version 3.0 (click here for version 1.0, here for version 2.0)

Introduction

First off, let me clearly state that what is contained in this document reflects my opinions only. If you think that I am wrong about something, then I probably am—for you. Read this to help you think about the issues, not to make your decisions for you.

What this document intends to do is help you create the character that is right for you! In my opinion, too many people just go out and create an Og mage because they heard it's powerful, and never stop to think about why it is and how to take advantage of that. You can end up hating your character if you do that. In this respect, what I write is pertinent to the creation of any character, so just read part one if you want to be a melee or an archer.

Although I have played archers to levels 39 and 48, I am writing about being a mage for two reasons. One is obviously because Quetozin is a level 63 mage and I know the most about mages. The second is because I think that the mage is the most versatile character to play in Dereth, and therefore the most interesting to me.

I would like to extend thanks to Topheron early on for his help in editing the guide and making sure my points were clear and well made. Anyway, let's get to the guide. I would appreciate any questions or comments, feel free to post them to the message board.

Table of Contents

• In the Beginning
  • Preparing for Character Creation
  • Creating your Character
  • Schools and Skills
    • Assigning your skill points
    • Specialization
    • Mana Conversion and You
  • Potential Templates
    • The Combat Factor
    • The Defense Factor
    • The Support Factor
• Outfitting your Mage
• Growing Up in Dereth
• Places to Hunt
• Skill Progression
• Arranging your Spell Tabs
• Ready, Aim, Fire
  • The Shoot and Scoot
  • The Vampire's life
  • Your Stamina and You
• Welcome to the big-time

Not a lot to say here, except that the default templates may not be your best course of action. This section deals with the ins and outs of creating the mage that you want to play.

A lot of people don't seem to give this a lot of thought. I believe that if you do this, then you will absolutely have the most fun you can with what you end up with. If you are playing Asheron's Call for the combat only and just want to be über, then skip this article or go to the final analysis. Otherwise, recognize that AC is a role-playing game and take these steps.

1. Read Dereth, A Brief History for Travelers and some of the Player Chronicles for inspiration.
2. Think about what your life was like on Ispar. In other words, write or at least imagine a back-story for yourself. It may sound a little silly, but trust me on this. Knowing what you are like will help you make a character that really reflects the one you want to play. In doing this, define in your mind your character's personality. Is s/he a crude barbarian, a scholar, an athlete, a hunter? What does s/he like and dislike? Come up with a rudimentary personality. If you are stuck here, you can read this article or maybe the one I wrote for Q.
3. Decide on your race and then name your character! If you are stuck for ideas, try the Ever-changing Book of Names. A wonderful article on this can be found at AsheronsLore.
4. Now that you have a name, sit back and think about it. Do you like this person? If there was a TV show about them, would you watch it? If the answer is no, then go back to step 1 and try again.
5. Prepare to actually role-play. Don't just play your character as a tiny virtual you wandering around killing stuff. Otherwise you will lose the point of this. This can be as simple as saying 'aye' or 'Hail!' instead of 'yeah' or 'Hello.'
6. Be active in your allegiance. Go on as many quests as you can. Help the new folks. Hunt with your peers. 'nuff said...

Ok, you know who you are, now it's your job to use the game mechanics to reflect that. Given that this guide is for mages, the slant begins here. If you intend to build a mage, you should have a clear idea of how that mage should function in Dereth. A lot of people reflexively try to make an über-mage without taking into account their style of play. They also tend to think only of offensive capability. Well, that's understandable, but there is so much more to consider. As a mage, you can play a support role, a drainer, a war machine, a twinker, or any combination of those. You may be über in skills, but if they don't fit your play style how much fun is it going to be? Face it, you can't be an expert in all schools, with melee defense, healing, and a mana conversion high enough to cast a dozen level VI spells before recharging. As stated, any character that is a real reflection of your ideal fantasy figure will be fun to play, keep that in mind when creating.

So, start with the attributes. Nearly all mages will want to max out their focus and self. In some cases you may want to start them at 80, but those cases are usually reserved for those who are creating a mage with a weapon type of character. This article is not for you, I assume that you intend to finish your attacks with war magic, not a bow or sword. So trust me, and start with 100 focus and self.

The other four attributes are kind of variable, they really depend on what other things you intend to do. For instance, if you decide you want melee defense and are Aluvian, you may want to spend some credits on quickness and coordination. You will never be as good as a pure dagger character at either, but it adds a little versatility. Perhaps you want to be a tank, wearing tons of armor and brandishing your peerless atlan staff (for Gharu) at critters with an obscene magic defense. Or you want to regain gobs of mana with a single spell, and have enough hit points that you just don't care how hard you are hit.

Going back to part one, think about your character and distribute your remaining 90 attribute points along these four attributes. Make sure you take into account the secondary skills that you will be taking (in other words, you may want to read the next part and come back to this):

Strength

Comps are heavy, and you have to carry a lot of them. If you are burdened you will slowly lose stamina in combat, and you will also run slow and rarely evade. If you have a low strength, you will almost have to wear a robe at higher levels, which means extra buffing.

Endurance

Mana management is the hardest thing for a mage to get down-pat. The two most common ways to recover mana are the stamina to mana spell and the health to mana spell. Both stamina and health are directly derived from endurance. It sounds simple, but let me emphasize that you will want a LOT of stamina (at least 2/3 of your mana) and since you are generally tanking, you want a lot of health as well.

Coordination

This goes to lockpick, weapon skills, melee defense, and healing. A lot of mages don't use any of these, so a lot of mages start with 10 coordination.

Quickness

This goes to run and melee defense (and dagger for aluvian mages). Ok, mages are slow, and if they are burdened they are slower still. The main reason people start with over 10 quickness is for a shoot and scoot style. If you are a real dungeon crawler, you may not care too much about this attribute.

Bear in mind that it costs about 3.3 million exp to raise a primary attribute by 100, and 2.2 million to raise a secondary attribute by that many. While this may seem like a lot, by the time you are level 50 you have earned about 55 million exp points. So, most mages who don't care about their racial weapon (Hey! I'm a MAGE for cryin' out loud!) will start with 10 coordination and 10 quickness. Endurance and strength, however, is a different matter. Early on endurance is of primary concern for stamina to mana. Later in life, however, mages tend to spend more of their experience on strength, striving to finally become unburdened. While the 100/10/10/10/100/100 template is not for the faint of heart, there are a lot who really appreciate it later in life. Of course, this isn't recommended for beginners, but neither is the 10/100/10/10/100/100 template.

Basically, if you aren't sure that 100 strength or 100 endurance will work for you, split the difference. Go with 55/55 or 60/50 or 50/60. Try to strike a balance between strength and endurance that works for you from a role-player's standpoint. Odds are, if you are the type who thinks mages should be scrawny types who run around in robes then you probably aren't intending to wear armor and may not ever care about burden. Therefore, the lower strength option becomes obvious for you.

OK, here is a quick overview of the skills a mage may be interested in. Start with the big five.

Life Magic

Recognized by many as the most powerful skill in the game. The reason for this lies in the ability to cast Armor and Protects, and to Imperil and Vuln creatures. Most mages use the Drain Health spell as their primary attack, as it drains 100 hit points from the target or 25% of it's health, whichever is lower. It also returns a percentage of those points to the caster, allowing you to pretty much ignore damage from anything attacking you. Life also has the healing and revitalization spells, and most important, the spells that convert health and stamina to mana. Frankly, this is a must-have for any mage almost from the very beginning. One more nifty thing about Life magic--it works through walls, allowing you to attack from relative safety (although that can get boring after a while)

War Magic

This is what most people think of when the visualize a mage--the wizard raining a path of destruction on his enemies through pure offensive spells. Well, this school of magic pretty much does exactly that. You have to be in line-of-sight for it to work, but the spells do a lot of damage and don't take a lot of mana to cast.

Creature Enchantment

In a nutshell, Creature magic allows you to increase and decrease the skills and attributes of a target. This means you can make a friend better at using a sword or you can make a monster less resistant to magic. Probably the school that is most convenient to have, but is the least essential of the four.

Item Enchantment

Item magic allows you to change the properties of armor and weapons. You can take an ordinary robe and use high level item magic to make it into an incredibly effective lightweight piece of armor. This school is widely considered must have by every person in Dereth, but not for the item buffs. Item enchantment comes with portal and recall spells, which really cuts down on the amount of time you are running from place to place.

Mana Conversion

Please don't think about creating a mage without mana conversion. Although it's kind of benign, this skill will mean the difference between victory and death over and over for you. What it does is reduces the amount of mana it takes to cast a spell. When you cast, a skill check is made for the difficulty of the spell versus your mana conversion. If the skill check passes, the spell doesn't cost as much. If your mana conversion is high enough, you can get a level VI spell off for as low as 3 mana, which means you can cast a lot more spells in a row with it than without it. Without a good mana c, you will waste half your buff cycle during the buffing itself.

