Gear Update 2011 2

So recently there was this silly rapture thing that was supposed to happen/happened "spiritually". As luck would have it, a certain item went up for sale that same day and after looking at things, I did only what a person like me could do.

I bought a hat with 666 luck on the day of the rapture.

The uncursing and blessing was work I had to do after the buy, but meh. I'm pretty happy with it. The Str isn't that great, but since I'm a mage that really doesn't matter. The nearly perfect Int, nice Dex, and SDI that oddly matches my ring exactly makes it all the pretty enough for me. It does, of course, complicate things for me, stat-wise.

It has 5% less LRC than my crafted hat, which means I have to wear a 15% LRC Merlin robe to compensate. It also puts me at 160% SDI; for those keeping not great at math, that's 35% over cap. This isn't such a bad thing on it's own, but since I have items with less than that amount it means I'm wasting slots.

Namely, I'm wasting slots on my ring. I keep it because it's the +8 Spell Resist ring that I crafted and love so dearly because I managed to get five solid properties on it without blowing the damn thing up, but as it turns out I'm now not benefiting from three of its five properties: FC, FCR, and SDI.

Replacing it is troublesome because, as I hinted, it is really hard to spellcraft things. Nevermind the part where I've been playing for two years and have only found a handful of blank +8 or better Spell Resist jewelry pieces at all. I do have another blank +8, but I just don't have it in me right now to try Spell Crafting it/blowing it up on the second property I try to add.

I would really like to replace the ring, though. If I made another right now, I would aim for Str, Int, LRC (25%+, 30% ideally), Cold resist, and Energy resist. That way I could dump my ninja belt for Tangle without any real loss and swap back to the +10 Int Merlin Robe. That would get me to 294 Int, which is oddly round and fits with +6 Int spellbooks nicely. Getting perfect Int on some of my jewelry/armor would also get me 6+ Int as well (I think I'm about 12 points total away from perfect Int gear).


As it stands, I'm artifact'd out, yo. If it's not jewerlry or a book, it's artifact: Undead hat, Undead gloves, Undead chest, Undead legs, Elysium arms, Sacrifice shoes, Merlin Robe, and My Book talisman. Okay, so there is the crafted ninja belt still. That won't last much longer.


Currently: 280 Str, 274 Int, 113 Dex, 229 HP, 131 Stam, 336 Mana.
160% SDI, 7/8 FC/FCR, 110% LRC, 60% LMC, 83% DCI, 1366 Luck.

Yes, we can!

For once, I have brought about positive change in the world! It's a fake world, true enough, but it counts. I haven't had much time for UO lately thanks to classes, but I do still frequent the boards so one day recently, in a fit of procrastination, I posted on the boards that bards needed to be fixed by adding the 160 barding difficulty cap. I wasn't as nice as I should've been about it, but eh, I was in an argumentative mood and I've posted about poor bards before so I didn't expect anything to come of it.

Imagine my surprise when it was done. Like nothing. Like instantly. Mind = Blown.

This is effing magical. All that time and touble (and money) that went into getting my Discordance to 120 is now completely effing worth it. Despite being 115/120, I now have a 15% (25% Slayer) chance to Discord anything that can be Discorded. Sure, at that point it's "only" a 14% cut to skills and resists, but as you might recall from my posts about dealing with Ancient Dragons, cutting something from 85% resist to 70% resist is a pretty big difference. Now those 85% resist creatures are going to be 56% resist creatures versus Fire and Poison and 71% versus Energy. That's a massive difference, especially when things have thousands of HP.

Even better, Discord doesn't wear off unless you break line of sight for more than 11 seconds. This also means lower Resising Spells, which means longer Corpse Skins in general, potentially raises the value of many Necro spells like Pain Spike, and makes Curse more viable. My "Super Curse" macro may see a lot more use in the future.

I'm going to need more hotkeys for Slayer Instruments. Also Blessed Bags.

