No...

I totally didn't let two months go by without updating anything. I know this to be true because I know how to read a calendar.

I'm plotting adding videos for some of my tips and strategies, but I haven't made a decision on that just yet.

New Bracelet

I did this one last night before I logged out. The Physical resist was already on it, but I'd already blown up a couple rings and another bracelet before so I was kinda in one of those self-destructive spellcrafting moods. The fact that it worked out to be almost exactly the same as my old bracelet, +1 Int, despite throwing on that LRC last (and therefore being stuck with whatever may've landed), I figured it was good enough. Yay for having GM resist even with Protection on.

Interestingly enough, I can go naked save this bracelet and my Undead pieces and still have 83 Physical resist. I call that a bit insane.

Being a Mage - Part 7

Or, "What the hell am I really looking for?"

That's a good question. The concept of "ultimate gear" is one that keeps me up at night sometimes. Mages get the short end of this stick, to be quite honest. It's so much easier for a warrior type to hit all of his necessary caps, including 300 total strength and 200 dex. Why is that exactly? Well, for one, most of their necessary mods are weapon mods; Hit Chance, Damage Increase, and Swing Speed. The caps for those are relatively low compared to the intensity of the mods we can add through spellcrafting, too. Artifacts are also heavy on these mods, which means that most of their suits don't even have to pull half of what they need since it's already on their weapon. This gives them plenty of room for other things that are less necessary but still useful, like LMC, LRC, FC/R, etc...

Mages don't remotely share this benefit. The mods we need are primarily only on jewelry or artifacts. Spellbooks also share these mods, but crafted books have them in such low intensities that there's no point in bothering, nevermind the 3 mod limit on books. On most of your books, one of those will be a Slayer property and, if you're using Protection, your other book would want some + Resist to make up that penalty (it actually does make a difference). That leaves you two mods to play with, some of which don't go above 6.

So what do you look for artifact-wise? Some of these choices will be easy, either because the best is quite clear or because there are no other options. Just to prove this, I'll list the two best options I've seen that are obtainable through quests or whatever else. Also note, there are a lot of other mods on these items, but as far as I'm concerned they're mostly gravy. DCI is the only other mod that we really care about.


Head: Paradise Reading Glasses.
Why you want them: 15 Int, SDI 15%, 15% LRC, 10% LMC, 5 Mana Regen, solid resists.
Where to get them: Draque's Quest, drop from Draque's Doom Dragon.

Head: Undead Pirate Hat
Why you want it: 10+ Int, 20+% SDI, 20% LMC, 20% LRC, 5 Mana Regen, 20%+ resist all
Where to get it: I'm guessing pirates.

It is somewhat hard to say which of these choices are the ultimate better choice. It really depends on how close to the 300 Int cap you get after all your other pieces. If you can hit the cap with the Pirate Hat, I might be inclined say it edges out; that SDI bonus is massive, and can save you a spot on your jewelry by itself. The mana regen is also an important consideration, but the cap isn't that high and Vampire does give you a bit of a bonus. The Glasses look better though.


Arms: Elysium Elite Arms.
Why you want them: 10+ Int, 5~15% SDI, 5~15% LMC, 5~15% LRC, 3 Mana Regen 1/1 FC/R
Where to get them: Grim's Quest in Elysium.

Arms: Arms of Compassion.
Why you want them: 5+ Int, 15% LRC, 5% LMC, 5 Mana Regen
Where you get them: Virtue Quest

The Elysium pieces are some that I've only rarely seen. The mods on what I've seen have been very strange, but all the pieces seem to fall into a certain frame (5~15), so I'm inclined to believe that it's random on drop. If not, then the numbers are just stupid. Either way, these two are your *only* mage-y artifact choices. Neither of them have stellar resists, but they're solid enough. Elysium arms win out even if the Int, SDI, LMC, and LRC are in a random range simply because the Int bonus is important, any armor SDI is good, and the other two are low cap or luxury mods.


Gloves: Gloves of the Undead
Why you want them: 8 Int, 10% SDI, 10% LMC, 8 Mana Increase, 3 Mana Regen, 1/1 FC/R Resists
Where you get them: Terragon Drop or shard donation item

Gloves: Elysium Elite Gloves.
Why you want them: 5~15% SDI, 5~15% LMC, 5~15% LRC, 4 Mana Regen, 1/2 FC/R
Where you get them: Grim's Quest in Elysium

Undead Gloves are the clear winner here. Their gravy mods are far better than the Elysium pieces, besides being more numerous. Standard "Elysium pieces are either random moded or stupid" condition applies as well. These are also the only real mage artifacts you'll find for the gloves spot. Gauntlets of Valor from the Virtue set *might* be an okay option for the 5 Int, but I'd honestly pass up on them for spellcrafted.


Chest: Tunic of the Undead.
Why you want it: 12 Int, 20% SDI, 2/2 FC/R, three strong resists
Where you get it: Terragon drop, shard donation item, 2 million gold at the artifact house

Chest: Elysium Elite Chest.
Why you want it: 10+ Int, 5~15% SDI, 5~15% LMC, 5~15% LRC, 14 Mana Regen, 1/2 FC/R
Where you get it: Grim's Quest in Elysium.

At first glance, the Elysium chest looks really good. However, the Undead Tunic has far better resists, 33 Str bonus, and 34% DCI, making it a much better choice. This is on top of the normal Elysium "either random or stupidly set mods" factor.


Legs: Legs of the Undead.
Why you want them: 17 Int, 12% SDI, 10% LMC, 10 Mana Increase, 3 Mana Regen, 1/1 FC/R, resists
Where you get them: Terragon drop, shard donation item, 4 million gold at the artifact house.

Legs: Elysium Elite Legs.
Why you want them: 10+ Int, 5~15% SDI, 5~15% LMC, 5~15% LRC, 3 Mana Regen, 1/1 FC/R
Where you get them: Grim's Quest in Elysium


Legs of Undead are the easy winners, for the same reasons as the Gloves; so many gravy mods, such high bonuses on them. There's a reason they're so expensive. Elysium legs aren't a bad choice by any means, though. If you can grab a pair, it's very likely worth it.



If you can pull the best pieces of those I listed (and the mods I saw on the Elysium arms are fixed bonuses), then you're looking at a great start to your gear. Assuming PRGs, Elysium Arms, Undead Tunic, Gloves, and Legs, you're looking at a total of: 67 Int, 68% SDI, 39% LMC, 22% LRC, 18 Mana Increase, 14 Mana Regen, 5/5 FC/R, and 113/102/56/92/57 resists. Your DCI will also be more than covered, as well as decent str, dex, and health bonuses.

You'll need to pull together a Ninja Belt Armor with 14 Cold resist and 13 Energy (18 Energy if you're an elf), or you could try try using Magic Reflect (you've sure got the physical resist to cover it). Your belt can get you another 4 Mana Regen, 20 Mana Increase, 25% LRC, and two other mods of your choice.

I would pull on a 10 Int Merlin's Robe, giving you 77 total. You'd need 9 more to hit what you need on armor to hit the 300 Int cap. If you managed to pull in Hastu's Smelly Shoes you'd get another 6 Int. If there's a such thing as a 10 Int Merlin's Cloak, I might consider wearing that.

Hastu's Smelly Shoes will also give you 1/2 FC/R and 1 Mana Regen, plus other bonuses. These are easily the best shoes on the shard. However, the Virtue set will also get you the Solarets of Sacrifice: 5% LMC, 15% LRC, and 1/1 FC/R. Both are great options, though Hastu's are easily better.

Assuming you got your hands on Hastu's and the robe, but no Int cloak, you're now at 83 Int, 68% SDI, 39% LMC, 47% LRC, 38 Mana Increase, 19 Mana Regen, 6/7 FC/R, and 70's resist. Everything but Int, SDI, and LRC is capped. You'll also have 73 Strength (seriously. Sick) and 52 Dex bonus. If you donated for the 340 scroll and kept 40 base dex, you've not only got your 80 dex for parrying, but a 13 point buffer for curses. Nothing will take you under that; it would require a 65% curse. That would be ungodly eval skill, and honestly the first damage spell would probably take you out anyway.

Your four pieces of jewelry need to pull in 67 Int (not possible), 57% SDI, 53% LRC, and whatever else you want. You can get 16 Int, 25% SDI, and 30% LRC on perfect jewelry; two pieces like that and your SDI and LRC is effectively covered (you'll technically be 7% short on SDI this way). That means that, other than Int on the rest of your jewelry, you're entirely open for what you add. I would recommend Strength on every piece for the health bump. Dex is a decent choice if you don't have the 340 scroll or if you want faster Healing with bandages. Hit Chance for times you melee for mana leech. Enhance Potions if you feel like bothering with those. Damage Increase if you think you'll get something out of it.

So now, with everything else, and assuming you run with two perfect str/int/dex/SDI/LRC jewelry pieces and two with perfect str/int/dex, you'll have a final total of:

147 Int
153 Str (Yup)
112 Dex
118% SDI
39% LMC (Close enough)
107% LRC
38 Mana Increase
19 Mana Regen
6/7 FC/R
70/70/70/70/70(75) Resists
+30 Resisting Spells.

Which pisses me off because we *STILL* didn't hit the Int cap, but we did hit the Str cap with some leeway. Oh, and the +30 Resist there is from the ridiculously rare +15 Resisting Spells ring and Bracelet that you would, in a perfect world, use to cover Protection's resist penalty.

Since we're talking "perfect world" here, your Spellbooks, Slayer and general use book, would all have 6 Int and 9% SDI on them, which would cap those two stats. The general use book could have 6 Mana or 6% LMC (if you're that hung up on the 1%).

That's a lot of counting, adding, and flipping around. I'm still curious about how this would look with the PRGs swapped for the Undead Pirate Hat, but I don't care enough right now to bother.


I think it goes without saying, don't expect to reach this point very quickly. You can pull the Undead pieces with some real world cash, but otherwise you're in for a long, long journey for the rest of this. Grim's quest has a long restriction time between each attempt and doesn't award an item each time, just as an example. Good luck.

 - Update 06/12/10 -

I did the math, and Undead Hat is way better than PRGs for us. Right quickly, assuming UPH, EEArms, Undead chest, legs, and gloves:

63 Int, 75% SDI, 49% LMC, 27% LRC, 18 Mana Increase, 14 Mana Regen, 5/5 FC/R 113/107/65/97/62 Resists. A difference of -4 Int for equal or better in everything else.