The other skills that a mage may want are as follows:

Arcane Lore

This skill helps to read scrolls and to use magic items. Because of the high starting focus, it is naturally high for a mage. If you have creature magic, you really don't need it, but it's a nice convenience, and cheap to train. Based on Focus.

Appraisal Skills

Even if you never train these they will grow along with your Focus on a 1 for 1 basis. These help determine what items to sell, and which ones you should hold on to for a vassal or yourself. Based on Focus.

Assessment Skills

Like the appraisal skills, these will be naturally high for a mage. However, if you like support or pvp you may want a higher assess person than normal. Based on Focus and Self.

Healing

You may wonder why someone with life magic would want this. The reason lies in the fact that a high healing skill allows you to quickly replenish mana with a health to mana spell along with a healing kit. This can be a nice luxury at the middle levels, but once you are comfortably casting life VI spells you will probably shift to a Revitalize VI, Stam to Mana VI combination to get your mana back. The only other strong point here is when you you are out of mana and getting pounded on... Based on Focus and Coordination.

Melee Defense

OK, this is a somewhat controversial one. It's good to have, but really not very effective until the higher levels. It's not too likely that the mage with Melee D will ever evade a mob of tuskers, but that same mage isn't going to get caught wearing a bathrobe by the mattekars in Osteth either. The best thing it will do for you is drastically reduce the amount of critical hits you will take--essentially cutting the melee damage you take from high level mobs. I have heard it is a good thing to have in pvp, but I would still count it as a nice convenience but a nonessential skill. Based on Quickness and Coordination.

Leadership

Hey, Mages make good patrons, so why not? With leadership, you can go from about 10% of your vassals' earnings to over 25%. If you are popular and have lots of vassals, this will easily mean a few more levels for you in the long run. Based on Self.

Lockpick

Not the most popular choice, but if you are the type who likes to explore every nook and cranny of every dungeon then you will be glad to have it. Not the best skill to take in the beginning though, consider it after you have filled out. Based on Focus and Coordination.

Loyalty

Like leadership in concept. Only costs two points to spec, so a lot of people use this as a throwaway skill to be more attractive to their Patrons. Based on Self.

Run

Well, you get this anyway. The reason it's listed is because it's cheap to specialize. If you intend to spend your time in a shoot and scoot style and have 4 skill credits left over you may want to spec this (especially if you start with 10 quickness). Note that run has no cap, so it's not the worst thing you can raise in preparation for PVP. Based on Quickness.

Magic Defense

This is listed because some people specialize it. Unless you are planning to raise this over 250 base though, or plan to fight spellcasters only, you may want to pass on specializing this. Against the highest level content your Magic Defense skill will probably never be high enough level to protect you. Specializing Magic Defense takes 12 credits, so unless you are focusing your mage strictly on defensive ability those credits are usually better spent elsewhere. Remember, the best Magic Defense is to kill the monster before he can do damage to you!

In summary, if you want to be a good mage, then concentrate on your primary skills. Those would be the big five listed above. Raise the attributes that support them until they become too expensive, and then begin adding directly to your skills.

OK, by now you should know who you are and what you want to be like. The good news is that you should be excited about creation. The bad news is the music that you are facing regarding what to specialize. Magic schools are expensive, and very expensive to specialize. A Sho UA or Gharu Staff can specialize their weapon for only a few skill credits, while the war-spec mage will find himself down 28 points immediately.

Here is the breakdown of the skills listed above:

So, the minimum that you know you are going to spend over time is 50, not counting specialization. But, you don't have to train all of your skills in the beginning. You start with 50 skill points. However, you can only specialize a skill at character creation. You gain additional skill points along the following progression.

With this in mind, you can add up how many you will be using at creation (use all 50, you can't carry them into the game with you) and then at what level you will finally gain the last skill. Naturally, your goal should be to end up with all of the critical skills, while having as much as possible specialized without sacrificing the other skills you would like to have.

To many, specialization is seen as a way to raise one skill to levels that vastly exceed the others. Many classes have a primary attack skill, and a primary way to defend. Mages, however, are concerned with 5 skills rather than two. This means specialization is generally the topic of much more gnashing of teeth to a mage than it may be to an Archer or Mace wielder.

For a mage, the benefits of specialization are NOT necessarily that you can raise the skill higher than normal. Instead, they should be looked at as the savings of experience that can be applied to other schools once you reach a goal. Early on and through the mid levels, most mages who have a specialized skill will not necessarily raise it a lot higher than the others. Rather, they will raise all their magic skills evenly, and the experience savings from the specialized skill will be invested in helping them reach their goals in other skills.

Consider a mage with 190 focus and self who is trained in all 4 schools. If that mage focused on life magic until it was 250 base then s/he would spend 33,063,990 experience on it. The same mage with specialized life magic would only spend 8,982,416 experience points. That means that at the same level and same goal the second mage would have 24,081,574 of their experience points invested in other skills, actually making them a little more developed at the same level than the first. This is a rather extreme example, but it demonstrates the value of specialization at higher levels nicely.

Another factor in the decision to specialize lies in the basis for the skill calculation. For example, Mana Conversion’s formula is (Focus + Self)/6. Because it's lower than a magic school, which is (Focus + Self)/4, it will be raised directly more often. This is referred to as a high divisor skill. If the above example used Mana Conversion instead of life magic, the savings would be 290,150,478 experience points! Granted, you aren't too likely to raise mana conversion to that level, but it does point out the difference the skill's initial calculation makes in deciding on specialization. The same example with Assess Person only saves 55,225, as it is (Focus + Self)/2.

For high divisor skills, it must be noted that you don't see the benefits of specializing in them until very late in life. Your average level 50 mage is not going to have a mana conversion skill over 200, but your average level 70 will. Well, if you are thinking of playing to 40 and restarting, then the benefits of specializing a high divisor skill may be lost on you.

The more skills you specialize, the more you take advantage of this system. In addition, the more skills you specialize the fewer skills you will have overall. Fewer skills means more experience applied to the ones you have, making them all a little stronger, while limiting your character's overall capabilities. This sounds like a recommendation to specialize, but it is not. Generalists have many more skill points to spend, and can therefore often do more in the game. The Mage with the mega-high magic schools and no skills will still find himself on the wrong side of a locked door every once in a while, or holding a bauble that would sure come in handy if it could only be activated. So, when deciding on specialization, you want to balance strength with versatility.

One thing that will really help you decide on specialization is the setting of a realistic goal for your character. If the highest you have ever gotten is level 20 then don't start a character with the idea that you are going to hit 70 with it. Set your finishing goal at a reasonable level; by somewhere within 10-15 levels of what you have played you should plan to have all the skills that you really want.

OK, the magic schools are pretty easy to understand. War Magic kills stuff, Item makes stuff stonger, etc... What a lot of people don't really understand is Mana Conversion. They are told to take it, and then told to try and keep it at the level of the spells they are casting. This has led to the widespread rumor that Mana Conversion caps in effectiveness at 300, as that is the level required for level VII spells. Well, that's wrong. With credit given to Topheron and Little Magesse for their research into Mana Conversion on the COD discussion boards (based on research first done by Swedish Flectch and Chef Fletch and a few others), here is how Mana Conversion works.

Mana Conversion has two skill checks when you cast. First, a check is made to see if you have enough Mana to attempt casting the spell. Then, after the spell difficulty is checked against your skill in that magic school, a second Mana C check is made to see if you actually have enough mana to cast. This is why you seem to fizzle a lot more when you're attempting to force a spell with low mana--you make the first Mana C skill check (getting past that pesky "You do not have enough Mana to cast this spell" message), pass the skill check for casting, and fail the second Mana C skill check. All of these checks are done with the standard skill check formula:

success = 1 / (1 + EXP( 0.03 * (difficulty - skill)) where
success is your chance of succeeding,
difficulty is what you have to overcome (in this case, the spell's conversion difficulty)
skill is the skill in question (in our case, it will be Mana Conversion)
EXP is the exponential function

Take this formula and plug Mana Conversion in and the spell difficulty in for resistance, and you get the following matrix based on how far apart they are.

One interesting thing to note here is that the difficulty for conserving mana is half the difficulty of the spell plus 25. So, for a level VII spell, you're looking at a difficulty of 175. You don't have to have Mana C at 300 for a 50% shot at savings. But, there is another factor that blows the cap myth out of the water. The amount of mana you save is tied to how much you exceed the skill check. So, it's still better to raise it as high as you possibly can. If you had a buffed mana conversion of 400, you would be casting level VIs all day long on minimal mana amounts, but would still risk having one fire off at full cost.

Well, the next logical question would be how much do you save? Well, there isn't really a formula that I have found to determine how much you save, only that it seems to be tied to the amount that your Mana Conversions exceeds the difficulty. However, there is a myth that the Devs have declared that 400 Mana Conversion you would cast level VI spells at one point apiece on a very regular basis. Assuming that the baseline is 50% cost, then you may suppose that the savings is tied to the same formula as above, which would explain why large differences always seem to save a ton of mana while smaller differences mean you end up thinking you have several spells left in you and all of the sudden realizing that maybe it's time to add to run again as you frantically try to get to safety to recharge.

