Leafiara (prime)/Mechanical Musings/The Autumnwinds' Magical Monk Guide: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:37, 23 June 2024

By Leafiara Autumnwind, in loving memory of Saraphenia Autumnwind.

Last updated June 22, 2024.

Please note: if you're reading this sentence, you've found this guide in its seventh draft form and not quite finished (which is why it's not linked from my main character page yet).

I know of a few things I still need to add and change, including a conclusion section, checking on the interaction between Kai's Strike and 1-4 ranks of Sanctify, and a table for Iron Skin thresholds.

That said, feel free to send me feedback on anything you think is working, not working, clear, unclear, helpful, distracting, etc. within the guide.

Introduction: How to Use This Guide

This guide is for all magical monks from 0 exp to 39,000,000! (What do I mean by a magical monk? One not using Kroderine Soul. Somebody else will have to write that guide!) I'll go over monks' strengths, weaknesses, other unique qualities, things to consider, others' perspectives that I hear about, training plans, and so on.

This guide is exhaustive within its scope, or at least it can be.

If you want an exhaustive guide, read through it in order.
If you want the opposite of an exhaustive guide, jump to the "Cookie Cutter" section at the end.
If you're not sure whether you want an exhaustive guide, read the "Why Play a Monk" section to see if monks sound cool, then jump to the "Cookie Cutter Monk" section at the end, then read the rest if you're intrigued afterward. The Cookie Cutter section provides an overview of what to do and gives a small window into what the rest of the guide covers, which is why to do it.

I've made each section collapsible for easy navigation, but I do try to include nuggets of wisdom for all experience levels in each section!

Speaking of experience, what's mine? I capped my monk Tarine before the combat modernizations of 2020 and 2021, helped Saraphenia with her training (both on paper and as a hunting duo) from level 43 to about 9 million exp between 2022 and April 2024, and I'm now working on my monk Sariara to fill in my knowledge gap before level 43; she reached level 30 early on June 17, 2024.

And speaking of Saraphenia, who created many monks and enjoyed them more than any other profession, I think of this guide like our joint project. She would have had the passion and interest to create it, but not the knowledge and time. I have the knowledge and time, but wouldn't have had the passion or interest--at least on my own. When I say I've written this guide in loving memory, I truly mean it. If even a few more players find monks even half as exciting as Phenia did because of this guide, I'll call it a job well done!

No further ado. Let's get on with it!

(Want to read the entire guide? Click here to uncollapse all sections at once!)

Why Play a Monk or Why Not Play a Monk?

Pondering the appeal of why to play a monk at all? Click here!

Unarmed Combat

Monks specialize at unarmed combat (UC), the most unique form of combat GemStone IV has to offer! It features four primary commands: JAB, GRAPPLE, KICK, and PUNCH. Making the most of them revolves primarily around two things:

"Tiering up," AKA improving positioning from decent to good, then from good to excellent, by sequencing your attacks correctly based on your training and following the combat messaging prompts.
Improving your multiplier modifier primarily through things like forcing a creature's stance down or inflicting status conditions.

Unlike the other physical systems based on attack strength (AS) and defensive strength (DS), UC's equivalents of unarmed attack factor (UAF) and unarmed defense factor (UDF) take a backseat to a third number, the multiplier modifier (MM).

I'll elaborate further during the Unarmed Combat Primer section. For now, know that unarmed combat has a drastically higher floor, albeit also a lower ceiling, than other forms of combat. Monks are much less likely to one-shot anything than their melee counterparts, but monks are also much less likely to run into situations where they have no chance of hitting their foe.

Bonus Tip!
Another standout difference of unarmed combat is that creatures can never outright evade, block, or parry a UC attack. UC attacks can still miss via low endrolls, but if you've played other physical characters and can't stand it seeing a creature avoids an attack before it even gets to the roll, try a monk!

Gear Indifference

Monks have extremely low dependence on good gear.

While GSIV is technically balanced around vanilla +20 gear, most people would agree there's a difference between a viable way to play the game and an enjoyable way to play the game. Pure casters are commonly considered the best at remaining enjoyable even with little to nothing spent on good gear. However, I'd put monks right behind them--and easily ahead of warriors, rogues, paladins, and rangers!

Because of the unique qualities of unarmed combat, improvements like enchanting, ensorcelling, sanctifying, or weighting your offensive gear are much more luxury than necessity. If you're unwable or unwilling to spend heavily on a new character, monks are an excellent low investment profession. (And smooth upgrade paths exist if you eventually want them, but more on that later in this guide!)

Fun Sidebar!
Players have noticed that monks can hunt and succeed in the Hinterwilds, arguably the game's most challenging area, on par with other professions even with a third of the experience points and a tenth of the gear caliber of those others. At this top end of difficult content, I'd say monks are the best at not depending on gear nor even exp!

Simplicity

Monks have a very low learning curve, at least by GS standards. This is a game world with a lot of convoluted training plans, tradeoffs, options, breakpoints to shoot for, tight training point constraints, and too many desirable skills to train them all, but monks present you with a very straightforward, low pressure profession that it's difficult to get wrong. I'd go so far as extremely difficult to get wrong if you stick to unarmed combat.

(If you want to do unusual things that don't involve UC, then read on in Odds and Ends!)

Fun Factor

Once monks hit their stride by level 40--maybe even level 30--they're great at screen scroll shenanigans. With the general speed of unarmed combat, its myriad status conditions, free bonus jabs in mstrikes or free knockdowns in Fury, and plenty of messaging prompts about tiering up or when to Spin Kick, combat can be an engaging and chaotic experience!

Even on the roleplaying side of things, Shroud of Deception is one of the game's coolest tools. It allows you to customize your appearance for up to three saved illusionary projections of yourself and is as close as you can get to playing multiple characters in one!

Might and Magic

If you long for the raw power of a physical profession like a warrior, but still want the option to use magic in and out of combat even from early levels, monks are for you. The Minor Mental spell circle is such an integral part of the monk toolkit that the dev staff had to make provision so that even Kroderine Soul monks could still cast spells from level 30 on!

Downsides or Lack Thereof

Some players feel that monks are pigeonholed into unarmed combat. I would have agreed a week ago, but while writing Odds and Ends, I did a deep dive into the math and now I believe a weapon build is absolutely on the table; if you really want to, monks can operate like warriors who have more DS but don't wear heavy armor, are better at evading but worse at parrying, have a universal stat bonus from level 50 on but don't have guild skills, and a few other tradeoffs. If your character concept is a lightly armored swashbuckler type quick on their feet, there's a very real case that a monk can be a better choice than a warrior.

Target defense (TD) is widely regarded as a monk weakness and was a major discussion point in Flimbo's Monk Guide, which was extensive in its time, but has become outdated after years of major game developments. TD certainly is a weakness, but not nearly as much of one now. Monks' offensive toolkit has grown, making keeping enemies under control and stopping them from casting at all easier than ever. Even when creatures do fire offs spell, non-Kroderine Soul monks have a new warding defense booster called Dragonscale Skin while Kroderine Soul monks have magic redux and can absorb (negate) an offensive spell once every 30 seconds.

About the best I can muster for actual downsides to monks is that they can't obliterate an entire swarm of creatures in six seconds or less (that's the domain of post-cap bards and wizards) and that their profession service needs improvement (but improvement is already planned for the future).

Character Creation

Need to walk through the creation of your monk? Click here!

If making a monk sounds good, then let's get started!

Choosing a Race

From level 50 on, monks arguably have more leeway than any other profession to be any race with minimal drawbacks due to Perfect Self basically eliminating stat deficiencies. Instead of any race being bad at anything monks do, it's more a question of which ones are slightly better at any given thing. I don't think you can go wrong, which isn't something I say about other professions, so my honest suggestion is to pick whatever sounds interesting.

If you're not sure what's interesting or are torn between options, then my next suggestion would be to see if any race-specific verbs strike your fancy. Even though Shroud of Deception can make your monk appear like other races, they can't perform (for example) halfling-specific verbs without actually being a halfling. Get the verbs you like!

If verbs don't sound compelling either, then here's how I'd rank monk races mechanically if I really had to:

Elves: What I made my first monk, Tarine. Elves tie with burghal gnomes as the second best race for combined Agility and Dexterity ("Agidex"), which means faster mstrikes and--key parts of the monk arsenal. Elves have no particular disadvantages like height or size, though they're slightly below average on encumbrance.
Halflings: Halflings tied with burghal gnomes as the best race for combined Agidex, having the fastest mstrikes and assaults. They also have an enormous bonus to defend against elemental warding spells, which monks would normally be weak against. (However, enemy elemental warding spells are sort of rare.) They have a Logic bonus, so they gain exp slightly faster and Vertigo is slightly more reliable, though these are minor points. Their primary disadvantages are severe encumbrance issues and a height that requires keeping average-sized creatures knocked down or training niche combat maneuvers like Acrobat's Leap to target enemy heads as a finisher.
Aelotoi, Dark Elves, Half-Elves, and Sylvans: All of these races tie for third place at Agidex. They can still get to minimum speed attacks, but need a little more experience or enhancive items than elves or halflings would. They have much more carrying capacity (less encumbrance) than halflings, all but aelotoi have more carrying capacity than elves, and none have problems height-wise. Mechanical differences between the four are pretty minimal for monks, but if we compare to elves as a baseline...
- Aelotoi have a Logic bonus, like halflings.
- Dark elves' Aura and Wisdom bonuses offer a small amount of defense against elemental and spiritual warding spells.
- Half-elves have the best carrying capacity of my top six picks.
- Sylvans' Aura bonus offers a small amount of defense against elemental warding spells. Dark elves are mechanically better at the same thing, but, again, the differences are really minimal in practice.
Forest Gnomes and Burghal Gnomes: These are in the top 3 and top 1 speed tiers, respectively. Forest gnomes handle encumbrance slightly better than halflings while burghal gnomes handle it even worse than halflings, which is why I have them down here. I give halflings the advantage over gnomes mainly due to their huge elemental TD bonus, but the differences are still minor enough that I don't think anyone should sweat it.
Dwarves: Like halflings, dwarves have excellent defense against elemental TD (albeit +30 vs. +40), but instead of having major encumbrance issues, they can hold a surprising amount due to their Strength and Constitution bonuses. Dwarves do face the short race issue of not being able to target the heads of standing foes--and, unlike the other short races, dwarves rank second to last in Agidex instead of being among the fastest. Still, if you wanted the fastest attacks, I figure you would have picked one of the races above. So if you're okay with having slower attacks, then other factors come into play and elemental TD is a rare and valuable one. I rank dwarven monks the best of the slower races.
Half-krolvin: The fourth best race for Agidex, though there's as much of a speed gap between third best and fourth best as between best and third best. Half-krolvin and dwarves have amazing verbs, but I don't see much purely mechanical reason to choose a half-krolvin over the previous nine races.
Giantmen: Giants are the slowest race, but can carry near endless amounts of things without getting encumbered. Encumbrance reduces DS and slows down single-target UC attacks, assault techniques, and AoE techniques. However, encumbrance doesn't slow down mstrikes nor Twin Hammerfists, which are key in the monk arsenal. Encumbrance-reducing items like silvery blue potions and especially blue feather-shaped charms are easier and cheaper to come by than Agidex-boosting enhancives, so it's not a trade I'd personally take--and, even when lower carrying capacity races get encumbered, most hunting grounds allow a quick return to town to drop off boxes and silver, then a quick return to hunting, so lower carrying capacity races can do that as they become encumbered. (Halflings and gnomes probably also need charms or potions.) Still, there's a reason that some players choose giants near exclusively. If any of that upkeep or returning to town sounds too aggravating or if you want to maximize the amount of time you can spend maximizing loot (staying out hunting) instead of exp (ending the hunt as quickly as possible and returning to town), giants might still be for you.
Erithians and Humans: These are the third slowest races. Erithians and humans have no particular mechanical disadvantages that push them away from being monks, but also no particular advantages that push them toward being monks. Erithians do have excellent verbs that go well with monks roleplaying-wise!

Everything from dwarves up is close enough that I wouldn't quibble about any of them being seriously better than the others. I can understand people's case for giants too, even though they're not my style. With half-krolvin, erithians, and humans, though, I'm really dubious from a mechanical perspective. Perfect Self does bring up the low and you can't go wrong, exactly, but Perfect Self also makes the rich richer.

Placing Your Stats

Before level 20, you can change your stats up to five times by checking in at your local inn. Power through the early levels by setting Strength, Dexterity, and Agility high so you're at your best in combat and setting Logic high so you level faster.

Since you finalize stats (and skills) at level 20, the game will stop your exp growth around 90% of the way through level 19 and force you to confirm that your character is configured the way you want. That's your cue to check in and decide your "real" stat placement!

Here are my recommendations for each race. Since Flimbo's guide included tables, I'll follow suit! The major difference is that he was on the side of tanking Influence while I'm on the side of tanking Intuition, which I'll explain shortly.

Race	Strength	Constitution	Dexterity	Agility	Discipline	Aura	Logic	Intuition	Wisdom	Influence
Aelotoi	62	68	68	33	59	82	73	41	82	92
Burghal gnome	73	62	68	33	70	85	62	37	82	88
Dark elf	62	68	62	30	68	82	73	44	82	89
Dwarf	49	49	78	62	58	82	73	39	79	91
Elf	62	73	62	33	70	70	73	50	82	85
Erithian	68	62	73	49	58	82	71	29	83	85
Forest gnome	70	59	70	33	59	82	73	44	82	88
Giantman	49	58	77	58	62	82	73	31	82	88
Half-elf	59	62	70	39	68	82	73	39	82	86
Half-krolvin	58	49	70	39	62	85	77	46	83	91
Halfling	73	49	62	30	68	82	70	56	82	88
Human	59	59	73	49	62	82	73	31	83	89
Sylvankind	70	68	62	30	70	77	73	43	82	85

My methodology was as follows:

Set stats to max out at cap.
Max everything except Intuition if possible. If not possible, then take a small number out of either Constitution, Discipline, or Influence.
If all stats have gotten as high as they can get by cap and there are spare points to allocate, then favor the configuration that gives the most mental TPs. If multiple configurations give the same mental TPs, then favor the one with stats that grow most slowly. (As a real example, aelotoi monks have a spare point that can go into either Logic, Wisdom, or Influence for 4 mental TPs. I chose Influence.)

