All the stuff nobody else thought to tell you (noob+)

I'm not going to tell you here how to build your first character in detail. I will point out that, like many games, there's a lot of value in min-maxing. Invest heavily in your primary stat and never have a Constitution of less than 14. It's also recommended to have a Strength high enough to carry loot. Your carry limit is listed at the bottom of your Inventory screen. Carrying too much will make you 'encumbered' which will slow you down, prevent tumbling, etc. Worse, there are spells that can reduce your Str to zero and leave you 'helpless' (unable to do anything but run around like a headless chicken). A Str of 11 or more eliminates that risk from one of the more common ones at low levels: Ray of Enfeeblement. Note that Str from gear counts for these things. (Hint: That means that stats from gear DON'T count for everything. Specifically, they don't count for Feat prerequisites. In fact, Feat prereqs have a very limited list of things that count; the logic is sound: the things not counted can change, which would remove the Feat's validity.)

Intelligence affects the number of Skill points you get. 'Nuff said.

When you're working with 28 point builds, compromises will probably have to be made.

Caster note: To cast spells of a particular level, the relevant spellcasting stat has to be 10 + the level of the spell (i.e. 11 to cast L1 spells; 19 to cast L9 spells). Stat bonuses from gear count. Thus, an exception to the advice to maximize your spellcasting stat arises if you mostly cast buffs and the like (e.g. Paladins and Rangers). Those classes can literally dump their spellcasting stat and use gear to be able to cast.

Again, this is not a primer on all the Skills and their value or use. I'll point out gotchas. And remember that both gear and Stats add bonuses to your Skill investments when you actually use the skills... but might not count for anything requiring a prerequisite Skill level.

Everyone should probably invest in either Spot or Listen. Otherwise, sneaky enemies will get the first hit, and for many, their first hit is a Trip, which leaves you on the ground, helpless, taking extra damage - or a backstab, which does extra damage. It's especially important for casters, since they're easiest to Trip AND they're the ones who want to hit enemies at a distance, before they close. Spot shows you a foggy greyish silhouette of sneaking mobs; Listen shows red flashes at their footsteps.

Balance doesn't necessarily prevent being Tripped (or otherwise rendered prone by other means), though it may. What it does do is reduce the time it takes to get back on your feet.

Concentration is essential for Monks and casters, though for different reasons. If you're playing a Monk, look up the class on ddowiki.com for an explanation I won't repeat. Casters' spellcasting can be interrupted by damage taken; Concentration makes it require more damage to do so.

Heal is mostly useless (and Healing Kits are almost entirely useless). The broadest value to Heal is that it increases the amount of health regained when resting at a Rest Shrine. Here's the kicker: Only the Heal skill of the person with the highest nearby counts. Seldom does the tiny spell power bonus to Positive Energy (healing) spells from the Heal skill matter. The exception is melee classes that get low-level positive energy spells, like Paladins and Rangers. Actual healers are more likely to over-heal than under-heal and thus the positive spell power from the Heal skill isn't particularly valuable. Repair skill is essentially Heal skill for Warforged; it's even less useful since Warforged are relatively rare.
Oddly, the greatest value to Heal may come from its foil: the Heal skill increases negative energy spell power. So if your casting element is negative energy, you will want to invest in Heal.

Jump isn't really required. Quests are designed so you can get through them with a negative Jump skill (armor can reduce some skills.. it's called ACP or Armor Check Penalty). However, if you're ranged or a caster, you often want/need to stand in one place (moving creates certain penalties). Jumping up and down doesn't count as moving. But it does make ranged projectiles and ray spells from mobs miss a lot. As noted other places, the effects of Jump cap when your Jump hits 40. However, Sneaking reduces your Jump by 20, so Sneaky characters can benefit from a Jump of up to 60.

UMD is considered essential by many players. If you plan to use utility scrolls (Jump, Haste, etc), then it's probably worth the investment, even if it's cross-class (you get half as much value per point invested). Otherwise, you might be better off to invest your skill points elsewhere when you're a newbie; reaching enough UMD to use some of the more helpful scrolls like Teleport and Raise Dead is likely to be near-impossible. Gear with UMD bonuses is rare and the bonuses are small.

Some people swear by Tumble. I almost never use it. I can't provide unbiased advice on this one.

Finally, there are the Rogue skills. Trappers need Spot, Search, and Disable. While Open Locks is far from necessary, it's handy. Hide and Move Silently are used in combination to form the Sneak Feat (you need to be both unseen AND unheard to pass unnoticed). Sneaking is really only useful solo and pretty much doesn't work at all in Reaper difficulty. You have been warned. (Caveat: There are a few abilities that require you to activate them from stealth. Keep an eye out for those in various Enhancement or Epic Destiny trees.)
Note that Spot is usually the trapper's weakness. Each Skill has an associated Stat that provides a bonus. Spot is based on Wisdom, which Trappers usually dump. Search and Disable are based on Intelligence. Int-based Rogues are the best Trappers. If you fail to Spot traps, Wis gear might help.
Also keep in mind that, while failing to Disable a trap can blow up the box (harming or even killing the trapper), you can make multiple attempts to Open Locks until you roll high enough to succeed. All it costs is time and Thieves' Tools. You don't need to max Open Locks. You DEFINITELY want to max Spot, Search, and Disable.

Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate are all about controlling aggro for a few seconds at at time. However, they're also useful in a lot of dialog options in various places; this is why they're collectively known as the 'social' skills. Note that in DDO, Sneak Attacks don't require invisibility or even hiding (Sneaking). Which makes the term 'Sneak Attack' a bit of a misnomer. In reality, SA only requires that you not have your target's aggro. Soloing a Rogue type is difficult, since SA and Critical Hits are a large part of their DPS and you'll need some way to dump aggro to use SA.

Of the remainder, Haggle and Swim are all but useless. Collecting plat isn't challenging, and as long as you have an Underwater Action item, Swim is just a time-saver. Perform and Spellcraft are largely about Spell Power. If you cast damaging spells, invest in the relevant one. Perform is also a prereq for some Bard abilities.

The in-game currency in DDO is Platinum (or plat or PP). There is a plat storage limit.

For VIP (subscriber) and Premium (have paid $$ for something) toons, that limit is based on a 32 bit unsigned integer's storage in copper, or just shy of 4.3 million plat.

For F2P, the limit at L1 is 1250 PP and it doubles every level until it reaches the same maximum of just under 4.3 million plat at L13.

Note that the F2P plat cap does NOT go away when you Reincarnate. And being above your plat cap leads to some very annoying issues (check out 'Currency' on ddowiki.com).

Platinum isn't hard to come by. If you aren't constantly spending it on new gear as newbie, odds are you'll hit the F2P limit at some point. You can mail plat, which costs plat. The limit per mail message is about 11K PP (9999 PP, 9999 GP, 9999 SP, + 9999 CP).

The DDO Store sells a Shared Bank - Platinum Storage that is independent of the plat storage limit and can be purchased in increments.

DDO Points are a 'shoulder currency' between real $$ and in-game plat. You earn DDO points by playing or you can buy them. Buying DDO Points even once makes you Premium forever, which has some beneficial effects, including permanently eliminating the F2P plat cap (details on the 'Account Comparisons' page on ddowiki.com). I tend to use a metric for comparing prices that values 1 DDO Point at 1 cent. This ignores the free ones you earn and assumes you're buying them in about middle-of-the-road quantities. Gives a basis for comparison, though, even if it's a vague one.

The DDO Store in-game (Ctrl-S) offers a vast selection of things you can buy with DDO Points. I recommend ignoring all consumables and the like and investing in things like Adventure Packs, Stat Tomes, or Shared Bank space, including Crafting Storage space. There's probably going to be an entire section on this somewhere sooner or later.

