Monk Guide

Guild Location:

Main Guild Location:

• Continent: Lucetium
• World Location: West of  Lorenchia City.
• To join the Monk Guild (Warriors of the Brotherhood) you'll need to go around the mountains to the west, and follow the river to the center island.
• If you are new player, take your time since you won't have swimming or water walking trained, so you'll swallow a lot of water and take damage
• Also there often are tough aggressive vampire bats (b) wandering around the lake so make sure you avoid them while going to the guild.
• An easier option is to look around the city of Lorenchia to see if there is a navigator tree (t) that will teleport you to the Monk guild location.
• Note: This is also where your main Monk quests will be. Your statue room is also in this area but will need to be unlocked via guild quests.

Additional Training Locations:

There are other trainers on different continents that can teach you specific skills. A guide to these special trainers is available [here].

Guild Requirements:

• Good Religious background
• Good alignment
• Must be Male or Female (Your gender will become locked on joining)

Race Requirements/Warnings:

• Undead races such as Skeletons and Liches who can not eat are unable to use Mind over Body which is one of the more powerful/impactful Monk skills.

My Overview of the Guild:

Newbie friendly pure skill based front-line melee guild that pairs well with other healing and casting guilds in the Good Religious background. Monks use martial arts which means you don't need to worry about buying any weapons, and some of the skills can be learned via questing and tasks instead of spending EXP on them. Monks also have various ways to regenerate, letting them get back into the fight quickly. Since there are no spells in this guild, it also lends itself well to selecting races that are more traditionally associated with Nomads, such as minotaurs. Finally, Monks gain access to skills that let them sacrifice their spellpoint pool to boost their stats and combat powers, allowing players to achieve higher stats without having to buy expensive equipment or donate real-life money to obtain task points.

Pros:

• Good guild for Newbies/Midbies
• Not as equipment focused as a lot of other melee guilds
• More forgiving when it comes to EXP requirements, since some of the skills can be learned via tasks, and there is a lot of equipment that gives bonuses to the martial arts skill.
• Monks focus on avoidance vs. resilience. One of the better guilds for avoiding damage vs. taking it.
• There's a lot of complimentary guilds in the Good Religious background
• Being able to pick being Tarmalen healer as a secondary class is an amazing super power.
• The Animilists guild also pairs well with Monks as it provides basic healing as well as a spirit companion to do even more damage
• One of the most well balanced and party friendly melee guilds for Good Religious players
• Templars, while strong, are mostly defensive focused.
• Ghost Liberators are considered stronger than Monks, but can be very annoying to other party members (specifically evil religious players). Also they struggle fighting against non-evil monsters.

Cons:

• Can be a tough guild for true Newbies
• The monk guild is much more complicated than a lot of other tank guilds such as Rangers.
• Also with their lower damage and hitpoints at low levels compared to other starter guilds, Monks can be frustrating until you get the hang of playing them.
• Low maximum hit points, so when you do get hit it hurts
• This is even more of a problem for low level players who haven't trained up the various avoidance skills much
• Does not provide a lot of skills for party members
• The guild is very focused on the individual player, so you'll need to join a secondary guild to provide much party utility beyond being a front-row damage dealer
• Essential skills can be very EXP expensive
• Martial arts is more expensive than most other "weapon skills"
• Also you need to train a lot of defensive skills to a high percentage before they become effective. This costs a lot of EXP as well.
• Basically, you can get started with very little EXP, but to max out skills in the guild requires more EXP than a lot of other guilds like Tzarak or Ranger.
• If you are reincarnating into Monks, it takes a lot of grinding and time to get many of their skills trained up
• This is the downside of having many of their skills be acquired by using them. Even if you have the EXP to spend you still need to do the grind to gain access to the top tier skills.

Monk Quick Start Guide:

