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The Mage Forum FAQ: Read this before posting!

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FatherGanja

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Welcome to the Mage FAQ. This will enlighten you on every single thing magery related. Bear in mind that there are always changes and this FAQ might not be 100% updated 24 hours a day but I’m gonna try.
<font color=blue><center>Written in part, by Lord Beowulf</font color=blue></center>
<font color=blue><center>SKILL GAIN</font color=blue></center>

<font color=red>MAGERY</font color=red>
ALWAYS START YOUR CHARACTER WITH 50 MAGERY. It will save you boat loads of time. Here I will list the best ways to GM magery, assuming you have 50 skill.

Method 1: From 50 keep on casting 4th level spells, such as lightning and G heal. This will take you to about 60. From then on cast 5th level spells such as mindblast and paralyze. This will take you to about 65-70. From then on cast 6th level such as explosion and energy bolt. This will take you to about 80. Then just Flamestrike until you hit 92. Then any 8th level spell will GM you.

Method 2
Get on a boat and use the 8x8 method. If you do not know what the 8x8 method is, please don’t worry yourself. :) Everything will be explained. You will find the 8x8 explanation at the bottom if this FAQ.


<font color=red>EVALUATING INTELLIGENCE</font color=red>
If you read this, you will never have to ask another eval question again so please do. There are a lot of ways to GM eval. IT IS NOT AN EASY SKILL TO GM. Eval gains along with magery very well up until about 80-85. Then the gains slow to a crawl. Once you hit 90 it is almost impossible to gain with magery, so you will have to use one of these methods. Here are the methods:

Method 1:
A very cheap method. Sit at the Britan Bank in Trammel (for most people) and eval EVERYONE there. This is a slow process but it’s free and gives decent gains.

Method 2:
Set all your spell macros to look like this:
Cast Spell: *Spell of your choice*
Use Skill: Evaluating Intelligence
Last Target

This way, whenever you cast a spell on someone, you will automatically eval their intelligence.

Method 3:
By far the most common method is the 8x8 way. See the 8x8 explanation at the bottom of the FAQ.

Method 4:
This method is a weird one but will GM you. First lock your magery at 30. Then walk around and try to cast Earthquake all the time. Since your magery is locked your eval will skyrocket for some reason. This can also be done on a boat.

<font color=red>MEDITATION</font color=red>
In between spells, meditate both passively and actively, moving around helps a lot. Wear only leather or nothing as Studded armor hinders your passive meditation rates. Meditation will GM whether you want it to or not so just give it time. :p Also see the <a target="_blank" href=http://uo.stratics.com/strat/medguide.shtml>Meditation Guide</a> on UOStratics.

<font color=red>WRESTLING</font color=red>
Get into high 60's or 70's by punching a friend, from then on go to the bone wall (its in deceit, somewhat near the lich spawn ahead, not too far from the fire elly plank) for anywhere around a week, getting a spot on top, as far away from the parry spot as possible DO NOT HAVE SPELLBOOK EQUIPPED You could also decide that you hate your friend and use him as a punching bag till you hit GM but it is less profitable. You could also wrestle your summoned elementals; it will even give you some resist, if you are lucky. Also you can wrestle the Jhelom fighters in the dueling pit but be sure to get a fighter that has a shield and a sword.

<font color=red>RESISTING MAGIC SPELLS</font color=red>
Everyone has their own favorite ways of gaining resist. Here are a couple. Mad props go out to Ifrit for making this chart.


<font color=blue><center>Gaining Resisting Magic Spells 101, by Ifrit</font color=blue></center>
I guess a lot of you have been wondering how to gain resist for some time and recently a lot of you have been asking about it so I'll help out.

Up to around the 50's you can use firewalls

50 to 60
Going into Shame Blood elementals every power hour gives you nice gains, also if you have friends :) get them to do certain spell combos, the best one is an explosion, fireball combo, this will give you great raises.
<font color=blue>Key Spells: Fireball
Supplementary Spells: Explosion, Lightning, Ebolt</font color=blue>

60 to 70
Try the same explosion, ebolt combo and mix in the explosion, Lightning combo. Using ebolts and explosions work out great while moving. Mix in Flamestrikes but don’t overdo it.
<font color=blue>Key spells: Explosion, Ebolt
Supplementary Spells: Flamestrike, Fireball, Lightning</font color=blue>

70 to 80
Much of the same you did for 60-70, take out lower level spells, replace the OCCASIONAL fireball with the OCCASIONAL lightning, focus on explosion, ebolt, and emphasize more on flamestrike.
<font color=blue>Key Spells: Explosion, Flamestrike, Ebolt
Supplementary Spells: Lightning</font color=blue>

80 to 90
While going to dungeons, do the same thing with your friends. Get rid of using EVERY spell under 6th circle, use the main combat spells (ebolt, explosion, Flamestrike)
<font color=blue>Key Spells: Flamestrike, Explosion
Supplementary Spells: Ebolt</font color=blue>

90 to GM
Flamestrike all the way only during power hour, you will save regs a lot. Mix in the occasional ebolt, explosion. And make the combos yourself. Stay away from lower levels.
<font color=blue>Key Spells: Flamestrike
Supplementary Spells: Ebolt, Explosion</font color=blue>

I am referring to using ALL of these while moving on a boat going slow forward with 1-3 friends healing you and doing the appropriate spells on you, I AM NOT REFERRING TO YOU DOING THEM ON YOURSELF.
-Ifrit


<font color=red><center>Beowulf's "wont put you 2 million in debt" way of gaining resist.</font color=red></center>

Now for those of you that don’t have 3 GM Mage friends to spend millions of regs on you, this is my method of building resist for the budget-minded avatar.

0-50: Just flame wall yourself by any means possible.

50-60: Liches will do the trick very nicely.

60-70: Again more liches since they have been beefed up a lot they give better resist gains. Also poison and blood eles work well.

