Raising magery in melee?

[imported_Merv_DeGriff]

As you can see by my board spam, yes I am playing UO and my mage again. (never quit, just hibernated)

Now, I am looking to make a melee with magery for PvM. (Summons, recall, EV etc.)

Can you still raise magery with a mage weapon? I have a pile of the things in my house and wondered if I could put them to use for this purpose. If so, will this take the skill to GM?

 

[Good_Ole_Lefty]

"Can you still raise magery with a mage weapon?"

Yes

Generaly I train magery with a -29 mage wand. It's faster than raising it using for melee magery gains. Hope that made sense.

 

[imported_GFY]

There are 2 benefits to using a mage weapon. The -29 that was mentioned is a great one. Also if you hit a golem with a mage weapon and you have the weapon skill and tactics locked down you will gain magery with your weapon hits.

 

[imported_Merv_DeGriff]

Thanks. I'll see about finding one for my melee toon that 100% poison. Now to get a golem as well.

 

[KakaJoe]

In the time you'll spend trying to find an elusive -20s Mage weapon with 100% poison, you will have been able to train your mage to elder twice over. Forget the golem, just go to Despise w/70 phys resist and equipped w/"normal" mage weapon.

 

[imported_Merv_DeGriff]

Most likely that will happen first, but a get a bunch of wacky mage weapons hunting hyrus on my mage / weaver. So you never know.

 

[vorius]

Hey, I'm stuck on 98.8 magery and desperately looking for a way to raise it quicker. Especially if I am going to try for 110.

I have been trying the 8x8 method but I'm starting to get convinced it's some kind of big hoax!! Ok, so one time I casted a spell, received a gain, made EXACTLY 8 steps north casted again and received another gain. But just one time. Every other time I have no gotten a gain. I think people are <font color="purple">smoking something</font> when they talk about 8x8...

Anyway, I was reading this thread and someone mentioned equipping a mage weapon and doing melee to raise magery ?? That sounds intriguing! Think it would be wiser for me to go that route? What bout a mage weapong with spellchannelling ? Will that lower my magery enough so that my gains in magery are much more frrequent, casting lower circle spells? Or is it still going to see that my real magery is high and therefore it would raise just as quickly (or should I say, slowly) as it is now, casting summon <font color="red">fire elemental</font> over n over again?

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[imported_Merv_DeGriff]

First off, they seem to have killed off 8x8, so that could use an update.

Second, the idea with the mage weapon is I can make more skill checks per unit time this way than I could using casting, especialy if the character has a smaller mana pool / regen like my melee. (55 vs the 145 base ofmy SW)

It will check and gain agains the effective magery skill. Real skill will still afffect gain rate somewhat though. I've never GM'd using this method, just blew through the middle parts of magery. I'll let you know how it turns out the next time I'm out working my melee/mage.

 

[vorius]

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First off, they seem to have killed off 8x8, so that could use an update.


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Figures!! Let everyone else GM magery with it then when it comes my turn pull the plug!

 

[KakaJoe]

I'm relatively new and have trained one mage to 108.2 (and climbing, would go faster except I'm pursuing Honor and there's no mage weapon fun safe there ) and have another char just past 90 by using the spellcasting mage weapons strategically based upon their negative rating and where my skill level vs. success at casting falls -- they esp came in handy during the mid 70s to GM hump where trying to cast my true-level circle spell could mean fizzle and death. For example, the difference between a -25 and -29 seems silly until you realize the % of successful casts of of 6th circle explosions or energy bolts (good bang for your mana dollars) at magery 72 (50%), 82 (75%) and 92 (100%).

The best way is to equip one according to where your actual level is, cast reflective armor or otherwise get your phys resist to 70 and head to Despise with its lizardmen and ettins/earth eles with some good DCI/HCI/PhysReflect jewelry or related mod armor and shield in place. (I recommend these non-magic casters so you can defend against one kind of damage.)

I also recommend the relatively low cost "arty" called the Staff of Power, which is a -15 and the Jaana's Staff at -20 (which you'll likely earn if you find spawns to play with in anti-virtue dungeons),as well as the -10 weap that you get completing the new player magery quest in New Haven to help find those magery sweet spots and complement the random looted mage weaps.

Finally, the actual magery gains I receive with a -29 lizardman slayer mage weap (w/o spellcasting) were negligible, by the way, but it was fun playing melee as a break to EVs. (I have high anatomy so I actually can do some damage w/weaps even w/o tactics.) Last recommendation: close the skill menu for a couple of days and just play somewhere -- I thought I'd hit a gaining wall about 102 until I stopped paying attention.

 

[Mr Mischief]

Any legitimate list as to when to use each level of wand at each level of magery?

I don't need to do any gaining, but having the info out there may be helpful to newcomers.

 

[Guest]

it definetly works and is much faster then casting i went from 117.3 to 120 in little under a hour with a golem and a 100% poison mage weapon

 

[vorius]

Why have weapon skill and tactics locked down- so as to avoid hitting GM on them and thus ending the chances of getting gains in magery?

Also, I was just reading a thread in the Treasure Hunter forum about using a Satyr to discord you to lower skills so u gain lockpicking faster... would this work with magery too, on top of using a mage weapon? So possible up to -60 or so to magery skill? Or do they not stack/affect magery skill ??

