Written by Nafai, Veeshan Server

The Wood Elf is my favored race for a bard, as their bonuses give the bard just what he needs to be really useful. It allows you to start in Kelethin, where virtually every song is located, and is quicker than the half-elf. The Humans have the worst of the starting stats for a bard, but get no race penalties for experience.

In combat, the key is the DGH principal, which is the Law of the Essential Guide to Combat for any race and class: Don’t Get Hit. If you don’t get hit by the enemy, you have all the time in the world to do the nifty little tricks that your race and class have to eliminate the enemy. Again, if you have chosen the wood elf, you are already in the right ballpark for agility.

Although this guide is written with levels 1-9 in mind, the tactics (especially those described under Selo’s Accelerando concerning fast equips) are useful to all bards.

Ok, now at each step of the way, you will be daunted with the confusing option set to you—am I combat oriented or spell oriented? No other class is so good at both, so if you learn to balance these two early on, you will be a much desired bard indeed.

I prefer 1H Slashing weapons, especially the Minotaur Battle Axe for these levels. This way you can also carry a shield, and still crank out good damage. I also carry around throwing daggers with me, as an optional way of drawing monsters towards you. Until you get songs that attack single monsters, a throwing weapon is a good way to ensure that you get one hit in before they do, and any hit that you can get in that you can guarantee that you Can’t Get Hit immediately afterwards falls into the DGH principle.

Also, learn to juggle early on and juggle your songs anytime you are in combat, even if one doesn’t have a huge effect—the practice will be invaluable. Juggling is the method of having the effects of two songs going at once. Song effects last a few seconds after you stop singing them, giving you time to fire another one off, stopping it after you see the effect start, going back to the original song, etc. This can be done with 2 songs reliably, and occasionally a third can be thrown in, although it is extremely rare for all three effects to be active at the same time.

From levels 1-9, this song should always be on in combat. It effects the entire party, and when juggled with another song, it often adds enough of a buffer to end the battle quicker and taking less damage. This song will also give you the edge at the lowest levels (1-5) to take stronger monsters than other classes at your level, helping you to level up quicker.

This song is dangerous, and is unfortunately avoided by most. As a result, there is an entire short section on Chords of Dissonance towards the end of this guide. Take the strategies from there and incorporate them into your combat knowledge.

Jaxan’s Jig could be considered one of the weaker songs in a bard’s repertoire, but especially from levels 1-5, it allows you to stay in battle longer than most would, again allowing you to chip away at harder enemies. Consider juggling this song with Chant of Battle. An individual or a party that has +AC, +Strength, and +Stamina makes for a difficult opponent for the baddies on Norrath.

Obviously no combat use whatsoever

Running is an often overlooked component to combat. Sometimes you get in over your head, or get ransacked by 6 orc oracles. Or perhaps you really want to take a crack at that isolated Slaver. Having this song not only allows you to stay in a battle longer (instead of trying to run away when you have only 3 bubbles of life like most other classes, you can run away at 2 and lower), but therefore allows you to try monsters that you otherwise wouldn’t. Don’t use this song during combat, juggle some other songs that help you fight, but when you foresee your death, or see a few legionnaires running towards your skirmish, tuck tail, click the little boot that is Selo's Accelerando and high tail it out of there. If you have a drum, and quickly equip it, nothing can catch you.

The problem is—how do I equip the drum quick enough while I’m running away? Well, a little known trick is that your inventory slots, as well as your equipment slots can be pasted as hotkeys just like your skills can. This keeps you from having to switch to your inventory screen to equip the drum. Even with a shield, I can change to my drum with the following sequence: Shift-1, click click click click. And my free hand is holding the up arrow, already running away. It takes about 3 seconds to switch. The secret is to know how to setup the hotkey page (I keep it on 1 as it’s the closest number to the shift key and the easiest to reach when panicking.) The top two slots should be the Left Hand and Right Hand from your equipment screen, and the bottom four are simply the last 4 slots in your inventory window. To make this work you need to keep those slots in your inventory free of everything but your drum (or other instruments.) You HAVE to have enough empty spots to put your weapon and shield in. So keep at least 2 backpacks and never let anything get put in those slots when you loot, or you’ll be wondering if it’s worth it to drop that cracked staff that’s worth 1 plat to free up a slot to drop your weapon into. Avoid this by keeping those inventory slots empty. A small sacrifice for 5 seconds to freedom.

Hymn of Restoration is a pulsing song, meaning that it’s not a continuing effect, but pulses every few seconds healing you a few hit points. This means that it’s probably not a good idea to juggle it, as you will lose a lot of it’s effectiveness. If you know that a battle is going to be rough, either for you alone or in a group, consider keeping this song on the whole time to help avoid damage and increase the amount of time your party (or yourself if soloing) can spend in battle. However, if you are level 7 and soloing, you will probably always want to juggle other songs (namely Jonathon’s Whistling Warsong and Chant of Battle) while in battle, and sing this song in-between battles to get your health back up.