As for earning DDO Points, VIP players get a 'free' (i.e. included in their sub price) 500 DDO Points per month. In addition, every 100 Favor ('Favor' on ddowiki.com) earned provides 25 DDO Points (you'll get an announcement and a Mail message). And the first toon on your account to reach certain Favor milestones on each server will earn a DDO Point bonus (Details on the 'DDO Point' page on ddowiki.com).

Astral Shards are the premium currency. Some things can only be purchased with AS. There is a secondary Auction House that operates solely in AS. That means the options for Auctions are plat or AS (no DDO Point AH exists). And that in turn means that the most valuable items are almost always traded only on the ASAH. A comparison for the $$ value of AS similar to the one I did above for DDO Points suggests that some things on the ASAH are priced astronomically high. Still, if someone's willing to pay....
Details on the 'Astral Shard' page on ddowiki.com

I'm going to be vague (or even incorrect) on what KIND of Reincarnation is required to make some of these changes. Check on ddowiki.com's 'Reincarnation' page.
You can buy the items required for various Reincarnations in the DDO Store (Ctrl-S) or earn ingredients to buy them in-game. All forms of Reincarnation are rife with restrictions.
A Lesser Reincarnation (when it will make the change you want) makes the least changes and doesn't have a level restriction. However, unlike other Reincarnations, the item required for Lesser Reincarnation is only available in the DDO Store for DDO Points.

Requires a DDO Store item. First name changes require a different item than last name changes. First names must be unique.

Cannot be changed.. ever.

The only way to change your Stat allocations is some form of Reincarnation.

Mostly doesn't matter all that much any more. But changing it requires a True or Racial or Iconic Reincarnation (a whole new life). But 'mostly doesn't' doesn't imply 'never does'. Some gear, spells or Enhancements might have restrictions or be affected by alignment... it's just rare.

Note: Do not multiclass until you are no longer a noob, unless you're following a guide produced by someone who hasn't been a noob in a very long time.

All Class changes require some form of Reincarnation. If you only want to change the class you chose at a few individual levels (You multi-classed, didn't you?), a Lesser Reincarnation using a Lesser Heart + n, where n is the number of levels where you want to change the class you took, is adequate. Otherwise, you're doing a full Reincarnation of some type (True or Racial or Iconic) and pretty much everything is up for changing.

Reincarnation.

There's a friendly mindflayer named Fred in House J under the garden who can invade your mind and muck around in such a way as to replace a Feat you took with another. (NOTE: It has to be a Feat you COULD HAVE TAKEN at that same level in your build.)

You can change one Feat per life free by running the Hall of the Mark quest in the Marketplace. This earns you a 'Feat Respec Token'. This doesn't appear in your inventory, but Fred knows you have it when you ask him to swap a Feat. QoL advice: Don't run this quest unless and until you specifically intend to swap a Feat using the token. Aside from potentially mucking up the sequence of Feat swaps (see below), you will get a warning every time you log in that you have a Feat Respec Token available. Gets old fast.

Additional swaps cost either plat + a Siberys Dragonshard (quality required dependent on your level), or Astral Shards. You have to use EXACTLY the requested quality of Dragonshard; you can't use a higher-quality one in its place.

WARNING: There's a 3 day time delay between Feat swaps using the Plat + Dragonshard option. This is assessed when attempting the second (and succeeding) swap. If you want to do multiple swaps, start with this type, then use the Feat respec token and then any AS swaps. NOTE: Don't earn the Feat respec token until AFTER you've done the first swap. If you have it, Fred will insist on using it in preference at least to the plat + Dragonshard option, which means you may be subject to the 3 day delay.

Apart from Fred, you'd need a Reincarnation to change the Feats you took.

Can be respecced at any time using plat. Note that in some cases, doing so multiple times within a short timeframe increases the plat cost.

Quests can be run on Normal, Hard, Elite, or Reaper. Normal and Hard scale in difficulty depending on how many players and hirelings are in them (hirelings count as half a player; in reality, they're usually worth far less). Elite and Reaper scaling starts with the assumption of 4 player-equivalents and go up from there if there are more. That means soloing an Elite quest will encounter exactly the same number and power of mobs as a group of four players in the same quest. It also means that the jump in difficulty of a quest from Hard to Elite is much higher for solo players. The Hard quest will have scaled for 1; the Elite quest will scale for 4 even with only 1.

If you're a first-life F2P toon, you can only open Normal on your first run of each quest. If you want to run higher difficulties, you can party with someone who can already open them (Check the Social Panel 'O' for PUGs). Or you can subscribe (called VIP in DDO). Or you can run Normal, which unlocks Hard, which in turn unlocks Elite AND Reaper. That's called running N/H/E. Reaper in turn has 10 difficulties (called Skulls). For details on that, check ddowiki.com

On your 2nd life, you can open Hard on your first run.

On your 3rd and higher lives, you can start out running Elite and/or Reaper.

Tip: The 'party with someone who can already open' the difficulty has an implication that they're of a level such that they can (and want to) run the quest with you. That's not always required. You can enter the quest at the desired difficulty without them, if..
- they've run the quest already this life on a valid difficulty to unlock the one you want to run.
- they have the quest as a current one (have turned it in and either retaken it or had it shared).
- the questgiver is NOT also the quest entrance.
- the quest isn't part of a multi-part chain where the opener has to be 'on' the same quest in the chain
As long as these things are true, simply having that person in your party will usually allow you to open the desired difficulty.
Some have gone so far as to make a 2nd account with quest openers in it. However, this trick is mostly only useful on first and second life anyway, so that's probably overkill. Exceptions exist. Sometimes people want to run the last quest in a chain without running the prerequisite quests. A common example are the final quests in Necropolis I through III (Bloody, Shadow, and Cursed Crypts). The 'opener' can remain flagged for those quests forever, while your main can run them life after life without ever flagging them. And having openers for Coin Lord and House K favor quests can make farming their favor on bank toons a lot quicker and easier.

You start out on the Shipwreck Shore, with a quest called The Grotto to do in which you cannot die. You can break some boxes for some potentially useful items (mostly the potions). If this is NOT your first character's first life, you have the option to skip the Shipwreck Shore and its quest. Oddly, skipping it provides about the same XP as running it, so there's little incentive to run it more than once. When you complete the Grotto quest, you get dumped in Korthos Village and you're essentially on your own. So what to do?

Obviously, you want to run the 3 Korthos village quests, which will unlock the quest Collaborator in the tavern, and that will in turn unlock the Korthos island wilderness, where there are 5 more quests, 4 of which you can run immediately; one of those four (Redemption) is prerequisite to the final Korthos Island quest (Misery's Peak). Once you've completed Misery's Peak and identified what's going on on Korthos, you can go to the docks and travel to the city of Stormreach, specifically its Harbor District, where the next level of quests are found.

NOTE: Before leaving Korthos Island behind, take advantage every life of DDO's best in-game bargain. In the Wavecrest Tavern, after finishing The Collaborator quest, you can talk to Merla Bauerdatter. Either via a dialog option or after talking to her, open the DDO Store and purchase a bottle of Vintage Old Sully's Grog for 5 DDO Points, which you can then trade to Bertram Sharpwood on the docks for a Starter Siberys Spirit Cake (Bound to Character). This is FAR cheaper than the normal price for any kind of Siberys Spirit Cake, and the self-resurrection can literally be a life-saver later.

If you're VIP or own the Keep on the Borderlands adventure pack, there's an NPC in Korthos near where you initially spawn (just below Heyton's Rest) who can send you to the Keep. It's the other location with L1 quests. The bank there is also the most quickly accessible one from Korthos. That makes it a convenient place to go to grab gear after Reincarnating.

There's a vendor in the Keep who sells ML2 caster sticks that are hard to beat, combining both spell power and spell lore for the same element. Trading for them only requires that you collect an ingredient that drops in pretty much every chest in the Borderlands: An Arcane Ingot.

