Shattered Kingdoms

After cycling through a bunch of classes I couldn't help but notice that the Priest class as no attack spells till Journeyman and very limited physical damaging skills to compensate for this. Was this an intended class design? I know one can gain experience from casting spells but to my knowledge there is a cap and at early levels doesn't seem to make any difference. I suppose to could try the grouping route, but pets and players do far more damage than I can making it not such a viable option either nor do they need much in the way of healing at such levels making the casting route pretty moot as well.

Or am I just doing it wrong?

You're actually just doing it wrong. Priests do get damage spells before jman, they get cure light. Undead are pretty easy to find up to jman when you get flamestrike, so spamming cure light on undead should do really, really well for exps up to that point.

I still say priests should get second attack sooner than they do. Not like it will be ground breaking to give it at novice or initiate.

I'd be happy with an attack spell that doesn't single me out to one type of NPC just to level. But I don't think I'll be sticking with this class anyways.

Grab a staff and and some strength mods. Hit things. You should burn through apprentice quickly enough.

Leveling up to apprentice hardly takes any time, even with one attack from a mace or staff. The problem a lot of people run into is thinking that they should get a pole-mace to level, which is a bad idea because it's really inaccurate. The steel staff from Exile does a great job.

Also, cure light and undead, but that isn't even required to get to apprentice.

Between Undead and the Ayamaon outpost, hitting apprentice takes no time at all with a staff or flail(depending if you end up hitting NPCs with natural parry).

Usually takes me more time to get invested then it takes to get to jman

People always mention undead.

The only undead I have leveled on, since the undead caves were removed, are the mummies in Morea. And those are like for Expert level.

Leveling shamans and priests sucks horribly until about Veteran. Flamestrike is worthless for leveling.

Outpost is filled with undead. Great for leveling.