04.11.01 - Name the remaining 7th level spells
Why they need lore with this I won't know but I'm hoping this means they are close to implimenting these things. I'm guessing (Yes just call me Amid) since they are still nameing them that it'll be May or June before we actually see them.
http://vnboards.ign.com/message.asp?topic=10667896
Come on someone go name a spell after me :)
04.10.01 - Journals, Journals and more Journals
Battlemage Devastator has been chronicling how he levels indoors on our messageboard with this thread So You Want to Level your BattleMage Indoors----- I've added him to the Battlemage Journals link to the right. I know there's a few of you that hate the outdoors so it makes hard for you to follow my way of leveling so check his journals out to see how he does it. Go check em out and let him know what you think. This is work in progress so check back later and see how he's doing.
I other mage related news Fist de Yuma has made new journal. Here's a snippet.
Finally land a spell
I port into AB from the island and have my new Focus stone in hand. The stone has buffed my creature to 333 and life to 332.
As I hit the LS I hear the hum of a vinnie go by. Several players are pounding on it. I see that it is down about 10%. One player dies as I ready my spell.
I figure the best spell will be imperil. Resist, resist, resist, resist, resist, resist, and with 20 mana left it lands! At this time it is at 75% health. Hit heals itself to 100% and tried to move back to the spawn site. I’m guessing it ran out of stamina because it suddenly dropped all health and died.
I asked the fighters what affect the Imperil VI had on it. Nothing was he general opinion. They were doing 1 to 3 damage before and after the Imperil. These things sure are a pain
04.09.01 - Q's Guide to being a Mage in Dereth
Go here now! http://www.gamejag.com/ac/mageguide.htm
This is a very nicely done compendium of mages and how to decide to build one. It doesn't seem to have any bias toward any 1 type of mage although if you read it you can see why Battlemages have an edge. I don't completely agree with all statements in this guide but I'm not going to dispute them openly as this is such a nice piece of work. If you haven't decided on a mage and if I haven't convinced you to be a battlemage then you need to visit this guide. This link will also appear in my resource section.
Comments for this guide should go on the vault board here, drop him a line and tell him what you think.
04.06.01 - More Journals, This time Warhead
Warhead is one of the original supporters of my site. He has been doing progress reports on his clan site that are very insightful. He definitely takes a different path than Dizz. So if you're looking for an alternative way of leveling than the one I suggest, take a look at these. You can find his journals Here.
04.05.01 - Other Journals online, First up Zarya!!!
I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I have created a new section called "Other Journals". This section will contain other stories and journals from other Mages. First up is Zarya. Zarya is the Battlemage that inspired me to create my BM and my diaries so if you haven't read here stuff do it now. Her journals are being keep local because the pictures are no longer available from her original post. I do hope you enjoy this new feature. If you have been keeping journals or would like to please let me know and we'll work something out.
04.04.01 - New Diary, Dizz gets laggy with it
Finally got around to posting a new diary. I know it's been a long time, I'll try to keep them coming more frequently. I ramble a lot in this, but I hope you enjoy anyway. Heres the Diary.
03.29.01 - First Poll Closed
Thought I would share this since news has been so slow this month. On the message board I've been running a poll on what level everyone's BM is. I closed the poll down today and these are the results
What level is your BM?
Just a poll to get us all going and to see what level we all are.
Results (total votes = 81):
1-10 10 / 12.3% 
10 -20 34 / 42.0% 20-30 21 / 25.9% 30-50 15 / 18.5% 50+ 1 / 1.2%
This poll was started at the beginning of this month, when a lot of us were first starting our battlemages. So I've put up a new poll to get a better feel of where we are all at. You can find it here What level is your Battlemage #2 You're not a BM? Then go vote here What type of Mage do you play-
If you haven't visited the message board please do. We have started a really nice community here and everyone is really knowledgeable and friendly. The board has lots of neat features and options. You can even start your own poll if you like.
03.29.01 - Dev Chat as it pertains to mages
Last night was the monthly dev chat. I usually don't read these things since they are usually so useless. But now that I have this site and people are relying on me for mage information, I read through it word for word looking for information for us. Here's what I found. (Yes I Know this is long) Also this one seemed to be a little more informative than usual.
AllenGrey Will there be any changes made to the dispell gems. The fact that they remove only debuffs has basically ruined PK for most players, and made dispell potions, dispell spells and magic D pretty much worthless. Please enlighten. Thx.