This song is donned as the Chant of Battle upgrade, but really is a different song. First off, it effects only you, the bard, and secondly the effects can be layered, so by juggling Chant of Battle with this song you become a veritable force. It also helps follow the principle of DGH. A lot of bards out there will tell you, "no, just use Hymn of Restoration in battle—the other songs are negligible." This could not be further from the truth. Why do you need to heal if you give them no chance to hit you? If I am in a party that is weak on tanks, I still juggle these songs occasionally. The Chant of Battle helps out the others, and they have already cast buffer spells on all of us, and it makes you a pretty decent tank. It is most useful when soloing though, as it needs no instrument have its full effect, so hack away!

Kelin’s Lament is the most efficient way for a bard to single out an enemy from a group. Whether on your own or with friends, cast this song on every enemy that you don’t want to attack and then draw one of them out away from the saddened party of monsters. This song keeps singing for a few moments after it effects your target, but does nothing during that time, so as soon as you see it effect your target (make sure it didn’t resist) cancel it and start it again on your next target. Practice with this song on weaker groups before trying it on higher level monsters.

Contrary to popular belief, the magic resistance songs are not broken and are very useful. Juggle this song with another favorite when fighting oracles, shamans, and wizards, as well as drakes and harpies (fire resistance.) At level 9, this song is a little weak to count on for consistency, but it helps nonetheless. I must say that it has saved me a number of times from Crushbone minions trying to cast root on me so they can gang up on me. It’s great to juggle with Selo’s Accelerando if you are running away from magic enemies as well, as the percussion instrument only makes it that much more powerful!

In a well rounded group, you will already have tanks and physical damagers. Therefore a bard can many times be the most useful when taking a support role, just outside the heat of the battle, but benefiting from much more powerful songs that instruments allow. You can also then act as the "battle coordinator." By not being right in the thick of it, you can pay attention to each party member’s energy as well as the monster(s) and issue suggestions and adjust your songs accordingly. There really are only two other times that I recommend using instruments and those are (A) non-combat, such as putting the lute on to heal the party faster, and (B) using Chords of Dissonance when soloing, as described at the end of this guide.

The Songs take on entirely different roles when you are not fighting yourself, so they will each be discussed again here. Also, don’t be afraid to lend a quick hand with your hand-to-hand combat toward the end of the battle—you still keep singing with the equipped instrument.

This song receives increased effect from use with a percussion instrument. This song is still effective at these levels, and until level 10 when you get Anthem de Arms, it is a very useful party song.

Again, this song is so special cased that I will not describe it here. Please read the section at the end of this guide to see how it can be used in both fighting and supporting roles

Singing this with percussion instrument causes you to regenerate your parties stamina more quickly. Just tell your party members to let you know when their stamina is decreasing too much, then kick this song on assist them. Also, this song is great to juggle with Selo’s Accelerando when you need to make swimming getaways (underwater, Selo’s Accelerando doesn’t negate your stamina loss by itself)—your stamina hardly drops at all and your speed underwater is unmatched.

Again, no combat use

Use as described earlier, but in this role, you have the added bonus of probably already having the drum equipped anyway. Still, make sure you have quick access between your drum and stringed instrument (levels 8 and 9 only.)

Available to you at level 8 are stringed instruments, so make sure you spend one practice point in them when you turn level 8, otherwise your skill won’t go up. In combat, when it gets very questionable as to the direction the battle is turning, Hymn of Restoration with a stringed instrument can turn the tides. It almost doubles it’s effectiveness each tick when you use a stringed instrument, making it very powerful. This is great if everyone in your party is getting hit hard, and your magic users are staying busy using mana on attack spells. If only one person is taking the brunt of the battle, consider having a magic user heal them and keep singing the combat enhancing songs. This is best used in-between combat with a stringed instrument to decrease the waiting time you need to jump into a good fray again.

This song is pretty useless in a group where you aren’t responsible for the majority of the fighting, therefore use it sparingly, if at all, as it doesn’t even need an instrument.

Use the same way as described above

Again, perfect to juggle with Chant of Battle when fighting magic using enemies and drakes and harpies. It’s best use is when the group needs to outrun a Goblin Shaman or something similar, in which case juggle it with Selo’s Accelerando which also uses percussion.

This is a great song. I cannot emphasize that enough. Whether soloing, or in a group, this is simply a great song. It only does like 7 points of damage, maybe even less, per tick, and it has no morality in its attacking. It will hit EVERYONE around you within 30 feet, including players (won’t hurt them unless you and they are PK) and guards and merchants and the Pixie Guard that happens to be wandering by, etc. Therefore, most bards avoid it because it is frequently akin to hanging yourself---unless you are very careful.

A few simple rules:

Now, that said, why do I like this song so? Here are a few reasons, and I’m sure that you will come up with your own.

Bottom line is—this is powerful song, one of the best, but it is the hardest for a bard to use properly. Only the most skilled and wise bards will be able to pull it off with great amounts of success, but is an asset to those bards