Iksar Monk Guide

This will be a guide for players starting and leveling an Iksar Monk

My name is Trappist and I have a 60 monk on red and I'm currently leveling a new monk on green.

I will try to detail the strategies I use to level and gear a new character. My goal is to help other players with as much detail as possible, since I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best strategies as I level my characters. I get a kind of research addiction as I level.

I started an Enchanter on Green and made it to level 20. I realized not having the pet window and target cycling was going to make the class not as enjoyable as I hoped, so I decided to reroll.

As mentioned above, I leveled an Iksar monk to 60 on red starting from nothing, and it is one of my favorite leveling experiences ever. I'm having a similar experience on green.

Why a monk?

Monks are incredibly fun to play. They are a decent tank, incredible puller, good melee dps, decent farmer, good powerleveler, and all around fun class.

A twink monk is one of the fastest leveling toons in the game with a fungi, decent weapons, and haste.

A non-twink Iksar monk is still great for leveling and very enjoyable.

Watch Flatts

When I made my new toon, I had nothing. I watched the great video series on YouTube by Flats [1] which gave me the itch to play monk again even if I had nothing.

Flatts does a great job laying out the quests available in Cabilis.

Basic Gear

Cabilis_Starting_Guide#Quests has some good info.

Sparring_Armor is really good monk gear, but the quest for it is extremely tedious and I gave up after about an hour grind and one Pile_of_Granite_Pebbles to my name.

Curscale_Armor is much easier to attain and you get exp/gold as a reward. I did this quest probably 20 times. The downside is how heavy the bag and skins are.

Also, skeleton mobs in FoB do not carry cloth like the mainland ones do, so this is one of the only ways to obtain your most basic armor.

Basic Weapons

Getting a good weapon is tricky.

Monk#Hand_to_Hand_Damage.2FDelay shows hand to hand damage/delay and you can see that a splintered club or cracked staff are a better choice for leveling.

Keeping hand to hand leveled up isn't that tough, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. When you need to start using a fist with your epic, your dual wield rate will be 70%+ so it will level quickly.

You can get Survival Staff, Club, and Staff from merchants when you get enough plat to afford them.

From there, your next upgrades will be Fighting_Baton or Master_Wu's_Trance_Stick. These go between 100 and 350 plat so it will be a while before you can afford them and you also have to deal with the problem of getting to EC to get them.

If you aren't completely fresh, getting one of these weapons for your new monk makes a world of difference.

Also, there are occasionally people running through FoB, Kurns, or WW with these for cheap or as a gift. I snagged a Fighting Baton off a guy that was stripping his toon for a different character and it only cost me 100 plat.

For 2HB Wu's_Quivering_Staff is an incredible weapon. It usually sells for 200-400 plat and it is a legit DPS weapon when you are 20+. They get snatched up quickly in EC, though, so start looking early on another character if you can.

There are also other options that aren't the best, but they will help you keep the skill up: Ketchata_Koro_Mis & Bamboo_Bo_Stick

Skills

Everquest is a slow game. Any gamer in the modern age knows the actions per minute are pretty low.

One thing I love about leveling a monk is all the new skills you get that you are continuously trying to level. During the slower, lower levels, I'm constantly hitting sneak, FD, sense heading, intimidation, whatever. Seeing those skill up messages is a little drop of dopamine to break the monotony.

Disclaimer: You get a lot of skills that throwing 30+ points into initially will make a huge difference on. I recommend being conservative with your point specifically for Feign Death at 17. This skill needs a lot of tries to skill up and starting around 50 skill is a boon.

Sense Heading: You can level this skill to 200 at level 1. I usually dump 3-5 points into it at level 1. It can only level on a successful use, and it probably has a 5% or less success rate at level (1).

Most players place sense heading in one of their lower hotkey spots and then bind that spot to the same key as a movement key. I didn't do this on green because your bar only holds 6 hot keys. I created a macro for it to use 3 times per key press and pressed it whenever I thought about it. (Note: you won't be able to use another macro while this is running)

Make Sense Heading 1 on your ability bar

/doability 1 /pause 19 /doability 1 /pause 19 /doability 1

I think I capped Sense Heading around 9 or 10. (It still fails at 200, thanks Verant)

Mend: Mend heals 25% of your health on a 6 minute timer. When it is below a certain level it has a chance of doing around 25% damage to you instead of healing you. Be smart when you use it. I poured points into it and used it every time it popped until it started working most of the time. I mainly used it out of combat and I made sure I had enough health to survive if it crit failed.

Once you or Mend hit a certain level it becomes your greatest tool to speed up soloing.