 

[imported_GFY]

Ok a few answers.

You lock down the weapon skill so you gain in magery not the weapon skill. If you want to gain weapon skill you can do that too. I thought we were talking about gaining magery.

To gain eval int you need to either cast spells or use the skill on others.

To gain eval faster cast spells 2 levels below your eval. For instance; 4th level spells at 60 eval. You will gain eval faster if you lock down magery.

Yes the saytre skill loss and -XX magery from a mage weapon do stack.

 

[vorius]

Yes, exactly, to gain in magery not the weapon

My mage weapon is a mace, and my mace skill is pretty high- 89. Is that going to make the gains in magery tougher? Would it be better to drop the mace skill or perhaps even find a mage weapon in another weapon type so the gains in magery go faster? Or does that have nothing to do with how fast the magery gains when using mage weapon?

And that sounds good about disco stacking with mage weapon! So is there anyt] caveat I am not thinking of when I think that going to Twisted Weald with my mage weapon and getting disco'd will be the best bet to gain magery?

 

[imported_GFY]

First of all, do you WANT the mace skill on your template? If not take it off with a soul stone if you can. The best way to gain in 1 skill is to take as many skills of your template as possible. The lower your total skill points (720?) the faster you gain. If you want mace skill on your template just lock it while you want to gain magery. What would slow the magery gains down would be trying to gain both magery and mace. The skill gain chances would be devided between the two skills.

What some people do to gain, bring a golem to the weald but leave it outside the weald itself. (outside the sparkle gate) Run into the weald and get discoed, then run out and hit the golem.

 

[vorius]

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And about bringing a golem, is that something I need tinkering for? I am not familiar with golems at all! Could I just summon earth elementals instead and fight them ?

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Was just trying this with earth ele, I get discoed, run out, start fighting earth ele and within 30 seconds the disco wears off. Anyway better way to do this?

 

[Mr Mischief]

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And about bringing a golem, is that something I need tinkering for? I am not familiar with golems at all! Could I just summon earth elementals instead and fight them ?

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Was just trying this with earth ele, I get discoed, run out, start fighting earth ele and within 30 seconds the disco wears off. Anyway better way to do this?

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I've been doing a little testing, it doesn't APPEAR that you can use summons to gain magery through mage weps. I'll keep testing, I'm not 100% on this.

 

[vorius]

oh really? hmm...

what about a tamed pet? Like if I could get a tamer to get me some kind of pet that has alot of hit points but hits like a mongbat! would be perfect...

so is the idea to go into the weald, aggro the satyr, get discoed, run back to the cave through the portal, fight your golem/pet/whatever for about 15 seconds until the disco wears off, then repeat the process?

i guess i misundertood once that the disco effects last for several minutes. it's gonna be annoying aggroing the satyr every 15 seconds and waiting to get discoed again

 

[Mr Mischief]

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oh really? hmm...

what about a tamed pet? Like if I could get a tamer to get me some kind of pet that has alot of hit points but hits like a mongbat! would be perfect...

so is the idea to go into the weald, aggro the satyr, get discoed, run back to the cave through the portal, fight your golem/pet/whatever for about 15 seconds until the disco wears off, then repeat the process?

i guess i misundertood once that the disco effects last for several minutes. it's gonna be annoying aggroing the satyr every 15 seconds and waiting to get discoed again

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For the disco effect, you ideally want to stay on the same screen as the satyr and it will stay on indefinantly. Just invis to stop it's aggressive flag, give it a few seconds, and then try to stay on screen with it.

 

[vorius]

I finally figured out the disco thing with satyr, so me and my friend go to the Weald and get ourselves disco'd. While staying within range of the satyr to keep disco on we start sparring with mage weapon -28 daggers. Coupled with the disco my magery was down from 103.9 to somewhere around 47. I didnt gain a single 0.1 point after sparring with my friend for about 30 minutes. Neither did he. Then we decided to start casting spells with our spell chanelling mage weapons, so our magery was still really low- maybe around 50- wasnt as punitive mage weapon as the daggers were. We casted 4th circle spells for about 45 minutes and I had 3 gains he only had 1. So my conclusion is the disco penalty does absolutely nothing in terms of raising magery quicker. It's really about as frequent as I was casting energy bolts with the mage weapon alone.

 

[KakaJoe]

For kicks last week when no amount of EVs and earthquakes in Mag would gain me more than .1 per day, I grabbed a couple of -27 to 29 non-spellchannelling mage weap (w/helpful mods like leech/hit lightning/etc. and as fast as swing speeds as I could find), put on my virtue armor set and jewelry for HCI, and went w/charged rune book (and night sight potions) to lizardmen in Despise.

I ran around and killed anything in sight and (relatively) easily had my magery gain the last few skill points I needed until 110. Note: I was allowing anatomy to gain too because I'm using the eval intel/anat defensive wrestling in my template, so this may have come into play there.

I broke up the monotony w/earth eles and ettins too, but the best gains were from low-impact lizardmen when I had as fast of swing speed as possible, ie, the more hits the better, but without killing them too fast either.