Musician Archive

Hi guys, I've just reached novice Musician. I was wondering, what tree should I go up first in the musician line? Will a certain one help me gain more xp? Any tips are appreciated. Thanks!

I would say (and most would agree) that you should go for Knowledge before getting anything in tech. BF and Wound healing it doesn't really matter, since both are fast enough anyway.

By taking knowledge you learn new songs and to play new instruments. Your XP goes up, and there are fewer times when you have to say, "I can't play that song."

Knowlege

Definitely start with knowledge over techniques. As much as I want to be able to do lighting effects and whatnot, the quicker you get up the knowledge tree, the sooner you get the songs and instruments that will help you get up the techniques tree.

I just hit Novice Musician last week, and immediately had enough to advance one of my healing trees by two boxes. The advice I got that seems to make sense to me is to start on your fatigue tree first. The logic is this:

-When you hit Novice Musician, you already have a significant boost to your wound healing from the entertainer wound healing levels, to the point where people are almost always waiting for you to heal their fatigue long after their wounds are healed. If you take the fatigue healing tree first, you balance this out more.

Allow me to be the dissenting voice here.

Now when I was doing this, pretty much everyone agreed Knowledge was the way to go. Calculations show that taking Knowledge to IV makes the Techniques tree take 75%-80% as long. However, this was all before the mind buff. The mind buff is exclusively in the tech tree. At Novice Musician, you have 10% mind buff. At Tech IV you have 75%, at Master 100%.

Personally, I would recommend Knowledge I (Ballad song) and Knowledge II (Bandfill, whoo!) and then Techniques I-IV before heading back to Knowledge III and IV. Reasons? Apart from simple XP, Knowledge III is a horrible box. Waltz is useless for the gaming public. Chidinkalu is nice XP, but it sounds like - you guessed it - the fizzz! Knowledge IV is a little better as its song (jazz) israther nice - but good luck getting to play it without making previous arrangements, asyou will find an awful lot of musicians can't play it yet.

On the other hand, Techniques offers you nothing in the way of XP. What it *does* offer you isa living. An honest, real musician's living - which is something most people find very hard to realize. People are willing to pay for buffs, even the 30 and 40% ones. The much-maligned lightshow may cost action with no XP reward - but it makes you look like a professional, and that counts for something with the tippers. Two days ago, on my first real day back from a long break, I made 83k in tips in one day, about 65k of that was buff money. Master level, to be sure, but even if you can only pull 25% of that, it's still a decent living.

By taking Knowledge II first, you get some of the XP gain, the third instrument "voice" (bass/percussion) and you're not stuck levelling the Tech tree with themost annoyinginstrument in the game (slitherhorn possibly excepted). Oh, yeah and the Tech IV title is Virtuoso (yay!), the Knowledge IV title is Composer (yawn)

Good luck regardless!

Sydira Katheda

Twi'lek (Rutian)

Master Musician/Dancer/Entertainer (Naritus)

Oops! Forgot one of my key points!

Musician XP is not going to be your gate to Master anyhow. Despite what you may think - at Novice Musician everyone thinksEHeal is easy- EHeal XP is going to be your problem. Never met a Master who said otherwise. The disconnect is that in the Entertainer tree, EHeal is a single line, thus you gain EHeal boxes faster than Musician XP boxes. By the time you qualify for Novice Musician, most people have amassed both level 1 EHeal boxes. Despite this head start, everyone falls behind and ends up grinding EHeal XP for 3-7 days after maxing out their Musician XP. EHeal XP is *not* increased from the Knowledge line.

As Waho said, Knowlege improves your xp gain, since you get the higher songs and instruments from that branch. Tech isn't completely useless, since that's where you get the "Mind Enhancement" skill that affects how large your Focus/Willpower buffs are. For the two healing branches, I'd suggest going up them equally, but take the Fatigue at each level first, since most people are worse off in BF than mind wounds.

Well even if the mind buff is great there is no need to take it first.

Why ? Because people don't ask for buff or seek a master buff usually. And they don't tip often too.

I think is better to have your own fun first. So being able to play new songs and use bandfill is nicier than being a dedicated buff people and not a welcome one is a master is around.

And I agree for the heal problem. I take me longer to get then because I play in european time too. And for this reason I prefere have a full tree filled so I can wait for a master to train me longer than if I spend my points in 2 lines (because of the cap limit *2 max lvl )

I'm AFK most of the time on my way to master and I'm a level ahead in both healing lines over the music lines. Healing is way easier to get, at least for me it has been.

Ooops, sorry Shaavik, I must not have been clear. My suggestion was: Knowledge up to II, then Tech up to IV, then Knowledge up to IV.

I agree that ballad and bandfill are not things you want to pass up for the several days it'll take (even power-levelling) the Tech tree. And at Tech IV, you can do a 75% buff. People will pay for that, particularly in the smaller towns or outer planets. There's usually nota Master option for those folks, so they take what they can get.

People don't normally tip for buffs? Well, I've always heard Naritus is the nicest server, but I only think I've been stiffed on a buff once in about 100 applications. The others MORE than made up for it. My lowest income night (was only on for 90 minutes) for the past week is still five figures.

Oh, and Jason, I don't really know how things work for AFK folks, so maybe this doesn't apply to them.

Sydira Katheda

Twi'lek (Rutian)

Master Musician/Master Dancer/Master Entertainer (Naritus)

Well, if you're an AFKer like me Knowledge is the most logical choice since you get access to higher xp paying songs/instruments. The effects and buffs you get from the tech tree don't help AFKers while they're AFK.

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JasonK wrote:
Well, if you're an AFKer like me

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well at least you dont call yourself a musician in your sig