Next we add:
Ninja Belt Armor: 25% LRC, 20 MI, 4 MR, [open], [open], 5 cold resist, 8/13 Energy resist
Merlin's Robe: 10 Int
Hastu's: 6 Int, 6 Dex, 5 Str, 1/2 FC/R, 1 mana regen
SC Ring: +15 Resist Spells, 20 Str, 16 Int, 15 Dex, 25% SDI, 30% LRC
SC Bracelet: +15 Resist Spells, 20 Str, 16 Int, 15 Dex, 25% SDI, 30% LRC
SC Necklace: 20 Str, 16 Int, 15 Dex, [open], [open]
SC Earrings: 20 Str, 16 Int, 15 Dex, [open], [open]

For a Total of : +30 Resist Spells, 143 Int, 149 Str, 107 Dex, 125% SDI, 49% LMC, 112% LRC, 38 MI, 19 MR, 6/7 FC/R, max all resists.

Spellbooks won't cap your Int this way, but Bless will. Your SDI and LMC will be capped without books, so that's a bigger plus. If you run with shields, Gwenno's gives 10 all stats, which puts you at cap. I can't remember if any others can do that too.  For all I know, it *may* be possible to get a UPH with better stat bonuses; a 12 in Str would cap you, but you'd need an 18 Int bonus for the Int cap (doubtful that'd happen).

Being a Mage - Part 6

Mages, like any character, have a number of choices they have to make that ultimately individualize the character. Since we can GM/Legend any skill on UOPF, the choices are cut down quite a bit, but there are still a few important ones to make.


Human or Elf

There are fairly decent bonuses to both sides of this one, but I tend towards Elf. I'll cover the mechanical benefits of both just so all the info is available to you.

Humans:

- Workhorse: Increased odds of gaining more resources when lumberjacking, mining, or skinning hides. This can be a noticeable increase in some cases and is probably the best benefit of being human. More resources is never a bad thing. In the case of mining, it seems to give you more swings per node, for lumberjacking it's more logs per hit.

Tough: Increased health regeneration. This isn't a bad bonus either, but it's one that you probably won't notice too much. If you have a little damage on you, you probably won't waste time healing it and won't really see the regen in effect either because you'll have gone on about your business. When you have a big hurt, you're going to heal it away anyway.

Strong Back: +60 stones to your carrying capacity. Without a doubt, this is a big bonus. However, it's of limited use. I can't imagine why anyone on Paradise wouldn't have 150 base strength, but even without that you'll very likely have tons of strength bonus on your gear. Either way, you're going to have enough strength to carry a full 400 backpack and your character weight without this bonus. Unless you have the Extreme Backpack, you probably won't even notice this little perk.

Jack of All Trades: This is the big one, a basic and free 20 points in every skill. You don't actually *have* these twenty points, it's just that where ever you *don't* have at least 20 points in a skill, your basic effectiveness at it is as if you had the 20 points. This makes training some skills that can't be bought a bit easier, however this is still a benefit of limited use. There's no skillcap on Paradise, so if you're doing things right you'll not see any effect from this after a few weeks on the shard.

Elf

- Night Sight: Elves get a permanent Night Sight spell cast on them. This would be great, except Razor comes with the ability to turn off the darkness layer and there's little reason, outside of RP, to not use it.

- Difficult to Track: Elves are harder to track that most other creatures. Again, not really a big deal. Monsters don't track and there's no world PvP; if you're fighting another player, it's a duel or maybe guild training so this doesn't ever matter.

- Perception: Elves have a bonus to detecting hidden monsters and players. Other than Doom Gauntlet, this is another lackluster benefit. If PvP was in play, maybe. But since it's not...

- Infused with Magic: Adds a +5 to your normal Energy Resist cap, giving you a 75 instead of 70. It's a small thing, but seeing as all casters use at least Magery there are two big spells that apply here; Lightning and Energy Bolt. Things that do Energy damage in melee become slightly easier as well, I suppose (though mages shouldn't melee). It's a gravy benefit really, but it is a nice one.

- Knowledge of Nature: Increases the special resources you gain, such as colored ore and logs. This is a great benefit. I often find myself pulling veins of ore without any iron at all, if the vein is low enough. Even on Valorite veins, I typically pull 10/18 Iron/Valorite, and that ain't terrible either. The easy 115 Smith/Mining PS is a Valorite small BOD, by the by.

- Wisdom: +20 mana to your max. This is where it's at. I loves me some mana, and even warrior types can't deny how nice this one is. Unlike Human's weight benefit, this is one you'll see every time. Even with my 330+ mana, I'm still known to get low on it in Champ Spawns or against bigger monsters; having another 20 mana is basically the same as another three fireballs.

In-Play benefits

To make matters worse, Elves have some things that they can do that Humans can't. The most important of them is the Cu Sidhe. This is easily my favorite pet ever. It has solid HP (about 550~600), 1K strength, high resists, over GM skills, and does both Bleed and Lethal Poison on hit. They're also riddable, which is very nice. They take three control slots, which means you can have two of them without the donation slot *and* as soon as you're able to tame them. Barring high stage Evos, I haven't seen anything that compares. Two of these guys can bring down and Ancient Dragon with minimal healing.


Karma: High or Low

On the one hand, this might seem like a no-brainer choice, especially since I recommend Necromancy so enthusiastically. There are a few good points to high karma. Most of them related to Chivalry.

- Remove Curse. This will sound like a minor point to some, but it's actually very useful. At Legendary Eval, anything that Curses for over 13% will require more than one Bless to overcome. Or one Remove Curse. It casts quick enough and is a much better way of getting over the big Curse hits from Terragon Ancient Liches than the alternative; don't forget, every -2 to Strength is 1 Hp that you can't just heal. Blessing over it takes more time, but ignoring it altogether is just reckless. Necromancy curses and Mortal Strike are also removed by this, as is the Paralyze spell (?).

- Better Chiv heals and cures. You can still use Close Wounds and Cleanse by Fire at low karma, but both of these benefit from higher Karma.

- Holy Light: You'll lose out on Wither, but Holy Light is a popular alternative. I haven't used it much, so I can't say how they compare in terms of damage.  Holy Light is Energy instead of Cold, for what that's worth.

- Dispel Evil? I've never thought to use it when I had high Karma, but it sounds like a spell that might have some use against high spawns or the Black Liche. I'll have to test it out later.

- Random Blues don't attack you. This doesn't apply to many creatures, mostly those that were introduced with UO:R, but if you're looking for a Unicorn or Ki-Rin, you'll want high karma just to keep the rest of them from trying to kill you.

The biggest high karma drawbacks are mostly minor. You lose out on Wither (which I don't suggest high use of anyway), Strangle, Evil Omen, and Corpse Skin. This means your only choice for Lethal Poison is through weapons or Lethal Poisoned Shuriken. Corpse Skin is the hardest to lose, because high resist all enemies are generally best dealt with by CS + Fireball. In the case of things like Ancient Dragons you can get away without Corpse Skin, but as the enemies get bigger so too does the usefulness of Corpse Skin. Strangle is likely your best poison damage, so seeing it go is a bit of a hurt as well. You'll be okay without it, though.


Shield or none?

I tend to err on the side of none. It doesn't feel Mage-y to me, but you don't have to agree. Before you have some of the better artifacts, shields are a great way to make up some mods. Guardian Crest is an easy one to get your hands on. Relic of the Church is an even better one, and if appearing Mage-y is a concern it can be 'use item in hand'-ed to Poly into an Ethereal Warrior. If you pull together the Virtue Set, you'll get Dupre's Shield which is pretty popular and has some nice enough mods. Gwenno's Shield and Shield of Salvation are easily the highest of the high-end shields; count yourself fortunate if you pull one of those.

In any case, if you run with a shield then you will find it a good plan to get rid of your Bushido; with Bushido in play, your Shield parry really eats it. You can throw it on a Skill Totem (quest) or Soul Stone (30K at Paradise Mall). You'll also want to make sure you pull together the 80 dex for full parrying bonus, as well as a solid buffer so that curses don't take you below 80.


Ninja and Bushido

Mirror Images are the number one suggestion for taking out just about anything on the shard, which I feel is weak character. You may disagree and want to fit them into your combat style. They won't pull much damage if you're holding a spellbook, but if you have a full suit of Aquas leather or better, they'll very likely have full 95% resist all which means they'll tank like no one's business. You can use animal forms to travel around instead of mounting and dismounting for every fight; if you're moving when you cast animal form you'll automatically try to assume the last form you used. Wolf is a good choice for the bonus health, Unicorn gets low-level poison immunity. You can only cast mirrors and animal form while in Animal Form and if you're currently using another form, even Vampire, you can't use Animal Form.

Other abilities that could help you in general, regardless of mirrors, include Focus Attack and Death Strike. From time to time, you may need to use a mana leech weapon and Focus Attack can help with that. Death Strike is good for mobs that are already running away from your. Ki Attack is also valid for jousting, assuming you have that much freedom to run around.

Bushido's Evasion is a great ability that I almost never remember to use (requires a weapon in hand, which a spellbook is not). It can block even things such as firebreath. Confidence can earn you healing if you're forced into melee (mana leeching) through parrying attacks, and includes a flat regen bonus to health and stamina for 4 seconds. If you have no HCI bonuses, Lightning Strike will get you HCI-capped hits; thus, you have even more reason to ignore seeking HCI bonuses. Obviously, Bushido allows parrying with a weapon as well, which can be more worthwhile than shields for we wand using Mages.


Overall...

Essentially, your choices come down to how much of a mage you really want to be. Pure Mages largely eschew shields and high karma to do as much damage as possible. Tank Mages will likely depend a bit more on Chivalry and Shields. Petless Mages may want to use mirrors as their tanks. A Druid type might favor Spell Weaving and Animal Form more than anything else.

Your choice may change depending on how you play; if you have friends that mostly use pets, you may find high karma a good choice to keep them curse free, control the crowd, and have multiple healing methods. If your friends run mostly mirrors, you're better off going full aggression with low karma Necromancy. Running solo, it's really a judgment call as to which is the best, though I can see a strong case for Shields; spellbooks don't Bushido Parry, so as long as you only have Parrying a shield can do you good in those times you get hit with a powerful paralyze. In the end, you're free to fit whatever you want into your Mage game. Just be careful; on a shard like Paradise, the line between Battle Mage and Dexer with few spells is very thin.

Magic Tactics - Creature Feature 3

One of the more common enemies people have trouble with, at least the first time, is the Black Liche. Sadly, the *only* solution I ever see for him is, of course, Mirror Image. Last night someone mixed it up and added in Wither, but Mirrors were still the initial suggestion. This is completely unnecessary, and it makes me sad to see that there are otherwise intelligent people that can't figure other methods of dealing with these creatures. Mirrors are *not* required to beat the BL. Intelligence and knowing your Necromancy is.

I use two different methods for dealing with this jerk.

Solo Method

This is the most dangerous method because the BL will be focused on you. However, this doesn't make him anymore dangerous than Terragon Dragons or Balrons either. Firstly, he *will* Flamestrike you. A lot. At 70 resist, it does around 60~70 damage to me, so be ready to heal often and quickly. Lots of FC/R and a one-button hotkey for your heal are your best friends here. Secondly, he *will* use Blood Oath on you at some point. If you're not paying attention, you will kill yourself. Watch your health closely, and if you see a sudden drop from something that isn't a Flamestrike, *stop* casting. He'll also hit you with Mind Rot from time to time, so you'll have to keep an eye on your mana if your regen isn't great.

Those are your biggest concerns, Flame Strike and Blood Oath. You're a mage, so I don't think I need to tell you to stay out of melee; otherwise, he'll turn you into a Skeleton. I'm not certain the exact effects of this on us, but it's unkind either way. If this does happen, you can break it with a quick Polymorph (the namesake spell or a Necro Form are best, but not Reaper form because it's too slow).

Corpse Skin + Fireballs is the way to finish him off. Take your time with it, don't get too spam happy; at 4/8 FC/R, I've been able to have two fireballs sailing when he Blood Oathed me and wound up eating the damage from both. You'll have to figure out the proper casting routine for yourself, but trust me; it's there and it's easy.

What about his spawns, you ask? Ignore them. As long as you keep moving, it's entirely possible that you'll be out of their range before they even think to aggro. If they do, a Fireball is generally enough to take them out. It's ultimately a non-issue for us. Though do be a responsible hunter and take them out *after* you kill the BL if they don't disappear.

Pets Method

Taking out the BL with pets is even easier. You will have to accept that they're going to be turned into Skeletons, but that's not really a big deal. You'll be partially on healing duty for this, but you do have a few key things that need to be done.

Namely, his spawn. This time it is an issue, as your pet will be tanking and keeping the battle stationary. Wraiths are not that big of a threat alone, but letting the BL summon too many can end a fight quick. There are two ways of dealing with them. Firstly, you can drop a quick Meteor Swarm each time they spawn. If you're quick enough, you can get them all in one shot and deal some damage to the BL at the same time. Alternatively, you can liter the area around the BL with Fire Fields. With the BL as the center, generally two in front and two behind make a big enough box that anything that spawns will immediately be caught in it. Even if not, should the Wraiths target your pet, they'll move into the field and burn up quick enough.

Depending on your pet, you may have plenty of leeway to nuke between heals. Cu Sidhe are rockstar for this (they rarely aren't rockstar, honestly). The Cu is a caster as well, so you can somewhat count on him to take care of himself; unless he gets Lethal poisoned or the creature he's dealing with poisons on hit, you can generally leave curing to him. Having two Cu Sidhe (if you can tame a Cu, you can use the Taming Potion for 7 Slots; a Cu takes three. Do the math) is a good way to take down just about anything in short order.

Mercs are also good against the BL, with high resist gear on hand. Fire resist is a great idea to dull down those Flamestrikes. Tutivillus might also be a solid tank, but be careful with him. I wouldn't take a Stage 3 Tordit or Stage 2 puppy against the BL; their resists and health are a bit too low for my liking and you may burn out all of your mana just trying to keep them alive. At higher stages, however, these also could be strong pets for a BL due to the sheer damage they can do even at low stages, along with Mortal Strike. I haven't played with my Evo dragon in a while, so I can't really say how he would work against the BL; I would err on the same side as the Tordit/Puppy in the Dragon's early stages, though.

If your Merc/pet can deal Fire or Poison damage, then Corpse Skin is still in the 'definite' column. If they use mostly Energy, you can still go for it. Pure Physical or Cold damage, however, you'd best leave it alone. You'll still most likely want to Fireball when you have the chance, but Lightning is also fast and powerful so you might consider it as well. Healing and Curing is your first priority, however; you don't want the Pet Method to turn into the Solo Method on *his* terms.

Mage Tactics - General 4

Continuing from a previous post, we'll go over the pets worth taming. Unlike my other posts, I expect this will be a short one. Most of the custom tamables are for skill over GM. I currently have 110 Taming, so I haven't tamed them all. I won't cover pets I haven't had or haven't seen in play.

At GM skill, you have a few options. Dragons, White Wyrms, Rune Beetles and Nightmares are pretty much the best of them. These can get reasonably powerful, but don't expect anything more than what standard UO offers from them. They haven't been buffed in any way, so custom enemies on UOPF will make a mess of them most of the time.

Tutivillius is a custom tamable (92.0). It cannot bond to you, so you'll have to be a bit careful with it. It is a pretty strong pet to own, however. About at the 1K mark for Strength, 650+ health, high resists including 100% Poison and around 70% physical. He (somehow) deals 100% Physical, 25% in all the others. Skill-wise, nothing over GM, but high out of the gate. Three control slots.

The over GM pets aren't often as good as Tutivillius. The ones that I've gotten so far are the Silver Steed, the Phantom Steed, Frost Steed, Fire Steed, and Cu Sidhe.

Silver Steeds (103.1) are re-colored horses. Don't expect anything more from them than you would a horse. One control slot.

Phantom Steeds (105.1) are basically Nightmares; slightly higher strength scores, 450 health, about 35-/+ in each resist other than Physical, which is around 50~60. Three control slots though. I haven't trained one to high skill, so it's possible that they can go over GM skill somewhere but I doubt it.

Fire Steeds (106.0) are the same as UO Standard. Lower than Nightmare stats and resists. High Fire resist and skills. The do come with pack instinct Daemon. Two control slots.

Frost Steeds (110) are recolored Nightmares. They have a frost breath attack, but for all other purposes they're the same as far as I can tell.

Cu Sidhe (104.1) are easily the best tame I've ever had. The majority of it's skills are over GM, it has 1K strength, 550-ish health, resists very high (over 60 on all of them, 80's for cold and poison). It uses spells, bleed attack, and deals lethal poison. As if it needed to do anything else, it is also a mount. I'm unsure if you have to be an elf to tame and ride these like UO standard. Unlike UO Standard, it doesn't use Healing skill. Takes three control slots. (Note, as of Jan~Feb '11, this information is somewhat obsolete)

Clay Puppet: Grabbed one of these a couple days ago in Elysium. Not sure the tame skill required. They're weak pets, though. Over 100 hp, low resist, no magic. I haven't used it much, for the reasons mentioned.

Kodiak: Another Elysium pet that I'm not sure of the skill needed I'm estimating near the 110 mark because it took a lot of tries to finally get. A world better than the Puppet. Nearly 900 strength, high magic resist, decent resists, and solid health. It won't replace a Cu, but it's a good stepping stone to the Cu if you don't have one yet but want to see what one might be capable of.


New custom tames are added fairly often, including special limited-time tames. I can't comment on any of those. As I gain better skill and tame some of these new additions, I'll update this post.

As right now, I wouldn't waste my time on any tames other than Tutivillius at GM skill or a Cu Sidhe over GM.

Mage Tactics - General 5

Batman is a better super hero than Superman: Fact.

Superman survives because he's nigh-invulnerable, save for a very gimmicky weakness; completely boring.

Batman wins because he's a crafty dude who both adapts to situations and plans ahead.

"Where does he get those wonderful toys?"

I'll tell you Joker; he's rich and crafty.

Interestingly enough, so are we on Paradise. So there's really no reason we shouldn't have a few useful toys of our own.

Fire Horn: Okay, granted, these aren't the most impressive of tools. The damage is based on your four Bard skills, tops out at about 70~80 damage, has a "you must catch your breath" delay, has to be used within 3 panels, and consumes 4 ash each use. However, it's an area of effect attack, and often just enough to clear some of those weaker spawn from around you (If you've ever used the travel stone to get to Blood, you know what I'm talking about). You can create a macro for it that removes ash from your reagent crystal for you then uses the item. You could also set it to target a relative location right at your feet if you want, but I prefer to target it myself. It as a 95% chance of success, 4% chance to fail, and 1% chance to fail and break.

Bolas: Again, another item that has limited use on Paradise. There are only a few mounted enemies in the game and dismounting them has limited effect anyway. Really, the best use for these is if you're wanting to steal a Ridgeback from a savage. But honestly, you can find those elsewhere.

Shuriken: Now we have something. Something I just recently learned, you do *not* have to wear the leather ninja belt to use Shuriken. Each belt can hold a maximum of ten shuriken. At 120 Blacksmith skill, I make them exceptionally 100% of the time and get 2 per attempt. They can be deadly poisoned and thrown at any enemy within three tiles, just as with Firehorns. However, if you're willing to work a bit harder, they can also be Lethal Poisoned. There's a questgiver in Occlo that will give you a Lethal Poison potion for every 20 beetle venom (or whatever) you give her. This item can be looted from Rune Bettles. Lethal Poison shuriken are a great alternative for high karma players who want to skip using Evil Omen to get Lethal. Their chance to hit is based on Ninjitsu, last I heard.

Wands: My new favorite item. Unlike On Hit: Spell effects on weapons, Wands take into account your skills and item bonuses, i.e., a Lightning spell from a Wand will do exactly the same damage as a spell you cast. Wands do have a delay between uses, but they also use 0 mana. This means that even if you're stuck chain healing one of your pets, you can still use a wand to damage between heals without worrying out running yourself out of mana. Likewise, if you find yourself getting low on mana you can pull out a Greater Heal wand to pick up the slack while your mana catches up. Wands also work for defensive macing and benefit from Bushido Parry despite having 0 speed. Because of the 0 speed, wands will not swing. This makes Taming that much easier, as you don't have to worry about angering or accidentally killing what you're trying to tame.

Smokeballs: These are nifty little items to have on hand. I previously said that Wall of Stone and hiding was the quickest way to make a fast escape, but these have changed my mind. They're based off Ninjitsu firstly, to determine if they work. If they do, you make an immediate Hiding check as if nothing has line of sight to you. You still have to deal with skill delay, so you can't use a smokeball and follow it with an immediate Stealth check, but if you have the skills and want to get away, this is a good item to keep around.

Potions: These are great to keep around, and easier to keep in bulk if you have a Gardener's Bucket; it will hold Greater Cure, Heal, Agility, and Strength potions for you. All you need is a macro that will pop one out and use it when you need it. Ancient Alchemy on Paradise expands this a bit further. There are now Mana potions, Super Potions (+10 all stats), Invisibility and Stealth Potions, and Revitalize Potions (completely refill Health, Mana, and Stamina).

Pet Leash: You can also use Shrink Potions (from ancient alchemy) for the same effect. Either one lets you shrink your pets, putting them in your main backpack and freeing your control slots once again. These are good to keep on hand if you're training pets, only keeping a pet around for one big mob, or planning to run the Doom Gauntlet. Likewise, if you're a serious tamer or doing a quest, you may like to have the bigger use leashes around when you do heavy taming sprees.

