Dual Alchemist/Mage? [From Scott's guide]

[Zuvio]

OK, first of all, thanks a lot for your beginners guide Scott! It truly helped me not braking these discs in half with frustration
Seriously, this is a great RPG. I'm just completely breaking my head over one of your suggested characters: the dualclass Alchemist/Mage. My whole party is kinda rocksolid with two polearmed and one Maced fighter Lizardmen (Atma, Ozma & Himna [img]tongue.gif[/img] ), a speed-casting Psionicist (fairie) with psionics trained to 80 (game is still kinda hard without training for me) named, offcourse, Psychomantis, an elven bishop using the power build (which is coming on so strong its kinda intimidating for the others and last but very much the least: the speed-casting Fairie Alchemist, still stuck on level 2 (while the rest is over level 7) so she doesnt even has a mage component yet!!

Now I'm trying to figure out just what you had in mind with this character:
- it should be a speed-caster
- it should/will be casting element shield AND/OR soul shield later on, which is fine as long as I dont switch to the mage class.
You will need level 8 in Alch or Mage to access ElementShield. Whats puzzeling me is this line of yours: "in this respect you could likely train your potion mixing/Alchemy to the max at a fairly low character level and then switch to the Mage class where you would gain the bonus to magical resistance, and more importantly have higher level spells earlier (-than the Bishop alternative, I think). " How can I train Alchemy to a high level at a low char level if all the good potions already require a high level of alchemy and knock-knock isnt available until level 5!

So basically, the game is coming on just fine, Im managing OK, but now I have this level 2 Alch and I dont know how to advance it properly to make it a great character. So if you could post a good plan for a Alch/Mage, anyone can post offcourse , it would help me out great. This is my fifth party and I do believe I will finally finish the game this time around

[Scatter]

Well, I'm not Scott, and i disagree with a lot he said, but here's my knowledge:
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Alchemy @15 mixes the basic potions. Camp at He-Li's to find out which 8-hour cycle she gets the Light and Med Heals, and reload that time but before you touch her to get 15 of each; then do the same with Braffit. Repeat ad nauseum. If you're lucky, He-Li will also get a few Flash/Sneeze; buy them and save for later, as they do vanish over time in her inventory. Mix the Lt+Med's until your Alchemy is 45 and then you can start with the Heavy+CLC.

Though to tell the truth, i'd rather just start as Mage and stay that way, as long as someone else is there to Alchemize.

[Wolfie]

When you mention "stuck on level 2" what are you referring to? Character Level or Spell Level? Because you should be aware that learning spells involves both character levels and skill points (ie, a Character Level 1 Alchemist with 100 points in Alchemy would still only be able to learn Spell Level 1 spells). The Character Levels have to be earnt while in the same spell book profession too.

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[ 04-20-2005, 11:11 PM: Message edited by: Wolfie ]

[DinkumThinkum]

I never had the patience to camp merchants. I'd just check out merchants for mixable potions when I was in the vicinity, then mix up what I could and sell any results I didn't need for my party's own use. Any potions I didn't have anything to combine with I just lugged around until I found whatever I needed to mix them with.

The character with the lowest skill would mix what they could, then the next higher skill would mix what they could, then the character with the highest skill would mix the most difficult ones.

That, plus spell casting, was enough for my ranger, alchemist, and bishop to easily keep their Alchemy skill high enough to get new spells as soon as their character level was high enough.

[Zuvio]

Oh, ehm, when I said 'stuck', I didn't mean impaired or unable to learn spells or something like that I looked up how the spell system works, lvl 8 + Alch of 45 = element shield. Stuff like that. I just pondered about how you could make a speed-casting fairie alchemist/mage who can cast element shield (cast it from the alchemist or mage part?) BEFORE you finished the game [img]tongue.gif[/img] This is just some trivia, I think I'll just make her into a sound pure alchemist.

[Random Passerby]

Don't worry much about the Element Shield issue, as your mage and alchemist levels do stack--a level 4 alchemist/level 4 mage satisfies the level requirements (the skills don't stack, so you'd still need either 45 alchemy OR 45 wizardry).

Aside from that, though, I'm really not sure how the proposed alchemist/mage dual is supposed to work, because taking just 3-4 levels of alchemist means it will take millions and millions more experience to max out your mage spells later. For this reason, the only dual class I throw in with casters is bishop, so that you can use all your levels from both classes; if you take about 8-10 levels' worth of bishop early on you can pick up lots of extra spells without slowing down your leveling too much, then you can switch back to a specialist class for faster leveling once you get into the teens and the bishop's experience requirements start stacking up. Unfortunately I'm guessing that your faerie alchemist probably won't qualify for bishop, but pure alchemist is decent enough.

[ 04-21-2005, 01:30 PM: Message edited by: Random Passerby ]

[DinkumThinkum]

On mixing potions to raise Alchemy skill: if you mix them one at a time, the skill appears to go up faster than if you mix them in batches. I.e., if you mix a stack of five potions with another stack of five potions, the game apparently counts that as just one skill use, not five seperate uses.

I didn't keep careful enough track to swear to it, but that's how it seemed to work for me.

That also seems to apply when identifying items: one at a time raises the Artifacts or spell skill faster than identifying a stack of items all at once.

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Personally, I never bothered with any class changes in Wiz 8: late in the game, I'd rather have an alchemist who can cast high level alchemy spells than a mage who can cast low level alchemy spells and low level wizardry spells.

I can see class changing as being useful if you're playing a small party for extra challenge, since that lets you make a wider set of skills available to your party. But with a full-sized party you should have enough character slots to cover all the skills you need without needing to swap classes.

[Scatter]

Yah, DT, you are correct. If you unstack one set into your personal inventory, then merge holding the other stack, they seperate themselves and you do one at a time, which DOES indeed make the Skill increase faster. Identifying them individually operates the same.