Another item that is very useful that drops pretty regularly in KotB chests (especially the Wilderness Rares) is the Mantle of Gentle Descent: a Feather Falling (FF) cloak. You can also collect Quaal's Feather Tokens and turn in 15 of them for a basic mount. A basic mount has a run speed of 180% of normal. A Fast mount, 200%. You can later upgrade the basic mount you get here with an Enchanted Horseshoe which drops in the Epic (L20+) versions of the KotB quests. Your mount(s) will show up in your mount stable (bottom right of your Inventory), and that's where you select which mount you want. You can drag mount icons from here to shortcut bars to make mounting quick and easy. <SHIFT> is the default dismount key. You cannot (mostly) fight mounted.

And from the Keep, you can either run the Borderlands quests, return to Korthos, or portal to the Gatekeeper Grove in the Stormreach Harbor.. your gateway to pretty much everywhere. It has an exit to the Harbor, a Stormreach Teleporter, and even a Guild Ship access point.

Stormreach is the center from which most quests are then accessed, one way or another.

Immediately upon arriving in Stormreach (if you came from Korthos), where the walkway turns, you can talk to a guard who may provide you with a reward if one of your characteristics is high enough.

The next thing to do is to talk to three people, each of whom will provide you with a storage bag, which will reduce your inventory usage. Two of them are also questgivers.
- Beaudry Cartamon, right where the dock meets the shore, will provide a red collectibles bag
- Fitzpat the Fence, halfway up the hill on the left, will provide a blue gem bag
- Felix d'Cannith, at the top of the hill by the Marketplace gate, will provide a green ingredients bag

Double-click each bag in your inventory and set them to auto-gather. When you talk to a vendor to sell trash loot, clicking on the 'sell gems' button will sell not only gems in your inventory, but also empty your gem bag. Collectibles and Ingredients you will need to deal with yourself. Mostly they're used for Essence Crafting, which you won't likely get much use from right away (though crafting a ML1 Underwater Action item is a good idea; I use goggles). If you own the Shared Bank-Crafting Storage, you can drag these two bags over that tab in any bank to empty the bags into the bank. Storing collectibles and ingredients in case you choose to use them later is probably a good idea in that event. If you don't have that storage, you probably won't be able to store enough types of them to matter. There are also collectors scattered across the city of Stormreach who will trade sets of them for various things.

A large fraction of the game's L2 quests are here. You'll find some questgivers right beside the entrance to their quest, while other quests will require finding the questgiver (one's in a tavern) and/or the quest (some are in the Cerulean hills beyond the gate near Beaudry Cartamon).

Do take the Essence Crafting tutorial. There's no minimum level nor any prereqs of any kind. There are EC areas in House Kundarak and House Cannith. Your Guild Airship might also have an Essence Crafting amenity in one of its rooms. Only the one in House K offers the tutorial.
You can earn the reward for running the EC tutorial once each life. If you ever decide to level your EC, these reward items can be useful (see the following paragraph).

Another Guide here that I've written is about leveling Essence Crafting as quickly and efficiently as possible. You COULD do that now, but it would cost you .. a lot. Everything required is purchasable in the DDO Store. But you wouldn't have the ingredients to make use of the ability anyway, so leave Essence Crafting alone beyond the Underwater Action item for now. You might decide you never need/want it.

First thing to notice is that your map will mark a few important things for you with colored icons if whatever it is is within the map's scope. If not, there'll be arrows at the map edge pointing toward them. This works for quests in yellow (specifically the CURRENT quest: most recently received or the one you select in the Quest Journal), party members in blue, hirelings (in wildernesses and quests) in purple.

There are a LOT of individual areas, both within Stormreach (various Houses, the Twelve, the Inspired Quarter, etc) as well as across Xen'drik (Eberron) and Faerûn (in the Forgotten Realms). Merely finding them can originally be challenging. Getting to them is a whole other thing.

DDOWiki is your friend. Start with your in-game Adventure Compendium 'P', which will list all the quests at your current level, then search ddowiki.com to find out where they are and at least some indication of how to get there (and whether or not they're F2P).

There are several ways to get from place to place. This list is unlikely to be exhaustive.
- Gates: The Harbor has four: to the Marketplace, Gatekeepers' Grove (looks like a cave entrance on the dock that leads from Korthos), the Cerulean Hills (low level quests; givers in the Harbor, Gatekeepers' Grove, and one within the Hills just outside his quest), and finally the Inspired Quarter (high level Heroic quests; none, iirc, are F2P).
- People: Just like the First Mate on Korthos' docks, some people's dialog includes the option to travel somewhere. Pretty much anyone labeled as a Planescaller has a decent chance to send you somewhere far away.
- Stormreach Teleporters: These look like an archway filled with a curtain of cyan light. Click the curtain and you can select one of multiple destinations within Stormreach.
- Guild Airships: The Captain can drop you off at any of close to a dozen locations. If the airship includes a Navigator, they have another list of more distant options (and their presence populates a second screen of options for the Captain so you don't have to comb the belowdecks to find the Navigator). You do not need to be in a guild to use this feature, but your own guild airship is much more convenient. Otherwise, you need someone to Invite you to theirs and you need to be standing at an airship portal when they send the invitation (Also, the invitation will fail if the airship instance is not open: i.e. nobody's been on the ship in the last 5 min.).
- Portals: There aren't tons of them in the game, but they exist. And much like Stormreach Teleporters, they lead to a short list of possible locations.. a list that in some cases gets longer as you do specific things. Portals look like circular structures with a whirling purple vortex within. All Stormreach Teleporters share the same list of destinations. The same is NOT true of portals. There are individual ones as well as ones with multiple destinations.
- Magic: Teleport spells, scrolls, and items all share yet another list of possible destinations. There's even a pocket dimension called the Portable Hole that's designed to serve the needs of casters and can ONLY be reached via Teleport. There's also a Greater Teleport (spell and scrolls only) with yet another list of destinations. This one can even take your entire party along, as long as they're nearby... but only works for group teleport if you're in a quest or wilderness.

And, ofc, one should never forget mounts and even shank's mare (running on foot).

If you're solo, navigating all of the above (and any options I overlooked) can be a challenge. Ask for help if DDOWiki isn't specific enough about how to get to where you need to go. Join PUG groups from the Social Panel 'O' (avoid anything with the word 'zerg' in the description and mention you're a newbie or don't know the quest and/or where to go). Find a guild that is helpful to newbies. DDO is full of helpful people, but you do have to let them know you need it.

There are a number of storage options, yet storage remains one of DDO players' biggest hurdles/headaches. Let's start with what you've got.

3 tabs, each of which has storage for 20 items or stacks of stackable items. Also, a paper doll showing what gear you currently have equipped for another dozen or so items.

You can earn two additional Inventory tabs:

The first requires only questing: gaining 75 Coin Lord Favor and talking to the Coin Lord Patron in the Stormreach Marketplace (Montague Goudreau, located in front of the Bank, opposite the Mail kiosk).

The second requires another 75 Coin Lord Favor plus EITHER 10,000 PP & a Collapsed Portable Hole OR Astral Shards. Talk to the same Coin Lord Patron, then take the ingredients to Ryo Silverbrow in the Harbor. A CPH is a consistent reward offering for Favor from the Ruins of Gianthold Adventure Pack. Otherwise, it's a rareish drop or has to be purchased on an Auction House.

There are a limited number of additional tabs available that are purchasable on a per-character basis from the DDO Store. You can buy these at any time before or after earning the others and these persist through Reincarnations, whereas the Favor-earned ones have to be re-earned every life.

The original free ones I mention elsewhere are quite small. They'll overload quickly if you actually use them. As I noted, gathering most collectibles and ingredients is a long-term payoff, if at all (lots of people never Essence Craft). Unfortunately, SOME ingredients (like raid ones) are exceptionally valuable.. and unless you search ddowiki.com for each one you encounter, it will take some time for you to know which. So while collecting everything not nailed down isn't really necessary in DDO... in order to do it, you need enough Shared Bank: Crafting Storage to dump it in or your inventory will quickly overflow.. and NOT doing it is a bit of a risk.

