Mages

Introduction

The mage on Ancient Anguish is vastly underrated and undervalued. They are rarely a sought after member of a party, are vastly ignored by powerplayers and have one of the less pretty looking alcoves within the hall of heroes. The average player views a mage as a hit and runner with a penchant for exploring and treasure hunting, useful for little else.

This is a guide that aims to achieve 3 things:

* Raise the profile and reputation of mages on Ancient Anguish
/me Teach some intermediate and ‘top’ players how to play a very powerful class indeed
/me Raise interest in mages and thus increase Ancient Anguish’s player base perhaps

Now a word of warning… primarily this is a guide for powerplayers and people wanting to powerplay every so often. Although there will be tips and tricks here useful for everybody, it’ll be littered with comments like ‘don’t waste time doing x as it’ll net you no experience, coins or skills’. If that sentence already made you queasy with powerplayer-hate, then you’d best stop reading now. Many of the suggestions in this guide are the completely opposite of chilling.

So here we go… what is a mage on AA? What do you want your mage to be?

At this point I should probably tell you a bit about myself. I’ve been playing AA for almost 8 years now. My second character happened to be a mage, and I’ve got or had a mage in every school, and had a mage of every race apart from dwarf. I’ve got three on the mage alcoves in the Hall of Heroes at the moment, have successfully worked out a tanking routine for a mage, and have had dozens of hours soloing and bashing as one as well. I hope this guide can help at least a few of you out there.

WARNING: This will be a long read.

The Structure

An AA mage fits the roles of soloer, tank, basher and explorer with varying degrees of success. Generally, we do the best soloing or exploring, make slightly above average bashers and a below average tank. Compared to a class like cleric which make excellent tanks, bashers or soloers, one can see why the mage has been largely neglected by most experienced players.

To start we’ll investigate a mage’s abilities (dodge), their skills, and their spells. Each school will be analysed and coontrasted with each other, with race choices for each school discussed, then an exposition of how to do what mages do – tanking, bashing, soloing, exploring, treasure hunting, bounty hunting and unique hunting. There’ll also be notes on equipment choices, useful alias’ and a levelling guide, bugs affecting us, guild choices, and much more.

Abilities - Dodge

Let’s start with the one thing that’s common to all mages : the dodging ability. On AA (to the best of my knowledge) is based solely on 3 things: your opponent’s dex, your own dex, and the amount of weight you’re carrying. There may be some factoring in of the skill level of your opponent as well, but this, if the case, will be largely irrelevant, as I’ll explain later. So how do we maximise dodge’s effectiveness, and to what extent is it ‘worth it’?

First, why is dodge useful?

• It’s free (no need to buy equipment)
• /me Related, you don’t need to go find equipment. Can log in, get a staff and already be ‘equipped’.
• For most races and situations, it is more effective
• /me You can carry more stuff, and with high dexterity, most mages fit straight in

And why does it drive some of the biggest mages around like Thothamon and Dooku to use defend none and wear armour?

• It’s a hassle to keep everything in your deeppockets
• /me The more int boosters, scalping knives etc that you gather, the worse dodge gets
• /me Related, the bigger staves (ie tetsubo) are pretty heavy
• /me A dodge that fails… ie ‘x monster predicts your attempt to dodge!’ hurts a lot
• It’s worse on larger monsters
• /me It’s useless if you’re pure hit and run (whereas armour will reduce the entry damage)

Now let’s see why you’d use defend none while wearing armour

• /me You’re still not at max dex, and you’re fighting scary things that have much more dex than you
• /me You’re a dwarf, and have no boomerangs, darts or frost spells
• /me You’re tanking for a powerparty, and that involves killing things like Razar and Hawkeye where a failed dodge would not be pretty
• /me You’ve got your grubby hands on some top grade armour that’s too good to pass up
• /me You can’t be bothered keeping up the anally retentive steps below

So let’s talk about the easier to deal with defence first…none. To maximise its effectiveness is pretty simple – get the best stuff you can find. You got deeppockets to cover for your carrying capacity…so even a puny elf mage can lug around Armour of Ichor and still carry stuff, provided the strength spell is on.

More interestingly… if you’re going to use dodge, how do we maximise its effectiveness? Let’s look at each of the 3 components that make up dodge:

The opponent’s dex

There’s only so much you can do about this. If you’re indiscriminately massacring the mud, you’re not going to skip a few high dex kills just because you can’t dodge them as well.

