The best magic skills !!!!!

tvlad · 07-09-2003, 04:10 PM

From the list of spells and what i've read on the net, these are the skill that i think should be raised (through skill points, practice)for my mage, priest, psionic.

Mage -Fire
-Water
-Air perhaps ?????

Psionic
-divine
-earth
-water perhaps ??????

Priest
-divine
-mental
-anything else ?????

Btw, i've read smwhere on the net that i should specialise the caster's in sling, but isn't that quite useless, since i'll use the offensive magic instead ????

[ 07-09-2003, 06:19 PM: Message edited by: tvlad ]

ChaosTheorist · 07-09-2003, 10:20 PM

Not sure who's info you're reading, but they're a bit OTL.

The Mage-book caster's two best areas are definitely Fire and Water. Unfortunately, there are lot of fire-resistant critters on Dominus, and the percentage goes up at the higher levels. Air is third. If you don't have an Alchemist-book caster, the Mage-book Earth spells are really useful. For day-to-day survival, the Mental realm's X-Ray is a must-have. Divine's Magic Missiles and Enchanted Blade are extremely useful in the early and mid game, and summoning Elementals is a very nice capability. IOW, all 6 realms are more than "nice" to have, and there's no reason why you can't have them all.

For the Psionic-book caster, Mental is #1, #2, and #3. After that, Fire is actually the next-most useful realm. Yeah, you run into the fire-resistance thing again, but the Fire spells, though few in number, are *very* handy to have--Haste is unique to the Psionic book. Likewise with Air; not that many spells, but a decent Silence capability somewhere in the party is important. Same for Divine with Soul Shield. Earth is the Psionic book's least important realm, especially if you have a Mage-book or Alchemist-book caster (or both) in the party.

From the Priest book, Divine is obviously #1, but Water is really #2; Stamina is important early on, and Rest All and Superman will save your bacon many times later in the game. A decent Earth skill is critical, since Armorplate is unique to the Priest book. The Priest book has no offensive capability in Mental, but the curative and utility Mental spells are ones you want; fortunately, it's really easy to raise a Priest's Mental skill through practice. Air, of course, is where the Portal spells live, and there's Silence again. Fire is the Priest book's weakest area; Lightning is an ass kicker (except against opponents with that frequently-appearing high Fire resistance), but you have to cast Light a *lot* to build up Fire to the point where you can safely and usefully cast Lightning.

Basically, there's no reason why you can't have your casters able to cast every spell they can learn, from every realm, at high power. Practice, practice, practice; level-up skill points are very much a minor contributor to the Realm skills.

Also: buy every spell book you can; save your spell picks so the characters can pick the high-level spells as soon as they meet the requirements. Every spell in the game below level 6 except Mind Blast and Body of Stone can be found or bought (though I think there's only 1 findable copy each of Holy Water and Instant Death, and no one sells those). Obviously you'll want to pick some of the earlier spells so you can live to get to the higher-level ones, but only pick the most-useful and most-needed spells at level-up time.

WRT combat skills: you'll find that by the time your specialist casters get into the mid-teens in level, all of their magic skills are above 75, so you have to put the skill points somewhere. Power Cast will pick up 3 of those points for quite a while, and maybe Reflextion if you max DEX, but you'll still almost always end up with skill points that can't be used for any of the character's primary skills; Throw for all, or Mace for the Priest/Staff for the others (or even Staff for the Priest, since there's only one extended-reach higher-level Mace, and it takes a while to get it) are reasonable choices of where to put those "surplus" skill points.

gator · 07-10-2003, 07:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ChaosTheorist:
Every spell in the game below level 6 except Mind Blast and Body of Stone can be found or bought (though I think there's only 1 findable copy each of Holy Water and Instant Death, and no one sells those).

Just a small correction about the spellbooks:

You can buy a Book of Statues (Body of Stone) from Ferro.

Holy Water is a drop from the Savant Orb around the tower in Arnika. It is also a drop from Braffit and Anselm. It can be pickpocketed, but I have never been able to do that since I have version 1.2.4. Holy Water cannot be found or bought.

There are two findable copies of Instant Death. One is in the Wilderness Clearing/Rapax Away Camp area. The other is in the Mountain Wilderness retro dungeon.