A theory I like a lot is that the amount you save is random but is closely linked (as in all but maxed) to the likelihood of you saving mana in the first place. So, if your Mana C is 205 and you're casting a level VII, then the most you're ever going to save, outside of the very rare fluke, is 71%, which would mean your average level VII life spell has a minimum, albeit rare, cost of 20 mana to you.

At the very, very high levels of Mana C, you can really rely on it for a lot. I am now level 126, and my Mana C is base 285--both are extreme numbers I know. But, I can always squeeze off a level VII spell with minimal mana, and I don't have to revitalize as much. I get a huge benefit from having it that high. Is it worth it? Well, unless you specialize the answer is a resounding NO. If you did, then you will notice a difference even at the extreme levels whenever you raise it 10 points. However, if you didn't specialize then you're really looking at the wrong area if you try and raise it to the levels I enjoy. Frankly, what good is it to get that spell off with 2 mana when it will be resisted? Best to stick to your strengths and give love to what you chose to specialize in, or what you kill with. High Mana C is a very, very nice luxury, but it's just that--a luxury.

Comparing different templates can open a lot of room for debate, which goes on every day on the message boards. To me, there is no perfect template. Rather, the best template is the one that provides you with the most fun doing what you want to do. That said, only one more point needs to be made. If you read my history for Q, you know that he was brought to Dereth to help others. The PvP lifestyle has never appealed to him, and that bias is reflected here. If you do want to go PK, just note that creature magic should have much more emphasis than I place on it here, and Magic Defense and a secondary attack should be given more consideration that I provide.

Anyway, by now you may be a little unsure and confused (especially after reading the previous section). This is where I am going to try and clear things up for you. What this section will do is try and compare the skills of twelve mage types, assuming they are started with even stats and raised with the same goals in mind. Then I will map out where they should be in comparison to each other at different levels based on pure combat magic skills, and finally give each one a few comments and observations.

The mages will all have these stats at the projected levels.

Now, for those of you that have played mages before, please don't just jump in and say "Hey, that's a stupid way to raise your stats because...." Some people prefer different progressions, some may never raise coordination, some may put everything into quickness early on, etc. How you do it isn't as important as the fact that in this comparison every mage type makes the same progression. The other attributes are raised just to put experience into them. It is unreasonable to assume that a level 90 mage would never raise his or her strength, or coordination; what is at issue is perhaps when they would choose to do so.

The types of mages selected for the comparison and their skill selection/path are as follows:

Note that each mage takes the four schools and Mana Conversion, then Arcane Lore, then Healing, Leadership, and Melee Defense. The latter three are done somewhat capriciously, as these skills do not impact the overall ability to cast in combat. They are selected just to have a place to put extra experience. As you can see, the latter templates are more extreme in terms of specialization, and take a lot longer to finish. Here are the descriptions for the samples as listed above.

Four School

Naturally, this is the one that finishes out your basic mage skills first, as you start with all the critical ones covered. Being the least specialized, this one is also the most versatile. Consider that you have 16 points to play with at level 40--you could have melee defense and healing by then. Or, you could take leadership and make an experience farm. The possibilities are wide here, no two mages like this have to look alike.

Mana-C Spec

You may choose to take lore and specialize it with this template, and maybe spec loyalty or take an appraisal with the two wasted credits. The point is that you still finish fairly early at level 16, and by 40 you will have 10 points to play around with.

Creature Spec

There aren't a lot of people who do this, because Creature Magic is pretty much regarded as a very nice luxury to have, but not a necessity. Well, if you have it you are going to use it a lot, and this is a surprisingly effective template.

Life Spec

This is actually a very strong template for the beginning mage who already has experience with Asheron's Call. It still finishes early at 16, but you will be a lot stronger at later levels than the 4-school as the coming analysis will point out. Other than that, it's about the same.

War Spec

This is very similar to the Life Spec, but you take a little longer to get everything. At level 26 you are a complete mage, and will still be able to take additional skills without waiting forever.

Creature/Mana C

Not too many people do this one, as it has to get to 40 to finish and they elect to play the Og template instead. But, specialized Mana C can pay big dividends at the higher levels.

Life/Mana C

This is a little more popular than the Creature/Mana C template, a little less popular than the Og. This mage also finishes at 40, but is a great ride along the way and is a real strong template throughout its career.

War/Mana C

This template finishes late, and it difficult to start without the mana management Life magic provides. However, as with the other two Magic School/Mana C specialized templates, it performs very well at higher levels.

Og Mage/War Cleric

Og the One Eye is a player who made the old-fashioned War Cleric template famous enough to have it renamed in his honor. This template is probably the most popular one for new mages in Dereth today. You don't finish until 40, but by that time many Ogs are so accustomed to self-buffing (and have the creature skill to do it!) that they decide to forget about Arcane Lore and pick up another skill at 50 or 60.

Opal Mage/Ugh Mage

This is similar to the Og template, and like Og is named for the players who popularized it. Rather than start without war, you start without life magic, which can be gotten around in the early levels with a life mastery wand. If course, since you don't have Arcane you can't use anything better than a Life II wand, but it still provides a workaround. It takes a little longer than the Og to finish, but you aren't ever without war and the extra time until Arcane is more than made up for by this fact in some people's minds.

Battlemage

This is without a doubt a very difficult template to play. You don't get Arcane until 70, by which time you could probably care less about it. By level 50 you are pretty much finished with this character, but will always have to rely on self buffs. On the plus side, you are unequaled in your raw firepower by then

The Grandpa Mage

OK, time for a little bias. This has got to be the most difficult template to play for a mage in the game. No war until 60! If you choose this one you pretty much have to know what you are in for and have a plan for getting to 60. However, it's the premier support mage in the game.

At the early levels, diversified templates are more fun to play and surprisingly efficient. Specialized templates gain in effectiveness as time goes by, clearly surpassing the diversified ones in terms of combat ability. Note that I am not saying that the old Four-School mages can't be just as much fun and possibly even more rewarding than the extreme templates. Even the most skilled level 80 Battlemage can be nickel and dimed to death by a crowd of Drudge Lurkers if there are enough of them, while a level 80 Four-School with lesser magic skills will just evade them because he took Melee Defense and gave it some serious loving. How well you do largely depends on what and where you want to hunt and your individual skill level as a driver, not just on the skill levels of your character's magic schools.

Asheron's Call is a skill-based game. Therefore the only effective analysis of the different templates can be done with a comparison of skills at different level of development. The tables above show skills will be added in our comparison. Again, the individual skills outside magic schools are not much of a concern, it is more important to acknowledge that some will be there and experience will be assigned to them. Appendix One to this document outlines the skill progressions of all mage types through level 95. Yours will be different than what is assumed here, but they are done that way to provide the closest thing to an apples to apples comparison.

When comparing skills, apples to apples it the way to go. Its hard enough to predict what two different mage types will do with their magic schools, trying to do so with their secondary skills can be a real pain. So, every mage takes the same secondary skills in the same order, and raises all their skills with the following goals in mind:

• All magic skills raised fairly evenly in terms of experience until the mid to late 20s. This means that specialized skills will be higher.
• Run to 150 by level 35. This allows you to buff over 200, which is fairly desirable in the Dires. Raised to 200 base by 55.
• Loyalty will be 100 at level 35 (yeah, I know some of you d00ds out there don't believe in it, unless you're in a ph4t exp chain...)
• Jump to 200 base by 45
• Magic Defense to 150 by 45, 200 base by level 65.
• Arcane Lore, Melee Defense, Healing, and Lockpick, have a base goal of 200 before they are no longer added to directly.
• All magic schools to at least 200 Base by 45. At that point, Mana Conversion will be raised to 175 Base.
• Once the magic schools are raised to 230 base (easy VIs and buffable to around 300 with the Focus Stone), they are added to in the following ratio: War:Life:Creature:Item = 4:4:2:1.
• Specialized skills continue to get love even after the base goal is reached. This means that some magic schools will have extra points applied.

Now, these general principles are only intended to represent a fair average of what people actually do. Surely every mage in Dereth will deviate from the collective in some way, but they are all fairly typical of the group at large. These deviations will have a small impact though, even where the extreme templates are concerned. To make this point, consider the level 95 Battlemage in my example versus someone who ONLY cares about war and life (the other magic skills were raised to 200 to be reasonable).

So, sure it's possible to do something different. Sure, the person who does it like this example is a nut. But, with the way the experience curves work in AC, you can bet that the magic schools are going to be close. If anything yours may be a little lower because you may have spent more on secondary skills and attributes.

To determine combat effectiveness of a Mage, only three skills are really looked at--Life, War, and Creature Enchantment. Life Magic provides the Vulns that make your War spells more effective, while Creature Magic allows you to raise your skills and lower the skills of your target. Let me state here that although Item Enchantment is not factored into the equation, not having it by level 30 seriously curtails your development, you are essentially consigned to either perching or hunting lower experience producers than your counterparts. You can choose to hunt creatures that rely on magic attacks (which ignore Banes) in high AL armor though, so I did not try to implement a penalty in the comparisons here. However, it generally takes more time to kill a pack of Revenants than it does to kill a pack of Tuskers, so no item still puts you at more of a disadvantage than I have captured here.

