Leave a bag open and manually pick them up as needed. Use of hotbutton inventory slots is a must - check out my Vert UI.

I have played a bard on Live for 11+ years and most of that was by manually twisting. I just can't physically do that anymore (I have to type with single fingers these days).

What do the numeric ratings on instruments do? A vendor bought lute is a 20 while some MM drop is a 21. Does this add to your instrument skill? Is the difference between 20 and 21 significant?

lvl 40 bard here. And i need more spots to solo and group. Right now it's Lguk, and solb for groups. I used to solo the entrance of Lguk, but they're getting green'ish. I also solo Hill Giants in RM, but that place is usually very populated. More good places would help me greatly.

Guards, specs

havn't seen specs not camped, and i stay way from guards for faction reasons. I like banking in any city

unfortunately, guards have a ridiculous respawn timer on this server - something like 20+ mins.

I notice that nearly the whole of misty thicket is empty for newbies to run to guards. I seen a few make it all the way to the middle with goblins only to die.

It's seriously not worth having hand, finger, wrist, wrist, and elbow pain just to be a bard. I know most americans nowadays are fat and could give a crap about their health, but don't ruin your fingers so that you can barely play video games again.

I was a 60 bard through velious. I wouldn't touch them again unless they implemented some sort of auto-twisting. It's not worth it.

woah another sullon zek player? i was a nobody paladin in tides of wrath for the longest time. don't tell me you were in hate/ruin... atleast i think the other guild was ruin, my memory is hazy.

I've played a lot, I did not experience the wrist pain out of twisting many are bringing up - I think a lot of it is avoiding rapid double tapping, but instead slurring the key presses, and trying to spread the twist over whole hand to reduce binding on adjacent fingers.

For example, to twist 4 songs, I'd do


13
42
14
41

I rebound my assist hotkey to s, have tab set to toggle targets, r to closest mob, f to target self. To switch instruments, I set up a hotbar with a L shaped layout:

[main weapon]
[inventory spot][secondary]

Then I can kind of click through in a pattern to switch out weapon and instrument, or multiple instruments by holding one on my mouse - situationally, a hotkey with /autoinventory helps, as it both auto-equips or auto-inventories whatever you've got on your mouse, in that order.

I also off load my movement to the arrow keys, so there's not much going on with the other hand - making it easier to reach over and hit screenshot. In addition, if you rearrange your bags so they all tile, you can use the open/close all functions, which I rebound to ] and [.

Having your open inventory was something I did my entire career, and having that spot hotkey'd is also useful as it allows you to activate the many, many inventory items you will accumulate as a bard, and can quickly grab and swap from collection of open bags.

Hope this helps.

-Tork