Optional Deep Dive Sidebar #1!
While there's endless debate across all professions about whether to set stats for cap or early power, it applies less to monks than others. Perfect Self makes monks will be good across the board from level 50 on almost regardless of what they do. Single strikes in unarmed combat are also naturally quick and, even at low levels, don't require good Agidex like hard-hitting melee weapons.
Once mstrikes and weapon techniques are a regular part of your monk's arsenal by the early 30s--if not sooner--Agidex does become more important. However, fast races who set stats for cap will be perfectly fine on Agidex due to innate bonuses. For example, at level 30, my monk Sariara had 19 Dexterity bonus and 16 Agility bonus, which is the -2 RT tier. She'll reach -3 RT by level 33, then -4 RT by level 50 thanks to Perfect Self. -5 RT is her peak without enhancives or Ascension, which she'll reach at level 84. That huge RT reduction only matters for mstrikes and assault techniques, which, despite being very important, aren't the majority of battle commands. There's a pretty negligible difference between setting stats for cap (-4 RT by level 50) and setting stats for early power (-5 RT by level 50).

Optional Deep Dive Sidebar #2!
There's also endless debate across most professions on whether to tank Intuition or Influence. The majority usually say tank Influence, but I disagree because Voln is the mechanically strongest society (a point that I do concur with the majority on) and Influence improves the success rate of Symbol of Sleep, arguably Voln's strongest ability, along with a couple other Voln abilities. (More on Voln in the next section!)
So I'm on the side of tanking Intuition unless you're not in Voln or you play a sorcerer or wizard (whose profession services care about Intuition and will take as much of it as they can get). The argument for maxing Intuition is that it ekes out a tiny extra chance to dodge enemy maneuvers, which isn't compelling to monks, who already have extraordinary ability to dodge enemy maneuvers due to high caps and cheap training costs for Physical Fitness and Dodging.
To put it into perspective, my capped monk Tarine, who tanked Intuition, has a -3% chance for a same-level maneuver hit to her in offensive stance and a -18% chance in defensive stance. If she maxed Intuition, those numbers would jump to... -4% and -19%. Not impressed!
But you might think that a super-capped character is an unfair example, so how about Sariara at level 30? She also tanked Intuition, hasn't maxed her stats yet, doesn't have Perfect Self, is an aelotoi instead of an elf (so a bit worse at avoiding maneuvers), has a little over 1 million experience points instead of 39 million, hasn't sunk Ascension points into avoiding maneuvers, and only has 2x Physical Fitness, 2x Dodging, and 1x Perception instead of 3x, 3x, and 2x. Despite all of that, like-level maneuvers still only have a 12% chance to hit her in offensive and a -2% chance in defensive. Improving those numbers doesn't appeal to me like improving the success of one of the game's strongest abilities, Symbol of Sleep.

If you're wondering what relevant things each stat does, I'll go over them quickly:

Strength: Reduced encumbrance. +1 UAF for every 2 bonus.
Constitution: Slightly reduced encumbrance. Slightly more max health. +1 crit padding for every 5 bonus against AS-based attacks only.
Dexterity: Reduced roundtime (RT). Slightly increased defense against maneuvers. Improves tattooing ability. Adds crit weighting, but only if using melee weapons.
Agility: Reduced RT. Twice as much defense against maneuvers as Dexterity. +1 UAF for every 2 bonus. +0.75 DS in offensive stance for every 1 bonus, assuming you're in robes.
Discipline: +1 exp pool size per every 1 base stat (not bonus). Increased resistance to enemy warcries. Improves tattooing ability.
Aura: +1 TD against elemental spells for every 1 bonus. +1 max spirit for every 10 base stat, rounded up.
Logic: +1 exp absorbed per minute per 5 bonus (on a node, e.g a safe place) or per 7 bonus (off a note, e.g. while hunting). +1 exp pool size per every 1 base stat (not bonus). +1 CS for Minor Mental spells for every 1 bonus. Potentially +1 starting mana for every 4 bonus.
Intuition: Slightly increased defense against enemy maneuvers. +0.1875 DS in offensive stance for every 1 bonus, assuming you're in robes.
Wisdom: +1 TD against spiritual spells for every 1 bonus. Potentially +1 starting mana for every 4 bonus.
Influence: Increased success for Standard Success Resolution (SSR) attacks. +1% silver from selling to NPC shops for every 12 bonus.

Selecting a Society

Almost all characters eventually join and master a society since there are numerous mechanical incentives to do so and no incentive not to. This technically isn't part of character creation since you can't join a society until level 3, but I'm including it here because it can be part of character concept creation and, like I said in stats, Voln makes Influence very relevant. Still, is Voln right for your monk--and, if not, then which society is?

Council of Light:

Mechanically, this society is very good at exactly three things:

Offering way, way more mana than other societies (with the possible exception of empaths in Sunfist)
Offering slightly more UAF and UDF than other societies, as it caps out at 35 instead of 30 (Sunfist) or 26 against the living (Voln, but Voln does get 39 UAF against the undead)
Being the easiest and fastest to master

Neither mana, UAF, nor UDF matter to monks other than in the tiniest regard, so if you're interested in CoL, it's probably either for reasons of ease or for roleplaying reasons like the other two options being a no-go based on their lore.

Guardians of Sunfist:

This society has a bit more mechanical appeal. Sunfist is a somewhat tricky society to work with for warriors and rogues because its abilities consume small amounts of mana and stamina; the former isn't an issue, but they need the latter in droves and diverting some toward Sunfist sigils is a tough sell, especially at lower levels.

Monks also make heavy use of stamina, but they can reduce their stamina costs--including sigils--by 20-35% with their Mind Over Body spell! In other words, monks have more freedom to use Sunfist's powerful short-term buffs like heavy crit padding or heavy crit weighting (against sworn enemies) that other professions might find themselves reserving for emergencies or skipping entirely.

Sunfist also offers the best target defense (TD) bonus of the societies, which is a weak point for magical monks, and a surprisingly underrated ability to ignore penalties from moderate wounds for the purposes of things like casting spells and attacking.

Lastly, Sunfist uniquely offers access to warcamps, a type of hunting ground suitable for the level of the characters who enter. It's more or less a means to find private hunting grounds for you and/or your friends whenever you wish! Characters not in Sunfist can accomplish something similar via Open Sea Adventures, which plays with the same general concept, but that requires millions of silver to buy in to. The riches in warcamps are definitely on the lower end, but warcamps remain an appealing aspect of Sunfist and can be especially helpful to help power through level ranges where you might find traditional hunting grounds unappealing.

Order of Voln:

This is widely regarded as the mechanical best society for most or possibly all professions.

Like all professions, monks get extreme utility out of Voln's teleportation to hunting grounds and back from them, restoring lost spells after being resurrected, swifter recovery from stat loss after being resurrected, and an emergency button to go noncorporeal. In battle, Voln offers a way to put foes to sleep and a way to force undead foes into an offensive stance, both of which are even better for unarmed combat than other forms of combat.

Voln also offers two UC-specific abilities in Kai's Strike and Kai's Smite. Kai's Smite is its own UC attack that allows you to temporarily turn noncorporeal undead corporeal. Needless to say, inflicting physical wounds on things that normally don't have bodies--and usually have light armor, if any!--is a major draw for brawling monks.

Kai's Strike, on the other hand, can be a mixed bag. It treats your hands and feet as always blessed even when your UC gear isn't. Undead creatures have 25% resistance to physical attacks from unblessed gear, so the idea is to take away the pain point of blessings running out mid-hunt. However, the way it accomplishes that is to act like you're not wearing your unblessed UC gear at all. That means you ignore the undead damage resistance, but then also don't get any flares, scripts, weighting, or other properties that your gear would normally have. For beginners or anyone with fairly basic gear, the way Kai's Strike defaults to "blessed" bare hands and feet is probably helpful. Higher end gear, on the other hand, can be powerful enough that a player would prefer to keep their buffs and just live with the undead resistance.

The inability to turn off Kai's Strike after learning it has been an unfortunate side effect of blessing changes a couple years back as Sanctify got released. (Kai's Strike was far more useful when undead had complete damage negation against unblessed gear.) Still, monks in Voln can work around it by filling in with their own Symbol of Blessing until they can track down a cleric for a "real" blessing. While the Kai's Strike issue can be tedious and is something to be aware of, it's not a dealbreaker.

Overall, Voln offers the greatest diversity of useful abilities for monks from a mechanical perspective.

Unarmed Combat Primer

Still figuring out how unarmed combat works? Click here!

Let's go over the unarmed combat system in more detail! If you're familiar with more conventional melee combat, put that knowledge aside--a great deal of it won't apply and might even interfere with understanding!

Beginner Basics

JAB, GRAPPLE, KICK, and PUNCH are your tools of the trade. What's the difference? Have a look at this table from the unarmed combat system page.

Attack Type	AG	Cloth	Leather	Scale	Chain	Plate	Base RT	Min RT	Damage Type
Jab	DF	.100	.075	.060	.050	.040	2	2	Jab
Punch	DF	.275	.250	.200	.170	.140	3	3	Punch
Grapple	DF	.250	.200	.160	.120	.100	3	3	Grapple
Kick	DF	.400	.350	.300	.250	.200	4	4	Kick

The higher the decimal numbers, the stronger the attack, but the lower the RT numbers, the faster the attack. Summarizing:

Jabs: Weak, but fast.
Punches: Moderate speed and moderate power.
Grapples: Moderate speed and moderate power, but less of the latter than punches.
Kicks: Powerful, but slow (at least by UC standards).

The use case for punches and kicks seems clear, but why jab when it's so weak and why grapple if punches are the same speed with more strength?

Here we get into the other major component of unarmed combat: positioning. There are three positions: Decent, Good, and Excellent. Going up the ladder drastically increases the power of all four attack types. To improve your monk's position, follow the combat prompts. Here's an example:

You attempt to jab a mezic!
As you strike, a deep golden light surrounds your hands!
You have decent positioning against a mezic.
 UAF: 244 vs UDF: 210 = 1.161 * MM: 85 + d100: 39 = 137
 ... and hit for 4 points of damage!
 Fast slap only reddens the cheek.
 Strike leaves foe vulnerable to a followup grapple attack!
Roundtime: 2 sec.

This is my cue to grapple, so let's do that:

You attempt to grapple a mezic!
You have good positioning against a mezic.
 UAF: 244 vs UDF: 269 = 0.907 * MM: 100 + d100: 60 = 150
 ... and hit for 41 points of damage!
 Repeated blows to both sides of the head dizzies foe!
 The mezic is stunned!
The mezic's movements slow to a crawl!
A mezic appears dazed and unsure.

As you can see, the followup was significantly more powerful. That's partly because the endroll is higher, partly because grapples are stronger than jabs, and partly because good positioning is much better than decent positioning. Here's one more example, this time going from good to excellent:

You attempt to jab a mezic!
You exploit the momentum of your previous strike to make a stronger attack against a mezic!
You have good positioning against a mezic.
 UAF: 244 vs UDF: 223 = 1.094 * MM: 87 + d100: 51 = 146
 ... and hit for 15 points of damage!
 Blow to kidney!
 The mezic is stunned!
 Strike leaves foe vulnerable to a followup grapple attack!
Roundtime: 2 sec.

[2 seconds later...]

You attempt to grapple a mezic!
You have excellent positioning against a mezic.
 UAF: 244 vs UDF: 223 = 1.094 * MM: 106 + d100: 43 = 158
 ... and hit for 48 points of damage!
 Powerful tug pulls right hip, and leg, free of the socket!
  A mezic falls to the ground grasping her mangled right leg!
Roundtime: 3 sec.

This time the jab started at good positioning because of Rolling Krynch Stance (more on that in the Martial Stances section), but the followup grapple was still far more powerful. Tiering up is crucial!

Bonus Tip!
Setting highlights can help! Since the text prompt is...
Strike leaves foe vulnerable to a followup [jab/grapple/kick/punch] attack!
...you can either create four highlights for each individual message or create a highlight for Strike leaves foe vulnerable to a followup, then four more highlights for jab attack! and the others.

So, in unarmed combat's most basic form (translation: at the lowest levels, before mstrikes and techniques throw generalizations out the window), the use cases for each attack type are:

Jabs: Dig for tier up opportunities to get away from decent positioning or even good positioning as quickly as possible.
Punches: A half-and-half option during good positioning, in which they have some potential to kill but are also reasonably fast at digging for tier up opportunities toward excellent positioning.
Grapples: Only when needed to tier up.
Kicks: Deliver a finishing blow during excellent positioning.

Grapple does have its day--just wait until the Combat Maneuvers section. For now, let's keep exploring the basics.

UAF, UDF, and MM

If you're used to GemStone's AS-based attacks, you probably noticed how different the combat messaging looks for unarmed combat. You might also have noticed that my monk Sariara hit a creature that had higher UDF than her UAF:

You attempt to grapple a mezic!
You have good positioning against a mezic.
 UAF: 244 vs UDF: 269 = 0.907 * MM: 100 + d100: 60 = 150
 ... and hit for 41 points of damage!
 Repeated blows to both sides of the head dizzies foe!
 The mezic is stunned!
The mezic's movements slow to a crawl!
A mezic appears dazed and unsure.

Let's look at an even more extreme example that doesn't go as well:

You attempt to grapple a spectral shade!
You have good positioning against a spectral shade.
 UAF: 244 vs UDF: 357 = 0.683 * MM: 85 + d100: 44 = 102
 ... and hit for 1 point of damage!
 The spectral shade shakes off a weak arm grab.

This is why I say you have to ignore what you know about AS-based combat to understand unarmed combat.

UAF and UDF aren't irrelevant, but the most important number is the multiplier modifier, or MM. While melee weapons, ranged weapons, and bolts calculate outcomes by subtraction and addition, unarmed combat calculates outcomes by division, multiplication, and addition.

