New(ish) wizard help

[Caipre]

OK ... so I could probably use some advise here. I'm new to the game (3 months), and not really the experienced gamer, so your help is appreciated. I've put my starting skills setting below, and my current info (at level 12), and skills. I know I'm kind of low on my current spell lists, but that is due to the amount of training points I currently get per level. I know I can adjust the skills to give me more training points, but where will I suffer? Currently my wizard hunts with spells (and wands when I have them), but I don't want to lose the option to hunt with sword and shield when I run out of mana. Any advice?

Info Start:
STR 50
CON 70
DEX 60
AGL 60
DIS 55
AUR 90
LOG 80
INT 70
WIS 70
INF 55

Info:
Norm (Bon) ... Enh (Bon)
Strength (STR): 53 (6) ... 53 (6)
Constitution (CON): 73 (11) ... 73 (11)
Dexterity (DEX): 66 (8) ... 66 (8)
Agility (AGI): 63 (6) ... 63 (6)
Discipline (DIS): 61 (5) ... 61 (5)
Aura (AUR): 94 (22) ... 99 (24)
Logic (LOG): 84 (22) ... 89 (24)
Intuition (INT): 76 (18) ... 76 (18)
Wisdom (WIS): 74 (12) ... 74 (12)
Influence (INF): 61 (5) ... 61 (5)
Strength: 112
Mana: 69
Stamina: 38
Spirit: 10

Skills:
Skill Name | Curr Curr
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use.........................| 20 4
Shield Use.........................| 45 9
Edged Weapons...............| 66 14
Physical Fitness.................| 66 14
Arcane Symbols.................| 74 16
Magic Item Use..................| 114 28
Spell Aiming.......................| 102 24
Harness Power..................| 114 28
Elemental Mana Control.....| 25 5
Elemental Lore - Air............| 15 3
Elemental Lore - Earth........| 5 1
Elemental Lore - Fire...........| 15 3
Elemental Lore - Water.......| 15 3
Perception...........................| 66 14
Climbing..............................| 62 13
Swimming............................| 40 8
First Aid...............................| 70 15
Trading................................| 40 8
Spell Lists
Major Elemental...................| 5

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental...................| 2

Spell Lists
Wizard..................................| 12

[Celexei]

key off...focus on ONE lore, its pointless to focus on multiples, and very costly climbing and perception don't need that type of growth that fast, trading is (i find it) not important...If you wanna hunt with a blade your gonna need more strength.

[AnticorRifling]

Drop edged and shield use and pick up two handed weapons or polearms.

[Celexei]

thats a fun way to go as well....sounds difficult

[Caipre]

I was thinking about adding some pole arms, so I can use the staff somewhat. Also some brawling for voln-fu when I get to that stage. Should I drop a little of my training in other areas? I was trying to even the lores out a bit to gain some in the various spells. How about my stat placement, any changes suggested there? Thanks for the responses so far!

[Celexei]

well as far as i know, least maybe they changed it, i thought staffs where two handers....but would make since if they're poles with the tripping and all....lores don't affect your spells until you have more than 20 in them anyway...as far as i'm to know anyway

[Trinitis]

Staves are two handers, not pole arms :)

fyi

[Galleazzo]

Back off of that Climbing and Swimming. You sure don't need both at 12th level, not nearly that high. Maybe you need a bit of Climbing that soon if you're in Icemule but not really anywhere else.

Runestaff use is a simple deal. It's based on having at LEAST 8 ranks a level in spells, Arcane, Magic Item Use, Harness Power, Lores and Mana Control. Weapon skills don't affect them squat.

There isn't a successful wizard in the world who doesn't at least double spells and you got a lot of wasted points. If you want to be a war mage, sure, okay (even if it doesn't work so well any more), but what's with doubling Magic Item Use? Why go over 1x on Arcane? Knock that shit down so you can put points in your actual spells.

Otherwise if what you want is to be a swordswinger who casts some spells go with a semi or a cleric.