Bigger bags are available. The first increase can be purchased from shops in House Jorasco and House Phiarlan for plat. Bigger Ingredient bags can be earned with Favor from the House Twelve Patron. Anything bigger than that is a turn-in of rare collectibles or a DDO Store purchase. Don't buy really big ones; Shared Bank - Crafting Storage is a better investment (see below).

Note that there are also bags for things like Soul Gems and Augments that you can buy or collect, as well as other aggregate storage items for specific things. There are not, unfortunately, ones for spell components, potions, scrolls, or Hireling contracts, despite a lot of requests.

Banks can be found in various locations throughout the world. There isn't one on Korthos Island, but there are in the two locations accessible from there: Keep on the Borderlands and the Stormreach Harbor.

The Character Bank is an expandable item storage. It also (like the Inventory) can be expanded twice for 20 spaces per expansion via Favor earned, although this time with House Kundarak. Once you've earned the favor and spoken to the House K Patron (in front of the Bank in House K), you can buy the upgrade within the Bank UI itself for plat. And the Character Bank can also be expanded by purchasing additional space in the DDO Store.

Shared Bank - Item Storage is probably your best long-term investment with the possible exception of Adventure Packs. It lets you pass any gear that isn't specifically BTC (Bound To Character) between your toons. So if your throwaway first character encounters something rare and wonderful, you can easily pass it to a more permanent one. It also enables using bank toons without the hassle and expense of mailing things between toons.
While you can mail anything unbound (random lootgen), it does cost something. Trading unbound gear is also possible, but since you can't have two toons from the same account online at the same time, requires either a friend or a secondary account toon as an intermediary.
The initial purchase of Shared Bank - Item Storage isn't particularly large. It can be expanded with further DDO Store purchases.

Shared Bank - Crafting Storage has a more useful initial purchase. It's a cheaper alternative for storing collectibles, ingredients, augments, filigrees, and a raft of other stuff than bags for the amount of storage. Keep moderate-sized bags in your inventory with auto-gather turned on. When you return to a bank, drag those bags in their entirety to the SB - CS window and drop them and they'll empty themselves without actually leaving your Inventory. Handy.

Shared Bank - Platinum Storage is the least valuable of the three. Having a level or two of it to pass large quantities of coin to bank toons or alts saves the annoyance of mailing 11K at a time. And F2P players can use it to stash plat before Reincarnating so they don't wind up over the plat cap. Other than that? Buy it when you have more DDO Points than you know what to do with....

Pretty straightforward. Create a toon for the sole and specific purpose of offloading gear your main toon doesn't need this particular life, or to hoard excess plat. Invest time and/or money in upgrading their inventory and bank space if you want fewer toons.. or have more toons at lower cost. Farming the Coin Lord and House K favor for 40 additional storage spaces (each) is quick and easy if you have the ability to make Iconic toons. All the same storage expansion options described above for main toons apply (except that the shared bank is, ofc, shared).

Guild airships can have an amenity that contains up to four guild chests, each of which can contain 100 items or stacks of items. Two of these chests will be accessible to all guild members. Two will only be accessible by guild officers. Guests on the airship will be locked out of all of them.

I've previously mentioned joining a guild. This is probably one of the most valuable things you can do... IF you choose a guild that actually suits you. If you're familiar with other games, you won't be surprised to know that there exist everything from end-game raiding guilds, to role-playing guilds, to newbie-friendly guilds, to Permadeath guilds (yes, even on the regular game and using the honor system for some elements), to people's individual, private guilds (I know a few people who have guilds primarily for the guild storage space.)

Finding the right guild may take a few tries. The three major ways are:
1) Accept a blind invite in the Harbor or Marketplace (most common locations). Some guilds recruit by literally sending an invite to everyone they see in a newbie area without a guild name above their head. It's not even a terrible way to find a guild. Sure, some who do so are working a numbers game: recruit everyone and provide nothing and see who sticks. But some are actually pretty newbie-friendly. Still, it's definitely a crapshoot.
2) PUG and when you meet people with whom you click or whose guild seems to contain helpful, friendly people, ask if they're accepting newbies.
3) Go to the Guilds page on the official forums and read what various guilds who are seeking new members say about themselves and find one that seems to fit.
Guild page: https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?forums/guilds-and-recruitment.63/

One of the major benefits of joining a guild that isn't social in nature is buffs. Guild airships can be populated with buff-producing rooms belowdecks that empower the gear-looking contraption on the weather deck (called the Buff Bar). Click the buff bar and you get the benefit of all the available buffs. What buffs you get and how long they last is determined by the guild level and the investment they've made in Amenities below decks (the benefit of some is also restricted by your character level and gets higher when you're higher level). To have all available buffs at maximum value, the guild has to be L140 and has to have one of the bigger and better guild airships. At that point, the buffs last 5 hours (stops counting down in public spaces; not removed on death).
Guild 'amenities' can also have vendors or crafting stations, as well as a 'Proving Ground' for trying out your weapons on dummies (not spells; most damaging spells can't be cast in public spaces).

One other guild 'perk' that has great value: If you 'bind' at the Spirit Binder in the Amenity known as the Banquet Hall, then when you die you will resurrect on the weather (main) deck of your Guild Airship. This makes it incredibly convenient to hit the buff bar to regain all your HP and SP and immediately return to questing. Spirit Binders exist in most Taverns, so if you wish to avoid long runs back to a quest where you died, you could bind in the nearest tavern instead. The Banquet Hall could be installed in literally any of the 'Hold Rooms' (smaller rooms) belowdecks, so you'll have to find it if you wish to bind there.

Note that joining a guild isn't an irrevocable decision. If you find the fit is bad or there's too much drama, or even if you join a newbie guild and outgrow it, you can leave at any time. When you choose that option on the Guild tab of the Social Panel (O), you'll be asked if you want to leave on good or bad terms. The difference is how much of the guild renown YOU have contributed to the guild you will remove from them on departure. Note that nobody in the guild can see which option you chose. And only those online at the time will specifically see a message saying that you left the guild.

Last note: While there are decent reasons to have all your toons in one guild, there's nothing preventing you from spreading them around. You could have one character playing permadeath in a relevant guild, another in an endgame raiding guild, and yet another in a guild that helps newbies, for random examples.

Your character limits are per server, but there's no real value in playing across more than one server.
There is one major exception: there are bonus DDO Points available to the first toon on each server to reach certain Favor milestones. Running one character on each server to farm this 'low-hanging fruit' is worthwhile if you're F2P. Details on the bonuses here: https://ddowiki.com/page/DDO_Point#Earning_DDO_Points
Most who take advantage of this just run to 100 Total Favor for 125 DDO Points per server.

The included character slots seem to have changed with the new servers. There are 3 categories of players: F2P, Premium (defined as someone who has at some time spent $$ on the game by subscribing or buying points or buying expansions off the DDO Market), and VIP (subscriber).

The current Account Comparison page on DDOWiki says F2P get 13 character slots, Premium get 15, and VIP get 21.

You can buy more slots as well.

Word of advice. Don't make too many playable alts (bank toons are fine). DDO long-term revolves around reincarnating your character over and over for small permanent bonuses (Past Life Feats). And there are a LOT of them available. If you ever see yourself doing endgame raiding, you'll want to focus on developing one character pretty substantially to be able to pull your weight in those activities.

The key piece of info is that there's no reason to toss your initial 'test' character if you don't want to... as long as you like the name and gender, which are the two things that don't change in any form of reincarnation.

But each form of reincarnation requires a component and you will want to plan somewhat for how to get one. Granted, the ingredients you need aren't available in-game until you hit Epic (L20+), but it's still worth planning ahead for as you get close. Check out 'Reincarnation' on ddowiki.com to be swamped in details you probably won't understand for a while. Then talk to people about it.