1. Pick your gender
• You can change your gender in Arelium City's hospital for a small fee (around 500 gold).
• Your gender will determine some of the skills you can train in the Monk guild
• Female characters can train two offensive attack skills (Find Weakness, and Kiai-Cry) to 100% instead of 90%
• Male characters can train Throw Weight and Stunned Maneuvers to 100% instead of 90%.
• Side note: Male characters can still get Kiai-Cry up to 100% through random improvements by using it.
• It doesn't have a huge impact, but once you join the Monk guild you can not change your gender unless you reincarnate your character.
• The one thing to keep in mind is if you want to join the Nun guild (one of the best anti-undead blaster classes) you need to be female.
2. Join the guild. 
• Go to the main training location west of Lorenchia to join the Warrior Brotherhood
3. Quick Tip 1: When regenerating, make sure you use kata before using meditation
4. Quick Tip 2: You can use the "marts %" command to change the speed/power of your martial arts attacks.
• Setting it to 1 means your attacks are slow but do the most damage. Setting it to 10 increases your attack speed the most but each attack does less damage.
• Conventional wisdom recommends setting it between 6-10, though for Barsoomian monks it probably should be 5 (as they naturally have double the attacks of most races).
• The advantage of slower attacks is that critical hits do significantly more damage when they land.
5. After you purchase 10 levels in the guild, you can start the first guild quest to unlock the hall of statues.
• This won't provide any bonuses until you advance further in the guild, but it gives you something to do.
• More about the statue quests can be found in Monk Statue Guide: [Link]
6. The next big change will come when you hit 19 levels in the guild and can train Iron Palm.
• Start using Iron Palm on everything. Even though you will not have it trained up high, keep using it.
• After you use Iron Palm enough times, it will unlock special trainers that will teach you more advanced attacks. A guide about the special monk trainers is here: [Link]
• The message you will receive when you've used Iron Palm enough is: 
• You feel like you have mastered the art of iron palm. It might be time to find another advanced technique.
• This also unlocks the next set of Monk guild quests.
7. Quick Tip 3: You may want to advance as quickly as possible to level 20 in the Monk guild so you can join a sect. Sect skills/rankings advance with the EXP you earn, so it can be helpful to be building that up as you are earning your normal EXP.
8. Focus on training up your special attacks gained from trainers.
• You can use these attacks as you would normally do during your normal day to day activities, but it can also be helpful to go to areas like Beastlands, and just murder a ton of small critters using these skills to quickly train them up.
9. Continue to do the Monk guild statue quests.
• You can complete one quest a day, so it will take you a few days to get through all of them.
• There are various rewards for doing these such as unlocking additional ki powers, adding elemental damage and resistances, etc.
10. Once you have 20 levels in the Monk guild you can join one of several martial arts sects which will offer you various other skills and abilities.
• Type "monk sect help" for more information on this.
• Here is a link to a page with more information about monk sects: [Link]

Guild Help

• Jermu's Monk Guide: Link
• Amazing guide explaining the different Monk skills
• Unacorda's Monk Guide: Link
• Shorter explanation of some of the Monk skills as well as trainers
• Batwiki entry on the Monk guild: Link
• Mostly just the information from the forum post above, but has links to the different skills
• Info on joining the Scarlet Lotus Sect: Link
• There are several sects you can join that give bonuses once you've gained 20 levels in the Monk guild.

Bonuses to Fighting Unarmed:

• (Bonus): Monks gain a bonus to their dodge skill when fully unarmed.
• After 20 levels in the Warrior Brotherhood, my character was receiving an extra 23% added onto my dodge skill when unarmed.
• (Bonus): Iron body reduces your criticals when fully unarmed.
• This makes up for the lack of being able to wield a shield.
• The nice thing is you'll be doing more damage with martial arts than if you were wielding a shield as well.

Guild Quests and Monk Statue Guide:

Note: You monk statue is a powerful bonus that will allow you to add elemental damage to your attacks and provides additional resistances to elemental attacks. It is unlocked via a series of guild quests.

• Monk Statue Guide: [Link]
• Warning: There are spoilers in this link as it contains quest walkthroughs

Once you use Iron Palm enough, you can unlock special trainers that will teach you advanced attacks once you complete a quests for them.

• Monk Special Trainer Guide: [Link]

Monk Skill Guide:

Monk Focused Offensive Skills:

Note: You can see more about the special trainer skills/attacks at their guide [here].