Wereboar · 07-10-2003, 03:31 PM

Notes to ChaosTheorist's analysis:

Mage: x-ray and enchanted blade are very nice, but there's no danger in backfiring, so the priority of mental and devine is very low (until you get that mental attack spell). I'ts especially around level 5-12 where you really use many spells from all realms.

For the psionic, divine is very handy later with the might to magic spell, especially if you don't have many casters. But this realm raises fast if you let him do all the healing after the fight instead of the priest.

The priest has a very nice high-level spell in each fire and earth. Use light and web a lot to bring this realms up.

Instead of an combat skill, i raise shield with priest, bishop, and alchemist, when they are done with magic.

There are IMO two nice extended maces, cat-o-nine tails and vampire chain.

ChaosTheorist · 07-11-2003, 01:01 AM

Quote:

Just a small correction about the spellbooks:

You can buy a Book of Statues (Body of Stone) from Ferro.

Can you? Cool; I've been working from some descendant of the original mage_77 list, and it makes no mention of that. I'll have to send my solo Bishop back Ferro's way, since BoS would be really handy for her.

Quote:

Holy Water is a drop from the Savant Orb around the tower in Arnika. It is also a drop from Braffit and Anselm. It can be pickpocketed, but I have never been able to do that since I have version 1.2.4. Holy Water cannot be found or bought.

Is that where it keeps coming from? I know that I always seem to have the spell, but never kept close enough track of where I got it. Thanks again.

gator · 07-11-2003, 08:23 AM

In general the mage_77 lists are very accurate. This is the most accurate one that I have found.

http://wiz8.web1000.com/mage_77.html

The only thing wrong that I know about on this list is that it lists Return to Portal for the Mountain Wilderness, but you actually find a Book of Death and a Book of Chameleons.

Also, Sadok has never had a Book of Light in his sell list even though I have camped for restock about 20 times (had to buy books for 4 Bishops). Maybe I was too high of a level or something. Not sure about that one.

ChaosTheorist · 07-11-2003, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Also, Sadok has never had a Book of Light in his sell list even though I have camped for restock about 20 times (had to buy books for 4 Bishops). Maybe I was too high of a level or something. Not sure about that one.

Same here; as nearly as I can tell, Sadok doesn't carry the Book of Light, only Kunar does. I recently outfitted all 5 of my Rangerettes with Kunar's spells, including Light (gave the one from the Monastery to the Bishop). Getting 5 each of Kunar's Alchemist-book spells (other than the ones Anna also sells) definitely took a while!

07-13-2003, 11:13 PM

Bishops in my opinion. Sure they suck around the early levels, but have two bishops, each focus on two groups of magic wreak havoc once they get good spells.

el_kalkylus · 07-13-2003, 11:51 PM

I just bought book of light from Sadok. My problem is always to buy book of rocks.

gator · 07-14-2003, 08:35 AM

el_kalkylus,

What level were you when you bought the book?

07-13-2003, 11:51 PM	#9
el_kalkylus Drizzt Do'Urden Join Date: March 3, 2001 Location: Stockholm, Sweden, Sweden Age: 45 Posts: 669	I just bought book of light from Sadok. My problem is always to buy book of rocks. __________________ Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

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07-09-2003, 04:10 PM	#1
tvlad Elite Waterdeep Guard Join Date: July 4, 2003 Location: Bucharest Age: 42 Posts: 13	From the list of spells and what i've read on the net, these are the skill that i think should be raised (through skill points, practice)for my mage, priest, psionic. Mage -Fire -Water -Air perhaps ????? Psionic -divine -earth -water perhaps ?????? Priest -divine -mental -anything else ????? Btw, i've read smwhere on the net that i should specialise the caster's in sling, but isn't that quite useless, since i'll use the offensive magic instead ???? [ 07-09-2003, 06:19 PM: Message edited by: tvlad ] __________________ You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