Even better, or worse depending on your point of view, anyone with 120/120 Peacemaking, a Kenshin Cloak, and a Slayer instrument will have a 60% chance of Peacemaking a 160 BD target, 50% with an exceptional instrument. That's clearly a massive advantage and is tempting me towards giving in and just using the stupid cloak.

Farming gold just got a whole lot easier. If we're lucky, some of those boss creatures won't be bard immune either. I wonder how much time one could save killing Slasher with him at 56% Fire resist and 14% lower skills...

I am apparently troublesome

So recently I was PM'd by staff on my alt regarding some of my locked down pets.

Oh those? Just some things I hit with Dryad Allure then leashed. (For the interested, that's an Arctic Ogre Lord, an Ogre Lord, an Ettin, a Troll, an Orc Bomber, and an Orc Brute. I had an Orc Mage but he was squishy and I was lazy.)

Apparently that's a problem. Which, okay, sure, I don't imagine anyone planned for DA'd pets to be kept forever despite the fact that, unless they die, are released, or the server reboots, you can keep them forever.

All the same... who really effin' cares?

Is it really that big of a deal that I have an Orc Brute locked down in my house? I mean, what's it gonna do? Break the shard balance? No, wait, Mirrors and Evos already did that. I'm actually 99% sure my mage-geared Mirror could no-heal kill an Orc Brute anyway. They might need to use as much as a store bought weapon to do it, but that counts.

So as it stands, I haven't heard anything else about these pets other than the fact that Staff is going to look into them, it's a bug but don't dispose of them, and they may or may not get wiped out. This makes me feel very uncertain about whether or not I should use DA at all. It is pretty much useless considering the things you can tame with it, but it's also kinda fun to play with. I was hoping to grab a Meer Eternal for my collection, but that's clearly out now.

Somewhat related to this, I haven't heard in-game or seen anything posted about mirror images side effect buff since the upgrade. Once upon a time, they got a percent of your base stats and that was it. Now? Apparently +stats on jewelry and clothes are a go. This is on top of getting your skills, full resists from your gear up to 95% max, and getting a portion of whatever item mods you have.

So it's perfectly okay that we have 2 control slot using summons that are just shy of being equally as powerful as our characters are, but owning a nigh useless 3-slot Orc Brute is too much. Meh.

Some days, Paradise, you show your disdain for player creativity.


04-27-11 update

lawls. Wish I'd done it to an Orc Brute or something instead. *That* might've been worth 3 control slots.

Mysticism

First of all:

And now the honesty, Mysticism is fuuuuuuu

What was I saying? Oh, right. Mysticism is a mess. Part of the problem is that Razor doesn't believe we have Mysticism, so any macros that use its spells don't register, nor is there a way to set hotkeys for it. This is severely disappointing, as I was counting on being able to Bombard and Eagle Strike at will. Hopefully this changes in the future.

The spells themselves. Well, right off, Enchant is out. As in, it is out of the game at the moment. It doesn't work at all and gives a message about it being temporarily removed. That's lame, but knowing how Spellweaving also sucked on a few missing spells for a while, I guess I'm not surprised.

Stone Form is also entirely useless. It provides none of the +resists, +max resists, or the curse/bleed/poison protection that it claims. It does provide all the expected ugly, and so for now I refer to it as the Nothin' But Ugly spell.

Bombard is actually pretty solid. It deals damage over two hits for some reason, but they're solid hits. At sub-GM skills, I was getting about 32~35 damage from it, while my 120 eval Ebolts deal about 30. At GM/GM, it did 20~24 with each hit, so 40 damage total. Not bad at all. It also uses the knockback effect on everything. Still, it looks like balls. Literally, a ball of stone.

Cleansing Wind is like a mini-Heal, Cure and Remove Curse in one, so naturally I love this one; no need for Curse Removal talisman, apples, or high karma!

Healing Stone is decent enough. They seem to be getting consumed instantly instead of portioning out the healing, but that may be due to my being too damaged and not having high enough skill that it would be able to portion like its supposed to.

