Dizz's Diary - Getting Comfortable in the New World
dated : 12.16.02

I had every intention of doing these more regularly but things never work out as intended.  This diary along with the previous edition can be found at http://dizzarian.com/ac2.  This journal will cover levels 18-26 so it will be a pretty hefty edition.

When last we left dizz

he had just left the laboratories and got the all powerful spell encase.   At 18 I felt is probably time to leave the main island and venture over into the jungles of Omishan.  Omishan is great island but you really need to pay attention and figure out the portal routes or it's very easy to get lost.  It seems like daily I have to go find a young guild member who has lost his way on the island.   

To start out with on the island I went hunting on the beaches of mayoi.  The main fair here is mimbu, sclavus and the occasional spawn.  What's great about this area is after you spend some time here you're liable to find some Sanguine Fang potion off a Kachem Mimbu.   After drinking the potion you have to kill 10 aste and 5 Essa Sclavus.  The aste are easy because they are all along this area.  Once you kill 10 of them either head over to Shinoko for some easy kills or if you're more a dungeon dweller you can go to inner darkness dungeon to easily get all the kills.

Since we're talking about mimbu a little I think it's time to give a little strategy.  Mimbu when found in pairs can be formable opponents.  They are heal freaks and help each other out a lot.  As a human mage though you should be able to retire both of them pretty easy.  First throw a fire spell on both of them.  This will get the DoT thing going and maybe keep them from healing each other.  Now use your dodging (z and c keys) till one of them goes vulnerable.  You have to land your crit and finish him off or you probably won't have much chance.   Once you crit the first one the remaining mimbu will be easy pickings.

Vauts, Vaults and more Vaults

At 19 the vault world opens up again with 2 vaults,  Drudge citadel and Kydi Vault.  Both vaults once inside are not too difficult with a good team.  In fact this is probably the last journal where actually talk about vaults.  Most are straight forward and are really just a mechanic for you get gobs of xp.   The drudge citidal is a little different in a way simply because the trip to the vault can be more treacherous than the vault itself.  Every time I've done this vault I always get in a group at Cavendo or at the portal drop.  There are some shortcuts to the vault that most know about so I won't cover them.  The run there is probably the best looking area in the game that I've seen to date.   It's worth the run just to see the sights.   My advice for this run is to not just run straight to the vault, if you pick up any drudges on the way stop and kill them or you risk loosing a fellow member to him.  Also when you get to the vault the opening is not clear so the fellow will have to clear that out.  Then you want everyone in the fellow to hotkey the glyph and run to the portal 1 at a time to enter.  If you don't do this then you'll be getting that the portal is in use and before you know it someone's dead.

Prosper vault (level 21) is pretty uneventful and the hardest part is just finding a fellow for it because it seems no one knows where to find a glyph for it (Pain reapers and Cabalist).  Also a small note, I had a clan member who fell through the floor in there and died in the vault.  He contacted an admin and the admin actually portalled him back into the vault so that's nice to know that if you have a glitch in the dungeon they will help you out.  Same thing can be said for ariaki and kydi.

Hunting and Leveling

There are so many great places to hunt on Omishan that it'd be almost impossible to cover them all.   And now with the new difficulty maps in the game it's pretty easy to make sure where you need to be.  Here's a general outline of where I hunted during different levels

20 - 21  - Ikeras ring and Shiniko ring
22 - 23  -  Zu ring
23.5 - 24 - Rakani loop
24 - 26 - Naderu Ring

This is  pretty rough outline as I was all over the place really testing my limits.  Which brings up one of my biggest thing I want emphasize, do not be afraid to test yourself.  If you don't test yourself with a mob that is 5+ level more than you then you could be depriving yourself of some valuable xp.  Don't use the monsters you're fighting now to determine if you can or can not take a higher level monsters.  They all have different fighting tactics and weaknesses.  As I always say "Dieing is not a choice it's a lifestyle."

Now for those of you saving up for a spec line  let me tell you a little trick I used.  Lets say you have 5 spare credits instead of just sitting on them train paragon but don't put any points into it.  Depending on you GM you'll have a few points in it, definitely enough to give you an edge.  Then when you die, just un-train it, train portal recall, recall, repeat.  As long as you put no points in paragon you can do this forever with no penalty.

