It's been nearly two years since I started this blog, and only now has it occurred to me that players undertaking this play style could do with a warning. A brutally honest warning about how inequitable playing Mage is on NPF.
Sadly, there are a few things you'll have to bear in mind as you go. The shard is not nearly as with you as other shards my be. In this case, warrior-types are far better favored. As long as you understand this and are prepared, you should be able to get along reasonably well.
* Items
Items were not made with you in mind. Period. Most of the things that will be of great benefit to you are going to be hard-fought artifacts or annoyingly-crafted books and jewelry. Most of the mage-themed items are from UOStandard and completely dwarfed by spellcrafting and NPF-tier items.
Spellcrafting, as I have mentioned more than once, is a pain. Especially for mages. Where warriors really need five mods total, six if you count Luck, mages easily need between 6 and 8, depending on how you prioritize DCI and Luck. The mods warriors need also come in better intensities, so they need fewer items; Wanting 100% item DI sounds daunting until you realize that weapons can be crafted with 40% out the gate and spellcrafting can put up to 40% on jewelry and weapons. Many artifacts, including the nigh freely given Skull Thunker, bring far more DI than this along with other mods.
SDI, on the other hand, has a 125% cap, comes in at up to 6% on spellbooks and to 25% on jewelry. The best one-handed weapon with SDI is, sadly, Spirit of the Realms at 25% SDI and -15 Mage Weapon penalty. Mondain's Staff, when polymorphed, gives 50% SDI and a few others mods, but this is the exception to this lesson.
In a similar story, Str crafted on Jewelry goes as high as 20, while Int only goes to 16. Faster Casting has a cap of 4 to 7 (depending on your source) and comes in at a massive 1 FC per item.
Spellbooks are another issue you'll run into. Getting good ones is very time and resource consuming. Scrapper's is not craftable and the mod intensities on crafted books still obey standard UO. The only books that are of any use to you are those crafted with Super Slayer or Resisting Spells bonus.
Artifact books on NPF are a joke. Other than the UO Standard books, which are interesting at best, NPF has three readily available spellbooks: Tome of the Arch Mage, Tome of Wind Raising, and Tome of the Forbidden Art. Arch Mage and Forbidden both have 1/2 FC/R, 6 Int, 3 Mana Regen, with Arch Mage's final property being 6 Mana and Forbidden's being 6% LMC. None of those are above what you can craft yourself, aside from there being more properties on each book. Wind Raising, on the other hand, is just stupid: 15 Dex, 15 HP, 6 Int, and 6% LMC.
There are a few uber books *somewhere* that were up for auction a time or two, as a set. Each book had massive properties and two Super Slayers. The problem is that they're rare and likely in the hands of a player who bough them just to collect them and may not even play PF anymore. It also just goes to show that staff can bypass the current limitations on spellbook mods and chooses not to.
Other held weapons are entirely pointless, a non-issue, and not magely. There's no point in having a weapon in hand, even if it's a bow; you can't swing/fire a weapon while you're casting, and if you're a mage you should be casting all the time anyway. You also can't swing a weapon from a distance, so why hold anything that doesn't give you a benefit in some way, such as Super Slayer on your spells or Resisting Spells bonus when slayer is no good. Now that Wraith form absorbs mana via spells, only high karma mages have any excuse for using a weapon at all, and only if that weapon has mana leech.
The artifacts you want are very rare and top-end. Undead Gear, Elite Elysium gear, and perhaps the Virtue set are the only things outside of spellcrafted gear that is really any use. This lies with the fact that very few artifacts and zero spellcrafted armor gives intelligence, which is the only way to (minutely) increase your damage once you have Slayer, 125% SDI, 120 Eval, and GM Scribe.
I am, of course, talking about artifact armor. Artifact jewelry is entirely useless, for much the same reason. You need the Int more than the other mods in most cases. Not to mention that the really good jewelry for mages is very rare. Merlin's quest drops some pseudo-mage jewelry, but it's not that impressive. Merlin's Earrings, for example, have (low) DI, SSI, and RPD, but no Int, SDI, or mana.