70-80: If Liches are still giving you gains than by all means go for it. But if they're not, then you're stuck with titans and only the toughest monsters and elementals. Example: Blood, Poison. Bone mages and Skeleton Mages also work well here - just be sure to have ALOT of them dumping you

80-GM: Bone mages and more VERY powerful monsters such as poison elementals, dragons, titans, etc. It's a long, hard road guys, but don’t give up. :)

<center>MasterCraft's Resist Essay</center>

Ok, to start off, this is how I gmed Resist, on 6 different characters.

Before gming resist, I recommend you have at least 95 magery, 90 eval, and gm med and wrestling for mages,
and at least gm melee, tactics, 95 anatomy, and 85 healing for dexers (parry is also really handy.)

From 0 - 35, this is bought skill. Walk up to a mage and tell him to teach ya, basic stuff. After you buy the max, may not be 35 but should be somewhere close, then find a mage friend, to cast firefields, and heal you; this is the best way to get up to 55, the only way in most people's opinion, including mine. Cast a Firefield, and have a healer, so you dont have to keep walking out of it then walking back in.
This should take all in all about 15 minutes, (don't I wish it gained like that all the way up *grin*) You will probably die several times gming resist, not nececarrily here, but probably higher up, so don't be surprised if you get wasted in the process, but trust me, it's well worth it.
Sometimes all these people say 83 resist and 17 poisoning, and no offense, but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, adding 2 points of damage for every extra 2 seconds hardly seems worth making a flamestrike deal 8 points of damage 50% of the time :)

From 55 - 65, There are a variety of options, I've done them all. Liches are fairly good, but dangerous at this level. Reapers (north of Minoc) are an excellent choice, as are summoned daemons. But the last time I gmed, I did bone magis in Deceit - they have low melee power, and are easy to kill once they have dumped. They can get you higher, but it seemed to slow down at 65. You could probably get up to 85 or 90 off these, but this essay is to gm as quick as possible, not sometime next century :)

From 65-70, Reapers slow down a lot, even with multiple casters, but can still be good. Summoned Daemons are a real good option here. What I did, was get 2 gm Mage friends, and 2 Warrior friends, set a pile of 3k bandages on the ground next to water, and had the 2 mages on a boat next to the water. The mages summon daemons for you to attack. It takes roughly 2-3 daemons to get average gains. The more the merrier, as you have warriors healing you, good way to boost healing as well :)

From 70-85, Liches, all the way. Titans are good too, but they hit kinda hard for going for resist, I gained steadily all the way up to 85.7, then it slowed down and I was gaining 1.5-2.3 per PH off these, which is awsome if you know what II mean. You can gain off them at lower levels, but their magic hits really hard earlier. Once you're above 70, it cuts their magic down quite a bit, and once your above 80, thats where the resist really starts to kick in.

From 85-93, Summoned Daemons won't work anymore here, youd need like 8 or more at a time all at once you gain sufficiently here, I know I tried *snicker*, I highly recommend Wisps. They pump out a lot of magic really fast, have to be careful not to get killed by them though, and not to get close, they can hit really hard as well, but the magic gains off them are unreal. You can gm off these.

From 93-98, one of the most dangerous parts, to keep the steady gains, Lich Lords, Titans, Wisps, non-summoned daemons, are all good, and the loot is good to, if you want to go safe, and still have decent gains, get 2-3 Gm Mages, with gm eval, to cast explosion, energy bolt, and flamestrike on you. They can gain you, but not near as much as lich lords and wisps, but its alot safer. and the loot sucks :)

from 98.1-GM (Ahhh i can feel it now), The absolutely most dangerous part, i can almost guarentee youll die on this step, Balrons and ancient wyrms are absolutely the best, this surprisingly was one of the fastest steps, you can gain from 90 off balrons and ancients extremely well, but are more dangerous untill above 95, Always make sure you have reactive armor, as a balron and ancient wyrm can hit you for 45-90 points of damage in a single hit, a decent lag pocket could finish it, 2 hits is all he needs, with ra, and arch protection, you may survive 3-4, but i dout it :)

It sounds like alot of work, and it is, my record is 7 days, 1 week to gm resist from 0. It just takes alot of patience, and alot of regs lol

Please post any positive and negative feedback, Ill respond to all, and I would really like to hear what others think, ive posted this before, but i had numerous requests for it. I hope this helps everyone even if it only helps 1 person :)

Lord Magus of Great Lakes

If Nobody is Perfect, Then I must be Nobody...



<center><font color=blue>Ok that basically covers the "big 5" as I call them. These are the 5 skills no pure mage should be without.</center></font color=blue>


<font color=red><center>What to wear and especially what NOT to wear as a mage</font color=red></center>
Studies done by Tim the Scribe

Hail and well met fellow mages.

Being of the scientific type nerd in real life (that's what they pay me for anyway) I decided to test for myself whether clothing changed the rate of meditation.

For this experiment I used Tim, my mage and scribe who has 100 int and 100 Meditation and I put him on the catwalk and did a full blown fashion extravaganza while timing my meditation rates (both active and passive) after hitting my poor tillerman for two quick flamestrikes. I started each timing and also meditation when my mana hit 30 so in ALL the following cases there is 70 points of mana regenerated.

Ok for the results. First Passive Meditation: (all numbers are in seconds unless stated)

Nekkid: 70
Newbie Robe(black), Newbie Cape(blue), and Thighboots (black) (my normal garb of the realm): 88
(repeated several times)
Full set Leather Armor with Leather Cap AC15: 70
Above leather set with Robe, Cape and Boots: 70 (did that one several times to be sure)
Full set Studded Leather Armor with no cap AC19: 142
Same studded set with Robe, Cape and Boots: 142


Everything else I did active meditation so to repeat the above:

Nekkid: 35
Newbie Robe(black), Newbie Cape(blue), and Thighboots (black) (my normal garb of the realm): 53
(repeated several times)
Full set Leather Armor with Leather Cap AC15: 35
Above leather set with Robe, Cape and Boots: 35 (did that one several times to be sure)
Full set Studded Leather Armor with no cap AC19: 71
Same studded set with Robe, Cape and Boots: 71


Hope this helps all you fashion conscious Magi.


