Recommend magic char for solo play

[arbiter]

It's tough playing as a magic user all by my lonesome

Can anyone recommend a build that has a chance of survival?

[Damn Snakes!]

My choice - begin as an Adept - then Paladin then magic classes... this allows you the armor and weapons for protection while you are building the magic character - mage to sorcerer to Wizard - by the time you have spellfire, you won't worry about simple things like armor and sheilds... but until then, it is nice to have some plate armor and celestial magic is really good for healing and protection spells... just my opinion

[arbiter]

Cool - thanks for the advice!

[Dread-TheUndead]

The best magic char will be a girl as, Sister Hood/Mage/Eanchantres/(whatever continue you want to mage)/continue to mage or War Witch.

But you will have a tough start and maybe you do not like the girls chars (also its for arcane/rune, if you take arcane - take eanchantres and if you take rune you take valkari).

[Frodo1]

Here is my two cents.

Best male caster is a Mage-Fighter-Sorcerer-Knight-Wizard. This set-up gives you the following advantages:
1) Access to heavy weapons, armor, and shields with more than adequate learning bonuses to use any shield or weapon and wear Deathlord’s armor.
2) The learning bonuses in Arcane magic, by far and away the most powerful and effective offensive magic type. Plus, 2 learning bonuses in Nether magic, the most varied magic type and the second most powerful.
With this set of classes you’ll be an awesome fighter in addition to the most powerful mage possible, at least for a male.

Best female caster is a Mage-Fighter-Sorcerer-Valkyrie-War Witch. This is an even more powerful character than the above. War Witch is the most powerful caster class by far. It offers:
1) 3 learning bonuses of Arcane, 2 of Nether, 2 of Rune, and 1 of Celestial. Nuff said.
2) In addition to the above, it offers the same benefits for armor, shields, and weapons, with the addition of adding heavy pole arms to your arsenal.

My take on all this is that you need to melee often no matter how you set up a magic caster. It’s just a necessity. Having fighter instead of Adept allows you to max powerful magic classes and get just enough bonuses for the other stuff to be viable. A second point is who would want to basically throw away a Deathlord’s Plate, the Shield of the Dragon, or an awesome heavy weapon because you couldn’t possibly reach the requirements for equipping it without a massive penalty?

These two character builds just rock. You rip through enemies no matter which skills you use. Your magic is powerful and you are a ripped fighter for those drawn out battles.

[The Master]

Gotta go with damn snakes myself: start as an adept so you can get through the sewers without dying all the time, then go mage/paladin/sorceror/wizard. I think if you really want to focus on magic use, you have go the wizard route: spellfire rocks. War witch is better for combined melee/magic, but I disagree that you have to fight melee a lot even after you have high magic levels. Backflip to avoid getting hit and blast them. Worked for me. Yeah, with this build wearing deathlord armor would be pretty much impossible, but guilded or crimson are good enough, and since you don't need to fight hand-to-hand, what's the difference?

TM

[Frodo1]

I disagree on a few points. One is that if you spend a little time building your character up you shouldn't die at all in the sewers. You can put point points into light armor as a mage anyway if you need to. I just put one point into light armor and decimate with arcane spells after reaching Fargrove. Spend time in the Slum District and you get tons of spellbooks from the Dire Witches. Buy some Fireballs books too. Then you don't need armor. I don' place points in armor or shield until I reach Fargrove and I only put 5 points into light weapon, which is not helped by being a Celestial. The learning bonus in Arcane is huge though. 7 points in that at an early stage rocks.

A second point is, how do you not need to use melee? Do you buy 400 or 500 each of many different spell books? How do you kill the Banshee? The Elder? The Athenas? etc. How do you get through the massive dungeons that don't have any fires to rest by? Leave the Naga Temple and go back in? THis is impossible in the Shadow Realm. Even with good points in Scribe you don't regenerate fast enough for it to be useful in the field and the rest times would be ungodly.

Also, if your leveling against Moon Beasts for 2 hours, spells are useless. And in the Arena, they mean a lot of resting, and that means much more time wasted gaining exp.

A third point is that healing is a waste. The game drops massive amounts of healing pots. I rarely fall below 300 of them after a time and then build them up even higher. That is with liberal use. Healing is bad because it has an animation motion that stops you from fighting/defending, which means you take damage while you're casting. I find Healing to be a waste of a very valuable spell slot. One that I could use for something else entirely.

Anyway, let me know what I'm missing here. I know you can build up bargain and honor and sell and resell lockpicks over and over and over to get an unending supply of gold to supply you with a theoretically limitless number of spell books, runes, and celestial spells, but that seems to be going overboard a bit.

[ferncliff]

The thing that's being missed in the knight verses paladin build is that they are basically the same build (same armor and weapons bonuses) but with paladin you get access to the celestial spells fire ward, unpetrify, ward of petrifaction, ice ward and divine intervention. So in my opinion paladin is better.
Unlikely that you'll be able to wear deathlord armor with either build as the cost of getting your heavy armor to 12 is crazy high, but it doesn't matter cuz the cost would be the same with either. D

[Damn Snakes!]

sorry, but how do you resell lockpicks? I always run out of gold as a mage/paladin... at least until I get to the vale of ruin... I have never figured out a way to 'cheat the dealers' except when it comes to selling a shopkeeper a spell or katal that he/she doesn't have and then I can buy as many as I want... but that takes gold which I find in short supply early in the game...
thanks... I know I have missed something but I have always spent a lot of time scrounging for gold early on and I would like to learn how to go an easier route in the future...

