Dark Ages
Priest FAQ






Introduction >>


  This is basically a step-by-step guide on how to master as a priest. How to
set your stats up and where to hunt will be just a few of the topics covered.
I will be assuming that you wish to master as a pure priest or sub from the
priest path. If you are subbing into the priest path, your path to mastering
might be a bit different thanks to skills or spells you inherited from your
previous path.

  I am currently playing Dark Ages at the time of this writing and intend to
periodically check the GameFAQs message boards but there will be links at the
bottom of the guide to other forums you can ask and hopefully get better help.

  The next portion is really my own opinions on the priest class and it will
be extremely long and tedious. The actual guide/walkthrough for 1-99 to master
will not be shown until much later so you may want to scroll past the next
part! That said, you should still read it!




Random Information >>


  As a priest you are expected to do one thing and do it in a timely fashion:
cradh everything. I can only think of one situation in which you don not want
to curse a monster and that would be if you're soloing the Tauren Creant as a
pure Bard but I will get into that later.

  As I was saying earlier, as a priest cradhing (or debuffing, if you prefer)
should be your number one priority. And not just the monsters! It is often
convenient to cradh your own party members! The logic is that if you cast beag
cradh on your party members, the monsters will not be able to cast a deadlier
curse on you such as ard cradh or Dark Seal. Such is the simplicity of the
monster's AI. Abuse it.

  As for debuffing monsters, pure master/GM priests get a lot of help in the
form of their master stave. Their Empowered Hy-Brasyl Gnarl only affects the
casting time of cradhs--it makes them instant! All four cradhs are instant
when wielding this deadly staff; making you a hunting machine. Again, this is
only for pure priests and subs get shafted in this respect (their empowered
master staff also only affects cradhs but a Holy Diana would be more useful.)
Which reminds me, all priests should carry a Holy Diana--even pures~

  I'm looking at my previous three paragraphs and realize I started all three
with "As" but I guess that's irrelevant.. Anyway, pure GM priests are great at
hunting thanks to their GM staff and their master staff. Keeping that in mind,
take your time before going Bard. Your instant-cradh staff is a huge sacrifice
and your hunting may suffer in response. After all, going Bard only gives you
the following benefits:

Dark Seal: +70 AC -30% MR
That is +5 AC over ard cradh. The one upside is that players cannot ao this but
it does not last very long. In most hunting scenarios, using ard cradh is
preferable. I only use this in the arena.

Regeneration 1: Heals 250 HP/sec for 30 seconds
Pretty much useless. Taking half a minute to heal 7500 HP is idiotic.

Cursed Tune 1: A pure-only spell. It drains 15% of the target's total HP within
15 seconds.
It is a really neat spell to have and I will go slightly more in-depth on it
later. One of the pros to going Bard as a pure.

Mesmerize: A pure-only spell. Casts pramh on a target and lasts longer than
normal pramh.
Another one of the pros to going Bard as a pure. However, think how often you
consistently use pramh while hunting. Not too often, I would say. This is for
arena because it's duration is longer than that of mor dion.

Salvation: A pure-only spell. Requires at least 1 MP to cast. It heals the
target's HP to full and is instant without a staff. It has a three minute
cool-down and drains all of the caster's MP.
A completely useless spell. This is more useless than Regeneration 1.

  So what does this mean? Simply put, only go Bard once you are comfortable
with your HP/MP bases and intend to arena. There are other reasons but they
are purely for cosmetic reasons. You want the harp or you are a role-player
and want to continue your character's growth.

  I feel that it may be necessary to lightly go over the GM/Bard debate. As
far as hunting is concerned, GMs are superior without a question. The only
things Bards might have an edge are in killing stragglers with dark defense
and synching beag cradh. Cursed Tune is the fastest poison and casting it on
a lone monster in Nobis before searging it ensures its death. There are times
when the monster will be at black HP but take multiple seargs before dying if
it is not CT'd. It is not really that big of a deal but it is something. As for
synching beag cradh, the pure GM staff causes all cradhs to be one line even
if they all have less than four lines. This means with the GM staff equipped,
ao beag cradh is instant and beag cradh is one line. And with the master staff
equipped, ao beag cradh is one line and beag cradh is instant. As stated
earlier, even pures should have a Holy Diana in their inventory (a Holy Diana
causes beag cradh -and- ao beag cradh to be instant; making synching BC a lot
easier) so this may or may not be much of a problem.