<center><font color=red>Mindblast Information Provided By Gamma Zulu</center></font color=red>
Okay, I spent some time yesterday evening and did some research on Test Center as to average mindblast damage. My target was a character with 50 resist. The mage had 100 magery and 100 eval. I collected 10 data points each on 5 character stat sets ranging from 75/75/75 to the 110/15/100 template. Here are my conclusions.

The spell scales totally on the highest and lowest stat. You don't have to have 75/75/75 to lower the spell damage to 1 point, 80/70/75 (a 10 point difference) also showed just 1 point damage per spell.

Between 10 points difference in stats, and 75 points difference in stats, the following linear equation ran through all the data points:

Average Damage = 0.5 x (Stat Difference) - 10

When you get above 90 points difference, the MB damage caps at 40.

So, to run through some numbers. The first column is the maximum stat difference. The next column is the average mind blast damage:

The first set of numbers represent the stat difference and the 2nd set of numbers represent the average MB damage.

10 1
15 1
20 2
25 4
35 10
40 12
45 15
50 17
50 20
60 22
65 25
70 27
75 30
80 33
85 35
90 38
95 40
100 40

Keep in mind this is average damage. Mindblast is a pretty variable spell it seems. There's plenty of times I saw 40 hp damage, and 10 hp damage off the same stat set.


Best Regards,

Gamma Zulu
(Great Lakes)


<font color=green><center>The Poisoning Skill And It's Affects on The Poison Spell</font color=green></center>
<center>Contributed By Lord Beowulf (Hey that’s me! :p)</center>

As every 133t person knows, the higher your poison skill, the more potent the poison is that you cast. Here are the numbers. This is assuming you have GM magery.

30.2 skill in Poisoning: You will cast regular poison every time if you are within 2 tiles of your victim.

70.2 skill in Poisoning: You will cast greater poison every time if you are within 2 tiles of your victim.

GM real skill in Poisoning: You will still cast greater poison every time but now you will have a whopping 5% chance to deadly poison your victim if you are within 2 tiles.

If you are more than 2 tiles from your target you will ALWAYS cast lesser poison.

Conclusion: If you want to be a "Nox Mage" do yourself a favor and don’t GM poisoning. It is not worth it to spend millions on DP kegs to have a 5% chance to DP someone. Of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

<font color=red><center>The Inscription Skill and It's Effects on the Reactive Armor and Protection spells</font color=red></center>
<center>Contributed By Lord Beowulf and Gamma Zulu</center>

The inscription skill has NO EFFECT on the magic reflect spell. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. That being said lets move on. Here's the numbers:

Assuming you have GM Meditation and GM Eval:

Reactive Armor adds a 50 HP buffer. Be warned it is not a complete protection from 50 HP of damage. Some times people will cut right through it and ignore it. (Axers tend to do this a lot right when they hit you with a 70 HP concussion blow. Nerf Axers. NOW)

Protection when cast reduces your chance to get disrupted while casting a spell by 50%. This is very handy to say the least.

Assuming you have GM Meditation, Eval and Inscription:

Reactive Armor adds a 75 HP buffer instead of 50.

Protection when cast, reduces the probability of getting disrupted to 25%. It also lowers the chance to be hit in general by about 10%.

On a side note: If you have GM Med, Eval, Inscription, and Wrestling you have a 12.5% chance to get disrupted and a 40% chance to get hit.


<center><font color=red>PvP Tips For Mages: Contributed by Gamma Zulu</font color=red></center>


This FAQ covers:
1. Thoughts on connection speed and Machine specs.
2. Possible templates for PvP.
3. What equipment to carry for PvP
4. What macro’s you’re going to need.
5. PvP tips against various classes.

So, you think you’re elite enough to take on the world of PvP in Ultima Online. The truth is that a mage that is played well has the capability to be one of the strongest PvP characters out there. Hopefully this FAQ will give you tips, ideas, and help you survive and conquer.

I. Connection Speed and System Requirements:

The unfortunate reality of Ultima Online is that ping time to the UO server and your computer specs, really are the determining factors on whether or not you are going to be able to actually kill someone. If your opponent has a significantly faster ping time, they will just run out of spell range, and keep running until their bandages (or heal spells) kick in. Then, they can come back and kill you since you have low mana, and are now at a disadvantage. That said, there’s some things that can be overcome even if you have a lower connection speed, and I’ll discuss that later in the FAQ.

First, find out what your ping time is. A useful utility is UOTrace. You’ll find it in the utilities section of the main Stratics menu. I’ve had experience with the full range of ping between 350 to 100 (I hope to get an upgrade soon which allows even faster ping than 100.) Here’s the lowdown on current ping versus PvP effectiveness:

Ping of
350+ Don’t bother PvPing, you will never win. Work to upgrade your connection.
250 You can PvP, but most people will be able to run away from you, you’ll have trouble finishing.
150 In my experience, the average PvP connection seems to be about 150ms.
100 You’re going to be faster than most, and quite effective.
50 This is starting to be a godly connection. You should rarely lose. Horse stamina begins to be a major issue.
30 With this connection, you fly, you’ll find yourself to be almost unbeatable.
10 There’s a few people with pings this fast. They generally end up being the extreme elite, and are basically unkillable to any single person with a ping over about 50. You’ll only die to ganks, or if your horse runs out of stamina.

If you have a slower ping on a DSL or cable modem, sometimes it helps to go to DSLReports.com, and download their broadband speed tweaks. I was able to drop about 30 ms ping doing this. Others have reported even better improvements to their connection. Also keep in mind that everyone’s connection speed is improving constantly, so the above table won’t be applicable in a couple months (chart was developed 2/13/01). Everyone continues to improve in speed.

