Is Bind Wound worth learning for a Shadowknight?
 

My main is a 45 Wood Elf Ranger, still grinding in Crystal Caverns in my free time (not much these days), but I've saved up 7,200pp in my time there, enough to fund an alt, and though I never had much interest in Shadowknight, the Trolls Racials caught my eye and made it more appealing.

Slam (so can 2h Bash without epic)
Strength/Stamina
Higher Regen

So I'm thinking I can get a cheap Haste item (Silver Chitin Hand Wraps), a decent 2-hander (likely Gravebinder), and some filler AC/HP gear and I'd be good until Planes at least. Learning where I can hunt and avoiding faction hate would be another obstacle altogether, but that's part of the experience I guess.

Being that Shadowknights lack healing spells, even though their Bind Wound skill seems to be capped at 200 (why theirs is only 200 and a Paladins is 210, I'll never know) and can only heal up to 50%, is it still worth training as a Shadowknight, or should I just rely on my regen as a Troll?

You should really keep with your name and call pp "dosh" lol.

I have a Troll SK, they are awesome.

Bind Wound is good for an SK when you don't have the clicky healing bp from Velious. Bind Wound is much faster than regen by itself. Plus, the extra Troll regen still ticks while you are Bind Wounding.

I would recommend getting a https://wiki.project1999.com/Embalmers_Skinning_Knife so you can summon bandages whenever you want. This also allows you to practice piercing, if you don't have another piercing weapon.

EDIT: Let me be a little more clear on the benefits.

Meditation allows an SK to regenerate mana MUCH faster than their HP. You will easily be regenerating mana at least twice as fast as your HP. The only way to get your HP back (other than regen) is life taps and Bind Wound. Depending on where you are fighting, it isn't always easy to find a low level mob you can tap on to convert all that mana you are regenerating in to HP. Therefore, Bind Wound is a great tool to get you back to 50%, without relying on finding said low level mob to life tap. Since your mana regeneration is still insanely fast, you really aren't losing out on the meditation ticks while you are Bind Wounding. You will still end up getting back to 100% mana before 100% HP.

My Ranger is called Thickcut Bacon.

I suppose my SK, if the name allows, could be called Lodsofemone Dosh.

I'll definitely want to work towards Thurgadin armor when the time comes, but that reminds me; is there any equipment that has Regeneration as a clickie/passive (that a Shadowknight can use and buy/MQ)?

https://wiki.project1999.com/Fungus_Covered_Scale_Tunic

https://wiki.project1999.com/Ceremon...sar_Chestplate

These are the two passive regen options. For your current money situation, the https://wiki.project1999.com/Ceremon...sar_Chestplate and https://wiki.project1999.com/Embalmers_Skinning_Knife combo would be your best bet, and you would only need another 5k or so.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Fungus_Covered_Scale_Tunic and https://wiki.project1999.com/Dark_Runed_Breastplate is the better combo when you get the Dosh, and will render Bind Wound worthless. However, https://wiki.project1999.com/Embalmers_Skinning_Knife and https://wiki.project1999.com/Ceremon...sar_Chestplate will get you a lot of mileage until then.

Yeah, by the time either of those come into my budget range, they'll likely not be of much use anymore.

So Silver Chitin Handwraps, Velium Fire Wedding Rings, and then either banded or low-grade Str/Sta plate armor to fill the remaining slots. And definitely JBoots for my own personal SoW. Noctivigant Blade and Atramentous Shield for the 1h/shield.

That just leaves the two-hander. Looks like Green Jade Halberd or Deathbringers Rod are my best options until procs start coming into play, at which point I can consider Soul Binder and Zealot's Incarnadine Sword.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Ceremon...sar_Chestplate and https://wiki.project1999.com/Embalmers_Skinning_Knife will always be useful in your leveling up process, until you can replace them with the better versions. With an SK, reducing downtime is the key, especially if you solo a lot. Those two items will also maintain their price, when you do replace them.

If you plan on buying just Silver Chitin Hand Wraps + Wedding Ring Pair + Jboots + Noct Blade and Atrementous shield, you are already spending over 10k. It shouldn't be too hard to farm another 10k for a regen BP and skinning knife, eventually. This is especially true when your SK is around level 25+, you can start killing halfling guards for cash.

Usually at 25 I'm making roost at High Keep, killing goblins and eventually guards.

That works too. But you get my point. If you can throw 10k+ at an alt, it shouldn't be too hard for you to farm another 10k, and it is definitely worth it. SKs have a harder time self healing when low level life tap targets are not present in the zone, or the area you are camping. Having a regen item and bind wound will speed up your recovery process significantly, which means more kills per hour.

Iksar BP gives you 3000HP/Hour. That is 1-3 additional full HP bars per hour, depending on your level.

Bind Wound at 100 skill gives you 40 HP per bind wound. That is 400HP per 10 binds. If you do 100 Binds per hour, that is another 4000HP/Hour.

That is a total of 6000-7000HP/Hour at least. For context, a Fungi Tunic is 9000HP/Hour. So for 1/5 of the price of a Fungi, you get 2/3 of a Fungi Tunic. This strategy does require you to go down below 50% more often, so you can bind, but it is certainly doable if you know how to handle the mobs you are fighting.

Well, I definitely plan to save any bandages I get early on and use them to jumpstart Bind Wound. And since I have Slam I can skip a 1-hander and shield probably and just live on 2-handers. That's money saved right there.

If I just go for SCHW, 2 Velium Fire Wedding Rings, a couple of starter 2h weapons (Deathbringer's Rod and Green Jade Halberd) and some various low-mid range Str/Sta plate, that's about 5k at most, and I can definitely afford that.

But Innothule Swamp is not going to work out for me. Nearly everything here is KoS and I only want to be killing Decaying Skeletons. I won't be able to transfer anything here either.

I need to find a way to get to Neriak on this character.

Agreed. That is a good start, and much cheaper. That will allow you to save for the regen items. You do want to skill up all of your weapon skills each level, this will save you pain later on.

Deathbringer's Rod and Green Jade Halberd are great options for your 2hb and 2hs, and will probably be your primary damage dealers.

For cheap 1hs, 1hb, and pierce to level up your skills, these are good, very cheap options:

https://wiki.project1999.com/Spine_Piercer
https://wiki.project1999.com/Sporali_Defender%27s_Blade
https://wiki.project1999.com/Deadwood_Stave

In terms of starting zone, you should move to Feerrott. Much easier to get to, and all the lizardmen/tadpoles drop basically the same stuff as decaying skeletons. That zone is much better than Nek Forest for cloth armor, weapons, etc.

EDIT: Ah, if you are trying to maximize bone chips, then yeah the lizardmen/tadpoles won't help. You should be able to get a port to Nek forest if you line it up with a friendly Druid. Get a SoW/Invis and a teleport to West Commons. Not sure if a Wizard port to Nek Forest would be good, since the Skeletons around the Wizard Spire would probably kill you, unless you have a SoW/Invis vs Undead.