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Hopefully this will be stickied, I put some effort into it and to date this information proves to be accurate. I see a lot of questions and concerns on the boards, questions I once had, and maybe this will save some searching.
This guide is intended for everyone, especially players new to the arts of magery. Some of this is common knowledge, some of it is not. Some of you are returning, some of you are new, and some of you are UO vets, but I hope that all walks of life can take something from this guide. I’m not giving direct formulae nor am I even going to get into numbers or tenths of points, I’m simply going to go broad and answer the most common questions people have.
1. Magery and Related Skills
2. Best Ways of Training Those Skills
3. Building your Suit and Item Effect Explanations
4. The Important Things to Know
Magery and Related Skills
Magery basically works like this. You have eight circles of magic. The skill itself in this regard simply increases the chance of a spell in that particular circle to be successfully cast. As you can imagine, a second circle spell is harder to cast than a first circle spell. In other areas, having higher magery also increases the effectiveness of some spells like heal and greater heal. It is also used in conjunction with the poisoning skill to be able to cast higher level poisons with the poison spell (more on this later).
Evaluate Intelligence does a few things for a mage. First and foremost, it directly adds damage to your offensive damage spells. Some might ask the effectiveness or necessity of this skill. For those of you who don’t plan on doing damage with spells (for example, a Bard or Tamer might wish to use magery simply for gating their pets or to use invisibility or to summon combat pets) then no, the necessity of Evaluate Intelligence would be low or not at all. However, the increase in damage for a spell-damaging caster is tremendous. If you would like to see the numbers, please visit the magery damage calculator on the main stratics site. All of the nitty gritty is explained there. Secondly, when used in conjunction with higher level anatomy, you can gain percentages to dodge incoming melee attacks, like wrestle, but without the special moves. Defense is very very important and will be discussed later. Thirdly if your anatomy is above 76.0 you can use the skill directly and be able to see the mana pool of the entity targeted, which can be useful.
Meditate is quite simple. The higher your meditate, the more mana you can regenerate. Mana regeneration is excruciatingly slow without meditate or items that provide mana regeneration. For the nitty gritty on how much mana you can regenerate, theres a great mana regeneration calculator here on stratics. There is, however, something you must know concerning meditate. Firstly, meditate only works while wearing three kinds of armor: Cloth, Leather (not studded), and any armor that has the effect “Mage Armor”. If you are wearing anything other than these three things, such as a player made fashioned helmet or a studded leather tunic, then the meditate skill will not work nor will you be able to use the skill directly. Mana Regeneration effects on items will still function, but the regeneration from the meditate skill will not. Meditate is very useful, and depending on what armor you are planning to put on it can be useful at different levels. Some mages and mage variation templates do not use meditation because they can regenerate mana with the mana regeneration effects that can stack on their items (more on this later).
Those are the three most commonly used skills for a mage. Here are some of the skills people also tend to use.
Inscription does three things for a mage. Firstly, at GM level (100.0, which for inscription currently you cant go higher than 100.0 anyway) scribe has a flat 10% damage bonus added to their spellcasting. This is, as lots of people ask, added on top of spell damage cap for pvp. Secondly, it dramatically increases the effectiveness of the resistance altering spells, Reactive Armor and Magic Reflection. A lot of mages who don’t have the best armor tend to be able to make their suits more suitable for them resistance wise with high inscription and these two spells. Last is the ability to create items and scrolls, which can be quite lucrative if that is what you wish
Poisoning in PVP and PVE both is extremely powerful. If you are under the effects of poison, you cannot heal by bandage or spell, you must cure the poison first. In conjunction with magery, you can cast more powerful poisons with the level three poison spell. A few things to know, however. Firstly, to cast deadly poison requires 200.0 skill in any combination of magery and poisoning combined. If you have 120 magery, you would need 80 poisoning. Any amount over 200.0 has no additional effect. For lesser poisoning enhancement levels, please visit the poisoning page on stratic’s home site. Secondly, the effect of the poison applied via spell when used in conjunction with poisoning is distance based, meaning the closer you are to your target the more chance you have of casting a higher level poison. In addition, having higher poison skill in conjunction with magery will give you a greater chance of curing yourself and others of poison.
Resisting Spells is a skill of quite some controversy regarding its usefulness. Resisting spells does not decrease damage received in any way, as one might think. What resisting spells does do is increase the chance that non damage spells such as clumsy, poison, curse, and paralyze will be completely and fully resisted. It also, at higher levels, adds an amount to your elemental resists (fire, cold, poison, and energy). However, these are non-stackable effects that are put on your resists at the bottom of the percentage spectrum (for example, having 100.0 resisting spells will put 40 points in the four resistances. If you have a hat that adds 20 energy resist, you will still only have 40 in energy, it dosent stack together).