Rising Colossus is supposed to be one of the best summons so far, but my experience is very disappointing. It has 100% or better in all but one resist, yet that resist is freaking Energy. It has 100 in all stats, so with only 30~40% Energy resist, it isn't going to last long. I'll test it further, but I doubt it will prove worth the 5 control slots.

As if to top that one, Animate Weapon is also utter crap. It takes four control slots and it... dies. It looks cool to have a floating halberd-ish weapon thing follow you around, but it does not do the job.

Nether Cyclone does nothing but stamina damage, which is disappointing for an 8th circle spell. It's supposed to do Meteor Swarm damage or better to all of HP, Mana, and Stamina. If not for the fact that it's an 8th circle spell, it might be useful in conjunction with Strangle and Pain Spike, but being 8th means it's low cast chance at just GM skill.

Eagle Strike is letting me down. Fireball level damage? Psh. It doesn't come close. It's more like a slightly amped Magic Arrow. Though I am doing this with only GM/GM Mystic versus 115/120 Magery, even at equal skill it won't make the difference; versus 0 resist, Magic Arrow was 75 damage, Eagle Strike hit for 84, and Fireball hit for 142. 20 more points of skill will not make that up. I expect that Eagle Strike might pull below 120 at Legendary Imbuing.

Sleep and Mass Sleep are like the goggles, in that they do nothing. I haven't tested Spell Plague or Purge Magic very much, but hopefully they work as they should. It would be nice to have a few new things in my arsenal, rather than just 200 more skill points to my credit.

Spell Trigger is utterly and completely FUBAR. In fact, it is how I managed to GM these skills. You see, I only own five of these spells and none of them castable below 33 skill. However, while screwing around last night I noticed that when I tried to cast the spells I wasn't getting a "you need xx skill to cast that" messages. Instead, it was just fizzling. To my surprise, Spell Trigger created the spellstone for the spell I chose. Which I don't actually own. And it worked. And it gave me skill.

So, a long ride on a boat later, I'm GM Imbue and Mystic. I made a Razor macro for "use item type/wait for target/target self" to use Nether Bolt spellstones on myself while I manually create them with Spell Trigger. At 20 skill, I switch to Eagle Strike until 33 skill. From there, I tracked down an EasyUO script that used Stone Form for me (saving me from a billion mouseclicks on the spell icon) until the 70's, Bombard to 83 skill, and Nether Cyclone to GM.

GMing off one messed up spell not impressive enough? It gets better.

Some of these spellstones aren't consumed on use. Purge Magic, Hail Storm, Healing Stone, and Cleansing Wind spellstones can be used repeatedly and with near 0 delay. I think my Cure/Heal self hotkey is about to get replaced with a Cleansing Stone self macro. If Hail Storm wasn't utter suck (read: Doesn't do anything but pretty effects), it might be worth using.


All in all, the time and skill points may prove worth it sheerly out of Bombard and Spell Triggered Cleansing Wind. Finally being able to (instantly) heal my curses and poisons is a pretty big deal, even if the health restored isn't a lot. Bombard managed to pull 148 in a single hit versus a 0 resist target, so assuming it didn't hit twice because the target died, that's 300 damage before resists; better than E-bolt, infact. However, if that second hit is the knockback hit and thus checked against Spell Resist, then it will likely not pull that much damage most of the time.

I really wish Eagle Strike was a little better considering it's also a 3rd circle spell, but if I could hotkey these spells then that would be even better. I'd take a spammable Energy spell even if it didn't quite hit for Fireball damage. Even better would be a damn Cold spell other than Wither; I may get that from Nether Bolt, but only 20% of the time. Stone Form doing its job would also be nice, since that would mean probably 73/78 max resists, possibly enough of a resist bonus to make up trading my belt for Tangle, *and* the lovely resistance to debuffs. On standard shards, having 120/120 for Stone Form apparently makes you Curse Proof versus all but special creatures. If I could have that here, I'd use Bless far more often, I think.

For now, I suppose I'll just take what I've got and hope Mysticism gets more attention than all the other Mage skills.