In short, unarmed combat is primarily multiplicative instead of additive! What does that mean in practice? Higher lows and lower highs. It's rare that a monk outright couldn't possibly hit an enemy creature. Even in my spectral shade example, improving my MM or getting a higher d100 roll could have easily turned that into a powerful hit. On the flip side, since UAF gets divided by enemy UDF, every 1 point of UAF means comparatively less.

The primary means to increase your MM are reducing your foes' stances and decreasing their EBP ability by reducing stats or inflicting conditions like stunning them, blinding them, knocking them prone, and so on.

Fun Sidebar!
Monks and unarmed combat have been around for almost twelve years, but only a single hunting ground--the Atoll for capped characters--has dared to release enemy creatures capable of using UC attacks. Why? Probably because no attainable UDF number--not even 500 more than their UAF--can save you if those creatures get to a high MM against you. UC is a dangerous tool in the hands--and feet--of enemy creatures and players alike!

Mstrikes

As you train Multi-Opponent Combat and Brawling (more on that in the Skills section), you'll eventually be able to use mstrikes or weapon techniques. (I'll refer to these as "techniques" from here on; despite the name, the brawling "weapon techniques" don't require weapons--unless you're thinking of your monk's hands and feet as weapons!) Mstrikes, assault techniques, and Area of Effect (AoE) techniques are your means to fit more attacks into less time.

Covering mstrikes first!

Mstrikes with no target specified, AKA unfocused mstrikes, can attack two opponents in one command at 5 Multi-Opponent combat ranks, then add more opponents at 15, 35, 60, 100, and 155 MOC ranks. Mstrikes with a target specified, AKA focused mstrikes, can attack a single opponent twice in one command at 30 MOC ranks, then add more attacks at 55, 90, 135, and 190.

For unarmed combat only, mstrikes also throw a bonus jab at enemies when the monk is at decent positioning against them. Once you're into good positioning, mstrikes either use an attack type that you specify (e.g. MSTRIKE KICK) or, if you have an opportunity to tier up, your mstrike will know and automatically switch to the appropriate type as needed. At decent positioning, mstrike will always jab (bonus or otherwise) until it finds the tier up.

Mstrikes sort of have a cooldown after use, which is 15-20 seconds (depending on training). When not on cooldown, mstrikes cost no stamina! When on "cooldown," you can still mstrike, but they'll consume a good chunk of stamina. (I can't give an exact number because it depends on how many hits are in your mstrike and which attack types are used.) Focused and unfocused mstrikes share the same cooldown timer.

Mstrike RT is frontloaded into a single burst and all attacks fire off at once. How much RT depends on the number of attacks and which attack types are used, but it'll be more attacks than throwing single strikes in that same amount of time would have been. However, be aware that it can reach times of 8 seconds or more early in a monk's life, especially if you're a low Agidex race or have made a very early push for high MOC ranks to have more attacks! As an odd quirk, encumbrance doesn't increase mstrike RT.

Fury and Clash

The unarmed combat assault technique is Fury, which you learn with 25 ranks of Brawling. It attacks a single foe twice at 10 ranks of MOC, then adds one more attack at 24, 50, 100, 150, and 200. There's no bonus jab, however. Like with mstrikes, you can specify an attack type in your command (e.g. WEAPON FURY KICK) and, at good positioning or better, Fury will do what you said or switch as needed for a tier up. At decent positioning, Fury will only jab until it finds the tier up. Using Fury also grants the monk and their party members a +10 Constitution effect for two minutes after being used, though it's not a major selling point.

The AoE unarmed combat technique is Clash, which you learn with 50 ranks of Brawling. It has the same thresholds as unfocused mstrikes, so it attacks two foes at 5 ranks, then more at 15, 35, 60, 100, and 155. Like Fury, Clash doesn't include a bonus jab. At good positioning or better, it uses your specified UC attack type or switches to the appropriate tier up type; however, since Clash only throws one attack per creature, a tier up opportunity would have needed to exist before Clash was used. (Fury and mstrikes, on the other hand, can find tier ups and then seize the opportunity all within their own string of attacks.) At decent positioning, Clash can only throw jabs.

Techniques always cost a small, flat amount of stamina (15 for Fury and 20 for Clash), then enter a cooldown period of 15 seconds. Unlike mstrikes, Fury and Clash can't be used while they're on cooldown. They do have separate cooldown timers, so you can alternate between them.

What you can't alternate, however, is mstrikes with Fury and Clash. Using an mstrike locks you out of Fury and Clash for 60 seconds. That's because former GM Naijin, the creator of techniques, didn't intend for players to insert mstrikes--with their zero stamina cost while off cooldown--into their rotation as a means to dodge around technique cooldowns. For this reason, many players pick whichever they prefer out of mstrikes or assault and AoE weapon techniques and ignore the other. (I'm not one of these people, though, as I explain in the Training Plan section!)

RT-wise, like mstrikes, Fury and Clash are difficult to nail down exact numbers on. However, they both seem to have lower max RT and Fury definitely has lower minimum RT. Fury divides its RT over individual strikes instead of all at once. For example, if it has 5 RT worth of attacks, enough MOC to strike three times, and a certain amount of Agidex (again, difficult to pin down an exact amount), it'll execute them as 2 RT, 2 RT, and 1 RT.

Fury's structure has upsides and downsides. If an emergency comes up mid-Fury, you can interrupt your own attack to leave the room, cast a spell, target a different foe, etc. On the other hand, enemy creatures can also interrupt your Fury by leaving the room, stunning you mid-Fury, etc.

Twin Hammerfists and Spin Kick

The other two UC techniques are ;Twin Hammerfists and Spin Kick, respectively learned at 10 and 75 ranks of Brawling. Unlike Fury and Clash, using mstrikes won't lock you out of them.

Twin Hammerfists is a Standard Maneuver Roll (SMR) style attack and an incredible setup that tries to knock down the foe, put it in RT, stun it, and add the Vulnerable status condition--all in one technique! It's a staple that can serve monks well from level 4 onward and potentially even for the rest of their lives.

Spin Kick is a reaction technique--a retaliation maneuver that can kick a foe after your monk evades an attack. It has 2 RT, costs no stamina, and can even be used while in RT, so it can save you in a tough situation. Like Twin Hammerfists, it's an SMR-based attack. Unlike Twin Hammerfists, Spin Kick isn't a setup, so it has real killing power if it rolls high. Spin Kick is at its best against enemies with poor maneuver defense, like lumbering tanky creatures or magic users. Spin Kick is at its worst against enemies with excellent maneuver defense, like speedy four-legged animals or creatures patterned after warriors.

Bonus Tip!
If highlighting tier up opportunities goes well for you, then You could use this opportunity to Spin Kick! is another message to consider highlighting from level 37 on!

Training Plan: Skills

Wondering how to train your monk's skills? Click here!

Core Skills

These are skills you consistently train with little to no deviation.

Brawling: Max every level.
Physical Fitness: At least twice per level. Thrice per level later in life or if you really want more stamina early on.
Dodging: At least twice per level. Thrice per level later in life or if you really want more DS early on.
Perception: Once per level.

Bonus Tip!
As a reminder, before level 20, you can flip your skills around any time and into any configuration. The game will adjust to your new training plan within a few minutes at most. I recommend taking advantage of this early period to experiment and find what you like! The above core skills cost little, so you'll have a lot of leeway to decide what to do with skills mentioned in the following sections.

Skill Training Sidebar #1: Combat Maneuvers as Core Skills?
Many players would probably consider Combat Maneuvers a core skill. I sort of agree in the sense that I'd say roughly 1x minimum is mandatory and you'll almost certainly want more than that early on. However, philosophically, I don't consider CM in the same category as Brawling, Physical Fitness, Dodging, and Perception. All of those are inexpensive and offer noticeable incremental value with every single rank, but 2x Combat Maneuvers has more opportunity cost and its value comes at discrete breakpoints. That's why it's in the Breakpoint Skills section below!

Breakpoint Skills

These are skills you train to specific thresholds, which have little to no merit for the ranks between those thresholds.

Two Weapon Combat: One rank gives 5 extra DS to barehanded monks, which is most of them, so it can be worth picking up early. Getting additional DS via TWC is slow (+1 per 10 ranks, plus a +10 bump at 0.5x level) and not worth prioritizing until much later, after maxing Dodging.
Combat Maneuvers: Train at least 1x--probably much more than that early on--but be intentional and reach benchmarks of Combat Maneuver Points to learn new maneuvers. (Which maneuvers? See the Combat Maneuvers section later!) The UAF bonus from CM ranks isn't that important on its own, so learning new maneuvers is the focus. You can push CM to 2x if you want, but it's also reasonable to prioritize other things like getting more spells sooner or getting 3x Dodging sooner. Up to you!
Multi-Opponent Combat: Before cap, if you're mstriking, the good breakpoints are 5, 15, 30, 35, 55, 60, and possibly 90 or 100. If you're using techniques, the thresholds are 10, 24, 50, and possibly 100. If you're using mstrikes and techniques, then use both sets of thresholds. (See the sidebars at the end of this section!)
Harness Power: Ten to twenty ranks fairly early will be extremely helpful, giving +50 or +90 mana, respectively, but that should suffice for a while. Sink spare points in as needed afterward, but I like waiting until the late game to go past twenty.
Minor Mental up to 13 or 16 ranks: Iron Skin at 2 ranks, Foresight at 4 ranks, Force Projection, Mindward at 8 ranks, Dragonclaw at 9 ranks, and the Mind Over Body focus spell at 13 ranks are all major benchmarks. Beyond that, Brace at 14 ranks is good, though I'm not quite as high on it as many players since evasions come before parrying in the order of operations and monks are really good at evading. Focus Barrier focus spell is also a good stopping point if you prefer more DS--or at least the option of it--over stamina cost reduction from Mind Over Body. You can slack off with Minor Mental training for a while after the focus spells.
Telepathy or Transformation lore: To prioritize more offense, pick up Telepathy lore at thresholds of 6, 15, and eventually (midgame or late game) 30 for extra stamina cost reduction in Mind Over Body. To prioritize more defense, pick up Transformation lore at thresholds of 5, 15, and eventually (midgame or late game) 30 for improved resilience in Iron Skin. To prioritize giving others Mystic Tattoos, the first 30 to 40 ranks of Telepathy can rocket your skill right up. You can also split differences and diversify!
Climbing and Swimming: 10 ranks of each suffice for most places before the mid levels, at which point you'll know when you need more. Specific areas can change priorities slightly, like needing more Climbing earlier for the Icemule mountains or needing more Swimming for the Landing monastery. 60 ranks handles basically everything at cap, but eventually 101 can't hurt for the tougher capped areas when you need to leave encumbered.

Skill Training Sidebar #2: Mstrikes and Techniques are a Contextual Preference!
Why anyone would train to account for the mstrike MOC thresholds and the technique MOC thresholds is a good question since mstrikes lock out Fury and Clash for 60 seconds. However, I find value in mstrikes and Fury depending on the situation.
My monk, Sariara, prefers Fury in most hunts, which revolve heavily around one-on-one combat. Fury scales up more quickly than focused mstrikes in the early game, firing off two attacks by 10 MOC and three attacks by 24 MOC while focused mstrikes don't get started until 30 MOC. It also has excellent synergy with Grapple Specialization, which I'll discuss in the Offensive Specialization section.
However, Clash is a very weak technique compared to unfocused mstrikes, whose bonus jab allows double the number of attacks, which means more tier up opportunities, more flare opportunities, and so on. During hunts that feature a lot of swarms, she can use focused mstrikes for single targets, even though they're slightly weaker than Fury because of her Grapple Specialization, while leaving the unfocused mstrike option open for battling the hordes.
Your MOC training plan doesn't need to assume that mstrikes or techniques are either/or!

Niche Skills

Niche isn't a bad thing and several of these skills can be prioritized over breakpoint skills. The key is making sure you're training them with a plan and a purpose!

Spiritual Mana Control and Mental Mana Control: Training more Harness Power is much better mana improvement in a vacuum, so leave these alone until mid-levels, if not later, unless you're surrounded by friends or alts who can send mana. In that case, tailor your SMC and MMC to those friends. (See the tip below!)
First Aid: Helps with skinning and Mystic Tattoos, though only barely in the latter case. I recommend having it during the first 19 levels, which you can read about in the Trade Secrets section. From level 20 on, train First Aid if you want skinning bounties and avoid it if you don't.
Trading: Monks get huge value out of at least the first 20 ranks. See the Trade Secrets section!
Survival: Helps with skinning, but it's more expensive than First Aid. Slightly reduces duration of stuns, but monks don't get stunned that often due to great defense and speedy offense. Like First Aid, I recommend it during the first 19 levels. Afterward, train it only if you want to excel at skinning bounties and have already trained First Aid.

Bonus Tip!
Let's talk mana sharing!
5 Spiritual Mana Control shares perfectly with capped clerics who have maxed SMC. 7 SMC or Mental Mana Control shares perfectly with capped empaths and sorcerers with the respective mana control or with capped clerics who only have 2x SMC. 10 SMC or MMC shares perfectly with capped bards, paladins, or rangers with maxed mana control of that type. 24 SMC or MMC shares perfectly with anybody else who has 24 or more mana control of that type.
Mana sharing breakpoints to remember!

Bonus Tip!
If you go to 24 mana control, consider going to 25, which unlocks the MANA SPELLUP ability once a day for a mana-free cast of each of your defensive spells. It's nice quality of life!

Skill Training Sidebar #3: The Skinning Deluxe Special!
Elaborating on First Aid and Survival, the Adventurer's Guild bounty system won't assign skinning bounties unless you have at least half your level in those two skills combined. For example, if a level 20 character has 8 First Aid and 2 Survival, they're eligible for skinning bounties.
Some players purposely avoid reaching threshold because skinning bounties have comparatively low exp payouts. Other players lean into training these skills because adding skinning into their pool of possible bounty reduces the odds of getting other bounties like escorts or gems that they might want to avoid.
Experience points paid out by skinning bounties depends on the quality of skins the furrier asks for; in turn, the range of qualities the furrier can ask for depends on your skill. This can be a double-edged sword! If you keep your skinning ability low, the furrier will only ask for fair quality skins and it'll be relatively easy to complete, but that means the exp reward will always be 600. On the other hand, if you heavily push your skinning ability, the furrier can (but won't always) ask for fine or exceptional skins. These pay out 650 or 700 exp, but be more difficult to complete.
What isn't a double-edged sword is that the skinning bounty point payout only depends on the quality and value of the skins actually sold to the furrier, regardless of what they asked for. The bounty point part of your reward can still be top notch if you sell magnificent skins.