Necromancy, Animal Taming, Bardic skills, Rogue skills, and trade skills will not be discussed as they do not interact directly with the magery skill are not as popular as the above in reguards to questions and misconceptions. For information reguarding said skills in this paragraph, please see the respective pages, which are quite up to date, on the stratics home site.
2. The Best Ways of Gaining Those Skills
Magery: For returning players, new and old players who have heard rumors, and players who have had their skills so long that they don’t know, the 8x8 method has been fixed and no longer functions as a effective way to gain magery. You can no longer use the 8x8 method to gain as fast as in the past, as the code within the game has been changed.
Get yourself a boat and a magic wand with spell channeling and a penalty on your magery skill. This will allow you to practice alone and at lower circles, which will cost less mana. Now, as far as what other things you need it is all flexible. If you have faster casting or 100 lower reagent cost or lower mana cost it will defiantly speed things up, there are a lot of factors that you can do to maximize this method, but at the core those two things are all you need. A great place I sail at starts at a peninsula directly west of Empathy Abbey in Yew. The sail time is about 45 minuites and ends in Skara Brea. There are a lot of places like this, but you’re basically looking for a stretch of sea that fits your training time and has few or no monsters that will disrupt you. Get on the boat. Equip the wand and create a macro for whatever spell you wish to use of whatever circle you fail at about half the time. Raise your anchor and use the command “slow forward” to move slowly north. Simply cast the spell until you reach the other side. Magery is movement based, the boat serves as a bypass so you don’t have to manually move with the mouse to be able to get the gains. The skill gains moderately fast. Past 100.0 the gains are slow but steady. Rinse and repeat with the boat, however within each real day use a different string of tiles to cast on (simply place the boat where you had it and give the command “left one” and you’ll be fine). This method works for necromancy, spirit speak, music and peacemaking, chivalry, and all the other movement based skills.
Evaluate Intellegence: This skill can be raised quickly to around 60.0 or 70.0 simply by going to Britian and using the skill directly on players and npcs. It also gains in conjunction with any magery spell, so along with training magery you can also be gaining evaluate intelligence. The skill will gain upon successful cast or failure of a magery spell. The best way to train it seperatly or if you have already completed magery training is to get on that same boat, make a macro that casts the spell reactive armor. Start your “slow forward” and just cast it like nuts. The gains will taper slower as you reach grandmaster, but it is still quite easy.
Meditate is hands down the easiest skill out of any listed to reach whatever level of it you wish. As long as you have a mana pool that is not full, you will be gaining in meditate. Simply mark the skill to rise, start training magery and evaluate intelligence, and watch it soar. Easy enough.
Inscription is quite a lengthy process at the higher levels. Firstly, you must have skill to cast the spell via magery to be able to inscribe it. Secondly you must have the spell in your possession via spellbook. Third is that inscribing a scroll uses the same amount of mana as it would to cast the spell. The last thing to know is that scribing requires a blank scroll, all of what I’ve mentioned, and the reagents of the spell you wish to inscribe. Effects such as lower mana cost and lower reagent cost will not function with inscription, so nothing in this regard will make the process faster, however magery skill enhancers (discussed later) on a bracelet or ring will function as an enabler for the respective circles. Bulk blank scrolls from players are for lack of a better word scarce, so I recommend collecting the blank scrolls from mage shops before training. As far as what to inscribe, pick the spells with the least costing reagents, as you can resell these to vendors or players for more money. Poison(3rd), Recall (4th), Blade Spirits (5th), Mark(6th), Gate(7th), and Earthquake(8th) are the spells of my particular choice. You can either train to 33.3 in new haven or copy books over and over via using the skill directly.
Poisoning is not a hard skill to raise difficulty wise, but a fairly long one. Get about 100 pieces of bread from a baker, poison kegs that reflect your skill level (found on stratic’s poisioning page), some empty bottles from a alchemist vendor, and create a macro for cure poison. This skill is target based, meaning the same piece of bread cannot be targeted over and over for gains at later levels. You will need to separate the bread into less condensed stacks. Every item in UO has a specific code. When you pull bread from the stack, you create a new item, thus a new code is born. So you are effectively making new bread every time you change the stack. Poison bread until you have gained or attempted to gain on each piece, then remix the stack, simple as that.
Resisting spells is a very easy skill to gain in, contrary to popular opinion. Just today I went from 40.0 (npc training in new haven) to gm in literally one sitting, took one hour and fifty two minuites to reach 100.0 skill, and it would have continued to gain fast if I would have let it. The trick to this is to find a monster who will cast non damaging spells on you that hang out in numbers. To the northeast of New Haven is where the old haven used to be. This town is full of undead. These undead do not attack unless provoked. There are spellcasting specters there that do not cast damaging spells nor poison. They cast curse, clumsy, corpse skin, and several others, everything you need to gain fast, simply go up to one, sock it in the face with a fist or cast clumsy on it. Simply walk in front of it and gather as many of these specters as you can get, their physical attacks are very weak. Your skill will fly. At earlier levels (0-70), get on your boat using the magery method (you must be guilded for this) and just spam clumsy on yourself.
Wrestling is also a skill that people are intimidated by, simply because a mage generally doesn’t have high dexterity. But fear not, I have a solution. You must be guilded for this method, you can create your own guild if you are not guilded for 25k. Train to 40.0 in New Haven, then go to the fisherman. That’s right, the fisherman. Buy as many fishing poles as you can carry, because they break fast in combat if the opponent has a shield. Go to the fighter pits in Jhelom. Hand a fighter dressed in leather 60 gold. This will make him/her your hireling. Use the command “follow me” to have it follow you into the pit and out of the protection of the town guards. Then when you get it there give the command “all stay” followed by the very important “guard me”. Equip a fishing pole, stand on the exact tile that the fighter is standing on, and attack the hireling once and do not re-attack again. The hireling will hit you once, then never again while you attack it. Because of the pole, you will swing at max speed regardless of your dexterity. Its important that you stand on the same tile as the hireling for the swing speed to work. You will gain like crazy and the fishing pole does no damage. In golem training, you only need one pole. Items with the Hit Chance Increase effect will surely help you out as far as being able to hit and hitting successfully is what gives you gains at later levels.
3. Building your Suit and Item Effect Explanations
Item effects that concern mages are:
Lower Reagent Cost: This effect does not lower the amount of reagents used. What it does do is gives you a percentage of chance to not use any reagents at all. If you have 100% lower reagent cost, then that means that no reagents will be used in casting spells, which is without a doubt an awesome thing. Chivalry and Necromancy work the same way, however with chivalry you must have the minimum tithe points in your book to cast the spell (the points wont be spent though).
Lower Mana Cost: This effect simply lowers the amount of mana needed to cast the spell. This effect can only go to 40%. At 40%, a 6th circle spell that would normally cast 20 mana will now cost 12 mana. The key to fighting as a mage is conserving and preserving your mana pool, and that is why this effect is so popular. This effect also works with any spell or ability that costs mana, including combat specials.
Spell Channeling: For the mages who wish to wield weapons, this effect allows you to cast spells while holding a weapon. Weapons and items without spell channeling will go to your backpack when attempting to cast a spell.
Spell Damage Increase: This adds a flat percentage to the damage you do with damaging spells. The most you can add in pvp is 15%, but inscription can go on top of that for 25%. There is no “cap” for pve.
Mage Weapon/Mage Armor: Mage weapons, usually having have a penalty to magery, simply means that it uses magery skill instead of a combat skill to determine chance to hit. Weapons with the “Use Best Weapon Skill” effect doesn’t do the same thing. Armor with the “Mage Armor” effect means that the meditate skill will function with it equipped. “Mage Armor” most prevalently appears on armor such as platemail or chainmail, the armor that you wouldn’t normally want to use if you wished to use meditation.
Mana Increase/Intelligence Bonus: There is a difference between the two. Mana increase simply adds an amount to your mana pool. Intelligence Bonus will do this as well, but Intelligence itself is a determining factor in the effectiveness of several spells.
Mana Regeneration: This adds directly to the regeneration of your mana pool. For specific numbers, percentages, and tables, please see the stratics mana regen calculator on the stratics site. Some people use it with meditation as it does stack with meditation. Some people can get so much mana regeneration with items that they do not need meditation, freeing up valuable skill points. As a mage your mana pool is one if not the most important asset you have. There is no limit on how much mana regeneration you can have.
Faster Casting/Faster Cast Recovery: These are two very important effects. Faster casting reduces the casting time of all your mage spells (necromancy and chivalry, too). This is of great advantage, as you can imagine. The most you can have for magery is 2 and each point of this effect reduces the time by a quarter of a second. That half a second can be crucial. Faster cast recovery simply reduces the time you have to wait before casting your next spell. The time between spells is a second and a half. Each point you have in this ability will reduce the time between spells by a quarter second. The most you can have of this effect is 6, which will remove the time altogether and let you cast without the pause.
Defense Chance Increase: Im not going to get into how combat works, but at the very end of all the formulas and all the science and numbers defense chance increase adds a percentage to dodge an incoming melee attack on top of what you would normally be able to dodge. This is pretty important when combined with a defensive skill or effect, because the way movement in combat works is that odds are you are going to be in melee range at some point.
Skill Increase Items: This effect adds directly to the skill in question, and in most cases the game will honor all bonuses and abilities given for having certian skill points in the respective skill
Ok, so those are the more important item effects when it comes to magery.
Suit Building Theory and Tips
I will say this, and I know it’s under a little bit of controversy, but artifacts in my opinion are not necessary for the building of an effective suit. However, the truth remains that there are a lot of mages out there, and thus items with the abovementioned effects or combination of these effects are high in demand. My personal suit, which I will show later, is very expensive and does use a lot of artifacts. However, that does not mean that you need to follow my example to be a successful mage.
First off, lets talk about resists. By resists, I mean Physical, Fire, Cold, Poison, and Energy. These can go to 70 (energy can go to 75 if you are an elf). Having 70 in all resists is great, but not a necessity. That’s right, I said it. The spell curse, which most spellcasting monsters and most pvpers use, will lower your elemental resists (all but physical) to 60. Thus, in my opinion you should shoot for 70 physical and 60-70 elemental resists. This also gives you more flexibility in your items. Poison resist is a resist that is quite neglected, so I personally do not care too much about it and as long as its over 50 its fine with me. The other four in my opinion are quite important.
I wont list item effects in order of importance, because that will cause some controversy and frankly its just a matter of opinion. However, I can tell you what a successful mage’s suit absolutely needs.
1. Faster casting
2. Faster cast recovery
3. Lower Mana Cost
That’s about it. All the rest of the effects are optional and you can be a successful mage without them. However, you will be gaining a whole lot of power by adopting those effects while suit building.
Nobody has infinite money, but some people are more limited than others. The armor game is a very diverse and sometimes cruel game to play. Armor is so unpredictable, and as soon as you find a great piece you can just as easily realize after buying it that something is wrong with how the effects and resists add up. My biggest advice is to get a pen and paper, keep track of your resists and abilities and add them up to what you already have before you purchase the piece. As nerdy or as bland as it sounds, suit building is a number game. The Kingdom Reborn client, which I recommend you download if you haven’t, actually keeps track of all the effects for you, which is very nice.
My Suit:
2/6 Casting
38 Lower Mana Cost
100 Lower Reagent Cost
45 Defense Chance Increase
40 Spell Damage Increase (no inscription)
7 Mana Regeneration
+12 Intellegence/Mana Increase
+25 Necromancy skill
+10 Spirit Speak skill
+15 Magery skill
+15 Resisting Spells skill
70 Physical
62 Fire
61 Cold
54 Poison
70 Energy
Artifacts Used:
Hat of the Magi
Armor of Fortune
Inquisitors Resolution
Midnight Bracers
Ornament of the Magician
Shield of Invunerability
Tome of Lost Knowledge
Bloodwood Spirit
My Template
110 Magery (95 Real)
110 Evaluate Intellegence
100 Meditate
110 Necromancy (85 Real)
110 Spirit Speak (100 Real)
110 Wrestling
115 Resisting Spells (100 Real)
90 Strength
125 Intelligence
40 Dexterity
Important Things to Know
A nice little list of things not so commonly known.
1. Harm and Poison are both distance based. You get a greater effect by being closer.
2. Effects that add to skills (+10 Magery Ring, for example) can be used to subtract from your skill cap of 700. If you have that +10 magery ring, then you can make magery 90 and put those 10 points of magery into something else.
3. 8x8 no longer works.
4. The spell Protection makes you cast as if you had 0 Faster Casting, regardless of how much you have.
5. If you have high magery, your faster casting “cap” for chivalry cannot exceed 2.
6. using Anatomy and Evaluate Intelligence to dodge blows uses less points toward your 700.0 cap to substantiate the same wrestling equivalent.
7. Follower slots: Summon Creature takes up one slot, Summon Daemon takes up all 5, and the rest take up two.
8. You can dispel your own vortexes
9. Players hate it when you use teleport in pvp.
10. Spellbooks now can have effects that mages popularly use.
11. You can hold a spellbook with 0 spells in it and still cast provided you have another one with spells in it in your backpack.
More to be edited as I think of them
I genuinely thank you for reading, this guide can be used for any purpose or posted on any forum or site as long as it includes my name. Post any corrections, comments, additions, and I will change as needed and requested.