  Now that we have ascertained that GMs have an upperhand in hunting, what
about arena? Well, it is up to preference. Yes, GMs have instant ard cradh but
it can be instantly ao'd! Bards have Dark Seal which can't be ao'd. Both have
the deo searg so that point is moot. GMs have regular pramh but Bards have
the lengthy Mesmerize so that is a point for them. Something to be aware of is
that the GM staff takes three lines off all spells except for cradhs. This is
very important to be aware of because Bards are forced to use Holy Dianas and
their harps. In order to effectively use Dark Seal or pramh, they are forced
to use their harp so that these two spells are one line. However, their harps
cause all spells that take longer than one line to be one line. This means that
their heals will all be one line. It is a lot harder to heal out with a one
line heal than it is with an instant heal. So while you will see Bards
constantly switching between their Dianas and harps, GMs can just keep their
GM staff equipped and worry not about being caught with a one line heal! So
it comes down to personal preference. You will always get a chance to heal out
as a GM but you lack the deadly Mesmerize.

  That is a lot of information for pures but what about the subs? This next
bit will be for sub-classes, both subbing in and subbing out:

Wizard/Priest: Amazing caster class. You will have MSPG/MSB for dark elemental
spells and DSG for your light elemental spell. You will have mor fas nadur
which is great for hunts and arena. Beag fas nadur is nothing to sneeze at
either and you shouldn't forget it. You can two-man anywhere. You cannot go
wrong with this choice. Because of the popularity of this class I feel that it
might be prudent to list some of the spells you will want to sub with:

beag fas nadur, mor fas nadur, beag athar lamh, ard puinneag spiorad, MSPG,
MSB, and any ard elemental spells

Rogue/Priest: Go bard as soon as you can. Your snares will be one-line with
your GM staff which is pretty annoying. With the harp on, they will be instant!
This is an amazing class if you enjoy hunting. You can two-man with a pure
summoner in Nobis for amazing experience. You can also leech lowbies but I do
not know of a single person who enjoys doing that.

Monk/Priest: More of an arena character. You will have an instant pramh in the
form of WFF and helping to kelb enemy if you have enough HP might be a bit of
a laugh. I can see this sort of thing being great in 1-99 arena but the work
required to make it effective as a Bard might not be worth it.

Warrior/Priest: 1-99 arena char. Anything above that is a waste.

Priest/Wizard: With a recent nerf involving spamming MSPG and being unable to
heal after fas spiorad, Prizards are not as good as they used to be. They will
also need to be AB 15 to fully utilize your priest spells so a lot more work
than wiests are required. They also are not very good in arena because of their
lacklust light elemental spells. Still, a fairly decent choice if you enjoy
casters. They can also solo, which wiests can not do as well.

Priest/Rogue: You will need a hefty bankroll to fund this character. Star
Arrow now requires you to have a bow equipped so having a Holy Diana equipped
forever is no longer possible. This forces you to resort to a Staff of Ages
or a Staff of Brilliance for your priest spells. You also lack an ambush so
crowd control is made slightly harder thanks to that. Still, an okay choice.

Priest/Monk: This is actually a fairly viable choice. Sadly, this speaks
volumes on how pure monks get shafted. By subbing into monk, you only miss
two things that pures have. Whirlwind attack and a third skill in your combo
scroll. Whirlwind can do some damage if you hunt a lot of HP and the third
skill is always useful but.. other than that, you will be exactly like a pure
monk (of course you will have your priest spells.) You will definitely want
an SoA/SoB.

Priest/Warrior: A pure warrior without any of the pure skills. I honestly think
that a pure warrior would be loads better than this sub. If war/priests did not
exist, this would be the worst sub. You can dion, you can cradh, you can ao,
you can heal, and you can bash; nevertheless, a mediocre character.