• (Skill) Controlled Motion
• Description: Will sometimes (very rarely) let you start using a skill in one room and then move to another room without it breaking. This has the potential to be super powerful since it  lets you start a really long skill in a "safe room", then pop into a monster room, smash them in the face, and then retreat before you take a lot of damage.
• Training Priority: (High to 30%. Medium afterwards)
• This skill is needed to complete several different Monk quests. So you'll need it to around 30% to avoid having to spend all day waiting for it to succeed.
• The skill is helpful, but inconsistent enough that it won't make a huge difference in your power level.
• Since skills don't cost EP until they actually "fire/complete", you might as well start an offensive skill before going into a room with an aggressive monster. Most of the time Controlled Motion will fail, but it doesn't cost you anything.
• Success Message:
• Your fluid motions allows you to move without breaking concentration
• (Skill) Iron Palm
• Description: The top tier *trainable* damage skill of the Monk guild. By using it a lot against enemies you can eventually unlock more advanced attack skills. This can be enhanced by using the Ki power (Statue or Belt) to add elemental damage to this attack. The elemental damage type is determined by the material you used to make your statue and belt.
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• You'll want to start using this once you can train it to unlock the more advanced attack skills ASAP. You will need to use it a hundred times or so for those advanced skills to become unlocked.
• Given the fact that Iron Palm is also one of your most reliable ways to do elemental damage, you will find yourself using it quite a bit even when you have other specialty attack skills available to you.
• Note:
• If you use the ki power "belt" or "statue" (learnable after a quest) enabled, you will get a bonus message telling you what elemental damage has been added to your attack. Eg:
• You feel poisonous energy blasting through your fist!
• Battle Messages (Worst to Best):
• You do a complex attack maneuver but miss
• You step inside {{ Targets }} guard and pummel it with series of chain-punches
• You duck to one side and deliver a strong backfist to {{ Targets }} temple!
• You grab {{ Target's }} hand and turn it making his wrist lock and causing serious pain!
• You grab {{ Target's }} thumb and twist it backwards until it breaks
• You grab {{ Target's }} arm and twist it dislocating his shoulder!
• You hit an open hand strike to {{ Target's }} side breaking several ribs with a loud *SNAP*.
• Hands moving faster than lightning you pound {{ Target }} several times before it even has time to realize what is happening
• You move with blinding speed and deliver a spinning roundhouse kick to {{ Target's }} temple and continue the movement by blasting his ribcage with a devastating back kick
• Bonus Iron Palm Attack Messages:
• You execute a final blow with SUPERB speed to make {{ Target's }} day
• You are at your best. You see a small opening and strike HARD at {{ Target's }} groin. WHOAA! You make it fall down
• NOW you really have it. You mutilate {{ Target's }} face with your INCREDIBLE finishing blow
• YOU HAVE IT! You execute triple-round-house-kick to {{ Target's }} head with UNEARTHLY speed. Its head makes a CRUNCHING sound and almost shifts from its place.
• (Skill) Joint Lock
• Description: A grapple like skill that will prevent your target from fleeing the room
• Training Priority: (Low)
• It's a nice skill to stop monsters from fleeing, but its not an everyday skill you'll use.
• This also has a history of being a good player killing skill if you are into that.
• Battle Messages:
• Initial Message: You make an adept attempt to grab a hold of {{ Target }} and apply a joint lock on {{ him/her/them }}.
• Success Message: You successfully apply the lock on {{ Target }}
• Ending/Failure: You cannot hold the joint lock on {{ Target }} anymore
• Notes/History:
• You can only use Monk skills while "channeling" this skill. If you try to use some other offensive skill/spell the joint lock will break.
• This skill used to be totally broken (as in the target had a 100% chance of breaking the effect) for years. It's been fixed but if you look through the old forum posts you'll see a lot of people complaining about it.
• (Skill) Kiai-Cry
• Description: An opening attack you can use to initiate combat that does some damage and has a chance to stun your opponent. Also has a chance of activating the Pattern Weave skill against your target, lowering their defense.
• Training Priority: (Medium)
• I'll be honest, I like this skill. Most other Monks complain that the skill doesn't do much damage, costs to many EPs (30), and has a very low chance to stun. When it is successful though, it seems to do a lot more damage than my normal Iron Palm attacks. I also love how it has a chance to enhance my other attacks by reducing my target's avoidance and even stunning them.
• Long story short, I recommend trying it out yourself. If you find it fun or useful train it up. But don't spend a ton of EXP on it until you've experimented with it, because you may very well find it doesn't fit your playstyle.
• Battle Messages (Worst to Best):
• You scream at {{ Target }} but it has no effect
• You can sense your opponent's weakness and with a fierce kiai cry you leap onto{{ Target }}. He panics and tries to flee before your mighty onslaught but stumbles. You start tearing him apart.
• (STUN) You glare at {{ Target }} intensively for only a tenth of a second, before you let out a high pitched kiai cry collecting all the KI power in your body and strike him. Faster than lightning you deliver a devastating series of chain punches to your enemy's head, crushing the skull and rendering him immobile for a moment!
• Bonus effects:
• You weave a {{ skill level }} pattern to confuse your opponent!
• This means you successfully used pattern weave as well to lower your target's avoidance.
• (Skill) Martial Arts
• Description: A weapons skill (much like shortswords/bludgeons/axes/etc) for unarmed combat. The core weapon skill of the Monk class.
• Training Priority: (Top Priority)
• This skill influences all the other damage skills you'll be using.
• Even though this is one of the more EXP expensive skills you can train, it is worth it.
• Notes:
• Using martial arts will change the damage messages for your attacks to be more colorful than the standard punch/claw messages you would normally get when attacking while unarmed.
• The Batwiki has a great list of the various martial arts damage message: [Link]
• You can use the "marts %" command to change the speed and damage of your martial arts attacks between 1 and 10. 1 maximizes damage, while 10 maximizes speed.
• The big reason you want to have harder hitting attacks is to start out a fight and to maximize the damage you cause when you score critical attacks. Otherwise faster attacks are generally better.
• (Skill) Pattern Weave
• Description: A two round attack that will reduce the evade statistics of your opponent. Basically it will make you hit more with your standard auto-attacks.
• Training Priority: (Medium Priority)
• This is more useful on longer fights. For shorter fights you will do more damage by using a normal damaging attack like Iron Palm
• Sometimes this is automatically cast/used when you start a fight with Kiai-cry. If you use Kiai-cry a lot you'll want to train up Pattern Weave as well to get the most benefit from it.
• Notes:
• I heard this effect lasts for around 30 seconds
• (Skill) Primal Adept
• Description: Increases the damage of certain race's "bonus" attacks, such a minotaur's horn attack
• Training Priority: (High if this skill is available to you)
• More free damage from your auto attacks is always a good thing!
• If your race doesn't have a bonus auto attack, this skill will not be available to you.
• (Skill) Punch
• Description: A basic 1 round attack skill.
• Training Priority: (If you are a newbie: High to Racial Max. Otherwise, Low)
• It's purely a "Newbie skill". But at the same time, everyone is a Newbie at some point!
• It only cost me around 200k EXP to train it to 90% which seems reasonable.
• Considering it only takes 1 round to fire off, this adds consistent and noticeable amount of damage to your attacks when you are leveling up and allows for quick hit and run damage sessions
• If you are not a newbie, then you'll still need to train it a bit for the first Monk quest, but otherwise you can skip this skill.
• Damage Messages (Worst to Best):
• Your enemy avoids your punch.
• You punch a glancing blow at {{ Target }}
• You punch an uppercut at {{ Target }}
• You punch a haymaker at {{ Target }}