Keep in mind that you also need a decent computer to PvP. You really need about 128 meg of memory (with 64 meg, you notice you suddenly jerk to a halt for a split second, as new graphics loads up from the hard drive.) Do not have a disk cache like smartdrive enabled, as my experience was it dramatically slowed things down. I think the minimum PvP machine is about a 500 mHz machine, but some might be effective at lower computer speed. A decent graphics card also helps slightly.

Last but not least, if you’re going to PvP, you need to spend the $10 and get a copy of UOAssist. The appeal of UOAssist is the capability to drink potions, pop trapped pouches, and apply bandages with the touch of a keystroke. UOAssist also has superior spell macro capability in my opinion. Another nice feature is it keeps track of all your reagents, and warns you when you start to get low. There’s been more than one fight when I see my reagent numbers go red, and I realize I have to recall out, or die. Nothing will get you killed faster than to run out of reagents.

II. PvP Mage Templates:

There’s no perfect PvP mage template out there. There’s going to be a lot of thoughts as to what the best template is, but truthfully the best template for you depends on your connection speed and your playstyle. There is one thing most people agree on, for a PvP mage you absolutely must have the following 5 skills:

Meditation, Magery, Eval, Wrestling, Resist.

Before PvPing, at least GM your meditation and wrestling. Your resist needs to be 70+, and preferably 80+. Also get your eval and magery into the 90’s.

Now, as to your last 2 skills it’s mostly up to you. Some will say that some skills are better than others, but it really comes down to personal opinion. Skills mages find effective in their templates include the following combinations:

Taming/Lore (Yes, you’ll be very effective in PvP with this template, but nobody will respect you for it. Dragons count as a substantial crutch so it’s really P&DvP, which really isn’t fair. But, if you’re the type of person that likes to start off with $4000 in Monopoly when everyone else starts with $2000 then this is the template for you. Just don’t go thinking that you’re really skilled when you kill people.)

Hiding/Inscription (Gamma’s choice, this is a very effective template against dexers, hiding saves against ganks).

Hiding/Healing (McFly’s choice, if you have a really fast connection healing might be more useful than inscription.)

Poisoning/Inscription (don’t bother GMing the poison, take it to 70.1 displayed, use poison over and over again on dexers). Use the last 30 points or so on hiding, tracking, or detect hidden.

Inscription/healing: Very effective template. With no hiding, ganks will get you more often though. If you have an extremely fast connection, this might be the template for you. Consider going 83 healing and 17 poisoning.

Healing/anatomy: Anatomy gives 20 hp more healed per bandage. This also allows for use of the stun punch, which can be effective when you need to get away.

Archery/Tactics (use the archery as opener, and when you run out of mana. Not the strongest template out there IMO.)

Swords/tactics: This is the old school tank mage. The idea here is to hit with spell combos, then move in for a hally strike. The hally strike really is pathetic now at low dex, and very few mages use this template anymore. However, the hally strike is somewhat useful against other mages.

Stealing/Arms Lore: The idea here is to pull up your opponent’s paper doll, use a dagger to target opponent’s weapon, then hit the disarm macro to disarm their weapon, then hit the macro to steal last target. If you can do this really fast, you have their weapon and now you can blow them away while they are defenseless. In practice, it’s hard to pull this number of macro’s off before you end up dead. Someone with really fast fingers might be able to do it though. Also, faction mates will love the fact you can steal sigils.

Stealing/snooping: This is a more traditional thief. The idea here against enemy mages is to steal their mandrake root, leaving them basically defenseless (can’t heal). Then you kill them (it’s happened to me.) This really is fairly effective against mages if you can pull it off. Against a fighter, if you can steal their sissors and stack of bandages, then you’ve got them beat.


III. What to Carry as a PvP Mage:

My typical inventory on my mage when I go PvPing includes the following:

1. GM leather armor for an AR of 15 (yes, wear the stupid cap, sometimes you get hit in the head.)
2. At least 5 trapped pouches
3. 50 of each reg (you can carry less, but you’ll have to refill more often).
4. 5 to 10 g-cure potions
5. 5 to 10 g-heal potions
6. 2 to 3 g-dexterity potions
7. 2 to 3 total refresh potions
8. 1 or 2 g-strength potions
9. a couple of g-explode potions
10. other things such as bandages (if you’re a healer mage).

With all that, you’re carrying about 3.5K worth of stuff. Be aware that a typical dexer will be carrying only about 1000 to 2000 gold worth of stuff, so if you want to break even doing PvP, you’ll need to have at least a 2 to 1 win/loss ratio.

IV: What Macro’s to setup:

Aside from all your spell macro’s, which you should have already setup from your magery training days, you’ll need to add some more macro’s.

1. Setup hotkeys in UOAssist to drink g-heal and g-cure potions. I use F1 and F2 for these vitally important functions.
2. Setup a macro in UOAssist to drink a g-dex pot (you’ll have to use the “use itemtype” sort of macro to do this.)
3. Setup a macro in UOAssist to drink a total refresh pot, and another to drink a g-strength pot.
4. Setup a macro to open your trapped pouches. Just record a macro of you opening a pouch, and set it to a key. I use F9 through F12 for these macro’s. What’s a real pain is everytime you die and get new pouches, you’ll have to setup these macro’s again. Sometimes I don’t bother doing this, but then I inevitably regret it when I run into a gank situation where a mage is always casting para.

Additional macro’s that I use.

5. I have a macro that teleports me north to the edge of the screen and then immediately uses the hide skill. This has saved me a number of times. You just need to make sure that the edge of the screen north of of you is a good spot to land. You can also setup more macro’s for every direction. The nice thing about this is with the hiding skill you hide everytime, dexers lose target lock, and you’re safely hidden so you can regain mana or have bandages kick in.