Questing

Seeing as I skipped a few months, and am generally lazy about questing anyway, I decided to take a big part of the day to knock out a few that I needed to do. The first was the Evo Tree quest, which also drops the Woodbin for the master crystal, Seeking the Elements, which has a shot at dropping the Ingot Keys for the master crystal, and the two Grim quests. I actually started the Evo Tree quest a few days ago but only got around to finishing it today.


Evo Tree Quest

This one is somewhat tedious. It isn't bad exactly, but it employs a few things which I consider artificial difficulty mechanics and it also uses creatures that are basically reskins of other old creatures. At one point I even tamed two of the quest creatures because the non-tameable flag wasn't set. The corpses also betray what creature they really are in some cases.

The first leg of the quest is a simple matter of going to Wind Park and chopping trees until you get bark. It didn't take long, but that may have been due to lucky spawn mostly leaving me alone (or that I have a nice Cu).

The second leg takes you to the swamps near Trinsic where Ancient Dragons roam. There, you have to kill Ancient Trees for an annoyingly uncommon quest drop. As you might have picked up from the name and my previous comment, Ancient Trees are basically Ancient Dragons, complete with the same sounds and fire breath. They're not the easiest thing to kill and could possibly one-hit a low HP character, but this is further compounded by the fact that the spawner is completely stupid and spawns Ancient Trees in a cluster at a time. I'll be honest, I resorted to mirrors here; I can solo the stupid things, but it's far quicker to just throw obscenely overpowered throwaway summons around.

The third leg takes you to a dungeon type spot in Elysium with twelve different hallways. One lich (or "lich") will spawn at a time, in a random hallway. Some of these are actually liches, Lich Lords, or Ancient Liches, but a few are modeled after dragons, rats, or dire wolves. The dragons are even vulnerable to Dragon Slayer instead of undead. This is where I tamed quest creatures, a dragon and a wolf; don't get any ideas about doing the same. I reported it to a GM and the tame flags were set correctly (or so I'm told, I didn't test it again). This part is far easier than the Tree section, but it shares the annoying uncommon drop rate for the quest item.

Finally, after returning to the quest start you'll be kicked to the virtue shrine NW of Tram Trinsic, where the boss creature will spawn. She deals pretty solid damage and loves to drop Flamestrikes. At 241hp, she could probably drop me in four of them. Her physical wasn't bad either. I stuck with the Undead slayer while fighting with her, mostly because I was too busy to think of switching, but her corpse said Succubus, so next time I'll try Demon on her. She dropped the Woobin for me, which is what I really wanted. She also can drop the Evo Tree seed, but I'm far less concerned about that.

Seeking the Elements

This one starts in Tram T2A, the desert near Paupa. It's a pretty easy quest; the spawn is pretty quick, all vulnerable to Dragon slayer aside from the boss, and the quest drop rate is higher than the Evo Tree quest. You're basically running around the desert killing various custom ore elemental Dragons. They have a chance to spawn Terragon, but even without that the tend to be able to one-hit my pets. My Evo Hound rolled up twice, in one shot, and my Cu once. A Terragon Electrum got me thanks to teleport, but even as Terragon the dragons don't spawn with more than 2K HP so they aren't hard to kill.

The Plat dragon acts as the final boss and will drop your ultimate reward; Ingot keys and mounted dragon heads for each element are the only possible rewards I'm aware of. I lucked into my keys and probably won't repeat this one unless I hear about another reward. Be aware, the Plat dragon at the end is obscene; some of its skills were in the multiple hundreds and it's base damage was something like 91-110.


Grim's Keeper

This one was tedious. You have to collect 1000 undead vials, which drop on the creatures that spawn in Grim's Dungeon (the Elysium version of Dungeon Doom), as well as four custom drops from unique creatures. The uniques are generally very easy, though the Fleshless Dragon is easily the most lethal. It managed to kill me twice, though I only count one of them because for the other the guard bug hit my Cu at the same time and there isn't much to do about a 190 damage fire breath hitting with a betraying pet that hits like a truck.