The calculation to determine the combat casting skills is basically an average of your war and life magic skills multiplied by a factor generated by your creature magic skill. The way I chose to create the creature modification was to recognize that a creature skill of 200 is barely enough to self buff to the point where you can cast level VI spells. Level VI spells will ultimately add about 50 to your abilities. Assuming at that level a skill of about 200 in war and life, then 200 creature would gain you 250 in life and war, or 40%. If your creature magic is higher then you are more likely to land yields on your targets, so I wanted to reflect that. The final calculation was ((War + Life)/2) • ((Creature/500)+1). This equation provides what seems to be a fair bonus for higher skills in creature magic, but if it doesn't suit you then the raw numbers are provided in Appendix One and you can make your own graph. Once that was done, I divided them all by the max value to end up with a rating of 1 to 10.

An interesting pattern that emerges here is how uniform the lines of the first few templates are while the more extreme templates have a lot more variance. The points where an extreme template falls below the others represents the periods where that particular template is considered the most difficult to play. Every mage will go through growing pains as it progresses; those who select the extreme templates should be aware of when their pain periods are and allow for a little more patience in those levels.

Granted, this is a rudimentary analysis, but it does point out the differences the extreme templates offer. The Og Mage doesn't even come into play until level 26, but once it does it quickly establishes a measure of superiority over the others. The Opal gets it's bump a lot faster, but the absence of item magic until 40 is not really captured here, and does put a serious dent in it's ability until then. The Battlemage starts out strong, then falls behind his peers throughout the middle levels as the others gain skill in Creature Enchantment, which the Battlemage does not get until level 50. Of course, the payoff for this comes after the Battlemage gets Creature Enchantment, and proceeds to pour points into it until he can cast level VI creature spells with ease. In the mid 50s, a Battlemage is as effective in general magic combat as a level 60 Og and a level 70 Four-School. Finally, the Grandpa here took Item first, and that kind of makes him look pretty shabby. You can certainly do it the other way, but the pain of no item magic until 60 will be unbearable for all but the most dedicated.

There is one more point that needs to be made. The higher the skill at which you are casting, the faster you can gain experience. While this may seem obvious, you need to consider it because of the impact at the middle levels when the Battlemage is hurting and the Og is rolling through Dereth like a freight train. As the Og's curve goes flat and dips below the others, it is producing experience at a much faster rate than the others. It may not look like a big difference, but consider that at times your your favorite target will be worth 3K exp and the same level Og's is worth 13K. Among mages, the Og is perhaps the ultimate powerleveler, while the Battlemage is the premier über mage once it's finished. So, although the Life/Mana C Spec mage is likely to be every bit as effective as the Og at level 75, the Og will probably get there much quicker.

Note that in the early levels, there are only basic differences between them all.

The more generalized ones are in fact superior until around level 26, when the War Spec and Life/Mana C Spec mages fill out. From that point forward, in terms of pure magic skill only, the others are left behind. Does this mean that they are less effective overall? Absolutely not! As mentioned previously, a level 40 Four-School can enter places that a level 80 Battlemage cannot simply because he or she may have trained Lockpick. A Life Spec Mage may take Leadership early, and with a little help from vassals outpace the Opal or Og in reaching 50, even though he or she cannot hunt the plains as well. And, a high level mage can raise Melee Defense to levels that can save them from jams where even a level 90 Grandpa would perish. It's all a matter of perspective, the best template is the one that you enjoy most.

In the mid levels, the combat effectiveness order gets a shakeup.

This is where you see the extreme templates begin their rise to the top. The Og and Opal are cruising, enjoying the benefits of specialized creature along with their specialized magic school. You see the Battlemage make a big surge at the end when the template finally picks up creature magic. Likewise the long suffering Grandpa, who mercifully gets war magic at 60.

So where do they end up? Well, the high level combat chart looks like this:

Well, now you see the reverse of the early trend. The templates that made the big sacrifices early on rule the pack, while those at the bottom are the ones who probably enjoyed the ride the most. It's all a give and take. Yes, the Battlemage lives up to his name quite nicely, but the Grandpa is a close second and the gap that separates the true extremes from the rest is a lot smaller that the one between them. In other words, although the Battlemage may be strongest here, you may want to think of it as a diminishing return at this level that is more than made up for by the relative strengths of the other extreme templates at the mid levels.

So, you might ask, why on earth would anyone consider playing a Four-school past level 40? Why not re-roll a Battlemage or Og, and blow through those early levels now that you know what to do? Well, Magic is about more than blowing critters away. At some point, you are going to find yourself in a situation where your offense just won't be enough to survive. For that, you are going to want a little defense too.

This is a little harder to quantify than offense though, as there are so many more factors. Also, your items will make an impact as well. Pre-patch GSA is always going to be better than a Faran robe for defensive purposes, and there is no way to quantify that. Best bet here is to just ignore outfitting and focus on what we do know.

There are a lot of factors that go into an effective defense. Foremost is Life Magic for the protects, followed closely by Item Enchantment. A set of level VII item spells on a robe will give you AL 220+ with unparalleled protections against all physical attacks, after all. Melee Defense and Healing are also important to an effective defense. Melee Defense may not allow you to evade high level content with any consistency, but it will put a big dent into the amount of critical hits you take. Having those silver tuskers pounding on you for 5-10 points instead of 10-20 WILL make a difference to you, trust me. Healing yourself without using Mana is also a huge deal when you are being mobbed. Sure, you can cast heal VI or Stam to Health, but healing is quicker and surprisingly effective.

Magic Defense is one of those skills that shouldn't get much argument. Note I am not thinking that you will ever consistently resist that Umbris Shadow, with it's 400+ casting ability. However, those silly gold wasps or, god forbid, LOW level zefirs still wreak mayhem on high level players occasionally. Although fairly benign, Arcane Lore is also a big assist to defensive ability. Face it, we all forget to cast a spell sometimes. Or, you may be running from one mob and into another--sure is nice to throw on those Lightning VI pants when you can't stop and cast. Speaking of run, we shouldn't forget that either...

OK, with all that said, we need a formula to capture some sort of overall defensive effectiveness. I prefer a weighted average of the skills mentioned, again modified by creature enchantment--that wonderful school that makes everything a little better. Once again, the results are divided by the maximum to put things on a 100 point scale. So, here is the formula I created. As with combat, use the data in Appendix One if you don't like my method.

(((4*Life Magic)+(3*Magic Defense)+(3*Item Enchantment)+(2*Melee Defense)+(2*Healing)+(2*Arcane Lore)+Run)/17)*(1+(B14/500))

Without the level range breakdown, here's the overall graph that this formula generates.

Well, the game giveth, and the game taketh away. What you see here is that the extreme templates that performed so well in the combat equation are not so fortunate this time. This is largely due to the sacrifices that they make in order to push their combat abilities so high. In general, the templates that finish early enough to take some good ancillary skills are better defensively than those that don't (no real surprise there).

Of course, defense doesn't get you experience, and doesn't kill things for you. It's a convenience, that's all. So, all you high level Battlemages out there shouldn't necessarily go out and re-roll four-schools just to satisfy the urge to evade something. Personally, I will take a good offense in AC over a good defense any day of the week.

There is a third factor I wanted to include in this basic analysis. Not everyone plays the game by themselves. The person in Dereth whom I admired the most was Uncus (FrostFell), a truly nice guy who pretty much leveled off fellowship experience and the occasional drain. Uncus was a support mage from the ground up--never had war and never intended to take it. He was always ready with a heal, a buff, or to do a little alchemy for you. Well, that's how a lot of mages like to play. I admit that ripping off a level VII war and a vuln and one-hitting a tusker is a lot of fun, but so is managing to heal your comrades, imperil and vuln the baddies, and stay alive.

The support formula I have developed is similar to the Defense formula. It is as follows:

(((4*Life Magic)+(4*Creature Enchantment)+(2*Item Enchantment))/10)*(1+(Mana Conversion/400))

Note that creature enchantment is considered an integral support skill. Taking its place as an overall modifier is good old Mana Conversion. Many's the time I have managed to squeeze out a Heal IV with no mana that proved to be the difference between my comrades victory and me running away and going back to pick them up at the lifestone. Mana Conversion rules when you are supporting, 'nuff said.

Here's the graph:

No real surprise that the Grandpa mage rules here, we aren't looking at war at all. As with defense, the really offensive-oriented mages aren't quite as effective in this category, which just emphasizes that having obscene combat skills does take a sacrifice.

So, how do you choose? Is one of these right for you, or do you really want to spec Missile Defense and hunt Lugians in the Excavations? Well, the first thing you want to do is determine how far you want to go. If you never intend to hunt the plains and just want to fool around with magic, then you should really take a template that fills out quickly. There isn't a real penalty to do so, so your choice should probably be determined by how many skills you want to take versus the general personality of your character. Use the charts to see where you want your comparative growing pains to be, and plan accordingly. I will mention that the reason I say comparative is because there is a tendency to judge yourself by how others are doing, and my bet is that most people look only at the others who are peaking when they do make those comparisons.

