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This is a guide for new players to AC on Magic - uses and methods.

1) Magic - the power of Dereth

Magic is a powerful tool within the world of Dereth, but it can be a difficult tool to learn to use. Mastery may take great efforts and time, but the rewards are equally great. Not for nothing does nearly every character in Dereth learn magic at some stage in their career. Magic gives you the power to blast your enemies into pieces, drain them of mana and life, enhance your clothes to be better than the strongest plate armours or to enhance the skills of yourself and your allies, giving you a powerful edge in combat. Magic can also heal, can transport you and your allies in a second to a different part of the continent and can even help tell you just exactly what that nice magic bracelet does. In short, magic is powerful, but requires dedication to master.

2) The Four Schools

Magic in Dereth is controlled through 4 different styles. Each of these styles has a "classic" name, such the "Way of the Left hand", but they are far more commonly know by their "skill" names within the game - Life, Creature, Item and War. Also, Creature is often referred to by the short hand version - "critter". It is by these names that the rest of this note will refer to them.

Each of the schools has its advantages, each it's disadvantages. Each school does close to what it's name suggests - Life deals with health and mana (either removing from an enemy, or boosting your own). It also has some nice protection spells. Item deals with spells that are cast on single items, spells that increase weapon speed, or enhance the protection armour offers you. Obscurely, Item also contains all the magical "travel" spells, the reason for which has never become clear. The next school is the "Creature" school - this one is used to affect all the stats and skills in the game. If you want to increase your skill with a sword (or anything else, for that matter), this is the school for you. Finally, the War school deals with blowing things up. Or down. Or sideways. This school is very "focussed" on what it does, and what it does, it does well :).

3) The Life School

This school is considered by many to be the most powerful. It includes a number of almost "essential" spells for any young mage, such as healing, protection and the famous "stamina to mana" and "health to mana" spells (more on mana use later). In addition to this, it carries the source of it's great power - the draining spells. These spells on the face of it do not seem like much - drain your enemy of health and add it to yours - or do the same with mana. The REAL power of these spells is that they work with percentages. Example, a "Drain Health I" spell will drain % of an opponents health and add a percentage of that to yours. It does not matter if the target has 10 health or 600 - the drain spell will drain a percentage of that health, and try to feed a portion of that through to you. Note that higher level spells do not do any more damage to the enemy - they just feed more of what they have drained to you. This can lead to the slightly surreal sight of a powerful, L60+ mage using a level 1 spell against a very powerful monster. In addition, it is the only school that provides spells that work on an opponent without your having to be able to see him. Target him on your radar, and then cast a drain, even through walls or doors.... This can lead to certain notorious areas being used for life mages as they happily drain away the health from an opponent, whilst that opponent cannot get to them....

There are two main ways of healing in the game - the healing skill and the Life school healing spells (the other methods, such as using healing potions as are either very expensive, or rare (shouting "heal me!" for example)). If you don't have the healing skill, then you will probably need this school - otherwise, it may be a long time between battles as you wait for your health to recovery normally.

However, it is not all roses with the Life school, there are some points to be warned about. The first point is the mana cost to use a spell from this school - it is very expensive to cast a life school spell. Example: a Level IV life spell costs 50 Mana (basic) to cast. A Level IV war spell costs about 20 mana. This can make a big difference if you are tight on mana. The second issue is that this skill is expensive to acquire in terms of skill points (important:- once you have the skill, it cost the same as any other skill to boost it). It is second only to war magic, in that it costs 12 skill points to train and a further 8 to specialise.

4) The War School

As mentioned above, this school deals with elemental attack spells. If you want to throw lightning bolts, shatter your enemy with shock bolts or simply roast your enemies with a fire bolt, then this is the school for you. This spell ties with the Life school in terms of power and effectiveness. The ability to deliver vast amounts of damage on a target a full screen away is.......useful.

The war school is very specialised, and has the fewest actual spells available to the starting mage than any other school. Having said that, it also almost unique in that it adds NEW spells (rather than just improvements to existing ones) as you get better with the skill. The starting spells you will probably learn are the "Bolt Spells". These are quick to cast, do a fair amount of damage and have a reasonable range (if it is on your radar, and you have line of sight, then you can hit it). There are 7 bolt spells, one for each of the attack forms used in AC - lightning, fire, cold, acid, slashing, bludgeon and piercing. This allows you to tailor your attack easily to the opponents vulnerabilities.

