Newbie looking for help :)

[boedy]

Hi all, new to EQ2 but not new to MMO's in general, 4 yrs of FFXI and 1 1/2 of WoW.  So far I have a 7 conjurer, a 15 zerker and now a 10 Brigand.  I enjoy this class so far the most...by far.  I have a few questions for you seasoned vets.1.  Which would say say is the best profession for a new Brig to get into??  Alchemy?  Amorer?  (Remember new to the game so I'm not exactly rich).  Which has more benefits compared to cost of lv up.  2.  How about a secondary skill?? Tinkerer or Transmuter??  I hear Tinkering is cheaper by far.3.  How important atm is it to keep my CA's updated??  At this lv they seem to change faster than it's worth replacing.4.  I will prob solo most of the time while I learn the game mechanics and what not, keep this in mind when answering the above questions.For some reason I had a lot more to ask when I first thought of posting, but I went blank...Guess posting from work will do that to you <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Grumble69]

1.  I would lean towards Jeweler.  That's the profession that makes the rogue CAs.  It would allow you to make your own adept III spells.  Alchemy is good for master crafted poisons, but that may be worth buying off the broker instead.  Armorer and Weaponcrafting require lots and lots of ore.  It's a pain in the butt to harvest enough and it's expensive on the broker.  I would stay away from it.2.  I would also stay away from the secondary skills for now.  They are slow & boring.3.  You should always get at least apprentice IV.  They are usually dirt cheap on the broker.  When money is not as much of an issue, I would get at least adept Is.  And as a jewler, make the adept IIIs for your more important CAs.4.  Even though you solo, I would still look for a guild.  Most guilds usually has someone with a lot of tradeskill alts and gets enjoyment out of making things for others (if you supply them the materials).  As long as you aren't a pest, their talents can make your life a little easier.-----another tip:  Don't sell your treasured items to the npcs.  Instead, sell them to other players on the market vendor.  You'll easily make 2gp for each treasured item that's lvl1-9 and 2.5-3gp for lvl 10-19.  That's why transmuting is so expensive.  One of their costly shortcuts is to buy these items and melt them down.  They take the components, use a recipe, and hope/pray for a skill-up.Also, if you have the RoK expansion, do the quests in Timorous Deep.  The rewards include some very good armor that will last you through the 20s.

[boedy]

A Jeweler, hmm, I'll take a look at that. As far as the guild, I met an awesome guy who's guild has gone to crap, but he still logs in every day. Joined our two man guild and hes been great. He has an alt for every profession as well(been around since 04 I think he said). But..I don't want to keep bugging him for armor etc, he twinked out my zerker with everything you can imagine, then I decided its not for me :/ So I kinda feel bad. Also as a veteran MMORPG"r, you better believe I'm using that broker <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" /> And the transmuting is basically an enchanter in WoW terms, they use a very similar approach there. Thanks for the info.And yes, I did roll a Zarnak in TD.  The only thing I don't like about the zone is the lack of things to harvest.  I literally have ran into 0 things to harvest except the random "?"  And it was not because of over crowding either.  Now I'm thinking maybe a rat would of been better...Oh well.  In the newbie land before Freeport, the harvesting materials are all over the place, like fish in the sea. If anyone else wants to chip in with their thoughts, they are welcomed <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" />

[Meirril]

<p>Since you know a crafter, I'd suggest you take up provisioning and alchemy. Both of these produce your major consumable items. Most crafters enjoy making a few durable items for their friends. It is the mundane day to day stuff that gets tiresome. </p><p>Jeweler is a good idea too. Quality jewelery and a constant supply of spells help alot.</p><p>As for upgrading spells, right now it won't matter. When you start slowing down or noticing that mobs are getting really tough start spending some coin on upgrades. First, upgrade your weapon. Make sure it is not more than 10 levels out of step with your adventuring level.</p><p>Next, upgrade spells. Make sure they are at least adpet 1 (or app4 if you craft). For key spells spend some coin on loam and get adept 3 spells made. Look to see if master 1 spells are cheap for that level. In the 30s master 1 spells can be really cheap due to a flood of availability.</p><p>Armor: master crafted is the way to go until you get to t8. Even when you hit 72 you might consider using mastercrafted until you get better adventuring. Buy a few peices here and there when you can afford it. I'd suggest saving up for a full set of steel and skipping t4 and t5 armor because feysteel and ebon are stupid expensive. A slightly better idea is to skip t4 armor and buy leather for t5. T5 leather is really cheap and almost as good as chain.</p><p>As for harvesting: go visit freeport. Find one of the newbie areas there and harvest till you hit 20 in everything. Then wander out to commonlands and get away from the city. In the more remote areas you'll find plenty to harvest. Skill up to 90 and then head to Nek forest/Thundering stepps/Butcherblock. Probably your best harvesting is in Thundering steppes. From then on out harvesting goes 50 points to get to the next tier. Remember that harvesting is linked to the higher of adventuring level or crafting level. Your max skill is level x5.</p><p>Harvesting your own steel is a good idea. Not only will you get steel clusters, you'll also get loam to make adept 3 combat arts, which make your life so much easier.</p><p>Oh, and make sure you take your friend/guildmate along for adventuring. Nothing makes them want to craft for you more than a good solid friendship based around grouping. It is also a good way to recruit more people into the guild by grouping with them.</p>

