What to start out with for cleric?

[Scottster]

I'd like to make a caster cleric with attack spells. And with tomes, I thought I could eventually try melee cleric also for fun to alternate try with.

What skills beginner skills to add to? There is healing. The Heal. Which for resting recovers more health. I think that would be ok with cleric. And the other is Spellcraft which increases damage. Does Spellcraft increase damage for cleric and worth getting in beginning? Concentration for preventing interrupting spells looks like maybe a good idea. What do you think?

I did read on there that cleric is very good for solo, and I know for group that they are wanted.

For cleric weapon class feat I thought either warhammer, longsword, or longbow. Any weapon better than the other? With bows, can't block with shield. Any weapon do more damage than the other? And are there any best weapons for cleric? A shield provides more defense for armor and survivability.

Do you have to buy arrows and bolts in the game or find them like in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2? Can you craft arrows and bolts? I see that cleric can use heavy crossbows.

Does gaining the warhammers feat allow cleric to use two-handed warhammers effectively?

What feats to get with cleric? There is skill focus Heal +3 check. More healing. I saw Diehard and Improved shield bash. I'd like to bash with shield with cleric also. That looks fun. Yet being a caster at first may not even use it as much. If monsters get in melee enough with cleric, he can use improved shield bash. The Toughness feat I like for more HP per level up.

I think the organic gaining more HP per level and tomes causes me to think the skin of even humans becomes tougher. Really tough skin to protect with. In Diablo 2, there is Iron Skin for barbarian. The forged race looks like fun, except don't have the best wisdom for cleric class; still could play it. Eventually can get the wis stat up with tomes.

How far in the game like hours does it require to get to the reset skills and feats creature to do so? If I mess up, I can do that.

Anything else?

[Xgya]

What skills beginner skills to add to? There is healing. The Heal. Which for resting recovers more health. I think that would be ok with cleric. And the other is Spellcraft which increases damage. Does Spellcraft increase damage for cleric and worth getting in beginning? Concentration for preventing interrupting spells looks like maybe a good idea. What do you think?

All decent ideas. The Heal skill's main purpose is increasing your total Positive Spell Power, which makes your healing spells better.
Spellcraft does that for most of your damaging spells, with very few exceptions.
Concentration is a useful caster skill - you don't use it that much, but you'll still notice when you don't have it. Still, I think it should come as a third, the other two are more useful in general.

For cleric weapon class feat I thought either warhammer, longsword, or longbow. Any weapon better than the other? With bows, can't block with shield. Any weapon do more damage than the other? And are there any best weapons for cleric? A shield provides more defense for armor and survivability.

Do you have to buy arrows and bolts in the game or find them like in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2? Can you craft arrows and bolts? I see that cleric can use heavy crossbows.

Does gaining the warhammers feat allow cleric to use two-handed warhammers effectively?

So, weapon choice. If you're going to make monsters dead by casting spells at them, chances are you'll find a magic rod (or even a pair of rods!) with useful spell boosting properties on it and call it a day. As for weapons, Clerics of the Silver Flame can use bows efficiently, but the rest of the Cleric chassis just isn't made to help them use ranged weaponry.
There are ways to summon magical ammunition, but Clerics don't get an easy access to those, so you'd need to buy a quiver and fill it with arrows. In any case, I won't exactly recommend doing so. There ARE ways out there to make a decent Cleric Archer, but it's not exactly beginner-friendly.

As for warhammers, they're 1-handed. A warhammer is a kind of hammer the same way a longsword is a kind of sword. Being skilled with a longsword wouldn't automatically make you great at using greatswords, so being skilled with warhammers wouldn't make you good at using mauls.

What feats to get with cleric? There is skill focus Heal +3 check. More healing. I saw Diehard and Improved shield bash. I'd like to bash with shield with cleric also. That looks fun. Yet being a caster at first may not even use it as much. If monsters get in melee enough with cleric, he can use improved shield bash.

Those are very poor feat choices. Diehard has a few merits, but you shouldn't need it.
If you want better healing, there's this Empower Healing feat that makes your healing magic cost slightly more and heal you better when you use it.
If you want a more defence-oriented option, there's Shield Mastery.
As for offence, most of your damaging spells should be of the Evocation school, so Spell Focus(Evocation) could help you ensure those work better.
There's also a lot of magic hidden in the Enhancement trees, and, much like the Empower Healing feat helped your healing magic, Empower and Maximize Spell are two feats that would help your offensive magic pack some more oomph. Those are especially good when used with spells obtained through your Domain or Enhancement Trees, because they get their full power added to those particular spells without the extra mana cost.
If you want to fight in melee, another spellcasting option is Quicken Spell, that would allow you to rapidly cast a spell between weapon swings for a slightly higher mana cost. (not that a normal caster can't benefit from Quicken - it's just that melees find themselves in tight spots more often, and that's when speed helps the most)

How far in the game like hours does it require to get to the reset skills and feats creature to do so? If I mess up, I can do that.

