Wizards! How do you train your book of Minor Magic?

[Ninjorp]

Lately I have been turning off everything but spellcasting and conjurations until level three. Once level three is reached I memorize Mephitic Cloud, Blink, Conjure Flame, and Summon Imp. After that, I split my training into Spellcasting, Conjurations, Poison and Air at 25% each. Once Posion reaches 2 and Air reaches 3 I begin to train up my Translocations and Summons up to about level 2 or 3. Repel missiles is last, and I try and get charms up to about 4.

I usually skip slow, and usually feel guilty about it, because it is a good spell. Once those spells are castable I tend to funnel everything into Spellcasting, Conjurations and begin to bring up my dodging.

So, my question is, how effficient is this method? I often have 2 to 5 skills training at the same time. Is there a better way to go about this? Is slow worth memorizing? I almost always play a DEWz which is how I can memorize so many spells at level three.

One more question that might seem a bit laughable considering I have one three rune victory. What does TAB do? Is that a commonly bound key? When I press it nothing happens!

[Galefury]

Tab is bound to autofight by default. Press tab to attack, or to move towards the monster if you are out of range. Very useful when used responsibly.

Usually you only want to train one skill at a time. Conjurations first to get some magic dart spellpower, then alternate between spellcasting to memorize more spells, and the school that will most help you cast your currently most urgently needed spell more reliably.

If you would like to do more damage or take less, you can train a weapon or dodging at some point, but you should not mix it with training a spell school. Think about what you currently need most (there almost always is something), then train that. This process will not only let you reach your skill goals more efficiently (because the important skills will be at a higher level sooner if you don't train less important stuff at the same time), but also makes you think about which skills you should actually be training right now.

[Tiber]

I personally think training more than one skill is fine, but be aware that there are many who would disagree with me on that. In any case, I'd just skip out on training poison magic altogether, unless there's some other poison spell you really want. You can cast mephitic cloud just fine with two schools, and power doesn't really matter for that spell. You can leave the spellcasting skill on if you like, but focus more on your spell skills than your spellcasting skill. Spellcasting requires more experience to raise, and has less of an effect on success and power than the spell's schools do.

Slow can be a great spell for the early game if you choose to use it, but you can succeed without it just fine. I've had success with a wizard skipping summon imp entirely and using slow instead, but I admit that summon imp is probably the better spell between the two. Conjure flame is probably my favorite spell in the book though, because flames do good damage to anything not resistant to them, and it's pretty easy to get things to go into them (Hint: many smarter creatures won't walk into it voluntarily, but if they're already in some other type of harmful cloud like fumes they're much less picky).

[Ninjorp]

Interesting advice. I'm playing a game and trying to train only one skill at a time now. Seems like a lot of micromanaging but a single skill does raise nice and quickly. Wouldn't you be forced to train more than one skill with Sif Muna? Would you not lose piety training dodging only, for instance?

[Psieye]

Don't even worry about piety decay with Sif, it's very very slow. Especially once you reach 5* and have the book gifts raining down on you.

There are 2 instances where I would train more than one skill at a time:

1) I'm a Wz and just hit Lv 3. I've been training Conj until now and I want to get Meph online as soon as possible. I train both Pois and Air. The Pois investment is recycled when I go learn Poison Arrow much later on.

2) I have everything I want for the time being way in the lategame and I just need to 'get better at everything': more HP, more EV, more spellpower, less spell hunger in the case of a mage.

[Davion Fuxa]

The Wizard is really about dabbling in the various spell schools, so there is nothing really wrong with trying to train multiple spell schools at once. Just remember to balance out the training so you don't fall behind in killing power with Magic Missile and you should be fine; unless your playing something like an Ogre Wizard where you might switch it up to be 'don't fall behind with Mace & Flail'.

[Ninjorp]

I'm not sure how this dabbling is supposed to work really. I just start training in the first book I find with a spell with decent damage output. If I find fireball, I go with fire, etc. I think to encourage dabbling they might want to nerf the opposite elemental penalties with the wizard class. But I also think elves should drop clean chunks, elves would be a delicious meal in my mind!

But i love playing a Wz as the first Book of Minor Magic give you so much ultility.

[Davion Fuxa]

Your mostly on the right track then - but to continue the trend, let's say you find a Book of Air so you decide to branch off into Air Magic, or perhaps you find a Book of Necromancy and you pick up those spells as well. As a Wizard your best suited to tackling a wide range of spells due to your High Int Score; IE, your most capable of 'cherry picking' whatever spells you want to cast, even if they are all in different spell schools.