By default, your Chat window is set up with three tabs: General, Party, and Guild. (Idr if by default there's a Combat tab. I customized mine a long time ago).... And they're all-but identical except that Party and Guild chat tabs send messages typed there to the appropriate channel instead of the General Chat channel.

I should mention that there is no global chat. All chat is limited either to those in the current zone, or to those in the specific channel (Party or Guild chat or a custom chat). Trade channel is not global.

First up, you need to know that there are codes that will send your comments to a specified channel WITHOUT the need to switch tabs. They all start with a forward slash '/' Just like hitting ENTER automatically puts you in Chat mode, so does hitting the forward slash.

/tell or /t sends a private message to a specific recipient; /t george will send whatever text follows to the character named george (yellow text)
/reply or /r will send a private message back to the most recent person to have private messaged you (also yellow text)
/party or /p will send what follows to your Party chat (green text)
/guild or /g will send the message into your Guild chat (blue text)
/trade or /tr will post a Trade message that will be seen by everyone in your zone, even if they're in different instances of that zone

Second, you can customize your chat windows themselves, by renaming the tabs, making new ones, and changing both what shows up in that tab (the 'Incoming Text Types') as well as what channel things typed in that tab will be sent to.

A tab called Combat primarily needs the Incoming Text Type 'Combat' though you can also select 'Dice' or whatever else suits you to see there.
A tab called Effects with the 'Effects' ITT will show you things like when you have multiple pieces of gear or spells giving the same bonus and can be handy for troubleshooting why things don't work as you envisioned. DDO has clear stacking rules for Effects. The same Effect stacks if the Type of that Effect is different. The problem is, not all Effects are clearly 'typed'. The Effects tab will make it clear when something doesn't stack, because it will say you have multiple items providing the same Effect with the same Type.

Regrettably, there is, to the best of my knowledge, no way to store the Chat tab settings to port them to another character or account.

Third, you can customize your UI to suit your playstyle. You cannot, unfortunately, change the size of most UI elements, but you can unlock them with Ctrl-=, unpin up to 20 shortcut bars, drag them around, rotate them from horizontal to vertical and back, undock, resize, and move chat windows, etc.
Once you have your UI as you like it, Ctrl-= will relock screen elements to prevent them moving by accident (mostly). At that point, you can also issue the command /ui layout save layoutname and the game will create a file in the DDO folder under your My Documents called layoutname.layout. When you create a new character or Reincarnate, the command /ui layout load layoutname will rearrange your UI to look how you previously arranged it. Note that it isn't perfect. It won't change the form of the focus orb if you did, and it won't rotate shortcut bars. I find it easiest to issue the load command, fix those things manually, then reissue it. That usually gives the desired result.

A note: Some UI elements can hide behind other UI elements. The biggest culprits are, ofc, the small ones: Dice, Network Status Display, and Tumble. If you have them turned on, but can't find them? Ensure you've saved your layout (see 'Third' above), then start dragging UI elements around until you find them. Once you know where they are, you can reload your saved UI layout, move or minimize what's in front of them, put them somewhere reasonable, move things back.. and then don't forget to resave your new UI layout.

And finally, like most modern games, you can customize your Key Mapping in the Options. If you do, a file named DDO.keymap is created with your customized layout. Back it up to protect your changes, or even copy it to another computer (along with your layout file) to move your customizations.

In your Inventory 'I', below the storage area, you'll see 15 green boxes. These are where you design your weapon sets. Each box can contain a main hand item and an offhand item. Drag the items you want in a set into the same green box. It could be a single, two-handed weapon for Two Handed Fighting (THF), a main-hand and offhand weapons for Two-Weapon Fighting (TWF), a weapon and Shield (s/be S&B for Sword and Board, but in DDO the relevant combat style is called Shield Mastery), a pair of caster sticks, a caster stick and an orb, or any other relevant items.

Note that the same item can be included in multiple sets, so you could, for example, have a sword and shield set as well as a set with a warhammer and the same shield.

Once you have populated as many weapon sets as you desire, you can then drag the set icon(s) to a shortcut bar (see below) to make swapping sets quick and easy and not require opening your inventory.

DDO provides the ability to populate up to 20 shortcut bars, each of which contains 10 individually-addressable slots.

Initially, you'll see a single shortcut bar. And it'll probably be locked in place. As noted elsewhere in this guide on UI customization, you can hit Ctrl-= to unlock UI elements, including shortcut bars, and Ctrl-= again to lock them. When they're locked, they should resist accidentally being dragged or dragging icons off of them. Unlocked, there'll be a diagonal arrow at the bottom left corner of the stack of shortcut bars (looks like a single bar). Click that arrow and it will undock a second shortcut bar.. and you can continue until your screen is covered with 20 of them if you desire. When they're unlocked, you can also rotate them between horizontal and vertical and drag them to where you want them. And, as noted, you can only REMOVE items from shortcut bars when the UI is unlocked, though you can always add items.

Under Options - Key Mapping, you will find that every slot on every shortcut bar is individually-addressable (can be accessed with a unique keystroke). How useful this is will depend on the controls you use to play and/or how quickly you can hit combo key commands like Alt-whatever or Ctrl-whatever. I personally have two bars of one-keystroke-addressed slots and use my mouse for everything else. But everyone's setup is individual.

As for things you can put on shortcut bars, the list is long:
- any active or toggled Enhancement or equivalent (Reaper abilities, Epic Destiny abilities, etc)
- certain types of Feats
- a few Skills (Active Skills only)
- weapon sets
- spells, SLAs, etc
- scrolls, wands, potions (scrolls and wands replace your main hand weapon; pots usually don't)
- mounts and maybe companions
- summons and hireling contracts
- gear (for quick swaps)
- clickies (don't forget to swap back ;) )
- metamagics
- stances (inc. Past Life Stances)
- imbues
- spell components, thieves' tools and the like (to track quantities at a glance)
- arrows, bolts, etc (as long as not in quivers)
- even menu items like the Character Sheet, Inventory, Quest Journal, etc
- specifically, I ALWAYS have Dismiss Charm, Defensive Fighting, and Auto-Attack
There's probably more; this list is off the top of my head.

If you discard, bank, or otherwise lose something that is on your shortcut bar, the icon will often grey out, rather than disappearing. This is so if you reacquire it, you won't have to drag it back into place. These greyed-out icons can be dragged off the bar when the UI is unlocked.

I won't try to cover everything about Spells and spellcasting. DDOWiki is your friend. But there are a few important concepts that could easily be overlooked, and that's the entire point of this guide.

These are Feats that improve the power of your Spells in some way, at a higher cost in Spell Points.
They're toggles that you can drag from the Feats tab in your Character Sheet to shortcut bar slots. Turning those toggles on is universal: affects every Spell you cast... sort of. You can make a Spell (or SLA) that's been loaded into a shortcut bar slot override the global Metamagic toggles by right-clicking it. The resulting menu will contain all the Metamagic Feats you've chosen. You will get the option to force any Metamagic to be "Always On" or "Always Off" (regardless of the global toggle) or "Standard" (subject to the global toggle.. the default) .. for that Spell cast from that shortcut bar slot. You could literally have the same Spell in another slot with different Metamagic override settings if you wanted.
Excessive use of Metamagics on your Spells will run you out of Spell Points quickly. There are Enhancements in some caster Enhancement trees that reduce the Spell Point cost of specific Metamagics.

Spell-Like Abilities are Spells.. that you get from somewhere other than your Spell book. Most come from Enhancements (Racial or Class or Universal), though there are exceptions. Be careful when reading Enhancement descriptions. Some will say that they add the specified Spell to your Spell book. Those are NOT SLAs. If they don't say that, they probably are.

There are important differences between Spells and SLAs, and SLAs are almost universally better.