Midgame and Later Skills

Two Weapon Combat at half your level: After you're finished with 3x Dodging, getting 10 extra DS by bumping TWC from one rank to half your level is a reasonable idea if you're not feeling hardy enough.
Minor Spiritual up to 2, 3, or 7 ranks: I'd ignore this for quite a long time in life, other than maybe picking up Spirit Barrier in the midgame. Other Minor Spiritual spells before Lesser Shroud all the way at 20 ranks are really easy to get from others. If you don't want to rely on others, though, I'd say get Spirit Warding II at 7 ranks somewhere near the midgame, then hold off until the late game.
Minor Mental up to 20 or 25 ranks: Premonition gives extra DS at 20 ranks, but, training point-wise, that's not worth doing until after you've fully maxed Dodging. Other compelling reasons to push Minor Mental are Vertigo and maybe Mindwipe at 19 and 25 ranks, which are CS-based disablers and will benefit from training more ranks.

Skill Training Sidebar #4: The Spirit Barrier Irony!
Like I keep saying, pushing your UAF higher is more luxury than necessity--but that means the opposite is also true. Lowering your UAF in exchange for increasing your DS via Spirit Barrier isn't nearly as damaging to unarmed combat as for melee weapons! Whether you want to trade UAF for DS depends on your playstyle, preferences, and hunting grounds, but monks aren't like, say, (weapon-using) rangers who would find trading AS for DS untenable. This spell is worth a second look in some situations!

Post-Cap Skills

Eventually you can train everything if you play long enough, but here are some considerations for what to prioritize if or when you reach post-cap.

Edged Weapons:

There's merit to diversifying your offense eventually! Training edged weapons allows monks to use katars, which are fast and powerful melee weapons. While unarmed combat can defeat basically everything and is usually fairly even with or advantaged to weapon-based combat in most situations, that's not universally true. AS-based attacks can blow UAF-based attacks out of the water in scenarios against creatures with especially low DS--and even more so if they also can't be killed through crits. Edged Weapons training also opens up the possibility of using the very powerful Hamstring.

Ranged Weapons:

Archery is another possibility for diversifying. Unlike with katars, AS-based ranged attacks don't necessarily add much when you already have UC, but Volley is an exceptional crowd control tool that does AoE damage over time. Monks aren't exactly poor at crowd control--they do have a high target limit, Bull Rush, and potentially Vertigo against low TD targets--but adding Volley into the mix can really up their game to excel at it.

Magic Item Use:

Supplementing DS with small statues is eventually a good idea for every (non-Kroderine Soul) profession and MIU bolsters their duration. MIU is also among the most cost-efficient means to improve protection against spellburst, behind only Harness Power and Arcane Symbols, in areas like Old Ta'Faendryl, the Ruined Temple, or the Sanctum fo Scales. Harness Power is more generally useful and a higher priority than MIU for spellburst protection, but MIU in turn is more valuable than Arcane Symbols.

Minor Spiritual up to 20 or 40 ranks:

Eventually the spiritual TD from Lesser Shroud will be important, likely closer to cap. It'll become apparent enough when that's the case! Going beyond 20 Minor Spiritual to potentially learn Spirit Guide or Wall of Force at 30 or 40 ranks is an option for post-cap monks. My first monk Tarine did learn those two spells, but I'm fairly certain that my second monk Sariara will ignore them when the time comes. Voln already offers a fine substitute for fogging, Wall of Force isn't what it used to be when it had no cooldown, and having fewer spell ranks allows for extra redux.

Minor Mental up to 48 or 50 ranks (or beyond):

Working on Minor Mental is primarily for slightly improving DS, slightly improving mental TD, and improving mental CS if you cast Vertigo, Mindwipe, or even Thought Lash. 48 Minor Mental ranks max out defensive benefits from Minor Mental spells. 50 ranks unlocks a few fancy Shroud of Deception options. Pushing beyond 50 would mainly be for the CS spells if you really like them, but they're more for hunting things like bandits and pirates than most "real" hunting grounds.

Redux Sidenote!
Even if you do want 50 Minor Spiritual and 40 Minor Mental, you can still reach 25% redux--a great threshold--by training a second weapon type and maxing Physical Fitness and Dodging.

Illustrative Training Snapshots

Mostly for discussion purposes, here are some early snapshots of my most recent monk. I've worked on enough monk training plans that, by this point, I've intentionally made questionable decisions to experiment and push boundaries of reasonability just to see what happens, but I'll explain which things you (probably) shouldn't do!

Sariara (at level 20), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     102      24
 Brawling...........................|     144      44
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     102      24
 Physical Fitness...................|     144      44
 Dodging............................|     144      44
 Harness Power......................|      50      10
 Spirit Mana Control................|      25       5
 Perception.........................|      90      20
 Climbing...........................|      50      10
 Swimming...........................|      50      10
 First Aid..........................|      90      20
 Trading............................|     140      40

Spell Lists
 Minor Mental.......................|              12

Here's Saria fresh off her skill finalization as a new level 20 monk. 24 MOC threshold because she uses Fury. 5 SMC threshold so she can share mana perfectly with my cleric Leafiara. She very heavily pushed Trading and spells early on for reasons that I explain near the end of the guide in the Sneaky Monk Merchants section. 24 Combat Maneuvers ranks were enough for three ranks of Grapple Specialization and two ranks of Evade Specialization.

What would I change in hindsight and/or what should you do differently?

Going to 25 CM for two ranks of Rolling Krynch instead of Evade Specialization would have been much, much, much better. 40 Trading is a bit high for so early on and I should have stopped at 20 or 30 to max Krynch sooner into the early 20s. Otherwise, I'm content with this.

Sariara (at level 30), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
 Skill Name                         | Current Current
                                    |   Bonus   Ranks
 Combat Maneuvers...................|     126      33
 Brawling...........................|     165      65
 Multi Opponent Combat..............|     130      35
 Physical Fitness...................|     164      64
 Dodging............................|     164      64
 Harness Power......................|      50      10
 Spirit Mana Control................|      25       5
 Mental Lore - Telepathy............|     120      30
 Perception.........................|     120      30
 Climbing...........................|      50      10
 Swimming...........................|      50      10
 First Aid..........................|     120      30
 Trading............................|     143      43

Spell Lists
 Minor Mental.......................|              13

And here's Saria ten levels later. Her early Trading and spell push has frozen in time to focus elsewhere, pushing MOC to the 35 breakpoint for mstrikes. Telepathy lore has joined the fray and I pushed it aggressively, partly for the stamina cost reduction on Mind Over Body and partly because I was curious how quickly I could have a monk capable of doing T2 tattoos with a 90% or higher success rate. (If I remember correctly, the answer was level 26.)

By the mid-20s, you're well past the stage where creatures all have paper defenses and/or low enough amounts of health that they get killed via sheer damage, so tiering up becomes more important and Rolling Krynch Stance becomes a priority. Saria untrained Evade Specialization for now to pick it up sooner, which I should have done in the first place since it's the best monk maneuver once you're past, like... level 10.

What would I change in hindsight and/or what should you do differently?

I can now say with certainty that stopping at 15 Telepathy for a long while (like I did on my first monk) is a much, much more sensible breakpoint than pushing to 30, especially by level 30. I had to try it, because I was building to allow for using mstrikes on cooldown every now and then super early in life. However, the difference between Mind Over Body reducing stamina costs by 35% (30 Telepathy) or 30% (15 Telepathy) doesn't come close to justifying all those training points that could have pushed Combat Maneuvers or Dodging higher. Thankfully, this will all work itself out by level 40 (orprobably even by level 34-35), but I'll update the guide with Saria's level 40 and 50 snapshots when she gets there.

Training Plan: Exclusive Choices

Looking for information about combat maneuver decisions and their opportunity costs, plus meditation resistance? Click here!

Meditation Resistance

One neat monk perk I haven't even mentioned yet is that their MEDITATE verb allows them to gain resistance to one selected damage type! It offers 10% resistance to start, then improves by 2% at thresholds of 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, 66, 78, and 91 Transformation lore. (It can can go even higher with enhancives or Ascension.)

The 15 and 36 Transformation thresholds are particularly notable because they reach respectively 20% and 26% (translation: "25% or more") resistance. This is where I could elaborate in detail, but the number of rows and charts that I'd need to detail the math on the hidden Damage Severity Weighting mechanics, how they translate to GSIV's crit system, and how it relates to order of operations with redux and crit padding would probably bore people who aren't Whirlin and me to tears. Suffice it to say this:

Because of rounding and the nature of GSIV crits, it wouldn't be merely underestimating 20% and 25% resistance to say that they're two times or two and a half times as effective as 10% resistance, but actually completely off base by orders of magnitude. The upgrade is substantial.

All that said, which damage type should you resist? You can change your chosen damage type any time, but here are some that jump out:

Cold: Useful for Icemule-based hunting at various levels.
Crush: A very common damage type, like all physical damage types. Particularly helpful for gigantic creatures that fall on you as they die.
Electrical: The most lethal damage type, albeit somewhat rare. If you're hunting creatures that use it, though, protect yourself!
Fire: Useful for Teras Isle, among other specific areas.
Impact: Great against various rock-themed creatures or shield-using creatures, among some others.
Puncture: Another common physical damage type. Very deadly if it hits the eyes even on a fairly tame enemy attack, so 20% or 25% resistance will help immensely.
Slash: The last of the common physical damage types. Probably the least impressive in a vacuum, but it is very common.

Of course, what you should use is contextual to the hunting ground. If your monk is in a place where everything spews Acid or uses Disruption spells, then meditate to resist those!

The only damage types I'd generally advocate against are Grapple and Unbalance, which are fairly unique. They cause minimal wounds compared to other damage types, but even weak hits frequently knock you down--and resistance doesn't stop a knockdown. Still, if you're in a hunting ground replete with Grapple or Unbalance effects, resisting them might save you rounds of stun, so anything's worth considering in the right situation.

Offensive Specialization

Monks can only train one out of Grapple Specialization, Kick Specialization, and Punch Specialization, which each improve their respective attacks, but which is right for you? I'll write about each one as if it's maxed, but during the earliest levels, these ramp up by gaining 20% of their max effectiveness per rank.

Grapple Specialization:

Deals bonus heavy grapple damage before each round of Fury against non-prone foes. "Before" is the key word since grapple damage usually knocks foes down before your UAF attack connects, which can improve MM and/or save you time of not needing to lead with Twin Hammerfists.
Against creatures that are immune to being knocked down, every hit of Fury racks up additional damage since the foe is never prone.
If you love Fury or hate setups, this could be the specialization for you!
In a vacuum, grapples aren't ideal when not using Fury nor mstrikes since they have the same speed as punches, but are less likely to have killing power at good positioning than punches or especially kicks.
Grapple Specialization has little to offer if you exclusively use mstrikes. "Exclusively" is the key word this time. If you use Fury sometimes and mstrikes other times, like me, then Grapple Specialization still pays off!

Kick Specialization:

Turns your Spin Kick into two Spin Kicks!
Many a monk has happily shared tales of being stuck in 20 seconds of RT only for Combat Mobility to stand them up, then they go on to dodge everything and double Spin Kick a room of foes to death before even getting out of RT. It's great fun and can save you in situations where the other two specializations couldn't.
Kicks are the most powerful of the unarmed combat attacks, but the slowest. Higher Agidex races can eventually get even MSTRIKE KICK to the same speed as its grapple and punch counterparts, in which case mstriking with kicks is flat out the best option.
Slower races might be better off with Grapple or Punch. Grapple or Punch also might be better at lower levels, especially pre-Perfect Self, when Spin Kick isn't an option (monks learn it at level 37) and mstrikes and Fury haven't become as fast as they'll eventually be.
While Spin Kick performs exceptionally well against like-level foes, it's not nearly as good against overleveled ones for two reasons: it's less likely to succeed and you're much more incentivized to disable those foes immediately--and if they don't attack, you don't evade, so you don't Spin Kick.
By its nature, Kick Specialization wants you to prioritize improving your UC shoes or footwraps, which is at odds with the fact that UC in general wants you to prioritize improving your UC gloves or handwraps since more of your attacks than not will be hand-based.

Punch Specialization:

Punches as a base attack are faster than kicks and more powerful than grapples. Jabs remain the ideal for tiering up from decent positioning, but at good positioning, when UC attacks have a chance to kill, punches are arguably the best option.
Maxed Punch Specialization has a 25% chance to add minor impact damage to each target hit by Clash. A 25% chance isn't a shining endorsement, though, since maxed Grapple Specialization and Kick Specialization have a 100% chance of adding heavy grapple damage or a second spin kick to their respective techniques. The disparity is exacerbated by Clash being nowhere near as good as unfocused mstrikes.
Despite the above, the buff to Clash being so minor is immaterial if the monk isn't using Clash anyway. Punch Specialization can shine for lower level characters or slower races who primarily prefer mstrikes over weapon techniques, but also can't bring MSTRIKE KICK down to the speed of MSTRIKE PUNCH.

Specialization Sidebar: Mstrikes with Specified Attack Types!
In case it isn't clear or in case going into math would be helpful...
MSTRIKE KICK becomes the mechanical best option for high Agidex races at high levels regardless of which specialization you pick. Depending on how armored the foe, kicks are 140-150% as strong as punches and 160-200% as powerful as grapples. That power gap is so huge that even if your punches or grapples have a higher MM because you picked Punch or Grapple Specialization, kicks are most likely stronger anyway. Of course, your fast race monk could just trained in Kick Specialization and have the best of every world!
MSTRIKE PUNCH can be the best for lower Agidex races, lower levels, or both. Kicks are stronger hit for hit, but if they're slower because your Agidex isn't up to par, punches can still win overall.
MSTRIKE GRAPPLE is worse than MSTRIKE PUNCH in a vacuum because the latter has the same speed while packing 110% to 141.67% as much power. Against foes in chain or plate armor, MSTRIKE PUNCH is probably better than MSTRIKE GRAPPLE even if you trained Grapple Specialization. However, against foes in cloth, leather, or scale armor, the power gap is 110%-125%. MSTRIKE GRAPPLE can still win out if you trained its specialization, due to the MM bonus and higher tier up chance.
In short...
Use MSTRIKE KICK if you're a high Agidex race who's at or close to the peak of your Agidex growth.
Use MSTRIKE GRAPPLE if all of the following apply: you're a moderate Agidex race or a high Agidex race not yet near your peak, you're against foes in armor lighter than chain, and you trained Grapple Specialization, but you're in a situation where you want to mstrike instead of using Fury. (Like, say, unfocused mstrikes.)
Use MSTRIKE PUNCH if neither of the above applies.

