Eschew the racks!

[Celephias]

Well, once in a while.

As a thought exercise, imagine you came into the game and ignored the racks. How doable would it be for you to gear up from nothing to a situation where it would be as if you had started with full racks?

What kind of help would you need, if any?

[Tarax the Terrible]

I think there are very few fighter guilds that would have any problem with this.
Some are _completely_ useless without a weapon but can buy or forge a starting one.
Then an easy kill of an npc with full armours, forging them, buying from bubba etc etc and you are well protected too.
You are good to go in minutes and can still gather the majority of your usual equipment hunt stuff using this gear it will just take longer to kill them.
There may also be some equipment hunt stops you have to work up to, getting progressively better gear or a particular item first.

Fighters just can't really grind effectively until they gather that good equipment.
So having a nice rack there when you log on gives you a choice of equip hunt or jump straight into the grind / fight.

Casters starting without any herbs or components will take a little longer to get to the hunt.
Of course thats if they don't want to / haven't the option to just buy what they need instead.
But I would say Casters are not at a disadvantage because their is less chance they have to work their way up through progressively better gear like fighters have to. Most casters can go straight for the big kills at the cost of burning more mana etc.
Then use this super gear to hunt for the less difficult to acquire items at a lower mana / component cost.

Help makes it go faster and its more fun.
But back in the days of daily armas some guilds had planned equipment runs for the post arma frenzy.
And when there was more than one person they would usually plan to divide up to hit as many stops as quickly as possible.

It is nice to have longer uptimes now and better equipment dropping distribution and saving racks

[Iliana]

Well given my herbs are not a part of the racks, I am assuming I have the ones I collected yesterday. In that case, off to bubba for a full set of armours including a shield. Any old club will do but there is one nearby I can get with the help of a good fighter my size or so.

Now it is off to get better armours, contrary to popular belief, I need the best armour I can get, caster or not. I would say without help, I could be good to go in about an hour, with help probably thirty minutes. I often go for what is more available than what is the best. Dragonscale is great but if it takes me four hours to get one, its rather pointless, so maybe something else will do just as well if it is easier to obtain. Just my two cents

[Alorrana]

little hard to imagine these days when basicly all have good/uber racks.

Personally I benefit from the billions of items i have forged, clubs, chainmails, greaves, bracers, shields, ect ect, enough to get me started of with good gear actually. and from there it would be easy, because its good as hell the items i can forge and I would have no trouble what so ever.
If i didnt tho, it would be harder, only having gore as damage.. and unarmed to sup nothing..
Glads and monks are proberly the ones that would benefit from this with no weapons.. Charge works regardless. so does monks. and its enough to get you a starting set..

Problem is there are simply to many uber items around.. and everyone wants one.. and that leaves the decent armours just floating around.. Take Alexander of Gont, hes armours, a full set, actually very very good to wear.. but compared to items as deep blue fullplate and skull plate its not worth going for.. (got a little side tracked there)

I dont get why we just cant have our personal set, then let all the Uber duber super trooper items never save.. but less armours, scales, good platemails, ect ect would stay with you. and you would only have to replace it when it breaks/gets worn. And then simply make the uber items more UBER rare.. and much much harder to get.. I mean the skullplate is an awsome piece of kick ass armour, but the DK.. *yawn* Ohh you cut a twat in the air.. lol.. hes not even a fight if you past legend.. he should be Nazgul violent, and more... The wise troll with crystal.. Uhh he heals. well Im hurt, and only him left.. i can just dual wield/wield in both hands.. and.. he dies.. fast.. Pretty easy axe to get when he has it..

Ofc there should still be uber items, but they needed to be more rare.

Oh well. c ya

[Booger]

I _am_ ignoring the racks, since some weeks back. Losing my eq now and then, due to inactivity & poor link, so re-equipping is not too uncommon for me:

Polished gleaming longsword from half-elf takes seconds to get and is decent enough. Then I go buy herbing gloves & travellers cloak in Green Oaks. And then kill a soldier orc in Orc Camp for an oval shield and a lethal steel bardiche, and I'm good to go. More eq and I wouldn't be able to move freely.
If I want to go for tougher mobs, I'll grab the helmet, chainmail, bracers and greaves from that soldier orc as well, and I'm done.

Maybe not über-eq, but good enough.

[Amberlee]

Run to bubba and pick up some armours + shield.
Get a random sword.
Kill alexander to get green steel longsword.
Get some sturdy black bracers and greaves.
And from there on just hope that i get lucky enough to be able to get good enough gear to actually do something.
The bigger you get the more equipment dependant you get really..

[Zestana]

Since the mercenaries can't seem to keep anything worth mentioning in the racks for over a night without it being stolen I've had to rely on personal drops that have been raided/found 4-5 times now. So for me waking up to nothing I follow this method.

As a mercenary I can fight unarmed combat so I first go to Bubba and get two of his shields. I then move to Emerald and obtain a thin green sabre. Now I have a shield and a sword. I then move to Alexander in Gont and gather a complete set and a slightly better sword.

After I have a decent set of weapons I move on to armours. The captain in Kabal is my next target of which with a bit of time some herbs and some in and outing I can take him down. I then move on to get either sturdy black bracers/greaves or light elven bracers/greaves. Then a hooded silvery robe from Mithas, and then I go and kill the Karg captain in gont and get a dragon helm.

Sure there's better stuff but that set at least gets me to be able to hunt for other things and for experience without to much effort.

[Tarax the Terrible]

Well given my herbs are not a part of the racks, I am assuming I have the ones I collected yesterday. In that case, off to bubba for a full set of armours including a shield. Any old club will do but there is one nearby I can get with the help of a good fighter my size or so.

Now it is off to get better armours, contrary to popular belief, I need the best armour I can get, caster or not. I would say without help, I could be good to go in about an hour, with help probably thirty minutes. I often go for what is more available than what is the best. Dragonscale is great but if it takes me four hours to get one, its rather pointless, so maybe something else will do just as well if it is easier to obtain. Just my two cents

I would think most SC can get the full set of crystal armours + nice club quite easily.
Takes such a long time for anyone else no-one else bothers really so likely to be there a lot.

Surprised about the dscale time to get, if you are just checking Kernan then yeah.
But if you go to Icewall, Pax, Plains, Kurinost, Neraka etc should be a lot quicker.
Lethal glaive, scale plated chainmail & dragonhide boots seem a lot more rare.

In the past it wasn't unknown for evil guilds to grind their own guards for gear.

[Iliana]

You do realize I am only a titan, right? I can't manage the guy with the crystal stuff by myself, even if I already had good gear. As to dragonscale... again, only a titan, Icewall alone? Seriously? Again if I had gear that could withstand that, I would not need a dragonscale. I am also still learning my way around the abilities of scop so that might be part of the problem, that plus the fact I have died four times since my return and thus spent a good deal of time as a hero.

[Anahita]

I would think most SC can get the full set of crystal armours + nice club quite easily.

You ignore the high cost spellcasters pay for components, the time it takes to cast a spell, the fact that we get hurt quickly, etc. Spellcasters can also do an equipment run for only as long as their mana lasts, then they're slowed down, whereas warrior classes may have a slow start (having played a warrior, I know generally any pointy stick will do) and can keep going and going and going...

But if you would like to have actual knowledge of what its like for an SC to take on that particular NPC as opposed to supposition feel free to express an interest and make application to any Elder in the Spirit Circle.