Mages, like any character, have a number of choices they have to make that ultimately individualize the character. Since we can GM/Legend any skill on UOPF, the choices are cut down quite a bit, but there are still a few important ones to make.
Human or Elf
There are fairly decent bonuses to both sides of this one, but I tend towards Elf. I'll cover the mechanical benefits of both just so all the info is available to you.
Humans:
- Workhorse: Increased odds of gaining more resources when lumberjacking, mining, or skinning hides. This can be a noticeable increase in some cases and is probably the best benefit of being human. More resources is never a bad thing. In the case of mining, it seems to give you more swings per node, for lumberjacking it's more logs per hit.
Tough: Increased health regeneration. This isn't a bad bonus either, but it's one that you probably won't notice too much. If you have a little damage on you, you probably won't waste time healing it and won't really see the regen in effect either because you'll have gone on about your business. When you have a big hurt, you're going to heal it away anyway.
Strong Back: +60 stones to your carrying capacity. Without a doubt, this is a big bonus. However, it's of limited use. I can't imagine why anyone on Paradise wouldn't have 150 base strength, but even without that you'll very likely have tons of strength bonus on your gear. Either way, you're going to have enough strength to carry a full 400 backpack and your character weight without this bonus. Unless you have the Extreme Backpack, you probably won't even notice this little perk.
Jack of All Trades: This is the big one, a basic and free 20 points in every skill. You don't actually *have* these twenty points, it's just that where ever you *don't* have at least 20 points in a skill, your basic effectiveness at it is as if you had the 20 points. This makes training some skills that can't be bought a bit easier, however this is still a benefit of limited use. There's no skillcap on Paradise, so if you're doing things right you'll not see any effect from this after a few weeks on the shard.
Elf
- Night Sight: Elves get a permanent Night Sight spell cast on them. This would be great, except Razor comes with the ability to turn off the darkness layer and there's little reason, outside of RP, to not use it.
- Difficult to Track: Elves are harder to track that most other creatures. Again, not really a big deal. Monsters don't track and there's no world PvP; if you're fighting another player, it's a duel or maybe guild training so this doesn't ever matter.
- Perception: Elves have a bonus to detecting hidden monsters and players. Other than Doom Gauntlet, this is another lackluster benefit. If PvP was in play, maybe. But since it's not...
- Infused with Magic: Adds a +5 to your normal Energy Resist cap, giving you a 75 instead of 70. It's a small thing, but seeing as all casters use at least Magery there are two big spells that apply here; Lightning and Energy Bolt. Things that do Energy damage in melee become slightly easier as well, I suppose (though mages shouldn't melee). It's a gravy benefit really, but it is a nice one.
- Knowledge of Nature: Increases the special resources you gain, such as colored ore and logs. This is a great benefit. I often find myself pulling veins of ore without any iron at all, if the vein is low enough. Even on Valorite veins, I typically pull 10/18 Iron/Valorite, and that ain't terrible either. The easy 115 Smith/Mining PS is a Valorite small BOD, by the by.
- Wisdom: +20 mana to your max. This is where it's at. I loves me some mana, and even warrior types can't deny how nice this one is. Unlike Human's weight benefit, this is one you'll see every time. Even with my 330+ mana, I'm still known to get low on it in Champ Spawns or against bigger monsters; having another 20 mana is basically the same as another three fireballs.
In-Play benefits
To make matters worse, Elves have some things that they can do that Humans can't. The most important of them is the Cu Sidhe. This is easily my favorite pet ever. It has solid HP (about 550~600), 1K strength, high resists, over GM skills, and does both Bleed and Lethal Poison on hit. They're also riddable, which is very nice. They take three control slots, which means you can have two of them without the donation slot *and* as soon as you're able to tame them. Barring high stage Evos, I haven't seen anything that compares. Two of these guys can bring down and Ancient Dragon with minimal healing.
Karma: High or Low
On the one hand, this might seem like a no-brainer choice, especially since I recommend Necromancy so enthusiastically. There are a few good points to high karma. Most of them related to Chivalry.
- Remove Curse. This will sound like a minor point to some, but it's actually very useful. At Legendary Eval, anything that Curses for over 13% will require more than one Bless to overcome. Or one Remove Curse. It casts quick enough and is a much better way of getting over the big Curse hits from Terragon Ancient Liches than the alternative; don't forget, every -2 to Strength is 1 Hp that you can't just heal. Blessing over it takes more time, but ignoring it altogether is just reckless. Necromancy curses and Mortal Strike are also removed by this, as is the Paralyze spell (?).