If you are looking to get to your mid 30s, and maybe a little beyond, then by all means take a primary school and specialize it! With any of them you are sure to be casting level VIs in something by 30-35 (with buffs of course!), and your decision should lie not so much in how far you think you may want to go, but in the play style you prefer. Support mages will love specialized Life and Mana Conversion, while those who are more generalized may like just specialized Life with the extra 4 skill points that that template offers. Then there are those who just want to blast away. If you stay with any of these characters you will enjoy relative advantages and disadvantages, but again the differences are marginal.

Regarding the Og Mage and the Opal. The glaring difference in these and the one-school specialized mages lies in the level ranges where you are casting with buffed skill of about 250 to 325. Basically, as an Og you sacrifice a skill (and your first 26 levels) in order to make your 30s, 40s, and 50s a lot easier to get through. As an Opal you suffer less up front than the Og, but in your 30s you are really going to be hating not having Item Magic. Is it worthwhile? Well, most who choose one of these seem to think so, and the numbers suggest that it is.

Then there's the Battlemage. If you create this then you really have to have one of two goals in mind. You either want to just fool around in the lower levels or you are dedicated to reaching level 50. When your Og friends are hunting the BSD at level 30 you are still having to settle for drudges and tusker drains from safe locations. You can't buff your robe effectively until at least level 35, as you cannot rely on creature buffs to raise your item high enough for level Vs--the absolute minimum required for survival against apes. If you are willing to put forth the effort, at level 50 when you finally get creature you will be the strongest pure mage in Dereth. Pure mage is right--you aren't going to have any other skills and won't get them until 70.

Finally, the Grandpa. Well, I have a lot of bias against this one simple because I can't see how anyone in their right mind can go for so long without War Magic. Once you get it, you will probably have enough experience saved up to immediately vault yourself near the top of all mages in terms of effectiveness, but you will never be as strong as the Battlemage in terms of combat magic and your other skills will likely not make up for that for a loooooong time. This one takes a certain mindset to do well with. I confess that I have played one to 30 and love it, but if it was my first mage I would have rerolled him a long time ago.

So what does all this mean? Well, if you are interested in getting your mage to level 20 or so, then either go all out and choose a Battlemage or choose one of the first three. With the No-Spec or 4-School you will actually be casting Item IV near 18, so you can wear a robe at those levels. Also, you can continue past 20 on lower level quests with a nice, well-rounded character. With a plan like this, you may want to add a little more to quickness than you would normally.

If your target level is 40, then you may jump to the Og template reflexively because all the folks on the message boards said to. Before doing that, consider that your in-game time will probably be without War Magic for half of your career. Unless you are planning on being a real slow leveler from 26 to 40, then you may want to consider specializing in a major school or maybe making an Opal. You will have a lot more fun in the earlier levels than the Og, but be prepared to be surpassed in capability pretty soundly in your mid to late 30s if you're the competitive type. If you are in Dereth to have fun, however, and could care less about Aerlinthe, then this will probably be the better choice for you.

If you want to hunt the Island and get to the really high levels, then you have a lot of choices. Just decide where you want the pain to be and go from there. If you are sick of early levels anyway (and I bet that if you are you still haven't done half of what is available for you there) and want to just zoom through then be an Og and go to the Walled Portals and drain, drain, drain. Get to 26, take War, and start rolling.

If you prefer the more traditional path and want a lot of diversification, then spec Life or War and take your other skills along the way. Note that with more skills you will not be as capable as the extreme mage for a long time, as your experience will be spread out more, but once you get to around 55-60 the difference in skills will probably be more than made up for with the diversification that you have chosen. If you want to be a pure mage, then this may not count for much though, so think about that at creation.

If you are experienced already, or have a good friend to hit you with critter buffs as you grow older, then you may want to try the Battlemage. Now, during your first 20 levels you are going to think I am nuts for suggesting anything else but this template, because you will be way beyond all your other mage buddies in terms of base offensive ability, and they are still going to have mana management problems with self-buffing.

Well, keep your euphoria in check, because they have many more resources than you. Your experience is concentrated in three areas here (besides your attributes) while theirs is spread a little thinner, and its in the 20s that the spread starts to make an impact. So they catch up, who really cares, right? Well, catching up is fine, but in your 30s they will pretty much pass you in terms of combat ability and are going to dust you bad in the 40s. Problem here is that it will be real tempting to hunt by yourself. This isn't bad by itself, but it can lead to a selfish play style. Maybe you're fine with that. Just make sure it is you before you choose.

Another option is going by the numbers. Take a look at offense, defense, and support and your target levels, and decide from there. This table provides an average for each mage at each level range:

So, if you intend to play the most in the middle levels and think Combat is twice as important as Defense, and Defense is twice as important as Support, them you could make a little equation where bestmage=max((4*combat)+(2*defense)+support)), which in this case would be the Life Specialized Mage. Frankly, kind of a silly way to create, in my opinion, but if you like numbers them go for it.

So what do I think you should do if that's silly? Well, you should pretty much ignore any perceived recommendations you read here and look at the way you think the types of mages listed will be playing at certain points in their careers. Then go back to your initial personality and ask yourself, is this how I will probably grow up in Dereth? Let your imagination make the decision for you, you will be a lot happier in the long run if you do. As far as comparing yourself to other mages, I have yet to meet the person who understands their progression and feels like they are actually "someone in Dereth" who is worried about comparisons with others around them. If you put this much thought into creation, you are going to have fun and be happy.

OK, no more intense analysis (Phew!). This section is short and to the point. Outfitting your mage refers to what armor and equipment you intend to use. In doing so, you need to consider what burden does and how much you can take. Each point of strength you have gives you the ability to carry 150BU worth of stuff. Note that you can carry up to three times your capacity, but being burdened makes you slower, easier to hit, and slower to revitalize. Most mages spend the greater parts of their careers burdened, but just about all agree that it's better to not be if you can avoid it.

Mages have to carry spell components, and lots of them. I think that there is an employee at Turbine whose sole job is to make sure that comps are burning fast enough. When you are casting level Is and IIs, this isn't a big deal, but the average level VI spell burns about 3 components per cast. In a normal buff cycle, you are casting up to 16 of them (all the masteries, focus, will, item buffs and protects). Killing a critter usually uses two or three high level spells combined with a few low level drains. Figure on a good day that you will get 20 kills per buff cycle, and at 5 cycles per hour you are looking at burning 840 components per hour. Big number when you actually think about it, huh?

A high level mage usually carries in the neighborhood of 10 scarabs, 15 talismans, 30 potions, 30 herbs, 30 powders, and 50 tapers for spells that are not frequently cast, and about 30 scarabs, 25 talismans, 50 potions, 50-100 herbs, 100-200 powders, and 100-200 tapers for spells that are used a lot. So, let's generalize and say you have the following quantities: 80 Scarabs, 800 Tapers, 800 Herbs, 650 Powders, 650 Potions, and 250 Talismans. That's about 13,000 BU, requiring about 90 strength just to carry them, your wand, and packs to hold them all. BTW, I have left peas out of this, but you will be carrying them as well probably, and your individual style will determine how many and whether the aforementioned numbers will decrease as a result.

Welfare mode is one way a mage with item magic chooses to combat the problem of carrying so many comps. Basically, what you do is grab either a starter wand or the Impious Staff (because it's no-drop) and use a basic hooded Faran and cheap gloves. If you are carrying gold scarabs or better you don't have to worry about losing your robe and gloves because you will drop comps when you die every time. This is a great way to go when you are hunting someplace you probably shouldn't be, or are in one of those places that you just aren't going to be able to get back to easy.

If you want to play in welfare mode all the time then you really never need more than 100 strength. But you probably want to use that armor VI ring you got off that Umbris or the Life Mastery V staff your patron hooked you up with. Use those and you are going to want death items (i.e. items that drop when you die so you don't lose the stuff you hunt with). That requires more strength, and the higher your level the more you will need to carry to avoid losing the things you actually use in combat.

If you are a young mage, then maybe you are only carrying 4000BU worth of comps. But, you don't have the item skill to buff a robe, so you need to wear armor. Well, by now you should realize that burden means something to you, and therefore don't go looking for that really nice looking amuli or plate if it means you will constantly be at 150% burden. Some folks don't care about this (Q has been a fat mage for most of his career), but it is something to think about, especially if you like the shoot and scoot attack.

Bottom line is that you should recognize that these are prosperous times in Dereth, and you shouldn't have a problem getting a nice, dull looking Mattekar Coat with high AL leather leggings. The nice thing about these is that even with level IV item buffs, you still have a lot of protection against anything you are likely to face. Failing that, get an armordillo hide coat (AL 70, nice protects) and reedshark hide leggings, or a basic leather outfit until you find some higher AL equipment. I see a lot of mages in Yoroi leggings, but they offer very little elemental protection and have a higher BU than leathers so although they look nice, they generally are not as effective as quality leathers for the discerning mage.

