The Melee
Being a melee is not only an excellent way to begin your life in Dereth, but it is also a fully capable lifestyle choice at pretty much any level. Melees are low maintenance and easy to learn, but there are plenty of nuances that can help you beat enemies much stronger than you.
How To Start
Begin your life as a melee by choosing which weapon you want to use. Your options are Sword, Axe, Mace, Spear, Unarmed Combat, Dagger, and Staff. Each weapon has its own benefits and disadvantages. Swords are the strongest weapons, but learning to be a swordsman requires more skill credits than any other weapon. Sword also lacks a bludgeoning attack. Axe and Mace are quite similar - they are cheaper than swords and slightly less damaging, but both have a bludgeoning attack. Maces lack a slashing attack and Axes lack piercing. Spear is the cheapest so far, but its damage is noticeably worse than sword, mace, or axe. Unarmed, Dagger, and Staff are all racial skills - that is, you get them trained for free if you choose the right heritage group. Of the three, only Unarmed is a strong melee skill. Daggers and Staffs are very underpowered and both lack at least one damage type (bludgeoning for daggers, slashing and piercing for staffs). Unarmed is the only melee skill that offers all seven damage types and although the damage on Unarmed weapons is low, Unarmed's damage modifier is based on skill instead of strength. That bonus, coupled with the extremely fast animation for punching, more than makes up for the low weapon damage.
Once you choose your weapon, you will want to specialize it. You will also want to specialize your defense, which should be either Melee Defense or Life Magic. Choosing Melee Defense will make you adept at fighting swarm monsters like Olthoi and Tuskers and generally make you into a dungeon crawler. If you choose Life Magic, you will be more capable against large, outdoor monsters. Eventually you will probably want to have both skills, but that will have to wait until you grow up. You will also need Healing to keep yourself from dying. Other skills you will most likely want to take eventually are Arcane Lore to activate magical gear, Mana Conversion to help you cast spells, and Creature Magic to increase your stats. I personally like to have Arcane Lore specialized on a melee to help cut down on the number of spells you need to cast. Chances are you won't be able to pick up all those skills at creation, so pick and choose.
Your last job in creation is to set your starting attributes. You absolutely must set Strength and Coordination to 100 to make sure you have the most weapon skill you can muster. (Dagger is the exception - start that skill with 100 Coordination and 100 Quickness.) Now you have 90 extra credits to spend and you will most likely want to divide them between Quickness and Focus. If you chose to specialize Melee Defense, put more into Quickness. If you prefer Life Magic, choose focus. You can allocate points to Endurance and Willpower if you like, but those attributes have far less bearing on your character than Quickness or Focus.
What You Need
Now that your character is finished, you will need to equip him. Every character in AC needs Armor, a Spellcasting impliment, the appropriate Spellcasting Foci, and spell components, so don't forget those. As a melee, you can carry a lot of weight, so don't be afraid of the heaviest armors like Celdon. If you do have Melee Defense specialized, you won't be as reliant on your armor rating as other characters, so you can swap out high level armor for lower level armor that casts good spells. I actually carry two sets of armor on my melee. One suit is made of lower level armor that casts Major Cantrips and the other is a suit of maximum armor level tinkered Celdon for those occasions where I do take a lot of melee damage. Your casting device doesn't have to be anything fancy, but I would recommend either a Focusing Stone or an Invoker. Both offer stackable buffs to your spellcasting skill, but the Invoker offers a big Mana Conversion bonus too, so that one is preferable. You'll also need Foci in whichever magic schools you have trained. Buy these from Scriveners in all the major towns, but be aware that each one takes up a backpack slot. Having a Foci allows you to simplify your spell component needs down to Prismatic Tapers and Scarabs. I carry 500 Prismatic Tapers, 5 of each scarab from Lead to Gold, and then 20 Pyreals and at least 20 Platinum Scarabs. If you do a lot of casting in the field, you will want to buy more tapers and scarabs, but if you only cast spells to buff yourself, then you should be fine with those numbers.
As a melee, you will need a few more items to be effective. You will need a Weapon, a Shield, Heal Kits, and Stamina fuel.