  We are almost done with this very long section! I will now talk about the
uses of Cursed Tune. Something you need to be aware of is that it acts as a
taunt. Also, with a recent update poisons do not overlap each other. Meaning
you cannot stack various poisons and CTs and that they will cancel each other
out. This is rather annoying when you have a monster CT'd and their stupid AI
causes them to get the red poison (a red swirly thing appears over them) which
negates your CT.

  Anyway, you can solo all four creants with CT although the Tauren is a bit
tricky because you probably do not want a bunch of Tauren images everywhere.
Combined with mor breislech, you can solo most quests!




Getting Started >>


  Finally! I am finally gonna take you through your journey from 1-99 and
beyond~

  After going through the crappy tutorial, you should be level three and also
have four stat points to play with. Go ahead and put all four into your WIS.
This is fairly important because CON/WIS increases your HP/MP respectively and
this increase is based off your current level. Getting these points in early
will mean more HP/MP per level which will result in having higher HP/MP bases
at 99. For now, continue to pump wis!

  You no longer require another player to guide you into your path so go to
the Temple of Choosing and talk to Aoife in the lobby. You will reach a room
with a glowing circle on the floor. Step to the middle of the circle and figure
out which of the two doors you need to take by reading the clues in the
pop-ups.

  You should soon end up in a room with a lady in a purple dress. Talk to her
about being a priest and you should be ported back to the lobby as a newly
initiated priest. You will now be able to learn priest spells and equip priest
armors and staves.

  Before you start hunting, there are multiple mundanes (NPCs) that you can
talk to or do random quests to gain experience in Mileth. So I suggest you
speak with all of them about everything to score yourself as much easy
EXP as possible.

  You should be around level 6 if you spoke with everyone and if you are not,
then that is fine as well. Make sure to continue adding WIS at every level!
You will probably want to get yourself some armor and some priest spells.
There is an armor shop in Mileth that sells Cowls and Gorget Gowns as well as
one in Oren that sells Oren-dyed versions. It is not really that important
because you will probably be level 11 soon enough and will have to use those!

  As for spells, the important ones at this point are gonna be beag ioc,
armachd, beag cradh, and ao beag cradh. If you can get any other spells, go
right on ahead. Now, be sure to take the time to train your spells so that
they are maxed. Maxed spells will work more often and may be more potent in
the case of iocs.

  At around level 9 or so, you will want to begin adding points into CON. I
suggest you add one point into CON and one into WIS until your CON is 19. This
may be a bit hard because you will be passing up a lot of low level spells
which require you to deviate from this plan and add points into STR/INT/DEX
but resist the temptation to add points into these stats for the time being.

  There are various stat-altering items and if you happen to have access to
Loures Signet/Regal Rings, abuse them! Each ring adds one point to -all- stats
which makes them very useful. There are other items such as Hy-Brasyl Belts
(which add one point to CON and WIS) Coral Earrings (which add two points to
INT) and even a spell called creag neart (which adds a whopping three points to
STR) that you can learn at level 20.

  Your first level benchmark will be level 19. Before I explain why that level
is so important, I feel I should touch upon how to achieve the level. You will
probably want to hunt with a warrior or a monk. You can hunt with rogues or
wizards but it probably will not be as fast. Keep your hunting partners healed
at all times and any sort of buffs should be casted on them. If you have beag
cradh, use it on the monsters; every little bit helps!

  There are numerous quests that can aid you in your path to 19. The two most
important quests are the Sick Child of Loures and Small Heart of Fire/Moon.
The first quest can be repeated five times (and each time yields 150,000 EXP)
until you finally receive a legend mark. You can start the quest from level 11.
The second quest gives you a random amount of EXP but allows you to cast dia
aite. Later on, you will be able to cast ard naomh aite which is the same thing
except the dia aite lasts much longer. Aite is a spell which cuts all damage
received in half so it is a tremendous buff that you should always have. By the
by, at level 15 you can equip a Diamond Necklace. You purchase them from Oren.
They give you -5 AC which is very nice and just a little something extra to
help you.