Every new character you make comes with a Lesser Heart of Wood. If you go to the Hall of Heroes and into the reincarnation grove, you can rebuild your character from the ground up - the only thing you can't change using that Heart is your class level and experience total.
It's only usable once, so think carefully, but the option is available from the start for everyone.
If instead you only want to make a small change, say, exchange a single feat, there's Fred hiding under a bridge in House Jorasco. The friendly Mind Flayer is always ready to help, for a price.
The most crucial part of a character's power is their Enhancements. Those, you can reset by yourself for a handful of platinum pieces so long as you're not in a quest.

Anything else?

Choose a single thing you want your character to be good at, and then focus all your energy on that. Trying to be good at too much at once usually leaves you mediocre at everything.
Depending on your character's level, it might be easier to just create a new one instead of looking for rebuilding options. Characters less than level 10 are usually among those.
Allow yourself to make mistakes. My first DDO character has long since been deleted, but I've learned a lot from playing it and adapted. I've since grown characters to a considerable level of power.

[Coffey]

I'd like to make a caster cleric with attack spells. And with tomes, I thought I could eventually try melee cleric also for fun to alternate try with.

Warpriest was a lot of fun before it was nerfed in the silly imbue update.

I would suggest a melee Two Handed Paladin because it seems to be untouchable at the moment. Paladin is the Cadillac of Melee right now on easy street. You wont ever spill a drink while playing it no matter how rocky the road gets.

I havent played a Cleric Caster since they last messed with Divine Disciple. I think Fire Domain is the most popular at the moment.

If you want to search DDO information to further your understanding i would suggest the ddowiki page.

Good luck to you!

[Ereshkigal]

Spellcraft and Heal are probably the most important skills.

Consider the double penalty to jump if you're planning on wearing heavy armor, so it would be more important to boost jump enough that you can reach 40 asap than it would be to max out heal. Just my opinion.

Personally I've been doing racials and have 21 under my belt since 9/28/22. All have been with a divine caster cleric.

I prefer Dark Apostate for the shroud immunities, the temp spellpoints on light/alignment crit, and the Bane evil aoe.

max out wisdom, put con at 18 ( or 16 if you don't have 32 point builds and/or if you want to boost INT a bit for more skillpoints. )

Feats: in order
-Maximize Spell
-Empower Spell
-Quicken Spell
-Heighten Spell

then for the last 3 grab either Spell Focus: Evocation line for better DC's or Mental Toughness for slightly better crits and more spellpoints.

Or once you have some good gear and a few past lives, you could grab Dodge/Mobility/Spring Attack to get the "leap" for the last few levels of Heroics - though if you want to do that, make sure your dex will be high enough by then to qualify for those feats.

For Domain I go Sun for Heroics, but would prefer Luck for Epics.
The Searing Light frees up Enhancement points, but the SunBeam and Sunburst SLAs are very nice for Heroic Leveling.

At Epics those SLAs are less needed, and would prefer to have the Luck domain - the immunity to failing all saves on a 1 is more important I think, and the Displacement clicky and +2 to all DCs is very nice too.

for Enhancements:
-first 23 points into Divine Disciple, grabbing Nimbus of Light, Searing Light, Holy Smite
-Then drop 9 points into Dark Apostate grabbing the shroud and the temporary spellpoint procs.
-Then I usually drop 8 points into Falconry for Speed boost.
-After that I go back to the Divine Disciple tree for the most part, though there are a few more points you can spend in DA and Falconry that are useful.

Multiclassing: I personally like to splash 1 level of Barbarian at level 4 for the 10% speedboost, and rarely the rage will help me bust down a door that I couldn't otherwise manage at early levels. Some go 2 levels of Barbarian for the Temporary hitpoints and the speed boost is better than falconry, but I found that it delayed spell progression and affected the damage output too much to be useful.

Spells: Other than buffing spells, and healing spells, the only offensive spells I take are Soundburst at level 3, and Divine Wrath at level 18 (17 if u don't splash 1 barbarian). The SLAs from Divine Disciple and Sun Domain are all you really need for combat. ( prior to gaining Searing Light, you'll need to use the Eternal wand of Light to aid your Nimbus of Light SLA) Soundburst, with a decent item to boost that spellpower is very effective on levels 3-6 even without having Maximize and Empower turned on for it.

On a final note, if you're not doing racial TRs, I suggest grabbing Human for the bonus feat and using it to grab the Dimension door from the dragonmark - or Aasimar for the Lay-On-Hands healing which is very nice at early levels, and the bonus to reflex saving throws.