AllenGrey no name on that one :(
Dell You can expect changes to the rewards from the Shagar Zharala.
Dell The fact is, they're getting a LOT of exchanges.
Dell And being s pragmatic as they are, you can expect them to lower their rewards in response to the frequency.
Dell DoneAhh crap!! Better load up on these guys and gals even if you don't use these you can expect to see a good value on these in the near future.
AllenGrey <deadbrain> SpiltBeans. It takes your zone name and tells you all your tapers for all the spells. done.
AllenGrey ah looks like we missed some on that one.
AllenGrey <deadbrain> What is your position regarding the recent cracking of the taper formula and will the formula be changed because of it; If/when new spells are added, will the tapers be calculated the same way? A program was recently released called SpiltBeans. It takes your zone name and tells you all your tapers for all the spells.
Crowley Okay... about Spiltbeans... People asked us what we thought about Splitpea, and we never really minded it.
Crowley The same generally holds for Spiltbeans.
Crowley Whoever wrote it is mighty clever, and gives us as a dev team another lesson in the craftiness of our players.
Crowley So we have no official stance against Spiltbeans.
Crowley doneDidn't expect them to have to many objections to this.
AllenGrey Now to something a bit less touchy, pack enhancements.
AllenGrey <JulianFF> When can we expect pack functionality improvements? Even if there was just one extra pack slot, or if we could carry one slightly larger pack it would help. Or maybe stackable trade notes. Us mages are seriously running out of inv room here. And could we expect further pack enhancements any time in the near feature? I would love a pack with a "taper" icon on it, for example, just to make organization easier. Thanks. Done.
Sean The server folks tell me that the more slots you carry around, the more the server has to work to keep track of it all.
Sean We decided on a number, and any number is relative. We could double the number of slots, and still people would want more. People tend to carry as much as they can.
Sean As for graphics, I made 10 different pack colors. I know for example, that my cooking stuff's in the grey pack, my healing kits are in the purple pack (unless I can find a red one) so I keep track by color.
Sean If we were to make packs that had specific symbols on them, you wouldn't be able to quickly re-purpose a pack. I often drop stuff and use a pack for something else, say trade notes. I wouldn't want my trade note pack to have a taper on it.
Sean I gave you 10 colors. Use them as you like. Organize as you like.
Sean Done.This question gets asked time and time again and the answer is always the same. It'd be nice but it's not going to change lets just deal with it.
AllenGrey The PvP crowd would love to know the answer to our next question.
AllenGrey *YojinIII* Q: God mode fixed next month: Yes, No
Orion God Mode is still being tested. We made the made the mistake last month of jumping the gun and thinking we had a fic
Orion err fix
Orion We're making sure that the impact that it has on all players be they PvP or simply PvM are viable before we implement any changes. It is something that we know is a problem and something that is being addressed. At this point however we do not have a definitive date.
Orion doneI posted on the message board that this wasn't fixed. I'm guessing by the response that this won't get fixed anytime soon.
AllenGrey *Yobe* When can we expect to see Level 7 creature spells? (within the next patch? or next two patchs? or further away)
Dell You'll see Level 7 creature spells soon.
Dell Not this next patch, but soon after.
Dell And probably sooner than Life.
Dell Done
AllenGrey *seifer* I was wondering about the lvl7's as well, what timeframe is there to add one spell, what process does a spell go through from thought to finish. Im asking this question to better understand for myself why the lvl7 creatures and lifes are taking so long to be finished up and implimented. Is it taking a while because of balance issues? or is jesse just busy on other things.. thanks!
Crowley it's taking a while because there are soooo bloody many level 7 Critter spells and we already have a lot on the plate to go in for each month
Dell Well, as you have noticed, all the level 7's have names.
Dell So that is a large addition as well.
Dell Not to mention there are lots of Critter spells.
Crowley and it's a huge QA task to test them all
Dell Add that together, it equals a long process.
Troop For most of the level sevens, the effect will be barely above the level sixes, the main thing will be the increased duration
Troop so, level sevens are not the "savior" of items/lore...
Troop that said, people are saying they still want that little bit of increased effectiveness, also taking into account the spell economy for level 7s
Troop to which I say, that casting level 7s has a cost, as all those mages reminded us when talking to us about platinum scarabs
Troop and I do think there is a balance there which is fair...