Also on the good side, this school has some of the lowest mana costs required for spells - a Level IV spell for example costs only 20 mana (basic). This can allow a mage to keep fighting long after someone with Life magic has given up - unless of course the Life mage starts to drain mana from his opponent....

The "extra" spells mentioned above are effectively "area attack" versions of the bolt spells, or refinements to the bolt spells. - i.e.

There are "streak" spells that are faster than bolts, but do less damage
There are "blast" spells that shoot 3 bolts out at 45 degree angles.
There are circle spells that affect all those surrounding the mage (etc etc)

However, there are two major downpoints for spells of this school. The first is the cost to acquire this school in the first place - it cost 16 skill points to train the skill , and a further 12 to specialise. This makes it the single most expensive skill in the game. Pretty much the ONLY people with this skill are those that start out with it at character creation. Adding it to a char later can be done, but requires a great deal of discipline in not spending those skill points on something else, and also begs the question "why"? The point cost is so extreme in terms of what other skills you cannot get, that it more or less needs to be part of the character design from the start - this is NOT a school you just "add" to a character, it is one that you build a character around. There is one exception to this for a character design called an "Og" mage, where the War school is added later. However, as an Og mage is most definitely not a good starting character for a new player, I don't propose to go into more detail here.

The second "bad point" is that the spells are not instantaneous. They travel to their target. This means, if the target moves, the spell may miss. When you cast a spell, the system will attempt to predict where the target will be when the spell gets there. It is actually quite good at this, and if the target moves in a straight line, then it will be hit.. However, it the target changes direction either by dodging, or going up/down a slope, then it is likely it will miss. As it happens though, monsters are fairly stupid. If you fire a spell at them to wake them up, they nearly always run straight at you, allowing you a perfect set of shots as they close.

5) Creature ("critter") School

This school deals with enhancing (or impeding) the skills and stats used by characters. As far as I am aware, every stat (with the exception of the 3 "derived" stats of Health, Mana and Stamina) and skill in the game has it's own quartet of spells - to either increase or decrease the stat/skill, and to target yourself or other people. Quite why you would want to decrease your own Health or Sword skill is a mystery, but if you do, the spell is there for it.

This school is one that is of use to everyone, not just "pure" mages. The extra skill points that this school can add can be frightening. At high levels, it can cost hundreds of thousands of point to raise a skill by 1 %age point. The basic spells within this school can add 10% just for the price of a 1st level spell. The higher levels spells can add a massive amount - +35% to a skill with a 6th Level version for example.

When it comes to trying to boost skills, you can easily boost them beyond the "obvious" limits of the spells. Example:- You want to boost sword skill. If you have access to Level III spells, you can cast "Sword Mastery Self III, and receive a +20 skill boost to sword. Nice. BUT, if you then cast STR Self III and CoOrd Self III, you will gain a further 10% to your skill, for a total of +30. In addition, all the skills that use Str and CoOrd will have been boosted. Obvious when you think of it, but then most things are - when you think of it :). By the way, on a personal level, one of the most useful spells I have found to carry round with me all the time in this school, as a mage or as a warrior, is the endurance boost spell. For a warrior it add stamina and health. For a mage it does the same, and also makes the "Stamina To Mana" spell more effective, as you will have more Stamina to start with....

Finally, this school is on of the least expensive (along with "Item") in terms of development points to acquire - something that means it is carried along by many "hybrid" warrior mages.

6) Item School

This school is used by pretty much ALL characters eventually. Apart from the useful nature of the majority of the spells to warriors, it also holds all the "Travel" spells such as "Lifestone recall". Unless you want to spend a lot of time running between towns and learning the portal routes (mind you, you should learn these anyway, but that is another story), you will need this school. On a personal note, after playing a character who got as high as Level 25 without having this school, the sheer jealousy you feel as someone just "recalls" in while you had to spend 15 minutes running and dodging bad guys to get back to the dungeon where you died, is extraordinary

With regards to the majority of the spells, they can be used to enhance weapons and armour, or degrade an opponents weapons, armour and the ability of their items to resist attacks. The most common spells used in this spell are the "big four" for weapons (Blood Drinker, Heart Seeker, Swift Killer and Defender) along with "Impenetrability" for use on a shield.