Ava Straden, Atlantic
This guide is intended for everyone, especially players new to the arts of magery. Some of this is common knowledge, some of it is not. Some of you are returning, some of you are new, and some of you are UO vets, but I hope that all walks of life can take something from this guide. I’m not giving direct formulae nor am I even going to get into numbers or tenths of points, I’m simply going to go broad and answer the most common questions people have.
1. Magery and Related Skills
2. Best Ways of Training Those Skills
3. Building your Suit and Item Effect Explanations
4. The Important Things to Know
Magery and Related Skills
Magery basically works like this. You have eight circles of magic. The skill itself in this regard simply increases the chance of a spell in that particular circle to be successfully cast. As you can imagine, a second circle spell is harder to cast than a first circle spell. In other areas, having higher magery also increases the effectiveness of some spells like heal and greater heal. It is also used in conjunction with the poisoning skill to be able to cast higher level poisons with the poison spell (more on this later).
Evaluate Intelligence does a few things for a mage. First and foremost, it directly adds damage to your offensive damage spells. Some might ask the effectiveness or necessity of this skill. For those of you who don’t plan on doing damage with spells (for example, a Bard or Tamer might wish to use magery simply for gating their pets or to use invisibility or to summon combat pets) then no, the necessity of Evaluate Intelligence would be low or not at all. However, the increase in damage for a spell-damaging caster is tremendous. If you would like to see the numbers, please visit the magery damage calculator on the main stratics site. All of the nitty gritty is explained there. Secondly, when used in conjunction with higher level anatomy, you can gain percentages to dodge incoming melee attacks, like wrestle, but without the special moves. Defense is very very important and will be discussed later. Thirdly if your anatomy is above 76.0 you can use the skill directly and be able to see the mana pool of the entity targeted, which can be useful.
Meditate is quite simple. The higher your meditate, the more mana you can regenerate. Mana regeneration is excruciatingly slow without meditate or items that provide mana regeneration. For the nitty gritty on how much mana you can regenerate, theres a great mana regeneration calculator here on stratics. There is, however, something you must know concerning meditate. Firstly, meditate only works while wearing three kinds of armor: Cloth, Leather (not studded), and any armor that has the effect “Mage Armor”. If you are wearing anything other than these three things, such as a player made fashioned helmet or a studded leather tunic, then the meditate skill will not work nor will you be able to use the skill directly. Mana Regeneration effects on items will still function, but the regeneration from the meditate skill will not. Meditate is very useful, and depending on what armor you are planning to put on it can be useful at different levels. Some mages and mage variation templates do not use meditation because they can regenerate mana with the mana regeneration effects that can stack on their items (more on this later).
Those are the three most commonly used skills for a mage. Here are some of the skills people also tend to use.
Inscription does three things for a mage. Firstly, at GM level (100.0, which for inscription currently you cant go higher than 100.0 anyway) scribe has a flat 10% damage bonus added to their spellcasting. This is, as lots of people ask, added on top of spell damage cap for pvp. Secondly, it dramatically increases the effectiveness of the resistance altering spells, Reactive Armor and Magic Reflection. A lot of mages who don’t have the best armor tend to be able to make their suits more suitable for them resistance wise with high inscription and these two spells. Last is the ability to create items and scrolls, which can be quite lucrative if that is what you wish
Poisoning in PVP and PVE both is extremely powerful. If you are under the effects of poison, you cannot heal by bandage or spell, you must cure the poison first. In conjunction with magery, you can cast more powerful poisons with the level three poison spell. A few things to know, however. Firstly, to cast deadly poison requires 200.0 skill in any combination of magery and poisoning combined. If you have 120 magery, you would need 80 poisoning. Any amount over 200.0 has no additional effect. For lesser poisoning enhancement levels, please visit the poisoning page on stratic’s home site. Secondly, the effect of the poison applied via spell when used in conjunction with poisoning is distance based, meaning the closer you are to your target the more chance you have of casting a higher level poison. In addition, having higher poison skill in conjunction with magery will give you a greater chance of curing yourself and others of poison.
Resisting Spells is a skill of quite some controversy regarding its usefulness. Resisting spells does not decrease damage received in any way, as one might think. What resisting spells does do is increase the chance that non damage spells such as clumsy, poison, curse, and paralyze will be completely and fully resisted. It also, at higher levels, adds an amount to your elemental resists (fire, cold, poison, and energy). However, these are non-stackable effects that are put on your resists at the bottom of the percentage spectrum (for example, having 100.0 resisting spells will put 40 points in the four resistances. If you have a hat that adds 20 energy resist, you will still only have 40 in energy, it dosent stack together).
