As quite a lot of people are flocking into the Gates of Camelot lately and rightfully ask stuff about "what to do after Xp? What are those templates/Temps people talk about all the time?" I decided to dedicate a "small" writeup on what templates are, how they are usually done on the Phoenix Server, and how YOU can do it.
0. What is a Template?
A template (or "temp"
, generally speaking, is the final or one of the final form of your characters item-build, which usually is capping out all the relevant stats for your class or is coming very close to it.
On other servers/patches, gear would not be as randomized (more on that soon) as they are on Phoenix and a template would consist of a strict item-build of farmable items, making the item-build reproducable for everyone and its what originally gave the name for it.(Well, a Template as you would imagine)
On Phoenix tho, that is not the reality. It would be possible, but way more hard to obtain, since the alternative (ROG drops) is just too good/cheap/easy to obtain.
ROG stands for "random object generator" and it does exactly that - creating random items. On Phoenix, every mob you kill has a chance of dropping these, even multiple. The higher level the mob you kill, the higher chance you have on getting higher utility ROG items.
Utility on items is a measuring unit to quickly determine how effective/how high stats/how good the item is ONLY CONSIDERING the bonus stats on it (disregarding anything else like for example armor factor value on armor items), you can check the utility value of an item by right clicking it and pressing on Info.
Some rough estimations on utility/mobs:
50-60 utility is VERY easy to get, the mobs you grind from level 45+ should already have a low chance of dropping these
60-70 utility requires some deep purple to lvl 50 mobs, good example is the Named-Boss-Loop in Cursed Forest in Hibernia (Skeagshee, Shadowgnash, Juggernaut etc)
70-80 is mostly dropping of even higher Nameds (Princes, Epic Dungeon Nameds etc)
80+ utility usually comes of High-End PvE Bosses(Dragons, Beliathan, TG/Sidi/Galla Endbosses)
Ok, we now know some of the important terms and what they mean - now, lets get to it and make a temp.
1. Deciding on set-in-stone items
As a starting point, I would strongly recommend to plan your template around at least the Chestpiece from your realms Epic Dungeon Raids (TG/Sidi/Galla). It costs 20.000 phoenix feathers at the Vendor which you should be able to reach in only 2 active participations (get a fullgroup, play active, tag mobs/heal). The stats on it are very good and it got a very useful and strong reactive proc (more on "procs" later). As a beginner in DAoC, you most likely don't desperately need other stuff from the vendors. There are some helpful charge items and weapons which are mandatory for very very specific class builds, which you hopefully didnt pick as a starter in the game
Another Item that gets used by 90% of all temps is the Necklace from "The Lost Seed" Quest Part 4. Its last reward is a Necklace that has 80 (!) Utility on it for an amazing headstart in building up resist values. If you somehow managed to acquire a ROG necklace that has more than 80 utility on it (lucky at a raid?), ofcourse you might want to use that.
Important Note for caster-classes:At the end of Part 3 of the questline the npc lets you choose an ADDITONAL, OPTIONAL, reward in form of a quite powerful staff. Make very sure you marked it for a taking before hitting "finish quest". There will not be another way of getting it (except buying of others) and although it has very bad utility it has a very Good DD-Charge (330 dmg charge, more on "charges" later) on it and gets used in maybe like 50% of caster temps because of the option to set up a dmg burst with it. Remember when i said Utility value would only take stats into consideration? Prime example.
2. Jewelry (the "Off-Parts"
Jewelry refers to ALL the item slots that are not Armor/Weapons/Instruments. So, your cloak is also called jewelry from now on.
Next on you want to fill all the other jewelry slots with RoG Drops. You might already have acquired some through exping. Generally speaking you need better utility on these when playing a hybrid or stealther or melee since you have more stats to cap AND, especially, more completely different skill lines to cap out. Pure casters/healers just go +all magic, while melees would need +all melee weapons AND +shield since +melee weapons doesnt raise shields/dualwield/envenom/stealth etc.. You can either buy these jewelry items at the auctioneer or go farm them - the list above hopefully helps you getting an idea on where to farm them.
When putting the jewelry all together, you should try to not overcap too hard on a single stat just by jewelry alone. It will likely happen, but you really want to reduce it to a minimum. It will (literally) pay out in the end when avoiding it.
3. Crafted Armor/Weapons (To Arms)
This one's quick - buy the remaining 5 armor parts and your weapon(s)/shield/instrument (considering you bought the Chestpiece for feathers and none of the latter from vendor).