Along with the Creature school, this is one of the "cheaper" schools of magic to acquire, and for long term characters who need to move around is almost essential. Warriors use it to boost their combat skills, Mages use it to boost their own defences and (along with the Life and Creature schools) to boost the combat skills of their associates - so called "buffing".

One last note on the Swift Killer spell which makes your weapons faster. If a weapon has a speed of 30, and Swift Killer II reduces a weapon speed by 20, then the weapon will have a final speed of 10. There is no benefit of reducing the final (or "net") modifier to less than zero - zero is zero. In the "old days", higher level spells used to last a lot longer than low level spells, so casting a higher level spell than was strictly required was useful - it would last longer, even though it would have no more effect than a lower level one. These days, as all spells levels I - V last the same duration, don't waste a higher level spell when not required! Also, Swift Killer has only a very limited effect on bow fire - so much so that it is very marginal if it is worth casting it on a bow at all.

7) Magic Support Skills

There are a couple of skills which are very useful for a mage. One is near essential, the other is useful. First the "essential" skill - Mana Conversion. All spells have a listed cost to cast in terms of mana (e.g. Heal Other IV, 50 mana). Mana Costs more and more to add to, as it increases. Even though you can boost both "Self" (which will boost Mana) and the mana "stat" itself directly, this can still get prohibitive after a while. This leaves you with an issue of how do you cast those oh so nice higher level spells without being able to cast only one, and then having to regenerate your mana. The answer is the Mana Conversion Skill. This skill, crudely put, will reduce the cost of casting a spell, often by a dramatic amount. The chance for it to work is based on your skill with Mana Conversion and the level of the spell you are trying to cast. It is this skill that allows the high level mages to cast decent spells, without continuously having to go for a lie down and regain their mana.

For a pure mage, this skill is essential. For a hybrid mage (warrior mage, archer mage etc), it is an important skill, but often relegated to a skill that is claimed as your character increases level. For a "pure" warrior/archer who sometimes uses a spell or two, then it is a nice to have, but by no means essential. Basically, the more magic your character will use, the more important this spell.

The second support skill is that of "Arcane Lore". This skill effectively deals with your ability to understand and use Magic items (also your chance to learn spells from scrolls). All magic items have a "difficulty" number. To be able to use the item, you need to have Arcane Lore equal to or greater than the difficulty. You can easily have a character, even a pure mage, without this skill, but some of the most useful items around for mages are the various Staves, Wands and Orbs that grant useful spell casting "buffs". Likewise, the main stat used by the Arcane Lore skill is Focus, one of the stats that a high level Mage will probably have quite high, giving a good starting skill level. Finally, the idea of having a mage who is not skilled in magic items to me is odd in the extreme :)

8) Spells and Spell Formulae

OK, all spells have a formula. This formula always follows a standard format, as follows:-

Scarab >Taper< Herb >Taper< Powder Potion >Taper< Talisman.

The >Taper< items are basically coloured candles, and there are 12 different colours. The >tapers< are not always used - for example, Level I spells do not use them at all; Level II spells use only the first >Taper<, and even then, always use the same colour for everyone. From level III onwards though, things get a little... interesting.

At this point, the spells are unique to you (or your account, at least). At Level III, these tapers change, and no-one can tell you which ones to use. As there are 12 different tapers colours, this means there are 12 combinations. However, at level III, there are two tapers used (1st and 2nd in the above list). This means there is a possible 144 (i.e. 12 * 12) combinations available. At this point the beginning mage often screams in frustration, picks up a sword again and goes and thumps something.

However, this need not be the case. There is a 3rd party software utility called "Split Pea" which will help with calculating your tapers for you. It will record which ones you have tried, and will then work out what similar spells will use a similar taper progression. It lists all the "base" tapers which are the same for everyone (e.g. the tapers for the 2nd level spells), along with the vast majority of the spells available in the game. It does not remove ALL the work, but it does mean that the work becomes almost reasonable, whilst retaining a feeling of success when you work out a particularly tough combination.