Offensive Skills Shared With Other Guilds:

• (Skill) Bash
• Description: A two round newbie attack skill that gives you a chance to interrupt your target's skills/spells they are using/casting.
• Training Priority: (Low to 50%)
• Punch is generally a better "pure newbie" skill as you start out.
• Bash can be nice when you are starting out if you don't want to spam punch constantly, but you won't use it once you advance further in the guild
• The skill/spell interruption is pretty rare, so it won't make a huge difference in you day to day gameplay.
• Damage Messages (Worst to Best):
• Your bash at {{ Target }} misses by a mile
• Your bash sends {{ Target }} sprawling
• (Skill) Kick
• Description: A more advanced attack than Punch
• Training Priority: (Depends)
• It's purely a "Newbie skill". Once you start advancing in the guild you will not use Kick.
• That being said, I've gotten a lot of use out of it as I've been leveling up.
• This is a solid reliable skill that does damage. At only 15 EP per use, I've had good success with it and haven't regretted spending 700,000k getting trained up to 80%
• Still, that's a serious investment for a skill you won't be using later on.
• Damage Messages (Worst to Best):
• You aim a fast kick at {{Target}}'s head, but miscalculate and only manage to
• bruise a shoulder slightly
• You kick {{Target}} in the groin very hard making the foe double up in pain
• You swing your foot heavily, and {{Target}}'s kneecap makes a sickening 'CRACK!'

Offensive Support Skills:

• (Skill) Attack
• Description: Core skill that determines if you hit with your normal attacks
• Training Priority: (Very High to 70%)
• You will get a 30% bonus due to your background
• After getting Attack to 100%, every % is only worth 1/4. So you need to train it to 104% to see any improvement from 100%
• Still, even at a reduced value, there's certainly worse things to spend EXP on than maxing out Attack.
• (Skill) Combat Damage Analysis
• Description: This will tell you if the monster you are fighting has any resistances
• Training Priority: (Low)
• Once you become a high level character and have multiple damage options, this can be helpful, but until you can add elemental damages to your attacks here's not a whole lot you can do if you find out a monster resists physical damage.
• Notes:
• You need to use this skill in combat. It's not a passive skill or something you can use before combat like consider.
• (Skill) Enhance Criticals
• Description: Increases the damage of your critical hits
• Training Priority: (High)
• More damage is always good
• You will be doing a lot of attacks, so the bursty nature of critical hit chances will even out a bit. You'll likely be getting at least one critical hit in every longer fight.
• Notes:
• I don't know how much an actual impact this skill has on critical damage
• (Skill) Find Weakness
• Description: I've been told this increases your chance of scoring critical hits. Critical hits can really save a battle, so this is a great skill to have.
• Training Priority: (High)
• More damage is good, and this is a passive skill so it's always in effect. Other players seem to consider it valuable too, so you might as well max this out.
• Notes:
• Female Monks can train this to 100%. Male Monks can only train it to 90%
• There are two schools of thought when it comes to setting your martial arts speed for this. Faster attacks = More critical hits. Slower attacks = Harder hitting critical hits.
• (Skill) Stun
• Description: Gives you a chance to stun monsters, increasing the damage they take and breaking any skill/spell attempts they are getting ready
• Training Priority: (Low)
• This is not a reliable skill, and until you get it trained up to a very high level, your target will likely be able to resist these stuns
• I trained it because I had extra EXP, but I rarely see it make a difference in my fights.
• Notes:
• This is a passive skill so it will give you a flat chance to stun your opponent every round
• I suspect this skill will also make Kiai-Cry more effective, but that is 100% a guess and not based on any real data.
• (Skill) Throw Weight
• Description: Increases the damage you do based on your character's size and strength
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• More damage is always nice
• Notes:
• I don't know how much of an impact this skill actually has. If anyone has hard data I'd love if you would share it.
• (Skill) Tumbling Attack
• Description: Gives you a chance to hit your target even if they successfully dodge your first strike
• Training Priority: (Medium)
• More damage is always good, and most monsters can dodge attacks. Still this is more a high level skill vs. something that newer players will really benefit from a lot.
• To put it another way, it won't have a huge impact in most of your fights until you start fighting monsters/players with a very high dodge, and you have this skill trained up 50%+
• Notes:
• What is cool is you can see how many times this skill gave you extra hits in your "show summary" output.
• These will show up like "Dodged: 78 (Tumbled: 26)" 
• This means that my targets dodged 78 times total this session, but I still hit them 26 of those times due to my tumbling attack.
• (Skill) Vital Points
• Description: Will occasionally cause your attacks to do a "mini-critical" hit and cause more damage. Also improves your ability to use acupuncture to heal and at high levels removes the need to use needles. 
• Training Priority: (Medium to 50%)
• It's an expensive skill for what it does, so you don't need to max it out immediately. 
• On the flip side, you'll need it trained to around 50% to help advance you special attack skills learned from the Laenor Monk trainer.