The easiest way you can impair the opponent’s dexterity is through the humble oak boomerang. This item is a mage’s best friend for under $300 a pop, and its –1 dex penalty to the opponent quickly adds up as time passes – more detail in the equipment section.

Related is the barbed dart from the dalair weapon seller. I personally don’t bother with the way it breaks all the time, and that the seller is dead half the time, that it’s not as convenient as the boomerang. However, if you’re admirably keen with these things, then –2 dex on an opponent is huge.

Finally, there’s the dex reducing ice spells. There’s 4 in total, 1 in each of the schools (including the basic one) apart from Drowgar. A ~40 spell point spell that reduces dex by 1 for a while, reduces the opponent’s attacks every so often and then also does a bit of damage sounds great doesn’t it? Unfortunately they 1) Do not always trigger the frostbite which reduces the dex 2) work less well the higher level the NPC is and 3) you get a lot more damage out of most other spells with similar cost.

As such, in only limited circumstances (explained in the ‘Alteration soloing’ section) are these ice spells really useful to a powerplayer.

In most circumstances an oak boomerang is all you can do in this field… make sure you have one or more at all times.

Your own dex

This of course is also something that is largely unchangeable. Your race will determine the amount your dexterity will max out at, so your race is probably the largest factor overall in determining whether you use dodge or none.

The only piece of gear practical to a mage to increase his or her own dex is the +1 dex –1 con semi-unique black staff from the Yeti Area. This is useful at 30-50ish skill.

Then there’s the reverse, thinking cap, tcap, tcrap. If you’re going to dodge, this thing is strongly not recommended. The only possible exception is a situation where you’re elf, and have the other 2 int boosters already.

Your own weight

This is the part you have most control of. To dodge reasonably well, you need to absolutely minimise the amount of stuff you carry – ideally a staff, a pipe, and a golden amulet. And that’s all. The only things you should allow in your inventory must be worth their weight, if it will gain you either more experience, money or skills. Otherwise it’d just cause you to take more damage for no good reason, and is thus inefficient.

The essentials are obviously

1. Your real weapon and
2. Your pipe.

If faced with 2 roughly equal weapons, take the lighter one if you’re going to be doing some dodging – ie azakath instead of tetsubo.

Now feel free to add to that any weightless items that are neat or help – of note is the leather sheath or black scabbard – adding to leg protection for no weight addition. Of course, extra stuff like hooded falcons, pet snakes and whatnot are weightless and do nothing, so feel free to get them if you like them.

Next are the items you’d probably get despite the fact that they hamper your dodging. Namely

1. Nightblue Cloak and Spidermedallion
2. Golden Amulet
3. Good Zarkan rings.

The first two are self explanatory – any mage wants extra int. Golden amulet provides some protection to every single part of your body for the cost of 1 weight – ‘Only the best piece of armour in the whole game’ – Lunger, mid 2004. The same sort of argument applies for the Zarkan ring.

Following this are the situational items. These are

1. Black Robe/Magic Surcoat
2. A non unique medallion
3. A runed breastplate
4. Thinking Cap
5. Robe of Turkey feathers
6. Sturdy ring.

1. A black robe or magic surcoat depends on whether or not you’re fighting magic hurling monsters – if you’re even only occasionally taking one on, by all means it’s worth it.
2. A non-unique medallion is very good for anyone casting drowgar spells any more than once a kill. Even the non-unique medallion reduces spell costs, and depending on which spells you use, can quickly stack up to be very significant. Well worth the 1 weight if you’re a drowgar mage deprived of spidermedallion.
3. A runed breastplate, at last checking, weighed one, gave +20 to two resistances, and evaluatedd as ‘good’ for the body. If that is still the case, and you can get your hands on one, then go for it.
4. Thinking cap…bleh. Use it if you really want to, but give it a good thought.
5. The robe of turkey feathers depends entirely on whether you believe that the rumours concerning it. As the robe gives you a blue aura, which some say means the robe actually gives you the spell effect of blur, either higher armour class or dodging. I’m on the side that thinks the rumours unsubstantiated, and as such wouldn’t take the robe. If you do believe the rumours to be true, then by all means take it. Otherwise, it’s not worth the weight for its protection.
6. The sturdy ring is the same idea. If you believe it lets you do more damage, -and- you’re a race that actually deals damage (ie human, orc or dwarf) then go for it. Otherwise, +% damage on an elf’s damage is still going to round down to roughly zero. If you don’t believe the rumours, then ignore this item.