Scrolls: These are another thing worth keeping around thanks to special holders on Paradise, in this case the Scribe's Tome. If you have less than 120 Magery or Necromancy, there are certain spells you can't cast at 100% chance. In this moments, have a scroll around is a great time saver. Rather than recast a couple times hoping to succeed, you could pop out a scroll; scrolls cast as if two circles lower than what you can cast. In the case of 7th, 8th, and high skill Necro, at GM skill you can use any spell from a scroll at 100% success.

Mage Tactics - Creature Feature 2

I'm posting this one because I had to leave the shard for a few days, just to be reminded of why I feel like I have it so good on UOPF. I'm generally fairly accepting of the fact that, when it comes to high-end custom content, the shard is not balanced for mages. Sometimes this is in our favor, more often it isn't. At the best of times, it offers an even greater challenge and sense of success for pulling through.

Then there's Gwenno.

So the Gwenno quest is in Elysium, the shard's custom facet. It's a short quest; get a guy his arm and he'll open a gate to Gwenno, who you can fight for a shot at some nice artifacts (for dexers, of course) and fulfill the quest for Sir Kenshin's cloak as well.

The first part of the quest is easy. The guy who has your questgiver's arm is a pushover. So much of one that I was deluded into thinking I could solo Gwenno as a Mage. So I proceed into the portal to Gwenno, jump another hoop or two, and our fight begins.

It starts off pretty tame. I went in with Mirrors going because I was expecting something like Dread Horn or worse. I sic them on the dead king, throw down a fire field on him, and mostly watch what's going on while mixing in a few fireballs. The mirrors aren't doing a ton of damage to him, and neither are the fireballs honestly, so I'm putting his (Fire) resist at around 80~85, same as Ancient Dragons. (He's human and I only have 115 Animal Lore, so I can't get exact numbers) I try throwing a Corpse Skin on him, but it doesn't change the fireball damage at all.

He's also not exactly melting the faces off my mirrors, so I'm fairly sure he doesn't melee very great. This is confirmed when I toy around with him and he hits me for about 40~ish. That's all well and good, but I still don't like being melee'd, so I change tactics. Out comes my Cu Sidhe. He also isn't doing great damage, but we're finally seeing a bit of red on the life bar. I'm healing him pretty well, but I still have a lot of time for fireballs. Gwenno is apparently poison immune, or so damn resistant that he might as well be, and he loves the Heal spell. Still, things are okay, we're making progress.

Then he WTF-one-hits my Cu. This is, at the least, 600 damage to a creature with 70-ish in all resists (some a bit better, some worse). I'm stunned by this and, having dropped my mirroring, left alone with this guy. So, figuring it was some sort of special move, I start my standard run-n-gun style Magery. He's not super fast, so I'm not having trouble playing keep-away, but his heals are better than three of my fireballs, so this is pretty much a losing battle at this point.

Then he WTF-one-hit me. With HP-based Firebreath.

Son of a...

That's it. That officially ENDS any chance I have. You will not beat Gwenno as a mage.

It was enough when he had crazy Resists, Spell Resist, and spammed a strong heal, but now he also has Firebreath? It's over. You can't compete with that. In the time that you get res'd from being hit with it, he will have healed all the damage you did (I know this for fact; he chain cast heal like six times when I died, right back to full health).

You will not beat him as a Tamer. This fireball either ignores resists or does such massive damage that even at 95% resist you would still need a boatload of health on your pet for it to survive a hit. Then you have to full heal the thing before it gets HPB'd again. If you can find a pet that can take a hit like that, please let me know what it is because I don't believe it exists. *Maybe* a stage 7 Merc?

The only realistic way to beat this guy is to have full DI, HCI, DCI, SSI, and whatever else dexers use, and spam Mirror Image. You'll also need Mortal Strike, assuming it works on him, to keep him from healing. Unless I've missed my guess, Skullthunker just happens to be a scepter, which has Mortal Strike.

GG, Dexers. GG. /quit


- Update 06/10/10 - 

I've put some more thought into this fight, and I stand by the 'no Mage can do it' thing. However, this is working off of my definition of a Mage. If yours includes Mirror Image then you can make it work. It just requires spamming MI and Fireballs. You'd simply need to keep stocked on a massive amount of Mana Potions (I sometimes forget they're on the shard because I don't have a PS for Alchemy yet). This is the only way you'll have the fuel to burn him down and avoid still the HPB.

Still, for as much "strategy" as that is, you might as well just go dexer all the same. It's really a stupid boss and I don't foresee myself doing this one again unless I can bring my second account in with me to act as a second Fireball cannon. Maybe give it a "If Mana < 15 drink pot / else / Corpse Skin / For Loop 15 Cast Fireball / End Loop / End If" macro and let turn him loose. I could add in Mirrors with him just to be safe, but he would only have three and that would take more mana off him for little gain. It would be far easier and faster to just let him blaze and handle the mirroring myself. Gwenno doesn't kill them on a fixed schedule. I actually had a few time out in my fight with him.

I really don't expect I'll bother. I already have (and don't use) a Kenshin Cloak and I don't care about the sword or shield. Like so many other things, it's really a no-gain thing for me.

Mage Tactics - General 3

One of the more important choices you'll make with your character is with your companions. Guilds are trickier beast that I can deal with here, but in terms of tames and evos your companion choice can completely change your approach to creatures.


Evolution Pets

Evolution pets are a popular thing on many free shards. The gist of evos is that you get them at a very young state and, though fighting monsters to gain Kill Points, they grow into different stages of creature with better stats, resists, and over-all survivability. Paradise Found currently has four evo pets (with the potential for another on the way): Mercenary, Dragon, Hound, and Torditsaron (Demon, basically). I have all four of them at various stages and have a fair grasp of what they're capable of.

Thus far, I haven't been overly impressed with the evo pets. They're definitely helpful, but they really shine at the highest stages which can take millions of Kill Points. Earning KP for your evos gets harder and harder as they advance through the stages, so pulling together high stage evos is somewhat unlikely without donating for the evo boost.

Generally, the evo plays for you in one of two ways: He serves as a distraction, taking little damage, while you're freely throwing your spells around to melt faces. The alternative is that he tanks something big for you, forcing you to count on his damage primarily while you're stuck healing and curing him so he doesn't roll up and become even more useless. Much of the time the Evo will be in the middle of these two extremes, edging towards one or the other. This isn't to say that evos should be avoided or aren't worth the hassle; getting yourself a fully evolved Merc is definitely worth the trouble. Just be prepared for a long, sometime tiresome road.


- Mercenary. The Merc is likely the most commonly used evo, for good reason. Unlike the other Evos, it's able to use any weapon and shield you give it. It gains new armor as it progresses through stages and this armor doesn't have need upkeep. Because of this, it's fairly easy to get a merc to mid-high resists at even low stages. He has solid stats, a base 700 skill cap that can be raised to 1000 with Mercenary Elixir, and can be trained in any fighting skill, tactics, anatomy, parrying, magic resist, and meditation.

All in all, the merc is a great tank pet. With his current gear, my merc has 96% Physical resist and 80+ in all but Cold. He can easily tank through Lethal Poison, which makes him a great choice for dealing with big creatures like Navery. He's not much in the damage department, however. Even with an offensive weapon (with damage, hci, ect), they don't really wheel it out even at stage 5 (though I'm told 6 is where they start to shine). Worse yet, the weapon and shield you give him *do* require upkeep, and since his damage is so low he can go through durability like no one's business; Self Repair 3+ is highly recommended on your merc gear.


- Dragon. The dragon is another solid pet. He starts with low resists, but gains a solid amount at each stage (20% in some of the firsts, 10% in later ones). Getting him to stage 3 or 4 only takes a few hundred thousand KP, where he becomes a much more solid pet. You can feed him Dragon Dust (dropped by dragon-types generally) for 5 KP per dust.

The dragon comes with a double-edged sword, however: It casts magic. This is a good thing, because it makes him much more offensive than the merc. It's a bad thing because magic doesn't raise KP, only hitting in melee (also with bows for a merc) does that. Every time it damages a creature with a spell, that's fewer hits you're getting which means slower growth. All in all, though, the dragon is a worthwhile evo if you can get your hands on one. Having magic also means that it can teleport to enemies as well as cure and heal itself.


-Tordtisaron. This little guy was my favorite evo until last night. He's very clearly one of the offensive evos; mine is stage 3 and has more Str than my stage 5 merc. It also deals lots of melee special moves, deadly poison being one of them. It has Poisoning skill, which can be raised with Glycane Venom (created with cooking, 1 arcane gem and 2 DP potions) at 0.5 skill per cake. As of the upgrade, the gain Poisoning skill naturally like any other pet with Poisoning. Whether this is an intentionally change or not, or permanent, I can't say. It can also be fed Captured Souls (generally looted from demon-types) to gain 50 KP per.

Tordits are rare to see in use. Unlike other evos, you don't find an item that creates it for you, you have to go out and find a Tordit to tame. I found mine in the swamp SW of Paupa. It looks like an Imp initially. It also does not bond instantly like the other evos, so either wait a week or purchase a pet bonder with Plat. Tordits start out with 20% in all resist, gain 20% at stage 2, and 10% at stage 3 (where mine currently is) for a total of 50% resist all at stage 3. I can't say when/if their Poisoning skill will let them LP, but as of 63 skill they still Deadly.


- Hound. *This* is my favorite. He's a fragile little thing to start, 20% resist all and 300 HP. He's a rough one, though. My fresh Hound took out an Ancient Guardian with some healing from me. It's also the only Evo capable of weapon skill greater than GM, specifically a 130 Wrestling cap. This is a massive advantage over other pets and evos, as many of the custom creatures have high weapon skills that make them hard to hit and avoid. Evo Hounds can be fed Bone (from skeleton/undead types) for 2KP per.

He does share a drawback with the Dragon, however. As of stage 3, he'll gain the use of Magic, which will slow his KP gains. As of Stage 3, he's also capable of Lethal Poison and mortal strike. This can be both good and bad; good because it means he kills high HP creatures that can heal easier than other pets, but bad because it prevents him from gaining extra KP from healing foes. All the same, I'd rather have him the way he is. Stage 3 still only has 50% in all resists and 500HP, so it will not tank. It does have 850 Str, 130 Wrestling, and a really vicious bite so it pairs really well with a merc.

It does appear to be the easiest evo to full evolve; It has four stages, the top stage being at 3 million KP. This is much lower than the other three, which tend to top out at 10 million or even 15 million in the case of the dragon.


I'll conclude this topic in a later post, where I'll go over some of the worthwhile tamables you may find interesting.

Mage Tactics - General 2

In this topic, we'll finally cover some of those useful combos I've glossed over before. Many of them are fairly obvious, but give it a once-over anyway. You may find one or two you've never thought of.