  Once you are 19, make sure to find a Holy Diana. This staff is the reason
why hitting 19 is so important. Once 19, you will be able to equip staves but
only one is important: the Holy Diana. This removes two lines from all your
spells making most of your current spells instant. Instant spells are good
because they hasten your casting abilities.

  By your high 20s, you may want to think about adding points into INT in
order to learn cradh. Remember, your main task is debuffing monsters. Healing
is just something you do if your group members suck and need it. That said,
do not neglect your WIS. Your stats at 99 should like:

STR 3
INT 83
WIS 98
CON 19
DEX 3

  At level 30, you can equip Dark Belts which will be a big boost in your
defense once a wizard casts mor fas nadur on you. The spell enhances an
element's properties and from 1-99, most things will not attack you with
a light element so you should be fine.

  At level 41, not only do you get a new armor you also get access to Silk
Boots! These beauties add a much need +8 DEX so use them to get any spells
you might have missed. There are also a bunch of other boots that are open to
you that give various other stat bonuses.

  Now, up until now you have probably been hunting in EW. But now that you are
41, you can hunt in the Karlopos Islands! A fairly fast hunting ground, you
may want to rush to the 3rd floor. The first 2 floors are rather annoying
because the monsters here like to spam poisons/blinds on you and they can
mob you rather quickly. The 3rd floor gives the most EXP and is rather tame
in comparison. Something to be aware of is that the Islands restrict entrance
to players between level 41 and 71. So your master friends cannot rescue you.

  Level 50 is an interesting level. You are halfway there and more importantly
you can do the Cap/Band of Danaan quest. It is a rather confusing quest which
requires you to pay attention to the pop-ups because there are various versions
of the quest. At the end of it, you will receive a Cap/Band of Danaan. You can
dedicate to one of the eight different Temuairan deities. I would suggest Cail
for a bit of HP, Glioca for easy AC, or Luathas for a bit of MP.

  The Pentagram quest can be started at level 60. This is a group quest that
requires one of each path to start and complete. After completetion, each
person gets a path-specific armor and luckily, priests get the best one! The
other path-specific armors suck. You can also hunt in CR (up to floor 10) but
a full group of five would be advised if no one has a master friend to help.
A new armor is available at level 71 but alas, no new hunting areas. You will
be stuck in CR 10 until level 80.

  But at level 80, you can venture down all the way to CR 30! You will not be
hunting for any decent experience until you walk all the way to CR 26 or so,
though. If you intend to hunt down there with only people around your level
try to bring four others (one of each class) to stay safe. You can tag along
masters for a safer hunt. It might be boring (than again, what grinding isn't?)
but you will soon reach level 98.

  This is where you need to make the choice of stopping or continuing on. Why
would you want to stop? Well, if you intend on mastering, stopping at 98 is
paramount because you will need to craft your 97 armor. This is an important
thing to do because this allows you to sacrifice your EXP for HP/MP! Now,
you sacrifice only 50m experience if you craft it at 97 or 98 but if you
choose to craft it at 99, you sacrifice 100m! If you intend to master as a
priest, hunting an extra 50m is a waste of time you do not need to deal with.
However, if you intend to sub to a different class wait and figure out if you
have the HP/MP requirement to sub. Remember that you need 6600 HP and 7250 MP
to do so. If you craft your armor at 99, you should have around 100m EXP left.
You need 60m to sub so you have 40m to kill. If you do not have the bases to
sub, calculate if the extra 40m will give you the necessary bases.




Mastering >>


  Hopefully you remembered the stat plan I gave a few paragraphs back and
stuck to it. So moving on, in order to master you need to have ard ioc or ard
naomh aite maxed. You will end up maxing both spells in the long-run so choose
whichever you wish to max. I would suggest ard ioc because with a flower leech,
you can max it fairly quickly. Once you have one of the two spells maxed, you
will need to make sure you have 200m boxed and your HP/MP bases are at least
3500/7500. Once all that is taken care of, either hunt yourself or purchase
a Holy Ink and a Holy Scroll. Fun fact: everyone has a Holy Ink somewhere in
their bank. It is the Holy Scroll that is a pain to get.