1) SLAs use your Character level to determine their effects, rather than your Class level. If you are multi-classed, your Character level will always be higher. Your Character level also continues to increase through the Epic levels and even the Legendary ones. Your Class level caps at 20. This might not matter if the specific Spell or SLA has a Max Caster Level, but if it doesn't, your SLAs will scale higher than your Spells. (Note that there are Enhancements and the like that increase caster levels, and even ones that increase max caster levels... but there are still limits.)

2) SLAs are NOT the Spell. They have the same effect (usually), but do not share a cooldown. Their cooldown may be longer or shorter than that of the Spell. Things that affect Spell cooldowns (e.g. Tenser's Transformation) don't affect SLA cooldowns. You can cast the Spell and the SLA back-to-back as though they were different Spells.

3) SOME SLAs can be cast in an anti-magic field like that produced by beholders.

4) There are a few SLAs that have limited uses per rest. It's not common, but watch for it.

5) SLA Spell Point costs are NOT increased when Metamagics are applied to them. There is no reason to not turn on EVERY Metamagic you possess on all of your SLAs. This allows you to use the global Metamagic toggles to adjust the Spell Point costs of your Spells depending on your situation.

As a general rule, depend on SLAs over Spells as much as you can; your Spell Points will go much further. And if you ARE going to multi-class a caster, depend on SLAs, not spells, because the caster level will be higher.

There are a few things to know about maps.

Obviously, your mini-map can be expanded and you can resize the window of the enlarged version. Annoyingly, if you have your expanded map open and enter certain zones, your map window will be resized to the size of that zone's map. There are a few places this happens, but the most commonly encountered one is.. a guild airship. Don't click an airship portal with your map open.

Zooming the map isn't quite completely useless. It doesn't zoom out nearly far enough to make it possible to, for example, see quest entrances in some of the larger wildernesses. Your only recourse is to have a quest in that wilderness as the 'current' quest (most recently received or selected within the Quest Journal). That way, a yellow arrow on the edge of your screen will point the way. It won't help with navigating around obstacles, though.

Mobs don't show on maps. But initially, even the terrain and quest locations are hidden in the 'fog of war'. Once you've seen an area on a wilderness map, it'll remain visible next time you return. If you find all the Explorers (points of interest) on a Wilderness map, that map will thereafter be fully revealed (for that life). Unfortunately, that takes a time investment that generally doesn't pay off if all you do thereafter is run each quest in the zone once. Earning XP in Wildernesses is a valid option, especially if you don't own enough Adventure Packs at a particular level range. If you're farming a wilderness for XP, finding all the Explorers might be worthwhile. There's bonus XP for doing so, but it's not an overwhelming amount.

The '3 map rule'. I don't think it's still 3 maps. However, DDO only retains the last few quest maps you've seen. Run too many quests, and earlier maps return to being blank if you re-enter their quests. This is mostly important if you're running N/H/E and do all the quests in a zone before returning to the earlier ones at a higher difficulty. The other place it can matter is events like Crystal Cove: if you run through all the map once early in the event, it will remain clear the next time you enter, as long as you haven't run too many other quests since. Since there's a randomly-located shrine, having the map clear on entry lets you know immediately where that shrine is. And the Epic version of the quest's Mammoth Crystal's location is likewise obvious.

While Instances aren't directly about maps, I'll throw this in here. If the population in a public area becomes too high, a new instance of that zone will be created. You can tell because there'll be a number after the location name below your minimized map ('Marketplace 2' for example). If you're looking for someone who ought to be right beside you and you don't see them, it's possible you're in different instances. You can change instances by clicking on the instance name/number and selecting a different one in the pulldown or by leaving the zone and returning. People in the same party will always be placed into the same instance when they enter a zone. However, if you're already in the zone and join a party, nobody will be transferred across instances.

There are a LOT of customizable Options in DDO. To access Options hit either ESC or the main menu icon at the bottom left (a dragon in the shape of an &) and Main Menu, then select Options.

These mainly exist so you can limit your graphical desires to a functional framerate I guess.

If you have issues with the default settings, try dropping your DirectX compatibility to 10 or even 9. Some cards give issues with the higher Dx settings in DDO.

If you play where the light level varies and your monitor doesn't auto-adjust, small touches on the Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma Level can be helpful, particularly in very dark quests (though nothing helps with Rainbow in the Dark; it's designed that way).

There's one particular quest in the Storm Horns (What Goes Up) where in one phase of the end fight, some settings can make you all but blind. Turning off Video Post Effects can have a positive impact. Could be there's a better or narrower selection that would have the same impact without the undesirable side effects of turning off post processing but that bit of the quest is a bit hectic so I've never tried to pin that down. Found something that works. Done.

There are three main things to know about DDO's audio.

One: it does not monitor changes to hardware while it's running. Windows has passed this info for over a decade now, but DDO doesn't manage hot swaps. If you plug in headphones, expect to need to restart the game for them to register.

Two: sometimes, for no discernible reason, your audio device will simply not populate and you'll have no sound whatsoever (or it will choose some alternate). Again, a restart is required to fix this.

Three: the audio balancing for the in-game voice chat is horrific. Most people can't hear voice chat at all unless they drop EVERY OTHER SLIDER down to below 0.1 I'd rather use the in-game voice chat than Discord, but....

Note that in the Party UI itself, each player with voice enabled has a tiny green soundwave icon that you can click to adjust that person's voice volume relative to others in the party.
Also, someone who has both Discord active and the in-game voice chat turned on may well produce echoes, feedback, distortion, etc.

Once you're no longer a newbie, turn on "Don't Show Hints" and "Don't Show Campaign Objectives" Or just do so because they're so annoying. Whatever you like.

The Network Status Display will let you know the problem is you.. sometimes.

There's a LOT of stuff you can decide on for yourself that I won't address. The next recommendation is to "Hide Guild Buffs". It doesn't, btw. What it does instead is amalgamate them into one status icon with a countdown. The status effects list is unmanageable even without adding dozens of individual guild buff icons.

Oh, and if you have trouble accessing the DDO Store, turning on "External Store" will open it in an external browser, which may work better.

I won't tell you how to set it, but notice that there's a "Quest End Rewards Based on Class" option.

"Healing Never Uses Soft Targets" may keep your heals from going places you didn't intend.

In a similar vein, "Force Healing On Self When Targeting Undead" could keep you alive.. or make it so you don't do damage to undead with positive heals as you intended. Pick the setting that fits your playstyle.

"Gather Trap Parts" will fill your storage with things you may want to use to make traps.. or with useless junk you'll never touch.

"Enable Detailed Chest Information" is a must if you ever intend to farm items. When you open a chest, it'll tell you how many times you've opened it since your ransack timer started. Chests ransack after looted 8 times within a week. The first thing to go is named gear (which is probably what you were looting for).

There's not much in the way of DDO controls that you can't customize. And you can even have two options for the same thing, if you want. Changes you make here are saved into a keymap file in your DDO folder so you can back them up or port them to another computer.

At various levels and difficulties, particular items of gear are either essential, recommended, or just helpful. Here are a few:

Once you've run the Essence Crafting tutorial, collect 10 Magic Item Essences, 15 Sweet Whitecaps, and 5 Small Wooden Idols (sometimes dropped as treasure bags when you kill Kobolds) and a pair of goggles, ring, helm or trinket (trinkets aren't usually random lootgen) and craft yourself an Underwater Action item and never risk drowning again. The UA shard doesn't require any existing EC levels. All these ingredients and collectibles are very common in the L2 Harbor quests.

Next all-but-essential item is a Feather Falling item (eliminates fall damage and allows a steep glide from high places.. VERY handy in many quests). Monks, Tabaxi, and the Tumble skill can reduce or eliminate fall damage, too. Monks even get a bit of the glide, though at a steeper angle. But a FF item works for anyone.

