By: Kranar Drogin, Human Archwizard
Introduction
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So you've decided you want to be the one responsible for creating 10x armor, or perhaps have the ability to charge a ruby amulet to 40, be the profession capable of summoning pets, duplicating magical items, spelling yourself up with every spell you have in under a minute or two for 4 hours or just downright hacking a critter to death with Haste II, well welcome to wizardry, the profession in Elanthia with the most abilities, utilities, and skills. All these wonderful abilities available to wizards do come at a cost and do require committment, but eventually, with the right training path you will find that being a wizard can bring you the best experience Elanthia can offer.
After being asked the question "What race makes the best wizard? What rolls are the most important? What skills should I train in? What spell training order should I go with?", the time has come to write an indepth guide to wizardry. A guide that will answer the many questions I have been asked over the years being a wizard. This guide will not dictate how one should train. It will provide recommendations, but most of all this guide will focus on the mechanics of wizardry, that way you can decide what kind of wizard suits you best. I do not personally believe any one mage is better then any other mage so long as the mage has followed a regular training plan and doesn't avoid training in their main skills. So let's get down to it...
The Race
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Many might argue that haflings make the best wizards, and others might say that sylvankind make the best. Unlike other professions (most notably the sorcerer), no race makes the absolute best wizard, this is more so for wizards then any other profession, the reason for this being that wizards are one of the most diverse profession. We have the ability to swing a sword, cast a bolt, use a maneuver attack or use a CS attack, we can use a combination of these attacks or focus on using only one type of attack. The race you choose should reflect what kind of character you want to play (grumpy dwarf, big brute giantman, mysterious darkelf) and the type of attack or attacks you want to focus the most attention too. So let's take a look at the different types of wizards commonly seen in the lands.
The Brands
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- The Generic Wizard.
This is basically as raw as you can get. It is the basic wizard independant of race or stat placement or preference. Just the primary skills that as a wizard shouldn't avoid without atleast a lot of thinking. Here is the training plan:
1x shield use (for life) You need all the DS you can get and shield use is a very cheap and essential skill to have to add to your defense.
1x blunt or edged (for life) Even if you don't plan on swinging or touching a critter with your sword, edged or blunt weapon is essential to your parry defense, and when the time comes when you need to go into a defensive stance to help guard yourself, you will be glad you trained in this skill
2x spell research (for life) Obvious reason is that as a wizard, spell research is a primary skill, doing it twice allows you to learn two spells per training as well as increase your CS. Even if you have no spells left to learn, 2x is essential to keep your CS up to date against critters of your same training.
1x Magic Item Use (for life) Magic item use is a very cheap skill for wizards and being a skill that we can triple in, it is essential that we atleast single in it if not double every
training. The reason for this is that if ever a new system is implemented for wizards, it may very well require magic item use so do not neglect this and make sure to get 1x per train.
1x Scroll Reading (for life) Same reason as magic item use, it's a cheap skill for wizards and magic related, do not neglect this skill. Scrolls are also very useful to give yourself defense from outside circles without leeching off of a cleric or empath.
1x Mana Sharing (40 ranks or beyond) Mana share plays an important role in enchanting and will probably be used further for future skills and requirements, you can not go wrong with training in it once per, it is very expensive for a wizard to train in it for reasons I still do not understand but do not neglect this skill.
2x Spell Aiming (for life) Once again, this is a primary wizard skill and should never once be avoided, spell aiming increases bolt strength.
.5x Physical Training (until max HP) Training in this by saving up a few points per training is the best way to go about it, depending on what race you are, you might prefer doing 1 physical train every 3 trainings.
- The Bolt Casting Wizard.
These wizards are most fond of using major shock, cone of lightning, and or minor fire. Bolt attacks are physical attacks using the different elements (fire, water, earth, air). They use the AS/DS system and have an advantage over swinging in that bolt attacks do not take into account the targets parry defenses (the DS a target gets with it's weapon). This means that a bolt casting wizard has no problem taking out all those stubborn critters that like to walk around in guarded or defensive stance, he can simply bolt them into the next dimension. Bolt AS is determined using the following formula:
BoltAS = DE Bonus + (Spell Aiming x Stance) + Spell Bonus
So dexterity plays a role in casting a strong bolt indicating that haflings have the potential of casting the strongest bolts followed by dark elves. Next comes spell aiming which is a trained skill and also a primary wizard skill meaning it should never be avoided and always trained in twice per. Stance indicates that in offensive stance you will get your full spell aiming bonus whereas in a different stance, you would only get a percentage of your spell aiming bonus (in defensive stance you get no spell aiming bonus).
Bolt casting wizards are sometimes haflings but most of them tend to be dark elves (haflings have very weak strength which is a big inconvinience). The bolt casting wizard doesn't have any different of a training plan then the generic wizard so the main issue with the bolt casting wizard is the race. Personally I'd be a hafling over a dark elf due to the fact that darkelves have a very bad TD (they get a -5 TD modifier, and as a wizard you need all the TD you can get, haflings get +50 modifier to their TD), they also do not have the impressive reflexes which halflings have and very poor spirit regeneration, haflings have the fastest spirit regen. Another personal point is I see way too many dark elves in the lands as it is, let's get the hafling population back on track.