Troop that said, I will not say never to adding level 7s into the loot system... i just dont think it will have that great of an effect, and it is not considered a priority
Troop done
Does anyone at turbine talk to each other??? I mean come on how many times can they say one is before the other and be different from their previous response. Also I think we will agree that we don't need special names for all these level 7 spells. Sure they're cute and all but other than that not needed.
Quixotic *Zeliah* Do creatures gain experience when resisting spells, thereby raising their Magic Defense automatically? And if so, is it working as intended? Creatures MagicD seems to raise extremely fast. For me, if I attempt to kill a Virindi Executor, if I don't kill it within the first 3 to 4 spells, it's simply impossible because by that point his MagicD will have gone up far too high.
Crowley yes, critters gain XP when resisting spells
Crowley this was part of the reason why the Shard of the Herald on Thistle survived
Crowley and yes, at a certain point, the skill curve goes wacky and their skills start going overboard, making them nigh-unhittable, as has been seen with the Executors from time to time
Crowley without changing the skill leveling curve, there's no way to address this other than to do sanity checking on some of the defensive skills of creatures at the high end of the XP curve
Crowley this does not necessarily mean Executors will be nerfed. they are, after all, the Virindi beatstick.
Crowley done
YES they admitted it. I absolutly hate this nasty curve. It's easy to see with tuskers, when you are fighting them at or below there magicD.
AllenGrey *DaMiZ* Q: Are armor protections effected by spells? like if you have acid shadow armor with unparrelled to acid, will you tend to recive less damage? or are they just for melee attacks?
Dell Armor is just for melee attacks.
Dell It has no effect on spells.
Dell Life protections on the other hand...
Dell Have full effect.
Dell Done.There has been lots of talk on the message boards about this for some reason. This is the way I've always understood it to work.
Other notes of interest are additions to monarch tools and more dires towns,
The whole transcript can be found here : http://ac.stratics.com/content/community/zone/logs/20010328.shtml
03.26.01 - SpiltBeans, The world is coming to an end?
I'm sure most of you have heard of this but in case you haven't here's the news from http://www.acdev.org
Spiltbeans has arrived. Spiltbeans will take your Zone ID, Portal.Dat, and a Location to extract data to, and spit out a whole bunch of HTML Files for each spell, and an index html :-)
It will give the tapers for every spell. This counts Level 7s, Diamonds,and Dispells. It will even give the combos for "Admin"/Bael Zharon spells...Of course, these are not learnable, but its fun to look and smile at :)
As usual, this program does not send your Zone ID back to ACDev, etc, etc, it is totally safe :)
Downloads:
http://www.archgrove.co.uk/spiltbeans.zip
http://www.astyrrian.com/spiltbeans.zip
Note:
A few bugs have been found, mainly with first tapers in item spells and a few tapers in War Spells..i am sure as soon as Asriel wakes up he'll fix it :)I haven't tried this yet as I'm always skidish of viruses and such. I don't doubt this though, I was actually wondering how long it would be before someone figured out how to crack the relation between the zoneid and your personal taper. Will this end spell research?... yes it probably will and I bet turbine has something to say about this. But then again the spell research was pretty much dead anyway. My problem with this is that this may detour them from adding any completely new spells into the game.
Now the question I have is, are those rain spells in the game? (yes I know they're not, but might be fun to try)
I know you have an opinion on this, voice it here.
03.26.01 - Weekend News
I have to be pretty motivated to post news on the weekends as it cuts into my actual playing time. Plus almost every site is this way so it usually doesn't come in anyway. But here is a bit that effects us (not including spiltbeans)
Turbine finished answering the question sent in to them that made up for the lack of a chat this month here's the stuff that pertains to us.
1) How much impact with the changes Jesse referred to actually help stop "god mode"?
DJ: We’re confident it’s a thorough fix to the jump-casting problem.This will mainly effect our PK brothers, I never could get it to work and I'm probably one of the few that think it should have been left in. I mean melee get this sticky junk and don't even have to work at it.
3) There's been alot of debate on the new war mage armor, what will be done to improve its usefullness?
Chris L’Etoile:
In March:
1) The Max Mana of all pieces will be lowered to 2000, and the burn rate will be lowered to one point per eight seconds. This gives the pieces the same 4.4 hour endurance as currently, but at 1/4 the mana charge cost.2) The value of all pieces will be lowered by 20% (coat 8000, leggings 4800, girth 2400).
3) Encumbrance on both Thaumaturgic and Exarch will be lowered, making a full set nearly as lightweight as a robe (coat 100, leggings 75, girth 50).