6. “Last Target”: This one is vitally important. I have the “Ins” key on the numeric keypad as my “last target” macro, as it’s a big key. This way when someone is running from you, you cast a spell and hold it. Then you run after them, and if you get close enough, smack down your last target key, and if you’re in range, the spell will hit.

7. I have a macro that casts recall, and hits a runebook which leads to a safe spot. This way if I get attacked in a gank, I can ussually cast protection and use this macro to get out.

V. PvP tips:

PvP is an extremely fluid and unpredictable situation. There’s a number of styles that a mage can adopt and be successful in PvP. I’ll try to cover the basics of most of these styles.

A. GM Inscription and the British Technique against Dexers:

The British style of fighting is where you don’t run, weave and dodge. You’re going to just stand there and kill dexers faster than they can kill you. While this seems counterintuitive to what all the monster bashing taught you about running away constantly, this is probably the most effective way of dropping a dexer quickly. Here’s what you do:

1. Cast protection and arch protection. If you have GM inscription, the protection spell will last 3 minutes, then you won’t be able to cast it again for another 90 seconds. So be aware that there is 90 seconds where you’re fairly vulnerable after the 3 minutes is up. Your AR should now be 25, and you’re only going to be interrupted 1 time out of 8 of the dexer’s swings. With an aggressive spell combo, you can drop the dexer before you run out of hit points.
2. You need to dump your mana quickly against the dexers. I typically start off with explode/ebolt combo to lower their dexterity substantially. Then, poison and start mindblasting until they drop. You’ll need to dring a g-heal pot, and cast g-heal as needed.

Before doing this on a live dex warrior, cast protection and go take on some of the red undead in dungeon khaldun. Use this standing still technique to kill them. It does take a little practice and nerve to know when you heal and when to dump.

B. The connection mage versus the slow dex monkey:

If your connection is significantly faster then your opponent dex monkey, don’t sit still. Just run around them, casting mindblast and poison until they drop. This doesn’t take a lot of skill, unless there’s multiple slow opponents involved. I’ve taken on as many as 3 slower dexers at once, and dropped 2 of them, and nearly killed the 3rd. A friend who has a faster connection has taken on 4 dexers at once and been successful. Being substantially faster as a mage compared to the dexer means you should win everytime, unless they get a lucky para hit in.

C. The para method against faster dex warrior opponents:

If you run into an opponent with equal or substantially faster connection speed, and who’s a GM runner there is an effective combo you can use to kill them. I’ve been using it quite a bit recently with a lot of success, against the fastest runners out there. This situation is going to take a good bit of PvP skill to pull off. You also absolutely have to have GM med, 100 intelligence and very high eval for this to be successful. Be aware though that if your opponent has GM resist, you’ll run out of mana before dropping them, and thus you’ll need to work in some g-explode potions into the mix. However I’ve found most connection monkies don’t have GM resist. They rarely need it. This also works fairly well against other mages.

1. If against a dex monkey, start off casting protection and arch protection. You’re in for a rough battle against a faster opponent, you need every edge you can get.
2. Cast curse on your opponent to reduce their strength. This curse spell is absolutely needed if your opponent has decent resist. Now you only have 90 hit points to wear away. This is 10 free hit points that they don't get to bandage.
3. Paralize your opponent, and keep casting para until they are out of trapped pouches. Most dexers only carry 2 or 3.
4. Meditate for a slow count of 10, then pre cast para and hold it. At soon as the target moves, hit them with para again.
5. Repeat step 4 until you have full mana. You are going to need full 100 mana to finish the opponent off.
6. Now, it’s time to kill them. Cast explode, and then precast para. Wait for the explode to hit, the smack them with the para that you’re holding. (You can also throw a g-explode potion here at the same time you’re casting explode, the effect is they get hit with the explode potion, 1 second later the explode spell, then you hit them with para. The timing on use of the explode potion takes a good bit of practice though. Also be aware that if a blue character is around, you can get guard killed in city limits by using explode potions.)
7. Repeat 6 until they get down to about 1/3 health. It should take 3 explodes, or so and you need to do this as fast as possible. They will probably use a heal pot, and in 13 seconds their bandage is going to kick in. If their bandage kicks in for a good heal, para them and run away. You no longer have enough mana to kill them.
8. When they get to 40% health, finish with an explode/mindblast combo.

D. The poison method against dexers:

If you have decent poisoning skill, and your connection is equal to or better than your opponent’s, this can be a very cost effective way of dropping your opponent. You should get at least 16 real, or 70.1 (shown) poisoning skill to pull this technique off.

1. Cast protection and arch protection.
2. Now, just keep casting poison on your opponent until they run out of cure pots. You’ll need to be running around to avoid getting hit too much. Most dexer’s carry 5 to 10 cure pots. When you cast poison on them, make sure you’re within 2 spaces to cast the more effective poison.
3. Once they run out of cure pots, keep them poisoned and start working in mindblasts. They’ll drop quick. Make sure you poison them fresh once they go below half life. They’ll then die from the poison as they try to get away from you.

E. Heavy archer/explode/flamestrike against non-parry dexers:

Mages with combat skill ussually open with a hally hit or a heavy x-bow hit, and follow with explode/flamestrike. If pulled off successfully this combo can kill in 5 seconds or less. It doesn’t work well against parry dexers, or dexers in heavy armor. It also doesn't work well against opponents with high resist.

F. Mage vs. Mage Combat – the fast attempted kill:

Probably this is going to be a long fight. More than likely both of you are going to burn a ton of reagents, and have it end as a tie. That said, there are some ways to win, there are really three strategies to take here. Here I’ll talk about trying to kill quickly through fast damage first. The key to doing this is disrupting the enemy mage’s spell casting, and pounding spells on them faster than they can heal.