Defensive Combat Skills:

• (Skill) Alertness
• Description: Helps prevent you from getting ambushed
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• Avoiding getting ambushed and being able to flee will save your life many times
• Also this is a quality of life improvement to be able to keep going when traveling and avoid fights.
• Notes:
• I don't think this applies when you are in a party. In that case, Leadership is the skill that determines if your party gets ambushed
• (Skill) Combat Sense
• Description: This skill makes your armor more effective. At 50% it will essentially increase your armor protection by two tier levels.
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• As a passive skill, this is always in effect. It'll make you much more effective as a tank and makes a noticeable difference in your survivability
• Notes:
• This only impacts armor effectiveness. I'm not sure if this is a flat bonus or a percentage bonus.
• (Skill) Contact Reflexes
• Description: A Monk only skill that decreases the damage you take
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• Passive defense skills are great! It'll always be there helping you out.
• Notes:
• I'm not sure of the underlaying mechanic for this skill.
• At the very least, it does increase your armour protection, much like combat sense. Though I think it adds to your racial armour protection vs. enhancing worn armour.
• (Skill) Defence Sense
• Description: This skill increases your +avoid statistic. Basically you will be hit less which means you take less damage.
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• Less hits = more survivability
• This is better than Dodge, since Dodge can be negated by tumbling attack.
• Notes:
• You can see your ability to avoid hits in your score. Aka "You have a mediocre ability for avoiding hits".
• (Skill) Discipline
• Description: Prevents you from being interrupted when you get hit hard
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• It's really annoying when your big hit gets interrupted. This is specifically a problem when you are going in and out to whittle a big monster down and they get extra big hits on you when you enter combat
• Notes:
• This doesn't prevent stuns. It just help keeps your attacks from being interrupted.
• (Skill) Dodge
• Description: Allows you to avoid hits.
• Training Priority: (Low until you can train it to 30%. Then High)
• Dodge is a weird defensive skills since it doesn't do much at low levels since even when you dodge, most monsters can use tumbling attack to still target you.
• It's only when you can get dodge at around 40+ that you will start to see it reduce the damage you take.
• Eventually as you get it up to 70%+ it will become a huge source of damage reduction.
• Notes:
• Dodge is more effective the less weight you are carrying. So if you can reduce the weight of your armor (for example by getting it feather weighted) that will also increase the effectiveness of your dodging.
• This is one defensive skill Monks tend to benefit from more than other classes since they don't need to carry around heavy weapons.
• IMPORTANT: As an added perk, Monks get a bonus to dodge when they are not wielding anything in their hands
• With 15 levels in the Monk guild, I'm seeing a 14% skill increase to my dodge when unarmed.
• With 20 levels, I'm seeing a 23% skill increase when unarmed
• (Skill) Iron Body
• Description: This skill has both passive and active uses. Passively it will increase your physical resistance, allowing you to absorb more damage. It will also reduce the amount of damage you take from critical attacks. If you actively use it, it will tell you what your resistances are to different types of damage.
• Training Priority: (High)
• Given the amount of hitpoints you have will be low, anything that makes them "count more" by increasing your resistances can have a huge impact.
• The protection from critical attacks is also key, since you likely won't be wielding a shield. This skill will save your life.
• The active use will display more information at once as you train it higher, but that isn't a big deal since you can just use it a bunch of times to figure out what your resistances are, since the types information it provides you is randomly determined.
• Notes:
• This skill will not work if you wield anything in your hands
• The resistances displayed by the active use of this skill are not always the same, so there is some "randomness" it adds to keep them from being exact numbers.
• Description of resistance to critical attacks (as you train it up):
• Your poor skills offer almost no protection against violent attacks
• Your weak skills are little more than a decoration against criticals
• (Skill) Leadership
• Description: Helps prevent your party members from getting ambushed when you are leading a party
• Training Priority: (Medium)
• Just like Alertness, but applies to your party members instead of yourself. If one of your party members gets ambushed, it will stop your whole party (so you don't leave them behind accidently).
• Avoiding getting ambushed and being able to flee will save your life many times
• The only reason I prioritize this less than Alertness is as a Newbie, you probably aren't going to be leading many parties.
• This is a great quality of life improvement to be able to keep going when traveling and avoid fights.
• (Skill) Stunned Maneuvers
• Description: Prevents you from being stunned
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• When you get stunned, it's pretty much always an instant "run away or die" situation. So anything that can prevent stuns will really help you out in the long run.
• Even with parties, it is never a good day when your tank gets stunned and starts taking 2x their normal damage.
• Notes:
• Even if you max this skill out, you will still eventually get stunned. This just minimizes the effect
• You will see a message when this skill activates saying something along the lines of "You get stunned but shrug the effects off"
• (Skill) Unarmed Parry
• Description: This is  like the normal parry skill, but only works when you are fully unarmed. Aka it does not work with a shield. But it lets you reduce your attack speed by up to 51% to increase the chances of you parrying (aka avoiding) an attack.
• Training Priority: (High)
• As a Monk, you will not have a lot of hitpoints or armour. So being able to dodge hits is important.
• This skill is expensive, and using it lowers your normal auto-attack, so there are trade-offs, but it will keep you alive longer to use your skills to do real damage to your target
• Notes:
• This skill automatically swaps with the normal parry skill depending on if you have anything in your hands or not.
• Using this skill is also exactly like parry. Just type "parry 51" to set it to max where it will reduce you attack speed by 51 percent but max out your parry chance.
• This skill is slightly worse than the normal parry skill in that you can't wield a shield while enabling it. This leaves you more open to critical hits.