A TS (True Seeing) item (ML1 when Essence Crafted BUT takes a high level of ability in Essence Crafting, unlike UA). TS not only automatically displays low level secret doors, but removes the miss chance when attacking mobs with Blur or Displacement (NOT Incorporeality). You won't find TS on low-level random lootgen; ask a high level crafter to make you an item. I actually put TS and UA on the same goggles for a situational gear switch item.

By about L8 quests, a Deathblock item becomes essential to prevent being insta-killed by certain attacks and spells.

Fortification items reduce Sneak Attack and Critical Hit damage back to normal damage. Aim for about 10% Fort per character level.

Trappers start to need gear that boosts their Spot/Search/Disable Skills as they reach higher levels or run higher difficulties. Some gear boosts all three (and sometimes even Open Locks). At several levels, there is named gear that boosts all four Skills:
- ML1 the oddball: the Troubleshooter's set from Korthos quests (goggles + necklace)
- ML6 the Leather Gloves of the Snake from Kind of a Big Deal
- ML9 the Kundarak Delving Goggles from the Plane of Night raid
- ML10 the Keystone Ring from Death House
- ML17 the Experimenter's Goggles from The Underlane Assignment
- ML20 the Epic Kundarak Delving Goggles
- ML21 the Magnifying Lens from The Hobgoblin Horde or the Epic Leather Gloves of the Snake
- ML25 the Epic Skeleton Key from Thrall of the Necromancer
- ML29 the Epic Keylock Ring or Epic Experimenter's Goggles
- ML30 the Legendary Kundarak Delving Goggles.
This list may not be exhaustive. Unfortunately, not one of these drops from a F2P quest. Also note that the provided bonuses follow a law of diminishing returns. The +16 you get at ML17 only rises to +21 at ML30.

Movement (Striding) items are not only critical to keeping up with veteran players, they also make it possible to outrun a lot of mobs, which you cannot do at the base run speed. The very best one is an upgraded Quiver of Alacrity from the Black Abbot raid (Accursed Ascension), which provides 30% Striding at ML1 and sits in a gear slot where it has little competition. You have to farm both the item AND a Seal of the Black Abbot to upgrade it to get that bonus. The Seal drops in the same raid, but can also be earned by trading in a full Shield of Legend or Tome of Untold Legends. But, ofc, none of that is F2P either. The Expeditious Retreat spell or scroll (25% Striding) isn't beaten by random lootgen until mid-Heroic levels. The one low-level, F2P, non-caster option is the Anger's Step boots from the quest turnin from the Sacrifices quest on Korthos: a 2-use 5 min Expeditious Retreat clicky.

A Protection from Evil clicky can be a lifesaver, not so much for the +2 bonus to AC and saves, but for the warding from 'mental magical control and compulsions' (immunity to the majority of Charm and Dominate spells, as well as Command and Greater Command). Silver Flame Bracers from one of the Catacombs quests are a 3-use 5 min clicky for Prot/Evil. (Also available as gear from the Veteran Status II starter equipment.).

Ghostly, Ghost Touch, Ethereal, Spectral or other gear that eliminates the 50% miss chance for incorporeal mobs (including Reapers) are essential for melee or ranged toons intending to fight such mobs.

A Regeneration item almost guarantees you won't bleed out when unconscious unless you were knocked down to almost the bottom of your unconsciousness range. Even 1HP of healing stops the bleeding.

A Freedom of Movement item prevents a wide range of effects that restrict your movement, from anywhere water is knee-deep to the effects of many a spell (though far from all the ones it would in PnP).
BTW, if everyone in the party has FoM, your caster can spam Grease and/or Sleet Storm. Since most mobs don't have FoM (mostly just Reapers and some Champions) and will fail a save against even a L1 spell on a roll of 1, these spells literally scale right up into Legendary content... Cheap CC that can make even an undergeared caster effective. The proc rate is low, but they have to make that save every few seconds. And Sleet Storm has NO save against the Slow and Blindness. Also neither Grease nor Sleet Storm is affected by mob Spell Resistance.

A Spell Absorption item is all but essential to fighting Beholders, especially in groups, if you don't wish to die.

Various clickies, scrolls, wands, potions, etc can make your life MUCH better. I always carry 5 potions in quantities: Remove Blindness, Remove Curse, Remove Disease, Poison Neutralization, and Lesser Restoration. If I can use them, I also carry Teleport scrolls, Restoration and Greater Restoration scrolls, Heal, Raise Dead, and/or Resurrection scrolls.. and the Starter Siberys Spirit Cakes you can buy cheaply once each life after running the Collaborator Quest on Korthos. Talk to one of the bartender's daughters; buy Old Sully's Grog in the DDO Store (5 DDO Points) and then trade it to Bertram Sharpwood on the docks: FAR cheaper than normal purchases.

Did I miss something? List it in the comments.

And I should probably explain what those are.

Most casters focus on one or two 'elements': fire, electricity, light, evil, negative.. there are probably a dozen or so options. While most caster classes contain spells from far more than two elements, it's impossible to maximize your Spell Power with more than a few, especially without compromising something else. But at the same time, you want more than one, because some mobs will be immune to, or even healed by, pretty much any element you could name.

So casters commonly have a scepter in each hand, each of which ideally has at least Spell Power and Spell Lore (critical chance) for the same element. Even better are ones that also throw in Insightful Spell Power. These are what are known as caster sticks.

Technically, this means that casters are Two-Weapon Fighting without any of the relevant Feats. Doing so produces substantial to-hit penalties. Add those to the already-weak melee abilities of casters, and they pretty much can't hit anything with them. Which is fine. The entire point is to cast, so those melee penalties are completely irrelevant. If a caster has to hit things with their caster sticks, things have already gone seriously pear-shaped.

By extension, it should be obvious that it doesn't matter if they're scepters or daggers (with which casters are likely to be Proficient) or hammers or dwarven axes or whatever (which would provide addtional to-hit penalties). In short, as long as it's one-handed, it can be a 'caster stick' despite not being in any way sticklike. Still, most caster sticks are scepters.

If a caster wants to maximize their damage with a third element, they will need the same bonuses on some other item of gear.
Advanced Note: Essence Crafting allows one to make Trinkets with [Element], [Element Lore], AND [Insightful Element]. It's hard to beat that combo. Unfortunately, craftable Trinkets are rareish.
REALLY Advanced Note: The Shroud (Greensteel crafting) ingredient known as a Shard of Power can be disjuncted for Essence Crafting to provide a ML13+ craftable Trinket. The major annoyance is that Effects crafted onto such a shard won't change its description. Also, since the Shard is bound, if someone else crafts for you (unbound Essence Crafting), you'll need to have them craft the shards and you'll need to apply them to the Shard yourself.

There is, to the best of my knowledge, not one caster staff (two-handed) that is better than a pair of caster sticks. There are a couple that match them. And even one where you can combine two caster sticks to create a staff with both effects... but it's no better than the pair of sticks, and it loses the flexibility to be used next life with one of the elements that went into making it paired with some other one.

Note that one thing makes caster sticks not universal: Some people run their casters as melee toons for the first few levels, providing them with THF (Two-Handed Fighting) weapons. Low level casters are terrible at soloing large groups with their single-target spells. And the divide in melee ability between melee and caster toons is low at low levels. So while a caster with a great axe may not match a melee toon in early levels, the gap isn't large and they may well do a lot better DPS than they can with their spells.. at least for a few levels.

I mentioned elsewhere that the ML2 caster sticks from Borderlands are ideal at that ML. There are named caster sticks available at a few other MLs that are also the best available unless the RNG gods love you. These are the ones that are available in multiple elements. There are occasional individual sticks, too:
- ML2/20 Scepter of [Element] from Keep on the Borderlands Arcane Ingot turnin
- ML3/33 Fish Sticks (various but not all elements) from Sleeping with the Fishes
- ML5/10/15/20/25/30 Forum Posts (various but not all elements) from the DDO Anniversary Party event
- ML12/29 Fusible/Malleable* from Peril of the Planar Eyes quests
- ML18/32 Shining/Defiled Reliquary from Vecna Unleashed (or trade with Steps Obliss)

* Includes Insightful Spell Power. Note that once Insightful Spell Power is added, a caster stick without it has to be of considerably higher level to increase the DPS over a stick with it.

