Beginner's guide to playing a bard

This article is a work in progress!

Are you interested in traveling the lands making merry and singing your way through your adventures? A life as a bard may be the life you want.

Overview

Bards are one of the three semi professions in Elanthia, this means that they hunt using a combination of physical and magical attacks. They are also a hybrid class, using magic from both elemental and mental spheres. The exclusive bard spells are sung, which is unique among all the professions. Instead of casting and stacking spells for a long time at once, bards sing their spells continually, periodically renewing them.

In general, bards have a number of very interesting spells and abilities. For instance, they are able to sing shields, weapons or armor into existence. They are also capable of purifying gems to improve their value or create orbs and they also possess the unique ability to learn about objects by singing to them.

Character Creation and Skills

Racial Selection

While each race may have particular mechanical advantages or disadvantages when it comes to particular hunting styles as a bard (which are covered in detail elsewhere), one of the most important reasons to select a particular race is role play. If you like, you can be a Dwarven poet who writes long epics about ale; an Aelotoi loremaster who preserves the story of her people through song; a Forest gnome who just wants to share some limericks with the world; a Halfling who busks for tarts; or even something less stereotypical, you can do it. So choose the race you want to play and go from there.

Statistics

New players should refer to the general guide on statistics for new players for an overview of all the statistics available to them as well as general advice for setting their statistics if they have not already done so.

The primary and mana statistics for bards are influence and aura. This means that when setting statistics, bards will receive a free +10 points to each of influence and aura and these statistics will have twice the effect on the number of training points (TP) a bard receives at each level compared to the other statistics. In addition, these statistics will both affect how many mana points they have.

In general, there are two extreme cases for setting statistics. One extreme is to set statistics for maximum growth while the other involves setting statistics for maximum TPs and enjoyment or playability at lower levels. For bards, setting statistics for maximum TPs would mean setting aura and influence statistics high at the outset. This means that the character will generally have fewer total statistic points at high level, since these have the highest growth rate. Most players try to strike a balance between these two extremes (sometimes by optimizing their total number of statistics points for mid-level play, around levels 50-60).

Determining the best way to set statistics for growth is very easy to do using a stat cruncher, but it is not generally recommended to set statistics this way, since it makes a character very challenging to play early on (especially for new players). There is also not very much to discuss since there are generally few ways of doing it.

When setting statistics for early level playability, it is helpful to consider the character's race (which changes statistic growth rates and bonuses) and intended hunting style for a particular character. All lower-level bards will primarily engage in some sort of physical combat, whether melee or ranged. These are both affected by a character's strength statistic, albeit in different ways. For melee weapons users, strength affects their total attack strength (or AS) and only indirectly affects their roundtime (RT), by changing how easily they become encumbered. Meanwhile, strength directly affects a ranged weapons user's RT and their dexterity statistic affects their AS. For melee weapons users, their agility and dexterity bonuses affect their RT. In general, all bards who use melee combat will want to set all three of these statistics relatively high at lower levels and those who use ranged will want to make sure their strength and dexterity are reasonable.

Other statistics which can be useful to set high early on include discipline and logic, which together help determine the size of one's experience pool and the latter also determines a character's rate of experience absorption. A reasonable setting for constitution is also advisable since this determines a character's total number of health points.

Skills

Here is a description of some of the skills you generally want to train during your life as a bard. This is intended to provide a broad overview since detailed guides for particular builds already exist (look here for details).

Note that these next two paragraphs may be covered elsewhere. If not, they can potentially be moved (with some changes).

The training point costs for each skill are listed in many places, including the main bard page. The values listed there are for a full single training, skills that are trained beyond single training are subject to a penalty (they can be trained for double the value for double training) so if one is considering to double train in a skill, one will pay three times the listed number of training points to do so.

Since all characters start at level 0, skills can be fully single trained (e.g. can have ranks in the skill equal to the character's level plus two) for the same cost as training a skill up to the character's level. Similarly, being fully double trained means that the character has ranks in a skill equal to twice their level plus four. However, there are some skills which should be kept equal to the character's level to reap the maximum benefit for the training points. This is referred to as being single trained as opposed to fully single trained here.