Necromancy, Animal Taming, Bardic skills, Rogue skills, and trade skills will not be discussed as they do not interact directly with the magery skill are not as popular as the above in reguards to questions and misconceptions. For information reguarding said skills in this paragraph, please see the respective pages, which are quite up to date, on the stratics home site.
2. The Best Ways of Gaining Those Skills
Magery: For returning players, new and old players who have heard rumors, and players who have had their skills so long that they don’t know, the 8x8 method has been fixed and no longer functions as a effective way to gain magery. You can no longer use the 8x8 method to gain as fast as in the past, as the code within the game has been changed.
Get yourself a boat and a magic wand with spell channeling and a penalty on your magery skill. This will allow you to practice alone and at lower circles, which will cost less mana. Now, as far as what other things you need it is all flexible. If you have faster casting or 100 lower reagent cost or lower mana cost it will defiantly speed things up, there are a lot of factors that you can do to maximize this method, but at the core those two things are all you need. A great place I sail at starts at a peninsula directly west of Empathy Abbey in Yew. The sail time is about 45 minuites and ends in Skara Brea. There are a lot of places like this, but you’re basically looking for a stretch of sea that fits your training time and has few or no monsters that will disrupt you. Get on the boat. Equip the wand and create a macro for whatever spell you wish to use of whatever circle you fail at about half the time. Raise your anchor and use the command “slow forward” to move slowly north. Simply cast the spell until you reach the other side. Magery is movement based, the boat serves as a bypass so you don’t have to manually move with the mouse to be able to get the gains. The skill gains moderately fast. Past 100.0 the gains are slow but steady. Rinse and repeat with the boat, however within each real day use a different string of tiles to cast on (simply place the boat where you had it and give the command “left one” and you’ll be fine). This method works for necromancy, spirit speak, music and peacemaking, chivalry, and all the other movement based skills.
Evaluate Intellegence: This skill can be raised quickly to around 60.0 or 70.0 simply by going to Britian and using the skill directly on players and npcs. It also gains in conjunction with any magery spell, so along with training magery you can also be gaining evaluate intelligence. The skill will gain upon successful cast or failure of a magery spell. The best way to train it seperatly or if you have already completed magery training is to get on that same boat, make a macro that casts the spell reactive armor. Start your “slow forward” and just cast it like nuts. The gains will taper slower as you reach grandmaster, but it is still quite easy.
Meditate is hands down the easiest skill out of any listed to reach whatever level of it you wish. As long as you have a mana pool that is not full, you will be gaining in meditate. Simply mark the skill to rise, start training magery and evaluate intelligence, and watch it soar. Easy enough.
Inscription is quite a lengthy process at the higher levels. Firstly, you must have skill to cast the spell via magery to be able to inscribe it. Secondly you must have the spell in your possession via spellbook. Third is that inscribing a scroll uses the same amount of mana as it would to cast the spell. The last thing to know is that scribing requires a blank scroll, all of what I’ve mentioned, and the reagents of the spell you wish to inscribe. Effects such as lower mana cost and lower reagent cost will not function with inscription, so nothing in this regard will make the process faster, however magery skill enhancers (discussed later) on a bracelet or ring will function as an enabler for the respective circles. Bulk blank scrolls from players are for lack of a better word scarce, so I recommend collecting the blank scrolls from mage shops before training. As far as what to inscribe, pick the spells with the least costing reagents, as you can resell these to vendors or players for more money. Poison(3rd), Recall (4th), Blade Spirits (5th), Mark(6th), Gate(7th), and Earthquake(8th) are the spells of my particular choice. You can either train to 33.3 in new haven or copy books over and over via using the skill directly.
Poisoning is not a hard skill to raise difficulty wise, but a fairly long one. Get about 100 pieces of bread from a baker, poison kegs that reflect your skill level (found on stratic’s poisioning page), some empty bottles from a alchemist vendor, and create a macro for cure poison. This skill is target based, meaning the same piece of bread cannot be targeted over and over for gains at later levels. You will need to separate the bread into less condensed stacks. Every item in UO has a specific code. When you pull bread from the stack, you create a new item, thus a new code is born. So you are effectively making new bread every time you change the stack. Poison bread until you have gained or attempted to gain on each piece, then remix the stack, simple as that.
