Greetings,

I am a rookie (level 5) monk, trying to determine how to train and develop. 

1)  I am not able to figure out how to use any ranged weapon, or indeed how to "train up" in any combat skills besides martial staff and hand to hand.  2)  I never seem to be able to use a shirken of any type and they tend to get lost!!

Is there a sound way to build up my various combat skills in a more balanced fashion?  Or is it simply better to concentrate.  Mainly, Id like to be in decent shape by the time I reach level 7 and the skills begin to bite!!

Any other tips or hints most welcome --

Thanks!!

Up untill last week, my shuriken were not depleted by using them. Went from lev 1 to lev 18 without using up my first stack. =)

Yes you should train your weapon skills in a balanced fashion, especially the weapon arch-type ones (2H Slash, 2H Pierce, Thrown, etc), as these skills directly impact your accuracy.  You dont want to get stuck with an awesome high damage weapon that you have no skill in and thus cannot hit anything with it, the higher level u are, the more it hurts.  It is a PAIN to raise the arch-type skills, so develop them early!  Invest in some newbie weapons and train that 2H Slash up, u wont regret it.

Specific weapon skills (Knuckle, Hand Wrap, Ulak n Claw, Martial Staff, Shuriken, etc), on the other hand, are very easy to raise.  We have something like 7 specific weapon skills, but one important thing to remember is we can only max 4 weapons at any given time before we run out of skill points to allocate.  That is, there are give-n-takes that you need to decide, which 4 out of the 7 do u want to concentrate? 

Note, you can SET the direction of weapon skill change in the SKILLS tab, so that you can UNMASTER a weapon skill that you no longer use in order to allocate more points into a weapon skill that you DO use!  For example, let say I bought a new pair of Knuckles, and I;m going to retire my old set of Claws.  I can open up my skills tab and set my Ulak and Claws skill to "MINUS" (meaning i will unmaster this skill in the future) while setting my Knuckles skill to "PLUS".

Just a recap:  Weapon Arch-type skills determine the accuracy (max skill gives u 95% accuracy against even con i think), while Specific Weapon skills give 10% damage bonus when maxed at current level.