This is a guide for all you aspiring bards, it will give general tips on how to get started and some hints on how to sing your songs. This is all based on my experiences and my personal choices so if you disagree with something, then disagree, I don’t mind at all.

When you first appear you have your standard newbie stuff. Bards don’t start with a song unlike other magic using characters so you will have to save for it. Equip your newbie shortsword and head out into the local newbie area. Here I would kill the basic creatures (rats, bats, decaying skeletons etc…) until you get about 2 gold. Then head back into town to your bard guild and pick up your first song, Chant of Battle. Go back into the newbie area and keep singing it constantly. It helps you a lot. After you get some more money, you will probably want to find some patchwork armor or buy some leather from a merchant., you will also want to buy a real weapon. When you hit level 5 you will find that a lot of the creatures are green to you. You can either stay there killing blues and looking for monsters with weapons (for some easy money) until level 6, or you can go out and find new things to kill. You will also get your percussion skill so remember to put one practice point into it before you start to use it.

• Chant of Battle: Increases your stats, help you be better in battle. Unless you can think of something you’d rather have on, keep this going at all times.
• Chords of Dissonance: This song is useful for attracting the attention of monsters near you, it damages them, but it will not distinguish between monsters and NPCs so be VERY careful where you play it.
• Jaxan’s Jig O Vigor: This song is useful for long battles, usually as a result of multiple enemies at once, because it regenerates your fatigue, allow you to fight longer and run longer distances.
• Lyssa’s Locating Lyric: This song is a great one, if you ever get lost and die, you will have no trouble locating your corpse again. It is also nice to be able to help people looking for theirs.
• Selo’s Accelerando: Another great song, I can’t stress how useful this song is, whether it is just for travelling great distances or running away from a battle, this will get you where you want to go faster and safer. I have yet to see a monster that can keep up with me when I sing this and play my drum. If you are in trouble in a battle, turn this on and run, while you are running, you may want to put your drum on to get an extra boost of "get-away". Be sure not to leave your party in the dust though, it will not make you popular. You may want to swing back and pick them up (get close to get your song affecting them) and then run.

During these levels, you will find that the newbie monsters don’t give you any experience so you will need to look for bigger and tougher things to kill. You will also notice that when you con something, it may have a different message (i.e. an even says it will be risky now). You will probably want to stick with blues unless you are in a group, just to be safe. Of course, the choice is yours. At these levels you will also have the Hymn of Restoration which can heal you and your party. Just keep at it and you may want to consider buying some banded armor and a better weapon (i.e. fine steel, minotaur axe, etc…). You will get Stringed and Brass instruments, although your first brass song isn’t until level 18 or so. Be sure to train a point in stringed because if you play your healing song with a lute or mandolin, it will heal more hit points. Also, be sure to train one point into dodge, once you do, it will raise automatically while you fight.

• Hymn of Restoration: This is arguably one of the most useful songs a bard has, when combined with a stringed instrument, you can heal anywhere from 4+ hp per pulse (depends on your stringed skill). It is useful for reducing downtime after a fight or for keeping you and your party alive long enough to finish one.
• Jonathan’s Whistling Warsong: This is a song similar to chant of battle, the advantage is that it requires the singing skill so you can hold a weapon and use this song to its full potential. The bad thing is that it only affects you.
• Kelin’s Lugubrious Lament: This song is very useful for taking on camps and groups of monsters. All you do is sing it to all of the monsters except the one you want to fight, then when you attack it, only it will come.
• Elemental Rhythms: This song is good to sing when fighting enemy spellcasters because it will reduce that damage you take from spells and sometimes even let you resist them altogether.
• Anthem De Arms: This song is great for when you are partying, it increases your parties attack speed and strength, allowing you to do more damage and hit more often. When soloing you may still want to use the Hymn of Restoration though
• Cinda’s Charismatic Carrillion: This song is pretty useless until you get a decent skill in winds because it is your first wind song and it doesn’t stay singing for long, you will find it hard to use it to raise your skill. Later on, it will make your target like you better so that they will sell for cheaper and pay you more.