1. Drink a greater-dex pot, this ups your dex by 20 and you won’t take as much damage from mindblast at about 10 points per spell.
2. Cast spell reflect on yourself if you can.
3. Test for spell reflect on your opponent by casting harm, if spell reflect is up, cast one more harm.
4. Lead in with explode and poison
5. You now need to disrupt their cure/heal spell attempt, a great fast spell to do this is clumsy. Clumsy will also cause more damage on your next mindblast.
6. Now that you disrupted their heal spell attempt, inflict more damage by casting mindblast.
7. Disrupt their heal spell attempt by casting another quick spell, another good one is feeblemind.
8. hit with another mindblast
9. disrupt again using weaken
10. hit with another mindblast. They should be dead, or very close to it. Finish with lightning. Lightning has the longest range of any spell out there, and doesn't always have to be line of sight.

G. Mage vs. Mage Combat – The para method (see section C)

This works just like the para method against faster dexers. The only difference is that a really canny mage will start castng magic trap on his pouches before he ends up running out of pouches. But, most mages don’t have magic trap on macro to do this, so it often works.

H. Mage vs. Mage Combat – The defensive tactic:

The spell g-heal takes less time and mana than any other spell to cast. Cure casts faster than poison. So, if you’re on your toes you can just cure and heal through an enemy mages mana dump with no problems at all. This is a tactic that happens quite a bit, and ends with a stalemate when both mages no longer have enough mana to kill the other. A couple survival tactics here is to cast feeblemind on your opponent, this drastically slows down their mana regeneration and they might just get in trouble with low mana this way. Also cast clumsy on your opponent if you want to inflict damage with mindblast. Use a g-dex pot to up your dex by 20 points so you take less mindblast damage. Use cure and g-heal potions as often as you can.

I. Mage versus Tamer Combat – the para battle:

Okay, you’re going to run into this eventually. The tamer mage, the most obnoxious PvP template out there. He’s going to have magic reflect up, and basically his strategy is to continuously paralyze you while telling his white wyrm to “all kill” you. It’s not going to take a lot of skill on his part to drop you, so you need to go into the situation already knowing you’re the underdog. This is what I’ve found to be effective:

1. Cast magic reflection, and use a g-dex pot.
2. The tamer’s probably going to lead off with paralize and have it reflected back on himself. Take this time to cast paralize on the white wyrm, now you have about 30 seconds to drop the tamer.
3. Switch over to the mage-fastkill tactics talked about in section F.
4. If the wyrm starts to move, para again and get out, you’re probably not going to win as you’ve burned too much mana on para’s.

Where possible gank tamers whenever you can. They are basically ganking you by using pets, so don’t feel bad going in with a buddy at your side. A good effective gank technique is to have one mage cast para on the dragon, and anther cast para on the tamer. Then one mage sits and casts para over and over again on the tamer and dragon while the other mage casts explode on the tamer. This rapidly leads to a dead tamer and there’s not much he can do about it. Then lead the white wyrm away and mana drain it then energy vortex it.

Another option if you are in Fellucca is to have a rune available to a very dangerous PvM spot. Open a gate, and lead the tamer’s pet through it. Then cast dispell field on the gate. The only problem with this is it leaves you with only 45 mana left, and one angry tamer with 100 mana on your hands. It’s better to just gank the tamer if you can.




<font color=red><center>Blade Spirits And Energy Vortex Questions Answered</font color=red></center>

Greetings all, I did this essay in response to a thread I read about the subject. It is a question that comes up every now and again, so I thought I would put together what I have found out about these two often very misunderstood spells.

BS and EV are tricky, but once you get to know how they work they are easy to use. I have spent a great deal of time practicing and hunting with them (in fact I dedicated a good deal of my UO time mastering their use). Here is what I discovered.

Casting the spells.

You will no doubt notice the casting time for BS is HUGE, the best option is to either, cast the spell and then approach your victim with the targeting cursor ready, or disable your victim (usually with a para or para-wall) then cast the spell.

EV is slightly better in this respect as the casting time is relatively short, about the same as a flamestrike, so you can get away with casting it without preparation if you need to.

Placing the BS or EV and getting it to fight for you

This is probably where most 'accidents' happen :)

First a word on targets the BS or EV will attack. Valid targets for BS and EV are in short, anything the caster could 'negatively affect'. What I mean by this is if you try to use a negative effect (eg a damage spell or stealing or provocation for example) and you get the message 'you cannot perform negative acts on this target' then your BS or EV cannot attack it either. In Felucca you can 'negatively effect' anything you want to, in trammel you are limited to guildmates, enemy guild members, monsters, and NPC's, if you want to check just try and attack whatever you want to test, if it lets you then it can be 'negatively effected' and is a valid target for BS and EV.
With regards to what things the BS and EV will actually attack, BS will attack the nearest valid (see above for valid targets) target, however, they will ALWAYS pick a MOVING target over a stationary one even if the stationary is nearer. EV target the creature or player with the highest INT score within range. (however they always seem to target player characters over monsters).

Ok now onto actually getting them to attack your chosen victim.

There are 2 ways to almost guarantee it targets the victim and not something else. The 1st is to cast the spell then provoke (if you have the skill) onto the victim (deadly if you fail provoke).
The second is my preferred method, in order to ensure the BS or EV attacks the victim you choose, the spell must be cast into a floor tile DIRECTLY next to the victim (that is, you must TARGET a floor tile directly next to the victim). This sounds a lot easier than it is. The reason for this is when the BS or EV 'appears' the victim will be in the 'area of effect' of the BS/EV and will auto defend and target the BS/EV, this will cause the BS/EV to defend and auto target the victim as it appears. This works almost all of the time, if it doesn't then you were either very unlucky or you didn't target a tile next to the victim (remember although some creatures are very big, they still only take up one floor tile). It is obviously easier to get the right tile if your victim is not moving,. which brings me onto the next bit,.