Resisting spells is a very easy skill to gain in, contrary to popular opinion. Just today I went from 40.0 (npc training in new haven) to gm in literally one sitting, took one hour and fifty two minuites to reach 100.0 skill, and it would have continued to gain fast if I would have let it. The trick to this is to find a monster who will cast non damaging spells on you that hang out in numbers. To the northeast of New Haven is where the old haven used to be. This town is full of undead. These undead do not attack unless provoked. There are spellcasting specters there that do not cast damaging spells nor poison. They cast curse, clumsy, corpse skin, and several others, everything you need to gain fast, simply go up to one, sock it in the face with a fist or cast clumsy on it. Simply walk in front of it and gather as many of these specters as you can get, their physical attacks are very weak. Your skill will fly. At earlier levels (0-70), get on your boat using the magery method (you must be guilded for this) and just spam clumsy on yourself.
Wrestling is also a skill that people are intimidated by, simply because a mage generally doesn’t have high dexterity. But fear not, I have a solution. You must be guilded for this method, you can create your own guild if you are not guilded for 25k. Train to 40.0 in New Haven, then go to the fisherman. That’s right, the fisherman. Buy as many fishing poles as you can carry, because they break fast in combat if the opponent has a shield. Go to the fighter pits in Jhelom. Hand a fighter dressed in leather 60 gold. This will make him/her your hireling. Use the command “follow me” to have it follow you into the pit and out of the protection of the town guards. Then when you get it there give the command “all stay” followed by the very important “guard me”. Equip a fishing pole, stand on the exact tile that the fighter is standing on, and attack the hireling once and do not re-attack again. The hireling will hit you once, then never again while you attack it. Because of the pole, you will swing at max speed regardless of your dexterity. Its important that you stand on the same tile as the hireling for the swing speed to work. You will gain like crazy and the fishing pole does no damage. In golem training, you only need one pole. Items with the Hit Chance Increase effect will surely help you out as far as being able to hit and hitting successfully is what gives you gains at later levels.
3. Building your Suit and Item Effect Explanations
Item effects that concern mages are:
Lower Reagent Cost: This effect does not lower the amount of reagents used. What it does do is gives you a percentage of chance to not use any reagents at all. If you have 100% lower reagent cost, then that means that no reagents will be used in casting spells, which is without a doubt an awesome thing. Chivalry and Necromancy work the same way, however with chivalry you must have the minimum tithe points in your book to cast the spell (the points wont be spent though).
Lower Mana Cost: This effect simply lowers the amount of mana needed to cast the spell. This effect can only go to 40%. At 40%, a 6th circle spell that would normally cast 20 mana will now cost 12 mana. The key to fighting as a mage is conserving and preserving your mana pool, and that is why this effect is so popular. This effect also works with any spell or ability that costs mana, including combat specials.
Spell Channeling: For the mages who wish to wield weapons, this effect allows you to cast spells while holding a weapon. Weapons and items without spell channeling will go to your backpack when attempting to cast a spell.
Spell Damage Increase: This adds a flat percentage to the damage you do with damaging spells. The most you can add in pvp is 15%, but inscription can go on top of that for 25%. There is no “cap” for pve.
Mage Weapon/Mage Armor: Mage weapons, usually having have a penalty to magery, simply means that it uses magery skill instead of a combat skill to determine chance to hit. Weapons with the “Use Best Weapon Skill” effect doesn’t do the same thing. Armor with the “Mage Armor” effect means that the meditate skill will function with it equipped. “Mage Armor” most prevalently appears on armor such as platemail or chainmail, the armor that you wouldn’t normally want to use if you wished to use meditation.
Mana Increase/Intelligence Bonus: There is a difference between the two. Mana increase simply adds an amount to your mana pool. Intelligence Bonus will do this as well, but Intelligence itself is a determining factor in the effectiveness of several spells.
Mana Regeneration: This adds directly to the regeneration of your mana pool. For specific numbers, percentages, and tables, please see the stratics mana regen calculator on the stratics site. Some people use it with meditation as it does stack with meditation. Some people can get so much mana regeneration with items that they do not need meditation, freeing up valuable skill points. As a mage your mana pool is one if not the most important asset you have. There is no limit on how much mana regeneration you can have.
Faster Casting/Faster Cast Recovery: These are two very important effects. Faster casting reduces the casting time of all your mage spells (necromancy and chivalry, too). This is of great advantage, as you can imagine. The most you can have for magery is 2 and each point of this effect reduces the time by a quarter of a second. That half a second can be crucial. Faster cast recovery simply reduces the time you have to wait before casting your next spell. The time between spells is a second and a half. Each point you have in this ability will reduce the time between spells by a quarter second. The most you can have of this effect is 6, which will remove the time altogether and let you cast without the pause.