The other alternative is a 3rd party program called "Spilt Beans". This one removes ALL the work from taper research, as it takes details of your account and works out ALL the tapers for you. On a purely personal basis, I enjoy having some work to do, so I use split pea - most of the work is done for you, but you still get a feeling of accomplishment as you work out your spells.

Without these 3rd party programs, I confess that Taper research can be a pain in the butt. It can be done (indeed, that was how the early players had to do it), but it is not too much fun (unless you are into building Excel spreadsheets and enjoy mathematical modelling systems as a hobby).

Looking beyond the tapers, there are a number of other rules which can help you work out spell formulae. These will become more obvious as you get familiar with the spells themselves, but some points to consider include:-

Many spells use the same components, in the same order, but only change one item for a new effect (e.g. the WAR school only changes the potions to give differing spell effects). Likewise, you may find that the only difference between spells that target yourself and those that target others, may be the talisman. There are definitely a number of internal logic systems here that can be understood, once you are familiar with the basics. Note that the tapers for example move their colours round on a spectrum (orange - red -violet etc).

Finally, when "researching" a spell, make sure you know the type of spell target (Other, Item or Self). This can be a source of much frustration unless you remember - you must have a valid target selected when testing a spell, or it will fizzle, as if it were an invalid formula, or as if you lacked the skill to cast it. For spells that that are "Self", you must naturally target yourself (i.e. click on yourself before hitting the "Test" button). For "Others" you must target another character before hitting the test button. This can be extremely irritating to forget, as you may spend 15 minutes cycling through various taper options, only to find that you have spent 15 minutes trying to cast "Heal Self III" on a stack of candles....

9) Types of Mage

There are many types of mage, and I don't propose to go into too much detail here. Some of the names you will come across include "Og Mage", "Battle Mage", "4-school mage" etc. A number of these mage types are very specialised, and only come into their own at high levels (30+, or even 60+ for some of the extreme Battlemages). As a starting player, it is probably best to play a 4-school mage, where you have all 4 mage schools trained. This will allow you to have fun with a character who will be effective from the word go. At high levels, the "extreme" mages will catch up and over take you, but you will have had fun all the way up - they may not have. With regards to which Stats to use, if you want to major on magic, then you will want a high Focus and a high Self score (100 is a good score to have at the start for a pure mage), probably at the expense of co-ordination, as this stat is not much use to most pure mages. For a better discussion on character templates and the importance/effects of stat selection, see the essay on Character Design.

10) What to cast and when

The ability to cast spells is based on your skill with that school of magic, not your character level. This skill can be modified by magic items, and by spells of the Creature school of magic, and it is this modified (or "buffed") skill that is used to work out success or failure. Assuming you have the correct formula, and all the components, the basic skill you will need to have a chance of cast a spell is a round 50% per spell level, ie.:-

i) Level I - pretty much any starting char should be able to cast these.
ii) Level II - Skill of 50+
iii) Level III - Skill of 100+
iv) Level IV - Skill of 150+ ... And so on.

If you use a multiplier of around 55, (e.g. LII at 55, LIII at 110 etc), then that may be a better guide for when you should start using the War school. The other schools of magic are often used outside of combat, so failing is not a big problem - just try again. The War spells are often used when you have a big bad guy running straight at you - failing then may not be a pleasant experience, though it could be a short-lived one....

11) Spell components

Each spell has a set of components that you must carry for the spell to work. When casting Level I spells, these components only rarely get used up. As the levels of your spells increase, the chance of one or more spell components being used up goes up dramatically. By LIII, you often use of a component every 3rd or 4th spell. By the time you are casting 6th, your are using up more than 1 component per spell. Officially, when you fizzle, there is no difference in whether components will be used up. Unofficially, it seems that the chance for component usage seems to go up dramatically. There again, this may just be the fact that you notice it more ("Rats. Not only have I failed to cast, but I have also used up more components").

12) How do I play a mage?