The Leafi verdict:

Kick Specialization is the flashiest and arguably the most fun specialization, and I stand behind MSTRIKE KICK being easily the best mstrike for fast races in a vacuum. However, the Fury technique backed by Grapple Specialization arguably has the highest ceiling. Its high knockdown potential works wonders against higher level creatures who make tiering up difficult. I've been very happy with these two specializations, using Kick for Tarine and Grapple for Sariara (as well as Saraphenia before her).

As for Punch Specialization, I wouldn't honestly recommend it to anybody other than the slowest races. Naijin intentionally designed Grapple and Kick Specialization to have stronger effects than Punch Specialization because punches are the most broadly useful as a standalone attack and it definitely shows. GemStone, like many games, rewards being exceptional at something instead of pretty good at everything. "Pretty good" isn't much to aspire to, but that's punches for you.

Defensive Specialization

Monks can only train one out of Block Specialization, Evade Specialization, and Parry Specialization, which each improve their respective defenses, but which is right for you? ...well, this one's a lot easier than the last!

Block Specialization:

At max, a +15% chance to block melee or ranged attacks with a shield. Shields are a bad idea for monks; they're expensive to train, monks can't learn shield skills, and shields significantly decrease MM.

Parry Specialization:

At max, a +15% chance to parry melee or ranged attacks--assuming you have Brace active. After parrying, it gives a 25% chance of gaining the Counter effect, which means your next attack has 1 less RT and costs 25% less stamina (if applicable). This might sound neat until it's compared to...

Evade Specialization:

At max, a +15% chance to evade melee, ranged, or magical bolt attacks. After evading, it gives a 25% of gaining the Evasiveness effect, which will automatically avoid the next attack (of any kind, including CS-based or maneuver-based) thrown your way with 100% success. Also, evasions are the triggers that allow Spin Kick followups 100% of the time.

The Leafi verdict:

Even without Kick Specialization, Evade Specialization is the only one that adds offensive power via a defensive specialization. I universally recommend it to all Brawling-oriented monks without exception. (I say "Brawling" because I'm not even limiting this to unarmed combat. Even if you're using brawling weapons like fist-scythes or katars, you can Spin Kick, so Evade Specialization still wins.)

Martial Stances

Monks can technically learn as many martial stances as they have points for, but can only have one active at a time, so most only learn one. Which one? Let's dig in.

Duck and Weave:

The most flavorful martial stance.

Gives you a chance to redirect enemy melee attacks that you evade, making enemies hit other enemies in the room.

This is a super cool and fun idea, but not nearly as practical as it might sound since there's a large number of hoops to jump through: you need to be fighting multiple creatures, they need to be attacking you with melee, you need to evade, Duck and Weave needs to trigger its redirection, and the attacker's AS has to be high enough compared to the defending creature's DS to do meaningful damage.

The Leafi verdict: Delightful, but bad. Not recommended.

Flurry of Blows:

The screen scrolliest martial stance.

Yo dawg, I heard you like jabs, so I put jabs in your jabs so you can jab while you jab.

When you jab, Flurry of Blows can simultaneously jab other foes in the room. Jabs aren't good on their own, so bringing the best out of this martial stance requires heavy investment. Unless your attacks can potentially fire off at least five damaging flares (...and the current max for a monk is nine while grouped with a paladin or eight otherwise, but even getting to five requires grouping with a paladin or having really high end gear), I wouldn't say it comes close to being worthwhile.

The Leafi verdict: Again, another one that's great fun, but bad. Not recommended.

Inner Harmony:

The most wasted potential of martial stances.

At rank 1 and 2, it can passively shake off negative spell effects. Rank 3 is where it becomes more appealing since assuming the stance will remove the effect on demand with a 20 second cooldown. However, the effects you'd most want to remove are exactly the ones you can't because you can't use Inner Harmony while bound or RT-locked. Troubadour's Rally this definitely isn't!

The Leafi verdict: I appreciate the idea of this stance, but it doesn't have much appeal in practice.

Rolling Krynch Stance:

Almost surely the best martial stance for UC monks.

This stance gives you a chance of carrying over your excellent positioning or good positioning from one foe to the next, which is a massive time savings and power increase. Decent position attacks won't kill unless you have extreme flaring gear or run through a large slew of hits. At good positioning, you at least might kill creatures via crits and can pretty easily kill them with several hits. At excellent positioning, you can kill creatures via crits even via a pretty light tap.

The less time you spend in decent positioning, the better off you are. That's exactly what Rolling Krynch offers.

The Leafi verdict: Rolling Krynch is everything a traditional UC monk wants.

Slippery Mind:

The most defensive martial stance.

When maxed, this one gives you a 27% chance to avoid CS-based attack spells (assuming you're in robes). If you do avoid it, Slippery Mind also has a 75% chance of redirecting the spell to either the caster or a different enemy target. Even if don't avoid the CS spell, you still also have a 27% chance to buff your TD for 15 seconds and possibly save yourself from subsequent attacks.

The Leafi verdict: This stance is simple, but really good, offering two lines of defense against a monk's biggest weakness while also preserving--and arguably even improving upon--one of the most fun aspects of Duck and Weave. I prefer improving offense to defense, but this is still the second best stance for most monks. I'd say it's the very best for a weapon-wielding monk in robes!

Stance of the Mongoose:

The most "almost got there" martial stance.

This martial stance lets you automatically retaliate after you parry. Even assuming the most wildly niche builds, like you're running a dual handaxe Kroderine Soul monk with Parry Specialization who wears metal breastplate (and if you're doing that, thank you for making it this far into the guide for reasons I don't remotely understand!), this martial stance takes some agency away from the player by attacking and adding more RT into your combat--3 seconds in this example--when you might not have wanted it.

If you're a more typical unarmed combat monk, the good news is that Stance of the Mongoose will only add 1-2 seconds of RT through its retaliation attack--but the bad news is that that RT is so low because it's always going to jab (and therefore do very little damage) unless you currently have a tier up opportunity against that foe, in which case it'll pick the tier up type.

That last bit might sound good--and, truthfully, it is good when it lines up, but how often does that happen? Unlike the perfect storm Duck and Weave needs, at least maxed Stance of the Mongoose triggers 100% of the time when it's not on its 3 second cooldown. Still, you need to have been on the offensive to create the tier up opportunity, you need to not yet have manually tiered up, your offensive needs to not have disabled the foe so that it could attack you, it needed to attack you with something you could parry, and you needed to parry it.

The Leafi verdict: Despite its problems, I think this makes a serious case of being the third best martial stance a UC-oriented monk can learn. That's not necessarily saying much, though, since I'd put it distantly behind Rolling Krynch Stance and Slippery Mind. If you're running a wacky build of a weapon-wielding monk in heavy armor, though, then go with this.

Fun time sidebar!
I'm not knocking wildly niche monks. Many of my characters who aren't monks are wildly niche builds like a dual wielding melee cleric in chain mail, a dual wielding paladin, a warrior in robes who casts e-waves with no hindrance, and a maul wizard in leather breastplate. Do whatever you have fun with in this game.
That's one reason I'm writing a guide for one of the only professions I play conventionally: more people might actually find it useful!

Bonus Tip!
Most characters go on the attack dozens of times more often than enemies go on the attack against them. I lean heavily on this fact whenever I'm torn on a choice between offense or defense on any profession. The defensive one will have trouble winning out unless either the defensive gain is immense, the offensive opportunity cost is minimal, or both. (For example, in the right hunting ground, Spirit Barrier has low offensive opportunity cost and can have immense defensive gain!)
This is one reason I hold Rolling Krynch Stance in so much higher regard than Stance of the Mongoose or even Slippery Mind. Rolling Krynch powers up something that you're doing in combat against every creature you fight, often several times per creature. Mongoose and Slippery Mind apply to things that the creatures do--things that you're actively trying to prevent them from doing, by the way--and things that only some of them do, which they only do some of the time.

Striking Asp Stance:

The best... uh... PvP martial stance?

QSTRIKE is an ability available to all professions that lets you consume stamina to reduce the RT of your next attack. Striking Asp reduces that stamina cost for the first single-target qstrike used every minute.

Whoever else this stance might be good for--if anyone, because I'm not convinced it's worthwhile in any context other than PvP duels--it's not good for monks. Since Striking Asp only does anything once per minute, Rolling Krynch is better at Asp's own claim to fame. Even if you use Asp to reduce a 5-second focused mstrike to 1 second, Krynch only needs to save you two jabs' worth of RT in an entire minute. It will almost always do that and more--and at a cost of no stamina instead of reduced stamina like Asp.

The Leafi verdict: No.

Combat Maneuvers

I won't go over every combat maneuver, but here are some quick takes on the more standout ones.

Acrobat's Leap:

Useful for short races to make up the height gap if you're willing and able to spare the points.

Bearhug:

Shockingly good supplement to unarmed combat. UAF attacks can overcome most defenses, but among the creatures that are so good at turtling that even UC struggles to punch through, a large percentage of them are casters who easily get hit by combat maneuvers. Bearhug is a rare case of a maneuver with killing power in its own right. I don't necessarily recommend using learning it until you can train at least three ranks; its cooldown can feel quite long before then.

Bearhug has great synergy with the Vulnerable status effect, which speeds up its damage rounds (not its cooldown). Twin Hammerfists inflicts Vulnerable, so it's a nice one-two!

Bull Rush:

Bull Rush is another way to inflict Vulnerable and can knock down a whole room of creatures. It does pretty minimal damage, but is a staple combat maneuver for monks, filling a need of controlling the enemy hordes so you can systematically pick them off.

Burst of Swiftness:

You needed this in the days of old to learn Perfect Self, but no longer. If you hear about that, it's outdated information.

If your monk is a slow race, you might consider learning Burst anyway to bring your MSTRIKE KICK up to speed--literally! I don't recommend using it until you have at least 4 ranks, though, since the cooldown is very long before then.

If your monk is a fast race, there's still a use case for Burst, but mostly for obscure builds at the top end; my super-capped monk Tarine, who's an elf, has Burst of Swiftness exclusively for Duskruin Arena because it can push her into the vaunted -8 RT tier of 113 or more Agidex bonus, which allows her to do absurd shenanigans with 14 attacks in 4 seconds with Fury and Flurry while wielding two katars. (Since these are assaults, the attacks are broken up into 1-second rounds of 4, 4, 2, and 2 attacks. By contrast, TWC katar mstrikes don't get any faster than 5 seconds regardless of Agidex.)

Cheapshots:

I love this suite of disabling skills on rogues and bards, but I don't think unarmed combat-centric monks benefit all that much despite the wide variety of applications. UC can just power through most things and, for what it can't, Cheapshots won't either--but Bearhug would! Cheapshots can still be worth considering for weapon builds, though.

Combat Focus:

I like two or three ranks to slightly shore up TD weaknesses if you can spare the points, but it's not mandatory by any means.

Combat Mobility:

Easily one of the best and most universal monk maneuvers. Automatically standing up while prone is amazing with Spin Kick and, frankly, even without. 10 Combat Maneuver Points are a lot, so I do recommend building up offense first during the early game and possibly even into the midgame when the enemies aren't all that threatening, but by the level 60s at latest, most monks will love this.

Coup de Grace:

A finisher that can insta-kill incapacitated foes at 50% health or less (at max Coup ranks) and provides a 90-second buff to AS/UAF depending how hard you killed them.

The AS/UAF buff isn't the part that matters (at least not for solo UC-oriented monks; it's amazing for weapon-using monks or group hunts). Unarmed combat is riddled with incapacitating effects tacked on to its normal attacks, offering frequent opportunities to deliver the Coup de Grace. Also, even foes that can't be crit killed, like various golems, noncorporeal undead, oozes, and so on are susceptible to Coup's insta-kill, so it's another helpful option in your toolbox.

Feint:

Even though UAF attacks can just power through turtled creatures, lowering their stance is a prime way to increase the multiplier modifier and help turn that "can" into "most likely will." Feint is the premier combat maneuver for that.

Hamstring:

I mention this for the katar builds. Hamstring can only be used with an edged weapon, but it's a devastatingly powerful setup-and-damage maneuver all in one. Two Weapon Combat characters will find it even more exceptional.

Ki Focus:

Increases the odds of having a higher tier on your next UC attack. This maneuver's wiki page recommends it if you aren't using Rolling Krynch Stance, but I recommend it even if you are. Ki Focus is just another means to more consistently keep the train of good-or-excellent positioning rolling, especially against overleveled foes who would normally be difficult to tier up against. That said, the stamina cost to use it too often is real, even with Mind Over Body, so you'll need heavy Physical Fitness training. It's more of a midgame or late game skill to me.

Finally, monks who use only mstrikes might benefit from Ki Focus more than monks who use techniques. Since mstrikes don't cost stamina while they're off their cooldown period, there's more leeway to keep a high stamina maneuver in your rotation.

Surge of Strength:

You needed this in the days of old to learn Perfect Self, but no longer. If you hear about that, it's outdated information.

I'd consider Surge for halflings and gnomes only. Between Perfect Self and a max rank Surge, they can carry things at least slightly more like an average-sized race. Still, Surge's cooldown is very long before at least rank 4. Even at rank 5, you can only have 75% uptime (a 90 second ability with a 120 second cooldown) unless you're willing to use it while in cooldown, which doubles its already high stamina cost from 30 to 60. Mind Over Body can only do so much to save you from that!