So I should probably point out that it's a newbie trap.

With no TWF Feats, the penalties to hit are -6/-10 (-6 on main hand, -10 on offhand) and you only get an offhand swing 20% of the time.

The first Feat, Two Weapon Fighting, improves that to -4/-4 and increases the offhand swing chance to 40%.

If the offhand weapon is a Light weapon, both improve by 2 (-4/-8 with no Feat; -2/-2 with TWF).

Thing is, even a -2 to hit on a low level first life toon with crappy gear may be enough to cause more misses and grazing hits than the addition of the 40% chance for an offhand swing makes up for.

While I won't say that you shouldn't make a TWF toon in these circumstances, I WILL say to watch your Dice rolls and/or Combat log chat window, and if you find you're missing or getting glancing blows too often, switch to using a single weapon or weapon and shield until something improves.

When you add to all of the above that the TWF Feats require high Dexterity, while Dexterity to hit and for damage with melee weapons is rareish, TWF becomes even more niche for newbies who won't have the build points, tomes, gear, etc to support both Dex for TWF Feats and another Stat for to-hit and damage. (See the section on Multiclassing and the dangers of trying to support two primary stats.)

In a word: Don't.
(If you know enough to have an argument against this one-word answer.. you're probably one of the exceptions.)

In this guide, I previously wrote, "Do not multiclass until you are no longer a noob, unless you're following a guide produced by someone who hasn't been a noob in a very long time." You may have wondered why I'd write such a thing.

Fact is, multi-classing in DDO is a high-level skill. It is all too easy to make a toon with irreparable structural problems of one kind or another. And until you know the game well, it's all but impossible to even know what the risks are.

So here are a few of the considerations:

You want to solo. Thus, you want to be survivable with some ability to self-heal and also get all the traps and locks in the game. So you decide on a multiclass of Paladin and Rogue. Sounds good.

But Paladin is largely Str-based by default, needing some Wis for casting, whereas Rogue mostly needs Int for trapping skills and potentially some Dex. You also need enough Con to not be killed by a stiff breeze. And Paladins also have Cha-based abilities. How do you divide up your initial 28 stat points? Which stat gets your level-up points? Sooner or later, either your trapping skills will fail, or you will have issues with melee; your toon is stat-starved because they have two primary stats and more than one secondary. And this doesn't become obvious until you've leveled somewhat and invested time into this inherently-flawed build. With Tomes and past lives, you can make this work. But the existence of two primary stats is trouble.

Ideally, you want your two classes to both have the same primary stat. Or if not, you want one of them to not be particularly dependent on its primary stat (perhaps you took caster levels simply to self-buff; there are no stat-limited effects in buffing except duration).

In this case, the Harper Agent Enhancement Tree would allow you to use Int in place of Str for to-hit and damage (for 12 AP.. a limited resource), thereby meeting the 'same primary stat' criterion. But you not only need to know that, you also need to own that particular Enhancement Tree.

Say you somehow managed to design that previous Paladin/Rogue build so that stat starvation wasn't an issue. You plan on 18 levels of Paladin and 2 levels of Rogue. Cross-class skills get 1/2 Skill point per point invested. To be a decent trapper, you need to maximize at least three skills: Spot, Search, and Disable. That requires 6 Skill points for every one of the 18 Paladin levels just for those 3 Skills. Paladins get 2 Skill points/level (+ Int bonus). You best make sure you have enough Int for at least 4 more Skill points per level, plus enough for any non-trapping Skills you intend to maintain. If you didn't use a Character Planner, it's pretty easy to realize you're Skill-starved well after you've begun playing the character.

A capstone is a particularly valuable Enhancement that you can only earn at L20 in a particular class, having invested a minimum of 40 AP (Action Points) into the tree containing the capstone. The moment you multiclass for even 1 level, you lose access to all capstones except those from Universal Enhancement Trees. This isn't always problematic: sometimes you were going to spread your AP out over too many trees to get one anyway, or the capstone in your primary tree isn't compelling, or you intend to Reincarnate immediately on reaching L20 so you weren't going to get any value from the capstone anyway.

If you plan on taking your toon into Epic levels, capstones can represent a lot of power and giving one up requires a careful assessment of what you're trading for it.

Not sure what else to call this. Some multiclasses just don't actually work. Almost any caster multiclass risks the caster class becoming gimped: lose access to high level spells; reduced Spell Penetration making spells fail to land; reduced spell damage because it's a multiple based on the caster class level; reduced spell durations. It's harder to screw up when combining melee classes, but it happens.

Successfully multi-classing casters usually requires one of two things: no more than a splash (1-3 levels) of another class added to a caster class, or a caster that doesn't focus on spell DPS or CC (buffs, perhaps) [Note that spell DCs aren't directly related to caster level.. but Spell Penetration is.]

Combining the BABs of melee and caster classes will negatively affect melee/ranged combat AND delay Feat acquisition of Feats with BAB prereqs.

Some multiclasses are incredibly potent.. at and above Heroic cap (L20+). But they're so weak on the way there that they're difficult to level.

Flip side: some start out incredibly strong.. but the higher you level, the weaker they get until they're all but unplayable.

You have to consider not just the beginning and not just the outcome, but how the leveling process will go. Struggling through a few levels might be acceptable, but a slog through most of a life is a horse of a different color.

Caster Feats, melee Feats, ranged Feats... Not only can a multiclass wind up needing more Feats than there are Feat slots, but some Feats can only be taken when leveling up one type of class, so sequencing Feat choices has to be considered in multiclassing: not just which Feats to take, but which to take at what level. And you have to meet all the Feat prereqs for the Feats you intend to take by the level at which you intend to take them. Back to Stats: That Paladin/Rogue using Int now has a new problem: If they THF or TWF they need enough Str or Dex for the Feat lines.

Then there are auto-granted Feats. Example: Rangers get a lot of auto-granted Feats that tend to show up at a reasonable level.. for a pure ranger. But let's say you want to run an Inquisitive (dual crossbow) build that includes Ranger, Rogue, and Artificer levels. You usually want L1 to be Rogue; 2 levels of Arti ASAP unlocks Rune Arm use.. but that means you have to wait until at LEAST L5 before Ranger will auto-grant Rapid Shot. Or you have to take it earlier, then swap it out BEFORE taking L2 of Ranger. Because once you've stacked the auto-granted Feat with the selected version, you can no longer swap it out with a Feat swap.

On a peripherally-related note: Rune Arm damage is based on Artificer level. Too few Arti levels leaves their DPS anemic.

You've decided on an Inquisitive (largely class agnostic) with 6 levels of Rogue and Ranger and 8 levels of Artificer. But in what order do you take them and why? How will the sequence affect the selection of Feats and Skills? What about Enhancements? Deciding WHEN to take each level of each class is as important as knowing how many levels of each class to take. And while it's less likely to 'go wrong', it can still go better or worse.

A multiclass toon is generally restricted to the lowest/most restricted armor of its classes. E.g. the Paladin/Rogue above has to wear Light armor to benefit from Evasion.

Weapon options can increase when you add a class... but actual restrictions for any of your classes still apply.

Multi-classing in DDO can produce incredible power and/or flexibility in a build. Or, it can make a virtually unplayable toon or simply a mediocre one. It's why the recommendation for newbies is to simply not do it.. unless working from a detailed plan made by someone who knows what they're doing. And when looking for those, make sure they're recent builds (or recently updated). The game changes frequently, and yesterday's power build can be today's gimped failure.. or simply no longer possible at all.

I'll add more sections if and when I think of them. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments.