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.

Safe Fall This skill allows you to take less damage when you fall. Any fall that does any damage gives the skill a chance to level up. Anytime you have SoW and you are in a zone with hills, make sure to run down in a way that would give another character 1-5 damage. This will help level it quickly.

Sneak Skill_Sneak allows us to be invisible when you are behind a mob. This used to help with FD pulling, but it was a bug and no longer works on Project 1999. The most important use for it as an Iksar is selling to vendors that don't like you.

Practice it early and often. It caps at 113 and it took me until about level 28 to cap it.

Round Kick, Tiger Claw, Eagle Strike, Dragon Punch/Tail Rake These are your upgrades from kick. The max damage on them seems to scale with your skill level, so train them initially when available and then use them on cooldown until you get the next one.

I create a macro to start a fight and hit it repeatedly while I fight. The downside is the hotkey won't let you see if one of these skills is up, so I usually keep my ability menu open as well to monitor.

Set your skill to ability 2 in the ability bar

/autoattack on /doability 2

Flying Kick The best upgrade to kick. Max damage is 50 when you get it at 30 and then it goes up from there. Great damage skill.

Defense, Dodge, Block, Riposte - Defensive skills that you should train when available and let naturally level as you get exp.

Bind Wound - I didn't start carrying bandages until level 8. You can bandage until 50% health. Bandages heal you for Bind Wound Skill/4. It becomes a very powerful soloing tool. Pro tip: You can practice FD and Sneak while you are bandaging. Feign Death then stand to look around while bandaging.

I created a macro that binds wound 3 times in a row for when I get low on health.

Be sure to save your Mend for when you are above 50% health.

Intimidation - This skill works like a long cast fear spell. The duration is random and the mob will run amuck. Above skill 100ish it works about 40%-50% of the time.

Mobs above 50% health run at about 90% of full speed, so using it without SoW can be difficult. Use strafe run to catch them when they are out of range. Also, higher hp mobs are really hard to consistently hit because they will randomly turn and lining up your hits when you are in range can be tough.

Mobs below 50% health run around normal mob low hp fleeing speed, so it's much better to use then if you don't have SoW.

Giants are one of the best mobs to use for intimidation kiting because their hit box is so large. Trying to use it on normal size mobs can be a chore.

Some rules:

1. Intimidation will not work if your melee skill is on cool down. When I first got the skill it so rarely worked for me that I only used it to keep it leveled. I asked another monk that was using it very successfully and they told me this. The faster melee skills like tiger claw and eagle strike can be cast during the intimidation animation and as long as they are off cool down when it finishes, you are good.

2. If there is another mob that will socially aggro near, your feared mob will head in their direction eventually, so be prepared.

3. You can practice Intimidation on mobs that are out of range and the skill will level up.

4. You can start intimidation when you are far away from a mob and it seems it will still work. There is a long animation and the skills seems to attempt the "cast" when it finishes.

5. You can start intimidation and then FD and it can still work. If you are successful, it will break your FD but you will still need to hit stand like normally coming out of FD.

6. Intimidation can be cast on a mob that is already feared and it can land again.

7. Intimidation can fail and it can also be resisted. The resist mechanic seems to work like normal spells where the mob's level in relation to yours is the biggest factor. Using it on a white or yellow mob is very difficult and even blues that are a level or two below you will get a number of resists.

Dual wield & Double attack - These skills will naturally level as you fight with them. Double attack is a game changer when you get it at 15. Dual wield max level is (Level+1)* 7.

Disarm Level it by using it on a mob with a weapon.

Feign Death - The main monk skill for pulling. For mobs that are below 35, a successful FD will memory wipe the mob. This makes pulling very easy as long as you get some separation. Be sure to practice this skill often. I trained it a ton in combat by turning off auto attack, hitting FD, and immediately standing up to start fighting again.

Forage You can't level this on an Iksar and it works probably 1/5 times. I ignore it mainly.

Low level exp rules

1. Watch out for a scaled wolf cub and a militia skeleton. Both are higher level and look like level 1 mobs. They will destroy you. 2. Save and sell everything if this is your first character. I would even save your copper unless you are really overweight. 3. Forget the monk AC penalty. It doesn't matter on a first character, you need the money much more.

Level 1-3

You made a new toon, congrats! I hope Lizard/Kicks/Azz/Scaly are in the name.

First turn in your newbie note and strap on your brand new non-shirt.

Go straight to the Haggle Baron and make a Macro

/say I will perform a small service

Use this on Klok Mugruk to get Empty_Curskin_Bag

Now head out to FoB and start fighting. Here is the priority of things to kill:

1. Decaying skeleton with a shield (go out of your way to get these guys while being careful, the shield sells for over 1 plat) 2. Decaying skeleton with a weapon 3. Scaled wolf pups

All of these mobs should be white to you.

Save all bone chips.

Once you get a shield or 4 weapons run to one of the merchants, sell the weapons and buy a bag. Repeat until you have 4 or more bags.

When you get 8 Scaled Curskins, combine the bag which will reduce a lot of your weight.

When you get 8 more skins, it's time to run into town.

Turn in the bag at Klok Mugruk for a piece of armor.

Use your macro to get another bag, combine the skins, turn it in again for another piece of armor.

Use the macro one last time to get another bag.

Run to Klok_Stitch and buy a large or small sewing kit depending on your funds.

Optional Dump some points into tailoring at your trainer.

Head to the bank, convert all your money, put any plat in the bank and head out to level again.

For levels 2 and 3 you will get better exp off the scorpions (social) and some of the beetles wandering around.

Optional You can turn in your bone chips to Trooper Mozo at the entrance to Cabilis in FoB for an exp boost. If you're thinking of saving them and selling them in EC, do /who and know that every other player in this zone is thinking the same thing.

Level 3-6

You can continue to do curscale armor and also add Scorpion_Pincers into the rotation.

At level 4, head over to the bonebinder warrens (D on the map) and get ready to murder some spiders. For new to the server broke players, I would stay here until you no longer get exp and maybe longer.

Combine 2 spiderling silks in your sewing kit to make a stackable silk thread.

At the time of this writing, each of those sold for 2 plat in EC and they sold quickly.

You can easily leave here with 6+ stacks worth 40p each. Hello Wu's Quivering Staff!

Level 7-10

These levels can be tricky and long.

I ended up fighting any blues I could grab around the pit in FoB.

I focused the larger spiders and ended up making a lot of silk swatches which I used to level my tailoring. They can also be sold to other players.

At level 9 I entered Kurns, which isn't always possible. On Green this zone was usually packed and most groups that are 12+ avoid the lower level scalebones because they are green.