At these levels, you can still solo if you like (like I did) or you can go out in a group and do the same things you did before. Not much to say about these levels. You may want to buy a magic weapon and go kill wisps at level 13-15 though, I did this in the west commons area and made over 200pp while I got my 2 levels. It is entirely up to you though. At level 14 you will get your final instrument skill, winds, which is useful for a few songs, you will probably want to buy a flute and train a point in it so you can start practicing. I’d suggest you use Tarew’s Aquatic Ayre because it sings constantly instead of having to start over each time it works. When you hit 17 and get dual wield, immediately go train your point in it and buy another weapon, it is great getting that extra hit in a battle, even if it only happens every three or four rounds.

• Brusco’s Boastful Bellow: This is the song that I use in battle whether or not I’m soloing, it does up to 10 points of damage per pulse (depending on your singing skill) and it is like us bards having kick. The downside is that you need to stop and start it each time you hit your target because it will say "you need to select a target for this spell" and stop if you don’t. I suggest that each time you see the message saying it hits, stop and then start the song again immediately. This song also doesn’t disrupt caster’s spells.
• Purifying Rhythms: This song is great for when you are fighting monsters that poison (spiders, snakes) or monsters that disease you (undead usually).
• Lyssa’s Cataloging Libretto: This song is completely useless at the time, apparently it was originally made because magic items did not have their abilities listed unless you identify them, but now all of them always have their abilities listed.
• Kelin’s Lucid Lullaby: I personally haven’t had that much experience with this song, I have heard that if you bite off more than you can chew (like 4 monsters at a time), you can sing this song and they will fall asleep momentarily, letting you escape. It is easily resisted though.
• Tarew’s Aquatic Ayre: This song is useful for underwater exploring, or practicing swimming as it eliminates the need for air when swimming.
• Guardian Rhythms: I haven’t used this song yet personally, but it should be the new song you use for when you are fighting enemy casters or even a mix of fighters and casters because it adds to your AC and magic resist, it also adds a spell shield. I don’t know what a spell shield does exactly though.

• Always sell to your bard guild when you can, they will give you the best prices for your goods, if you aren’t near one, sell to the merchant that cons the best to you (i.e. judges you amiably)
• If you do quests for your bard guild (I don’t think Freeport has any quests from their bard guild) you will gain better faction from your bard merchants, you will not see much increase when you con them, but the prices you get for your goods will go up.
• If you choose to solo, or just don’t like large groups, you might want to take on a partner and kill blues, you might not get as much experience, but you will be safer and you can kill things faster.
• If you are in a fight, and you find yourself losing, you can stay in it longer than any other class because of Selo’s Acclerando, all you do if turn and run while singing this song, and while running, equip a percussion instrument. You may have more trouble when running from casters because they can still hit you for a bit, but will your instrument, you will decrease the amount of time they have you in range,

I can’t stress enough how useful this technique is, I always use it when I can and it helps a lot. When you sing a song, and then stop it, the song does not go away right away, it will stay there for a few seconds still, and this provides us an opportunity to start a second song. As soon as this second song’s effects are seen, stop it and start the original song again. This allows you to have two songs going at the same time. I have heard that you can do more, but I doubt that they will all be on at the same time. This technique works much better with songs whose effects are seen constantly, like Chant of Battle, than it does with pulse songs such as the Hymn of Restoration. If you juggle the Hymn of Restoration and Brusco’s Boastful Bellow (two pulse songs) then you will heal hit points, then hit your enemy, then heal, then hit, and so on. The heals and hits will not occur as quickly as heals would if you sang the Hymn alone, but you will heal damage as well. The true strength of this technique is when using two songs that have constant effects, like Chant of Battle and Jonathan’s Whistling Warsong. I used these two songs together when I was around level 9 and they allowed me to solo yellows. Together, their affects were layered on me, I gained 20 strength, 6 dexterity, and about 20 armor class. The effects of juggling these two songs helped me in battle many times. Also, if you have two songs that increase your magic resist (like Elemental Rhythms and Purifying Rhythms) you can juggle them to increase heat, cold, poison, disease resistances as well as increasing your magic resist two times. You should experiment with other combinations to find what suits you best.