Some specific questions for a new player

[Drezial]

Please, first and foremost forgive my spelling. Secondly, if something I ask was already covered, just say "That was already covered" and I'll try researching for it. I don't have time to pour over hundreds of threads, but I will if I need to.

Starting off:

I lvl'd my thf to 7, then switched to RDM to 16. I switched to rdm because I was only grouping with a friend and he was a mnk, I figured some form of healing would best help him. RDM it was.

I'm now faced with this. Lvl RDM to 18, and sub it for thf, which will probably blow and not get me many party invites I'll want to easily get to 15, or hit 18 as RDM, start up war, lvl THAT with thf or rdm sub to 18 (or whatever's clever) and go thf, subbing war till 30.

Kinda confused on how bad I screwed myself.

Anyways, I'm also a hume and don't have much complaints about spending money to get the best gear, so I'm not worried about trying to be super cheap.

The questions are:

1.) Considering my current situation, what would be the most effective way to start lvling my thf.

2.) What are some ways to convince parties to invite me between 10 and 15?

3.) Sword or daggers till 33? I'm thinking sword, since I already have it capped till 16.

4.) What about ranged weapons? Should I go bow, crossbow, or boomerang type weapons?

5.) How can I best contribute to a party before Viper Bite?

6.) What food should I use to be able to keep up with the party's I will get? I want reinvites and money isn't really too big an issue.

That's all I can currently think of, and once again, I apologize if most of this has been covered and I'm just too lazy to find it.

-R

[Ljarin]

1) If it was me I would lvl warrior first to at least 15-20 then lvl thief - will find it a LOT easier that way

2) beg & pray or find some friends to lvl with, thf is kinda sucky til 15 just something you have to deal with - having lvld war sub will help out there.

3) sword will do better damage until 33, but you will want to keep dagger capped as much as possible.

4) xbow can work nicely, however you will find a boomerang much cheaper, but less damage. Entirely up to you really - I would've used xbow when lvling my thf if we had the option back then.

5) just do your best

6) Meat Mithkabobs. Always

[neighbortaru]

i would get rdm to 18 first, do subjob quest and then go level war or thf solo with the rdm as sub. the reason I suggest this is that, as you know, soloing thf to 15 is a pain. Having the ability to cure is very helpful and will cut down on your downtime.

also, i would recommend not using daggers until you have to (e.g. when you near 33). sword or h2h is so much better.

[Drezial]

I just want to say thank you for the advice, I seriously appreciate it. What's the first crossbow I can buy? Like I said, I'm not worried about money too much. I'll farm low level's if I have to. I'm not above getting crappy exp findinf fire crystals to sell stacks of.

[Omena]

I wouldn't use a crossbow for exp parties. A long boomerang has better stat bonuses than any crossbows and a lightning bow has even better stats.

Anyway, since you don't have war leveled at all, you might as well level monk and use grapples instead. With monk you can boost your attack to ridiculous numbers before doing you sneak attack, which results in awesome damage. Combo is also a stronger WS than Fast Blade.

Always switch to daggers at L33 and not before. You might want to skill up dagger briefly, but the damage just sucks. At 33 you no longer want to sub monk and use grapples, so you should level either war or nin (I prefer nin for various reasons that have been discussed many times before). Some people even like to sub rng for bow/marksmanship WS, but I have never seen a thf/rng in action nor have I tried it, so I can't comment on that.

[Alexander]

Most important to least important:

1) Sneak Attack + Combo (H2H). I used H2H all the way to 33 except for when keeping dagger capped.

2) Meat Mithkabobs. If you can afford them, use them. If you're rich, give them out to the other melees in your party...lol

3) WAR sub would be nice, but to be honest, you'll get invites in Valk no matter what your sub is. Only at 20+ does choice of sub make a big difference in party invites. You will need a WAR or MNK sub 20-30, though, so you might as well get it done with.

4) Ranged on a THF is only for pulling, and the damage is insignificant, so it's easier to just get a boomerang, The only reason to use crossbow or archery is for skillups.

[Ungerpurr]

Regarding subs:

Get to 18 on rdm, get subjob quest, level warrior to 10 or so.

Level monk to 16-18 or so with warrior sub once you're past the soloing levels.

Level thf with warrior sub until level 15, at which point you can use either monk or warrior sub (provoke will get you groups from 10-15, but sneak attack is what gets you groups 15+). If you go with monk sub, don't feel compelled to use HTH.

Personally I couldn't stand using them while leveling thf; my main job is monk and the miss rate is just retarded, in comparison. You'll be hitting 100% tp at the same time the warrior using great sword is hitting 150+, it's that bad.

The main shining point of monk sub is boost. Boost your ass off in-between pulls; you'll really see the difference in your sneak attack damage.

Weapons and their pros/cons (pre-33):

Dagger: Fast TP gain, mediocre WS damage. A 100% TP sneaked Wasp Sting does about the same damage as your regular sneak.

Sword: Slow TP gain, decent WS damage. A 100% TP sneaked Fast Blade does about 25% more damage than sneaked Wasp Sting. 300% sneaked Fast blade is around 80-85% more damage than sneaked Wasp Sting.

HTH: ASS SLOW TP gain, great WS damage. A 100% TP sneaked Combo does about 33% more damage than sneaked Wasp Sting. 300% sneaked Combo is around double the damage of sneaked Wasp Sting.