Make sure the part you are about to buy is
a.) of 99% Quality! (more on % Quality later)
b.) 51 ArmorFactor for Cloth, 102 for the others armors or 16.5 dps for weapons
c.) completely clean of any bonus stat (you cant do it yourself anymore then)
Buy from auctioneer/housing or get in touch with a crafter. When playing a hybrid class, you might need some 100% Quality Armor pieces instead of 99%, keep on reading for now before you instantly buy away after reading these last lines.
4. Spellcrafting (Gems are truely outrageous)
Next and probably most important step is to put the bonus stats on the crafted gear you just bought. We need a spellcrafter (sc, a player profession) for that, and the spellcrafter will ask you to send over the template/build as it will instruct him on what to craft exactly. That means you are expected to calculate it by yourself and file a craft report for the spellcrafter. We do this via the help of some tools - SC Calculators like "Moras", "Lokis" or "Korts" (download links below). Note that some Spellcrafter also offer to do the calculating for you, for a costly extra price ofcourse. You might find a nice person/friend helping you out with that too.
Now, to some core mechanics of spellcrafting:
Spellcrafters make Gems, one Gem has one bonus stat to it. Bonuses are
+Base Stat like Strength, Intelligence etc. (cap +75)
+Hitpoints (cap +200)
+Powerpool (cap +25)
+Resistances physcial and magical (cap +26%)
+Skill line, like Blades, Stealth, Magic lines etc. (cap +11 skill)
+Focus Magic Skill Line, only for pure cloth-casters (cap +50 focus)
Note: Spellcrafters CANNOT make +All magic focus/+All magic skills/+All melee weapon skills/+All dual wield skills, these boni are limited to dropped Gear (including feather items, rog's, non-rog's like dragon staff etc) on Phoenix/older patches.
Crafted armor/weapons can only be enchanted with 4 Gems max (on phoenix). The Gem boni come in 10 different tiers, for resistances for example tier 1 would be +1% resist, tier 5 would be +7% resist, tier 10 would be +17% resist. We can't just put 4 Gems of tier 10 on an armorpart. Each crafted piece has a pool of how much stuff you can put into it. This pool is called "Imbue points" (IP) in DAoC. The +1% resist would cost up 1 IP, +7% resist would cost up 12 IP and the +17% resist would cost up 32 IP.
How much Imbue Points a crafted piece got is determined by the level (af51/102, 16.5 dps is level 51) and the % Quality of the piece.
lvl 51, 99% Quality is 28 Imbue Points
lvl 51, 100% Quality (MP = masterpiece, expensive) is 32 Imbue Points
As you can see, putting up +17% resist would only be possible on a 100% qual, lvl 51 item and would eat every single available IP for it. Maybe you guessed it, it would not be worth it since you also can see the IP costs of different Gem tiers going up exponentially. It is way more efficient to try and balance out as much with mid-tier gems as possible as a rule of thumb. You can also see that +17% resist would NOT be possible on a 99% qual, lvl 51 item, right? Wrong - there is a mechanic named "Overcharge" in place.
Overcharging allows a high enough level spellcrafter to add another 5.5 Imbue points (other values on other patches) on top of your usual IP - Pool. It comes at a risk, too: There is a very small chance (2%?) that your item you want to see overcharged literally BLOWS up and getting deleted at once. On other servers/patches, the spellcrafter himself will blow up along with the item and straight up die. Still, it is worth to plan with overcharging every single one of your crafted gears, preferably at the maximum 5.5 extra IP. Keeping that in mind, it will leave us with these two numbers - 33.5 IP (28+5.5) for 99% qual items, 37.5 IP (32+5.5) for 100% items. Pure casters on phoenix might even get away with some 98% qual items i would imagine, otherwise everything below 99% just gives us too few room to juggle with, so dont bother with it.
5. Calculating (where the magic happens)
Now you know the core mechanics regarding Spellcrafting. Just with that info alone you could start away trying to do your first templates with a calculator like Moras, which is a quite clean UI but has to be used manually. Its not bad and I used it for a long time, it really helped me understanding all these and other daoc mechanics over time. I just recently stumbled across another calculator named Loki, which I think is more recommendable to newcomers and that I started using and quickly loving it for doing my templates. Tbh, I sometimes use both, or just Moras when I want to look something up (like I did for this post) as its interface is really natural - unlike Loki which really got some unneccesary controls/mouseinputs and doesnt look as clean and doesnt feel as natural. BUT Loki will do the juggling and calculating for you and saves a loooot of time. You just need to get a hang of the inputs needed and let the app do the rest of the work. I never tried Korts which is another known calculator, so I cant say anything about it. When doing it all manually, the first trys might not be as successfull in capping out everything, but you ll notice yourself getting a lot better with more practice at it.