[Jida]

<span class="postbody">Alchemy by far will save you the most money and makes an ok amount.If your a poison user and don't roll </span><span class="postbody">Alchemy, eh, your crippling yourself.A + note, you can make your own combat arts adept III until level 19 if your a scholar (</span><span class="postbody">Alchemy makes fighter adepts).Also, i'd adept III everything the more damage you do, the better your life is.. BTW look out for the hell levels for a brig, 14-20. They are just horrible to solo, and it gets a lot better after 20.</span>

[Uggli]

As for your 2nd trade skill, I suggest Tinkering.  It's tons more fun to use as you are leveling up too.   My SK is an 80 Armorer / Max skilled tinkerer.   I plan to do the Alchemist/Tinkering path on my Brigand.    All other options are just too limited in my opinion.    You only make a few items/spells per tier and then you never use them again.  Where with alchemist you are always making poisons/potions yo will be using.Take a look at the link below for all the cool toys you get to use with tinkering.<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=346347" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=346347</a>

[Anfauglith]

1) Go for Alchemist all the way...during low lvls making rare poisons for almost nothing (and get exp for it) is great. And at high lvl the money you'll waste into buying pre-made poisons is enormous.2) for secondary I'd go for tinker but I'd leave it for later if I were you.3) CA update is pretty important...but depending on how fast you lvl you could wait a bit before you need to update every single CA...take the most important ones from tier 2.

[boedy]

<p>Thanks everyone for the great advice.  I see that alchemy seems to be my path, which I had in mind from the outset, but never hurts to ask <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></p><p> As far as Gathering, I've been hittin up every node of everything I find, I'm well over 100 pieces for most things already.</p><p> As far as 14-20 being a hellhole, looks like I'm going to enjoy this class A LOT....I'm lv 16 atm and I'm just breezing through it all, the only mistake I can say I've made is not speccing agil first for WtP, (respec coming tonight) and not starting out with a slasher, now I'm like 22/60+ for slashing /cry.  Guess I'm going to have to get a cheap buckler and just poke stuff to death for a while to catch up >.></p><p> Again, thank you all for the great advice. </p>

[Kafziel]

<cite>Devastatin@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><span class="postbody">Also, i'd adept III everything the more damage you do, the better your life is.. BTW look out for the hell levels for a brig, 14-20. They are just horrible to solo, and it gets a lot better after 20.</span></blockquote><p>Wow, I guess I missed the difficulty there.  I'm about to hit 20 on my Brig and I've flew through 14-19.</p><p>If those were hard, I can't wait to get to 21+ <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[Kaldrin]

<cite>boedy wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hi all, new to EQ2 but not new to MMO's in general, 4 yrs of FFXI and 1 1/2 of WoW.  So far I have a 7 conjurer, a 15 zerker and now a 10 Brigand.  I enjoy this class so far the most...by far.  I have a few questions for you seasoned vets.1.  Which would say say is the best profession for a new Brig to get into??  Alchemy?  Amorer?  (Remember new to the game so I'm not exactly rich).  Which has more benefits compared to cost of lv up.  2.  How about a secondary skill?? Tinkerer or Transmuter??  I hear Tinkering is cheaper by far.3.  How important atm is it to keep my CA's updated??  At this lv they seem to change faster than it's worth replacing.4.  I will prob solo most of the time while I learn the game mechanics and what not, keep this in mind when answering the above questions.For some reason I had a lot more to ask when I first thought of posting, but I went blank...Guess posting from work will do that to you <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img mce_tsrc=" />" />.  Thanks in advance for any advice.</blockquote>1. I went with Jeweler since I already had an Armourer and Alchie already. Alchemist will probably save you the most money in the long-term, but jeweler is also great if you want to keep yourself in Adept3s for your entire career.2. Bleh. Neither, but that's just me. Tinkerer probably has more stuff you can use. 3. Not at all until you start to slow down. Even with my own jeweler going I had to stop adventuring at the beginning of each tier and gather ingredients to raise my artisan class and generate the CAs. I never bothered with Adept3s until I was well into my 30s, but even then it was just because I had a bunch of rares laying around that I wasn't using on anything else. Now in the 50s leveling  is slow enough that you can grab or make the adepts all you want. 4.  Brig is an easy soloer if you keep your weapons and adepts on the major damage CAs up to date. Armour not so much. I'm still wearing the bloodore armor from 37 or whatever and I'm doing fine. <i>Edit</i>: There's a lot of people who like to brag about being able to take a triple up heroic named mob, but I find I can level faster taking blues... that's just an observation. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />