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Saturday, May 29, 2010

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.

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