Project Altoholism: Hindsight is 20/20/20/20/20/20/20

So, I don’t think I quite realized how much of an undertaking this was going to be when I first started this project.  The problem is that I already had some characters near or at 20, so I figured it wasn’t a big deal.  However, last night as I was moving characters into our new kinship, I realized just how big the project actually is; and that’s with one character sitting at 42 and two more characters on the way!  All I can say is… whew, this has been a challenge.  But, I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet.  So here goes the breakdown:

The Lore-master

Still sitting on the sidelines for now, so he hasn’t been played much.  He’s basically there to do any woodworking that’s needed.  I would love to be working on his reputation for the woodworking guild, but I’m not quite into the areas to gather the correct materials just yet.  Hopefully soon though, because I do love crafting and would like to progress on his at least in some way.  However, Goldenstar’s alt is now 40 so maybe he’ll do some stuff with her in the future.

The Captain

The first to 20, and so far he’s looking like he’ll be the first to 30.  This is kind of odd, because I don’t really find the Captain class all that particularly interesting.  I can’t deny that I am somewhat oddly drawn to utilitarian classes, so that may be why he’s the first one that will stick.  That aside, he probably has the highest survivability of all the classes (at least the way I play he does) so he’s a good test model to run through all the areas and see where I want to quest from the 20-30 range.  His buffs are amazing and I’ve found myself slack-jawed once or twice after a fight where I’ve been good about my buff rotation and seeing all the blinking icons going on under his character bar.

The Burglar

The most ironic thing that happened to me leveling to 20 on my Burglar was seeing someone in the OOC channel saying that the had just returned to the game and wanted to know what was the lowest played class.  To which they responded “Burglars”, which he was ironically playing.  I can understand why there might be some misconceptions about this class, but I didn’t think it was all that difficult to level.  They definitely are not the DPS kings starting out, although I have seen some threads in the official forums about how some very well geared Burglars do quite well in raids DPS-wise.  So I ended up playing initially like any other melee class, but as I progressed I found that by playing “sneaky” I started to do quite better in fights.  Personally, I’ve found that using Sneak, Aim, Surprise Strike usually ensures a one to two-hit kill on a normal mob, and by timing a trick with Mischievous Glee I’m usually fine on health.  I have to say that this is the class that I am most interested in playing in fellowships at higher levels just to see what they can do.

The Minstrel

I play this class wrong, and I love it.  As per my previous post, this class to me is all about doing as much damage as quickly as possible with intermittent heals and  Cry of the Valar to survive in bad situations.  I am greatly looking forward to using War-speech and seeing how that goes, however I will have to remember to toggle it off whenever I find myself in need of healing, as the healing reduction really does hurt quite a bit.  Ultimately though I am going to have to get into the swing of healing for groups because that’s what people really want Minstrels to do.  Oh well, at least I shouldn’t have a problem finding a group.

The Hunter

The king of all solo’ing?  I don’t know.  I found the Minstrel to be quite self-sufficient.  So far I don’t have any self-heals on this character and I don’t know if any are coming.  He is a cook as well, but since he’s perpetually broke and still horribly behind on his skills that doesn’t do me any good either.  I did take him out for a spin recently before settling on the Captain and seriously… He’s ridiculously powerful.  Granted, when mobs get close enough to hit him his DPS drops due to push-back, but once I learn (and remember) how to use traps, things should go much better.  I’m also looking forward to the ports!

The Champion

This was probably the only class that I’ve actually felt disappointment with.  I just feel like the melee moves are way too slow for this class.  They should be a blur of blades, but instead I feel like I’m constantly waiting on auto-attack to finish in order to do my thing.  I’m hoping that the upcoming changes with combat really pull this class up or at least make them feel more fluid, because they need a little bit of love.  Yes, I know they do massive amounts of damage when they’re higher level, and he did seem to improve as he leveled; but still… I want to be a tornado of flying blades with this character!  Instead I got a little bored in the beginning.  Also, the dwarven starting quests stink.  I mean they are awful.  I found it to be a ton of running and just sporadic.  I highly suggest that if you start a dwarf that you run down to the elf area and start from there.  I found that area to be my favorite.

As a Whole

So as a whole I had fun leveling these characters and I look forward to moving into the 20-30 range.  So far I am torn on where to level.  I have the Captain going through the Lone Lands, but they’re a bit too easy.  The quests range from light green to dark blue, so I’m thinking about moving on to Ost Guruth or The North Downs.  From what I’ve seen though, it will probably be The North Downs, but we’ll see how quickly I go through The Forsaken Inn quests on the Captain first.

Now, I do have a major complaint about leveling to 20… And that’s the money you earn versus the money you need for skills.  Even with characters that were not crafting, I barely had enough money to cover purchasing skills upon leveling the higher I went.  I’m not sure if any adjustments were made to the costs of skills when the experience required per level changes were made, but if they were then they were not dropped far enough.  I walked into the training area with my Champion at level 20 with around 300 silver and left with around 15.  That’s just silly, and not in a good way.  I shouldn’t have to rely on later levels going more slowly in the 30’s and 40’s so I can purchase skills from my 20’s.  Yes, I am over-exaggerating some, but the skills are absurdly high costing for as quickly as you can go through the levels and I hope that this gets taken into account in the future.