There are some stats I would very very strongly recommend to always cap out, and others you might be ok with just bringing it close to the cap or maybe even completely ditching it. Always cap out your relevant base stats, hitpoints, all melee resists, body resist, heat resist if you re not a hib, cold resist if you re not a mid. You can completely ditch powerpool if its stopping you from capping everything else. Its really only adding 26 power to your powerpool. Look up any of your main spells and look how much power that costs, most likely more than 26. Nice to have for sure, but not needed at all costs. When you re a caster, ofcourse you want to cap out all your focus on at least the relevant/most used skill lines. Better try to go for all so respeccing eventually wont require you to change your weapon or anything.
Most Skill lines like Blades, Mana Magic, Buff Lines cap at 51. So far a bard that regularly runs 43 Nurture for the Speed/Endusongs, that would only require +8 on Nurture from the temp to cap it. Also, consider in your temp that you will get +1 on ALL of your skills for gaining Realm Ranks (up to max +5 at RealmRank 6) and you will basically be RR2 (+1) and RR3 (+2) in literally no time.
Every Calculator has some sort of option to create a file called "craft report" or something likely. When done with everything, make your calculator create that file and send it over to your spellcrafter of choice (mostly done by discord or Email).
After being done with Spellcrafting and not blowing up, you re safe to bring your crafted and sc'ed pieces to a NPC-Enchanter (drag and drop every piece from inventory into him). There are several in your realms capital. It will greatly help with your to-hit chance for weapons and your getting-hit chance for armor (since everybody is doing it, you dont want to be at a disadvantage).
6. Alchemy (i am going into battle, and i want only your strongest potions)
So now got your full itemization, all your Stats, Resist, Skills are (ideally) capped - what else should there be to do? We re coming back to "procs" and "charges" now. Also, we could need some of these very helpful potions. We will get all of that of an Alchemist (another player profession).
"Procs" are effects that are passive most of the time and can trigger at certain events. There are reactive (armor) procs and proactive (weapon) procs. Armor procs on an armorpart have a chance to trigger when the armorpart is hit by a melee weapon/arrow. Weapon procs on weapons have a chance to trigger when the weapon hits something. Weapon procs can be a pure instant Dmg spell or a DoT landing on the same target the weapon just did. There are several buffings Armor procs, but the relevant ones for starting out are Ablative procs and Healing procs for Armor. Ablative buff being a buff that creates a shieldpool which is drained by every melee attack by 50% up to set value. Healing procs are pretty self explanatory. On phoenix, the standard is to put 3 Ablative and 3 Healing procs on your Armor. You will need 1 less Healing proc, because you hopefully put the Chestpiece for 20.000 feathers in your template which already comes with a built-in Healing proc (and also the strongest one).Note that there are 2 version of each the Ablative and the Healing procs on phoenix. There are the "regular" ones, Ablative creating 100 shieldpool and Healing healing for 75. And there are the "Epic" ones, Ablative creating 150 shieldpool and Healing healing for 100. Of course the "Epic" ones are way more costly. The regular ones would/could be fine. If you want to push the template to the limit, aim for the Epic ones!
"Charges" are on-use-spells on your crafted armor/weapons. The variety is pretty big here - debuffs, lifedrains, damage add, damage shield, haste. dot, acuity, ablative, spec AF buff.
The % Quality of the item will determine, how much charges of the spell there will be before its depleted. When it is, you can visit a NPC-Recharger to load it up again.
You basically want a lvl 5, 100% quality item for putting buff charges on it, since 100% quality will mean a maximum of 10 max charges and lvl 5 100%s can be crafted by anone and cost nothing. These items basically just sit in your inventory, you can put their spells on your Hotbars and use them without putting them actually on.
The ones you really want depend a bit on your class and realm. Hibs do not have any class that can buff spec AF, so a lot of people want to carry around 1 item with spec AF charge.Some People also take an ablative buff charge item so they Start off a fight with it already Active instead of hoping for an early/proc when needed. Melees might want to consider carrying a dmg-add buff charge with them, everyone could theoretically make use of debuff charges or even dd-charges for an instant interupt every 2 minutes (which is the cooldown on use for the charges).
