The Monk Profession
Why Choose a Monk?
Monks are a unique class in that they have access to both the religious tomes and spell books. This offers a monk easy transportation around the world map through both spells and rites as well as other benefits such as Magic Reflect and Flame Strike from the spell book and rites from the religious tome that are just too numerous to mention. Along with the aforementioned benefits however, monks are unable to wear the more protective armor as they are restricted to studded armor.
What Skills to Pick?
Meditation – 30
Why 50% in Resisting Spells and not 50% in Magery or Meditation?
Resisting Spells is one of the more difficult skills to train, as opposed to the other two. The closer you can be to your goal when starting out, the better.
What Stats to Pick?
Intelligence – 10
Weird, Intellect starting at 10?
You will find that raising intellect is trivial at best, it is just a skill you will naturally gain in while training the skills you primarily need as a monk and strength offers you more hit points.
I’ve Created my Character, Now What?
You’ll probably want to make a bit of gold, the best and easiest way to do this for any class is to visit the fields located just outside Britain. Harvest any of the crops out there and sell them to a vendor, you will need to secure yourself a few items to begin your training as well as probably want to vendor train a couple skills. This will also raise your dexterity and strength some so it definitely does not hurt to spend a bit of time out there harvesting. You may also want to consider keeping some of your harvest as it will help keeping yourself fed while you train. Below is a list of items you will want to purchase with the gold you make out in the field.
- Spell book with 1 of each scroll for circles 1-3 of Magery which can be purchased from The Sorcerer’s Delight (located at 1488, 1572, 30) within Britain city limits.
- Purchase a bag of reagents of either 200 or 500 in quantity, this will be a good start for training Magery but keep in mind you will probably need to replenish your reagent stock as you are training.
- As an optional step, within The Sorcerer’s Delight shop, there should be a vendor in there who is able to train you in Evaluating Intelligence, you might want to do this if you have the funds.
- Find a player who plays a scribe and try to secure at least a Scroll of Lightning, Scroll of Paralyze, Scroll of Recall and a Scroll of Mark. (The latter two just allow you easier travel, the first two mentioned are strictly for training purposes.)
- Pick up some cheap studded armor from the vendor at The Best Hides of Britain (located at 1440, 1611, 20) within Britain city limits, while here if you can afford it, vendor train in Arms Lore which you may want to train to 40% before joining the monk class as it will gain slightly faster while in the Magic User base class as well as raising your intellect should you not meet the intellect cap requirement for joining the monk class.
- If you can afford it, locate a vendor at The Bucking Horse Stables (located at 1515, 1552, 25) to vendor train in Animal Lore and Animal Taming. You may want to train these before joining the Monk class to 40% as they will gain slightly faster while in the Magic User base class.
How do I go About Training my Crucial Skills?
Joining the monk profession requires that you build certain skills and stats to specific levels, the toughest of these to do will be Resisting Spells, but if you started with a 50% as advised, it will not be too much of a pain.
Your Stats Must Be:
Intellect – 85
Your Skills Must Be:
Magery – 65% or Meditation – 55%
Training Resisting Spells:
Let’s start with the toughest of the three, Resisting Spells is tough because this is not something you can sit within city limits, safely protected by guards, no this skill you must place your character in real imminent danger. You must have NPCs (Non Player Characters) cast on your character. Below is a quick guide as to what mobs you will want to seek out for casting on your character based on your character’s Resisting Spells. It is advisable that you just raise it to the bare minimum required to join the class (55%) as it will raise a little faster once you join the Monk profession.
Bone Mage (Britain Graveyard) : 20% – 50%
Bone warlock (Vesper Graveyard) : 50% – 60%
Lich : 60% – 65%
Training Magery:
As mentioned above, you will need to acquire a little bit of gold to be able to train this skill, it is a fairly quick skill to train but it does require a little bit of planning ahead and spending. Even though this will cost gold to train, it is advised to train your Magery to 65% instead of relying on your Meditation skill to hit 55% to join the class, your Magery skill will generally raise faster than your Meditation skill at this point so, go the easier route, in time you will max both out but to begin with, get your Magery trained.
20-30 : 1st Circle (Magic Arrow)
30-40 : 2nd Circle (Any Spell in this Circle will do)
40-50 : 3rd Circle (Poison)
50-60 : 4th Circle (Lightning)
60-65 : 5th Circle (Paralyze)
Training Meditation:
As you train Magery, you will discover that Meditation will also gain as it is a skill crucial to any casting class, it regenerates your mana faster when you are too low to cast a spell. It is advised however to visit The Chamber of Virtue (located at 1556, 1613, 10) where you will find an altar with which you can use to train Meditation up to 40%. It is highly advised to do this before you even begin training Magery as it is an easy way to get Meditation up for free without having to spend gold on reagents. Once you have reached 40 Meditation, you’re left with only two options to train it.
If you are not in a religion yet:
Your only option here is to just use spells to drop your mana and then meditate back up and repeat this process until you hit the desired meditation skill percentage, which to join the class is 55%.
If you are in a religion:
These rites below can be found within the tome issued your Monk once you have joined a religion, if for whatever reason you have not received one of these tomes, contact your religion’s head and see if you can obtain one of these.
40 – 50 : Effulgence
50 – 60 : Enervation
60 – 65 : Encumbrance
Any Other Important Skills I Ought to Know About?
Of course the three skills reviewed above are just crucial skills needed to join the class, but the monk has many other skills you ought not forget about. Healing and Evaluating Intelligence are two important skills to not just leave on the way side. Whilst your Magery will never be as powerful as a Mage’s, you will want to train Evaluating Intelligence as it boosts your mage spell’s potency and Healing while only being a Secondary skill, is invaluable as you can not always rely on spells alone to keep yourself alive. Wrestling is also a handy skill to have, it is very powerful but at the same time, a monk must not rely on it as the type of armor a monk is restricted to is not very protective to be fighting within melee range.
Final Closing Notes:
- Should you wish to enter the heightened monk class, it is strongly advised that you train your Penalty skills to 40% while still in the Magic User Base class, they will raise a little bit faster while in Base Class as opposed as a monk, this is a common mistake, to rush into joining a class without thinking ahead and this little bit of time spent in base class training these four skills will save you a bit of time.
- Wands are invaluable to a monk, become friends with a scribe who might be able to supply you with these as well as scrolls such as fire elemental scrolls, casting from scrolls does not use any mana so building up a group of mobs before combat is especially nice as you will not need to meditate after summoning elemental creatures from scrolls.
Guide created by Roman Wu