My tips

Para wall,... this spell is invaluable when using BS/EV, (para is good but is a little less useful), Para wall helps two fold, 1st of all it will stop your victim moving (see above for why this is good), secondly when you cast the BS/EV make sure you target a tile next to the victim on the OTHER side of the wall from you, that way if it does not target the victim for any reason, it will run into the para wall if it decides to come for you. Para is useful for stopping victims so you can place your spells, but the wall gives the extra protection just in case.

Don’t use either spell on dragonkin,.. since they were patched, dragonkin can dispel both on 0% mana, so don’t waste your time,.. you'll have to think of a better way to kill these creatures.


Well,.. that’s all folks, hope it helps you, cya on Europa,...

(if you see me running away from an EV, do me a favor, dispel it for me eh ?,...)


Urgat Rip-Eye

------------

<font color=red><center>Frequently Asked Question:</font color=red></center>

<font color=blue>Question:</font color=blue> I'VE SPENT SO LONG KILLING CATTLE I HAVEN'T LEARNED OUT TO USE THIS CHAR WITH A GROUP AND IT'S DRIVING ME MENTAL.

How should I be macroed up?
What are good combos?
What do I do when I'm with a group and targeted by every monster in sight? I mean all I do is run trying to put distance between me and the monsters so I can cast while warriors chase the beasties around.
How best to preserve my mana in bigger fights?

Any help would be great.

Oh, and since I was to freaked out to try it, if the warriors are surrounded and I cast chain lightning on the monsters, will I hit any members of my group...?

<font color=blue>Answer:</font color=blue> STEP #1 SET UP
Set your spells up on hotkeys (macros). Mine are as follows:

ctl z flamestrike
ctl x ebolt
ctl c lightning
ctl v harm [used to be of use to bring down magic reflect - limited use now]
ctl a paralyze
ctl s explosion
ctl d poison
ctl f teleport [use this to get out of trouble to safe areas]
ctl q greater heal (self)
ctl w cure (self)
ctl e heal (self) [faster than gh and harder to interrupt]
ctl r invisibility (self) [instant hiding when you are in over your head]

Now open your spell book and drag the icons for your favorites spells to the bottom of your screen. Mine includes all the ones listed above and: dispel summoned, blade spirit, summon daemon, summon fire elemental, energy vortex, dispel wall, wall of stone, wall of poison, wall of fire, energy wall, create food, night sight, heal, cure, greater heal, resurrect, recall, gate, mark, reactive armor, protection, spell reflect, bless

STEP #2 SOLO

Go out solo and learn to fight things on your own before grouping. Start with the weakest creature and then move up to stronger creatures then finally groups of creatures.

Walk out of town and look for a mongbat, great hart, or bear. Pull the health bar off the monster by left clicking it and dragging. Stay as far away as possible and begin casting on it by targeting the health bar. Experiment with different spells and get used to dealing with running back after casting to minimize interruptions.

Once you are comfortable with those mechanics, find an orc, troll, or ettin. These will go aggro on you once they see you so make sure you are prepared for battle by having reactive armor up beforehand. Experiment with different spells. I personally like to paralyze then explosion/ebolt combo (the explosion should take place right as the Ebolt is striking when done correctly). Then I follow up quickly with a poison and run backwards for my next salvo of spells.

Once you are comfortable with single creatures venture further out from town and start working with groups. Find a group of orcs or lizardmen and run backwards and cast poison wall and fire wall (trammel only!). Run around the walls and wear them down enough to where you have enough time to cast ebolt and other offensive spells without them reaching you.

STEP #3 GROUPING

Once you are comfortable with your spells and have a good understanding of how long they take to cast, how easy they are to interrupt, and which are best for certain situations you are ready to group. Join a group and establish what skill set everyone has. Determine who will heal and if you will be responsible for healing.

Everyone plays a mage a little differently. Some simply thunder in first on horseback and start slinging spells. Others play a warrior/mage hybrid and will follow the group right into the thick of combat. The pure mages may be more suited to staying in the back out of combat judiciously using spells as required. Until you get the group combat skills under your belt, I recommend you do the latter

<center><font color=blue>Templates</font color=blue>
<font color=green>by Lord Belgarath</font color=green>
Zaxton(PKD)</center>

There is a lot of discussion on templates on this forum, so I thought perhaps I could summarize a few of the more popular ones and thier variations. Most of what I have to say here has already been said in one form or another, but I don't think it's been addressed in quite this way before.

First let's look at the 5 skills that are standard in all of the templates:

<font color=red>
Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist
</font color=red>

The big 5. These are described in more detail in the FAQ. There is almost no reason to go without these 5 as a mage.

The templates normally utilize these main skills with 2 supplemental skills added in. The choice of these skills is dependant on what the purpose of your character will be. First I will examine the Player vs. Monster templates, then move into the Player vs. Player skill sets.

<font color=blue>The Pure Mage</font color=blue>
Pretty easy. This term has pretty much been used to apply to any template that uses the 5 main mage skills, and doesn't fit into any of those listed below.

<font color=blue>The Tamer Mage</font color=blue>

Whether you love them or hate them, a Mage with a pet Dragon is a force to be reckoned with.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist<font color=red>
Animal Lore
Animal Taming</font color=red>

Pros
  1. Taming allows you to own and ride the more powerful mounts.
  2. You rarely have to take direct damage from opponents as your pets will be the front-line.
  3. Selling desireable pets (ie. White Wyrms, Dragons, Nightmares) is very profitable.
Cons
  1. Taming is a very time-consuming skill to raise.
  2. Dependance on animals can become habit forming. /php-bin/shared/images/icons/happy2.gif
  3. Many people strongly dislike tamers.