Lethal Poison: Evil Omen > Poison.
- You can create a hotkey for this one, with a delay only .03 seconds; so long as you're within three tiles, you're almost certain to Lethal anything that isn't immune or incredibly resistant. This assumes you also have high Poisoning; without that, it's a waste of time as the best you could pull even with Legendary Magery is 2nd; [0 Poisoning + 120 Magery]/2 = 60. It takes 65.1 to get even base 2nd level poison. So at 120/0, your base poison is still 1st level, bumped to 2nd by EO; ultimately pointless.

Strangle: Corpse Skin > Strangle
- Strangle depends on low stamina to do it's best damage, but the damage is still poison based, which makes a Corpse Skin lead a good choice.

Two-step Cold: Mind Blast > Harm
- Both of these spells hit Cold, but Mind Blast has a short delay to it that will give you time to land at least one, maybe two, Harms on a target, depending on how sqishy your target can make you. If you have high defensive skill and Bushido/Parry, you'll likely be able to roll the dice and come out a winner more often than not.

Two-step Energy: Energy Bolt > Lightning
- Energy Bolt doesn't have a delay, per se, but these two often strike together thanks to Lightning's instant hit and Energy Bolt taking time to fly to it's target.

Flame Strike +: Corpse Skin > Evil Omen > Flame Strike
- I routinely use this one on White Wyrms and Arctic Ogre Lords. At my level, it's a one-hitter. My record so far on Wyrms is in the 580 area, while I've hit Arctic Ogre Lords for 720s. It's another combo that can handle a short delay, assuming you have your FC/R right.

The four-step: Explode > Mind Blast > Energy Bolt > Lightning
- Another combo that takes advantage of spell delays. With high FC/R, the delay on Explode is actually fast enough that it should hit just after you have the Energy Bolt sailing. Mind Blast will be roughly in the same spot. Energy Bolt doesn't deal it's damage until the bolt actually strikes, and with proper distance from the target you'll be able to land the Lightning at the same time; four different spells landing at roughly the same instance is going to slow down all but the biggest creatures. The biggest flaw here is the mixed damage types; Fire, to Cold, to dual energy. Mind Blast also has somewhat pathetic damage unless your Int and Magery are very high.

Incendiary: Curse > Explosion > Corpse Skin > Evil Omen > Flame Strike
- This one also needs high FC/R, but it's a dozy when you get there. The Curse reduces a target's stats by a percent, damage that can't be healed away. Explode's delay will be plenty long enough for the CS>EO>FS to land; both Explode and Flame Strike will benefit from -15 Fire resist on the target, and the Flame Strike will take the 25% damage boost from Evil Omen. If you're hitting something already weak to fire, it's very likely a corpse after this one.

There are also two worthwhile combos I use that make use of the Music skills. These also make good lead-ins to any other combo I listed above.

Musical Curse: Discord > Evil Omen > Curse
- Discord burns 20% of a target's stats and skills (half that if they have 160 bard difficulty). The Evil Omen may not strictly be necessary, but it makes me feel better to have it lead in for my Curse; the stat reduction check from Curse doesn't benefit from Evil Omen reducing the target's resist to 50, but it does, near as I can tell, help the Curse land in the first place.

Musical Death: Peacemaking > Word of Death
- This one is generally reserved for Toxic Elementals, who are immune to Magery. Peacemaking works as a Paralyze to keep them off me while that long casting time for WoD is at play. Death ignores their magic immunity and often pulls around 160 damage; two or three of those and the Toxic is down. Peacemaking is very nice here since WoD also takes a high Spellweaving skill to use; at 110 Spellweaving, I still fail casting pretty often.

Mage Tactics - General 1

As you play the shard and gain more and more in each of the skills, you'll come to see that some are more useful than others to the pure mage. To help you save some time on this trial-and-error process, I'm here to list off the skills I've found most helpful. Craft skills will be left off for fact that pretty much all craft skills have a place with every character. I've mentioned elsewhere that GM Inscription gives a 10% SDI bonus outside of the item cap; naturally that would be one of the most important secondary skills for a Mage.

Poisoning: I list this one first because it might be the most helpful. In determining the level of poison you inflict on your target with both Poison and Poison field, the game checks your Magery and Poisoning skills accordingly:
- [Poisoning + Magery] / 2
- If this score is 65 or lower, you do level 1 poison. From 65.1 to 85, level 2 poison. 85.1 to 99.9 is level 3, and 4th at 100 or better.
If you're lucky enough to have 120 Magery before you begin training Poisoning, you'll only need 80 Poisoning to start hitting with Deadly from three tiles or closer. If you couple this with Evil Omen, you'll get Lethal poison out of it. This is even better, as it's that much harder for monsters to cure Lethal and it does that much more damage on top of them not being able to heal.

Hiding: This is one of the best skills out there for a quick get away. If something is putting the hurt on you, dropping a Wall of Stone and hiding is the easiest way to get some breathing room. The wall will drop pretty quickly, but you'll remain safely hidden while you catch your breath. Another use I have for this skill is when running through high spawn areas. If you move fast enough, most creatures won't come after you. Once one of them does, the odds of others attacking you goes up a great amount. Even if you ignore them, they'll follow you for a while and wind up outside of their natural areas; to avoid that, as soon as you break line of sight or get about half a screen away, hit your Hiding macro; the monsters will drop aggro and go about their business. Consider it a courtesy to the next guy, who might be looking for the monster that would've chased you around the world otherwise.

Parry/Bushido: These two are questionable skills for a Mage, but somewhat common even on shards where skill caps force you to be more specific about the character you are. I suppose that counts. These skills are great defense skills; at 120/120 (and 80+ dex), you have a 40% chance to parry with a two-handed weapon. That's a hefty bit of defense, which you can easily take advantage of if you're using Mondain's Staff. If you choose to go the Book/Shield route, you may want to put Bushido on a Totem or Soul Stone to bring your shield parry back to par. I don't believe spellbooks count as weapons for one-handed Bushido parry.

Animal Taming/Lore: Though you don't really need either of these to own and control most Evos, it's more than worthwhile to GM these two if only for the Taming bonus potion. This potion instantly adds two control slots to your character, and is required if you ever want to donate for the 8th pet slot. At GM skill and below, there are few pets that will help you terribly much; Dragons, White Wyrms, and Nightmares are pretty much the full range. There are other interesting pets, such as the Unicorn for females and Ki-Rin for males, but other than a minor gimmick there isn't much to either of those pets. You can, however, tame and bond a Torditsarion if you find one. It is the Demon evo pet, and it has some interesting tricks. I've so far seen mine poison (Deadly), bleed, mortal strike, and paralyze blow creatures that it's fought. At third stage, it is a decent enough evo; less of a tank than the Mercenary, but fairly powerful.

Music/Discord/Peace/Provo: These skills are a bit under-rated on the shard. When you're trying to tame creatures, few skills are as useful as Peacemaking. Unlike Paralyze, Peacemaking doesn't impart a penalty to a fresh tame's skills. By the same token, Peace makes for a better paralyze on creatures generally than the Paralyze spell does; Paralyze's duration is ruined by high resist, but Peacemake has a generally solid timer to it no matter what. It will, at the least give you plenty of time to land a good combo on a creature, which may be enough to slow it down.

Discord stacks with Curse. There aren't many creatures that you would need to use it on, but for training pets it can come in handy. At GM skill, Discord is 20% reduction to a creature's stats and skills. This can help Evos greatly, as they gain by hitting a creature. Just make sure to never use this on a creature you want to tame.

Provocation... does anything really need to be said? Provocation is one of the greatest crowd control skills you could hope for. Minor spawn off creatures like the Dark Father become that much more manageable with Provocation in play. Creatures immune to magic, like Toxic Elementals, are often not immune to Provocation. If you can throw two of them against each other, you'll have plenty of time to avoid them without hassle.

Stealth/Ninjitsu: I am generally opposed to Ninjitsu for fact that it holds the most over-powered ability ever, Mirror Image. However, I often use these two skills to scout around or in cases where I can't be bothered to fight all the creatures around. It only takes using Stealth once to be able to use Shadow Jump as much as you like. Shadow Jump is basically a free teleport, free meaning that it doesn't cost Stealth steps to use. You'll remain hidden after the jump, giving you the chance to explore at your leisure in nearly perfect safety (I say nearly because I recall there being monsters that can reveal. Other than at Champs, I've never had this happen).

Being a Mage - Part 5

So you've taken my previous advice and grandmastered some key skills as well as crafted some powerful armor. Now all you need is something to hunt. Well, I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I have some good suggestions. It really depends on what you're looking for.

If money is what you're trying to get your hands on, hunting dragons in Destard is a common suggestion, for good reason. You'll want to use your Reptile slayer there (which you should've created with Inscription and lots of patience).

Blood is another good dungeon for cash, assuming you have a Demon slayer. It's populated with Balrons, Demons, and Succubus, as well as a few Blood Elementals and Blood Bears. All of these creatures drop good gold; Demons are on the low end with 200~250 each, the rest drop upwards of 500. They also drop scrolls, gems, and magic items very often. You'll probably never care about the magic items for use, other than a few Slayer weapons perhaps, but you should always ID what you find; items with classic mods such as Massive, Vanquishing, or Fortification can fetch a pretty penny from NPCs.

Speaking of ID items, another common suggestion is to run dungeons looking for treasure chests. You'll need Lockpicking skill relatively high (The training oasis can take you to 95, which is plenty), but it's worth the trouble. Along with the various items you can ID and sell, there are also commonly scrolls, gems, regs, gold, treasure maps of all levels, and leather. If you're *very* lucky, you may even find a Power Scroll. If you have good Hiding, perhaps Stealth as well, you can easily survive any of the dungeons with a bit of smart playing.

Monster Contracts are another good way to make money, as well as give you a goal. Doing the standard contracts is pretty easy up to Grandmaster contracts. The only ones below Grandmaster that you may roll that should give you pause are Cu Sidhes and Hiryu. The rest are easily do-able. You can also find Terragon Contracts in Tram Brit. I wouldn't advise going too far beyond Expert Terragon contracts; you can land Blood and Poison elemental contracts in Expert, which are some of the easiest to fill and give you a great chance at Terragon drops while filling the contract. Those two are still what I prefer hunting, and managed to pull 6 Terragon drops in the span of a week (week and a half at the most; they all came fairly clustered together). Oddly, I didn't land any from filling out contracts themselves, which is supposed to have better odds, but the gold I made was more than worth it.