If you like a robe, and if you don't mind long buff cycles, get a basic shirt and pants and buff those as well. Turbine has stated that Impen is stackable, so if you get 200AL on your robe and 200AL on the shirt underneath it then your upper body has an effective AL of 400. Baning your robe can add up to 200% to it's effectiveness, so don't forget that as well.

Mana Conversion may also have an impact on what you wear to the hunt. Usually you want to bane for at least two damage types (unless you are hunting apes), and of course, there is your impen. That's three spells per piece of armor. So assuming you're doing your undies too, here are some popular armor combinations and the amount of spells they will take:

• Headgear/Matty Robe/Gaunts/Underclothing, 11 spells
• Hooded Faran Robe/Gloves or Gaunts/Underclothing, 8 spells
• Headgear/Amuli (could be GSA)/Gaunts/Solz or Boots/Underclothing, 14 spells
• Headgear/Mage Armor/Solz or Boots/Underclothing, 14 spells
• Headgear/Mattekar or Leather Coat/Leather Gaunts/Leather Legs/Solz or Boots/Underclothing, 14 spells
• A full set of armor with critter spells/Underclothing, 23 or 26 spells

Basically, there are a ton of combinations out there. When choosing armor you also want to consider the natural protections it has. I have the Aerfalle's Pallium, and having spent too much on arcane, I can activate it. I also have a set of nice gaunts with creature spells, and a variety of helms with same. So, if I am out hunting baddies that mainly do spellcasting damage (like Undead or shadows), I just wear it and only cast life protects. When I am after critters that do a lot of physical damage too, I will generally use a robe and bane the fire out of it. Them hollow bastards get armor...

This section is less about analysis and more about what life in Dereth is like. Regardless of whether you are a fighter, archer, or mage, there are a lot of things for you to discover and you can count on several trips to the lifestone finding them out. Mages, however, sometimes seem to have a little more to discover than the rest. A good thing you will soon realize is that you start out as probably the most powerful level one in Dereth. However, as you grow you start to fall behind--to the point where you are whining because Archers are overpowered and Bandit Weapons are unbalancing (well... maybe that part's true ;-p).

Anyway, there's a lot to learn and a lot to do. This is what this section deals with.

OK, you have created your baby mage, and have a whopping 100 mana and a magic skill of about 60. You know the flame bolt spell and little else. The first thing you do is get your tail to the archmage and blow your 100p on some basic comps to learn all the war I spells (and the enterprising archmage will learn his/her level I life vulns as well). Maybe you already have all your equipment, or maybe you intend to role-play a self-sufficient mage, only using what you find. It really doesn't matter. Your first few levels will go by quickly from learning spells and blasting the low level drudges and shreths on the outskirts of town.

Then you get brave and wander a little deeper into the woods. You see a lone orange dot on your radar, and assess. "A Reedshark Pup," you think, "level five can't be too difficult, I am level six now, bet I can take it." You get it on the edge of your radar, fire a force bolt and then masterfully hit it with a piercing vulnerability right before it lands. Booyah! Got it down to half health on the first hit! OK, the orange dot starts moving toward you and you take aim and kill it with your second or third shot. Trouble is, that dot keeps coming an you realize that there were others with it. Oops... OK, the pup wasn't so bad, what was with it. Adult Reedshark? Level 10, huh? Well, you should probably be able to take that before it kills you...

Adult Reedshark resists your spell
Adult Reedshark nips you for 14 points of piercing damage
Your Spell fizzled.
Adult Reedshark nips you for 8 points of piercing damage
You impale Adult Reedshark for 12 points with Force Bolt II
Adult Reedshark giggles as it sends you hurling towards the lifestone, and decides to sit on your corpse for a while for spite.

OOPS Well, maybe you need to start being a little more careful. You repeat the process, this time firing and then turning to run. Dang, it's faster than me. Ouch! Sheesh! How long is this thing going to chase me? Ouch! Hello, Lifestone, you're looking bigger than the last time we met. Hmm... 10% vitae...

Well, after a while the pesky reedshark goes away and you get your corpse back, or maybe you brought in your retired level 50 archer to dispatch it handily. Point is, that reedshark pup didn't give you too much experience, and neither do the drudges any more. What do you do to get higher in level? Where is a good place for you? Well, you need to know two things before you decide, how experience works and what Magic Defense means.

Creatures give experience based on two values. The first is the basic experience award that is assigned for them, and the second is the result of a modifier based on your comparative levels. The formula works like this:

If (Creature Level +3) > Player Level then
Exp = (Creature Exp Award) x ((Creature Level +3)/(Player Level)) else
Exp = (Creature Exp Award) x ((Creature Level -3)/(Player Level))

Note that this may not be entirely accurate, as it's all hearsay. I could not find confirmation from Turbine on this when I wrote the article, but it seems pretty accurate in my experience. Also, the first time you land a spell in combat you will get the double creatures magic defense directly added to your war skill upon a successful cast. So, even though you were used by the reedshark earlier, you still got 56 points assigned to your war skill for a successful hit. Note that this particular experience reward is on a 130 second timer. If you managed to finish it and immediately turned to another one if it's magic defense was the same or less you would get no additional experience applied to your war skill.

"You mean the Adult Reedshark's magic defense is only 23?!?!?! My skill is 70, I should have OWNED it!" you may say. Well, it happens. Magic defense is one of those broken skills that seems to work the opposite way you want it to when you need it most. You're actually probably going to hit it more often than that, but if you go after level 6 Mossies be warned that their base Magic D is 59 and they will probably embarrass you. Their melee defense and attacks, however, are also in the mid 60s, making them good melee fodder. The lesson in this is that you need to know what is best for you to hunt, and act accordingly.

OK, so why didn't you own the Reedshark? Well, Magic Defense is one of those things where, although you never fully understand it, you do come to believe it was put in by Turbine just as an act of spite towards you personally. In truth, Magic Defense uses the same formula as Mana Conversion.

success = 1 / (1 + EXP( 0.03 * (difficulty - skill)) where
success is your chance of succeeding,
difficulty is what you have to overcome. In this case, it will be your Magic Defense
skill is the skill in question. In this case, it will be your War or Life Magic skill.
EXP is the exponential function

And, so you don't have to go back and forth in the document several times, here is the table again.

So you had about a 77% chance of hitting the Reedshark. Well, chalk this one up to bad luck I guess, but now you see why Magic Defense is so important. When you cast, you go through three basic checks. First, it uses the above chart to determine whether or not you are successful at casting the spell. In this case, you were casting Force Bolt II, and with 20 skill points over the spell difficulty, you have a 65% chance of actually casting it. Then you get to wait and see if you actually hit. Spell tracking is not the most reliable thing in Dereth, and moving targets are evil so far as Mages are concerned. Finally, you connect and see if you can overcome their resistance.

So, if you run the numbers you see that you actually only have a 50% chance of doing damage to the reedshark at close quarters (65% of 77%). With the small sample of three shots mentioned above, it suddenly becomes a lot more believable that you only hit it once in three tries. Of course, with a Melee Defense of 10 and taking into account the Reedshark's attack skill of 80, it will hit you 89% of the time. Couple this with the fact that it has 60 hit points and you realize that you aren't going to be winning any toe-to-toe battles with this critter for a few levels yet.

So, with that in mind, what should you be hunting? Well, what's good experience for your level? This generally depends on your level I guess... At the baby levels anything that yields 200 to 500 exp is good, while when you get to 10 you want about 1000 exp per kill. This is a very subjective question to answer, as different people have different play styles, and different expectations based on their level of patience and desire for exploration. To borrow an example from the Melee, a level 40 may choose the OHN, where you only get 6K per kill but there are LOTS of kills to be had, or the Nexus, where you get 10K per kill but will have fewer kills and more downtime from running and healing.

The same holds true for a mage. If you go to the DM on any given night, you will see a level 20-25 mage waiting on the tusker spawn at the bottom. Easy kill, takes a while maybe, and the spawn is 15 minutes apart. That mage will maybe make 75-100K per hour, less if other people are in there. A different mage at the same level will be hunting Granites at the Crater Caves. If it isn't too camped they will take out about 10 of them per buff cycle, or up to 40 per hour. This can yield around 100K as well; the Granites aren't worth near as much as the Tusker but there are more of them.

So the answer to the age-old question, "Where should I hunt?" should be addressed by instead saying "What should I hunt?" Once you decide on that, then you can ask, "Where are there a bunch of uncamped <fill in your favorite monster here>?" The answer to what you can hunt will be determined by your magic skills. To effectively hunt a creature, your buffed magic skill should be around 50 points higher than it's Magic Defense for consistency, and don't forget the value of a good magic yield if you have creature.