Note: On phoenix, you could make a lvl 1 alchemist and would be able to put these charges and procs on your armor yourself, which is why they are also sold via auctioneer/housing. This is not possible for spellcrafting tho.
Now, just grab the occasional but mandatory buff potions/draughts. Draughts have 100 charges, so thats more comfortable than carrying around lots of potions/elixirs.On Phoenix, everybody runs Endu-Buff potions together with the realm abilities Long Wind and Tireless so they can permasprint. So you always want at least a Draught of endu-buff and obviously a Power healing potion/draught on a casting class.
If you wanna push it here you could also grab a PoM-Buff potion, Hp-Reg-Buff potion and hp heal potion and so on. Or carrying around buff potions when solo/smallman.
You re all set then and armored to the teeth Go out and feel really strong!
I hope that "small" write-up brought some light into the subject and giving you as much tools at hand as you will need to start off. Feel free to ask here or around your server/realm for any further information or help. Also feel free to leave a feedback and criticism if you want too see things added or corrected.
Links for Calculators:
Moras - https://sourceforge.net/projects/moras/
Loki (!get Version 1.4 or 2.0!) - http://www.syntheticrealms.com/loki_daoc/loki_download.php
(Tutorial for Loki: https://forum.playphoenix.online/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=5892)
Korts - https://sourceforge.net/projects/kscraft/
I will add my current Bard's "template" of phoenix, if you need anything to compare yours or have a peek how that could look like. Note that I am only using 99% crafted Gear, 40-60 utility ROG jewelry, Galla Chestpiece and SI necklace and capping out everything easily - I even got +5 Blades that I will most likely never use as an extra since I just had the leftover IP. So its really quite easy and cheap to do a template on phoenix (ofc, tho, bard is counting as a pure caster in that regard). Chest, Legs, Arms have Epic Healing charges, Helmet, Gloves, Boots have Epic Ablative Charges. S/C debuff charge on harp. I am usually carrying around spec AF charge, Ablative Charge, Healing Draught, S/C-Buff Draught, D/Q-Buff Draught, Endu-Buff Draught, PoM-Buff Draught, Power Draught - just to get an imagination on how it could look like at the end.
0. What is a Template?
A template (or "temp"
, generally speaking, is the final or one of the final form of your characters item-build, which usually is capping out all the relevant stats for your class or is coming very close to it.On other servers/patches, gear would not be as randomized (more on that soon) as they are on Phoenix and a template would consist of a strict item-build of farmable items, making the item-build reproducable for everyone and its what originally gave the name for it.(Well, a Template as you would imagine)
On Phoenix tho, that is not the reality. It would be possible, but way more hard to obtain, since the alternative (ROG drops) is just too good/cheap/easy to obtain.
ROG stands for "random object generator" and it does exactly that - creating random items. On Phoenix, every mob you kill has a chance of dropping these, even multiple. The higher level the mob you kill, the higher chance you have on getting higher utility ROG items.
Utility on items is a measuring unit to quickly determine how effective/how high stats/how good the item is ONLY CONSIDERING the bonus stats on it (disregarding anything else like for example armor factor value on armor items), you can check the utility value of an item by right clicking it and pressing on Info.
Some rough estimations on utility/mobs:
50-60 utility is VERY easy to get, the mobs you grind from level 45+ should already have a low chance of dropping these
60-70 utility requires some deep purple to lvl 50 mobs, good example is the Named-Boss-Loop in Cursed Forest in Hibernia (Skeagshee, Shadowgnash, Juggernaut etc)
70-80 is mostly dropping of even higher Nameds (Princes, Epic Dungeon Nameds etc)
80+ utility usually comes of High-End PvE Bosses(Dragons, Beliathan, TG/Sidi/Galla Endbosses)
Ok, we now know some of the important terms and what they mean - now, lets get to it and make a temp.
