I've recently joined this game and made it to L32 with my orcish raider so far. I heard I should use poles for quicker xp. Being a complete newbie I have no idea how to do it and where to do it safely at my level if possible at all.
Any and all advice from experienced aoers will be greatly appreciated.
Raiders can AOE well. First off can I check what armour you have what what pole arm you have or intend to get. Plus have you signed up to the seven signs?
Yes, you should sign up for Seven Signs with the Priest of Dawn, so that you can go into the Cats. However, you will have to wait until next Monday to do this, at least on Seigehart. At level 32, I,m not sure where else you could go in the meantime. Also, you will need 1 or 2 buffers and healers to go with you. At least one other DD never hurts, because occasionally one of the mobs breaks from the group to attack one of the healers.
In the meantime, I'm not sure where else you could go to pole. However, one other place I found fast to level my Raider was Alligator Beach, near Heine. You should wait until maybe lvl 36 or so, and have a buffer/healer with you. But, you won't need a pole. Also, the money is good at Alligator Beach.
To do AOE hunting effective you should have either buffer with Vampiric Rage in your party (Shillien Oracles are your best friend) or some other means to aquire vampiric rage buff (Clan hall, friend who can buff you etc.)
Generally AOE hunt looks like this:
1) You pull several mobs (the number depends on place, your equipment and enviroment)
2) You bring mobs train to the point of kill, preferrably to some sort of wall, corner, tree or other obstacle.
3) Round up mobs so your polearm hits them all(it is only possible with polearm or some skills in this game).
4) Kill all mobs at once.
The trick is about time of killing mobs. In ideal situation you can kill al mobs you trained in the time you need to kill only one mob (using polearm). More mobs killed means more experience/drops for you.
Vampiric rage heals you as you hit mobs. With proper buff you don't need healing at all. But better be in party with healer for cases of bad pull etc. Healer should start healing after first two hits so he doesn't draw aggro on himself - it's deadly for newbie AOErs as some mobs will run off you to your healer, some will stay on you, you both may panic and die then.
If you have access to catacombs, start with half-room pull. In big rooms 4 mobs are generally agressive, and 4 others are only social with them. So, step into the room, run back and forth and then run off to corridor once all 4 notice you. They will follow. Stand next to wall so mobs will run to you from one direction, then kill them. Then you can go inside and hit every mob left in the room to draw their attention and do again like the first time. Then wait for room respawn.
You'll see how hard mobs hit you and will be able to determine the optimal pull size (the more the better, but you should stay alive till you come back and your healer should be able to outheal you under the whole train after you start hitting mobs).
There are good places for AOE on the ground too. For example Gorgons Flower Garden (the area around Giran Castle) is good enough for AOE even in case you have no healer. Just pull 2-3 mobs and kill them, and increase pull size if you feel confident.
You can kill mobs by 2-3 nearly in every area, and mostly you don't need obstacles for 3-mobs pulls. It's not most effective AOE way, but in general it's more effective than killing mobs one by one.
Last remark - don't forget about frenzy/guts/rage. They makes wonders you you manage to use it in right time.
Catacombs are not really needed for poling. There's lots of 1/2HP field mob groups out there too. Those are perfect for poling.
Good poling areas are Bee Hive, Tanor Canyon, Garden of Eva(bottom), Skyshadow Meadow and Ancient Battlegrounds. For your lvl Bee Hive is the closest one in lvls (if I remember right, been a long time since I was at those lvls).
Sure, you wont get seal stones, but I've found these places less crowded, atleast in C5 so better chance of getting that exp in there. Also, atleast in Tanor Canyon you can net millions with just the spellbook drops. Shadow Flare and other rare books drop there, and atleast on Teon they fetch from 500k to 2million, depending on the buyer ^^ 1 lvl of poling = 5 spell books for me, so do the math. Also, normal adena and material drops alone were more than the SS+pot cost. (Exping a twink)
At lvl 32 you could pull trains in Partisans Hideaway(some fortress, by Dion now), although they might be getting a bit low for you. I think I pulled trains at crypts of discrace at that lvl, but not sure. You can aoe easily anywhere there is an abundance of melee mobs and someplace to have them grouped so you can hit them all.