Guide to Barding.

Intro Hello and welcome to what I hope to be a great guide for all up and coming bards. I very strongly recomend that if you want to be a bard that you start a brand new character, this is because bard skills can ruin your character by the extremely high dex. For your new character you can choose two different creation methods. If you have a safe place to macro such as a house or a friend's house then start with 49 magery/50 resist/1 music. If you have no house hen you should start with 50 resist/50 provoke. Resist my be substituted for magery if your the lazy type and hate training magery ;) Either way you choose, be sure to start with 45 strength.

Early Training Either way you choose start in the city of trinsic. Take all your items and bank them. Now make a macro for last object/ use skill hiding(or whatever depending on how often you want to die ;). Now macro your instrument and your skill overnight. Make sure to try and play the instrument as fast as impossible.Do this for atleast on night. After this is yet another night of macroing. This time macro peacemaking, it is a great skill and works a good deal of the time at a level of around 70. This is only about a night of macroing to get here and you might want to macro your instrument as well for an increased music skill. You are probably asking yourself why not just macro peacemaking/music the first night? Well if you do this then you will gain no peacemaking because you will always fail your music skill. After two nights of macroing you should have a nice music skill and a decent peacemaking skill, if you do not have around 90 music and 70 peacemake, then i reccomend you macro up to these levels.

If you have a house.. If you have a house, then you have one more day of macroing. First start by trapping at least one non-magical animal or monster in your house. Now trap the animal and start by macroing provoke on the animal. Make it attack a chest.If you want to almost double the speed of the macro trap another monster and make it attack the other trapped animal. Strangely it goes faster when you make animals attack each other and not a chest. After a skill of around 75 you are ready to rock unless you want more strength and want to macro carpentry or mace the dummies.

The ideal bard The perfect bard is very well rounded and easy to make in just a few days of macroing, so in no order here is a nice well rounded bard.

• 80 str(keeps you alive, may require macroing)
• 80 dex(there is no way to have anything lower and be a good bard :( )
• 80 int(you will get this easy through macros)
• 100 music, 100 peacemake, 100 provoke. All these would require alot of macroing to get 100 but if you are dedicated it is easy. Athough if you do not want 100 in each 90/80/80 is nice balance.
• A hiding kill of 65 is very good and you will almost never fail. A magery level of 70 and a macro for ebolt is good to defend against the usual CPK or finish off that gargoyle. A small combat skill would be nice to also kill pesky rats, slimes, or that already injured monster. My bard only has a mace skill of 75 and does just fine.
• All this makes for a very good bard that can hold your own against any person or any monster. Looking at all these skills you will have about 150 points to do with whatever.

Bard Skills

• Provoke: This is the backbone of the bard, it is used to engage two monsters on each other and start a fight. As a general rule you should always provoke the stronger monster on the weaker so that you do not get karma loss. Also be sure to never provoke npcs or anything onto a npc, even evil ones as a GIANT karma loss will happen.
• Peacemake: This is a great skill, as it helps to stop monsters that want your hide. Perfect for stopping that newly spawned orc horde or that pk archer.
• Music: This skill is what all others are based on, in other words, no music skill no provoke skill.
• Enticement: The most useless skill in the game. If you want the effects of it, get a newbie crook and use that, same effect almost never fails.

Using the bard to PvP Ahh he beautey of being a bard is the great way you can easily kill almost anyone. Simply choose the closest monster that is almost impossible to kill and provoke it on someone. Such favorites are wisps, poison elementals, demons or gargoyles. Sure if you suceed in killing the person you get a murder count, so just macro overnight and get rid of it! Even if you become a murderer and die it doesn't matter! Just macro back up! It takes one night to get that provoke/music back up. Of course if you play your cards right you shouldnt become a murderer and if you do, stop killing and go macro away those murderers.

Avoiding Cpks After provoking two monsters on each other, you will go grey for two minutes. This time can either be really bad as people will attack you for no reason or it will be perfect for killing them. If there are no big monsters around such as a wisp or a gargoyle then i reccomend you just hide until something spawns or you are not flagged. But then again if you are quite a mage just fire a few ebolts at them.Don't worry no murder will take place after you give them a beating :)

Adventuring for profit Some of the best places for barding is where the big boys hang out. Covtous and Despise are useless and only breed Cpks. There are no monsters worth provoking on each other as they are all gobbled up by newbies, and rats are pointless. Deceit is good for Pking as it spawns poison elementals which go a long way and can easily get you five kills, which is all you should do in one day anyways. If you are so lucky as to find a poison elly in a liche room then just wait for the next liche and provoke the elly on it, hide, loot, repeat. Wrong is a decent place if you are there almost alone. Just wait for a ogre lord and provoke it on every monster you see. Shame is nice, as earth ellys pop up everywhere and are easy to provoke on each other. A misc. ebolt is very good here so that you can chase down that injured elly and finish him off. Hyloth is personally my favorite dungeon. Almost every monster that spawns is worth killing except snakes and rats. If you can get a rune for level three by the stairs and go straight for the demons. The final dungeon Destard is good if you have patience. The first level is the best by far, but there is always fifty snakes, and seven drakes/dragons all spread apart guarded by 10 snakes. Whenever I go to destard I always go with a partner to help lead drakes together. Not up for dungeons? Bah then the only monster in the wilderness is the mighty wisp, kills almost anything instantley.

Final Tips The only last things I can think of is to always provoke the stronger monster on the weaker to gain karma and fame. If you provoke two earth ellys on each other and the victim eds up winning then quickly provoke him on the other one to get fame. Also remember to never have anything to do with npcs, in other words if you see one leave it alone. I hope this is a good guide to help all you guys.