- The Casting Mage
Although the bolt casting wizard is still a casting mage, they make use of physical attacks as their prime form of attack. The casting mage does not use physical attacks yet prefers to use spells like Elemental Blast/Strike, Weapon Fire, Mana Leech, Immolation, Hand of Tonis, Sleep, and a few others. These attacks all use the CS/TD combat system, the advantage is that as a Casting Mage you never have to hunt in any other stance then guarded to use your spells giving you an almost untouchable defensive strength. This combat system is a lot less variable however, you have a fixed CS, and usually deal with a fixed TD. They are all calculated the following way:
MiE. CS = (3 x Level) + Aura Bonus + # of MiE. Spells + .5(# other spells)
MaE. CS = (3 x Level) + Aura Bonus + # of MaE. Spells + .5(# other spells)
Wiz. CS = (3 x Level) + Aura Bonus + # of Wiz. Spells + .5(# other spells)
Universal TD = (3 x Level) + (Aura Bonus) OR (Wisdom Bonus) OR ((Wisdom + Aura) / 2) + Spell Bonus + Racial Modifier
The advantage to this combat method is never having to stance dance or force the opponent to fall and if done excessively, this method of hunting can prove to be more effective then using bolts in most hunting areas. The disadvantage of it is that as the calculations show, MiE. CS will most likely be different from MaE. CS which will be different from your Wiz. CS, this means you have to make a choice as to what spell circle you want to excel in and this is not as easy as it seems. Do you prefer to steal all of a critters mana as quick as possible, be able to stun it or sleep it? Or would you rather attack it with a powerful crit usually resulting in instant death? Or do you like the idea of turning a critters weapon against it? All three spell circles offer great benefits (equal benefits in my opinion) and these questions are ones you should ask yourself. If this is the path you wish to take, then you will concider spending your training points triple training in spells every time you have enough. Being that Aura is the key stat for determining CS, you may decide to choose dark elf as your race, however it may be best to choose a race with a good Aura stat and fast spirit regeneration. This is because CS spells are mana costly and will require that you wrack often to fry your mind.
- The War-Mage
Wizards are given several spells to increase physical attack such as strength and elemental targetting, these spells in combination with Haste and Haste II make a deadly combination. As a war-mage you will concider training in combat maneuvers to increase your sword AS and DS and after a certain point you will want to train for brigandine armor (35 ranks of armor to train off spell hinderance). Brigandine armor is effective against maneuver attacks and reduces stuns extremely well compared to double leather. By having 35 ranks of armor, you can save spending upwards of 12 million silver to purchase 4x heavily crit padded double leathers and spend 200k on 4x brigandine armor which will offer more protection then the 4x heavily crit padded double (better AvD, lower CvA, same critical protection), or decide to spend 5 million silver on forest green brigandine armor which will give you chain hauberk critical protection. As a war-mage you will not be negleting your primary wizard skills so when you are old and decide it's time to hunt in the rift, you will have all of your physical abilities to help you defensively and can still make use of your magical abilities. The following is the formula for both physical AS and DS:
Physical AS = Stance x (Strength Bonus + Weapon Use Skill + Weapon Enchantment
+ Combat Maneuver Ranks / 2) + Spell bonus
Parry DS = Weapon DS = Stance x (Strength Bonus + Weapon Use Skill + Weapon Enchantment)
Shield DS = 20 + Shield Enchantment +
(20 + Shield Enchantment) * (Shield Use Skill / 100) * (.25 + (Stance) * (.75))
Base DS = Armor Enchantment + Reflext Bonus +
(Stance * Combat Maneuver Ranks / 2) + Spell Bonus
Total DS = Base DS + Shield DS + Parry DS + Spell Bonus
Quite a long thing to calculate but the key skill to train in is Combat Maneuvers ontop of your generic skills and then to grab armor training when possible until brigandine armor, or if you're really serious about this route, go for the hauberk class armor (Much later in life). The race to choose for this brand of wizards would most commonly be giantman and dwarven as these two races are very durable, have excellent offensive abilities (high strength bonus), and are loaded with blood.
The Mangler
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Decided what brand of wizard works best for you and now rolling that 650? Seeing how we now have pretty fast and well made autorollers I think working towards a 650 or atleast a 640 is an modest goal. But where does one place those stats? A generic stat placement would be the following:
DI, ST, AU, RE, IN, DE, LO, WI, CH, CO
If you have that stat placement after the +10 bonus to LO and AU then you won't have much to worry about. If you're way too worried about your bolt AS you can swap DE with RE however since DE grows at a moderate speed I placed it as such. Some key things to think about when placing stats are your training points. Make sure that your stat placement is good for the character you're making but optimized so that you have enough mental training points and physical training points to train in all the primary wizard skills I mentioned above and have some left over for misc. purposes. The following is how one calculates his training points:
Mental Training Points = (DI + AU + IN + LO + WI + CH) / 10
Physical Training Points = (DI + AU + ST + RE + DE + CO) / 10
Those formulas should demonstrate the importance of DI and AU as they are used to calculate both PTPs and MTPs. To further optimize training points you can place your stats in as much of a reverse growth order as possible, my generic stat placement attempts to do just that.
Hunting
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Here is my life from the farm to the rift... To me it's been a piece of cake the entire time except for when I had to leave warfarers to hunt coyotes and wolverines.
1-8 rats (extremely easy and quick fry)
8-14 manticors and boars (little challenging but quick fry)
15-20 fire cats/rats (easy as hell)
20-26 warfarers (cake walk using death cloud)
30-45 glacei (minor fire tore em apart nicely)
45-55 Varunar (easiest hunting of my life)
55-60 Seekers (these guys suck against 903)
60-70 Illokes (had tons of fun, challenging hunting area but full of action)
70-73 Pyrothags (call wind major shock instadeath)
73-80 lava golems (rapid fire major cold, or haste and metal wands)
80-95 sprites and fire mage (easy 2 minute fries, if it swarms though I die)
Further comments/questions
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Any problems with your wizard and feel free to post at The Gemstone III Player's Corner which can be found at http://www.whee.org/~buckwheet/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi. I'm sure plenty of people there will be able to help you out with any problem your wizard is experiencing.
reg
reg