Speaking of Terragons, if grabbing some choice Artifacts is your goal then you may want to do a bit of prep work first. Merlin's Quest, which starts in Brit Graveyard, is the path to a few good artifacts that will help you out. Merlin's Robes and Cloaks can drop at the end of the quest, some which give +10 Int, +15% SDI, or 1/2 FC/R. Any of these would be help drops for you, but the 15% SDI may be the best, as it goes a ways to helping you get off your Mondain's Staff dependency. Also as part of that quest, you may earn a pair of Wings of the Gargoyle (I believe they drop from Secnor if you have high karma, but I'm not positive), shoes that give FC/R bonuses among others.

You can also earn a Guardian's Crest during the Merlin quest. It has 5% SDI among others, but there's a better shield you can go for. Relic of the Church has 10% SDI, 20% LMC, and 2/2 FC/R; this can go a long way to free you of Mondain's Staff. It comes from a difficult quest for Mages, requiring you kill Dartmoor Ponies. This is extremely difficult without pets/evos, because Ponies have very high resistances to everything but Physical. They also have high magery skills, and they love to heal all the damage you manage to do in a Greater Heal or two. If you can't get your hands on a Merc or a good pet, the shield is often for sale from players.

If you manage to get your hands on a Relic, Wings, and 15% SDI Robe and Cloak, you'll have 40% SDI, 3/4 FC/R, and 20% LMC or better, which gives you plenty of room to lose Mondain's Staff and start using Slayer Spellbooks full time. You'll still be roughly 10% SDI short of the cap, and if that irks you too much you can always try to fit a Hat of the Magi into your suit; it makes up 10% SDI, along with a little Int and Mana Regen, but the resists are poor. You may want to use Armageddon leather for a few pieces if you see yourself falling short of 70's. Hat of the Magi can be purchased at the Artifact House via the Travel Stone. The chest and legs of Undead are also available here, but I would wait before shelling out that much gold on them; rarely you can find them on auction for less and you may be better served using your gold on Power Scrolls, staff events, or artifacts from players.

With Mondain's Staff out of your life, you can finally play a mage to it's full versatility. Anything with a Slayer vulnerability is fair game at this point. You can hunt Blood and Poison Elemental terragons at your leisure; it may take some practice getting used to them (their spells are decent and they still hit hard), but they're still some of the easiest prey you'll find and have a solid drop rate on Terragon artifacts. Tram Destard is another option, though you'll need to be more careful there, as the fire breath from a Terragon Dragon does a great deal of damage when he's at full health.

Elysium is another option. There are facet-specific artifacts over there as well, some of which are very nice.


Another option you may find to your liking is running Champ Spawns. There are daily free Champs and you can host a private Champ for 500K. You'll need at least 4 other players, and up to six. Some hosts try to recoup the price by charging a small fee for anyone who wants to join in, while others may instead simply ask for the skull and/or the gold that drops for killing the champ.

Playing a champ spawn requires a bit of cooperation and knowing your role. Firstly, before you even consider going into a champ you should have 4k Justice, at least. You can do this by killing Murderers in Buc's Den, Tram Moonglow, or around the Fel Yew Moongate. Secondly, the champs are set-up initially so that the only top three damage dealers will earn a Power Scroll. This is where the Justice Virtue comes in. With at least 4k Justice, you can use the virtue to Protect another player. When you protect a player you are guaranteed a power scroll so long as the Protected gets one. With six players, as long as three players protect everyone will get a Power Scroll (Barring the rare possibility that one player *severely* out-damages the other two attackers when the Champ is out).

If you are a Protected player, you will do the fighting when the Champ comes out. If you are Protecting another player, when the champ comes out get away from it. Your earning a power scroll depends on you having zero interaction with the Champ; any hostile action from yourself or pets will break the protection, and you can kiss your scroll goodbye.

Before the Champ gets underway, the group should work out who will protect and who will attack. Once that bit is settled, proceed to slaughter every creature you see as quickly as possible. Summoning the champ involves killing it's minions as quickly as you can to advance the spawn. Each champ has a theme and four stages of minions. The minions get stronger as the champ advances, so if you're stuck dealing with mongbats or shadow wisps for too long you may want to make sure everyone is doing their part (or, in the case of public Champs, that anyone else is even in the Champ).


However you choose to go about your quest for greater power, you'll find any of these options a strong start. You may be fortunate enough to get into a good guild early on and benefit from friendly player's donations, but don't count on it; be prepared for a harder road than that and be very appreciative if you are so lucky. Take things slow and don't get discouraged if it's harder than you expect; you have a lot of variations you can play as a mage and most things can be overcome with a bit of craftiness if not outright nuking. As you pick up each piece you need to become a better and stronger mage, you'll be capable of so much more. The things that give you trouble one day can easily turn around and become easy prey the next. Just give it time.

Being a Mage - Part 4

It occurs to me that I skipped a crucial step in being a mage; starting out. Paradise Found is different enough from other shards that some of the things experienced players will naturally start out doing on a shard should be tweaked a bit. While I am writing this with mages in mind, the initial bits of this apply to anyone just starting out.

One important thing to note about Paradise Found: Most skills require movement or a change in targets. It works on a 5x5 grid with .3 gain per grid; if you find that you aren't gaining skill, move around. For a more in-depth explanation of this, see here: Target/Movement skills.

Firstly, your skill order. The first skills you should go after are Tailoring, Magery, Alchemy, and Inscription, in that order.

Tailoring because it's the cheapest and one of the most effective ways to make money with crafting there is. Likewise, leather armor is the best option for a mage just starting out since it can give powerful resistances and doesn't hinder meditation. I should also add that Arms Lore could be GM'd with Tailoring, as it adds to the total resistances on exceptionally crafted gear (not just for tailoring), but as this is a starting suit it isn't as important just yet.

Tailoring also has the benefit that much of the last leg of training means making oil cloths, which break down into bandages that can be used to train healing/anatomy and/or vet/animal lore when you move into the more combat oriented part of your life. Healing is a good skill for everyone to have.

Next you'll want Magery, because obviously you're a mage and want to kill things. Eval, Meditation, and Resist can/will also be raised with Magery training, depending on how you go about it. You may want to look into a cheap/free LRC suit for this part of your training, but don't pay too much for it; LRC is one of those convenience mods and completely unnecessary even just starting out. We played for years without it, so don't lose your head over it.

One of the most common things I hear about getting to GM magery is to use/fight with a Mage Weapon. On two different characters now, this hasn't worked for me though it's possible that I'm just not patient enough to bother. My way is faster anyway. Magery can be bought to a certain point, mid 30s, I believe. From there, you should fireball/bless/lightning your way towards the 60s and 70s, throwing in a few cheap 5th circle spells towards the end. When you get closer to the 70s, put on a high penalty mage weapon, as close to -31 as you can get your hands on, and do the exact same thing over again.

Since PF has auto-spell channeling on everything, you don't need the mod for this to work. At 70 skill, a -31 sets you back to 39 skill, where you can gain off of 3rd and 4th circle spells again, using less mana per cast and likely less reagents. You'll only have to get back to 69 skill, take off the mage weapon, and there you go: GM Magery. These spells will also be safer to cast on yourself since the damage formulas for them is lower.

Once you have a GM Magery and a solid bit of eval, you may want to add to your funds a bit. It would be worth your while to hunt a few liches; they drop regs, scrolls, cash, and fairly often one of the two pieces of Mondain's Staff. You need a blue and a white piece to make the staff, and it is *very* worth your trouble. It can be double-clicked when equipped (Or use a 'use item in hand' hotkey) to polymorph your character into a water elemental as well as double the staff's properties; 50% SDI, 30% LMC, 2/2 FC/R, and hit lightning 50%. This is the best weapons for a mage on the shard (sadly), and it will be a cornerstone in your gear for a long time to come.

Alchemy next, once you have the time, regs/cash, and bottles. Alchemy requires reagents regardless of your LRC, so be prepared to spend some money on this one. When looking for a useful skill progression, I would suggest one that allows you to train Poisoning at the same time.

Alternatively, you could train Inscription before Alchemy. I suggest Alchemy first because it's a bit less cost intensive, but the difference isn't that great. Inscription is vital to you, however, as once it's GM you benefit from 10% SDI outside of the normal SDI cap. Furthermore, Inscription is the path to arming yourself with the most useful weapons you'll have as a mage, Slayer Spellbooks. You do not have to add all 64 spells to these books once you have them; so long as you have one spellbook with all the spells in your backpack, you can cast them regardless of what you're holding.

Now, with those four key skills, and perhaps some of their companions, at GM, you're able to do the most important thing you can on Paradise: Spellcrafting. Spellcrafting requires Inscription and Alchemy to do, and you'll need a book of Spellcrafts and the Spellcraft gems that fill it, as well as magic jewels as reagents. The book and gems can be bought in Brit's Jeweler's shop beside West Brit Bank. They're quite pricy, but you only need to buy them once. Start out with just a few important ones: Int, Str, Mana, HP, Mana regen, LMC, and/or SDI bonuses. Faster Cast and Cast Recovery are also very nice.

Each non-artifact item can have five mods on it, total; if you find a sword with DI and HCI on it already, you would be able to add three more mods to it, for example. Bonus skills on jewelry are an exception to this, but I'm not certain how far; I've put five extra mods on a ring that had one bonus skill, but I'm not sure you can add five to something that has three skills on it already.

I would suggest going with Int, Str, and SDI for sure; these can only be Spellcrafted onto Jewelry, and at the very least you'll have earrings and necklace slots empty of jewelry (sacrifice the gorget, as the SDI bonus is worth more than anything you can do with a gorget). At GM/GM skill, you'll likely spellcraft SDI at somewhere around 16~20% at best, likely on the low end of that. If you can pull 17% or 18% per piece, you'll have 68-72% SDI to go with the 50% from Mondain's Staff putting you right at the 125% SDI cap. I would also suggest putting any FC/FCR you want on your jewelry as well or saving space for it later if you don't have the cash.

For the armor in your suit, Mana, HP, and Mana regen without a doubt. The other spaces are up to you. There isn't much else you might want other than LMC and LRC. I would advise against putting too much LMC on this suit. You can try to plan ahead for the day where you can eventually dump Mondain's Staff, but you would be better off building this suit with it in mind, then building something wholly new when you can eventually toss it. Reason being, by the time that becomes the case, you'll likely be swapping in artifacts in your suit that will have mods you've already covered which forces you to change other pieces anyway. You'll also probably want to start a new suit if you come across 120s for Alchemy or/and Inscription.

A word of caution about item mods: some of them are completely worthless. Mage weapon for one. There's no skill cap on PF, so there's ultimately no benefit to taking a penalty on your Magery to use a weapon you can have the weapon skill for anyway. Spellchanneling is likewise useless, as PF doesn't force you to unequip to cast. I'm somewhat unhappy with that rule because it makes things much easier for dexers who don't need things easier for them, but eh.

Mage Armor is another iffy property. If you're looking to add this one, it's because you're trying to use something bigger than leather. This is generally pointless. You can get a full suit of 70's with Vulcan leather, which is easy to come by. Aquas is an even better choice if you don't have 120 tailoring and/or GM Arms Lore. Mage Armor still takes a property slot as well, so unless you honestly have nothing else you care to add to your armor you should stay away.

Getting equipped is half the battle these days. With a start like this, you'll have a good start towards getting your hands on those coveted artifacts. You'll have a few things to work around, but this will definitely get you going.

Being a Mage - Part 3

There's more to being a mage than just direct damage. Sure, killing things dead has obvious advantages, but sometimes that's not what you need. Here are a few other tips for general spell use. After all, between the three skills, you have 92 spells to play with.

General Tips

- Use the Field spells. Wall of Stone has a short duration, but works if you're looking for a quick way to break line of sight to heal and/or hide. Energy Field, on the other hand, has a decent duration, and often only one is necessary to completely halt a monster. For melee creatures, this means you're free to blast away without fear (until the field drops). Throwing two more fields to completely box a monster (or monsters) in makes a nice target for Fire Field; Energy Fields won't build where a creature is standing, but Fire and Poison will. Using the terrain and/or Energy Fields to trap casting enemies in a Poison Field is a good way to ensure they only waste their time Curing (so long as they're not immune to 4th). Energy Fields do not break line of sight like Wall of Stone, so casting creatures will teleport over it.


- Summons are a mixed bag. Beyond just the usefulness of the summon is managing your control slots. Blade Spirit is a decent enough spell, but requires as many control slots as an EV, which without question tears open many more new holes in things. The Blade Spirit advantage is that it's a 5th circle spell, so GM mages never fail in casting and it has a long duration. The 8th Circle summons can be useful, but are generally not worth the cast time, especially with less than 120 Magery; there's few things more annoying than fizzling on Summon Daemon three or four times before finally getting it right only to have it dispelled by the first creature it runs across.

Necromancy gives us more interesting summons in the familiars, but they're ultimately not that useful either. The Horde Minion is a nice pack creature, but if it's dispelled then everything it was carrying goes with it. Thanks to it's habit of rushing into a fight, you don't want it carrying anything important outside of town. The Dark Wisp suffers from the same trouble of rushing into combat, which makes it's mana flare useless beyond a mana battery while macroing. The other familiars have their uses, but against the PF Uniques they're not going to make it. Animate Dead is a better summon spell. It takes no control slots and can conjure some okay monsters. It's based off the dead monster's fame, so you'll get the best stuff from the stronger enemies. The target corpse can't be undead, however.

Nature's Fury might be my favorite summon. It's very quick to cast, takes one control slot, and can actually tear some things up when you get a few out. A single Fury isn't a match for an EV, but four or five can do some work. They have a very short duration, so don't expect them to distract anything for too long. At the same time, I've been known to swarm Terragon Roaches with seven or eight of them with good results. Spellweaving also has Summon Fey and Summon Fiend. Summon Fiend will hit your karma, so avoid it if you're trying to stay in the positive. These two spells are somewhat interesting, but I find that Nature's Fury is far better in most/all cases. These two are casters, so if you have an Evo tank they might add a bit to the table, but otherwise stick with something else.

Not directly a summon, but Dryad's Charm allows you to sway Humanoid creatures into your service. They'll take control slots and there aren't many that are highly useful, but it is fun to watch an Arctic Ogre Lord work for you for a change.

- Buffs and debuffs. Bless and Curse are both very nice spells. They should not be underestimated. In the old days, they did a flat magery/10 + 1 bonus or penalty. The new formula depends on Eval instead *and* works as a percent bonus/penalty. This means that GM Eval gives you 11% of your base stat bonus when you bless, or 16 points off a base 150 stat. That's another 1% spell damage outside of item SDI bonuses and 16 mana, as well as 16str/8hp. It also helps offset the *wild* curse penalties some monsters inflict. Curse takes into account the target's resist, but even still you can expect a solid reduction to the target's stats. Even better, cast Evil Omen first.

Necro is almost sheerly debuffs. Blood Oath is very nice if you can actually take a few hits to make use of it. Evil Omen is even better. It has a short duration and only impacts the next spell you cast on a target, but you have three options with it: 25% more damage on your next damage spell, boosting poison one level, or taking advantage of the fact that it sets a target's resist to 50 and landing a good debuff or Pain Spike. Corpse Skin is very helpful against things already weak to Fire or Poison, or even more against things with high resists all around. If you're using Mondain's Staff and don't have the Physical Resist to make up it's penalty, Corpse Skin is also a buff option to cover that for you. Just make sure your Fire and Poison resists are good enough that you don't trade one weakness for two. Mind Rot is the final Necro curse, but outside of PvP it's very little help. The creatures it will work on could more easily just be killed.

Spellweaving has buffs galore, and this is where the real benefit of the skill shows. Arcane Circle, first and foremost; it provides a benefit to all your other Spellweaving spells, depending on the level of the Focus Crystal you create. You'll now need other people to get a crystal, but it makes a big difference and is worth the effort. Gift of Renewal is moderately useful; throw it on your Evo for an HPR boost and possibly saves you from having to cure once. Ethereal Voyage is decent enough for some quick scouting. The time limit is somewhat short and it can't be used with other forms such as the Necro forms or Reaper. It loses most/all of it's usefulness once you GM stealth, but until then it has a place. Gift of Life is the final, and likely most appealing, buff of the skill. For five minutes or so, you're granted a one-time instant resurrection at the spot you died. You're restored with 50% health and cured of any poisons. It can also be applied to bonded pets. This is without a doubt one of the more useful spells in the game, and is only really beaten by Sacrifice res. The higher your skill, the better the duration.

Since the upgrade, we've gained the rest of the Spellweaving spells. Arcane Empowerment does not grant SDI outside the cap, but it does impact healing strength and increase summons' resistance to dispel. If you have a high enough crystal to raise the duration of this one, you have a potent spell to throw on for pet healing or summon bombs. Attunement absorbs melee damage outright; without a focus at all, it blocks 48 damage and up to 90 damage with a level 6 focus. Immolating Weapon adds a very minor bit of damage to your melee attacks, overall underwhelming but if you need a bit of a boost...

- Polymorphs. This is hard choice to make. Lich form still has great regen rate, but it takes you off your mount and offers not much else. I have trouble telling if Wraith form actually lets you mana leech with your spells; if not, it's benefits are pretty small and it also has the penalty of forcing you to dismount. Vampire is where it's really at. Even with 100% LRC the garlic penalty is in play, but immunity (more like free cures, but eh) to poison 4th and lower is a massive benefit. The life drain effect doesn't count for spells, but if you have a melee weapon for mana leech, you may enjoy the free life leech.

The contest comes in with Reaper form. Yes, it is ungodly slow; it's intended to be used in places where you can root down and focus on spewing damage. The benefit is that the SDI bonus it applies is outside the item cap; at base it's 10%, +1% per level of your arcane focus. This sounds small when you're already at 125% item SDI, but it can (literally) mean the difference between one-shotting drakes or having to throw a second spell at them.

I would recommend using Vampire for the majority of the time; you keep your mobility and gain poison resistance. When you have time to root down, by all means take advantage of that free SDI bonus; it's very much worth the trouble.

Being a Mage - Part 2

The true test of any character is its ability to cope with any situation. Whether it's a tamer that switches pets versus different enemies or a warrior with different weapons for weapon skills, slayers, and damage types, each type of character has to have some ability to change for each situation's demands.

Mages are no different. Our weapons are the spells we use, enhanced by our spellbooks. Slayer books apply against different creatures, but even more than that mages must know their spells.

Of the five damage types, Mages can most easily hit four of them through the three spell skills. Knowing when to use which spell is key to keeping fights as short as possible; even with a Slayer book, throwing Fireballs and Flame Strikes against a Balron is a longer fight than using Energy Bolts and Lightning.

Energy: Lightning, Energy Bolt, Chain Lighting from Magery, Thunderstorm from Spellweaving. Each of these spells have their moments, but Energy Bolt and Lightning are the most useful. Lightning's damage is nearly as good as Energy Bolt's, it hits instantly, and it's faster to cast. It's your go-to energy spam spell, and works as a great end spell to a combo. Energy Bolt is likely the most iconic spell in the game; high damage, decent cast speed, and it nestles right into the middle of many combos.

Fire: Fireball, Flame Strike, Meteor Swarm from Magery. Fireball is one of the best spells in your arsenal. It's ridiculously fast, solid damage, and very low mana. Even without a massive mana pool, you'll be able to throw these puppies near endlessly. Flame Strike, on the other hand, is probably the most damaging spell in the game, pre-resist. It's slow to cast, but it makes a great opening shot or if you just need a big hit. All the better that Fire is one of the resists lowered by Necro's Corpse Skin curse.

Poison: Poison from Magery, Poison Strike and Strangle from Necromancy. Poison should be applied liberally against anything that might try to sneak in a few heals before you take it down or things that you'll have to whittle down such as Ancient Dragons; you'll learn when these times are. If you run low karma, Poison should always be applied right after an Evil Omen. Poison Strike is least appealing of all options, as it's damage is low and it has no secondary effects aside from area; at 120 SS, I see it hit in the single digits on creatures with under 50 resist. Strangle follows the same general rules as Poison. Poison is also one of the resists lowered by Corpse Skin.

Cold: Harm and Mind Blast from Magery, Wither from Necromancy, and Essence of Wind from Spellweaving. One of the hardest types to hit as a mage. Against a single target, Harm and Mind Blast are your only realistic options; you only have so much mana and there's little sense in blowing it all on one target. You don't want to be caught off-guard by adds either. Harm's best use comes from being adjacent to your target; thankfully, the damage there is solid and spamable. Mind Blast is less impressive; it's based off your Magery skill and intelligence, and even at 120/300 it's never going to be that great. Even still, it has a slight delay to it and can be used equally at range, so it can be combo'd nicely. Wither is likely the most powerful of the bunch, but it's mana intensive. Save it for times when there are a lot of targets, such as fighting the Black Liche. Essence of Wind is a poor man's Wither, but if you're running high karma you don't have much else. Cold is one of the resists *raised* by Corpse Skin, so don't waste your time with cold after a CS.

Physical: Earthquake from Magery, Pain Spike from Necromancy. Earthquake is another AoE spell. It's okay, but not great; 1/3 of a target's hp capped between 10 and 100 damage before resist. Pain Spike isn't much better. It behaves like spells used to, checking against the target's resist, and versus targets with resist equal to or better than your Spirit Speak, you'll see poor damage come out of it. What's worse, part of the damage is temporary unless the target dies within ten seconds. Physical is one of the resists *raised* by Corpse Skin, so don't try to mix the two. In fact, leave Physical to pets.