Healing and Buffing Skills:

• (Skill) Acupuncture
• Description: The primary skill Monks use to heal others. Can also heal themselves with this once they complete a guild quest
• Training Priority: (High)
• You'll need to train it to around 50% to complete one of the Monk trainer's tasks
• Also being able to heal people is always a good thing!
• Notes:
• The skills "Vital Points" and "Kata" make this healing more effective
• There is a 15 minute cooldown between uses of this skill
• (Skill) Baptize
• Description: Allows you move another player's alignment to be closer to good
• Training Priority: (Very Low)
• This can be helpful in a party if you are killing a lot of good aligned monsters which can cause problems for your healer.
• Another common use of this in a party is to make your tank good so that you can buff them using your bless skill.
• As a party skill though, I'm not ranking this very high as it really only matters as you get more advanced.
• (Skill) Bless
• Description: A once per boot buff you can apply to other players who's alignment is good
• Training Priority: (High)
• Don't use this skill on a player unless:
• You have their permission
• You have Bless trained to a high percentage
• Basically since its a once per-boot buff, when you cast it on somebody they then can't have a more experienced player cast it on them later if your spell fails or gives poor results.
• (Skill) First Aid
• Description: Primarily used to revive/save unconscious players and save them from death. Can also be used to heal yourself or other players with bandages but that gets very expensive and doesn't heal a whole lot.
• Training Priority: (Very Low)
• Being able to save another critically injured player is nice, but Monks don't have any supporting skills to drag an unconscious party member out of a fight. So it will be very rare that you'll need to use this skill
• Most of the time you'll use this is when another player does something "fun" like open a trapped chest.
• Still using it rarely is not never, and your friends will appreciate you saving them from death!
• Notes:
• You'll need to train this a bit for one of the Monk statue quests. But it doesn't need to be trained to a high level.
• The main users of First Aid for healing are Rangers who can pick cotton plants and make bandages. If you are partying with a Ranger, you can ask them for bandages, but otherwise bandages cost 500 gold from the store so are too expensive to use normally.
• (Skill) Kata
• Description: Increases the chance (and potentially effect) of the next skill you use. Basically it does for skills what the ceremony skill does for spells.
• Training Priority: (Medium)
• It's a cool skill, so I'm tempted to rate it higher, but since this enhances other skills it usually is better to train those skills instead.
• It's helpful to use this skill before meditation to get the most out of those rests.
• Notes:
• Yes the Kata skill can be used to increase the Kata skill. So using this multiple times in a row has the chance to give you a really big bonus.
• The Kata skill can also increase the ability of the Ceremony skill if you want to get additional bonuses when casting a spell.
• The type of Kata you perform will depend on the martial arts sect (if any) that you are a member of.
• Types of Kata:
• Default: Peaceful Heian Shodan kata
• (Skill) Ki
• Description: This is a guild defining skill, allowing you to transfer spell points into bonuses to your character.
• Training Priority: (Very High)
• This is the skill that makes Monks stand out. Gives you a ton of flexibility about how to configure your Monk.
• Ki will also increase the effectiveness of the Mind Over Body skill, meaning it can increase your stats even more than just actively using Ki.
• Guide:
• As a general note, using kata before ki does not seem to increase the ki effects by any noticeable amount.
• You can "use ki at list" to see the available powers you can enhance with ki as well as your current active ki powers
• The list of powers available to you will grow as you complete statue quests for the monk guild. Initially you only will be power and strength
• You can "use ki at add <list>" to turn on ki for various powers.
• You can activate multiple ki powers at once with this command, but you need to separate them with commas. Aka: "use ki at add strength, power"
• The cost of each ki power is cumulative, so using both strength and power will reduce your total spellmax by 40% (20% + 20%).
• I believe the impact that ki has to the bonuses increases the higher you train the ki skill. So initially it will be a bit underwhelming (such as +1 to STR), but can become substantial as you train ki closer to 100%.
• When Ki was trained to 17% I was getting +4 STR.
• When Ki was trained to 36% I was getting +9 STR.
• You can "use ki at remove list" or "use ki at clear" to remove the ki effect from selected powers and get you spellmax back. You'll still need to regenerate you missing spell points like normal though.
• If you want to add elemental powers to your Iron Palm strike:
• You need to apply the "belt" OR the "statue" effect. You can only have one active at once.
• The type of elemental damage is determined by the material that you used to craft your statue and your statue's belt.
• These don't have any spellmax drain so the only reason to remove the effect is if you are switching between the two, or you are worried the monster you are fighting is resistant to both.
• Many of the ki powers are not available at the start and need to be unlocked by completing monk quests.
• If you "use ki at power" it will drain all of your remaining spell points. I've been told it will then heal party members by a small amount.
• Every player I've talked to says this is an old and broken skill option that really isn't worth using. It's better to cast heal light wounds instead.
• Ki Powers:
• Power
• Spellmax drain: 20% 