This part of the quest is very managable, so don't get the wrong idea. Other than the dragon, everything is weak to Undead slayer and generally dies in a Flamestrike or two. The hardest part, if that word even really applies, is collecting the 1000 vials; it takes a while, so you may want to break it up into a few trips if it gets too boring. Your reward is Grim's Curse, which acts as the key to crossing the river to the gauntlet.


Summoning Grim's Pet

This part was much easier for me, but I could see a lot of people having trouble with the drop rates. It's very similar to the Doom Gauntlet, but instead of just facing one creature in each section you have a constant spawn with a named creature that drops an idol you'll need for your quest collector. Once you're in the room, you can't move on until you collect the idol.

The first room took a few kills before I got the idol, the next three were immediate, and the last took longer than any other, maybe five or skills named kills. The creatures in the rooms were the same; minotaurs, a named minotaur, golems (renamed, of course), and exodus robots. Nothing seemed any more amped up than usual, so it was really just a matter of making your kills and getting your drop. I let my Cu most of the work since it could one-hit most of them. The named minotaur took a bit more work, but nothing too threatening.

The Mechataur is the end of your quest. It's capable of dropping the Elysium gear and the Mercenary Wolfbane, all of which are worthwhile rewards. Be warned, there is no promise of a drop from making your kill and there's a week wait between quest repeats.

Mechataur can spawn minotaurs and golems, has a counter to ranged attacks, and has an area of effect type attack that deals decent damage. He can kill you with it if you're not careful. I let my Cu and my Merc handle him while I healed and trashed the spawn to keep from getting overwhlemed; even with five and six of those creatures out there were no deaths and I was able to roll out my damage spells often enough to keep things under control. The golems are complete trash and nearly drop in one energy bolt, but the minotaurs are a good bit more durable. It wasn't a long fight for me, felt shorter than dealing with Slasher of the Veils even. Sadly, I didn't get any artifacts or interesting items.


Conclusion

Of all the quests, the Grim line is easily the best of the bunch. The other quests are interesting but have a bit more tedium to them and not enough polish. It still disappoints me to kill a creature and see its corpse name betray what it really is, and missing the taming flags in the Evo Tree quest definitely adds a feeling that things were just thrown together. At this point, I feel like certain things in quest making should be fundamental; at the very least, certain things in creature building should be fundamental, but still we see lazy re-skins and Trees that make dragon sounds. Grim's quest is actually *older* than both of the others, yet it managed to get things right in that regard.

The other issue with the Evo Tree quest in particular was the drop rate; the whole reason I broke that quest into multiple days was because of the Ancient Trees. You only need to collect 10~ of the quest drop from them, but it took hours of hunting and killing to pull them all together. I consider this an artificial difficulty trick because it only serves to lengthen the time you spend on the quest without really making things any harder; if you can kill one tree (or three, with the way they spawn), then you can kill a hundred of them; the fact that you *have* to kill a hundred of them to complete that part of the quest doesn't make it any more difficult, it just makes it time consuming.

I also don't like the way some things just feel like they were crafted with making things challenging for the Mirror Image crowd to the point that it actually rules out other play styles; these quests are all impossible for a bard, the Ancient Tree leg of the Evo Tree quest or the ore Dragons quest is probably not possible for a true (non-evo using) Tamer, and all of them are extremely difficult for a Mage type without extensive use of throwaway summons. In the case of Fiana or Mechataur this is expected since they're boss creatures, but the Ancient Trees, for example, are nearly as hard as any of the bosses and you have to take out ten of them at the very least. The ore dragons could one-hit me if I wasn't careful or got teleported on top of. These are the sort of things that tell me what sort of play styles are expected on PF, and it's a little disheartening.

At least I can say that there was no insta-kill HP Fire breath this time.