1. Deciding on set-in-stone items
As a starting point, I would strongly recommend to plan your template around at least the Chestpiece from your realms Epic Dungeon Raids (TG/Sidi/Galla). It costs 20.000 phoenix feathers at the Vendor which you should be able to reach in only 2 active participations (get a fullgroup, play active, tag mobs/heal). The stats on it are very good and it got a very useful and strong reactive proc (more on "procs" later). As a beginner in DAoC, you most likely don't desperately need other stuff from the vendors. There are some helpful charge items and weapons which are mandatory for very very specific class builds, which you hopefully didnt pick as a starter in the game
Another Item that gets used by 90% of all temps is the Necklace from "The Lost Seed" Quest Part 4. Its last reward is a Necklace that has 80 (!) Utility on it for an amazing headstart in building up resist values. If you somehow managed to acquire a ROG necklace that has more than 80 utility on it (lucky at a raid?), ofcourse you might want to use that.
Important Note for caster-classes:At the end of Part 3 of the questline the npc lets you choose an ADDITONAL, OPTIONAL, reward in form of a quite powerful staff. Make very sure you marked it for a taking before hitting "finish quest". There will not be another way of getting it (except buying of others) and although it has very bad utility it has a very Good DD-Charge (330 dmg charge, more on "charges" later) on it and gets used in maybe like 50% of caster temps because of the option to set up a dmg burst with it. Remember when i said Utility value would only take stats into consideration? Prime example.
2. Jewelry (the "Off-Parts"
Jewelry refers to ALL the item slots that are not Armor/Weapons/Instruments. So, your cloak is also called jewelry from now on.
Next on you want to fill all the other jewelry slots with RoG Drops. You might already have acquired some through exping. Generally speaking you need better utility on these when playing a hybrid or stealther or melee since you have more stats to cap AND, especially, more completely different skill lines to cap out. Pure casters/healers just go +all magic, while melees would need +all melee weapons AND +shield since +melee weapons doesnt raise shields/dualwield/envenom/stealth etc.. You can either buy these jewelry items at the auctioneer or go farm them - the list above hopefully helps you getting an idea on where to farm them.
When putting the jewelry all together, you should try to not overcap too hard on a single stat just by jewelry alone. It will likely happen, but you really want to reduce it to a minimum. It will (literally) pay out in the end when avoiding it.
3. Crafted Armor/Weapons (To Arms)
This one's quick - buy the remaining 5 armor parts and your weapon(s)/shield/instrument (considering you bought the Chestpiece for feathers and none of the latter from vendor).
Make sure the part you are about to buy is
a.) of 99% Quality! (more on % Quality later)
b.) 51 ArmorFactor for Cloth, 102 for the others armors or 16.5 dps for weapons
c.) completely clean of any bonus stat (you cant do it yourself anymore then)
Buy from auctioneer/housing or get in touch with a crafter. When playing a hybrid class, you might need some 100% Quality Armor pieces instead of 99%, keep on reading for now before you instantly buy away after reading these last lines.
4. Spellcrafting (Gems are truely outrageous)
Next and probably most important step is to put the bonus stats on the crafted gear you just bought. We need a spellcrafter (sc, a player profession) for that, and the spellcrafter will ask you to send over the template/build as it will instruct him on what to craft exactly. That means you are expected to calculate it by yourself and file a craft report for the spellcrafter. We do this via the help of some tools - SC Calculators like "Moras", "Lokis" or "Korts" (download links below). Note that some Spellcrafter also offer to do the calculating for you, for a costly extra price ofcourse. You might find a nice person/friend helping you out with that too.
Now, to some core mechanics of spellcrafting:
Spellcrafters make Gems, one Gem has one bonus stat to it. Bonuses are
+Base Stat like Strength, Intelligence etc. (cap +75)
+Hitpoints (cap +200)
+Powerpool (cap +25)
+Resistances physcial and magical (cap +26%)
+Skill line, like Blades, Stealth, Magic lines etc. (cap +11 skill)
+Focus Magic Skill Line, only for pure cloth-casters (cap +50 focus)
Note: Spellcrafters CANNOT make +All magic focus/+All magic skills/+All melee weapon skills/+All dual wield skills, these boni are limited to dropped Gear (including feather items, rog's, non-rog's like dragon staff etc) on Phoenix/older patches.
Crafted armor/weapons can only be enchanted with 4 Gems max (on phoenix). The Gem boni come in 10 different tiers, for resistances for example tier 1 would be +1% resist, tier 5 would be +7% resist, tier 10 would be +17% resist. We can't just put 4 Gems of tier 10 on an armorpart. Each crafted piece has a pool of how much stuff you can put into it. This pool is called "Imbue points" (IP) in DAoC. The +1% resist would cost up 1 IP, +7% resist would cost up 12 IP and the +17% resist would cost up 32 IP.
