One of my favorite things to do in game is start new characters and train them up from scratch. Sometimes I will buy a couple mythic tokens other times I will just grind up from NPC bought skills. I know templates are very subjective and everyone has their own favorite, so not trying to start a debate of what template is best. Just simply putting out what I have and do use to get established on a new shard without transferring gold and items in, and keeping post AOS as pre AOS templates and play styles are for the most part obsolete.
The solen are your friend or not. The first character I make is always a Zoogi farmer, powder and bag runner. Necro is one of the easiest skills to get to 100 or above and Spirit speak rises right along side it. Necro and SS power scrolls are usually some of the cheapest. Powder of translocation, bags of sending and pet summoning balls are all very worthwhile and the gold and gems picked up along the way add up. Why a necro? Very simply they are low risk and you can kill the hive queens with Revs and not lose friendship, and by not killing the workers, the queens insta respawn. If you have a house or access to a house in the ant woods North of Vesper you can lead 7 to the porch wither them, loot them and zip off the powder quest fast. You don't need any high end gear. The crappiest no resist LRC suit will work as good as a high end suit. A couple of necro jewels are handy if you have not trained up. The higher your Necro and SS the faster your revs kill the queens. a couple of loot SDI jewels 18 sdi is not hard to find now days as loot and a scrappers greatly increases your wither mojo for killing the 7 on the porch. Using a Necro, SS, Mage template you can branch off in several directions with that one character. Sampire, Necro-Mage-Mystic-Weaver, LOL a necro -mage-disco template can be fun
120 necro 120 SS 120 music 120 disco 110 mage 100 poison and 30 focus with a suit with some MR and LMC in addition to the LRC
The Mystic is a gold making machine there is not much that will not fall to RCs given enough time. And like the necro template can be done on the cheap with a LRC suit that no one will envy. Mystic is just as easy to train up as necro but the scrolls to go to 120 are often harder to find and considerably more expensive. Particularly the 120 focus. The alternative is doing 120 imbuing which is NOT a cheap skill to get to 120. At 120 mystic and either 120 focus or imbue and with a easy to get 60SDI your RCs, Hail Storms, Nether Cyclones and bombards hit hard. Make it a disco mystic and it is a low cost PvM template. And there is plenty of room to add Spell weaving for the finishing big hits. My personal favorites to farm with this template are Tsuki Wolves and the Fairy Dragon Spawn, RCs and a WOD chaser take the renowned wyvern down fast and it takes the forgotten servants down fairly fast as well. Take yer bag of sending though you will be sending a lot of 60k piles of gold to the bank. You also have a shot at the insane tinker legs, which usually sell for a nice price. My personal best was 5 sets of Tinker legs over 10 hours of grinding the spawn. (Was wearing a 2470 luck suit with 100 lrc 20MR and 30 LMC and 70s resist) Have not repeated that since but it was a nice chunk of gold selling the legs. As far as just farming easy gold the mystic is my top template. 120 Mystic 120 Focus 120 mage 120 Spell Weaving 120 med 120 eval.
The Stealth Tamer, pirate, T hunter. With Pub 97 I got a lot more into taming. And here is where I will buy Mythic tokens I hate training taming....... Everyone hates training taming! Using a mythic to get to 90 taming takes a whole lot of sting out of training taming. I also am one of those weird folks that actually likes high seas and there is no faster way to get your pets through the training process than pounding on dread pirates, if you are half way decent with a ship and reloading cannons. Most of my tamers are also T hunters and have Mining/Lock Picking/Cartography on soul stones. Pub 97 turned the old and weak Blue Beetles into my main T hunting pets. A Unicorn as my miasma farming T map machine, and lesser hiryus of a chiv or bushido nature into my all around hunting pets. All easily obtained, trained and useful. And a 2 slot Najasaurus for farming Navrey Unscrolled pets work just fine, not as well as 8X scrolled pets but fine never the less My unscrolled blue beetle with 80 cold resist chews through a frost dragon guardian fairly quick........ A unscrolled fire beetle or a fire drake even quicker. No need to worry about a taming mastery 3 until you are 120 tame and lore (real skill) a 1 or 2 will serve you just fine until then. Hiding and stealth are just plain handy for taming critters and for farming mobs. I do make some weaponized tamers usually of a archery or throwing type. Even if you just add a weapon skill and tactics your own and the pets damage output are much better DPS combined. But at 90 taming/lore/vet/hiding/stealth via a mythic and a set of jewels to get your tame and lore you can get up and running with a tamer. most of my tamer templates are 120 tame 120 lore 120 vet 100 mage 100 hide 100 stealth 60 focus and I shoot for suits with as much luck, MR and LMC as possible and 100 LRC is a given.
The warrior not my favorite template or character type to play but they are useful. I don't get carried away with them and usually run fencing or macing just because the 120 scrolls are cheap. 70 necro to 100 with jewels 120 weapon 120 chiv 100 bushi 120 tactic 100 parry 90 resisting spells. Probably not the best template but it does alright chewing through most mobs and tanks well enough on bosses.
Most characters you can do well enough with 7x100 in PvM the exception being the tamer if you don't have at least 115 tame and lore your control over your critters pretty much does not exist since they are all 108 at 3 slot. The mage, mystic and necro skills will just fizzle more at 100 and rarely at 120. And the warrior skills will not hit as often or for as much damage. Most folks could care less about the science of it and breaking the numbers down, they just want to make a template that is effective and fun to play. Whether they deliver or receive 2 more DPS does not really matter. Most of us myself included now days knowing 120 wrestling tact and anat on a pet means the pet will hit more often and for more damage VS 100 skills or that your RCs will fizzle a whole lot more at 100 than they will at 120 is good enough LOL I start looking at the numbers and start yawning fast
I won't speak to PvP at all as I left that scene back in 2002/2003 and have had zero interest in it since then.