• Effect: Adds more damage to your martial arts attacks
• Strength
• Spellmax drain: 20% 
• Effect: Increases the Strength of your character
• With Ki trained to 5%, this increases your STR by 1
• Belt 
• Spellmax drain: 0% 
• Effect: Adds elemental damage to your iron palm attack
• Note: The elemental damage is based on the belt on your monk statue
• Unlock: Becomes available after the 3rd Monk statue quest
• Statue
• Spellmax drain: 0%
• Effect: Adds elemental damage to your iron palm
• Note: The elemental damage is based on the belt on your monk statue
• Unlock: Becomes available after the 6th Monk statue quest
• Haste
• Spellmax drain: 45% 
• Effect: Adds haste to your monk skills. This includes both defensive and offensive skills. There is a reason this is so expensive!
• Unlock: Becomes available after the 7th Monk statue quest
• Healing 
• Spellmax drain: 15% 
• Effect: Adds additional hit point regeneration (+hpr)
• Unlock: Becomes available after the 4rth Monk statue quest
• Ki Siphon
• Spellmax drain: 15% 
• Effect: Adds additional spell point regeneration (+spr).
• Unlock: Becomes available after the 4rth Monk statue quest
• Elemental
• Spellmax drain: 15% 
• Effect: Add elemental damage to your normal martial arts hits.
• Available elements: air, fire, asphyxiation and cold
• Unlock: Becomes available after the 8th Monk statue quest
• You need to do a separate unlock per element
• (Skill) Light Steps
• Description: Lets you run across water. Basically a skill version of the spell "water walking". The downside is you need to keep moving or the skill channeling will end and you'll find yourself in the water.
• Training Priority: (Low)
• You'll need to train this a bit to finish one of the Monk guild quests, but in most cases I just end up relying on the Swim skill instead.
• This can be useful if your race is allergic to water (or is a catfolk and just hates being wet)
• Notes/Questions:
• You need to start this skill on dry land. Can't build up enough speed otherwise. So plan things out so you don't find yourself in the middle of the sea before using this skill.
• While the text of light steps says it was keeping me above lava when I was crossing it, I still took massive damage. TLDR: Don't count on this skill to protect you from lava.
• (Skill) Meditation
• Description: The Monk guild's version of camping. Lets you rest for a bit and recharge hit, endurance, and spell points.
• Training Priority: (High)
• While Monks have a number of ways to boost their recharge rate, being able to take a break and regenerate is very helpful
• Unlike the camping skill, meditation can fail when you use it, which means it can save you time to have it trained up to a higher level.
• The higher percentage you have Meditation trained, the longer it will last and the more you will regenerate.
• Notes:
• This skill has a cooldown much like the Camping skill. (around 5 minutes)
• Unlike the camping skill, you can cancel it at anytime by typing "STOP".
• (Skill) Mind over Body
• Description: The basic casing of it will just satiate you so you don't have to worry about eating food. But you can modify the skill to also provide you stats and regeneration for up to 30 minutes. Certain stats and regeneration bonuses are more difficult to successfully execute than others.
• Training Priority: (High)
• The base use-case of being able to ignore food is pretty worthless as you can always cast "create food" instead. But being able to increase your stats this skill is amazing!
• The higher you've trained this skill the bigger bonus it will give you and the longer it will last.
• Initially you'll likely only be able to increase your STR by 1 for two minutes, which isn't that helpful.
• Eventually you'll be able to get 20+ STR that lasts for around 30 minutes.
• Training Ki will also dramatically improve the effectiveness of this skill
• Stats You Can Increase (in order of difficulty):
• cha, dex, str, con, wis, int, spr, hpr, epr, tick
• Messages:
• Difficulty Estimate:
• You try and visualize a food with bonuses to {{ List }}. This seems like an {{ difficulty }} feat.
• Success:
• You quench your feeling of hunger
• Failure:
• You try to quench your hunger through willpower but DAMN that is hard.
• Failure (Your skill is still on cooldown):
• Gluttonous thoughts fill your mind, spoiling some of your focus
• Guide:
• If you just "use mind over body" a successful skill was satiate you but won't apply any other bonuses.
• You can "use mind over body at list" to get a list of bonuses you can enhance using the skill.
• You can also "use mind over body at <list>" to apply it to multiple bonuses at once.
• Note: Unlike the ki skill's list, the mind over body list is NOT comma separated. So for example you could type "use mind over body at dex str"
• The more bonuses you try to add at once, the harder it will be to succeed using the skill.
• Notes:
• Races that can not eat (such as skeletons and litches) can not use Mind over Body and therefore can not gain the stat boosts it provides.
• This skill will show up in your "show effects" list as "Imaginary food"
• (Skill) Skulking
• Description: Lets you hide and move between rooms. Much less effective than the Invisibility spell and can fail suddenly and unexpectedly leading to fun.
• Training Priority: (Medium)
• While not reliable, being able to sneak/skulk will help you get through some tough areas.
• I'd recommend using a kata before using this skill to make it more effective.
• Skulking Messages:
• Starting Message: 
• Success: You move to the nearest shadow and start moving very, very slowly
• Failure: You try to hide inside your own pocket. Perhaps you need to try again
• Imminent Failure Soon Warning: You feel like your movement is making you more and more visible to keen eyes
• Leaving Skulking Failure Messages: You try to hide in a shadow way too small for your body. Feeling silly, you give up