How much Imbue Points a crafted piece got is determined by the level (af51/102, 16.5 dps is level 51) and the % Quality of the piece.
lvl 51, 99% Quality is 28 Imbue Points
lvl 51, 100% Quality (MP = masterpiece, expensive) is 32 Imbue Points
As you can see, putting up +17% resist would only be possible on a 100% qual, lvl 51 item and would eat every single available IP for it. Maybe you guessed it, it would not be worth it since you also can see the IP costs of different Gem tiers going up exponentially. It is way more efficient to try and balance out as much with mid-tier gems as possible as a rule of thumb. You can also see that +17% resist would NOT be possible on a 99% qual, lvl 51 item, right? Wrong - there is a mechanic named "Overcharge" in place.
Overcharging allows a high enough level spellcrafter to add another 5.5 Imbue points (other values on other patches) on top of your usual IP - Pool. It comes at a risk, too: There is a very small chance (2%?) that your item you want to see overcharged literally BLOWS up and getting deleted at once. On other servers/patches, the spellcrafter himself will blow up along with the item and straight up die. Still, it is worth to plan with overcharging every single one of your crafted gears, preferably at the maximum 5.5 extra IP. Keeping that in mind, it will leave us with these two numbers - 33.5 IP (28+5.5) for 99% qual items, 37.5 IP (32+5.5) for 100% items. Pure casters on phoenix might even get away with some 98% qual items i would imagine, otherwise everything below 99% just gives us too few room to juggle with, so dont bother with it.
5. Calculating (where the magic happens)
Now you know the core mechanics regarding Spellcrafting. Just with that info alone you could start away trying to do your first templates with a calculator like Moras, which is a quite clean UI but has to be used manually. Its not bad and I used it for a long time, it really helped me understanding all these and other daoc mechanics over time. I just recently stumbled across another calculator named Loki, which I think is more recommendable to newcomers and that I started using and quickly loving it for doing my templates. Tbh, I sometimes use both, or just Moras when I want to look something up (like I did for this post) as its interface is really natural - unlike Loki which really got some unneccesary controls/mouseinputs and doesnt look as clean and doesnt feel as natural. BUT Loki will do the juggling and calculating for you and saves a loooot of time. You just need to get a hang of the inputs needed and let the app do the rest of the work. I never tried Korts which is another known calculator, so I cant say anything about it. When doing it all manually, the first trys might not be as successfull in capping out everything, but you ll notice yourself getting a lot better with more practice at it.
There are some stats I would very very strongly recommend to always cap out, and others you might be ok with just bringing it close to the cap or maybe even completely ditching it. Always cap out your relevant base stats, hitpoints, all melee resists, body resist, heat resist if you re not a hib, cold resist if you re not a mid. You can completely ditch powerpool if its stopping you from capping everything else. Its really only adding 26 power to your powerpool. Look up any of your main spells and look how much power that costs, most likely more than 26. Nice to have for sure, but not needed at all costs. When you re a caster, ofcourse you want to cap out all your focus on at least the relevant/most used skill lines. Better try to go for all so respeccing eventually wont require you to change your weapon or anything.
Most Skill lines like Blades, Mana Magic, Buff Lines cap at 51. So far a bard that regularly runs 43 Nurture for the Speed/Endusongs, that would only require +8 on Nurture from the temp to cap it. Also, consider in your temp that you will get +1 on ALL of your skills for gaining Realm Ranks (up to max +5 at RealmRank 6) and you will basically be RR2 (+1) and RR3 (+2) in literally no time.
Every Calculator has some sort of option to create a file called "craft report" or something likely. When done with everything, make your calculator create that file and send it over to your spellcrafter of choice (mostly done by discord or Email).
After being done with Spellcrafting and not blowing up, you re safe to bring your crafted and sc'ed pieces to a NPC-Enchanter (drag and drop every piece from inventory into him). There are several in your realms capital. It will greatly help with your to-hit chance for weapons and your getting-hit chance for armor (since everybody is doing it, you dont want to be at a disadvantage).
6. Alchemy (i am going into battle, and i want only your strongest potions)
So now got your full itemization, all your Stats, Resist, Skills are (ideally) capped - what else should there be to do? We re coming back to "procs" and "charges" now. Also, we could need some of these very helpful potions. We will get all of that of an Alchemist (another player profession).
