Getting Past the Spellup Blues

[Gnomad]

I love playing my empath, but as I logged him on today I realized I never use him any more. He's a 2HW empath, and I love watching him deal out and take damage, but hunts take way too long - I spend about half the time spelling up that I do hunting. There's no fun in that.

Since I'm swinging, I usually wear, at least, 1109, 1119, 1125, 1130, 211, 215, plus all the little DS and TD spells.

By the time I get them all done, I barely want to hunt anymore.

PSINET SPELLUP isn't that useful, because if I'm going to sit and spell myself up, I'd want 4 hours of 107, but not 4 hours of 1119, and there's no easy way to set separate timers.

If memory serves, he just hit 31. Any advice?

[GuildRat]

write a script that shortens the spells you don't need 4 hours on, and maximizes what you need?

It's that easy.

[fallenSaint]

Yea I can't think of the last time I spelled up manually, jot down a script with your casts and just run as you rest to keep everything on refreash then have a seperate script to toss on before you start the hunt for shit that doesnt stack. And not to mention a script to flag all your CoL Signs.

[Silvanostar]

even if he isn't spelling up for 4 hours, 1109, 1119, and 1130 are mana intensive as hell. thats one of the reasons why i switch from using weapons to a 1106 build. you could probably do without 1125 though. is your empath in col?

what i do with my empath is spellup for 4 hours then go hunt. once i fry, i refresh my spells for 2 hours and by the time i'm ready to head out again, i have enough mana to hunt. and since my empath is a dwarf, wracking isn't much of a problem.

[Jolena]

My empath is a brawl/shield build and I also use 1106 a lot. What I do is pretty much what Silvanostar has said. I spellup fully for 4 hours before hunting, then in between hunts I refresh and by the time I'm ready to head out I have full mana again. It really doesn't take long as long as I'm at a table, and I don't have my empath in any society so there's not even the option of wracking.

[Zarli]

why bother with 4 hours of spells period? Sometime if you're doing something else, use the psinet spellup and pile on the spells when you're not actually planning on hunting, otherwise, just put on enough to get you through the hunt. When you get older it's not going to make much of a difference because you'll have plenty of mana, but for now a couple casts of the spells you need, dont bother with 4 hours.

Since you're swinging, you dont need the mana to hunt so it shouldn't be a problem to put enough spells on to get you 30 minutes to make it through the hunt.

[Landrion]

Eventually I moved to a combination rest/spellup script. The script would check if the character's mind was empty, if so it would log off. Otherwise every 8 minutes or whatever time period it took to go from empty to full mana it would recast everything I typically wore. I think it took 4 2 minute xp checks between spellups, so Id have the script echo 4 3 2 1 so I could look at it at any point and know if it were close to trying to respell.

This was very useful on the cleric, whose important spells didnt stack. The character was always keeping his durations up without my input making it much less onerous. His script could be more aggressive time wise thanks to meditation - which your empath should share.

The only bad thing was, I didnt like to rest in populated areas because of the screen scroll for other people.

Honestly it was ham-handed compared to psinet spellup. But it had the merit of working whether I had psinet installed or not.

Unfortunately, I cant share the script with you. I only had it in stormfront and Im currently inactive. Maybe I should have spent more effort interacting with folks during my downtime than automating it ::doh::.