Further Character Progression

Curious about feats, meditating, or upgrading your monk's gear later? Click here!

Feats

Monks gain new abilities called Feats at various levels, which are as follows:

Level 0 Monk Feat - Kroderine Soul:

Kroderine Soul is an opt-in feat that I won't cover in detail, but suffice it to say that you gain additional physical redux (resistance to physical attacks, which is increased by training physically-oriented skills), redux now applies to magical attacks, magical disablers have decreased duration against you, and you have access to the Absorb Magic and Dispel Magic abilities.

In exchange, before level 30, that you can't learn spells, cast spells, or have spells cast on you other than a few exceptions like disks, empath healing, and resurrection. From level 30 on is a different story, which I'll explain in the level 30 feat section.

Level 0 Monk Feat - Martial Mastery:

After you've maxed one weapon skill (for your level), Martial Mastery grants +1 AS or UAF for every eight total ranks you train in up to two additional weapon skills. However, the extra attack power is penalized by 5% for every spell you learn beyond five ranks--which means that Martial Mastery no longer applies by the time you have 25 total spell ranks. Monks have a way to ignore the first 20 of those spell ranks, but I'll explain that too in the level 30 feat section.

While Martial Mastery is technically learned automatically from level 0, most monks won't make much use of it for a while. Some, like my monk Tarine, will never make use of it since they'll have too many spell ranks. I'll speak more about that in the Odds and Ends section discussing builds off the beaten path.

Level 20 Monk Feat - Mystic Tattoo:

Monks can tattoo themselves or other characters by using a needle and ink from the local alchemist shop. They can ink from nearly 1000 different options from a stock tattoo list! These are called mundane tattoos.

From level 20 on, monks can upgrade characters' existing tattoos--including tattoos for which the monk wasn't the artist--by turning them into Mystic Tattoos, which gives the tattoo an enhancive quality of improving one stat of the patron's choice. This is the monk profession service!

For full detail on Mystic Tattoos, see their wiki page. The simplified version is that Mystic Tattoos have five tiers, each getting more difficult and each adding an enhancive bonus of +1 for a stat of the buyer's choice. To empower Mystic Tattoos, monks use 50000, 75000, 100000, 125000, and 150000 Motes of Tranquility (respective to each tier), which are earned via absorbing via the equivalent amounts of experience points. Monks can earn up to 50,000 motes per week and save up to 200,000 total for later use. (You can see your totals with the RESOURCE command.)

As profession services go--so I'm comparing Mystic Tattoos to battle standards, enchanting, ensorcelling, Lucky Items, ranger resistance, sanctifying, and warrior weighting--this can be a decently high impact one for CS casters, who benefit heavily from boosting Aura or Wisdom, or anyone close to specific Agidex thresholds. However, it's definitely on the lower end of profession service value overall, so don't create a monk expecting to start rolling in silver. (...at least not via tattooing, but more on the silver-making secrets of monks later!)

GM Estild, the head of dev, has acknowledged that Mystic Tattoos (and warrior weighting) need further improvement at some future point, but that it'll have to wait until empaths and rogues even have services at all.

Level 25 Monk Feat - Mystic Strike:

A weird one, to say the least. FEAT MYSTICSTRIKE allows a monk to use a small amount of stamina to infuse their next physical UC or melee attack with an effect that debuffs a foe's defense against warding spells after it lands. While monks do have a few warding spells like Thought Lash, Vertigo, and Mindwipe, those spells are normally better off as setups--if they're even used at all--than something to set up toward.

Level 30 Monk Feat - Dragonscale Skin or Mental Acuity

At level 30 (and any time a fixskill is used after that point), monks will have to decide between these two feats by using FEAT LEARN DRAGONSCALESKIN or FEAT LEARN MENTALACUITY.

Dragonscale Skin is a straightforward buff that operates on monks' Iron Skin spell.

Reviewing the basics of Iron Skin first, it improves a monk's robes to have the defensive power of full leather at bare minimum (level 2) and can get all the way to the durability of half plate on a truly outlandish, mega-capped character with an incredible enhancive set. However, this boost to defensive power only counts for the purposes of taking physical damage. Enter Dragonscale Skin, which makes the armor-mimicking aspect of Iron Skin also reflect itself in CvA (defense against warding spells).

For illustration's sake, my monk Sariara has leather breastplate caliber robes at level 30 (equivalent of +10 TD compared to robes), will reach cuirbouilli leather at level 33 (+11 TD), studded leather around level 43-45 (+12 TD), brigandine at 50 (+13 TD), chain mail likely around 60 (+21 TD), and double chain at 75 (+22 TD), where she'll pause for a long while. My super capped monk Tarine had a less Transformation-focused build and is still only at chain mail caliber now, but will push to chain hauberk (+24 TD) in the near future, then stop at metal breastplate (+33 TD) over the very long haul.

To be clear, Dragonscale Skin reduces the odds of getting hit by spells at all and, if the monk does get hit, essentially reduces the endroll result. However, an identical endroll against real chain armor, plate armor, etc. would do significantly less damage than it does against robes.

Mental Acuity is a much more complex beast. It basically forces redux, Martial Mastery (the level 0 feat), and Kroderine Soul (the other level 0 feat) to act like a monk's first 20 learned Minor Mental spells don't count. However, instead of a monk's first 20 Minor Mental spells costing mana, they cost stamina at twice the mana cost. (Mind Over Body does bring that down, so it won't necessarily be exactly twice.)

The most striking of these exceptions is definitely Kroderine Soul because it creates the entirely unique path for monks of continuing to casting spells despite training a feat that prevents their warrior and rogue counterparts--and pre-level-30 monks--from using magic at all. I can see the appeal even though it's not a route I have any interest in.

In practice, the only monks I know who chose Mental Acuity instead of Dragonscale Skin were also using Kroderine Soul. Having spells cost stamina instead of mana is a hefty ask. That said, nothing stops a character from avoiding KS and using Mental Acuity anyway. There are still reasons to do it. Saving 20 spell ranks' worth of redux remains a Mental Acuity benefit even for the non-KS monk. Saving 20 spell ranks' worth of Martial Mastery penalty means that a monk trained in three weapon skills could still max out the AS/UAF bonus even while training, for example, 20 Minor Mental spells plus 3-5 ranks of Minor Spiritual.

Are these compelling enough reasons to take Mental Acuity over Dragonscale Skin on a non-KS monk? As far as I can tell, so far the answer is no, but they're on the table for anyone who wants to take a walk on the wild side. As for KS monks, Mental Acuity is the only option; Dragonscale Skin does literally nothing for them because KS monks can't cast Iron Skin at all unless they have Mental Acuity.

Level 40 Monk Feat - Martial Arts Mastery

Now we're talking! Not to be confused with the level 0 Martial Mastery feat, Martial Arts Mastery uniformly adds +10 to the multiplier modifier of your UC attacks, adds a flat +10% tier up chances to your UC, and adds a flat +10% evasion rate (which also helps fire off more Spin Kicks).

If you play an unarmed combat monk through low levels and ever find yourself wondering when it really gets good, level 40 is the latest possible answer (unless you heavily neglect Multi-Opponent Combat training to the point of not having at least 35). Before level 40, something like a brawling warrior in robes might feel at least similar to a monk, albeit with no Rolling Krynch Stance and with different training point costs for various skills.

Level 40 draws a line in the sand, though, to establish that unarmed combat is the monk's wheelhouse because Martial Arts Mastery is the monk's premier feat. To put it in perspective, Martial Arts Mastery is the equivalent of maxing Grapple Specialization, Kick Specialization, and Punch Specialization all at once, minus the Fury/Spin Kick/Clash perks but plus a new Jab Specialization that no other profession even has. And since you'll already have trained one of Grapple/Kick/Punch Specialization the normal way, now Martial Arts Mastery has double-maxed it.

Unleash the power and never look back.

Level 50 Monk Feat - Perfect Self

Perfect Self raises all your stats by +10 (or +5 bonus). That's it! Your monk hits level 50 and great power drops on their head.

Like I've said, there's pretty much no such thing as a bad monk stat split from level 50 on because of this feat. It's also the driving force behind why even moderately fast races (along the lines of half-elves and aelotoi), never mind the really fast races, have so much potential as monks. If you're using mstrikes and weapon techniques at all, you'll notice the improvement!

Gear Upgrades: Armor

Even though fancy gear is more a luxury than a necessity for monks, you might as well upgrade your monk's gear eventually if you enjoy them! But how and in what way?

For armor, I think the answer is to keep it really simple. Most of the expensive armor you can pick up doesn't do all that much for monks. (...at least not magical non-Kroderine Soul monks, the subject of this guide. I assume expensive armor does way more for KS monks who are tanking more hits.)

Animalistic Spirit Armor? Gives a few minutes of extra stamina regen per hunt and can flare to knock down creatures when you evade, but you're a monk. You already reduce your stamina costs by 35% and you already keep everything knocked down constantly.
Ethereal armor? If you happen to have boatloads of ethereal scrip from frequent Reim hunts, then sure, go for it, but more DS and a flare chance for crit padding isn't what a monk is screaming for.
Forest Armor? Monks don't need a tiny boost to UAF and CS.
Ithzir Armor? Cool abilities, to be sure. 500k bloodscrip cool? Nah.
Mana-Infused Armor? Mana, damage padding, crit padding, UAF and CS, and an emergency button to drive creatures out of the room. Not exactly what a monk's seeking.
Parasite Armor? It can give a 90 second buff to TD, but it's once every five minutes and costs 150k bloodscrip. Pass.
Sprite Armor? Extra DS, maneuver defense, and mana. Nope, not for a monk!
Valence Armor? Health, mana, and reactive flares. Skip.
Voln armor? Extra DS, sheer fear protection, crit padding, and an emergency escape button. There was a time when this was a reasonable value despite its high cost, despite the DS and crit padding not being too meaningful to a monk. However, that time was before Sanctify and Battle Standard existed. You can get the sheer fear protection for cheaper and you can emergency escape with a Battle Standard after death instead of before death. You'll have to die several thousand times before the cost of your deed and chrism outweigh the cost of your Voln armor.

So my actual answer to the armor question is:

Go to playershops, spend 1-5 million silver on robes with either +7 to +9 TD or some cool damage resistance, get them upgraded by wizards, clerics, and sorcerers over time, and call it a day.

Yes, this is what I actually do! 16% slash resistant robes, +8 TD robes, more +8 TD robes, and +7 TD robes are all things that some of my characters--two monks, a warrior, and a cleric--actually wear. If GMs ever release an armor script that I think is a must-have for monks, I'll come back and update the guide at that point!

Gear Upgrades: Weapons

I wrote a guide on this topic, but unarmed combat has more limited options than other weapon types, so I'll go over the few that I think are worth looking into depending on your budget.

Animalistic Spirit:

Incredible variety of flavor messaging makes this script fun and very popular among all professions! For monks, specifically, Revenge Flares are a great unlockable feature that fires off damaging flares as monks evade. On the other hand, the default grapple damage type isn't the best since grapple is mainly good for knockdowns and monks are very adept at that on their own. My monk uses Animalistic Spirit gloves and boots with their damage type converted to lightning.

The entry point is only 10k bloodscrip per item and the a la carte unlocking paths make upgrading in the future easy if you really like your gloves and shoes. Overall, these are the top pick of monks for very good reason.

Energy Weapon:

For unarmed combat, Energy Weapons are only available in the form of held weapons like a cestus, not handwear and footwear. That's immediately anathema to some people. I'd agree with them when talking about a -10 or -15 MM weapon, but I'm actually not down on the -5 MM held UC weapons like others.

Held UC weapons slightly improve damage factor and UAF at the cost of taking hit to the multiplier modifier. You also lose the use of Brace parrying. That is an overall loss in a vacuum for most attack types, so the held weapon needs something else significant to compensate. Energy Weapons can do that with supercharged lightning flares, so I do have a cestus and even use it against foes where MM is so high that I can live with the drop. If the margins are close, I don't use it. Easy enough.

The entry point for an Energy Weapon is 10k bloodscrip. The higher unlock tiers aren't very useful to monks, so I called mine a one and done.

Obscure Trivia Sidenote!
When you're wearing flaring gloves while also using a flaring held unarmed combat weapon, the flare rate of each item--gloves and weapon--is halved, ending up at the same overall flare rate. So how can I be talking about an Energy Weapon's flares as a perk that helps compensate for the MM drop in any way if that perk is counterbalanced by hurting the flare rate of your gloves?
Well, for example, let's say that my Animalistic Spirit gloves had default grapple flares, which I don't value highly because unarmed combat keeps foes knocked down anyway. In that case, trading off half of a grapple flare rate to replace it with half of a lightning flare rate is a win.
This logic breaks down as gloves get more upgraded and you're either trading off worse things or spending currency on gloves and a cestus. Still, I stand behind it if your stopping point is just a flare and a script flare.

Greater Elemental Flares:

These are a gold standard of midrange weapon scripts, at least if you'd consider 40k bloodscrip per item "midrange." Offering triple lightning flares is a pretty crazy thing! However, you do need to track down handwear and footwear that was already flaring or else the prices jump to 55k bloodscrip.

GEF flares are a solid and straightforward one-and-done option, but cheaper alternatives can be more efficient bang for your buck while more expensive alternatives can be more fun.

Knockout Flares:

Easily some of the best flare messaging in the game and they always hit heads, which can be very deadly. I've used knockout flaring UC gear on non-monk characters and had a blast with them. One of my favorite moments was the happy accident of channeling Mario with the "You leap up, bringing your pure white sandals down across the head of the human mugger with a sickening thud!" messaging.

That said, the entry point--and only point--for knockout flares is 100k bloodscrip per item, which is a very tall ask for most people. It used to be a lot cheaper in the days of Ebon Gate on Caligos Isle, albeit released in limited quantities via a jackpot system to compensate. If you are willing to spend to that degree, then I say read the wiki page and see if you like the messaging more or less than Animalistic Spirit. Some people pick Animalistic Spirit for their handwear or footwear and knockout for the other.

No script, just basic elemental flares (especially lightning):

This is where I think you should begin if you're uncertain or just dipping your toe in the water.