  So let us go over this again. Ard ioc or ard naomh aite maxed? 200m boxed?
3500/7500 bases? Priest master set? If you double-checked that you have all
these things ready, go to the Temple of Choosing and talk to Aoife about
mastering. She will bid you to travel to the Suomi Fae. Once there, the
mundane will take your Holy Scroll and Holy Ink and give you back a Holy Book.
Obediently travel back to the ToC and talk to Aoife again about mastering.
After a little more talking, you will now be a master! Congratulations and get
ready for a flood of whispers bidding you congratulations.

  Now what to do? Well, you will want to travel to SW 11 to get deo searg (for
pures) and deo searg gar (for pures and subs.) If you are a pure, get your
hands on a Bent Crux and Talos Ore to empower your Holy Gnarl. Sub priests,
you do not have to worry about this.

  Some more random information for you now that you are a master. If you drop
a Succubus' Hair in the Mileth Altar, you will have a death mask suddenly
placed over your head. If you die, you will be able to transfer your experience
into HP or MP! If you choose to transfer your EXP into HP, you can than buy
stat points using any excess HP (as long as your base is above 3500.) Each stat
point costs 150 HP and you cannot go under your base of 3500.

  The next thing you will want to do is your creants. Three of the four
creants (Phoenix, Shamensyth, and Tauren) actually give you equipment while the
fourth must still be completed (although you only receive a legend mark) in
order to go bard.

  After that, you should go ahead and start hunting in order to max your
stats. Max stats for a priest are as follows:

STR 100
INT 180
WIS 215
CON 150
DEX 100




Medenia >>


  If you are a sub (and especially if you are a riest) you are better off
going Bard as soon as you can. I have covered the choice for pures way earlier
so refer to that for any questions for you pures.

  If you do decide to go bard, you will need to sacrifice 500 HP and MP which
means you will need at least 4000/8000 HP/MP in order to go Bard. You will also
need to sacrifice 250m EXP. Upon going Bard, you will lose all your GM equips.

  Hunting AB is a pain and a boring one at that, but you do get to further
your character, I guess. Make sure you get Instrumental 1 to actually wield
your Wooden Harp and Instrumental Attack 1 is basically a really crappy
Wind Blade with no animation. Oh, you will also need to learn Learning Spell
in order to learn the majority of your spells and skills!

  As for hunting areas, 1-2 is in Noam Plains, 3-7 in Andor, 7-12 in FC, 12-19
in Andor again, 20-? in CH2. You are not restricted to that template though.
Those are just general guidelines.




Temuair Spells/Skills >>


Spells/skills listed with Necessary should not be removed from your spell book!

ao ard cradh - Removes ard cradh. Necessary.

ao beag cradh - Removes beag cradh. Necessary.

ao cradh - Removes cradh. Keep it if you can but if you are strapped for room,
go ahead and lose it.

ao dall - Removes blind. Necessary.

ao mor cradh - Removes mor cradh. Necessary.

ao puinsein - Removes poison. Necessary.

ao suain - Removes suain. Necessary.

ard cradh - +65 AC -30% MR Curse. Necessary.

ard ioc - Your second most potent heal. Instant with Holy Diana. Necessary.

ard naomh aite - Halves all damage received. Necessary.

ard seun - Mesmerizes low monsters and brings them under your control. Useless.

armachd - -10 AC. Necessary.

Armachd Fein - -10 AC. Can only be casted on self. Useless.

Beag Breisleich - Confuses the target and forces it to lose aggro. Keep it
until you are able to learn the next version.

