SK Race question + item help (have never played a tank)

[Alarria]

Hi, just looking for some suggestions- I don't really want to deal with an exp. penalty for playing one of the large races or Iksar, although I know regen/stats/FSI are all huge QoL. That leaves me with a DE, Erudite or Human. Is there really any benefit to vs the other?

As far as gear, I have a FBSS, 2x Plat. Fire wedding rings and a Skull-shaped Barbute and that's all for gear. I was thinking of picking up some Crusty for armor slots, and some orc fang earrings for ears. Have a budget of only ~6-8k. Mainly looking for weapon help. Want the best bang for the buck! Shield I figure the Atramentous, but I've always only played casters so for weps I got nothing!!

Thanks in advance!

Edit- Will be playing with a cleric most of the time, trying to form PUGS or possibly killing Paineel guards.

[Jimjam]

Erud has a slight advantage in naked magic resist if that means anything to you. Dark elf has better night vision (but you get spells for that).

It's kinda a wash otherwise - the humanish races all have stats of about straight 75 - except for int in the two nerd races, which I don't really think matters all that much for most the knights career.

With that budget I'd try squeeze a ceremonial iksar chestplate - it really helps the first 30 levels. The rest you can fill with looted cloth/raw hide/ringmail/bronze as you level and snap up bargains as you see them (something cheap with str like crusty is ideal).

Mace of the Shadowed soul is a cheap starter weapon. If you have high level friends you can try jump down a pit in velks at level 5 to get a Shard of Night.

[Danth]

Those three races are pretty close for the shadow knight. Between them, appearance is probably the most important deciding factor.

--Erudite has glitchy-looking Velious helmets. It has the highest intelligence. Remember to put five points into agility so as to bring it to 75. Worst effective starting strength makes them more of a hassle to start with if wearing mediocre equipment.

--Human has the highest starting strength of the three, which can be a factor if you don't have good equipment, especially since your cleric partner cannot meaningfully buff it and his class usually has STR issues of its own. This advantage wanes over time as equipment improves and human has no particular advantage at higher levels.

--Dark elves start with excellent night vision; the class gets a vision spell anyway at level 22 but it's a great bonus for starting out. Easy access to reaper of the dead quest is a plus. Different faction alignments than the other two, able to use the ogre and troll cities to some extent but worse with most of the others.


Danth

[DeathsSilkyMist]

If you don't mind the look of Trolls or Iksars, I wouldn't discount them because of the XP penalty. Being able to regen 2x faster is effectively doubling your kill speed solo. This is going to net you more xp even after the penalty.

For weapons you want https://wiki.project1999.com/Embalmers_Skinning_Knife for infinite bandages. Will reduce your downtime and is much cheaper than the regen chest items. Getting both the dagger and a regen chest would be better, but more expensive.

For DPS weapons Mace of the Shadowed Soul, Noctavigant Blade, or Ebon Mace will work well for a while. Atrementous Shield is indeed great if you can get it, otherwise Sarnak Battle Shield is a good, cheaper alternative.

[Snaggles]

On Blue an ebon mace is like 1-1.5k. At some point around 30 I’d get a 2h since even good ratio 1h’s don’t really keep up when soloing. They are still great when tanking for bashing casters and interrupting their spells.

Humans and Erudite SK’s are actually quite easy to play. You will be KoS in some places and some guilds but in general you can navigate a lot of good and evil towns without issue. For example in Rivervale you are probably fine but the druids will kill you. DE will need serious faction to be friendly there.

I don’t believe the Regen will ever make up for the xp penalty. It doesn’t really scale until later (2 standing instead of 1 for 1-50; 3 standing instead of 10 from 56-59) and at that point you likely will be soloing one or two spawns and waiting for them to repop. Not crawling and killing non-stop. Mana would be a limitation over hps, even with an epic or Greenmist. It’s a nice perk if you want to grind it out, like frontal bash immunity with ogres but mainly if you want to be one anyways.

For a casual player the race pick is more flavor than anything. If you are a min-maxer but not a raider an ogre will swing about 70 stam over a small race which is about 360hps. Strength is higher for ease of carrying gear and extra attack lower (str capping isn’t easy). Stam capping an erudite without starting stats pumped isn’t easy. If you care about having a large mana pool though the littles have that going for them. They also don’t need shrinks or shroud of undeath (15-20k spell) to get around in HK or dungeons.

[Keebz]

Of those choices, I'd lean DE. Ultravision is nice, as is the smaller size and high int pool. I enjoy the fashion as well. Human is a good pick if you want better melee stats and to be less KoS places. Erud is good for the int and the faction, but the melee stats are the worst and most importantly the fashion is unfortunately buggy.

I'm a regen or bust boy, but the other races have their charms. It should be noted the penalty is shared amongst your group, so if you don't solo it's more like like 3-10% depending on group size.

[Keebz]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you have high level friends you can try jump down a pit in velks at level 5 to get a Shard of Night.

I second the Shard of Night rec, but it's dropped in Chardok and can be bought relatively cheaply. The no-drop sword in Velks is Sword of Pain iirc.

Reaver is a great twink weapon 30+, as is Frostreaver if you raid (note the race restrictions on it).

[Trelaboon]

My SK is a Human, and if I didn’t have a ToV weapon on him, I’d reroll. While we do have night vision spells starting at 22 for infra vision, and 49 for Ultravision, it’s annoying having to always keep it up. We aren’t like Rangers who are going to have an easily obtainable ultra vision helm or something, so Dark Elf is really nice.

Furthermore, depending on how seriously you plan to play (raid) at 60, melee stats all max easily with buffs and good gear. They do have lower strength, which can be a pain in earlier levels, but at this point in the game, that’s less of an issue than it would be during initial server launch, classic era.

As far as gear, I’d also recommend the Iksar Chest plate (try to spend 6k) Noct blade (800p) and fill the rest in with crusty armor with your remaining 1k. While someone’s embalming skinning knife is a good idea, you’d have plenty of plat to buy one (roughly 1k) by the time the iksar BP starts slowing down at 30 or so, and the iksar BP will be a faster way of leveling prior to then.

[Ripqozko]

Originally Posted by Trelaboon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

My SK is a Human, and if I didn’t have a ToV weapon on him, I’d reroll. While we do have night vision spells starting at 22 for infra vision, and 49 for Ultravision, it’s annoying having to always keep it up. We aren’t like Rangers who are going to have an easily obtainable ultra vision helm or something, so Dark Elf is really nice.

Furthermore, depending on how seriously you plan to play (raid) at 60, melee stats all max easily with buffs and good gear. They do have lower strength, which can be a pain in earlier levels, but at this point in the game, that’s less of an issue than it would be during initial server launch, classic era.

As far as gear, I’d also recommend the Iksar Chest plate (try to spend 6k) Noct blade (800p) and fill the rest in with crusty armor with your remaining 1k. While someone’s embalming skinning knife is a good idea, you’d have plenty of plat to buy one (roughly 1k) by the time the iksar BP starts slowing down at 30 or so, and the iksar BP will be a faster way of leveling prior to then.

DE has hard time capping sta, even with pretty good gear. Less you are VQ/riot alt

[Kirdan]

DE gets Ring of the Dead to bind anywhere as a melee. Not sure how rare they are on blue these days, but if you can find someone selling then you can have it MQ'd to your SK via the recharge quest.