4) On the Exarch Plate Girth, Fauna Perlustration has been replaced with Mana Renewal 6.
5) The Coat has been extend to cover the hands. That's one less armor piece (gloves/gaunts) to buff.
Further down the road, some new spells will be added, and you non-specialized people who accidentally made Exarch Plate will be able to deconstruct it and start again.
Wow thank you stormy!! This very well could make this stuff very usefull. or at least pieces of it. I can imagine we are going to see a lot of people running around with just the top for this and GSA bottoms. Plus with the addition of new spells this could be tremindious. Glad to see they are going to allow you to deconstruct it too, I know some OG's have acicentally put together the wrong pieces.
4) Will creature and life magic get level 7 spells like Item and War? If so, how soon?
DJ: Critter will come sooner than Life, but we’re not sure when… Critter has a LOT of spells.OMG can you hear the OG's getting pissed? Although I'm a little pissed they aren't doing life first.
6) Will a method be added to unlearn portal tie and gain the advantage of never having learned it? Or will those that never learned it be changed to remove the advantage?
CK: Currently, there are no plans to allow a person to remove their portal tie. Those that have never used it will be left the same.hmm this seems to be contriditory to other information. At one time they said they were going to nerf the ability to recall to a non-tiable portal. Ahh well good news for Dizz as he never learned portal tie :)
03.22.01 - Dizz's Diary - Booo BSD
Man and I hated this place before the nerf. Read about why I hate it more here.
03.21.01 - March Build Notes up
Here's a few of the ones that should intereste us as mages
http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/marchbuild.asp
Increased the drop rates of Vial Organic Acid for Bane, Harrower, and Virulent Grievvers. Lowered the max mana of all Thaumaturgic and Exarch Plate pieces to 2000, and reduced the burn rates to one point per eight seconds. This gives the pieces the same 4.4 hour endurance as before, but at 1/4 the mana charge cost. Lowered the value of all Thaumaturgic and Exarch Plate pieces by 20% (coat: 8000, leggings: 4800, girth: 2400). Lowered encumbrance on both Thaumaturgic and Exarch Plate pieces to make a full set nearly as lightweight as a robe (coat: 100, leggings: 75, girth: 50). On the Exarch Plate Girth, replaced Fauna Perlustration with Mana Renewal 6. The Thaumaturgic and Exarch Plate Coats have been extended to cover the hands. That's one less armor piece (gloves/gauntlets) to buff. Also lots of changes to the keep if you hunt in there you need to see what those changes are.
And of course the rollout notes http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/marchrollout.asp
Looks like the virindi story is moving along with new monster and pissed off virindi so should be fun for a mage.... or not.l
03.20.01 - Pull Scrolls from a Steel Chest everytime???
hmm, found this post on Cod. I'm not high enough level to really take advantage of this but it could be really good news. I've heard of all the hard times people have with these chest and this could be really good news.
original post : Pull Scrolls from a Steel Chest everytime!!!
From: Grimwulf ID: DgjnfvKhmTo Date: 3/20/01 at 7:58 am Subject: Pull Scrolls from a Steel Chest everytime!!! I found this little tip out the other day when I cashed in a pack of keys.
If you don't take the mana charges out of a chest then it will always spawn scrolls. no more pulling 2 charges every other pull, just leave them in the chest and you will get 1-3 scrolls every time. Thought everyone might like to know that, better than waiting 5 minutes between pulls.
03.19.01 - Obsidian Guard's Mage Compendium
Found this while looking at this clans monarch tree software. They have a very nice mage compendium that covers creation of several types of mages including a BM. Also contains some tips and strategies for a mage. A very nice guide so go check it out.
http://home.nc.rr.com/obsidianguard/mageGuide.htm
I've include this link in the resource section.
03.19.01 - ohhh ahhh 30
Yup dizz got 30 this weekend. I'll probably do a small diary tomorrow but it'll just be exclusive to the site.
Think I suck? Tell me about it here
Update 03.22.01 : I accidently deleted my old pic of the other image so this is the one from my diary. Also the diary wasn't exclusive to this site since it was bigger than expected and the information I was going to include wasn't in it.
03.16.01 - Javis's new armor
Although my monarch got his mage armor a week or so ago, I'm just now getting around to puttin up a shot of him in it. He does have spec'd war so he can take full advantage of it. Although I've only seen him showing it off,I'm pretty sure he doesn't really use it to fight in.