Defense Chance Increase: Im not going to get into how combat works, but at the very end of all the formulas and all the science and numbers defense chance increase adds a percentage to dodge an incoming melee attack on top of what you would normally be able to dodge. This is pretty important when combined with a defensive skill or effect, because the way movement in combat works is that odds are you are going to be in melee range at some point.
Skill Increase Items: This effect adds directly to the skill in question, and in most cases the game will honor all bonuses and abilities given for having certian skill points in the respective skill
Ok, so those are the more important item effects when it comes to magery.
Suit Building Theory and Tips
I will say this, and I know it’s under a little bit of controversy, but artifacts in my opinion are not necessary for the building of an effective suit. However, the truth remains that there are a lot of mages out there, and thus items with the abovementioned effects or combination of these effects are high in demand. My personal suit, which I will show later, is very expensive and does use a lot of artifacts. However, that does not mean that you need to follow my example to be a successful mage.
First off, lets talk about resists. By resists, I mean Physical, Fire, Cold, Poison, and Energy. These can go to 70 (energy can go to 75 if you are an elf). Having 70 in all resists is great, but not a necessity. That’s right, I said it. The spell curse, which most spellcasting monsters and most pvpers use, will lower your elemental resists (all but physical) to 60. Thus, in my opinion you should shoot for 70 physical and 60-70 elemental resists. This also gives you more flexibility in your items. Poison resist is a resist that is quite neglected, so I personally do not care too much about it and as long as its over 50 its fine with me. The other four in my opinion are quite important.
I wont list item effects in order of importance, because that will cause some controversy and frankly its just a matter of opinion. However, I can tell you what a successful mage’s suit absolutely needs.
1. Faster casting
2. Faster cast recovery
3. Lower Mana Cost
That’s about it. All the rest of the effects are optional and you can be a successful mage without them. However, you will be gaining a whole lot of power by adopting those effects while suit building.
Nobody has infinite money, but some people are more limited than others. The armor game is a very diverse and sometimes cruel game to play. Armor is so unpredictable, and as soon as you find a great piece you can just as easily realize after buying it that something is wrong with how the effects and resists add up. My biggest advice is to get a pen and paper, keep track of your resists and abilities and add them up to what you already have before you purchase the piece. As nerdy or as bland as it sounds, suit building is a number game. The Kingdom Reborn client, which I recommend you download if you haven’t, actually keeps track of all the effects for you, which is very nice.
My Suit:
2/6 Casting
38 Lower Mana Cost
100 Lower Reagent Cost
45 Defense Chance Increase
40 Spell Damage Increase (no inscription)
7 Mana Regeneration
+12 Intellegence/Mana Increase
+25 Necromancy skill
+10 Spirit Speak skill
+15 Magery skill
+15 Resisting Spells skill
70 Physical
62 Fire
61 Cold
54 Poison
70 Energy
Artifacts Used:
Hat of the Magi
Armor of Fortune
Inquisitors Resolution
Midnight Bracers
Ornament of the Magician
Shield of Invunerability
Tome of Lost Knowledge
Bloodwood Spirit
My Template
110 Magery (95 Real)
110 Evaluate Intellegence
100 Meditate
110 Necromancy (85 Real)
110 Spirit Speak (100 Real)
110 Wrestling
115 Resisting Spells (100 Real)
90 Strength
125 Intelligence
40 Dexterity
Important Things to Know
A nice little list of things not so commonly known.
1. Harm and Poison are both distance based. You get a greater effect by being closer.
2. Effects that add to skills (+10 Magery Ring, for example) can be used to subtract from your skill cap of 700. If you have that +10 magery ring, then you can make magery 90 and put those 10 points of magery into something else.
3. 8x8 no longer works.
4. The spell Protection makes you cast as if you had 0 Faster Casting, regardless of how much you have.
5. If you have high magery, your faster casting “cap” for chivalry cannot exceed 2.
6. using Anatomy and Evaluate Intelligence to dodge blows uses less points toward your 700.0 cap to substantiate the same wrestling equivalent.
7. Follower slots: Summon Creature takes up one slot, Summon Daemon takes up all 5, and the rest take up two.
8. You can dispel your own vortexes
9. Players hate it when you use teleport in pvp.
10. Spellbooks now can have effects that mages popularly use.
11. You can hold a spellbook with 0 spells in it and still cast provided you have another one with spells in it in your backpack.
More to be edited as I think of them
I genuinely thank you for reading, this guide can be used for any purpose or posted on any forum or site as long as it includes my name. Post any corrections, comments, additions, and I will change as needed and requested.
Ava Straden, Atlantic