Mage advice

[bughunter]

Originally Posted by archolewa

If you *really* wanted to be nasty, give him Relentless Taunt. When active, players suffer the same side-effect as Bloodlust: they have a chance of meleeing Makar (or moving next to him) without the player's input so long as he is in LOS.

Interesting idea! If there was to be just one candidate for converting a unique into a Blackguard, it would be him...

He's never been a real challenge for any of my ranged combat @s, e.g., Ranger, Mage, Rogue, etc.

[VeritasAequitas]

alright, reviving this temporarily!

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=24212

this is the furthest ive ever gotten with a mage.

[x] - all resistances, confuse, blind etc covered
[x] - ESP
[x] - base speed more than 20
[x] - all spell books found

my current plan of attack is to:
- hunt uniques and wyrmz to get xp for level 45 (for manatorm)
- gather consumables for the final fights
- ????
- call morgoth a coward to his face

what would you do if you were in this character's shoes? see anything in my house/gearswaps that you would want?

...or is my plan of attack flawless

Thanks in advance

[Adam]

It would be good to get that one missing point of CON.

i) a Small Metal Shield of Resistance [5,+18] - this can be upgraded easily. Hopefully Thorin/Elros /Haradrim shows up and that would solve your CON as well. Or maybe you can shuffle equipment later to put on Dor-Lómin or Balli Stonehand. You have at least 25 levels to go where hopefully you can improve your gear a little.

Just out of curiosity: you actively use archery? I see you use 2 inventory slots for arrows/bolts.

[VeritasAequitas]

archery is a significant bit of damage yeah, the mana bolt i have is only about 30(ish)d8 or around, 4.5*30 which is 135 or so on average. the arrows are about 190 so easily the most dmg, even if i miss sometimes.

normally i would use drain life wands but they all blew up

for now archery is by far the best way to deal damage, mages lategame dmg doesnt feel very strong. maybe itll get better once i hit 45? but if i find a good bow/arrows of holy might or something i can see archery being the way to go endgame

[Pete Mack]

Mana storm is the way to do damage ... eventually. Right now what you need is EXP. And you should keep scrolls of Mass Banishment. Min fail on the spell is 3% even at CL50, IIRC. In the final battles, you can give up rAcid for that last point of CON, but you're likely to find Thorin before that.

[malcontent]

Other considerations...

Mana bolts impose un-resistible damage. I don't think the same can be said for your arrows.

You cannot mana channel your arrows and shoot them faster.

You cannot recharge your arrows as easily as your mana (potions and the "tap magical energy" spell).

Arrows use up extra slots and weight

You may decide at some point that your launcher is simply a stat stick that gives you a convenient way to carry ESP, exptra speed (Cubragol), extra DEX, etc...

[VeritasAequitas]

all good ideas.
im currently racing towards 45 as soon as i can, and keeping an eye out for a better shield. i for sure will be picking up a better bow if i can use one as a stat stick.

the feeling im getting from the comments is that having a ton of arrows/using the bow is/should be uncommon for a lategame mage? maybe im doing it wrong
i find it handy for finishing off the high hp enemies without recharging mana. can manaburn, use up your mana pool and switch to arrows to finish them off.
also interestingly ive never ever used the tap magical energy spell. what is the primary use of it for you guys?

[jevansau]

For any fight of significance, you should have mana channeling on as it doubles your spell damage per round.
Tap magical energy lets you refill your mana from a (stack of) wands or staves. With the high level ones, you get a lot of mana. Well worth having a couple of stacks instead of the arrows, for effectively 2 free restore mana's per fight.

In between fights, recharge your stacks. Best is to drop one per square and recharge each one once for the minimum number of failures.

[VeritasAequitas]

alright, up to level 47 or so, got some severe damage now, got some consumables.
also, found my very first ever ring of power across any game ive played; Nenya!

now i have a kit problem. if i lose my =con, i drop too much hp. if i swap out my =speed, i drop below 20 base speed.
What should i do? is there any case to be made for going into battle _without_ nenya??

after ive sorted this kit out im tempted to take a punt at sauron...

[Sphara]

Does your mana drop that much if you'd switch to Dor-Lomin and <+16> ring of speed instead of Holhenneth/<+6> CON ring combo?

You'd only lose rConf and +2 INT for massive speed increase and no HP drop at all. You have 100% saving throw but you should keep away from meleeing titans or Thuringwethil. Saving throw does nothing against confusion-branded melee attacks. I cannot imagine why you would melee the given monsters anyway.

EDIT: ..says a guy whose character died just 2 hours ago in an unimaginably dumb way