However, I wanted to see what the other way was like. I had never made a Battlemage before, but I had looked up on them and decided that after all that I would make one. Item did not seem to appeal to me so I decided to take Creature first.
**Opening Music plays inspiring tune**
These are the journals of the great and gimpy Saviors Hand.
Well to start off, I guess I did a big mistake in terms of stats. I felt 100 Focus and 100 Willpower, 10 coordination and 10 quickness was a given, but one other thing seemed to bother me. What would I do as far as the Strength/Endurance part? I wanted a good deal of strength, but what is the use of that if you do not have enough life or stamina. So in the end I went with 30 Strength and 80 Endurance. Yeah, let the flames release, I know I made what might have been a mistake but I don't really think so. At this point I have a very good amount of Health and Stamina, I wear at least 50-100 of all the comps at all times plus Peas and a full suit of GSA and I am still under 100% burden, so I am kinda liking the trade off.
"Well Savior what equipment did you start out with?"
Well to be honest I kinda had help from my patron
. For most of his normal life he used a set of GSA, but his first early levels I
had nothing at all in terms of armor.As for a wand, I just used my starter wand.
"Ok. So start out with the story already!"
The Beginning...
Well I decided to make my character in Shoushi Southeast (before the new patch), from there I made my way to town and decided to go into the Shoushi Grotto, I believe that is the name, and went downstairs. Now at first I had no idea what to do. All I knew was blast away. So with my tunic and pants I started to shoot with a Fire Bolt I. Within a moment or two I had a dead Drudge at my foot. With pride I moved onto the next area and started to fire at them as well. But there was one or two problems. First off all I was new to Mages, I had played one before but this was my first one ever, second I had not learned my level 2 spells yet, third I was trying to kill a Drudge Prowler, not a Skulker which I had just defeated. I knew the difference between them but I never really noticed that it was this type of Drudge when I started to fire away. Call it lack of attention
.
Needless to say in a moment I had been sent to that 'big...blue spinning.....thingamajiggy'.What's a mage to do I thought. Well I looked around and found some of Dizz's posts and started to get the whole picture.
[Note] Yes it changed just like that. I read his journal and started right up with a whole new style, sounds simple huh?
So as advised I went to town and bought some spell components and learnt my level 2 spells. This brought me to level 2 and I decided to raise some of my strength and magic skills.
The Big Skip
Unfortunately here is where my patrons help comes in
. He had decided to be a good little patron, and me being the sucker I took up
on his offer for for some leveling. He got me to level 12 and it was pretty
uneventful. But looking back I wish I had done it on my own, cause when I was
finished I felt really bad that I had all this new power and spells and such
while I still was fealing fresh, like I should have learnt something by now.The Pickup From Depression
Well about 3 weeks later after I had gotten out of my rut and decided he was worth the effort to play, instead of feeling bad about before, and came back to him to try and get him going.
"What did you do in the mean time Savior?"
Well I had started up a Life specialized Dagger character. See I came from Morningthaw to start up in Thistledown and I met my soon to be patron, Rhand Altor, and he leveled my mage. Really only cause I had told him I wanted a mage. Then later after that he leveled me the New Dagger Character to level 27. And I took him over till I decided I needed to finish what I had done. The Dagger Character is now level 32 and I use him as my main.
"You got someone to level you?! Sell out?"
Not really I had been playing for many months before so it was not like a newbie getting power leveled. It was a person who had nothing on the server starting up a new character and getting a leg up with some items and some levels.
Post Big Boom
Well after waiting 3 weeks and starting to get motivated about playing my BM I started him back up. To be honest it was tough at first. I had no armor that I could use, because I would need to make sure I had my GSA on my main character, So I wore nothing but underwear, a starter wand and 10 Vitae. Yes that's right 10% vitae.
Before that three weeks ago I had died trying to level with my patron. So we sorta decided to call it quits for the day and that I would level tomorrow, but first I needed to come and get my items. So he summoned for me and we went back to get my items, not even thinking about the /permit command. After some rushing by some un-seen golems I had been sent to the lifestone again. this time we remembered about the /permit command and he got my things.
Anyways back to the story. My first experience was to try and hunt some Drudge Skulkers (6 Magic Resistance) and Slinkers (9 Magic Resistance). As you could probably tell I was doing pretty good. After about 5 minutes of trying to to hunt I thought that with my vitae this high I could never burn it off hunting this small game. So what did I do? Tried to take some Azure Gromnies(66 Magic Resistance).
Some New Mage Strategy
Now let's get into some strategies here. First of all for you beginner mages I know how many times you have been told to hunt at the beach and attack Azure Gromnies there in your levels 3-10. But here are some tips. First of all look afar for these suckers. They don't usually appear on your radar especially when they are in the water or in some out of the way spots. When you finally encounter one on your radar stop and make sure you are a good distance. Now since you are only 3-10 now a mana conversion is either non existent or too low to try and cast a vulnerability, so don't try it unless you have a full bar of mana to use and there are no critters near by. There are in my opinion two things you can do here.