You can find flaring UC handwear and footwear for under a million silver each at a fair number of events--sometimes even free events. Basic lightning flaring gear matches the power of off-the-shelf pay event gear. Pay event gear does pull ahead when you double down and stack lightning flares on top of it, but that means even heavier investment.

Start small while you're getting your bearings and save the bigger decisions for later!

Profession Service Priorities

Silver does no good unless it's spent somewhere, so if you're going budget on buying gear or just have a money surplus in need of a home, how about looking into profession services?

Battle Standards (the paladin service)

(Note: this service isn't yet released at the time of this writing, but it's on the test server, I've played with it for hours across several professions including monks, and its release to the live game is right around the corner.)

If there's only one service I'd recommend for a monk, it's Battle Standards. From the third tier on, Battle Standards add offensive flares to your attacks. (The flare rate goes up at the fourth and fifth tiers.)

As a general rule, offensive flares are better the more attacks per minute you use on average. This pairs extremely well with unarmed combat (especially mstriking due to bonus jabs, but even Fury) because its myriad low RT abilities churn out attacks more quickly than anything other than high level wizards, high level bards, and high level Two Weapon Combat builds.

Even while you're only throwing jabs and fishing for tier up opportunities, a battle standard flare can sneak in and potentially kill a creature. Usually not, but even a lighter hit might stun a creature--and stunning increases UC's most important number, MM, making every following attack better.

Fourth tier and up Battle Standards also offer a short-term buff where every attack you do for 30 seconds is guaranteed to flare. This is a burst of fun, chaotic, powerful mayhem, especially in any area that's even moderately swarmy! There's a 30-minute cooldown at the fourth tier and a 15-minute cooldown at the fifth tier, so you can use it once every two hunts or once every hunt, respectively.

Battle Standards have a few other perks, but these are the main ones making them so good for monks.

Battle Standards have charges and periodically need recharging, which will cost you. I don't believe we have hard confirmation on how the charges drain, but if (if!) it's similar to Lucky Items, there's a chance for a charge to drain each time one of the Battle Standard's abilities triggers. Relative to other professions, that might be a faster drain than them due to your sheer volume of attacks. However, UC or no, the charges should last a long while for the large majority of players, who aren't hunting more than two hours a day.

The Leafi verdict: Get a Battle Standard and love it. Even in the worst case, if you ended up not loving it, you could sell it to someone else since it unattunes from you 30 days after your first use.

Enchanting (the wizard service)

Enchanting offensive gear improves UAF (or AS if you're using a weapon) while enchanting armor improves DS.

UAF offers minimal help. DS is more compelling, especially once you're hunting areas with the spell sever mechanic. Monks have the game's cheapest training costs for Dodging, so their DS is very good throughout their lives, but not untouchable since they are regularly in offensive stance. I don't go hard on improving monk DS, but it can't hurt either.

The Leafi verdict: Bring your robes up to +30. It gets expensive afterward, but +35 is a fine long-term goal too when you have silver lying around! Poke away at improving your UC gear if you find a great deal, but otherwise it doesn't matter much.

Ensorcelling (the sorcerer service)

Ensorcelling armor improves CvA (basically the equivalent of TD). Enemy spells are a weak point, so I'd say your long term plan should include this. However, get most or all of your sanctification done first since ensorcelling first adds much more gear difficulty than sanctifying.

For unarmed combat gear, ensorcelling adds a flare chance for either a UAF boost on the next attack, stamina recovery immediately, or health recovery immediately.

Stamina recovery is strong for monks--but these flares grant UAF boosts instead of stamina most of the time, which is very weak for monks. Ensorcell evenly scales up its UAF bonus; a fifth tier (T5) Ensorcell increases UAF by 25 while a first tier (T1) increases UAF by 5. Stamina recovery, on the other hand, is frontloaded: the average stamina return at T1 is 9 while the average at T5 is 15.

I like the "get a T1 Ensorcell on your offensive gear and call it finished" philosophy. You already have 60% of T5's average stamina return, but only bought 10% as much of a sorcerer's resource points.

The Leafi verdict: T1 Ensorcell for your handwear and footwear whenever you get a chance. T5 Ensorcell for your robes over the long haul.

Lucky Items (the bard service)

Lucky Items are incredible. They improve virtually every offensive and defensive aspect of combat, which is like having extra enchantments, ensorcellments, weighting, and padding all attached to the same item--plus boosts to maneuver offense and maneuver defense as even more cherry on top!

For most professions and builds, I'd argue that Lucky Items are mechanically the most powerful service.

...but monks aren't most professions and builds. Yes, Lucky Items are like having extra UAF, DS, TD, weighting, and padding all at once, but I have a low opinion of all of those things for monks other than TD.

Lucky Items are sort of opposite to Battle Standards; instead of favoring the low-impact attacks that UC excels at, Lucky Items favor high-impact attacks so every instance of luck triggering is proportionally more powerful. Lucky Item triggering on a jab or a decent positioning attack is a bit of a waste and you're probably firing off a lot of those.

Like Battle Standards, Lucky Items use a charging system. In this case, we do know that charges have a chance to drain each time your item triggers, which isn't so good for monks and their high volume of attacks. Lucky Items also trigger in an even wider variety of situations than Battle Standards, the most notable being whenever an enemy attacks you. (Standards' defensive flares need the enemy to actually connect.)

Despite all this, Lucky Item charges will last you a while (but not as long as Standards) unless you're a hardcore power hunter, but it's sort of a straw breaking the camel's back that pushes them down the priority pole.

The Leafi verdict: If this were any other profession, I'd be singing the praises of Lucky Items and breaking down the math. Honestly, I might have to write a mini-guide on Lucky Items because they're tragically underrated. They offer amazing power to every form of combat other than the exact one that monks favor. If you're a weapon-wielding monk, definitely buy in. For typical UC monks, I'd recommend your silvers go elsewhere first. I say "first" because luck is so powerful that you should definitely get it eventually, just not as a top priority.

Mystic Tattoos (the monk service)

Despite Mystic Tattoos being a monk's own ability, it's not that helpful when used on yourself. The best benefits would be either decreasing encumbrance (Strength), hitting an Agidex threshold (Agility preferred for a monk because it gives more maneuver defense and offers UAF), increasing exp gain (Logic), or slightly improving defense against spiritual magic (Wisdom), but it's pretty marginal.

I look forward to seeing how GMs improve Mystic Tattoos in the future since most profession services created from 2020 on have included some kind of extra perk for the profession providing the service itself.

The Leafi verdict: I'd only tattoo yourself in your spare time when you can't find others willing to pay for your tattoos who would probably get more mechanical use out of them than you do. More Wisdom or Aura can be a gamechanger for CS-based casters, so sell them your tattooing services and use that silver to pay for paladins' Battle Standards.

Resist Nature (the ranger service)

Rangers can build a bracelet, anklet, or amulet that grants up to 25% resistance against up to five damage types: cold, heat, nature, steam, and lightning. For post-cap hunters going into Ascension areas and the Scatter, this is really good since most of those areas use at least four of those damage types.

Before cap or in other hunting grounds, usually only one damage type is the scourge of the area. When you only need one resistance, monks can get that from their own meditate ability instead of needing a ranger trinket. Even pre-cap, there's still some merit to a ranger trinket pre-cap since you can meditate for a general purpose physical resistance like crush and use your trinket for an elemental resistance like fire or lightning, but you'd have to know that you'll be running into that damage type consistently for a while.

As an obscure sidenote, nature resistance is unique to ranger trinkets. Monks can't meditate against it and even the Ascension system can't train to defend against it. However, an extremely small number of creatures use nature damage.

The Leafi verdict: I'd look into ranger resistance for post-cap purposes, especially if you intend to hunt Ascension hunting grounds (which monks perform well in at lower exp amounts than any other profession). Before cap, make do with your own meditation ability.

Sanctification (the cleric service)

Sanctifying unarmed combat gear adds UAF against undead for the first five tiers and negates 5% of their damage resistance per tier if your gear is sanctified (but not blessed). The sixth tier adds a holy fire flare against undead that deals 50-100 health damage and a fire crit.

The first five tiers of Sanctify have dubious value for UC gear. The sixth tier, on the other hand, is amazing if your monk frequently hunts undead. Holy fire flares are extremely powerful for anyone, but only get better for a spammy combat type like UC. The question is whether you're willing to pay for the first five tiers' minimal value just to get to holy fire.

Sanctifying armor is a much more clear value proposition for monks. The first five tiers improve DS, TD, and, most importantly, sheer fear protection so you can hunt higher level undead without constantly getting locked in RT. The sixth tier again provides holy fire, but since the flare is armor-based, it'll only trigger for certain combat maneuvers or when the undead hit you.

The Leafi verdict: Get the first five tiers on your robes unless you're absolutely certain you'll never have interest in hunting high-level undead. Holy fire isn't a high priority on armor, but does go well with Bearhug and Bull Rush if you want it one day. Unarmed combat gear is the opposite; either commit to seeing through the entire expensive holy fire path or don't bother sanctifying at all. Since UAF matters little, ordinary cleric blessings offer basically the same value as the first five Sanctify tiers for UC.

Weighting and Padding (the warrior service)

Weighting has limited value to an unarmed combat monk because UC itself increases or decreases the potential of attacks based on positioning. It could still make sense on a weapon-wielding monk. Padding is more useful, but not useful enough to justify paying warriors unless they're charging less than the automated WPS smithy that comes around every couple of months. (They probably aren't!)

Like with Mystic Tattoos, the head of dev, Estild, has acknowledged that the warrior service needs improvement at a future date. Maybe hope is on the horizon, but right now this service isn't terribly desirable for most players, monks or otherwise.

The Leafi verdict: An easy skip unless a friend is providing it for free or something.

Bloodstone Jewelry (the future empath service)

Might as well touch on this, even if briefly, since it's been designed and is going through the coding process. Enormous caveat that numbers aren't necessarily final!

Bloodstone Jewelry will increase max health, mana, and stamina, increase regeneration for health, mana, and stamina, and will add 2-10 extra health damage (only health damage) to all attacks. After every 50 health damage it deals, the next attack inflicts Major Bleed. It does a couple of other things, but these are the big ones for applicability to monks.

Analyzing the value to a monk is like a mishmash of Battle Standards, Ensorcell, and Sanctify. Like with Ensorcell, stamina regeneration is great, but Ensorcell doesn't use a recharging system like Bloodstone Jewelry, Ensorcell's stamina regeneration is a flare chance (good with frequent UC attacks) instead of a per minute effect like conventional stamina regen enhancives or Bloodstone Jewelry, and those conventional stamina regen enhancives are plentiful and inexpensive in playershops.

Extra health damage, on the other hand, is a huge selling point. While it can't stun or crit kill like a Battle Standard flare, it affects every attack instead of 20% of attacks. On average, you'll get the Major Bleed effect after every 8.3 attacks, which is also powerful. However, Bloodstone Jewelry doesn't have this extra damage component until its fifth and final tier.

The Leafi verdict: Like with Sanctify on offensive gear, either go all the way with this service or pass on it unless someone's offering a steal.

Odds and Ends

Can I interest you in the weirdest inner workings of my mind re: monks? If so, click here!

I'll wrap this guide up with miscellaneous topics like off-the-beaten-path things monks can do or advantages they have that you might not have thought about.

Monk Magic After Dark

...wait, I can't write about that on the wiki! Moving on.

Trade Secrets of the Sneaky Monk Merchants

I'm one of the bigger advocates of training Trading in the GS community, but even more so for monks than others!

Monks have easier and more universal means to make more silvers per item sold than any other profession--and they can do it almost anywhere in Elanthia.

Except for Mist Harbor and Kraken's Fall, every town's NPC shops will pay +5% extra silver to at least one race when players sell. (See the chart of favored races here!)

Monks have a secret weapon in the profit war: Shroud of Deception!

Even monks who live in a geographic region where their race can't get a bonus can configure their Shroud profile to appear as another race and get the bonus anyway! It's that easy!

But wait, it gets better! Monks also have Glamour', which gives an enhancive boost of 20 Trading ranks or 50 Trading skill, whichever is lower. (50 Trading skill will be lower unless you have at least 20 Trading ranks on your own.)

What does Trading do, though?

You get an extra 1% silver for every combined 12 bonus between Influence and Trading bonus. That's bonus, not ranks! So, for example, if you had 44 Trading ranks, which is 144 Trading bonus, you'd make 12% more silver for selling items than if you had 0 Trading ranks. Shroud of Deception takes that 12% to 17%, then Glamour takes that 17% to 18%--and, actually, 8/12ths of the way to 19%. If you took my advice and set Influence high from the start, Influence will also get you to 19% if not 20%!

This is a big part of how Sariara made 2,509,473 million silver within a week of existing. By now she's existed for four weeks and a day and is up to 23,108,060 silver, only 1,500,000 of which came from selling a Mystic Tattoo.

Some general tips on early silvers:

Don't hunt overcrowded Landing areas, but find the rich lower level creatures. There are plenty of them because characters don't stay low level for long, so hunting pressure is low. (For more on hunting pressure, see the treasure system page and saved posts subpage.)
Take advantage of Glamour and Shroud of Deception to get a percentage boost to these rich creatures' already valuable loot. Reap the reward of being a monk!
Between level 0 and 19, when skills migrate near instantly, max out Trading every time you're about to sell things.
Between level 0 and 19, push First Aid and Survival up when you're out hunting so you can get value from skinning. Unlearn them afterward so you can...
Between level 5 and 19, learn Glamour and cast it before selling. (Afterward, unlearn it so you can get skinning skills back!)
Between level 12 and 19, learn Shroud of Deception and cast it before selling. (Afterward, unlearn it so you can get skinning skills back!)
For your final level 19.9 build, as you're forced to commit to your skills, have at least 20 ranks of Trading and know at least your first 12 Minor Mental spells.

Yes, this is what I did. I got to see delightful lines in my SKILL command like:

You started this migration period on Saturday, 5/25/2024 at 01:55:18 EDT.  You have 4 days, 20 hours, 8 minutes remaining in your current 30 day migration period.

You're currently migrating at a rate of .001 skill points per pulse, and have converted 25580.00 training points this migration period.