Core Skills

Absolute Core Skills for all Bards

#	Cost	Skill	Reasoning
1x	4/0	Physical Fitness	Necessary for full hitpoints, good as a cheap defense for maneuvers and for redux.
2x		Weapon Skill	Whatever the weapon choice, the training should be maxed out.
1x	0/17	Spell Research	Learning new spells, improving the effectiveness and duration of others.
1x	0/5	Harness Power	Should be exactly at the character's level (not fully 1x) for 3 mana at each level.
Total	4/22

Physical Fitness

Physical fitness is generally a very useful skill. Training in physical fitness will increase a bard's maximum health points up to a certain skill level, beyond that it also increases maneuver defence and can lead to obtaining defensive redux.

Weapon Use

Bards can use a variety of different weapons successfully and whichever one you choose is entirely up to you. However, no matter the weapon choice, its corresponding skill should be fully double trained.

Harness Power

Training in harness power will increase your mana pool by three with single training. This is very useful to bards, even if they do not use magic to directly attack while hunting since it allows a bard to sing more buff songs, increasing their attack and defensive capabilities.

Spell Research

Bards have access to both the bard base and minor elemental spell circles. Both of these circles contain useful spells and bards should fully single train in Spell Research. However, since it is not possible to use spells with a spell number higher than one's level, it is not recommended to train above one's level in either circle (training a little in the other circle, however, is recommended).

Due to the large number of beneficial songs at low levels, focusing on the bard base until title (level 20) is generally a good idea. Many bards then switch to the minor elemental spell circle for a while until they have enough magical power to use some of the other bard songs in combat.

Defensive Core Skills

In general, all bards should pick at least two or three of these skills to train at every level.

Defensive Core Skills for Bards

#	Cost	Skill	Reasoning
1x	6/6	Dodging	Dodging helps one avoid incoming attacks entirely.
1x	8/4	Combat Maneuvers	Adds attack strength, defense or other special abilities.
1x	5/0	Shield Use	For bards who use a one handed weapon and are looking for something else to do with their other hand.
1x	0/3	Perception	It's relatively cheap, provides maneuver defense, helps spot traps.

Dodging

Since bards necessarily hunt out in the open, training in dodging is a good idea. Dodging increases DS and is a way to avoid being hit entirely. Additionally, the cost to train in it is relatively low.

Combat Maneuvers

While it is listed here as a defensive skill, single training in combat maneuvers is a must for melee weapons users since it adds +1 AS for every two ranks.

For defense, there are combat maneuvers that directly add to defensive strength (DS), target defense (TD) or general maneuver defenses (Combat Movement, Combat Focus and Cunning Defense, respectively) and training in a particular offensive combat maneuver also provides defense against that maneuver when it's used by an attacker. Overall, this is a very useful skill to train.

Shield Use

In order to be successful using the Sonic Shield Song (1009), a bard needs to train in shield use. However, not all weapon choices require shields (e.g. Polearm and Two Weapon Combat users typically do not use shields), so it is not strictly necessary to train in this skill. If a bard chooses a hunting style that requires shield use, they should fully single train in this skill.

Perception

All characters, regardless of class, are required to train some perception. It is probably a good idea to get at least ten or twenty ranks of perception to effectively find traps or hidden paths to new hunting grounds. However, this skill is also useful for maneuver defense and it's relatively cheap to learn. Bards who wish to hunt with ranged weapons should fully double train this skill.

Threshold Skills

#	Cost	Skill	Reasoning
60	5/0	Armor Use	60 ranks is required to use augmented chain with minimal spell and maneuver hindrance.
10+	3/0	Climbing	For low- to mid-level hunting grounds, somewhere around 10-15 should be enough to get around. You can add more ranks as necessary.
5+	3/0	Swimming	For low to mid-level hunting grounds, somewhere around 5-10 should be enough to get around. You can add more ranks as necessary.
25	0/6	Elemental Mana Control or Mental Mana Control	24 ranks for perfect sharing and an additional one for double incanting ability.