The only thing you need to remember is that you need to make sure some of those spells are always capable of letting you 'get by' in the game and kill stuff; if you can't kill things with your plethora of spells then you won't get far.

[Ninjorp]

Ahh it's the high INT that defines a wizard's wizardly ability. Still, isn't the biggest difference between all the Magic Users really just the starting spell book? And does ANYBODY start as a Summoner? If so, I'd like to know the reasoning behind it. It seems a much better idea to begin as a Wizard since summon imp can be your bread and butter through the Lair if you're really pressed.

[Psieye]

Well, summoner is for people who are very patient. MuSu being a classic example, FeSu is a dubious other 'classic'. Becoming a summoner in the lategame is perfectly understandable but I'm not sure there's much merit in starting as one unless you are a really fragile race.

[crate]

Summoner is for people who want to hit dudes while fighting alongside other dudes, imo

[Psieye]

Summoner is for people who want to hit dudes while fighting alongside other dudes, imo

I would argue Yred, Trog, Beogh and Maklehb (possibly also Fedhas) are there for people who want to do exactly this. Later on, TSO joins the queue.

[crate]

Ah, I see you have discovered that TSO summoner is actually quite good!

(Herding around Yred/Beogh/Fedhas permallies is dramatically more annoying than using summons since you cannot interlevel travel and keep your allies with you ... and Trog is not good at all for fighting alongside other dudes, unless you find a rod of summoning).

[Psieye]

Ah, I was actually arguing strictly for the earlygame: rather than start as a summoner, you can take Yred/Beogh/Fedhas/Trog/Maklehb to have the "fight alongside some dudes" style.

But yes, by extended, TSO is pretty much the god who governs summoners... so long as you only consider the non-evil summons.

[crate]

TSO summoner is fine for a 3-rune game too ... maybe not the best, but he has some benefits. Mainly, the halo.

[Ninjorp]

I'm playing a game training one skill at a time, and quite surprised by how quickly they raise. I think I gained all three levels of Air Magic just from killing Sigmund. I might just be hooked on this method now. Thanks for the advice everybody.

[rebthor]

I find it useful to train 2 skills when I have dual or triple school spells that I want to bring online faster, since there's really no difference (assuming similar apts) between 12 cj, 10 ice, 0 air and 12 cj, 5 ice and 5 air when you're trying to cast freezing cloud since your overall average spell school is still ~7 and you're probably going to want 5 levels or so of ice/air/whatever in the long run.

[DuxOrbis]

Conjurations to 5
Spellcasting to 5 (Magic Dart Power Maxed)
Learn: Blink, Summon Imp, Mephitic Cloud (I used to get Repel Missiles and Slow until I realized they aren't useful if you play carefully anyway)
Spellcasting to 10 (Learn Conjure Flame as soon as it becomes available)
The extra spellcasting gives slots for spells as you find books
Then Summoning 4 for good imp supply, Translocations 4 for reliable blinking, maybe 2 levels into poison and/or Air

If you find a book of Burglary early on, charms 4 to get cTele up and running.

This is pretty much the most bare minimum and efficient way I've found to get a Wizard going when I play. Mephitic Cloud becomes castable with high success without any levels of Air or Poison Magic.

[Lasty]

10 Spellcasting is way more than a wizard typically needs at this point -- Spellcasting is usually a very inefficient way to add power to spells, and power is going to be more important than more spells or more spell points at this point. That's probably not enough conjurations for maxed Magic Dart, either -- at best, it's probably the lowest end of the max power range.

[BlackSheep]

It depends on your Int, but yeah, Conj 5 Spc 5 can max Magic Dart. It caps out at 25 power.

[crate]

Not all races have a +3 spellcasting apt, either...

[KoboldLord]

It is not worth attempting to hit the spell power cap for Magic Dart. It still deals 1d8 maximum, and picking up a piddly half point of average damage isn't likely to be worth the xp investment required to bump it up a notch. However, you really do want Mephitic Cloud and Conjure Flame at usable spell success levels as quickly as possible, and getting them there is likely to cap out Magic Dart as an extra freebie anyway.

Summoning is a much more useful application for your XL2 xp, even if you eventually plan to drop summoning completely and go with a pure conjurations-based build. Summon Imp is one of the best low-level killing spells in the game, while Magic Dart is a mediocrity that at best holds you over until you get something good.