Other Skills/Spells:

• (Skill) Consider
• Description: Gives you an idea of how tough a fight you are going to have if you attack a creature.
• Training Priority: (High to Racial Maximum)
• I use this skill all the time when exploring a new area. It's saved my life more times than I can count
• Consider is more "accurate" for melee/tank guilds than spellcasters. Since Monks are a tank class, this means the information consider provides gives a good idea if a fight is doable or not.
• Notes:
• Here is a list of consider messages provided by the Batwiki: Link
• The higher you have consider trained, the more information you will get from it.
• (Skill) Fresh Pants
• Description: Allows you to make pants from a slain monster's corpse.
• Training Priority: (Medium to 40%)
• You'll need this skill trained for one of the Monk quests.
• Otherwise you won't use it much. It's easier to bury corpses, and the money you can make from Fresh Pants is limited compared to the trouble and time of using it.
• Notes:
• I actually like this skill and will sometimes use it when I'm bored. So it isn't a waste, but it's also not something to dump a ton of EXP into.
• (Skill) Hiking
• Description: Reduces the EP cost of traveling in the Outerworld.
• Training Priority: (High)
• Moving in the Outerworld uses a lot of Endurance points. This will help you explore different areas faster and easier.
• (Skill) Hunting
• Description: Lets you use hunting to catch food in the outerworld
• Training Priority: (Skip)
• If you are worried about food you can always cast the spell "create food" that is available for free from your background
• Notes:
• The food you catch with hunting can be made better if you cook it on a campfire.
• (Skill) Leather Craft
• Description: Lets you create random leather pieces of armour from corpses
• Training Priority: (Skip)
• While it can be nice to sell the armour you create, and it'll generally be worth more than the pants you could create with the fresh pants skill, having to carry it all back to a vendor and take the time to use this skill usually isn't worth it.
• Most of the items I created sold for between 30 and 250 gold each.
• If you want to create a leather belt for your monk statue, you still use the sewing skill, and not this one.
• Notes:
• You can use this skill at corpses to make armour pieces, (much like the skill fresh pants)
• Unlike fresh pants, you can make all sorts of armour pieces, such as belts and girdles.
• The "type" of material used in the armour depends on the creature you killed. So for example, you might create a feather cloak
• At least according to the help description, if you are wielding a sharp knife that will increase your success chance with this skill.
• (Skill) Sculpture
• Description: Lets you create sculptures from different materials. This is important for creating your Monk sculpture but otherwise you won't be using it much
• Training Priority: (Skip until you get the guild quest to create a sculpture. Then train it to whatever you are comfortable with)
• Notes:
• The material you make your Monk sculpture out of will influence the protections and damage bonuses it gives.
• You'll need to have the material you want to sculpt laying on the ground when you use this skill.
• To use sculpture the command syntax is "use sculpture at <material>"
• If successful, you will be prompted to enter a name, a short description, and a long description for your item
• By default, you can end your typing by entering '**' on a blank line.
• The name and the short description MUST match what you are told in the note if you are making a statue for your Monk room. Otherwise the sculpture will not be accepted.
• (Skill) Sewing
• Description: Lets you sew clothing. If you do a good enough job some of that clothing can give +Charisma bonuses.
• Training Priority: (High to 10%. Low priority after that)
• You need to train it a bit for your monk statue quests
• Being able to sew higher quality items will improve the bonuses you get from your statue (you have to make the items for it yourself vs. buying from other players), but that's more of a highbie optimization once you have lots of EXP to burn. Lower level players have more important things to spend their EXP on.
• Notes:
• The easiest way to sew is to go to the Adventurer's Outfitters store in Arelium.
• You'll need to have a loom to sew. Luckily there is a free one in Adventurer's Outfitters. Otherwise you can buy a portable one for 10k gold if you want.
• You'll also need to buy and wield a needle. You can get one from Adventurer's Outfitters. Don't forget to unwield the needle before you go off fighting!
• The material you'll need for sewing needs to be on the ground when you sew items.
• If your sewing skill is low you'll end up wasting a lot of material in failures vs. making anything. Even the stuff you make will be "ugly" or at best "plain".
• While you can pay 50 gold to attempt to dye pieces of clothing when creating them in the Adventurer's Outfitters, I'd recommend buying a bottle of dye and dying the finished clothing piece you want to keep instead. That way you don't waste 50 gold on each of your failures.
•  To sew, the command syntax is: "use sewing at <material> make <type>"