You can do anything you want, but to be honest, if you want to maximize your time and develop a baseline bare bones toon in a month or so of effort, this is what in general you need to do.

1) Work up ANY 2-handed weapon to Skill level 75 and get the mastery. One of the easiest ways of doing this has two options. Go out with a small group and beat the crap out of the mobs while the other people with you hold the aggro as best as they can. The second option is to go to the blood way and beat the crap out of people for skill gain. The final option is to get in on the Parry Pit's and work up your skill gain that way.

2) Harvest Stone/Iron, Wood, Shrubs until your eyes bleed. Two fold on this one. You can make good money selling the materials and the stat gains are essential for building your toon. One of the best places to do this is in the starter NPC areas within the protection of the zap towers.

3) Go out hunting mobs with KGB. Use this time to skill up either your magic or melee and bank the gold. Your never dead weight as long as your actively working your toon, it doesn't matter what your toons skill level is. This is KGB, we help our own, anyone who says you can't head out with them better have the explanation of "You can't take the heat from the mobs, we can't keep the AI off you, and you'll just get punked." There are plenty of places where if you don't have enough skilled toons to control the mobs this is a true statement.

4) The only thing you should be spending your money on is buying Skills, Reg's for casting, and basic equipment to skill up and farm gold.

5) Finally the question of magic's. People vary on this for flavor, but I stand by my reasoning that the baseline bare bones for Magic should be something like this:

A) Lesser Magic to 50 -> Grant's access to Greater magic. I used Rend and Magic Missile to get this done.

B) Greater Magic first to 25 then to 50 -> This grants access to the Elemental Schools and Witchcraft.

C) Any ONE elemental school to 50 for AoE damage. Pick whatever school you like, Fire is the flavor of the year right now.

D) Earth Elemental Magic to 50 -> Stoneskin. Then level Stoneskin up to 50 and you won't ever have to worry about leveling it up again because it lasts so long.

E) Necromancy to level 40 -> All the damage type debuff's for greater ease in farming.

E) Witchcraft to 75 -> This gives you Witch's Brew almost a must have.

G) The final couple spells are debatable, Like Wall of Force and Sacrifice, and I would wait and do these last.

Magic beyond this is up to flavor and what you like to do vs. the type of dmg/playstyle you prefer.

6) As an afternote, Archery Skill to 75 and then the mastery. Archery has its place and can be an effective weapon for taking out mounts, and really pounding people once they break in PvP and start to bug out.

7) Afk swimming is still one of the best ways to get stat gain when your at work or asleep. Just ask the vet's, they will tell you. There are plenty of places to hide yourself and reduce yor chance of getting killed, stopping your stat gain.

Last edited by Tasorin; 01/18/10 12:38 PM.
Don't make me have'ta Troll ya Bro!