Armor Use

It is very common for bards to wear augmented chain eventually, so training once or twice per level up to 60 ranks is typically recommended. For this skill, you can also learn new ranks in spurts, using a method sometimes referred to as threshold training. Using this type of training, a bard would train enough armor use ranks to wear armor in the next AsG up from the one they currently wear all at once and then stop training in armor use for a few levels or so. Note that bards have the ability to create their own armor, so it is not necessary to continue buying new armor each time.

Mana Control

Since bards are hybrids, they can train in both Elemental Mana Control and Mental Mana Control. While mental mana control benefits one bard spell, it is not strictly necessary to train in either of these skills. However, these skills are useful for sharing mana with other characters and training in one of them can be especially useful if the bard has a hunting partner who shares one of these spheres (e.g. a wizard or sorcerer for elemental or an empath for mental magic).

If a bard would like to share mana with others, training in elemental mana control is generally recommended since more professions have access to the elemental sphere than the mental sphere. In this case, training in 24 ranks of elemental mana control will give the best sharing and adding an additional rank (bringing the total to 25) will allow the bard to multicast minor elemental spells.

Lores

As a hybrid class, bards benefit from lores from both elemental and mental spheres. As far as the elemental lores go, only Elemental Lore, Air is useful to bards. Training in this lore improves sonic gear (weapons, armor and shield) as well as providing benefits to a few other songs. This can be fully single trained, but depending on available training points at lower levels, one may prefer to forgo this in favour of the mental lores for a while.

Bards have two mental lores which can be useful. Mental Lore, Telepathy increases the duration of bard songs, which is especially beneficial for lower level bards with limited mana pools, as well as increasing the power of several others. It is often recommended to train in this skill up to 25 ranks, especially at lower levels. Mental Lore, Manipulation helps a bard purify gems and eventually make heads explode, among other benefits.

Songs

Whether you are a new player or simply new to being a bard, spell songs are a bit odd. The maintenance required for the songs in the bard base make them at least slightly more complicated than the spells in any other spell circle in the game. However, it is very easy to get the hang of them and have your bard humming along in no time at all.

The primary difference between bard songs and other spells in Elanthia is that bard songs cannot be stacked while resting until a maximum duration is reached. Instead, they are initiated and then renewed for some cost of magical power. Most of the songs a bard would like to sing constantly are renewed automatically, however, new bards might experience issues when trying to sing many songs at once.

To start singing a song a bard uses the incant verb like they would for any other spell:

>incant 1003
You begin to sing of heroic deeds and bolster your confidence.

To see the songs a bard is currently singing, use the song verb to check the status of the songs. Doing this will yield a list of all the songs the bard is singing, indicate approximately how long it will be before the songs renew and the renewal cost of these songs. For example,

>song status
You are currently singing: Fortitude Song
Your song magic remains strong. It will be a few minutes before your song renews. Your current renewal cost is 1 mana.

Here we see that this particular bard is singing a single song that was either started only recently or was recently renewed (note that it is possible to use spell active to check the exact time remaining on your song). In addition, note that although Fortitude Song (1003) costs three mana to cast initially, its renewal cost is only one mana.

When your songs renew, you will see this message:

Your song renews.

And you will note that the appropriate amount of mana has been deducted from your total. Spell songs are thus relatively simple to keep running all the time since many of them are renewed automatically.

However, lower level bards may encounter issues with their mana pool if they sing too many songs at once. This is both due to the multi-song penalty (in which the mana costs of singing increase for multiple songs) and due to increased maintenance costs for renewal with more ranks in bard base (this is a trade-off for other improvements to the spell songs).

For example, a level 19 bard who knows 19 bard songs might find that their renewal cost for Kai's Triumph Song (1007) is much more than the cost to cast the spell again. Indeed, this cost may be a significant fraction of their total mana pool.

>song status
You are currently singing: Kai's Triumph Song
Your song has recently renewed, and it will be quite some time before the effects fade. Your current renewal cost is 12 mana.

It may thus be to this bard's advantage to pay the mana cost for casting the spell again instead of renewing it. To do this, a bard must first stop singing the song, using the stop verb, just like they would for any other spell:

>stop 1007
You stop singing Kai's Triumph Song.

If a bard does this, the effects of the song will not stop immediately. Instead, they will stop about a minute or so later. In principle, it is possible to stop singing a song just before renewal and start singing it again once the other songs are renewed to save mana while still receiving the benefits of having their songs running all the time. However, it is also possible that a bard may wish to refrain from singing all of their songs at once until they are much more experienced (both so their mana pools are bigger and their songs last longer).

Buff Spells

While it is always possible to get buff spells from other players, bards have a reasonable collection of buff songs and spells that they should nearly always be singing (or have cast on themselves). Here is a brief summary of the buff spells available to bards.

Minor Elemental

From the Minor Elemental circle, bards can potentially access a number of spells. The following buff spells are stackable and not self-cast limited, unless otherwise noted.

• Elemental Defense I (401): +5 DS, +5 elemental TD.
• Presence (402): Enhances some activities that require perception. Self-cast limited and non-stackable with a 5 minute duration.
• Lock Pick Enhancement (403): Enhances lock picking skill. This spell is stackable with short duration.
• Disarm Enhancement (404): Enhances disarming trap skill and aim (aiding ranged weapon users). This spell is stackable with short duration.
• Elemental Defense II (406): +10 DS, +10 elemental TD.
• Elemental Defense III (414)/Mass Elemental Defense (419): +20 DS, +15 elemental TD. Can be cast at a single character (414) or at a group (419), but it's the same spell so the effects are not cumulative (e.g. do not waste your mana casting 414 at people when you've already cast 419 while in a group with them).
• Elemental Targeting (425): +25 AS, +25 CS, self-cast limited. This is the best overall offensive attack buff spell in the game. If you know it, you should have it running all the time.
• Elemental Barrier (430): +15 DS, +15 elemental TD, self-cast limited.

If these spells are known to you:

• It is typically useful to stack 401, 406, 414, 425 and 430 on yourself while resting and prior to going out for a hunt.
• 404 can be stacked for archers offering benefits similar to 613.
• If there are others around, you can offer 419 instead of casting 414 on yourself if desired.

Bard Base

From the Bard Base circle, bards can potentially access a similarly impressive list of songs. None of these songs can be stacked, as spellsongs are renewed automatically when their initial duration elapses unless otherwise noted. They are also all self-cast, with some songs providing benefits to the bard's group where indicated.

• Fortitude Song (1003): +10 DS against melee, ranged and bolt, self cast.
• Song of Luck (1006): Improves the luck of the bard and their group (e.g. against maneuvers).
• Kai's Triumph Song (1007): +10 AS, available to group.
• Song of Valor (1010): +10 DS against melee, ranged, bolt, aids against sheer fear, self cast.
• Song of Mirrors (1019): +20 Dodge, self cast.
• Song of Tonis (1035): +20 Dodge ranks, -1 second round time, available to group, 60 second duration, not renewed automatically (refreshable).

If these spells are known to you:

• It is typically useful to continue singing 1003, 1006, 1007, 1010 and 1019 while hunting.
• Bards with low total mana might want to stop singing songs while resting.
• Bards with low total mana might want to avoid 1006 until they acquire more.
• If a bard is subject to the multi-song penalty while hunting, it can also be useful to stop singing 1003 before song renewal and reapply after.

See Also

• Bard (main article)
• New Players' Guide (a comprehensive beginner's guide for new players of any profession)
• Loresinging
• Whirlin's Bard Guide
• The Art of Roleplaying in GemStone IV (guide)
• Player Guide Contest

References

• Bard profession on Play.net
• GemStone IV New Player Guide on Play.net

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