Interestingly enough, I've found that my regular sneak attacks usually did more damage with dagger; I think this is because I had a higher attack rating with dagger than sword or HTH. At any rate, don't ever let anyone tell you that you don't have a right to raise dagger skill in an xp PT pre-33; assuming timely WS usage (i.e., you don't have to wait on anyone, always WS at ~100% TP), the difference is really not very large, and you will get fewer WS with sword / HTH vs. dagger because you WILL miss more often.

[Alexander]

Your weapon skill level affects both damage and accuracy. If your H2H wasn't capped, I'm not surprised you found it to miss frequently.

[Omena]

I didn't have any trouble keeping up with TP when I subbed monk and used H2H. I did have above average gear since thief wasn't my first "main" job, though.

[Ungerpurr]

My monk job is level 60; HTH was always capped when playing thf. I also had the absolute best possible gear when leveling thf from 25-37; the most dex, agi, +atk, and +acc possible at that level. Now, keep in mind, I was comparing it to monk's accuracy with HTH, which is, of course, much, much better than THF.

It's a fact that you will gain TP slower with HTH than Dagger as a thf. If your SC partner sucks, this isn't an issue; but even a sword-using warrior gains TP noticeably faster than a HTH-using thf, and a ranger, of course, blows it out of the water (just mentioning the weapons that start fusion pre-33). Granted, impaction is probably a better SC anyway if you're going for MB at those levels, which gives you more options, but your SC partner will still be outstripping you for TP gain most of the time.

I'm not saying HTH is bad, far from it, but you will end up with fewer SCs than if you go sword, or especially dagger. My sneak/trick wasp sting was still doing 300-350 damage in Yhoator, but being a mithra with (iirc) +15 dex +9 agi (w/ meat kabob) helped with that a ton. My best wasp sting was like 378 in Yhoator; my best fast blade was 455.

I stopped using HTH by level 27 because of what I felt was an abominable miss rate, and also the difficulty in getting SA off in noob parties where it was often 15-20 seconds before the tanks stopped strafing at the beginning of a battle, and usually lost hate (thus losing me my sneak attack) while I was waiting for the long delay of HTH to cycle. Perhaps it would've been a good idea to NOT ready SA before the battle in these PTs, so I could start building TP and then use SA right after a provoke. For reference, my best SA + Combo (no TA) at level 26 was 318 damage, that was with 9-10 boosts and close to 200% TP, as I recall.

If you switch to Garlaige at level 32, you'll really be feeling the effect of HTH missing horribly. HTH at level 32 in Yhoator is not an issue, of course, as the mandrogoras and goblins are almost all merely tough-very tough. YMMV, I'm just saying that you don't have to go with sword or HTH to do decent SC damage in the pre-33 levels. Your gear and race are more important to your SAnTA damage than your weapon.

[Drezial]

ok, so I followed some advice, got rdm to 18, subbed it for war till 15, subbed war for thf which I've got up to 21 as of this morning.

I lvl'd crossbow with war till I switched to boomerang since long boomerang is +2 dex and cheaper.

I'm using swords, just got RLB. I now SA and use RLB instead of SA+FB because the damage it more if I do them seperate. I've eatten so many mithkabobs I'm almost sick of them

I have mini little static of a pld, whm, and myself with two different mnk's rotating in and out whenever one of them is on.

I burnt through 13-21 in two days, probably a bit slow...

But now I'm in desprate need of money. There is a LOT of eq minus the leaping lizard boots that I need to buy to be able to help contribute more.

What's the fastest way to make 240k+? I need to do it asap. And I don't want to hunt lizzy and hope to beat the higher lvl'd rng subs just to sell the boots

Arigato in advance!

-R

[Omena]

The only way to afford stuff like leaping boots without a high level job is to farm, farm and farm for a very long time.

If there was a "magical get 240k quickly trick", the boots would be a few million instead.

[Drezial]

It's not for the boots. I need two balance rings, garrision tunica, garrision boots, 2 beetle earring+1, spiked necklace +1, and other assorted gear to get my dex up so I can contribute in parties.

^^ I am farming though, but I'm farming beehive chips and was wondering if there was a better farm.

[Macht]

Originally posted by Drezial
It's not for the boots. I need two balance rings, garrision tunica, garrision boots, 2 beetle earring+1, spiked necklace +1, and other assorted gear to get my dex up so I can contribute in parties.

^^ I am farming though, but I'm farming beehive chips and was wondering if there was a better farm.

Well to be money efficient you can always try the garrison matches to get the boots and tunica you need. If you got friends or reliable connections, now it probably a good time to call on them for a little assistance. See if any would like to try from the item drop to do the garrison, then get a party for garrison with people that are willing to give up those items if they drop (They still need some insentive, so letting them have what ever else drops I'd think would be sufficent).

Other then that to make money around lv. 21 is kind of tough, maybe do so fishing for moat carp. That'll get you about 4k a stack you get (Take you about 2 hrs or so to make a few stacks to get 24k). If not that then you can try BCNM 20's I guess?? The items dropped from that range from about 6k - 30k if I remember right.

Would take you probably around 8 - 15 successful BCNM 20's to make that money. Other then that the last choice I can see that'll be effective is trying to get either Jaggedy-Eared Jack or Leaping Lizzy (NMs) if you can get it before anyone else and get the drop.

Making that kind of money under lv. 40 is kind of tough. There isn't many options that yield a large return, just farming for a very long period. Something like farming for about 5-6hrs for a week or two to make that.

[John Doe III]

Good job Unger D;/ H2H is teh pwn lower level, not some gay shadow stich or 1 hand sword lol