Upgrade Changes

Paradise Found recently did a full shard upgrade to enable all current content. Naturally, this has add some things and changed a few standard PF rules on skills and abilities. Overall, I'm glad for the change because it does allow for a lot more expansion of the shard and gives me new things to collect. The real perks that impact mages:

- Mana and Life Leech via spells: Vampire and Wraith forms now leech for spells the way they're supposed to, so a need for mana potions and/or firm mana management is greatly relaxed. Mana is really only a problem against bosses, custom bosses, and in champ spawns anyway, but this largely eliminates those issues as well. This does add to the value of an Ethy as well since toggling between Vamp and Wraith will dismount you; riding a pet that you don't intend to attack with, like an Ostard, should only be done when you know you won't be needing Wraith form.

- New Items: Chiefly, Talisman and a few clothing artifacts. These generally fill equipment slots that weren't in use before, meaning everything you get from them is a gain. Hitting the 300 Int cap is now a realistic goal, as we potentially gain another +20 Int from filling empty spaces with these items. Sadly, the Killer and Slayer bonuses on Talisman do not work for spells. Curse Removal could be useful to those of us with low karma since we miss out on Chiv's Remove Curse. Ward Removal is also somewhat interesting if you want a quick wipe of your Protect and Vamp so you can heal pets more effectively, but that's generally overkill.

- The Final Spellweaving spells: At last! Arcane Empowerment, Drayd's Charm, Attunement, and Immolating Weapon are implemented. Of the bunch, Attunement is probably the most useful. These spells are now detailed in this post.

- Mysticism: A whole new set of spells to play with, some of which have potential to fill big gaps in the Mage style. Namely, Bombard might fill the void of Physical damage for mages. Once I have a full spellbook and manage to GM Mystic, I'll go over these spells in greater detail.

- New Pets: As of this moment, it appears only the Skree and Stone Silth are spawning, but others are on the way as the bugs get worked out. Its doubtful any of them will match the power of the PF Custom creatures, but I'm a big fan of new pets anyway.

- Mini-Champs: PF has its own way of running full Champs, so assuming that mini-champs are left to run as they do on UO Standard this will give us something else to do when we don't have a full Champ team. Some of the interesting Artifacts also drop via Mini-Champs.

- New Bosses: Slasher, Navery, and Stygian Dragon to name a few. Most of them are solo-able for we PF players thanks to the lack of Skill caps and far more powerful items, but they retain a fair amount of difficulty nonetheless. They also drop some of the better artifacts. I have yet to challenge SD, but both Slasher and Navery are very manageable solo.

- Gargoyles: We don't have them just yet, but they're currently in the works and in testing. Their items are dropping all over the place, so the gear will also be there as soon as Gargs are in. I'm somewhat interested and may get a 3rd account to try them out. Most of my disinterest is due to the fact that PF nullifies most of their racial benefits. Flying, Berserk, and the HCI bonus are interesting benefits to say the least, but the HCI isn't going to make that big of a difference and Berserk may not even come into play most of the time. The faux-Mysticism bonus is pointless on a shard with no skill cap, and Imbuing is only going to be Eval for Mystic on PF, which ruins the racial crafting benefit for them. Elves and Humans are going to come out on top generally because resource gathering is a big enough racial benefit to trump Flight everytime.


A few notes about previous notes since the upgrade:

As of this moment, I still recommend play Elf. The mana bonus is still better than what you get from Human and potentially Garg. If the Garg's Berserk ability is an outside SDI bonus, *then* we might have something.

If you can get your hands on a Curse Removal talisman or a certain Mysticism spell, I think Chiv and high karma lose a bit of their draw over Necro. Most of the other Chiv spells work with low karma and I don't think they have anything worth giving up Corpse Skin and limitless Lethal for.

If you can regularly get your hands on a +6 Focus, Arcane Empowerment might be reliable enough to relax your SDI needs on your suit, freeing you from Mondain's Staff even sooner. The duration without a focus is *horrible*, so if you're not in a big guild then you're likely out of luck on that point.

Attunement is definitely worth a hotkey, even if you don't have a focus. Likewise, I've recently learned that Dispel Evil is kind of fun and might be worth a hotkey.