And then there’s everything else. I’m sure I’ve missed a few important items. If it’s going to make you more experience/skills/coins than the experience/skills/coins you’re going to lose by taking more damage by it reducing the effectiveness of your dodging, then take it. Otherwise, chuck it in a trashcan.

Remember, every extra item makes quite an impact in the long run.

EXAMPLE

Now to put it into action. Obviously you’re still going to need smokes, medicinals, heals (maybe some that don’t go in the deeppockets), etc. What you’ll need is to ‘keep’ all your essentials in your inventory (help keep ingame if you don’t know about it). Then you need a ‘put all in deeppockets’ alias. Then a heap of alias’ for getting stuff out of deeppockets, get packet from deeppockets, get medicinals from deeppockets, etc. At the start of a fight, you’d need to use your put all in deeppockets alias, then try to use up the heals that cannot fit in deeppockets first. You get your heals out as you need them (through your efficient alias system) and in general try to keep your inventory as clear as possible at all times. This applies to any hunga-mungas or boomerangs you’re looking to use as well (with boomerangs, perhaps don’t pick them up until the fight finishes).

If you don’t have deeppockets…well then the ground is your pocket! Same alias’, just you got to get stuff from the ground instead.

Any elf or orc mage following these instructions should dodge like a charm on all but the most dextrous of monsters on the mud (illarin, achrya, few others). Humans and half elves should do well enough, and dwarves…well…*cough*.

The Subschools

There’s four schools for a mage to choose from – conjuration, alteration, drowgar and invocation. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Here I’ll go through each school and their major spells, and how to use them effectively.

First we’ll take a look at the interesting basic spells:

Basic School

Flame Dart

The first and cheapest direct damage spell of a mage, this is really quite good. There’s no reason to not pick this spell up and use it to supplement your physical damage in the first handful of levels. It’s even useful later on to cast on frost giants at mid levels or to finish off an almost dead foe.

Rating: 5/5. Excellent for the first 10 levels.

Magic Missile

One of the most asked questions on mage board is ‘should I get magic missile?’

The answer to this question to me had always been no, but recently I’ve been swayed the other way. In reality it’s not that important a question, but choosing the right option can save you a few hours while leveling up.

The situation where you should not get magic missile is where you will be joining invocation upon attaining level 10, as fireball is quite cheap to get upon joining. That, or you’ve hogged glimmer for the early levels so much that you have enough study hours to get acid arrow or venom spit about level 11.

In all other situations, I think magic missile is worth the 400 study hour expenditure. Although it has been criticised for being very unpredictable and barely better than flame dart, the bottom line is that it is actually better. This makes it better to use against harder monsters, as it takes less time for you to exhaust your spell points casting MM than FD, and therefore you can leave the room faster, therefore taking less damage from the harder monster.

The argument against magic missile has commonly been that ‘you shouldn’t waste 400 study hours if you can just save up for acid arrow’. It’s true that you can get acid arrow at the end of level 12 or so without buying magic missile, and it takes until level 13 to get it if you did take magic missile. However, getting to level 13 with magic missile probably takes half as much time as getting to level 12 with flame dart. Overall, if you’re just looking to get through to level 19 as soon as possible, magic missile will get you there faster.

However, once you get your main attack spell (acid arrow or venom spit) this spell becomes pretty much totally useless.

Note that its damage is at least partly fire as well, so it’s good on frost giants.

Rating: 3/5. Not a great spell, but you should still get it if it’s going to help.

Blur

Your first defensive spell, and one that has lately raised some interest. It has been rumoured to help dodging (my testing on it has been inconclusive). What is true is that it obviously is going to provide some benefit of some sort. Therefore you might as well get it while you’re leveling up – a few less points of damage taken never hurts.

This spell has been linked with the turkey feather robe’s blue aura – it’s not true that the robe gives the same description effect as the spell – a blue aura on the robe compared to ‘x is hard to look at’ for blur. I don’t see any necessarily connection for the rumour that turkey robe provides the blur spell to the wearer.

