Raising Mage Skill
Raising skills in the mage class is difficult for newbies and even some skilled
players to accomplish. This may be because many mages advise others to simply
'not bother' with gaining 'useless' skills. But skills for any class, including mages,
are essential to truly good game play.
Note please that I don't claim to know everything. All of this is simply my opinion,
and I present it in the spirit of trying to help other mages with what is a difficult
task. If someone has other ideas or conflicting opinions I will be glad to post them upon request.
While using a purely hit and run attack is popular, I don't believe it's the best
strategy. Either way, it is likely that skill raising will benefit most, if not all,
mages in some way. Though it is possible to concievably raise any skill, I will concentrate
on where mages have the most potential (staff and knife) and in what I believe are two
other potentially beneficial skills for most mages (marksmanship and exotic).
General Tips for All Skills:
The idea when killing for skills is to hit as often as possible, with the most suitable weapon,
fighting the most suitable enemy. Get out of your mind the idea of the kill. Killing, here, is
a secondary concern. Hitting the enemy while taking the least amount of damage is most important.
Therefore, if you are looking solely for skills, forget offensive spells. Think of defensive
spells and methods to achieve your goal.
Be innovative and don't be afraid to spend money. Getting heals is, as a mage, expensive, time-
consuming, and frustrating. Here are some general pointers:
- Use your spellbook!: Defensive spells like stoneskin are going to be very handy if you're
trying to tank for yourself. Also, in the interest of hitting more often, use of "Haste" might
come in handy.
- Get a weapon appropriate for your skill level: Don't start with Glimmer. The idea is to
HIT your enemy, not miss over and over again. If you're missing a lot, you might want to try
an easier weapon (if possible). Find a reliable fighter and bug them for evals if you can.
- Get a tank: This can make things a lot easier on you, especially when trying to advance
at higher skills. Arm them with a Beast-Slayer if you can, or minimize the damage they are
doing. In any case, if you're partying as a mage, you should ALWAYS carry a weapon--sometimes
a skill point can come at any time.
- Use thrown weapons: Barbed darts and boomerangs both lower your opponent's dexterity. Using
both will cause them to have an even greater penalty to dexterity. Less dexterity means they are
easier to hit--so use these whenever possible!
- Know your foe: It's not necessary to kill Blor to raise skills at low levels. Even at level
19, you don't have to kill the greatest monsters on AA to raise low level skills. Use a magic
stone; enemies that are at the same level and those that are slightly less are who you should be
killing. Remember: the best foe is probably the one that you can hit the most, not the most
'impressive' one or the one who gives the most XP.
- Use Zhou as much as possible: There's no reason not to get staff or knife up to 15 or so
in a single, even brief, playing session.
- Use heals: and I do NOT mean hero's feast! Buy real heals, potions, whatever you need. Money
is relatively easy to get compared to skills. Make your time spent for skills count!
STAFF
Staff is, I believe, the most beneficial and time-effective mage skill. Mages have potential
to raise this skill fairly easily (comparatively). By level 19, it's not extremely difficult
to have a staff skill of 50. Once this high, you may actually be doing some damage.
Start with a crooked staff (from Belob, a wandering NPC 'criminal') or, if this is not available,
use the strong branch (as this is highly accessible; available in Ravel either simply lying at the
entry or from the guard in the tree at the entrance). Use Zhou from the very start. It can be
expensive, but it will save you a lot of time, and in the end you can gain money back faster that
way. Zhou will stop helping you about skill 15, which you should be able to get fairly quickly.
At the beginning, if you are fighting the right monsters, you can easily raise staff skill 2 or 3
points per Zhou session. Fight monsters at about your level, or slightly less ("slightly less
experienced than you" from the magic stone evaluation).
The staves in sequence should be crooked staff (or strong branch), light staff, long
staff, and white iron stick. (Note that I suggest ranger-made long staves as opposed to
the sage's long staff.) At this point you should have skill of 45-50. From here some
suggest the rosewood staff, but when the stick is no longer perfect (over 50), I find Zarkan's staff
highly effective. At skill 50 or above, Glimmer is an excellent choice; at skill 52 I bludgeon
about every round with it. Above this carved staff, then bo, then tetsubo (though it's probable
you won't get it to budge too much after skill 50 unless you have a highly skilled tank and are
killing very difficult monsters.)I found vicious staff to be a good damage choice at skill 50, and raised
a point with it (fluke), but it only evals at excellent.
It is possible to raise staff skill solo, but many mages find a tank useful. If using this method,
ideally you should not be casting spells--you have more hits to kill a monster, and therefore more
opportunity to raise skill, this way. Also, if your tank is not also seeking skill, you will want
to try to cripple their combat ability as much as possible, such as with a broken Beast-Slayer from
Balan, which will cause them to hit not at all.
Note that I haven't mentioned Carcera. Using Zhou to raise related skills and transferring
them to staff is not effective, as staff raises faster in the first place, and Carcera won't advance
a skill unless the skill you are transferring to is lower.