Even if you don't go to this extreme, though, monks are the game's best at selling to NPC merchants. At the low end, monks skyrocket toward high sales value. At the high end in the post-cap world, monks reach the maximum sale bonus in almost every town.

Bonus Tip!
"Maximum sale bonus" is 28% from Trading and Influence plus another 5% from race bonus. To be clear, the max bonus is 33%, but only sort of; the two bonuses are treated separately. For example, if you're an elf monk selling in Solhaven (no bonus), you can't just pump your Trading and Influence so high that you'd make 33% from that alone; it's capped at 28% and the other 5% has to come from Shroud of Deception.
My monk Tarine was the key to my figuring this out. Noticing that Glamour no longer made a difference post-cap with max Trading led me down the rabbit trail of investigating why! I found the Trading and Influence hard cap, then the total hard cap counting race bonus, then isolated that they were separate things.

When Robes Aren't Robes: Alterations

For simplicity, I've been talking about "robes" throughout this guide because that's the conventional name for that armor type.

However, robes don't have to remain robes at all; they have the same leeway for alterations as other chest-worn clothing! Here are examples of post-alteration "robes" that my various characters (monks or otherwise) have worn or that I plan to create:

An airy white starsilk sundress sporting an asymmetrical knee-length skirt
A sleeveless lily white tunic with a jet black silk sash
A knee-length midnight blue silk dress aglisten with a constellation of stars
A sleeveless white tunic splashed with an autumn-hued music motif
A sleeveless white starsilk tunic spangled with sunset orange musical notes
A midnight black silk tunic marked with a silver eight-pointed star
A sleeveless sunlight gold tunic accented by bright white edges
A royal purple silk tunic embroidered with a golden rose
A sleeveless emerald green dress showcasing a heart-framed pink sapphire fairy centerpiece (this one cheats; it has the Joola fluff script, so it can break character limits)
A snowy off-shoulder dress sporting white pearl accents along a wavy aqua skirt (also a Joola)
An ivory-edged scarlet starsilk dress showcasing elegant thigh slits
A sleeveless star-patterned white kimono sporting golden threading
A ribbon-sashed cherry red elesine blouse with vanilla-hued ruffled sleeves
A sleeveless gold feather-patterned tunic tied at the waist

Mine are mostly feminine designs, but even for a masculine character, you can turn your robes into shirts, vests, jackets, and more. Get your creativity on!

Bonus Tip!
Likewise, unarmed combat footwear isn't limited to boots or footwraps. Have a merchant make you shoes, sandals, slippers, flats, moccasins, or anything else you like and wear them into battle!

The Weapon-Wielding Melee Monk

Let's talk more about Martial Mastery, the level 0 feat. Although monks have access, it was primarily invented for warriors and rogues as an alternative to learning Elemental Targeting, a Minor Elemental spell that increases AS.

Far enough post-cap, magical warriors or magical rogues have the same AS ceiling as their non-magical counterparts. (Their non-magical counterparts do get there millions of experience points sooner while the magical ones have more DS and TD, but that's outside the scope of this guide...) Monks, on the other hand, don't have Elemental Targeting, so a monk maximizing Martial Mastery can have up to 50 more AS and UAF than a monk not maximizing it! Of course, UAF doesn't matter nearly as much as AS and the entire monk profession is built around unarmed combat. So I ask:

Is there merit to a weapon-wielding, AS-based monk?

Before I explore it, I'll repeat that I think people should make whatever kind of character they find fun and that I personally like wacky builds. However, I'm not convinced that a melee monk even is a wacky build. When people consider making a melee-only character who isn't stealth-based, a warrior is probably their first thought, but let's seriously compare these options.

The Training Cost Factor:

I'll use my (first) monk and warrior for the sake of illustration since they're both elves. At level 50, my warrior had a total pool of 2568 PTPs and 2242 MTPs while my monk had a total pool of 2319 PTPs and 2259 MTPs. You might think the warrior is hugely ahead, but no, not at all. I could show you paragraphs upon paragraphs of math I wrote, but let's just cut to the chase.

Let's say my monk and warrior had both done dual katar builds that shared nearly identical core training. 2x Brawling, 2x Edged Weapons, 1x Thrown Weapons (to buff up Martial Mastery), 2x Two Weapon Combat, 2x Combat Maneuvers, 2x Physical Fitness, 50 Multi-Opponent Combat, and 1x Perception were all in common.

From there, my warrior took 70 Armor Use to get metal breastplate, then trained as many Dodging ranks as possible with her remaining points. My monk learned Iron Skin, took 30 Transformation to buff up Iron Skin, and took 10 Harness Power, then trained as many Dodging ranks as possible with her remaining points. Their skills would be identical in most ways, but here's where they'd differ:

Monk in robes that act like chain mail: 153 ranks of Dodging and 102 MTPs spare
Warrior in metal breastplate: 109 ranks of Dodging and 21 MTPs spare

I'm not going to claim that my monk would basically just be better; there are too many factors to say that. Warriors have their guild skills. Monks have Perfect Self. Warriors have a higher parry chance because of their level 40 feat. Monks have a higher evade chance because of their level 40 feat. Warriors have Whirling Dervish. Monks have more DS, at least at this stage of the game. Warriors have Weapon Specialization. Monks have Burst of Swiftness. Warriors have Weapon Bonding.

My point is that a melee monk is even comparable--better in some ways and worse in others--to a warrior with the exact same build despite ignoring so much of what the monk skillset is tailored toward.

The Mental Acuity Possibility:

What if you learned Mental Acuity even without Kroderine Soul? My above training cost example illustrated my monk stopping at two Minor Mental spells for Iron Skin, but another alternative (though this would be during later levels) would be taking Mental Acuity to retain access to the first 20 Minor Mental spells and still even allowing room for Spirit Warding I and Spirit Defense. (If you were okay with Martial Mastery capping out at +45 AS instead of 50, you could even learn Spirit Warding II!)

The hypothetical Martial Mastery and Mental Acuity monk has almost the same AS as a Martial Mastery warrior, but her spells would pull her far ahead in DS while keeping all the silver selling benefits of Glamour and Shroud of Deception, plus saving tons of stamina via Mind Over Body. The tradeoff is making spelling up more of a hassle, but that might be worth the payoff of having a light armored warrior-like character whose combat maneuvers and weapon techniques have 35% stamina cost reduction!

The Doubly Perfect Self:

As great as Perfect Self is for unarmed combat, it's arguably even better for a melee monk. For UC purposes, it's mainly RT reduction for your mstrikes or your singular assault technique, Fury. For a katar monk, on the other hand, you're getting AS--more useful than UAF--and RT reduction for two types of assault techniques: Brawling's Fury and Edged Weapons' Flurry. Rotating weapon techniques to work around cooldowns is a very powerful thing available for hybrid weapons like katars! This can eat a lot of stamina on a warrior or rogue, but monks don't sweat it as much due to Mind Over Body.

Conclusion:

Ironically, I wrote the above Mental Acuity subsection mostly to acknowledge that it's a possibility even while thinking nobody would do it without Kroderine Soul. I just like to encourage weird builds in most professions, so I figured I'd bring it up.

Instead, after considering all the math and angles I did while writing this, it's made such a strong case for a bizarrely appealing build that I've talked myself into trying it with Sariara much later in her life. My mind's swirling and it seems clear that the melee monk is a very, very real idea that's gone unexplored because it's not an intuitive or obvious idea from a glance over the monk skillset.

TL;DR: Making Cookie Cutter Monks

Low on time or thought processing power and just want a cookie cutter build you don't need to put much thought into? Click here!

(...by my wacky definition of "cookie cutter.")

"Leafi, I love you and all, but I expanded every section, noticed my scroll bar is tiny, noticed your guide is crazy long, and ain't nobody got time for that. Please tl;dr this nonsense?"

Okay, okay, I hear you.

Some of you never wanted the Leafiara treatment where we seek to become real life monks with advanced spiritual and mental understanding by thoroughly exploring the unfathomable mysteries of reality and transcendent reality.

Some of you instead wanted the Saraphenia treatment where I tell you how to have a functional build that lets you have mechanical fun in an online text-based multiplayer video game and then you embark on your journey.

So I included this section for you!

Race:

Aelotoi, burghal gnomes, dark elves, elves, forest gnomes, half-elves, halflings, and sylvankind are all basically the same power for monks. Faster is better, but more encumbrance is worse, so find your balance. Giantmen have a niche.

Stats:

See the table in the Placing Your Stats section.

Society:

Voln.

How do I fight?:

Weapon Twinhammer as your opener once you learn it.

Jab at decent position, punch at good position if you're not Grapple Specialization and grapple at good position if you are, kick at excellent position. Regardless of those general rules, follow prompts and do what it tells you when it tells you.

Against single targets, Weapon Fury until whenever you have enough Agidex for a 5-6 second mstrike kick.

Against multiple targets, mstrike grapple if you're Grapple Specialization or mstrike kick if you're Kick Specialization. In either case, not until they're 7 seconds or less. If mstrike grapple is 7 seconds or less, but you're Kick Specialization and mstrike kick is 8 seconds or more, mstrike punch for now until Kick Specialization is faster.

Core skills to train every level:

2x Brawling, 2x Physical Fitness (eventually 3x), 2x Dodging (eventually 3x), 1x Perception.

Skills with breakpoints:

1 rank of Two Weapon Combat.

Combat Maneuvers in bursts for various breakpoints to pick up specific maneuvers. (For which ones and when, see the "combat maneuvers and feats" section below.)

Multi-Opponent Combat in bursts to 5, 10, 24, 30, 35, 55, 60, 90, and 100 ranks.

10 Harness Power early, 20-30 mid-game, then really push near cap.

Minor Mental to 16 so you have both focus spells (1213 and 1216) as options, then slack off with spells until the midgame.

Telepathy lore in bursts to 6, 15, and 30. Transformation lore in bursts to 5, 15, and 30.

10 Climbing and Swimming until the midgame or as needs arise.

Tertiary skills:

Spiritual/Mental Mana Control only if sharing mana with friends and alts.

First Aid and Survival only if you want skinning.

20 Trading by level 20 because monks make silver via 1205 and 1212.

Midgame skills:

Minor Spiritual to 2, 3, or 7 ranks, but only after 3x Dodging.

Combat maneuvers and feats:

Dragonscale Skin for your level 30 feat.

Step 1 of Combat Maneuvers, making the super early game not painful:

3 and 9 ranks ASAP for one and two ranks of Rolling Krynch Stance (unless you're not using unarmed combat, but if you're in this section asking for a cookie cutter build, I'm telling you to use unarmed combat).

Step 2 of Combat Maneuvers, improving the early game:

Pick up the last rank of Krynch and first three ranks of Grapple Specialization or Kick Specialization in whatever order, depending if you want to hunt Ascension areas one day (Grapple) or not (Kick). If you choose Kick, it might not even be an early game priority since you don't get Spin Kick until level 37, so you could possibly move to step 3 after finishing Krynch.

Step 3 of Combat Maneuvers, fleshing out skills and diversifying your abilities through the midgame:

In whatever order, pick up at least three ranks of Bearhug, at least two ranks of Bull Rush, all three ranks of Evade Specialization, at least three ranks of Feint, and the remaining ranks of Grapple or Kick Specialization. If you went Kick Specialization, add Combat Mobility to that list sooner than later. If you picked a halfling or gnome, add Acrobat's Leap, but otherwise don't.

Step 4 of Combat Maneuvers, putting the last pieces in place:

Pick up Combat Mobility (if you didn't already have it from Kick Specialization) and all three ranks of Ki Focus.

Step 5 of Combat Maneuvers, player's choice:

Whatever you want. Finish Bearhug, Bull Rush, and Feint or don't, depending how you like them. You can veer off in different directions with more niche maneuver options or not. Up to you!

Armor upgrade path when ready:

Buy TD-boosting armor of +7 or more from a playershop. It'll cost 1-5 million silver and serve you fantastically. Add services of Enchant, Sanctify, padding, and Ensorcell over time in that order.

Weapon upgrade path when ready:

Spending almost nothing (~1 million silver): Buy basic lightning flaring handwear and footwear.
Spending moderately (~35k pay event currency (equivalent of 35 million silver)): Buy off-the-shelf Animalistic Spirit from Duskruin. Add lightning flares at Rumor Woods or Ebon Gate.
Spending heavily (~80k pay event currency): Buy basic lightning flaring handwear and footwear. Add Greater Elemental Flares at Duskruin.
Spending a ton (~150k pay event currency): Buy Animalistic Spirit handwear from Duskruin. Add a slew of Animalistic Spirit upgrades and unlocks at Duskruin. Add lightning flares at Rumor Woods or Ebon Gate. For footwear, same steps except skip the Animalistic Spirit upgrades and unlocks.
Spending a super ton (~265k pay event currency): Same as spending a ton, except don't skip the Animalistic Spirit upgrades and unlocks for your footwear.

And if you're the top 0.5% ready to drop almost $7000 worth of pay event currency, then--well, realistically, you're probably not reading this guide. But just in case, for fun, and to entertain the other 99.5%...

Whaling out beyond most people's imagination just because you can (~2.84 million pay event currency): Buy greater somnis handwear and footwear at Duskruin. Add the Animalistic Spirit script at Duskruin. Add a slew of Animalistic Spirit upgrades and unlocks at Duskruin. Add bane lightning flares at Duskruin. Add Flare Affinity at Duskruin. Add lightning flares at Rumor Woods or Ebon Gate.

(Why lightning flares? Because the flares whales would normally buy when money is no object, mind wrack and death, are disallowed on UC gear. They've never said why to my knowledge, but I think I can infer why from the fact that they sold a xazkruvrixis (death flaring metal) cestus exactly once before swiftly banning the creation of more UC gear with death flares. Said item has become sort of a legend in the community since it's still around. I'm guessing they learned the hard way that top end flares are so astonishingly powerful with UC's low RT attacks that they considered it too great a balance-destroying outlier and had to cut it off. The good news is that the next best option, Flare Affinity-backed lightning flares, only cost 407.5k pay event currency per item instead of the 500k or two million that mind wrack and death flares would have!)

Other upgrades when ready:

Buy a Battle Standard of third tier or higher to capitalize on flares.