Rating: 3/5

Fear

This new-ish spell is somewhat interesting, but in the end probably causes more annoyance than anything for most people.

It has an interesting use against rooms with 2 monsters – casting it on one would separate them, making the fight much easier for a solo mage or a small party. Possible rooms where this is useful are Optio, orc captain/lieutenant, the cold hand clan, lava men, etc. This results in needing to later on chase down the NPC that fled, which can be rather annoying. The upside is that every time it flees, when you re-enter the room with it, you get a free physical hit on it – it can add up should the NPC keep fleeing.

Rating: 2/5. Someone creative may come up with a great use for this spell, but that person hasn’t been me so far.

The Rest

Light is a must-have, self explanatory.

Rating: 5/5, essential.

Identify is similarly useful.

Rating: 5/5, again essential.

Knock is a useful utility spell for convenience with doors and treasure chests, and getting out of tight spots.

Rating: 5/5 essential.

Rope trick, apart from being a quick way up to pendleton, also provides some added mobility when stuck in certain areas like windmill and underground forest.

Rating: 5/5 Essential.

Cantrip is just irrelevant. But what’s 3 study hours?

Rating: 0/5

Charm seems like it never works, and I can’t really see any practical use for it either.

Rating: 0/5.

Scry is essential for anyone who plans on bounty hunting or gathering information.

Rating: 5/5, you’ll end up using it.

Mark is an essential spell for a lot of other spells (notably the teleporting ones).

Rating: 5/5 Essential.

Know Alignment is completely unrelated to combat or ‘convenience’ as such. It might be useful in exploring to know if certain npc’s are really evil or good.

Rating: 2/5.

Comprehend Languages is useful for exploration for the subhuman races.

Rating: 2/5.

Locate object I haven’t really played around too much with, mainly because I don't see a practical use for it

Rating: 1/5.

Ice flurry is very similar to magic missile, and the same arguments apply to it. Ice flurry is superior to missile in that it provides frostbite sometimes and that it’s something different, the disadvantages that it costs more in study hours and spell points, and that it has no bonuses versus fire giants. Choose the one you prefer.

Rating: 3/5. The comment I’d make for the rest of the ice spells are the same as this one.

Protection from Elements is a decent trade for later on – 55 spell points and a parsnip for 20 fire and cold resists. When tanking, every bit counts, and this spell permed isn’t a bad way of boosting resistances.

Rating: 4/5.

Conjuration

The conjuration mage is one of the most commonly seen mages. It is from this school that mages have gotten much of their reputation as soloers, treasure hunters and explorers.

Spells

Acid Arrow

This spell is the heart and soul of the conjurer. For a cost around 37 (depending on int), it dishes out a whopping 50-70 damage on average (depending on int again) every single casting, extremely reliably. It works on 99% of the monsters in the game, and can be cast every 2 rounds, the favoured spell of all hit and runners.

The sheer efficiency of this spell is what makes it so deadly. A skilled berserking fighter on average would deal out 15-20 damage every round, whereas a mage with constant spell point supply can dish out 50-70 damage per 2 rounds, plus the average of say, 10 staff damage dealt during that time. Of course this is contingent upon always having spell points… this will be discussed later in the ‘soloing’ and ‘bashing’ sections.

There’s a good reason alteration and invocation mages often use this spell instead of their own school’s attack spells.

Rating: 5/5. This is the sole reason anyone would be a conjurer, for very good reason.

Armour

Conjuration’s version of the self-protecting spell has one major difference – it can be cast on others. Any experienced tank would know that this makes a huge difference to the damage one takes. It’s in most cases worth casting on yourself to reduce physical damage taken as well… but as has been often documented stoneskin is better. This spell however lasts longer, so is a better choice when perm mages cannot be found to help you out with perming stoneskin.

As this spell is cast infrequently, and most mages have it anyway, it’s not really an exclusive conjuration spell as such.

Rating: 3/5. Not much to say about it really, one of those spells everybody has.

Hero’s Feast

Now here’s an interesting spell. For a minimal financial outlay and 70 spell points, a conjurer can create a whole stack of heals that on average would heal about 120 hit points and spell points. Sounds good? The catch is that these heals are rather inefficient compared to other heals that can be bought – that is, they fill you up to extremely full or drunk, while healing you less.