[AnticorRifling]

Drop down to 5 ranks of climb and 5 ranks of swim. Get 5 more in each by lvl 20.

Focus on one or two lores. Hitting all four will not yield any big advantage when compared to the cost.

2x spells. This is a backbone of a wizard. I've made it missing 4 spells before but that was because my training costs a ton of TP's. If I could have squeezed those spells in I would have though.

You look like you want to be a pure wizard so you don't need the shield and OHE training. Drop those down to zero and bump up your arcance skill to 2x, get those missing ranks of spell aim, get some elemental mana control, and get fully trained(if not overtrained_ in your spells. Then pick up a 4x runestave and have fun.

[AnticorRifling]

Originally posted by Galleazzo
If you want to be a war mage, sure, okay (even if it doesn't work so well any more)

It still works fine it's just not for everybody :cool:

[Zanagodly]

I have a wizard who goes 1x earth, .5x fire. He still ends up tripling 40 times before he caps, should I back totally off fire and allow myself to triple more?

[Galleazzo]

Yeah, Anticor, but if you want to be a war mage you don't need scroll or MIU, those are just points holding you back. You need those skills up the wazz if you're going runestaff, but you sure as hell can't do both.

[Fengus]

I'd second or third the suggestion to lost the lores, unless you are a warmage (where haste and strength bonuses are essential) I would bother with lores, especially when you are young. Lose them and the weapon/shield (unless thats what you are doing) and put those points into your magic skills, spell for the most part but you can easily double in Mana Control for some cheaper spell ranks.

You should be able to hunt with your own mana with only a little wand use at this age, and it will be much improved when you get 913 and 513, but of course you are really slacking on the major elemental circle.

Stats look good for the most part, not thinking too far term, but not too short term either. Only thing I would change is DEX, I would get it up another 10-20 points or so, its just much more effective to have a good bonus there for your bolts, makes like much easier. And I would take it from CON, what race are you?

[Caipre]

I'm human. Look pretty evened out, only a few small positives, but no negatives.

[Caipre]

From above (at 12) to (at 13) ...

Armor Use ... 4 ranks
Two-Handed Weapons ... 10 ranks
Physical Fitness ... 15 ranks
Climbing ... 5 ranks
Swimming ... 5 ranks
Perception ... 14 ranks
First Aid ... 15 ranks
Trading ... 5 ranks
Arcane Symbols ... 21 ranks
Magic Item Use ... 29 ranks
Harness Power ... 30 ranks
Spell Aiming ... 30 ranks
Elemental Mana Control ... 5 ranks
Spell Research:
Major Elemental ... 2 ranks
Minor Elemental ... 10 ranks
Wizard ... 13 ranks
Elemental Lore (Not decided on which lore yet, any direction on which lores work better with what?)
Air ... 3 ranks

This still leaves me with a shit load of PTPs, after transfering a bunch of MTPs to PTPs. If this looks good, I'm willing to use my fixskills on it. I've seen people say there is another fixskills coming, is this true?

[AnticorRifling]

If you're not going to single in your weapon type don't bother. Either fully 1x or drop it and be a runestaff user. Your swing will be bad enough with full 1x, under that is just pointless.

[Caipre]

If you mean the THW, I put that in there for the staff, but wasn't really sure what it would give me. I doubt I can do much damage swinging a rune staff. I would rather get a little training so I can "trip". I'd prefer to be a pure. I am noticing that I have too many PTP and not enough MTP though.

[AnticorRifling]

I train in CM, polearms, etc and I still have more PTP's than MTP's that's just the way it is.

[Fengus]

A lot of things still that seem to serve no real purpose. Trip will not likely be effective even if you were to full single and it offers no benefit for using the runestaff, that all comes from how many ranks of magic skills you have when considering your training.