Didn't Take a Year

Yes, it has taken me forever to update this place. I would like to say it's because I was busy, but that's not entirely true. A lot has happened since the last update. Just a quick list:

-120 Animal Taming: Check
-120 Tinkering: Check
-New equipment gathered: Check
-Missed pretty much every auction, including one with custom spellbooks: Check

Oh, and in more major Paradise news, the shard did a major upgrade that added all content up to High Seas. What does that mean for us? Well, rampant bug squashing for the moment, but also new creatures, artifacts, tames, Gargoyle characters and items, and three new skills. Old content has also felt some changes, some good and some bad. I'll be updating some older pages here with any changes or detailing things on entirely new pages in the very near future.

New Gear

In the many months since the last update, I've aquired a few new pieces for my suit. I've also learned a bit more about some of my caps, aims, and possible pieces. I'm still in the process of working out my dream final suit, but I'm not terribly off even now.

I swapped my general spellbook from Archmage Tome to a crafted spellbook. The crafted book has +11 Magic Resist, +6 Int, and 1 MR. For creatures that I have no intention of meleeing and can't Slayer, this book gives me over GM Resist which makes a noticable difference in avoiding poison spells and cutting curses. It also softens my need for perfect +15 Magic Resist jewelry. I also dumped the quarterstaff since the upgrade, as leeching via spells now works for Vampire and Wraith forms.

I also fixed my jewelry to make more sense, dumping the useless Enhance Potions mod for Dex. I spellcrafted a new ring that came with +8 Magic Resist. It's the same as the previous bettered by 1% SDI and 2 Str, but that's good enough for now. I now have 108 Magic Resist even with Protection on, 119 with the spellbook.

Headgear was the next update to my gear, more of an appearance change than anything else. I managed to get a Terragon drop called a Transmuter, which allowed me to transfer properties from one head piece to another. What did I do? Traded my circlet for a kasa.

Next, I bought a set of Elysium arms with 13 Int. I take an overall hit to my health for it, but they cover a lot of other things I needed, albeit not as great as I wanted. I don't know what "perfect" arms are, but I'm still on the lookout for better ones. All things considered, I'm not going to do much better than Elysium arms, barring the addition of Undead-level artifact arms, so I consider it a good upgrade.

Also feel free to ignore the resists on this piece, as they change everytime the item is equiped. Generally between 3% - 15% each.


My current stats: 273 Str, 265 Int, 101 Dex
My current mods: 138% SDI (13% over), 7/8 FC/R (1/2 over), 100% LRC, 46% LMC (6% over), 17 Mana Regen (1 over), 83% DCI (38% over).


My future plans will clean that up considerably, excepting the DCI which is 9% shy of being entirely from Undead pieces, and thus never changing. The extra FC/R I have now is due to the addition of Elysium arms, so my future jewelry will drop those for something else. If I play it right, I could hit the DI cap as well, for all the use that would be; most items have at least 40% DI anyway, so getting more than 10% more on my suit would wind up a waste in most circumstances.

I'm only just off of the points I need to get the My Book talisman from the Brit community collection, which will add 5 Int, 2 Mana, and (hopefully) good Inscribe bonuses. I also have a few bracelets with Magic Resist better than current, one of which has 5 free slots.


Rambling Hopes:

The upgrade has also brought in a few new artifacts that would be a help. I'm not certain whether or not they're all implemented, but here's a few I have my eye on.

Tangle (half-apron): It adds 10 Int, 2 MR, and 5% DCI. I own it, but using it is complicated. The problem with using it is that my resists would fall below cap, some well below. Short of donating for a Paradise Shroud, I'm not sure how I could cover such a switch without subbing another artifact piece or spellcrafting the resists on my jewelry; none of these options are particularly attractive.

Lieutenant of the Britannian Royal Guard (sash): It has 5 Int, 2 MR, and 10% LRC. This would be a pure gain, as there haven't been many clothing arties on PF before the upgrade. I don't know if this is in, but I'm strongly hoping so.

