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.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
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.
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.
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.
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.
My Gear
In the old days, mages used to run around naked. Well, okay, most of us wore clothes just to show a sense of individuality, but we didn't wear armor. This was in the times where Eval and Meditation became required, and put a stop to full plate mage/archer/swordsman templates. We could've worn leather even then without a med penalty, but it was ugly and because PvP was the big thing we all generally assumed we were going to die anyway. Leather wasn't going to slow that down very much.
UOML is a different sort of game. We no longer have AR and Magic Resist as our defenses. Now we have resistances derived from what you wear and maybe your Magic Resist; Physical, Fire, Poison, Cold, and Energy. Going naked just isn't an option anymore, not if you want to fight anything bigger than a Mongbat.
Spellbooks are an important part of my gear, so much that I have hotkeys for quick switching. Namely, I have all six Slayer spellbooks. On top of the damage I already do, anything with a Slayer vulnerability takes double that. I can, in fact, one-shot a White Wyrm (to be fair, it's still three spells, but only one for damage; upwards of 500 in a hit). I'm most often holding one of these books because this is what brings in my cash.
When Slayer can't be a part of my fight, I have three other weapons I use. Tome of the Arch Mage is the general spellbook I keep on hand, for it's Int and mana bonuses; it's not much, but it's something. I also carry a quarterstaff with 100% fire damage, mana leech, hit lower attack and hit lower defense, just in case I need to make a recovery. The staff doesn't see as much use as the tekagi I carry; 100% fire, hit lightning, hit fireball, hit magic arrow. The staff and tekagi I crafted and spellcrafted myself. I go for fire damage because if it's not a creatures lowest resist, Corpse Skin can make it so. I go two-handed for the Bushido parry bonus.
None of that helps me hit any necessary caps in a significant way; I leave that to armor and jewelry. I spellcrafted my jewelry with the general aim of boosting Int, spell damage increase, and str, in that order. The other two mods on each piece vary, some dex, faster casting, cast recover, and enhance potions (which is wasted, because I don't use potions at all). This is not my final jewelry. I'm still looking for a few armor artifacts that will lessen my need for some of these mods, and I'm hoping to grab some blank +Magic Resist pieces; they still allow five spellcrafted mods and would cover the hit I'm taking for using Protect. I also need better Alchemy and Inscription for better spellcrafting.
The core of my armor lies with Undead pieces; I found the Tunic of Undead as my first drop from a Terragon creature in Trammel, and I donate for the Gloves and Leggings because I was sick of being married to the Staff of Mondain to hit my SDI cap. In retrospect, that may not have been necessary, but I have no complaints. These three are easily the best pieces for their slots on the shard, at the least for a mage. I hunted Ancient Dragons up and down Trinsic swamp hoping for a Dragon Heart Arms drop, but ended up buying them. I used them for a few weeks, but have since gone back to a pair of Platinum Plate Arms I made. I use a Circlet I created for my head slot. I also wear an Int Merlin's Robe and Solarets of Sacrifice.
A few additional points about my gear:
-Tunic of Undead has hidden properties, as far as I can tell just 20 Str and 12 Int.
-My dex just barely makes that magic 80 where I take no penalty to parrying with low dex, but curses easily take me under. My ideal gear would have a bit more.
-Enhance potions is a waste. I could've better benefit from more hit chance on my jewelry. I'll plan that better next time.
-I'm probably never going to hit the Int cap without using Bless. I have 250 now. Near as I can tell, with the perfect jewelry (+11 Int over current) and two or three optimum replacements, I'll get to ~290. This is the subject of a rant that will come later, I'm sure.
-I wore the Cloak of Sir Kenshin for a few weeks before my principals and sense of taste forced me to take it off. I will not be using it again. Subject of another rant.
UOML is a different sort of game. We no longer have AR and Magic Resist as our defenses. Now we have resistances derived from what you wear and maybe your Magic Resist; Physical, Fire, Poison, Cold, and Energy. Going naked just isn't an option anymore, not if you want to fight anything bigger than a Mongbat.
Spellbooks are an important part of my gear, so much that I have hotkeys for quick switching. Namely, I have all six Slayer spellbooks. On top of the damage I already do, anything with a Slayer vulnerability takes double that. I can, in fact, one-shot a White Wyrm (to be fair, it's still three spells, but only one for damage; upwards of 500 in a hit). I'm most often holding one of these books because this is what brings in my cash.
When Slayer can't be a part of my fight, I have three other weapons I use. Tome of the Arch Mage is the general spellbook I keep on hand, for it's Int and mana bonuses; it's not much, but it's something. I also carry a quarterstaff with 100% fire damage, mana leech, hit lower attack and hit lower defense, just in case I need to make a recovery. The staff doesn't see as much use as the tekagi I carry; 100% fire, hit lightning, hit fireball, hit magic arrow. The staff and tekagi I crafted and spellcrafted myself. I go for fire damage because if it's not a creatures lowest resist, Corpse Skin can make it so. I go two-handed for the Bushido parry bonus.
None of that helps me hit any necessary caps in a significant way; I leave that to armor and jewelry. I spellcrafted my jewelry with the general aim of boosting Int, spell damage increase, and str, in that order. The other two mods on each piece vary, some dex, faster casting, cast recover, and enhance potions (which is wasted, because I don't use potions at all). This is not my final jewelry. I'm still looking for a few armor artifacts that will lessen my need for some of these mods, and I'm hoping to grab some blank +Magic Resist pieces; they still allow five spellcrafted mods and would cover the hit I'm taking for using Protect. I also need better Alchemy and Inscription for better spellcrafting.