Here are some popular types of creatures for Mages, their magic resistance, and where you might find them. Also included are recommended levels. I mainly included both creatures that I see mages go after a lot and those with a high level to magic defense ratio. For instance, although Mosswarts have a wonderful Missile Defense for the Junior Archer League, their magic defense makes them rarely worth the effort for the exp, but Bandies...

OK, this guide is mainly written for the aspiring Mage, so although we will be discussing the raising of skills and attributes here I am not going to get into detail for the later levels. For the first 25 levels or so, though, most players mainly focus on their attributes. The reason for this lies in the fact that all skills are based on Attributes, so early on you get the most bang for your buck by raising them. Early on, you want to raise everything, while later in life you tend to set specific goals and raise your skills directly.

Consider the impact of raising self by ten points right out of the gate. This will cost you 3,746 experience points. The benefits of that are ten points to mana, three points to each magic school (the game rounds up), two points to Mana Conversion, three points to loyalty, five points to an assessment or appraisal skill, and one point to Magic Defense. Add those up for a standard Four-School mage and you get the following respective numbers:

2,472 + 4(612) + 382 + 612 + 1,152 + 178 = 7,244

Obviously, adding to your attribute is much more efficient. Of course, you may not care too much about anything but your Mana, Spell Schools, and Mana Conversion, but even with that attitude you would still be spending 5,302 to match the results.

So, for the first 20 levels Mages (and most other characters) pretty much confine their experience spending to attributes, with the leftovers going into other skills like Loyalty, Run or Jump. To see how things may generally progress, and this is only an example, consider the skill and attribute progressions of a Four School Mage and a Life/Mana C specialized Mage.

As the chart shows, the first 20-30 levels focus on Attributes. At level 30, the specialized skills are significantly higher than trained ones, as these have mainly been raised through use, although its common for a skill to be raised directly on training with saved experience points. From level 30 on, skills are given a lot more direct attention, and it's here that specialization starts to give a lot of benefits. If you specialize it, you don't have to spend a lot of experience to raise Life Magic to 200, giving you a lot of experience to put in other places. In doing these charts, I chose specific goals at the level milestones for Attributes, Magic Schools, and for any skill taken after creation (why train it if you aren't going to use it?).

Also, with the Four-School there are several more skills trained. This means that experience is being taken away from some skills in order to give loving to others. So, the level 90 Four School's war magic may be 18 points lower than the Life/Mana C Spec's, but he has a Melee Defense of 200 and is getting a ton more vassal points probably. Finally, slightly different emphasis was given to each one's progression, as the Four-School is probably more interested in a well-rounded template while the Mage with specialization may have more specific goals in mind. Note that this is not an endorsement of one over the other--I promise you that if you manage to get either template to level 90 you will probably have tons of fun playing it.

Before you start wailing and gnashing your teeth and sending me e-mail saying, "N00B! Ur d00d SUX0R! I 0\/\/N U!" let me say that this is only one way to do it, and it's actually kind of artificial as the entire chart is done through math. Your character, even with the same template, will likely have a very different look, especially in the mid to high levels. However, this should give you a clue as to the progressions a lot of people take. Still, I just know I am going to get a bunch of e-mail from people telling me about their level 30 4-school mage with 300 base war... <sigh>.

OK, so you got your mage made, you paid your dues by learning all your spells, and are ready to take on some of the harder critters out there. Well, it won't be too long before you say to yourself, "there's got to be a better way..." I am talking, of course, about your spell tabs. As you have learned spells, you probably just stuck them on a tab arranged maybe by level, maybe by type. The odds are that by now your tabs are starting to look a little cluttered. If not, then skip the next couple of paragraphs.

Arranging spell tabs is a matter of personal preference. Those who use the mouse a lot may not care much how they are done, while the keyboard users will be much more sensitive to an organized arrangement. In arranging them, you should consider not just the spells you have now, but what you will be using down the road. It's better to leave all of them looking a little empty but with room for growth than have all your spells crammed on a single tab.

How you arrange them is your choice. So long as it makes sense to you, and it's organized, it should serve you well. Q's spell tabs are arranged as follows:

Tab One

The first nine slots are in a constant state of change. The first slot is always heal self, and four and five are stam to mana spells, but the rest are directly related to what I am hunting. I may have yields, war spells, drains, etc on these at any given time. Sometimes I need a few more immediately after the nine, but I try and set it up for easy single-tab hunting. After these spells are my recall spells, then my item buffs, and finally my dispells. The reason for these lies in the frequency of use. When I am buffing, I can just go to a section of this spell tab without having to get there fast, so this is just a convenient spot for them.

Tab Two

The first nine slots are heal self followed by protects, and the rest of the spell tab is filled out with creature self-buffs. Sometimes I find myself in a situation I didn't plan for, and need a quick protect without thinking about where it is located (ack! Altered Drudges! [pgdn] 9 [pgup]. You cast Lightning Protection VI on yourself). It's that simple.

Tab Three

I play a lot of support, and this tab is dedicated to that. It's also the one that has the most spells on it, which is why if I am buffing you there is sometimes a slight delay between spells. The first nine slots are heal self, then heal others and revitalizes, and an infuse mana spell. After those come the life protects, then the creature buffs.

Tab Four

Four and Five are my combat tabs for general mayhem purposes. Tab Four has all the life vulns, followed by creature vulns. The life vulns occupy slots one through nine, and appear in the same order as the war spells do on Tab Five. This allows me to hunt with keystrokes like this: 5 [pgdn] 5 [pgup] 5 5. Your Lightning coruscates over Banderling Mauler's mortal remains!

Tab Five

This tab has all my war spells on it. I have my current casting level, followed by my vitae casting level, followed by the ring spells, followed by the level VIIs.

OK, those are my tabs. Other ways you might do it are putting the vulns and war spells next to each other, or putting your self and other buffs on the same tab according to their type. Early on I had three different combat tabs, depending on what I was hunting (the drain tab, the war tab, and the drudge tab) and all the others spread out over the other two tabs. This was fine when I wasn't doing a lot of support, but kind of fell apart as my spellbook filled out. The point here is to give your arrangement some thought from the beginning.

Scour the message boards and you will come across posts occasionally where people discuss this. Well, rather than list all the possibilities here, I have included a few quotes:

"My attacks are in this order, Vuln V, War V, War IV"

"I have a MS intellimouse with the left side button bound to move down one spell/attack low, middle button cast/attack medium, right side button move up one spells/attack high. Left Shift is move up one tab, Left Ctrl is Tab 1, and R is target closest critter. I think this setup is one of the fastest ways to get quickly from one spell to another because you don't need to point the mouse at things and click on them. "

"All my bars have one thing in common, Slot 1--Stamina to Mana VI, Slot 2--Stamina to Mana V, Slot 3--Revitalize Self V, Slot 4--Revitalize Self VI. That way no matter what bar I am on, managing mana is second nature, my hand is so used to the stam2mana trick its like having unlimited mana with this setup. A good rule of thumb is setup your buffing tabs in the order that you will be using them. That way you are not bouncing all over the bar. Also your battle tab should be setup where you never have to scroll sideways mid-battle."

"I hang onto level 4 war if I'm low on mana. I also hang onto level 5 item and life spells here and there on my spellbar, in case I'm debuffed with vitae."

What do all these have in common? Well, the people that came up with them all put some thought into it. There is no "right" way of arranging your spells, they just all talk about different ways of doing the same thing: organization. There is no wrong way to do this, so long as it's done in a way that will work for you.

So, you actually learned all your spells, artfully arranged your tabs, and made your starter town safe from the threat of invasion from carrion shreths. Now you want to really get down to hunting. Lets cover a couple of basic strategies.

The first is the combination Life/War attack. This is really simple actually. Life spells hit their target immediately while War spells have to travel to reach their target. The way you take advantage of this is as follows. First, you position the targets so that they are on the edge of your radar.

Too Close!	Just Right

Then select your victim

Then fire the appropriate war spell. As soon as you fire, cast the appropriate vulnerability.

You cast Bludgeoning Vulnerability Other I on Blue Phyntos Wasp
You knock Blue Phyntos Wasp into next MorningThaw!

The best thing about this type of attack is that a variety of creatures will not run to you unless one of their pack does, and if you can one-hit it then you don't need to worry about all of them at once. If they do decide to run after you, you have given yourself a nice head start. The vulnerability spells also make your war spells a lot more effective, to the point where they effectively double your damage in one hit.

When you fire into a mob, it will generally give chase. Just turn and run, and when it gives up you can fire into it again and have only the affected creature come after you (guess Derethian monsters are particularly sensitive to the Banderling that cried Wolf concept). Now, the P key is your friend. Get to know it, love it, send it flowers and gifts. P is the default keyboard mapping for previously selected, and this is why it's important. Say you manage to land the vuln but your war spell is resisted. The mob targets you and begins to give chase. You manage to get away, but in the process lose the targeting on the creature you vulned.

Well, fear not, you haven't wasted your vuln. Just hit your handy-dandy P key and you will select the item you had last selected, even if it is no longer on your radar! Then proceed until it is, and blast away. Best thing about this method is that the mob won't give chase any more, and you can begin picking them off at your leisure. I have survived entire packs of shadows before (yah, I got lucky), but I still use this technique on them.

