About 100-120 dex with gear is a pretty good goal if you are on a budget. Generally once you hit that you want to put the rest into str so that your base damage is higher and hence your critical multipliers are more effective. Finding a group can be hard at time sometimes you just have to try during different times of the day. As you have probably noticed already, every 5 lvl's there is a new category items available. This continues up until lvl 55, after that there are no new items. Hence you will find that your lvl 50//55 items will be the most expensive as they have to last you a very long time. If you are on a budget, I would suggest the following
When you are lvl 40, purchase a weapon with around 80 ee. This should cost around 60-70 FG
Lvl 45 : 80 ee again
Lvl 50 : 80 ee
80 ee is generally pretty cheap, that is < 70 FG. It will output decent damage. Not a ton given, but at least the members in your group wont be whining that you arent helping the group. As for armor, Id suggest you just find a decent armor that has +25-30 of either dex or str, both are good for a fighter. Don't worry about the defense so much, just make sure you are in the back of the group in the catacombs so that you arent taking a lot of hits and forcing healers to waste their mana. Once you are lvl 55, it is really up to you how much you want to spend. I would suggest a 100 ee weapon to get you through, but if you dont want to spend a lot of fg you can stick to the 80 ee pattern. It all depends on how fast you want to climb.
When you do attempt your first MQ, you will truly find that the journey was much harder than the task itself. I was petrified of my first MQ attempt expecting an army of Njaguar's to come destroy me, but its really not that bad. It is actually an army of pikachu's, alas Njaguar's icon reveals its true purpose. I kid ofc
...I won't spoil the surprise for you. But I'm sure with a little confidence and a little luck you will do fine
Oh and as for a charm to put in your main slot, all you care about is the +str/dex on it. Dont pay extra for ee or anything like that since you actually wont be using the charm for damage, you just want the stat bonuses
This post was edited by Linkinator on Jan 4 2010 01:25am