The core of my armor lies with Undead pieces; I found the Tunic of Undead as my first drop from a Terragon creature in Trammel, and I donate for the Gloves and Leggings because I was sick of being married to the Staff of Mondain to hit my SDI cap. In retrospect, that may not have been necessary, but I have no complaints. These three are easily the best pieces for their slots on the shard, at the least for a mage. I hunted Ancient Dragons up and down Trinsic swamp hoping for a Dragon Heart Arms drop, but ended up buying them. I used them for a few weeks, but have since gone back to a pair of Platinum Plate Arms I made. I use a Circlet I created for my head slot. I also wear an Int Merlin's Robe and Solarets of Sacrifice.
A few additional points about my gear:
-Tunic of Undead has hidden properties, as far as I can tell just 20 Str and 12 Int.
-My dex just barely makes that magic 80 where I take no penalty to parrying with low dex, but curses easily take me under. My ideal gear would have a bit more.
-Enhance potions is a waste. I could've better benefit from more hit chance on my jewelry. I'll plan that better next time.
-I'm probably never going to hit the Int cap without using Bless. I have 250 now. Near as I can tell, with the perfect jewelry (+11 Int over current) and two or three optimum replacements, I'll get to ~290. This is the subject of a rant that will come later, I'm sure.
-I wore the Cloak of Sir Kenshin for a few weeks before my principals and sense of taste forced me to take it off. I will not be using it again. Subject of another rant.
What/Who is...
UOPF
Ultima Online Paradise Found, a UO freeshard that emulates UO in the ML era running since 2004. It's the shard I play and very likely will be the last shard I ever play. In the six years it's been running, it has greatly expanded on this base with some of the most creative things I've ever seen in UO. The best part of the shard is easily the staff transparency; they're actually there. You can talk to them. I've played many free shards in my time, but I easily have more staff interaction on this shard alone than all the others put together, most of which on other shards was only because something broke or because staff thought I was breaking rules. It also helps that the staff is easily likable on top of that.
And just to get it out of the way: Yes, fine, it's a trammie carebear shard; wah wah PvPers. Christ, the game was actually created with more in mind than just PvP. Here's a fact you may want to embrace: No matter how hard your shard master tries, they will never realistically emulate classic UO PvP. They just won't. It can't be done, simply because the player base has changed. We rarely to never used wands or explosion pots back in the day. Are you kidding me? If you weren't able to set-up a stack of purples to be hidden under a fur for someone to stand on, where you would throw the necessary purple to set them all off, you never used them. And wands? Psh. New tactics means new demands means new setting and conditions means not classic PvP. It's a whole other beast now, and it's lame. Get over it. You'll be the better for it.
OMG
OMG is the guild tag for the Only Mages Guild on UOPF. It could also be simply Only Mage, because frankly I think I might be the only true mage on the shard. And no, having 120 Magery/Necro/Spellweaving or whatever else doesn't make you a mage. Nor does randomly dropping Withers in champ spawns. If your base Int is 25 (or 40 with the donate scroll), you're not a Mage. If your main weapon(s) doesn't involve words of power, you're not a mage. Mirror Images are definitely not the sign of a mage either, exactly the opposite really. I would say that we're accepting members, but I don't expect many other people to limit themselves this way on a shard where you can GM/Legend every skill.
Ultima Online Paradise Found, a UO freeshard that emulates UO in the ML era running since 2004. It's the shard I play and very likely will be the last shard I ever play. In the six years it's been running, it has greatly expanded on this base with some of the most creative things I've ever seen in UO. The best part of the shard is easily the staff transparency; they're actually there. You can talk to them. I've played many free shards in my time, but I easily have more staff interaction on this shard alone than all the others put together, most of which on other shards was only because something broke or because staff thought I was breaking rules. It also helps that the staff is easily likable on top of that.
And just to get it out of the way: Yes, fine, it's a trammie carebear shard; wah wah PvPers. Christ, the game was actually created with more in mind than just PvP. Here's a fact you may want to embrace: No matter how hard your shard master tries, they will never realistically emulate classic UO PvP. They just won't. It can't be done, simply because the player base has changed. We rarely to never used wands or explosion pots back in the day. Are you kidding me? If you weren't able to set-up a stack of purples to be hidden under a fur for someone to stand on, where you would throw the necessary purple to set them all off, you never used them. And wands? Psh. New tactics means new demands means new setting and conditions means not classic PvP. It's a whole other beast now, and it's lame. Get over it. You'll be the better for it.
OMG
OMG is the guild tag for the Only Mages Guild on UOPF. It could also be simply Only Mage, because frankly I think I might be the only true mage on the shard. And no, having 120 Magery/Necro/Spellweaving or whatever else doesn't make you a mage. Nor does randomly dropping Withers in champ spawns. If your base Int is 25 (or 40 with the donate scroll), you're not a Mage. If your main weapon(s) doesn't involve words of power, you're not a mage. Mirror Images are definitely not the sign of a mage either, exactly the opposite really. I would say that we're accepting members, but I don't expect many other people to limit themselves this way on a shard where you can GM/Legend every skill.
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