Another thing to keep in mind. You have a personal spell economy, which dictates the effectiveness of each spell you cast. On the bottom of the spell tab is a scale that goes to 100%. If you start getting resisted on your level II Flame Bolt a lot, check this out, it's probably sitting at 75%. Throw a Flame Bolt I into the mix to give the level II a chance to recover.

Draining is another common mage attack. The Drain Health spell removes 100 points or 25% of the target's health (whichever is lower) and returns a percentage of that to the caster, based on the spell level. It also costs 20 mana to cast a level one, so it's not a cheap spell for the beginning mage. Harm Other takes ten mana per level, and the war spells take five per level. The reason I am pointing this out is to pave the way for another point--most mages drain too much! Not too often, just too much. Drain is a seductive attack for the feeling of security it provides, but consider this. Against a creature with 200 hit points, you do damage on this progression: 50, 38, 28, 21, 16, 12, 9, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 (death).

Now, if you have a healthy mana conversion, say that it cuts the mana requirement to 40% on average for the spell levels you are casting. Note that this makes the Drain I spell cost less as your levels increase, as you are much more likely to conserve mana on it. Therefore, the Drain I spell's mana cost has been reduces in increments of 6% per spell level for simplicity's sake in the table below. Given than, take a look at the following progression of damage per mana point, based on spell levels (level VII war are not included here):

OK, it's a little complicated at first glance. Basically, at the point in your life when you are casting level ones, against a creature with 80 health your drain does 20 points at a mana cost of around 8, or roughly three points of harm per point of mana used (all numbers in the chart are rounded after calculations). If you fired a war spell at it you would do an average of 12 points, or about 6 points of harm per point of mana. Obviously, War is more efficient at this level. That doesn't mean you want to use it, but it's more efficient. Now, as you gain power and start throwing around level VIs, you are probably still using level one Drains. This is almost a guarantee of effective mana conversion, and your damage to mana ratio on Drains goes way up.

So, if you are looking at things from a mana management perspective, then you would actually drain longer in the high levels. But, you want to consider the fact that although you can often do better from a mana management standpoint with draining, why would you bother them when you can finish your target with a single cast. To reflect this in the chart, the bold numbers indicate the points where your mana management is better, and the cells with the teal backgrounds indicate the points where a single spell often will finish combat for you. Interestingly enough, the simple drain one's damage per mana ratio has an inverse relationship with the war spells finishing points.

Now, let's look at the same analysis with Harm Other spells. Overlaid on the table is a series of cells with blue backgrounds that represent the finishing points for war spells.

Based on it's cost, Harm Other is really never going to give you a good damage to mana ratio. However, for any creature with 40 hit points or less, it's just as effective as the Drain spell at level one, and more effective when the target has under 20 hit points. As with the war spells, there is an inverse relationship in the finishing points versus mana management. However, they come much later.

So, how does this translate into the young mage's development? Consider that Mages tend to fall in love with drains at about the time they are going after Drudge Lurkers or Granite Golems. A Drudge Lurker has 150 hit points and a Granite has 240. Further, many mages do this behind walls, not just the Ogs. So over time your typical wall licker will intuitively get a feel for the relationship with Drain Health and Harm Other.

Want to guess what happens here? Well, three drains are great when you are casting level I spells, but the beginning mage soon gets a feel that draining uses too much mana to make it worthwhile, because there just isn't enough mana left over to harm the target to death. Also, they aren't hunting creatures with 200 hit points, so it's even more worthless to them (what do those high level mages know anyway?). Yah, I know you were told that draining rules, but it just doesn't seem right. Then you progress to level IIIs, and start taking on Lugians or other high hit point creatures. You soon realize that you are doing scads of damage with your first strike, and draining makes more sense. You get caught up in casting 4 or 5 drains in each attack, which is fairly reasonable in your low/mid to middle levels, especially behind walls. Then you start popping off your first War Vs. You face down the tuskers, and start draining until you are getting 12 points back each time (about 6), and finish off with aplomb, deftly burning the ape to a crisp.

Well, you do this a few times and suddenly your personal economy goes in the toilet and you are using all 10 points on each drain, and you get resisted, and your stamina is too low for a stamina to mana, and blah blah blah. You run back to the BSD and curse as you try and rebuff your armor. With a creature that has a lot of hit points like a tusker, just a few drains will get it down to the point where War spells get more effective from both a damage standpoint and a mana management standpoint.

Finally, another thing to consider is that when you are casting level VIs, often you do tons more damage when the drain caps with a combo war/life attack. My level VIs on properly vulned creatures regularly do more than 200 points of damage, while the drain does only 100. So, against a Banderling Mangler 4 spells is enough to finish it this way, at an average cost of 64 mana (vuln VI and three war VI = 160 mana, * 40%). I can do that easy and recharge a lot faster than draining 7 times and finishing with two war spells (at a total cost of 52 mana). Also, with the life/war attack I can usually finish it before it hits me more than once, often before it hits me at all.

So, although every mage in Dereth probably thinks that the Bandit weapons are overpowered (and they are!!!), if you spend all your time whining that you aren't getting any kills in the BSD because there is a melee in there maybe you should look at your casting progression. There's no reason why you shouldn't get a vuln and a war off before he closes, engages, and gets his second swing in, and if he doesn't crit you will get the kill that way at least half the time.

Mana Management is the bane of the young mage's existence. I guarantee that there will come a time when you are trying to kill a critter through a wall and end up having to lie down when it only has 20 health left. Pretty frustrating, huh? Well, you can always use health to mana, but with 40-60 health that's not gonna do a lot. You can drain stamina and do a stam to mana, but the net result of that operation early on is probably going to be only around 20. Remember, your mana conversion is still pretty low at this point.

The way most mages regain Mana is through the Stamina to Mana spell. There isn't a ton that can be said on this point, except to discuss at what levels you should switch from Stamina to Mana I to Stamina to Mana II and so on. To do this, we will again take Mana Conversion into account ("Gee," you may say. That Mana Conversion seems to be everywhere! Take a hint....).

The following table represents how much mana will be returned after the cost of the stamina to mana is factored out at different levels.

So, there you see that the conventional wisdom of moving to Level IIs when you have 130 stamina is justified. However, this statement doesn't take Mana Conversion into account. Using the formula established earlier, and assuming that your average mana saved is the same percentage as your chance of actually conserving mana (yes, we may be reaching here), the following calculations can be made.

What many people may find interesting is that at a Mana Conversion of 250, a Level V will probably prove more effective than a level VI over time. At any rate, for an archer who took life but is waiting for Mana Conversion the switch to Level II at 130 makes sense. For the Mage, however, you may want to change when your stamina is around 70, not 130.

Well, that leads into this point well. Get some mana renewal and mana conversion items. Even if you don't have lore you can still take advantage of the explorer society wands (save those Lucky Gold Letters!), and you may actually want to add to mana conversion directly until it's around 100. You can also try carrying around mana potions, but they're expensive. If you can get your stamina to 130 though, you can use stamina elixirs and stam to mana II to get your mana back a little cheaper and more efficiently. Yes, they're heavy, but who cares? You're a mage! Many's the time I have formed a mental picture of this skinny dude lugging a steamer trunk full of spell components into the dungeon, but such is life in Dereth. Until you have Melee Defense, you don't really have to be concerned with burden.

One more thing... Getting resisted is extremely frustrating. It's going to happen, and it will likely happen a lot for a long time. Just play through it and be patient, once you get over the hump you will be able to go anywhere and pretty much do anything you want. It just takes time and experience. If you are an Og especially, don't reflexively jump back on your perch or behind your wall after you get war and discover that it doesn't let you roam the plains with alacrity. Instead, learn what you can do and how to stay alive when you have no mana an buffs are going and things are on your tail big-time. You will learn a lot more that way, and will have more fun later on in life.

Well, it's going to happen eventually. You will reach all your goals, or will get to a point where you can hunt anywhere in Dereth. Congratulations, first of all. Now you get to decide how you will play. Before you restart, consider that Mages make wonderful patrons. You can also change your style of play to shake things up. At various times in his career, Q has played the drain mage, the pure war style, a support role, or in a fellow as the designated vulner/imperiler for melees (this is the most challenging to me). Get away from the apes and hit Bandys and Shadows for a while.

Anyway, what you decide to do is your own, but if you remember who you started out as and who you wanted to be, then you will probably have a lot of fun at it. I can't think of the quest in Dereth where a high level mage is not welcome!

I hope that this article has helped answer a lot of questions you may have about making and playing a mage. I am sure it didn't cover everything, and I may have raised some new and more difficult ones for you. In any case, here are some good resources that you can use to learn more:

The Road To Gimpsville: Mages and Specialization
The Math Behind the Skill Check
Elohim's Guide to "Og" Mages
Dizzarian's Diary of Dereth
Alle's AC Tips
The Obsidian Guard Mage Compendium

Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to meeting you in your travels through Dereth!

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