On Thu, 13 May 1999, Greg Gillan wrote:

>
> As soon as I hit level 6, I found myself a good group.
> Not hard, just shouting "Bard looking for group" usually
> gives me about 4 or 5 responses.

Yup, L6 was when it became a piece of cake to find a party.
L8 (when we get the stringed instrument skill) was when I was
making clerics and druids feel useless as healers. Minor
healing heals about 10 hp, light healing (cleric L5, druid L9)
heals about 35 hp. A L8 bard with a lute can simultaneously
heal everyone in the group 5 hp every tick. Enjoy it while it
lasts. :-)

> Once you have a good
> group of people you should be able to kill a lot of
> yellows and reds in fairly quick succession, with you
> keeping the party healed all the time.

I would even say that around L6-8, your healing song is so
effective relative to the number of hp people have that a good
group can do just fine with only the bard as healer. A good
group will bounce the monster(s) between each other so
everyone takes damage, not just one person or just the tanks.
That makes the bard even more effective vs. heal spells.

> Levels 1-4 were fairly easy to solo. Levels 4-5 were the
> hardest for me, as I didn't yet have the healing ability,
> but if you stick it out through these it gets a lot
> easier.

I'd agree with this too. It's hard to find a group at that
level and with the songs you have (most L5 groups don't travel
much so Accelerando isn't very useful), and without healing
you're looking at a lot of downtime after each fight. Get to
L6 and life will get much easier. Although you may find as I
did that monsters really don't like it when you heal everyone
:-) - I died many many times from L6 - L13 because none of my
party members could draw the monsters off me, unless I
completely refrained from attacking. Either it got better
around L14, or Verant tweaked it so bards aren't public enemy
#1 to monsters anymore. (I was even drawing off monsters
other people were fighting, simply by walking by.)

--
John H. Kim
kim@...