07-09-2003, 10:20 PM	#2
ChaosTheorist Manshoon Join Date: May 14, 2003 Location: Seattle Age: 69 Posts: 163	Not sure who's info you're reading, but they're a bit OTL. The Mage-book caster's two best areas are definitely Fire and Water. Unfortunately, there are lot of fire-resistant critters on Dominus, and the percentage goes up at the higher levels. Air is third. If you don't have an Alchemist-book caster, the Mage-book Earth spells are really useful. For day-to-day survival, the Mental realm's X-Ray is a must-have. Divine's Magic Missiles and Enchanted Blade are extremely useful in the early and mid game, and summoning Elementals is a very nice capability. IOW, all 6 realms are more than "nice" to have, and there's no reason why you can't have them all. For the Psionic-book caster, Mental is #1, #2, and #3. After that, Fire is actually the next-most useful realm. Yeah, you run into the fire-resistance thing again, but the Fire spells, though few in number, are very handy to have--Haste is unique to the Psionic book. Likewise with Air; not that many spells, but a decent Silence capability somewhere in the party is important. Same for Divine with Soul Shield. Earth is the Psionic book's least important realm, especially if you have a Mage-book or Alchemist-book caster (or both) in the party. From the Priest book, Divine is obviously #1, but Water is really #2; Stamina is important early on, and Rest All and Superman will save your bacon many times later in the game. A decent Earth skill is critical, since Armorplate is unique to the Priest book. The Priest book has no offensive capability in Mental, but the curative and utility Mental spells are ones you want; fortunately, it's really easy to raise a Priest's Mental skill through practice. Air, of course, is where the Portal spells live, and there's Silence again. Fire is the Priest book's weakest area; Lightning is an ass kicker (except against opponents with that frequently-appearing high Fire resistance), but you have to cast Light a lot to build up Fire to the point where you can safely and usefully cast Lightning. Basically, there's no reason why you can't have your casters able to cast every spell they can learn, from every realm, at high power. Practice, practice, practice; level-up skill points are very much a minor contributor to the Realm skills. Also: buy every spell book you can; save your spell picks so the characters can pick the high-level spells as soon as they meet the requirements. Every spell in the game below level 6 except Mind Blast and Body of Stone can be found or bought (though I think there's only 1 findable copy each of Holy Water and Instant Death, and no one sells those). Obviously you'll want to pick some of the earlier spells so you can live to get to the higher-level ones, but only pick the most-useful and most-needed spells at level-up time. WRT combat skills: you'll find that by the time your specialist casters get into the mid-teens in level, all of their magic skills are above 75, so you have to put the skill points somewhere. Power Cast will pick up 3 of those points for quite a while, and maybe Reflextion if you max DEX, but you'll still almost always end up with skill points that can't be used for any of the character's primary skills; Throw for all, or Mace for the Priest/Staff for the others (or even Staff for the Priest, since there's only one extended-reach higher-level Mace, and it takes a while to get it) are reasonable choices of where to put those "surplus" skill points.

07-10-2003, 03:31 PM	#4
Wereboar Baaz Draconian Join Date: June 6, 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 795	Notes to ChaosTheorist's analysis: Mage: x-ray and enchanted blade are very nice, but there's no danger in backfiring, so the priority of mental and devine is very low (until you get that mental attack spell). I'ts especially around level 5-12 where you really use many spells from all realms. For the psionic, divine is very handy later with the might to magic spell, especially if you don't have many casters. But this realm raises fast if you let him do all the healing after the fight instead of the priest. The priest has a very nice high-level spell in each fire and earth. Use light and web a lot to bring this realms up. Instead of an combat skill, i raise shield with priest, bishop, and alchemist, when they are done with magic. There are IMO two nice extended maces, cat-o-nine tails and vampire chain.

07-11-2003, 08:23 AM	#6
gator Dungeon Master Join Date: April 15, 2003 Location: Kentucky Age: 50 Posts: 59	In general the mage_77 lists are very accurate. This is the most accurate one that I have found. http://wiz8.web1000.com/mage_77.html The only thing wrong that I know about on this list is that it lists Return to Portal for the Mountain Wilderness, but you actually find a Book of Death and a Book of Chameleons. Also, Sadok has never had a Book of Light in his sell list even though I have camped for restock about 20 times (had to buy books for 4 Bishops). Maybe I was too high of a level or something. Not sure about that one.

07-13-2003, 11:13 PM	#8
SecretMaster Guest Posts: n/a	Bishops in my opinion. Sure they suck around the early levels, but have two bishops, each focus on two groups of magic wreak havoc once they get good spells.

07-14-2003, 08:35 AM	#10
gator Dungeon Master Join Date: April 15, 2003 Location: Kentucky Age: 50 Posts: 59	el_kalkylus, What level were you when you bought the book?

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