Skill Analysis

So up to this point I have had every skill in the human mage line.  For those thinking of going with this type of character I'm going to cover every skill and give my opinion on each

Mindlash - Distance : 0 regen time : fast
- This your base skill for the tree.   This skill is so very very weak.  The only time I really use it when the mob has less than 50 health or so because the skill hardly ever gets evaded and can be used to finish the creature off. 

Firebolt - Distance : 4 regen time : fast,  Line of sight required
- Up until level fireball this is your lead off spell and it does pretty descent damage with DoT.   It's true power though is it criting ability where it does amazing damage.  I'll never stop pumping this skill.

Heart of Ice - Distance 1 regen time : moderate
- Not the greatest spell.  If you really need an AoE spell there are better ones on up the tree.  It's merely a place holder for me.

Ease Suffering - Distance 3? regen time slow (30 secs?)
- Past level 18 you'll probably want this skill to help in fellows.  It's a pretty weak heal but enough to save a friend or even yourself if needed.

Horripilate - Distance 2.5 regen moderate
- Not played with this much appears to be like combustible

Combustible - Distance 2.5 regen moderate
- Not bad, not good.  As a pure damage and DoT spell is not all that great but can be nice as an additional damage spell for a target that's going down fast.  The problem is it takes a substantial amount of vigor to cast and by the description I would guess it's not working as intended.  I wish we could word from a dev on how this really works.

Inner Calm - Distance ? regen slow
- 20+ this spell start to become more and more useful.  You have to remember that you have it because it coast quite a bit of vigor to use.  It's a life saver though.

Rushed Recovery - 
- This spell is useless for a human mage.. you don't have enough vigor to spare for this become useful

Icey Torment - Distance 2.5 regen moderate
- A decent AoE spell, if you're not going to be getting Explosion this is a nice substitute.

Spontaneous Combustion - Distance 2.5 regen moderate/fast
- A great damage spell, I use it every fight.  It does take a little vigor but the is best direct damage spell in the mage line.

Robustify - Self Spell regen 0
- Decent buff that will help regain health while not fighting

Tenaciousness - Self Spell regen 0
- Same as above but with vigor, I always use these spells and can tell when I don't have them on.

Drain Health - Range ? regen slow
- Not a bad spell does decent damage and gives you health.  this won't help you at the end of battle it has to be used just at the right time for it to really pay off.  Most likely you can use the credit point in better places

Fireball - Range 1-4 regen moderate
- Very Very nice spell, It's now my lead spell as long as it not into a pack of creatures.  It does do a small linear AoE so make sure you use it appropriately.  It does a little less than Spon Comb but doesn't take as much vigor. Love this spell.

Slithering Flames - Range 4 regen ?
- Throws 2 firebolts and when both hit it does great damage.  The problem is getting them both to hit.  If you do use these then they will be you lead off spells.  I never could get these to pay off so I stopped using them

Encase - range 4 regen 0
- You know the drill everyone wants this spell and it's a god send.

Vigor Siphon - 
- Probably the only spell I have not trained and tried.  I would like to hear comments on it.

Explostion - Range 4 regen slow
-  A very nice large AoE spell.  Probably the best looking spell in the game.  It only does decent damage and take a considerable amount of vigor.  I untrained it after I wasn't using it for a long time.  Most of my mage buddies appear to be doing the same thing.

Skills and a new road map

I've had a change of heart with the spec line that I'm going to be going.  I've read a lot about the enchanter buff line which is pretty popular so that's not for me.  Then I read about the root spells and such on the debuff line which was what I really wanted.  From what I've read they are not really like what I was expecting and wouldn't play into my style of play.  So I've decide to go with the Sorcerer Debuff line this was due to some comments by the devs concerning Gossamer's Flesh and a little bit of nudging by my good friend Emeraldwind :)  Debuffs play more into my style of play my only concern is vigor and running out is going to be a major concern

As you can see, like I talked about above I untrained explosion as it just did not fit in.   I've also started crawling up the sorcerer debuff line but I'll save real discussion of it till my next journal.  One thing I've done since last time is bump every skill, even place holders, up to level 20.  The reason is for every 10 points in a skill a predecessor skill gets 1 point and at 22+ or so it's cheaper to put 20 points in a lower skill than to bump a single point.

I'll try to get a new journal out next week to talk a little about level 26-29.  Also I'll be discussing some of the new content and working in a fellowship.

Till next time, blow stuff up