This section will depend on which schools of magic you are trained in. However, for the start, we will assume that you have a "four school" mage (i.e. all four schools of magic are at least trained). This means you have a lot of variety and options. The suggestions below are just one set of ideas. Experienced players may (Hell, they probably will) disagree with some aspects of it, but it should help you get your mage character off and running (well, walking at least, as most mages start off with a very poor "Run" ability :))

The most important requirement for a starting mage is room to run with/engage with. A starting mage tends to be slow, not have heavy armour and can't take much damage. As such, you will prefer to engage at some range, at least to start with. To help this, it is best if you start hunting low level creatures (such as drudges and gnawer/carrion shreth) above ground. If you go into a dungeon, be prepared to run if you even look like you are going to get swamped. When holding a wand, your melee defence drops to effectively zero (i.e. your chance to dodge is damm near non-existent). At low level, buff yourself using the Creature spells, protect yourself using Life, but hit your opponent using War spells. I say use War spells to attack with for one reason - they are cheaper to cast than Life spells. Later on, Life will become one of the major attack areas, but until you have your mana up where you want it, and have a decent Mana Conversion skill, use war.- it will help you more.

When you have hit levels 5-7, think about going to the beach.... Most beaches are heavily populated with Gromnies etc, and make wonderful hunting spots. My personal favourites are The West Beach at Tou-Tou, Mayoi Beach and the North Beach at Eastham. This latter one almost seems made for mages, with Azure Gromnies, Mud and Water Golems and the occasional blue phyntos wasp. Again, you will be probably using War magic to attack with, but your life and creature buffs should be much better, with Level II's and some Level III's. About now, you should start to see some of the benefits of Mana Conversion - many of the spells you cast will suddenly seem to be requiring much less mana

At Level 8+, you should be ready to start hitting the dungeons,. By now, you should have access to some LIII buffs (i.e. school skill should be 110+). Wearing armour and casting Protection II or III along with Invuln II or III should give you a good chance of surviving. It is now that the Life school starts to come into it's own. Pick on a single opponent, use "Drain I" against it until it is low in health (you, oddly enough, should stay quite healthy!) and then finish with war magic. This should be the tack you follow through to the higher levels, at least until you start casting L V and VI war magic - at that point, it becomes very powerful again.

Also remember - just because a monster is stupid, you do not have to be. If you can see an opponent is not running towards you and is in fact casting a spell at you, use the "Z" and "C" keys to side step.... This can be quite fun as with a deft step to the side, a Lightning bolt IV misses you completely....

The above suggestions deal with "tanking" as a mage. However, a mage is nothing if not intelligent, and there are other options as well that should be considered. One technique is known as "perching" - finding a safe place where you can see the bad guys, but they cannot get to you. This is not considered a "polite" tactic (at least when there are others around to comment....) and may result in a few comments of "Wimp - come down and fight like a real warrior" from the low-lives who have to get their hand dirty when fighting. Note that beyond this, it is considered very bad form to start draining health from an opponent and then not finish them off. Doing this will limit the experience point that the person who actually DOES put the kill in severely and make you very very unpopular.

One last point, a trick that sometimes works for someone who has both Life and War magic. Get the opponent at the edge of your radar. Cast a war magic spell at it (e.g. Lightning Bolt). Then, immediately, cast the appropriate vulnerability on the creature (e.g. Lightning Vulnerability). Because Life spells instantly work on their target, the vulnerability should take effect just before the war spell hits, often allowing much greater damage....

12) The mage as a friend

Playing mage need not be a solo experience. A mage can add a great deal to parties ("Fellowships"), and are very valued members. In the case of a mixed group of players (archers, warriors and mages), a mage may actually add more value to the group by supporting his comrades than directly attacking the opponents. There are a number of options for this role - healing allies, boosting (or "buffing") their skills and equipment, and making the warriors opponents vulnerable to attack. The effect of an "Imperil" spell on a bad guy when there is a warrior type trying to hit it has to be seen to be believed. The sheer smugness you get as you sit back with a drink in your hand as the warrior goes "Great God! You've turned me into a killing machine! I can kill anything!" is quite extraordinary Of course, some warriors claim that it was all their fighting skills that did it, but we know better :) . If you do take this role, make sure that the fellowship you are in has set the "Share experience points" to yes - that way, you will not be losing out by spending your time, resources and mana in supporting your comrades instead of killing the creatures yourselves.

Aiddar II Of Wintersebb, Unarmed Martial Scholar