[ferncliff]

Originally Posted by Damn Snakes!

sorry, but how do you resell lockpicks? I always run out of gold as a mage/paladin... at least until I get to the vale of ruin... I have never figured out a way to 'cheat the dealers' except when it comes to selling a shopkeeper a spell or katal that he/she doesn't have and then I can buy as many as I want... but that takes gold which I find in short supply early in the game...
thanks... I know I have missed something but I have always spent a lot of time scrounging for gold early on and I would like to learn how to go an easier route in the future...

You can't resale lock picks since version 1.0.
In version 1.3 once you raise your bargain skill to 6 then you can buy in Fargrove and sell in arindale for a profit (I recommend at least 7 in bargain). So go to Arindale and sell all your spells at the temple. Hop on the moon bridge and buy all the spells you can afford from the mage in Fargrove, and then back to arindale and sell, back to fargrove and buy, etc
With the german to english version it gets really messed up. Once you have bargain 3 and the merchant heraldry you can buy in arindale and sell in arindale for a profit. You don't even need to close out the window just buy, sell, buy, sell etc. I haven't tested this completely so you might have to raise your bargain skill a little higher and it seemed not everything worked. Once I had about 6 in bargain I was selling and buying back celestial spells for a high profit. I haven’t made it that far in the new 1.4 but I’ll bet it still works. D

[Frodo1]

I have to disagree again. This time on 2 points.

First, all classes can buy all of the celestial spells mentioned above, except Divine Intervention, which is certainly a powerful spell. Maybe ward of petrification isn’t available. But I think it is and I don’t use it personally.

Second, using the male mage build I was wearing my first piece of DL armor at level 12 without a penalty. On my female character I was wearing the DL plate no later than level 16 without a penalty, maybe earlier. So, from my experience the benefits of having the fighter class is really pronounced.

Ferncliff is right about how to earn gold. As of the 1.4 German conversion you can sell almost anything to the celestial priest of Elvithra in Arindale for a huge profit and then turn around and immediately rebuy whatever you sold. Lockpicks are best especially if you have 3 or 400 of them. You need bargain at 6 plus and some extra points in Honor or you should have the bargain heraldry. I don’t know if it works with the English 1.4, but I bet Ferncliff is right and it does. Who knows what will happen in the collectors edition. Both of these vendors pay much more than any others in the game no matter how well you bargain.

Anyway, this is an interesting argument. I think the bottom line is that any of these builds can dominate this game, which is not that difficult in the first place. And, that it all comes down to preference. Character creation is now one of the best aspects of this game, if not downright the very best thing about it. The collector’s edition is touted to improve this, I wonder if it will.

By the way, I would match my Urgoth Battle-Wizard up to any other character with great confidence. Insane damage from spells and weapons alike and a huge armor bonus along with endless hitpoints makes for a real tank.

Best all.

[Wahooka]

Hi everybody

I'm currently playing with a mage/adept/sorcerer/enchantress/wizard. It's not so easy to play in the early game, but as you get further in, it gets much, much easier. This build gives you a lot of learning bonuses for arcane magic, and spellfire with the wizard class is just so cool. I have gradually built up money, and hence spells (I don't really want to have almost infinite power by putting too many points into bargain skill), and now the last time that I had to get close to using melee was against the Fiend of Ghazbu (my spelling might be off, but you know the one I mean). I went through the shadow ruins, and only had to use about 10 blast novas, and a few other minor spells such as magic missile etc... until I got to Nausolem, who got killed so quickly I didn't realize he wasn't there. The tree guardians also died after about 2 fire novas. Now my computer is freezing about 5 minutes after I get out of the shadow ruins. not so much fun

It would be nice to try knight/paladin for though armour though.

Wahooka

[goldenwarrior69]

I think both builds are good. I always try to build the ultimate Warrior/Magician, as I enjoy using both melee and magic for variety thats why. The Mage/Fighter/Knight/Sorcerer/Wizard (which I just achieved at level 25 in 1.4) build does let you specialize better in Arcane Magic, as Frodo maintains, and it does let you wear Deathlord Armor quickly.

I did get Deathlord Armor As a Adept/Mage/Battlemage/Paladin/Crusader, and even though I did not have Spellfire, my magic was still awesome and this char was a devestating warrior. Critical Strike works great in 1.4 and delivers a huge amount of damage that is as good as any magic assault...

I also found that you can make over a million gold in 2 minutes and here's how...The best profit in the Temple of the Empyrean in Arindale is the Crystal Ward of Ice. Buy ten of them at about 3,300 gold each and sell them back for 47,000 gold. Then buy ten at a time in one purchase for 33,000 several times and sell say 50 of them. Then you can start buying units of 50's, and then unit's of 100 at a time etc until you're bloody rich...

GW

[Frodo1]

Originally Posted by goldenwarrior69

I also found that you can make over a million gold in 2 minutes and here's how...The best profit in the Temple of the Empyrean in Arindale is the Crystal Ward of Ice. Buy ten of them at about 3,300 gold each and sell them back for 47,000 gold. Then buy ten at a time in one purchase for 33,000 several times and sell say 50 of them. Them you can start buying units of 50's, and then unit's of 100 at a time etc until you're bloody rich...

GW

...and Godly. All I can say is...

[goldenwarrior69]

Yes, it is a bit of a deadly spoiler isn't it...

I was going to put this in my Tip of the Day thread but since the the great Spoiler King Ferncliff mentioned part of my idea in this thread, I thought I'd elaborate it here.

I almost feel like I'm cheating. I recommend beating the game first without using the Get Rich Quick Method, but it really livens the game up for us veteran's who might be a bit bored...I can buy as many spell books as I want, so I can advance very quickly through hairy battles. I don't even pick up anything anymore unless I want to use it, so the game goes alot faster and that's cool also, as I can try out several new chars and burn through the game very quickly.

GW