KNIFE
Knife is another skill that is comparatively easy for mages to raise. However, it is less popular
for several reasons, mainly that knives have been given a bad rap (as there really aren't many high
level knives, or any really powerful ones). This is not to say that a mage skilled in knife cannot be
as successful as one in staff; I know some mages swear by knife skill. However, I myself know little
about raising knife skill; if a mage or someone else has a list of which knives to use or other pointers
I would be glad to post it here.
MARKSMANSHIP
Title: 'mms' // Fluiddruid <19> Sat Jan 23 22:21:58 1999
As a mage, raising marksmanship is going to be difficult, pretty much no
matter what. I don't find using the crossbow very effective, as it's not
really intended until higher skill levels. I also don't particularly care
for the mindless work that it would be to try and raise mms with a wielded
weapon--I prefer thrown weapons. (Archery is pretty much out of the question
here, as a) arrows are more difficult to get and have a more limited supply,
and b) bow/arrows are a lot heavier. However, it could concievably work,
especially since the bow itself is a staff, you'd have less weapon switching
as well.)
Here's what I do. Because in mms / thrown weapon you have not only a skill
but an ability to raise, and the ability does help you hit, and (naturally)
hitting helps you raise skills. Therefore, if you're a mage with a lot of
cash (as most tend to be, if they have CK, or are mindful of their money), I
would do the following during normal play. (Personally, I find it a lot more
interesting play as it is, and a lot better than rote skill-raising. But
then, there are those who will disagree.)
Because I use mms for damage as opposed to just 'having' the skill, I find
that this doesn't raise mms quickly, but it does for thrown weapon (at least
at first), will help you do more damage in normal play, and allows you to get
skills/gold/xp at the same time.
Find a kill about what you normally kill, something about your level (or
higher, if you feel like it). I usually carry several barbed darts, as many
boomerangs as I can find (usually only a few are available, maybe 2 or 3) and
some others (you might pick up javs and darts from t-hunts, knives from Bort,
or whatever you want from the seller, like hungas) for this method. You
should probably make the following aliases (these are the ones I have all the
time)
alias a = wield (main weapon; staff)
alias tk throw knife at opponent
alias td throw dart at opponent
alias tj throw javelin at opponent
(etc)
And whatever spells you usually have aliased.
Begin the fight with an aa/fireball/attack and then immediately toss a barbed
dart/rewield. Then start with the boomerangs.
alias tb throw boomerang at opponent
alias gb get boomerang
Throw the boomerang, rewield. The boomerang will either be on the ground in
a round or so or it will return to your hand in a few seconds. Either way,
if you have multiple boomerangs, throw them as fast as you can while not
casting spells.
Therefore, the battle would go thusly:
cast aa/fb or attack
td (make sure barbed dart is firt in inv)
tb
gb
tb
gb
(etc)
until round 3:
cast aa/fb
tb
gb
tb
gb
etc.
If you have time between boomerang throws, you can throw your other weapons
as well,
or if the boomerang gets 'stuck' on the opponent (if you leave the room, or
in certain other cases, this will happen.
This tends to be rathermoney intensive, but you will increase your damage as
well, so if you're not using up too many weapons (as your skill rises less
will be dropped, etc. and break; or rather, as your ability rises). You'll
find thrown will shoot up. This is good. 100 thrown is useful.
Marksmanship won't shoot up. For me, around skill 15 or so, using this
method it crawls. But it does go up.
That's all the advice I have for you.
End of note number 242.
EXOTIC
Exotic is a popular choice because of the invokation spell, Mystic Sword (which, incidentally, I
would recommend if you have the study hours to spare, because it's a damn handy spell in a pinch,
and great for having instant weapon and weapon skill for those hard-to-kill monsters). However,
actually raising the exotic skill, with or without Mystic Sword, is a difficult task for mages.
I won't kid you. If you want to do this, you had better either have a lot of time on your hands or
have other high skills and be bored. But, it is possible to do (concievably) and, if I was going to go
about doing it (I have tried, but not ardently), this is what I would do in the spirit of raising other
skills in this class.
From what I've heard, the simplest exotic to raise with is the knight's tail from the Scythe Camp games.
However, you won't be able to remove it, even with teleporting/gating out of the area, as you'll be stopped and
asked to return it, have it disappear, or your spell will fail--regardless of method. You'll have to use another easy exotic--
the shuriken is best.
Once you have your exotic weapon (it's unwise to try this with Mystic Sword, as it's easier to raise from 1 to 2
than from 51 to 52), you should use Zhou extensively. It may not go up even from every session, but this is the
fastest way for a mage to raise exotic that I know of--unless one wanted to get Carcera involved.
(Note: I have since experimented with this, and I do not believe Carcera can assist with exotic.
There don't seem to be any skills similar to exotic for him to switch with.)
I've recently been informed that boomerang and shuriken are indeed exotics when wielded, as is the
'bible'.
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