That is not to say this spell doesn’t have its uses. When you’re poor, a hero’s feast is well worth the inefficiency in healing. When you’re stuck in some area or far from civilisation, virtually free heals is great. When bashing, this is one of the best ways for a conjurer to hurl even more acid arrows. When your ranger friend’s wolf is about to feral and you’re far away from anywhere, a hero’s feast inevitably will have some meat in it.

This is quit a versatile spell, useful in many situations. It is quite an exclusive conjurer’s spell, as its increased spell cost out of school makes it virtually worthless for the other schools

Of note is the fact that the smaller items of food from the feast are weightless (thanks aelenfear), and not bad in terms of efficiency either - that is, being extremely stuffed from the apples, jerky and sandwiches (the weightless ones) heals you about as much as, if not more than being extremely stuffed from kniggets.

Who's getting HoH running ideas?

Rating: 4/5. An underrated spell.

Gate

A conjurer’s version of teleport, it is quite useful. It transfers not only you, but can also move anybody else with you into the marked area. Also it doesn’t have the problem of people on the other end coming back through – so it’s often used for making gates from your guildhall into another guildhall to use their goodies. This is quite a good spell in a party, to move the whole party to a far away area (ie SE isles) or past guards (like orc mountain’s guards). It is also cheap to cast for yourself, only 60 spell points at low spellpower. Once again, it’s a spell that all conjurers probably have, and most other schools’ mages would take this at some point as well.

Rating: 4/5. Yes it’s just another teleport spell, but quite useful to a powerplayer.

Everything else

Flame Arrow is about the worst spell ever coded. Don’t get it unless you’re going for a full spellbook.

Rating: 0/5.

Wizard’s eye is useful for keeping an eye on stuff you want to camp but don’t want to be at yourself– namely NPCs with uniques and dark strangers. Nice to have but not essential.

Rating: 2/5.

Choke is just a poor man’s version of spider legs that doesn’t even last past the kill you cast it on. Not too useful unless you’re the sole mage basher bashing for a non-necromancer on a high hit point monster. Mostly useless.

Rating:1/5.

Secret Chest and Instant Summons are related spells that essentially give you little storage spaces anywhere on the MUD for several hours. Instant summons allows you to retrieve items from these secret chests from afar. Useful in certain situations (like hall of heroes runs) but not essential.

Rating:2/5.

Find familiar is just a cute little spell that can act as an extra wizard’s eye. Another idea is to mark the familiar, let it sit somewhere you want to teleport to every so often, and have it act as a second location mark (explained in more detail later).

Rating:2/5.

And finally, Tiny Hut and Secure Shelter. Essentially, these create an extra room in almost any room in the game, for you to safely run away to and stash items in. It is mainly a hit and run mage’s tool, and would only be used on certain kills that are hard to run away from like alton and effaw at any rate (shouldn’t you be tanking those out anyway?).

Rating: Can be useful in certain circumstances I suppose. 2/5.

So what’s all this mean as a package? The spell that is repeatedly cast in a school is the spell that defines the school, and in this case it is acid arrow.

A conjurer is the closest a mage gets to raw power. A conjurer slays anything he/she likes until the spell points run out, and that is the key here. A conjurer’s main question is: how do we upkeep our spell points?

Race

The race you choose for your conjurer plays quite a part in how effective they will be. As acid arrow defines how well you do, we will have to investigate what makes it work better.

The amount of damage an acid arrow deals is based on your intelligence primarily, and the opponent’s armour has some part to play as well in reducing its damage. The amount it successfully hits is based upon primarily your dexterity compared to your opponent’s, (perhaps your intelligence has a smaller part to play as well), and the opponent’s armour class also factors into it.

Since you’re probably not going to choose your kills based around low dexterity and also low armour class opponents, the important aspects of this mage is obviously dexterity and intelligence.

Another thing to mention here is that Acid Arrow’s damage increases as your increase your intelligence, and as you increase your intelligence the spell cost also increases. In other words, the damage increases as spell cost is increased…that is, the damage you get out of every spell point stays roughly (if not exactly) constant. So unless you’re doing a hall of heroes run where damage per second rather than damage per spell point is important, intelligence is actually not quite as important as it seems.