Claws of the Berserker (tekagi): 45% Hit Lighting, 50% HLD, Battle Lust, SSI 25%, 60% DI. I'm not that hot for melee weapons, but this one is pretty. The DI would cap me and the SSI would nearly do the same, but easily take me to the 1.25 swing speed cap (if I don't already have it with my current tekagi). I would lose out on two Hit spells, but the HLD mod would probably make a bigger difference against high skill creatures. Battle Lust is a Stygian Abyss mod that adds more damage, very nice for me since I don't bother with Honor and probably don't come close to the 300% cap in melee.

Mage Tactics - General 6

Since the upgrade and my reaching Legendary Taming, there is a bit of new info on the tames.

Most importantly, the Cu Sidhe has fallen from grace. Sort of.

There are now two versions of the Cu; the old pre-upgrade Cu and the UO Standard Cu. The old Cu is so completely superior that I can hardly stand to look at the new ones.

The pre-upgrade Cu has lost its ability to Lethal Poison, but has gained Healing skill. It starts at 0, but this is nothing that can't be trained. Mine is already in the 30's and I haven't really focused on training its healing at all. An effective method for training its Healing is to keep it next to you when Spellcrafting, so it will heal you on explosions. You can also go into Lich form with 0 HPR and it will constantly try to heal you. It retains the bleed attack, over GM skills, high stats, and casting abilities.

The current Cu, on the other hand, is much more disappointing. You might not think so when you first see him; that beauty of a creature boasting 1200+ str and high 90's in skills. Sure, he has no magic ability anymore, but 1200 str hits like a truck and that healing is crazy quick. So you fight with him, wrestle the beast into submission, and just as you embrace victory you take another look at his stats and skills, and *gasp*! All of his stats have been cut in half; 1200+ str is now just over 600, not to mention his Int and Dex are abysmal. His 90's in skills are now 80's in skills, and that's when it dawns on you that not only are these things cut but also his skill ceiling is 100. Sure, he can heal himself and bleed attack, but to kick you even harder in the jewels, he now takes four (4) control slots.

New Reports

Charger of the Fallen: This guy is very interesting. Well over 1000 HP, a range of 350~600 Str, deadly poison attack among other special moves, immunity to most poisons, very high skills (one of mine has 160~ Wrestling), and fair resists. The Charger is also a mount, meaning it is easy to port around without drawing agro as you breeze through locales. In practice, I'm a little let down. He's very powerful and healthy, but he doesn't wheel out the damage you would hope. Despite the HP, it also isn't as great of a tank as you would want due to some of the resists. It *is* a very great pet, but for the taming skill it takes to get one I was just hoping for a little more, especially after the show the Cu put on for me. Four control slots.

Elder War Horse: Another interesting pet, there are actually two varieties. One of them is a mage, the other is a dexer with parrying. They're both pretty healthy and strong, possibly over GM skills by a short margin, but the resists are lacking for a high-end pet. I haven't bonded one just yet so I haven't played around with them too much. I don't expect a lot, and if I have a choice between this or the Charger, it's the Charger all day long. All the same, the Parrying on a pet is interesting and could make a big difference in some cases. To be updated.

Dark Unicorn: I wasn't expecting much from this one, but he looks quite appealing. The exceptional part of this one is the resists: I haven't seen one yet that has under 70 in *any* resist, and the best one I've tamed has 80 in two resists and nothing lower than 75. Some skills are in the 110 area, so it can hold it's own. The stats backing it up aren't that impressive, but since it can cast it will Bless itself often, which makes a fair difference. The other curious thing about this one is the fact that it has no prefered food, which seems to mean it can't be fed. If it can't be fed, it can't be bonded. I don't know if this is intent or an upgrade bug, but not being able to bond these things puts a big strike against it; for the unbondables, Tutivillius is always going to be on top.

Chimera: Space reserved, I totally want one of these but Labyrinth is closed off and I don't think they spawn elsewhere.