Your own defenses are something else to keep in mind. Magery gives you three important spells to this end in Reactive Armor, Protection, and Magic Reflection. You'll likely not need two of these spells thanks to the generous resists on player crafted armor and most artifacts, but knowing what you *can* do is an important part of being a mage.

Reactive Armor: Your Physical resistance buff. It gives a base 15% Physical resistance at a cost of -5% each Elemental resistance. Inscription provides a bonus to the Physical resist bonus, up to a max of 20% Physical resistance.

Magic Reflection: Your Elemental resistance buff. It gives a base 10% resistance to all Elemental resistances at a cost of -25% Physical resistance. Inscription reduces the penalty to Physical resistance, up to a max of -20% Physical resistance.

Protection: A core buff to keep in mind. It reduces Physical resistance by 15% and your casting spell cap by 2 (meaning you cannot make this penalty up through items), and drops your Resisting Spells by 35.0; large penalties to be sure, but worth the cost. In exchange you cannot be interupted when casting spells. This means no matter how mobbed you get or how many bleed/poison ticks you try to heal/cure through, you'll always have your shot at casting a spell. These penalties can be lowered by Inscription, to -30.0 Resisting Spells and -10% Physical resistance at GM Inscription.

Generally, you want to keep Protection on when solo. Creatures cast at respectable speeds and multiple creatures can keep you from getting a spell off at all if you're not careful. When using pets in situations where you're doing lots of healing and curing, drop the Protection so that you regain full casting speed; that penalty does make a noticable difference.

Later I'll go over a few basic combos, some of which can/should be hotkeyed.

Mage Tactics - Creature Feature 1

There are a lot of creatures in Paradise, custom or not, that many players have trouble with. I wouldn't dare to think that I've fought them all or that I've done it the best way, but I have noticed that there are a lot of them I have no difficulty with that others can't seem to get a handle on. So here are a few big bads that I have a handle on.

Dragons/Demons/Elementals (most varieties, Paragon, Terragon, or otherwise): Slayer book. Pew Pew Pew (if it's a dragon, I'll probably need to heal because of a breath weapon) Pew Pew Pe- Oh, it's dead. I exaggerate, there's a lot more duck and move involved, but that's the gist. Slayer books are very powerful, and even in the case of Terragon Dragons, I'm rarely in too much danger from these guys. Their magery is decent, but their real might is in melee and that's a place you rarely find me if I can help it.

Ancient Dragons: Worse than any of the above Terragons, without a doubt. Partially because of that jungle/swamp terrain. The basic trick is moving, Corpse Skin, and Fireball. Because they have a base 85 in all resists, the difference in an Energy Bolt and a Fireball is next to nothing. With Corpse Skin in play, I do more with Fireballs. Add in that easily spammed factor, and Fireball becomes the weapon of choice. One important thing to keep in mind with these guys, for anyone particularly squishy, is to never put an obstacle between you and them unless you're running away. If there's still line of sight to you, they will teleport on top of you. They generally have 115 Wrestling, so if your weapon skill is low be prepared to eat it.

Dreadhorn: I'm adding this one because it's an embarrassment to my heart and it's the one creature I've fought so far that I failed horribly on. Lately I've been using a Cu Sidhe as my primary companion, occasionally bringing out an Evo merc or Tordit to assist. So late last night/this morning, I take my merc and Cu against this monster. I never played beyond AoS on EA servers and only for a few weeks there if that long, but I've done my research on this guy so I knew he had crazy bad poison and could hit. What I didn't really grasp was the magnitude of these hits. Wow. He tore through both Cu and merc without much effort. So I'm left with ghost pets and an angry horse on my hands. That island he lives on isn't ideal at all, but my E-bolts are doing some business and he's slow enough that I can stay away. I think for about a minute that I might be able to just handle things like this.

Oh no. Not in Dread's house. Paralyze. His magery versus my 70 resist? No contest. He strolls on over while I'm stuck just standing there waiting for it, and that's one death. In retrospect, I should've had a way to break paralyze on hand because of that very fact. I've learned my lesson. So I blow a Sacrifice res, run away from the horse, and try to get my pets back to life. That doesn't really work out, he tags the both of them again just as I get the second one res'd, and we go right back to running in circles until he one-hits me again. I think he teleported that time, but it doesn't much matter.

So now I'm discouraged. I need to be better prepared, without a doubt. A bigger, tankier pet, boom boxes, pretty much anything more than this. So I head into the sparkle, thinking that it's the same as the ones in Doom and Prism that just boot you out, but no. I'm back on the mainland and the gate to Dread is still open. Interesting. I res and shrink my pets, take a moment to ponder the situation. I could go in, run around trying to mage him down, or I could go to the dark side: Mirror Image.

I hate Mirror Image; it's over used, over powered, and just too cliche and tactless. Everyone on the shard uses it as the go-to ability and I rarely see any other strategies offered to take down these tough creatures. Is this really the same situation, though? Having tried and considered other strategies, it would appear that my best chances lay with Mirror Image; does that restore the sense of tactic and thought to the ability for this brief moment?

Whether it does or not, I made a macro for Mirror Image/all kill, ran into Dread's house with four of them ready to go. I set the images to task with my tekagi on hand and proceeded to roll E-bolts his way. As the Images fell, I quickly replaced them and resumed spewing. He died quickly. It was anti-climatic. I am ashamed.

Being a Mage, Part 1

Now that I'm done with introductions and gloating about my possessions, we can get to the heart of the thing; how does the GM of OMG define "Mage".

The Mage, as I see it, consists of the three mage skills and their synergy skills; Magery, Necromancy, and Spellweaving. Despite having spellbooks, Ninjistu, Bushido, and Chivalry are not Mage skills and will only be addressed as extra/supplemental skills. Since Paradise allows for all skills to be GM'd, I will talk about a lot of other useful skills to a Mage, most especially Poisoning and Parrying/Bushido.

Before we get into skills, a word (or thousand) about stats: The base total stat cap on UOPF is 300, and there's a powerscroll for 325 available at Paradise Mall for 25K. You can also donate for a 340 stat cap. I donated and encourage serious players to do the same, but everyone can pull the 325 cap and I assume in this that they will. Individual stats cap at 150, and items/spells can push any one stat to a max of 300.

STATS

- Intelligence is your bread and butter. 150 it, period. Every 10 points of Int is 1% spell damage that does not count against your SDI bonus cap. Beyond that, it's far harder to get Int on items than it is Str; the SC max for Str is 20 while Int is 16.

- Dex at minimum or at 80. The only reason for 80 dex is to make Parrying/Bushido most effective. At less than 80 dex, you suffer a penalty to your block chance of
Dex Mod: (80 - dex)/100
Final block chance: Base * (1 - dex mod)
Dex over 80 gives a dex mod of zero. Thus, as long as you maintain 80 dex, you have your full chance to block. The importance of this depends on how much you plan to use Harm or Poison (both benefit from close range). Reaching 80 dex through items also counts, and I recommend it; curses use your base stat in their formulas without item/spell bonuses; if you have 40 base dex, few creatures will knock off more than 4~6 dex, so pulling another 50 dex in items gives you a good buffer against curses to keep your Bushido/Parry going.

- Strength is obviously vital, but far less so than to a warrior. Without the Extreme Backpack, you can easily get enough strength to carry your gear *and* allow for the full 400 stones in your pack. Using GM/GM Spellcrafting, I threw 59 Str on my jewelry without much effort. If you're going for base 80 Dex, take the points from Str; with Str and HP bonuses, you can handle the hit.


Skills

I'm going to try to just gloss over the core skills here. At a later point, I'll cover some of these skills more in-depth as well as some of the more important secondary skills.

- Magery and Eval Int: These two are the most vital (and where the Mage gets it's name). It gives you access to the most basic 64 spells in the game. Magery skill works as your chance to cast. At 0 skill, you have 50% chance to cast 1st circle. At GM skill, you cast everything 6th circle and below at 100%, 7th circle at 75%, and 8th at 50%. Few important spells depend on Magery for their effects; healing, curing, poison, poison field, and Mind Blast use Magery directly.

The rest of what you need works off of Eval Int. Damage spells, bless, and curses all benefit from high Eval. When you're looking for power scrolls for these two skills, give priority to Eval Int. It's effects on a spell are applied first and is the most important.

- Necromancy and Spirit Speak: These two work in the same way as Magery and Eval; Necro determines chance to cast, Spirit Speak impacts effects. There are 16 Necro spells, but only a few will be of much general use. In the hunt for power scrolls, I would probably rate Spirit Speak power scrolls at about the same priority as Magery and Necromancy just below.

- Spellweaving: 12 (of the 16) spells here are live on UOPF, and there are really only a few that you'll want to concern yourself with. Spellweaving is an underwhelming skill for a number of reasons, one of the biggest being that even with the little Faster Casting it takes, the cast times are still very long. This makes things like Word of Death even harder to use in the heat of combat. It's also a skill designed with the idea of a group of people working together to get a high powered crystal. I've never gotten a +6 crystal, so the damage I've seen these spells do has been poor. It does have a few high points and is worth getting to GM. Very low power scroll priority, though.

- Meditation: As long as you're wearing no, leather, or mage armor, you'll have a significant benefit to your mana regen rate. This is a vital skill, and thankfully it will GM without much effort. It also has an active use that increases your regen rate further, but that's generally not necessary. The mana regen rate formula is very complex, but meditation takes into account your intelligence in it's part, and later impacts the benefit of any Mana Regen item bonuses you might have as well. Under Eval in power scroll priority all the same, but definitely worth grabbing if you can.

- Focus: Meditation-light. It has no armor restrictions but also doesn't benefit from intelligence in anyway; it's simply a flat rate bonus to your mana regen (and also stamina). Focus also impacts the benefit of MR Items.

- Magic Resist: No where near as vital as it once was, but somewhat important still. It no longer reduces direct damage, but it does lessen the effects of curses, both Magery and Necro, and is checked against Poison spells. You'll likely wind up with just 70 resist most of the time; base GM skill minus the 30 penalty for using Protect. Another 'grab it if you can' power scroll skill.

- Wrestling: Perhaps more important than Magic Resist. Wrestling is your basic defense skill. Anytime a creature attacks you in melee while you're unarmed or holding a spellbook, it compares against your Wrestling skill; the higher you have, the better. Against some custom creatures it simply won't matter since their skills are so high, but against things you'll want to hunt for cash, such as dragons, poison and blood elementals, and demons, as well as their Terragon forms, you'll have at least a decent shot of avoiding blows with GM or better Wrestling. Power Scroll priority varies based on how often you choose to get close for Harm and Poison.