Climbing ... 5 ranks
Swimming ... 5 ranks
Perception ... 14 ranks
First Aid ... 15 ranks
Trading ... 5 ranks

Not sure why you have so much perception or the FA, unless you are doing that for skinning. The climbing and swimming are mostly waste at this level and can certainly be delayed until later. Also the armor ranks what are you trying to get there?



Here are my base stats for a human wizard attempting to maximize MTP for a CoL runestaff user.

Strength (STR): 62
Constitution (CON): 23
Dexterity (DEX): 90
Agility (AGI): 35
Discipline (DIS): 58
Aura (AUR): 80
Logic (LOG): 79
Intuition (INT): 71
Wisdom (WIS): 88
Influence (INF): 74

So you can see why I was recommending to bring down CON a bit. I'm not sure why you have it so high, the health bonus is only marginally useful for a wizard, even less so for a human.

The only other advice I have is to try to get more of those cheap magic ranks if only to improve your runestaff defense. Also don't use your fixskills yet, try to wait it out with so little skills changing it shouldn't be too long and you may need it more for some other reason.

(Also note I used a reroll at 10th to bring down DEX and will use another one again later to bring down DEX even more. Only because its a nice bonus to have for your bolts.

[Edit: added a not]

[Edited on 4-15-2004 by Fengus]

[Caipre]

OK ... after working out the stats in Tsoran's spreadsheet I am definiately goign to be making some changes. I'm not sure what you mean by dropping the DEX down at 10, then again later (most likely because I'm not sure how it works, if I dop it down at 15 does it affect my stats from level 0 up, or only from the level I make the change at? Also will dropping it at various levels give my bolt AS a higher maximum than if I don't drop it?).

I've been training in climbing and swimming because I sometimes make trips to Solhaven, and Ice Mule, and would like to take a trip to the Elven Nations, and River's Rest too (and I'm new, and don't know how much I need for these travels). The first aid is so I can tend my wounds and I thought the perception would help me sense things around.

I was planning on using my fixskills for this because I figured the amount of change that I am making would cost a HUGE amount of IG hours to finish. But I am new, and again, not sure how that works either.

[longshot]

I know nothing of Jewish wizards.

[Fengus]

Originally posted by Caipre
OK ... after working out the stats in Tsoran's spreadsheet I am definiately goign to be making some changes. I'm not sure what you mean by dropping the DEX down at 10, then again later (most

I've been training in climbing and swimming because I sometimes make trips to Solhaven, and Ice Mule, and would like to take a trip to the Elven Nations, and River's Rest too (and I'm new, and don't know how much I need for these travels). The first aid is so I can tend my wounds and I thought the perception would help me sense things around.



Well DEX has pretty good growth for a mage so you don't want it too high, but it also helps bolt AS so you want it to have a good bonus. Also its a physical skill so the points you put into it are taking away from mental training points.
So say I want a 20 bonus I realloc such that the bonus will be 20 at my current level. If I started at 90 at level 0, by the time I'm 10th it may get up to 94 or more at which point I could go realloc it down to 80 something and gain some more MTP. For instance if you start at 90 and realloc at 20th level you could bring DEX down to 84 and maintain get a 90 by 20th. This applies to other high growth stats as well if you want to maximize stat points, but I only bother with DEX cause I want the MTPs.


Sol and RR don't require any skills to reach. However there are some hunting grounds that require climbing in the area, but this isn't essential you can just find other hunting.




About the fixskills if you are in your first 20 days or something you have an accellerated rate and won't need to use fixskills no matter how drastic the change is. Also in this case you aren't really changing a whole lot and specifically you aren't *reducing* your effectiveness because you are not reducing spell aiming or HP for instance. Fixskills is best for when you decided to change your main attack so you would reach a point where you can no longer hunt effectively during the transition. All you seem to be doing is dropping some less useful skills and putting them into more useful skills.

[AnticorRifling]

If you're training in FA to tend your own wounds I would suggest not. It would be easier to just carry a herb or two. Remember (most) wizards don't survive by taking nasty hits and living, they survive by getting hit as little, if at all, as possible.