The main mage jewelry is going to be from Standard, which of course means it fails against Spellcrafting. Ornament of the Magician's mods look really pretty, until you realize that you can craft equal or better for all of them, save the FC/R. You also need SDI on your jewelry if you want to hit the cap while you're in crafted armor as well, and likely after you've gotten a few good artifact armor pieces as well.
One thing to keep in mind about jewelry, if you're really lucky. There are a few pieces that come blessed, such as the ring from a quest in Brit (S/SE of WBB). Spellcrafting does work on that particular ring, so if you manage to not destroy it in the process you can spellcraft a nice item with a free bless, saving on insurance and the expensive bless deed.
New Haven (aka Tram Haven) is also a good place for some quick early items even on NPF. There's a free Undead Slayer to be earned from the Scribe's quest. Ring of the Savant, from the Eval Int quest, is blessed with 1/1 FC/R and 3 Int. It can be spellcrafted, potentially improved to 1/3, 16 Int, and two other mods of your choice (with 120/120 skill, of course. You should be able to pull 1/2, 12 Int no problem even at just GM/GM).
* Monsters
Monsters are not balanced with you in mind. At all. The standard UO content is mostly in tact as standard, but custom creatures are created with Mirror Image in mind. At best, they were balanced against evos instead.
This gets really frustrating, believe me. There's nothing fun about running across a monster with 65000 HP, 4600+ in each stat, and skills over 200 including Magery and Eval. Put simply, you will not kill this thing without Mirrors. The bonus damage from 200 Eval is pretty massive alone, but 4600 Int means it does another 460% of that base damage; in just about every case, this is going to be more than your HP in a single spell. As a point of reference, the Black Liche is not nearly this powerful but still manages 50~ damage Flame Strikes against 70s Resist.
Still, not everything custom obeys this rule. Things like Ancient Dragons/Trees, most quest creaures, and Terragon creatures in Tram are manageable with some skill and innovation on the player's part. Purgatory creatures are also mostly possible, but you have to be a lot more careful there. Whether the trouble is worth the effort in a lot of cases I'll leave to you to find out.
* Spells
Not all of them work, work as intended, or work as effectively as other options.
Magery's summons are pretty lackluster, though Blades and EVs are still useful against creatures that give you the "refuses to attack" message when you direct pets/summons/evos/mirrors. Mind Blast will also just about never give you great damage, but many things that are immune to spells are somehow not immune to Mind Blast, so I keep it hotkeyed anyway.
Necromancy is mostly good these days, but still the most useful spells are Evil Omen, Vamp and Wraith forms, and perhaps the poison spells. Wither *is* nice, but it's really mana intensive, so I prefer just about anything else to it.
Spellweaving is best as a back-up plan. None of the spells seem to take FC/R the way they're supposed to, so as nice as Word of Death may be, it's really hard to use in tense combat situations. Getting a full focus is also not the easiest thing in the world all the time.
Mysticism is pretty much useless beyond Spell Trigger'd Clensing Winds (instant cast, no mana, never consumed, free mini-heal, curse removal and cure to 5th, 100% success) and Bombard. If Razor hotkeys/macros for Mysticism spells worked they might see more use. I've heard that using Sleep and/or Mass Sleep has crashed the server, so I'd shy away from those regardless. The broken Mysticism spells have been broken since they were added, so who knows when they'll get fixed.
* Mirror Images
I find them very annoying in general. Even though I don't use them, they are the instant answer to any monster problem. It's annoying to see. Honestly, I fail to see where it's fun at all. You might as well just roll a 5x120 build and call it a day if that's all you're going to do. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess some people do use Chiv or Magery to get around.
Mirror Images are what makes NPF really hard to play on. They are what "balance" is checked against as far as monsters go. They are the simplest and most over-powered solution to at least 99.9% of the enemies on the shard; apparently staff hasn't yet noticed that this issue just feeds on itself. Because MIs are over-powered, monsters have to be over-powered in order to give MI users a challenge even though these monsters can easily be killed by MI users who require more over-powered enemies to challenge their over-powered MIs...
It's very frustrating. Be prepared for that.
If you can deal with all these things, you might make it playing mage on NPF. This test of tolerance will be the biggest obstacle you face. I speak from experience on this. The inequity of it does drive me to try out other shards from time to time, and I can also tell you from experience that you're not going to find anywhere more enjoyable to play than NPF.
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