- Better Chiv heals and cures. You can still use Close Wounds and Cleanse by Fire at low karma, but both of these benefit from higher Karma.
- Holy Light: You'll lose out on Wither, but Holy Light is a popular alternative. I haven't used it much, so I can't say how they compare in terms of damage. Holy Light is Energy instead of Cold, for what that's worth.
- Dispel Evil? I've never thought to use it when I had high Karma, but it sounds like a spell that might have some use against high spawns or the Black Liche. I'll have to test it out later.
- Random Blues don't attack you. This doesn't apply to many creatures, mostly those that were introduced with UO:R, but if you're looking for a Unicorn or Ki-Rin, you'll want high karma just to keep the rest of them from trying to kill you.
The biggest high karma drawbacks are mostly minor. You lose out on Wither (which I don't suggest high use of anyway), Strangle, Evil Omen, and Corpse Skin. This means your only choice for Lethal Poison is through weapons or Lethal Poisoned Shuriken. Corpse Skin is the hardest to lose, because high resist all enemies are generally best dealt with by CS + Fireball. In the case of things like Ancient Dragons you can get away without Corpse Skin, but as the enemies get bigger so too does the usefulness of Corpse Skin. Strangle is likely your best poison damage, so seeing it go is a bit of a hurt as well. You'll be okay without it, though.
Shield or none?
I tend to err on the side of none. It doesn't feel Mage-y to me, but you don't have to agree. Before you have some of the better artifacts, shields are a great way to make up some mods. Guardian Crest is an easy one to get your hands on. Relic of the Church is an even better one, and if appearing Mage-y is a concern it can be 'use item in hand'-ed to Poly into an Ethereal Warrior. If you pull together the Virtue Set, you'll get Dupre's Shield which is pretty popular and has some nice enough mods. Gwenno's Shield and Shield of Salvation are easily the highest of the high-end shields; count yourself fortunate if you pull one of those.
In any case, if you run with a shield then you will find it a good plan to get rid of your Bushido; with Bushido in play, your Shield parry really eats it. You can throw it on a Skill Totem (quest) or Soul Stone (30K at Paradise Mall). You'll also want to make sure you pull together the 80 dex for full parrying bonus, as well as a solid buffer so that curses don't take you below 80.
Ninja and Bushido
Mirror Images are the number one suggestion for taking out just about anything on the shard, which I feel is weak character. You may disagree and want to fit them into your combat style. They won't pull much damage if you're holding a spellbook, but if you have a full suit of Aquas leather or better, they'll very likely have full 95% resist all which means they'll tank like no one's business. You can use animal forms to travel around instead of mounting and dismounting for every fight; if you're moving when you cast animal form you'll automatically try to assume the last form you used. Wolf is a good choice for the bonus health, Unicorn gets low-level poison immunity. You can only cast mirrors and animal form while in Animal Form and if you're currently using another form, even Vampire, you can't use Animal Form.
Other abilities that could help you in general, regardless of mirrors, include Focus Attack and Death Strike. From time to time, you may need to use a mana leech weapon and Focus Attack can help with that. Death Strike is good for mobs that are already running away from your. Ki Attack is also valid for jousting, assuming you have that much freedom to run around.
Bushido's Evasion is a great ability that I almost never remember to use (requires a weapon in hand, which a spellbook is not). It can block even things such as firebreath. Confidence can earn you healing if you're forced into melee (mana leeching) through parrying attacks, and includes a flat regen bonus to health and stamina for 4 seconds. If you have no HCI bonuses, Lightning Strike will get you HCI-capped hits; thus, you have even more reason to ignore seeking HCI bonuses. Obviously, Bushido allows parrying with a weapon as well, which can be more worthwhile than shields for we wand using Mages.
Overall...
Essentially, your choices come down to how much of a mage you really want to be. Pure Mages largely eschew shields and high karma to do as much damage as possible. Tank Mages will likely depend a bit more on Chivalry and Shields. Petless Mages may want to use mirrors as their tanks. A Druid type might favor Spell Weaving and Animal Form more than anything else.
Your choice may change depending on how you play; if you have friends that mostly use pets, you may find high karma a good choice to keep them curse free, control the crowd, and have multiple healing methods. If your friends run mostly mirrors, you're better off going full aggression with low karma Necromancy. Running solo, it's really a judgment call as to which is the best, though I can see a strong case for Shields; spellbooks don't Bushido Parry, so as long as you only have Parrying a shield can do you good in those times you get hit with a powerful paralyze. In the end, you're free to fit whatever you want into your Mage game. Just be careful; on a shard like Paradise, the line between Battle Mage and Dexer with few spells is very thin.
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