1. Wait for someone to run by and attract him, this way you can wait till he starts running. At this point you can fire a bolt and if auto targeted correctly it should hit it. From there it should stop and you can hit them again. Now they should be running towards you. Fire off as many bolts as possible until he is dead. If all goes good you should have that gromnie dead and 300exp in your pocket without too much work.
2. If no one can run by just start firing away. The first one should hit dead on and he should be running towards you. Depending on the distance you should have gotten in about 2-4 hits in before he has gotten to you. For this method you should have some protections on cause he is going to hit you. One or so more bolts if he is not dead already and you got a kill.
While I am at it for all those new mages here are some tactics for the rest of the beach monsters who you might encounter.
Blue Phyntos Wasp (29 Magic Resistance)
These guys are pretty self explanatory. There are normally three in a pack so just fire away. However concentrate on one at a time. All wasps are very fond of chain casting so if you take out one quick that's one less to worry about so try and concentrate on one, then move to the next and so on. In my opinion, however, you should avoid these wasps until much later. When they cast, they cast War spells, and unless you started with high endurance you can't take too many hits.
Water Golems (60 Magic Resistance)
They hit hard and can cause you many problems with their War spells, and I believe the occasional debuff, so they are worth that vuln. Since (most?) Golems are vulnerable to Bludgeoning use a Shockwave spell, the higher the better. If you are careful and at a distance these guys should be very manageable. At level 3-7 I could only take one at a time, however after that 2 maybe even 3 is possible, just be careful.
Mud Golems (60 Magic Resistance)
The same as above.
Small Shadow Child(85 Magic Resistance)
Sorry not just yet
Back to the story
Well I did not take into account what I was talking about above and had died. To make a long story short (which I probably should) I quickly built myself up to 25% vitae.
At this point I was depressed again and did not want to play too much, but for some reason I just keep going. This time I thought smart. Killing the Drudge Prowlers nearby and then carefully moving up to Azure Gromnies was a good idea. This moved to 10% vitae. Feeling assured again I decided to try at a house nearby where I was in Cragstone. This house had a few banderlings by and in it. These beasts brought me to 5% vitae, then nothing. Talk about great. These guys became my new treats if I could get a hold of them.
Vitae gone and ready to rumble
After the above I realized I could not get lucky for long and decided to get my GSA from my main character, his good ol' gold helmet, some gaunts and a good old orb for flavor, nothing magical-just a normal old orb.
First place I went was the Mountain Shortcut, some nice experience there but not too many creature around and the respawn rate wasn't too good so I headed elsewhere.
I thought about of the many different places and decided on the Mayoi Mountians. When I arrived I buffed up and started to take it to some Drudges right off the start. Making some mad exp I kept on going and really only concentrated on Lurkers, Stalkers, and later Raveners plus certain monougas till level 20, but boy was it a different trip there. At level 17 I had gotten into the groove of killing my prey and had it down. The day after I got 17 I wake up and something just sorta hit me. "I am going to make 20 today!"
So for the whole day I leveled and leveled. Nothing but Drudge after Drudge after another. To be honest it got very tedious and starting to test my patience.
When I reached level 18 it didn't feel too good. But when I thought of how happy I would be at level 20 from my new creature skill I just had to continue on. 19 was pretty much the same and kicking butt and so was the same for about half of level 19-20. However at some point, for some reason, the Drudge spawns really slowed then stopped. I have said it before and I will say it again. Dev's know about this sort of thing and they know when to stop the spawns right when you need them
.
After some running around I found this good steady spawn of Drudges and started
kicking butt again.Right about around the time it was to level guess what happens...come on you call can figure it out? Yep that's right I died.
Right from some Raveners. Had lost my helmet and my last Silver Scarab. Talk about terrible. I was hoping to just kill the last critters I needed, then recomp. So after throwing on my life buffs I headed back for my new hunting stretch and passed up the house, nothing had spawned yet. Darn I would go into the battle at a major disadvantage, not only would I not have level 4 War/Life spells, I had vitae. Well the little Savior in my head told me that there was still a way to win.
Time to become sly
Well, like the pictures I will show you in a moment, there is a spot that Drudges spawn and have to come all the way down or jump to get you. Cause of that timeframe you can get in a vuln and a war before they can hit you, which sometimes was enough for that good kill.
My Strategy for the Drudges:
Well since there was always three what I would do is vuln one. Two of the pack would start running after me while the other would stay and do nothing. With that in mind I ran like crazy away. While running I had made sure I kept that vulned Stalker in radar so when they ran away I knew which one to vuln again. After about 10 seconds of running they went back, at which point I followed and kept that Stalk in my radar. I did it again except this time no Drudge would come at all spare the vulned one. I shot it a few times and I got some major big exp. Rinse and repeat for the rest and I had it covered, oh and that body I lost too
.At level 20 I ran to the Mayoi Mage, and recomped.
And then right outside I set myself up for my new legacy, being one of the few Creature First BM's.
Here some pictures for those newbie mages or just people who wanted to know where I was hunting.
bmdoc1.jpg