The next consideration is other sources of damage – most conjurers would only use 2 others. One is obviously the staff damage you’re going to be dealing. Now this is dependent on both strength and dexterity – how much your staff hits, how much damage it does. However as this requires that a) you have a good weapon b) a good weapon skill and c) that you’re actually going to stay in the room for any amount of time, it’s obviously not quite as important a source of damage as acid arrow. It’s more effective for bashers than soloers as well.

The other source of potential damage is thrown weapons and bows. Both of these depend entirely upon dex for their effectiveness.

The common vein from the above discussion is that a conjurer’s major stat is actually not intelligence or strength, but dexterity.

In my opinion, an ELF makes the best conjurer. My main mage Eliveru is, you guessed it, an elf conjurer. With 19 intelligence and 18 dexterity, their acid arrows rarely miss, pack a huge punch, allows them to dodge all but the best monsters (and the best do fall quickly), their low hit points are compensated by the high dexterity in most cases, and have roughly the same power at log in as fully equipped with all int boosters. This is the ultimate solo mage, hopeless at tanking, and not much better as a basher.

Second on the pecking order is surprisingly, ORC. Now don’t knock this choice unless you’ve actually gone and played an orc mage. With the above discussed correlation between damage dealt and spell points used, an orc ends up spending roughly the same amount of spell points to take out a kill as an elf would, just it might end up taking 1 extra acid arrow (1 extra garlic, 2 extra rounds). With an orc weighing in with 3 more constitution than elf however, he can easily take those 2 extra rounds. However an orc does miss more acid arrows than a mage, and as such slightly inferior in that respect.

What an orc does have over an elf however, is strength. With 15+2 strength, an orc mage can do some real damage if the staff skill is at a decent level. In a party, where constant damage is preferred generally over the sporadic damage an elf mage provides, an orc mage would be preferred. The higher strength also gives more flexibility with carrying capacity and equipment choices. Overall, the difference is simply whether you want raw power, or close to raw power tempered by some actual damage from the staff. If your connection is horrible, the 3 extra con can save a few trips to Lars as well.

Equal third would have to be HUMAN and HALF ELF. They have the same dexterity, with the elf getting more wis and int, and human more str and con. This would be a preference thing of course, but a word of warning – with the 16 dex that these 2 races get, the misses you’d get with acid arrows can quickly get depressing.

Dead last would have to be DWARF. They have minimal dex or int, making acid arrow miss a lot. Their low dex and high strength cries out for you to use armour and defend none. This is a bit of a battle mage, and would be neat if you didn’t regularly get runs of 2-5 acid arrows missing on 9k’s. Want a reason to get annoyed? Go play a dwarven conjurer.

Playing Style – Tanking

Don’t even bother trying to tank with a conjurer. I’ll bow down to you and let you write this section if you manage over 150k/hr per person.

Playing Style – Bashing

A conjurer makes a better basher than most people think… the problem is that most people do not use them to their full potential. A conjurer lugs out acid arrows instead of the hastes that make a party mage famous. The (mostly correct) perception is that the haste comes out to help the party more since it

• should deal more damage than the acid arrow
• /me makes the hasted person skills faster
• /me a double haste on a tough kill can drop it real quick
• /me it doesn’t cause complications in the NPCs’ scripts, so no ‘turning’ on the mage.

However acid arrow has some definite advantages. It

• is independent of the damage anyone else in the party does
• /me costs less both spell points wise and financially
• /me can be cast a lot more than haste if the mage uses hero’s feast, smokes and medicinals well and
• /me 50-60 damage every 2 rounds can drop a tough kill pretty d**n fast as well and finally
• /me contrary to popular belief, it does –not- make your skilling slower, sure, your experience to skills ratio goes up, but your skills to time ratio stays the same as long as you keep hitting things.

So although the alterer may come out a slightly better basher, the conjurer is not far behind. Remember to cast armour on you tank first thing, grab the biggest staff you can use well, and keep extremely stuffed and very drunk through hero’s feast as much as possible (you do know that the more drunk you are, the faster you regenerate spell points, right?). Always be smoking your pipe and binding your wounds as well. Learn which kills ‘turn’ on you if you cast spells on them, or do bad effects, and then learn which kills tanks appreciate being killed fast. Don’t bother wasting spell points on easy stuff like Bulette, your tank much prefers the old wise sage or Razar dead faster.

Remember to use deeppockets and at least one other container.