The solen are your friend or not. The first character I make is always a Zoogi farmer, powder and bag runner. Necro is one of the easiest skills to get to 100 or above and Spirit speak rises right along side it. Necro and SS power scrolls are usually some of the cheapest. Powder of translocation, bags of sending and pet summoning balls are all very worthwhile and the gold and gems picked up along the way add up. Why a necro? Very simply they are low risk and you can kill the hive queens with Revs and not lose friendship, and by not killing the workers, the queens insta respawn. If you have a house or access to a house in the ant woods North of Vesper you can lead 7 to the porch wither them, loot them and zip off the powder quest fast. You don't need any high end gear. The crappiest no resist LRC suit will work as good as a high end suit. A couple of necro jewels are handy if you have not trained up. The higher your Necro and SS the faster your revs kill the queens. a couple of loot SDI jewels 18 sdi is not hard to find now days as loot and a scrappers greatly increases your wither mojo for killing the 7 on the porch. Using a Necro, SS, Mage template you can branch off in several directions with that one character. Sampire, Necro-Mage-Mystic-Weaver, LOL a necro -mage-disco template can be fun
120 necro 120 SS 120 music 120 disco 110 mage 100 poison and 30 focus with a suit with some MR and LMC in addition to the LRCThe Mystic is a gold making machine there is not much that will not fall to RCs given enough time. And like the necro template can be done on the cheap with a LRC suit that no one will envy. Mystic is just as easy to train up as necro but the scrolls to go to 120 are often harder to find and considerably more expensive. Particularly the 120 focus. The alternative is doing 120 imbuing which is NOT a cheap skill to get to 120. At 120 mystic and either 120 focus or imbue and with a easy to get 60SDI your RCs, Hail Storms, Nether Cyclones and bombards hit hard. Make it a disco mystic and it is a low cost PvM template. And there is plenty of room to add Spell weaving for the finishing big hits. My personal favorites to farm with this template are Tsuki Wolves and the Fairy Dragon Spawn, RCs and a WOD chaser take the renowned wyvern down fast and it takes the forgotten servants down fairly fast as well. Take yer bag of sending though you will be sending a lot of 60k piles of gold to the bank. You also have a shot at the insane tinker legs, which usually sell for a nice price. My personal best was 5 sets of Tinker legs over 10 hours of grinding the spawn. (Was wearing a 2470 luck suit with 100 lrc 20MR and 30 LMC and 70s resist) Have not repeated that since but it was a nice chunk of gold selling the legs. As far as just farming easy gold the mystic is my top template. 120 Mystic 120 Focus 120 mage 120 Spell Weaving 120 med 120 eval.
The Stealth Tamer, pirate, T hunter. With Pub 97 I got a lot more into taming. And here is where I will buy Mythic tokens
I hate training taming....... Everyone hates training taming! Using a mythic to get to 90 taming takes a whole lot of sting out of training taming. I also am one of those weird folks that actually likes high seas and there is no faster way to get your pets through the training process than pounding on dread pirates, if you are half way decent with a ship and reloading cannons. Most of my tamers are also T hunters and have Mining/Lock Picking/Cartography on soul stones. Pub 97 turned the old and weak Blue Beetles into my main T hunting pets. A Unicorn as my miasma farming T map machine, and lesser hiryus of a chiv or bushido nature into my all around hunting pets. All easily obtained, trained and useful. And a 2 slot Najasaurus for farming Navrey Unscrolled pets work just fine, not as well as 8X scrolled pets but fine never the less My unscrolled blue beetle with 80 cold resist chews through a frost dragon guardian fairly quick........ A unscrolled fire beetle or a fire drake even quicker. No need to worry about a taming mastery 3 until you are 120 tame and lore (real skill) a 1 or 2 will serve you just fine until then. Hiding and stealth are just plain handy for taming critters and for farming mobs. I do make some weaponized tamers usually of a archery or throwing type. Even if you just add a weapon skill and tactics your own and the pets damage output are much better DPS combined. But at 90 taming/lore/vet/hiding/stealth via a mythic and a set of jewels to get your tame and lore you can get up and running with a tamer. most of my tamer templates are 120 tame 120 lore 120 vet 100 mage 100 hide 100 stealth 60 focus and I shoot for suits with as much luck, MR and LMC as possible and 100 LRC is a given. The warrior not my favorite template or character type to play but they are useful. I don't get carried away with them and usually run fencing or macing just because the 120 scrolls are cheap. 70 necro to 100 with jewels 120 weapon 120 chiv 100 bushi 120 tactic 100 parry 90 resisting spells. Probably not the best template but it does alright chewing through most mobs and tanks well enough on bosses.
Most characters you can do well enough with 7x100 in PvM the exception being the tamer if you don't have at least 115 tame and lore your control over your critters pretty much does not exist since they are all 108 at 3 slot. The mage, mystic and necro skills will just fizzle more at 100 and rarely at 120. And the warrior skills will not hit as often or for as much damage. Most folks could care less about the science of it and breaking the numbers down, they just want to make a template that is effective and fun to play. Whether they deliver or receive 2 more DPS does not really matter. Most of us myself included now days knowing 120 wrestling tact and anat on a pet means the pet will hit more often and for more damage VS 100 skills or that your RCs will fizzle a whole lot more at 100 than they will at 120 is good enough
LOL I start looking at the numbers and start yawning fast I won't speak to PvP at all as I left that scene back in 2002/2003 and have had zero interest in it since then.
