new veno in town!

1. Use whatever magic weapon is available to you in the beginning. As you get higher (80+) you'll have your choice between magic swords and glaives, choose whichever is most appealing to you.
2. This is up to your play style. If you're mostly going to be a caster, I'd recommend arcane. If you're considering using fox form a lot, then maybe go for light. You can wear heavy armor but it isn't recommended for lower levels because of how expensive it can be to maintain. That's more of an end-game fox build.
3. Your priorities are venomous, ironwood, pet heal, lucky scarab, noxious, nature's grace, metabolic boost, bramble, amp, wood mastery, lending hand and later on, purge. There may be more important ones - can't think right now lol. And those are from a PvE perspective - there may be more important (fox) skills for PvP.
4. For arcane armor, there are a few builds. You can either go pure (9 mag, 1 str every two levels), pure vit (6 mag, 1 str, 3 vit every two levels), or do your own thing with the vit. Make sure you have at least 3 mag every level and 1 str every other level. What you do with the rest of the points is up to you. For a light armor build, it's 1 str 1 dex 3 mag every level. For heavy, well, there's no set build because there aren't enough points to go around. There should be a sticky for how to build a good heavy armor veno, though.
5. Hmmm... this may not be a problem at lower levels, but make sure you know about heal aggro. Basically, if something is attacking your pet but your pet hasn't attacked it back yet, if you heal your pet, the mob will go towards YOU instead. This isn't an issue in a 1 on 1 fight, but if your pet is suddenly being jumped by 2 or 3 other mobs, you'll regret healing immediately. Make sure it attacks the other mobs first. Luring is also important - it's one of a veno's main jobs. To lure, you send your pet in to attack a mob. DO NOT attack it yourself, and do not heal. After your pet has attacked at least once, unsummon it. The mob will start running to you, and hopefully someone else will be there to catch it. Also, if you have no intention of getting a herc or nix any time soon (presumably with real money - around $180), you'll want to check out the zoologoist in Archosaur to upgrade your pet's skills. Bash is one of the best PvE skills to use, and if I remember correctly can be upgraded every 20 levels.

Dyskrasia - Heavens Tear wrote: »

To lure, you send your pet in to attack a mob. DO NOT attack it yourself, and do not heal. After your pet has attacked at least once, unsummon it. The mob will start running to you, and hopefully someone else will be there to catch it.

The "someone else" could be your own pet, of course. Just resummon your pet right after unsummoning it, wait until the target has gotten far enough away from the group, then send your pet to intercept.

Takes some "getting a feel" for the distances --- how far away can you send the pet, how far away are you allowed to be so the luring works (if you're too far, the monster will not come for you but just reset), how far do their ranged skills go etc. So, practice at least a few times on harmless monsters.

Also, I like to suggest getting the fly at lvl 8, or whatever flying pet you want to use at whatever level it starts. You can just as well get used to keeping pets levelled early on, even though using the fly from the ground is slightly tricky as it doesn't follow terrain.