<font color=blue>The Bardic Mage</font color=blue>

For this mage, losing his reagents is no problem, in fact, it's an occasion for a song.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist<font color=red>
Musicianship
Provocation</font color=red>

Pros
  1. A Provoker Mage has the ability to adventure solo more easily than many other templates.
  2. If by some chance you are killed and your body is being guarded or your reagents have been looted, you do not need to enlist the help of others to reclaim your inventory.
  3. If guilded you can provoke your Energy Vortexes/Blade Spirits to attack monsters that they might not choose on thier own.
Cons
  1. While Musicianship is relatively easy to raise, Provocation is among the harder skills to GM.
  2. Similar to the Tamer Mage, many people dislike Bards.

<font color=blue>The Scribe Mage</font color=blue>

At first glance, a mage consumed with his studies, but in studying one can learn valuable combat skills.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist<font color=red>
Inscription</font color=red>

Pros
  1. Added bonuses to the Reactive Armor and Protection spells.
  2. The ability to make scrolls and runebooks, good for profit.
  3. In factions, the ability to make "faction scrolls" capable of charging "faction staffs" with magical properties. One of the few magic items that players can create.
Cons
  1. As far as skills go, if you are not engaged in PvP the relative bonuses of inscription to combat are not as high as those of other skills.
  2. The precise nature of the inscription bonuses is more complex than i'd care to go into here. Detailed information on this can be found in the Mage Forum FAQ.

<font color=blue>The Thief Mage</font color=blue>

The shadiest of the mages, he'll heal you in battle then pickpocket your loot.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist<font color=red>
Stealing
Other*</font color=red>

*A quick note on the thief mage. Several possible complementary skills could be included. One of the more popular is Armslore, allowing you to perform the "wrestle disarm," then steal your opponent's weapon. Other useful skills would include Hiding, lockpicking, or snooping.

Pros
  1. A great way to gain wealth at other's expense.
  2. In factions you can obtain town sigils.
  3. Useful in PvP (especially with the new spellbook modifications*) as you can steal potions, bandages, reagents, or with armslore, your attacker's weapon.
Cons
  1. The inability to give murder counts while "perma-grey.**"
  2. Stealing is a quick way to be attacked by everyone in view
  3. Even your friends will quickly become distrustful if you abuse your skills

*You will no longer be required to have your spellbook equipped to cast spells, leaving your hands free to steal.
**For more information on perma-grey and other aspects of stealing consult the thieves' forum.

<font color=blue>The Heal Mage</font color=blue>

Out of mana? No problem, just run around and wait on the bandage.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist<font color=red>
Healing
Anatomy*</font color=red>

*Anatomy is sometimes replaced with hiding.

Pros
  1. Cuts down on the need to waste mana on heal spells.
  2. Reserve reagents, like mandrake, that are used in many spells.
Cons
  1. In order to apply a bandage in a reasonable amount of time, you will need higher dex.[/i]
  2. Anatomy is difficult to raise by healing alone.

<font color=blue>The Nox Mage</font color=blue>

Very useful in PvP, the Nox mage can be a dangerous opponent.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist
<font color=red>Poisoning</font color=red>

Pros
  1. Increased potency of the Poison spell.
    Combined magery/poisoning skill
    <130.1 lesser poison
    130.1+ normal poison
    170.1+ greater poison
    200.0 Deadly Poison (see below)
  2. The ability to poison weapons, very useful as a money-making technique.
Cons
  1. Poisoning is an expensive skill to GM.
  2. Even at GM you only have a 5% chance to cast Deadly Poison, and even then you have to be within 2 tiles of your opponent.
  3. Even Deadly Poison can be cured using a Greater Cure potion, although Deadly Poison is "only" cured about 65% of the time.

<font color=blue>The Parry Mage</font color=blue>
"Roach Mage"

Like thier namesake, these mages are hard to kill.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist<font color=red>
Parry</font color=red>

Pros
  1. Once again, thanks to the new spellbook rules, the ability to equip a shield is quite useful.
  2. When combined with other defensive spells, a roach mage is about as hard to kill as, well, a roach.
Cons
  1. Even though you don't need to equip your spellbook to cast, you do have to have your hands free. This means you'll have to use macros to arm your shield after casting.
  2. Well, I can't really think of much else. When played right, this template can be almost as potent in PvP as the next one.

<font color=blue>The Tank Mage</font color=blue>

What can you say about a spell-casting, weapon-wielding, armored bringer of death? Don't fight one willingly.

Requisite Skills

Magery
Evaluating Intelligence
Meditation
Wrestling
Resist<font color=red>
Tactics
Weapon Skill(swords/macing/fencing)</font color=red>

Pros
  1. Dump your mana, then fight with your weapon while you regain mana.
  2. Most templates that can seriously hurt a mage are vulnerable to other warriors, and vice-versa.
  3. Seriously, need I say more? You fight with magic and weapons. Best of both worlds.
Cons
  1. Without anatomy, you don't do as much damage as other warriors.
  2. You're main healing ability still comes from magic, supplemented with potions, so you still need to be careful.
  3. If you plan to pick up healing or anatomy, you'll have to drop one of the big 5, best bet would probably be wrestling.

This can be a tough template to play, but if played right, can be unstoppable.

Well, those are the main templates. I put all this information together from my own experiences, various posts on this forum, and some help from UO Stratics. Special recognition should go to the following:
<font color=blue>Lord Beowulf
Gamma Zulu
Mastercraft</font color=blue>


There are many other possible templates for mages given the 200 skill points available to a Pure Mage, but my intent was to include the most popular templates. Also, I was trying to give a basic layout of the skills needed, for more information on the skills themselves, refer to the Mage FAQ (Guildenstern's note: See above).

The Dark Lord Belgarath, Grandmaster Mage

<center>

One slays daemons, the other......carrots.<font color=red>
Signature by Succabus of Atlantic!</font color=red><font color=green>
LS, Mage,East Coast Trading, SnR & Star Wars Forum Moderator</font color=green></center>
<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by Guildenstern on 06/29/01 12:45 PM.</FONT></P>
 
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