Beag Cradh - +20 AC. Use it to keep Dark Seal or ard cradh off of you.
Necessary.

beag ioc - Weakest heal. Lose it once you max ioc.

beag ioc comlha - Weak group heal. Lose it once you max ioc comhla.

beag ioc fein - Weak self heal. Useless.

beag naomh aite - Halves all damaged received. Lose it once you learn next
version.

beag pramh - Puts target to sleep. Lose it once you learn next version.

beag puinsein - Poisons target. Lose it once you learn next version.

beag seun - Useless. But need it to learn Seun.

beag slan - Useless.

beannaich - +5 HIT. Lose once you learn next version.

beothaich deum - Allows you to create Red Potions wherever you wish. Lose it
once you can go to Medenia. Komadiums do the same thing and you can have a
stack of 52 instead of just 30 like reds.

breisleich - Lose it once you get mor breisleich.

cradh - +35 AC -10% MR. Once you have ard cradh and Dark Seal, only keep this
for arena purposes.

creag neart - +3 STR. Useful for helping lowbies get extra STR for spells or
skills.

dachaidh - Teleports you to your home town. Not necessary but nice to have if
you do not have songs.

dall - Targetable blind. Not necessary but you need it for suain.

deireas faileas - Reflects 70% of non-gar spells back to original caster.
Necessary.

deo lamh - Weak light elemental spell. Attacks the four adjacent sides of
caster. Not really necessary.

deo saighead - Targetable light elemental spell. Not necessary but do need for
the priest's version of puinneag spiorad.

deo searg -  Strong targetable light elemental spell. Takes 2k MP. Necessary.

deo searg gar - Strong light elemental spell that attacks everything onscreen.
Takes 8k MP. Necesary.

fas deireas - +2 DMG. Not really necessary.

food lore - Tells you properties of foods. Useless.

herbal lore - Allows you to participate in Herbalism. Somewhat necessary.

ioc - Second heal. Keep it until you learn nuadhaich.

ioc comlha - Group heal. Necessary.

mend staff - Repairs a staff in the first slot of your inventory by 10%. Not
necessary but fun to have.

mor beannaich - +20 HIT. Necessary but Fiosachd's entreaties give +40 HIT.

mor breisleich -  Confuses target to throw off aggro. Necessary.

mor cradh - Lose it after you learn ard cradh. Keep only for arena purposes.

mor dion - Invulnerability from most damage. Necessary.

mor dion comlha - Group invulnerability. Necessary.

mor ioc - Third heal. Necessary for nuadhaich.

mor ioc comlha - Strongest group heal. Use only if you have lots of MP.

mor naomh aite - Lose it once you learn Ard Naomh Aite.

mor seun - Useless.

mor slan - Useless.

naomh aite - Lose it once you learn Mor Naomh Aite.

nuadhaich - Strongest heal. 1 line with Holy Diana. Oddly enough, not
necessary.

perish lore - Tells whether item is perishable or not. This is buggy. Use it
solely to ID an item. Necessary.

potion lore - Anazlyzes potions. Useless.

pramh - Places target in sleep. Necessary.

puinneag spiorad - Tranfers group members MP to your own reserves. Necessary.

puinsein - Poisons target. Necessary for pramh but otherwise not necessary.

seun - Necessary for spion beathach.

slan - Useless.

sonruich nadur - Changes a monster's element. Useless.

spion beathach - Creates spiders. Useless.

suain - Suains target. Necessary.

transfer blood - Transfers part of your HP to target in front of you. Useless.

wield staff - Useless.




Links >>

http://www.darkages.com
http://www.planetda.net
http://www.dahelp.com
http://www.da-wizard.com

Contact >>

Best bet would be on the Dark Ages GameFAQs board.

Copyright >>

Okay, I realize this is my first FAQ and stuff but you are not allowed to copy
this crap at all. The only site that has my permission to display this is
gamefaqs.com, okay? Dark Ages is owned by Kru Interactive.

History >>

v 0.8 - December 11, 2005
Made rough guide. Still needs to be cleaned up for grammar and crap like that.

v 1.0 - March 30, 2006
Submitted.

v 1.3 - April 2, 2007
After an incredibly long hiatus, it's back. I fixed some pure bard crap and
briefly went over all the possible priest subs.

v 1.8 - December 9, 2007
Couldn't fall asleep so decided to redo everything. Same crappy layout but
lots of new information!

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