"Procs" are effects that are passive most of the time and can trigger at certain events. There are reactive (armor) procs and proactive (weapon) procs. Armor procs on an armorpart have a chance to trigger when the armorpart is hit by a melee weapon/arrow. Weapon procs on weapons have a chance to trigger when the weapon hits something. Weapon procs can be a pure instant Dmg spell or a DoT landing on the same target the weapon just did. There are several buffings Armor procs, but the relevant ones for starting out are Ablative procs and Healing procs for Armor. Ablative buff being a buff that creates a shieldpool which is drained by every melee attack by 50% up to set value. Healing procs are pretty self explanatory. On phoenix, the standard is to put 3 Ablative and 3 Healing procs on your Armor. You will need 1 less Healing proc, because you hopefully put the Chestpiece for 20.000 feathers in your template which already comes with a built-in Healing proc (and also the strongest one).Note that there are 2 version of each the Ablative and the Healing procs on phoenix. There are the "regular" ones, Ablative creating 100 shieldpool and Healing healing for 75. And there are the "Epic" ones, Ablative creating 150 shieldpool and Healing healing for 100. Of course the "Epic" ones are way more costly. The regular ones would/could be fine. If you want to push the template to the limit, aim for the Epic ones!
"Charges" are on-use-spells on your crafted armor/weapons. The variety is pretty big here - debuffs, lifedrains, damage add, damage shield, haste. dot, acuity, ablative, spec AF buff.
The % Quality of the item will determine, how much charges of the spell there will be before its depleted. When it is, you can visit a NPC-Recharger to load it up again.
You basically want a lvl 5, 100% quality item for putting buff charges on it, since 100% quality will mean a maximum of 10 max charges and lvl 5 100%s can be crafted by anone and cost nothing. These items basically just sit in your inventory, you can put their spells on your Hotbars and use them without putting them actually on.
The ones you really want depend a bit on your class and realm. Hibs do not have any class that can buff spec AF, so a lot of people want to carry around 1 item with spec AF charge.Some People also take an ablative buff charge item so they Start off a fight with it already Active instead of hoping for an early/proc when needed. Melees might want to consider carrying a dmg-add buff charge with them, everyone could theoretically make use of debuff charges or even dd-charges for an instant interupt every 2 minutes (which is the cooldown on use for the charges).
Note: On phoenix, you could make a lvl 1 alchemist and would be able to put these charges and procs on your armor yourself, which is why they are also sold via auctioneer/housing. This is not possible for spellcrafting tho.
Now, just grab the occasional but mandatory buff potions/draughts. Draughts have 100 charges, so thats more comfortable than carrying around lots of potions/elixirs.On Phoenix, everybody runs Endu-Buff potions together with the realm abilities Long Wind and Tireless so they can permasprint. So you always want at least a Draught of endu-buff and obviously a Power healing potion/draught on a casting class.
If you wanna push it here you could also grab a PoM-Buff potion, Hp-Reg-Buff potion and hp heal potion and so on. Or carrying around buff potions when solo/smallman.
You re all set then and armored to the teeth
Go out and feel really strong! I hope that "small" write-up brought some light into the subject and giving you as much tools at hand as you will need to start off. Feel free to ask here or around your server/realm for any further information or help. Also feel free to leave a feedback and criticism if you want too see things added or corrected.
Links for Calculators:
Moras - https://sourceforge.net/projects/moras/
Loki (!get Version 1.4 or 2.0!) - http://www.syntheticrealms.com/loki_daoc/loki_download.php
(Tutorial for Loki: https://forum.playphoenix.online/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=5892)
Korts - https://sourceforge.net/projects/kscraft/
I will add my current Bard's "template" of phoenix, if you need anything to compare yours or have a peek how that could look like. Note that I am only using 99% crafted Gear, 40-60 utility ROG jewelry, Galla Chestpiece and SI necklace and capping out everything easily - I even got +5 Blades that I will most likely never use as an extra since I just had the leftover IP. So its really quite easy and cheap to do a template on phoenix (ofc, tho, bard is counting as a pure caster in that regard). Chest, Legs, Arms have Epic Healing charges, Helmet, Gloves, Boots have Epic Ablative Charges. S/C debuff charge on harp. I am usually carrying around spec AF charge, Ablative Charge, Healing Draught, S/C-Buff Draught, D/Q-Buff Draught, Endu-Buff Draught, PoM-Buff Draught, Power Draught - just to get an imagination on how it could look like at the end.