Your weapon is the most important item you have. Make sure it's a good one. At low levels, your chocie will be somewhat irrelevant as you will outgrow it quickly, but as you improve in skill, you will have access to stronger weapons. Once you reach a base skill of 325 or so, you will be keeping each weapon for a long enough period of time to warrant investing in the best weapon you can find. You want a weapon with high base damage, good modifiers, and low workmanship. Unfortunately, you can't really afford to be that picky. Your weapon needs to be imbued with a Resistance Rending material to make it strong and that process only has a 33% success rate. Once you do have an imbued weapon, you can tinker it further. To maximize your weapon's damage, you will want to add Iron and Granite to the weapon. Consult the weapon tinkering program found in the Links Section to find out how to go about adding Granite and Iron. Ultimately, you will want to have a properly imbued weapon for each damage type your skill offers. That means tracking down a lot of different weapons and blowing a lot of them up. You should have the strength to carry one weapon for each damage type with you wherever you go, which makes you quite versatile.
A shield is a fairly easy choice to make - choose one with the best armor level that has the best spells. There are many quest shields that will serve you well, including the Diamond Shield, Doppelganger Shield, Nefane Shield, and Caliginous Aegis. If you prefer a loot-generated shield, find one with good armor level and low workmanship. Shields max out at about AL 180, so get as close to that number as you can. If you can afford it, a shield with a good Major Cantrip is an excellent choice too. Mine casts Major Invulnerability.
Your choice in Heal Kits is even easier than your choice in Shields. There are only three types of kits worth having - Treated, Renegade, and Plentiful. Treated are the easiest and cheapest to find, even dropping in monster loot. Renegade Kits come from a quest that offers 10 kits a week. Plentiful Kits are primarily a reward from the Bobo quest, but you can also earn one for each uncarved Singularity Key you trade in to the collector in Timaru. Renegade and Plentiful Kits are better than Treateds, but the choice between Plentiful and Renegade depends on your play style. Renegade Kits offer a larger bonus to your healing skill than Plentiful Kits, but they heal less health. Plentiful Kits also have twice as many uses as Renegade Kits. If your heal skill is low, stick with Renegade Kits. If you rarely fail a heal, Plentifuls will be your best bet.
Stamina fuel also is a personal choice. If you are really concerned with your burden, then you will want to invest in the food with the best stamina to weight ratio, which is probably Winter Lager from the Nanto barkeeper. If you are less concerned with your burden, you would probably benefit most from the food that has the biggest charge per item, which is the Elaborate Field Ration. These are made by cooks - each pack of rations make 25 edible pieces, so it's very cheap. The best stamina restorer around is the Stamina Philtre, but those are only available in monster loot and from the Enrico's Letters quest. You do have an alterative if you don't want to keep a stash of stamina food on you - use life magic to restore your stamina. It's very cheap and quite effective, but you need to go from melee mode to mage mode, which can be quite dangerous. I only restore stamina with magic when all my enemies are dead. It's also a good idea to eat or drink whatever stamina foods or potions you find on your defeated foes. That will save you from having to restock as often.
Basic Combat
Melee combat is a fairly simple matter - you find an enemy, go into combat mode, and then select your attack height. Each monster is easier to hit at a specific height, so experiment! Some creatures must be attacked at a specific height or you won't hit them at all. For instance, you must attack high or medium to hit a Wasp and you must swing low or medium to hit a rat. You also need to select whether you want to hit with smaller, faster strikes or attack using powerful, slow attacks. I personally prefer smaller and faster, as it is more stamina-efficient. Characters using multi-strike swords and daggers need to select full power to activate the multi-strike ability. You will keep attacking until either you or the monster is dead. Keep an eye on your stats. If your health falls below halfway, it's time to heal! The lower your health, the more difficult it is to heal and the more likely you are to die. Better quality healing kits make it easier to heal, but don't tempt fate. Kits are cheap and easy to come by. Also watch your stamina. If you run out, you will be unable to make strong attacks, your melee defense will be severely reduced, and you will be unable to heal. If you are fighting a swarm of monsters like Olthoi, try your best to keep them all in front of you so your shield can help reduce damage and try to limit the number who are actively hitting you. If you can keep the swarm stacked up in a narrow hallway, you can effectively reduce the fight to two or three at a time, meaning you will burn health and stamina much slower. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, so know when to fall back to a easily defendable position or when to leave entirely.
The Bottom Line
Melees are quite simple to play, but they aren't perfect. Here are the pros and cons:
Pros:
Cons: