Basic questions for Gargoyle Earth Elementalist

[torvon]

Hi all,

I've played a couple of dozen characters, and am advancing far enough with my Gargoyle Earth Elementalist of Vehemut that I need to start paying attention to skills now.

Here is my situation. As you can see, I focus spellcasting and earth magic so far, a bit of fighting, and now shields because I found a nice + 2 shield of reflection (I remember reading somewhere that deflection is a quite cute property). I activated transmutations to be able to paralyze people better, and left it on by accident so it's a bit too high now I guess. Oops.





Questions:
1) How high do I need to level spellcasting / earth magic? Do I just leave that on for good?
2) I guess I should keep focusing on fighting to gain HP? What about shields, how high do I need that?
3) What other schools of magic do I get? So far I only found a book of air, which has some nice early level utility spells. But I am not sure how I can learn air magic, it doesn't show up in my list of skills to learn. How does that work?
4) Haven't found any good weapon, I guess I need to focus on one school (pref maces?) and then level that at least a bit?

Thank you <3
Torvon

[vergil]

To be a pure mage, you need to focus on conjuration and earth magic.
Here's a major trick - most of the spells need more than one skill, and their spellpower is AVERAGE of both. Stone arrow needs conjuration and earth. Don't forget that as, it's not obvious, but it is quite important.

How high - depends on what you're going after. If you're planning to use shatter - I'd advise you to go for max in earth magic, and max conj for iron shot\crystal spear.
As for spellcasting - try to put it as low as possible, but good enough points to lower hunger costs and failure rate to 1%.

Personally I prefer to go for like 14\14 conj\earth, and some spellcasting, then defences - fightning, dodge, etc. (in early game)

Don't train transmutation untill later in the game. Transmutation doesn't have anything to do with paralyzing people. That's what hexes are for. Nvm, figured you were talking about petrify. For me personally, it's a waste of exp to learn transmutation early on. Spell itself doesn't really help in most of the situations. Choice is yours here.
Don't go for multiple schools, that'll screw your progress. Focus on one elemental school.

Next up - to offset penalty of buckler - you need 4 points in shields, for shields - 15, and for large shields - 25. My advise - use a buckler, don't waste anymore points.
Not using a weapon is a solid choice too, especially as a blaster EE.
Train fightning to something like 10-14 to gain health, and some dodge to about 10-14.

Press shift+M to (M)emorize spells. Or press r to (r)ead book you like, and choose from there on.
Find a decent weapon if you can, or go for staff of power\energy\earth\conj anything you can find.

[Shtopit]

Shields make spellcasting more difficult. To make this penalty go away on medium sized races, you need 4 for a buckler, 15 for a shield and 25 for a large shield. If you don't want to get more SH right now, you can stop training it.

It's kind of hard to say what schools you should keep activated without knowing which books you found. In general Earth Magic and Transmutation have good synergy, but you are a Gargoyle, which means no statue form for you. This only leaves Petrify and Passwall. Keep training Tr until you can cast both reliably (better than 4% failure rate: 4% means failure in 1/25 cases, which happens pretty often if you use the spell a lot). If I were you, I'd also train conjuration, since it gives you ranged attacks.

Magical staves + rage do not strike me as a very good combo, since they don't make much damage and you aren't training weapons, anyway. If you find another amulet, it will be more useful, unless you want to use rage to get a speed boost when running away and trying to reach the stairs. Given that rage ends very, very fast when not attacking or butchering, even this use is dangerous.

Which version is this?

[torvon]

Thanks Vergil & Shtopit, very helpful. I will reply to your points below, I really appreciate the help.

1) Conjuration: check. Will level that next.
2) You said focus on one school of ele magic: that means I stick to Earth and never go for fire ice air venom? Found a book of air as my second book (haven't found any other, boo ...), so I should just ignore that? (swiftness is kind of neat). Do I see it correctly that if I were to learn swiftness, for instance, I would be able to afterwards also train air magic in my "m" tab? Currently there is no air magic to learn
3) This hasn't been a lucky run, only 1 book so far, and only 1 amulet (of rage) .. I just have it equipped because I found literally none else. The rings of protection aren't terrible but also not good. The staff I'm wearing because +10 mana seems a lot at present, haven't found anything better.
4) I had huge hunger issues (nearly starved), although I always "c" all corpses I find. Is that because my spellcasting is too low maybe? Found 15 royal jellies now (an army of bees attacked me, like 30 or so ..) so that'll last a few hours.
5) Version: I downloaded the offline version of the game today, so I guess .18 is the latest right?
6) What do I do against Hydras? I found a few now and have to run away ... LRD does not do sufficient damage, neither does stone arrow. So I usually just try to nuke it, fail, and then either petrify or wand of slow and run ...
7) The only thing Vehemut has offered me so far is "Freeze" spell which I didn't take (since I have petrify).


Thanks!

[genericpseudonym]

2. Training air to get utility spells like swiftness and repel missiles is fine. You just wouldn't want to invest in things like Fireball or Lightning Bolt when your LRD works just fine.

And yes, you can start training air as soon as you have an air spell memorized. It's similar to how you can only train shields if you have a shield in your inventory.

4. You will have fewer hunger issues if you use stone arrow on weaker enemies that you don't need LRD for.

6. If you're not up to killing hydras, running away is always fine. They're normal speed so as long as they're not already in melee range they'll never be able to catch you if you just walk away from them, even without using petrify or slow. (Go to an up staircase and then come down another way.) If you're using a slow wand you might as well blast them down with LRD while they're slowed though.

[vergil]

Training air to get utility spells like swiftness and repel missiles is fine.

I dissagree on this one. I'd advise you to train charms instead. It is much more usefull when trying to get online haste\ozucubu's\regen\ddoor later on.

[goodcoolguy]

You have more spellcasting than you need right now. You can probably cast the good spells in the book of air (which is to say swiftness and repel missiles) without skilling air or charms. Being a heavy spellcaster means you eat a lot of chunks, so just remember to butcher things. You should almost never skill spellcasting to reduce spellhunger, that's silly. You skill spellcasting when it's the cheapest way to reduce your fail rates and/or increase spellpower, you need more spell levels, or to increase your max mp, roughly in that order.

You should stop skilling shields and spellcasting. You should skill some dodging and conjurations. You want to pick up spells in a way that allows you to keep your skills relatively tight, so for example learning lightning bolt would be bad, but learning something like iron shot would be good. Most spells with a conjurations component and similar spell level do roughly the same things. You don't want dump a lot of experience into learning new ways to do what you can already do.

Don't skill in a way that assumes you'll get specific spells later in the game. Often you don't.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Hi all,

I've played a couple of dozen characters, and am advancing far enough with my Gargoyle Earth Elementalist of Vehemut that I need to start paying attention to skills now.
Actually, paying attention to skills is most important in the beginning. (Later in the game there is a lot of XP available.) The general guide is this:
- Switch to manual mode.
- Train one skill at a time.
- Train one skill combination that kills enemies. (Either 1 weapon skill, or 1 magic school (+ conjurations for dual school spells)
- When you kill enemies well then train defences. (Always fighting, dodging on most characters, especially light armour ones, armour when it's useful.
- In the beginning I check my skill training often so I don't waste precious early game XP.

Here is my situation. As you can see, I focus spellcasting
Don't train spellcasting unless you need spell levels. You don't right now.

and earth magic so far, a bit of fighting,
That's fine, but really train one skill at a time. For spells that use conjurations, train conjurations too.

and now shields because I found a nice + 2 shield of reflection (I remember reading somewhere that deflection is a quite cute property).
Leave the shield, it costs too much XP right now (15 skill is a lot). Use a buckler if one is lying around. Reflection is probably the worst shield brand, although admittedly it can be pretty funny.

I activated transmutations to be able to paralyze people better, and left it on by accident so it's a bit too high now I guess. Oops.
Don't worry. The XP is gone and petrify has its uses.

Questions:
1) How high do I need to level spellcasting
See above.

/ earth magic? Do I just leave that on for good?
You need enough skill so that your main attacks kill enemies reasonably quickly. Unless you've found better spells (like iron shot) that should be stone arrow and lee's rapid deconstruction. So you train earth / conjurations until they are at low miscast chance and do good damage.

2) I guess I should keep focusing on fighting to gain HP?
When you kill stuff reasonably well, then train some defences. Fighting is good. Dodging is good too.

What about shields, how high do I need that?
At this stage of the game, 4 shields for a buckler is OK. Wait until later for normal shield.

3) What other schools of magic do I get? So far I only found a book of air, which has some nice early level utility spells.
Low level utility spells is the right answer. Here are some good ones: Apportation, Butterflies, Blink, Regen, Swiftness, Repel Missiles, Animate Skeleton. Later on get some powerful support spells like Haste and Deflect Missiles.

But I am not sure how I can learn air magic, it doesn't show up in my list of skills to learn. How does that work?
You can only train magic school if you have spells from that school memorised. So memorise an air spell.

4) Haven't found any good weapon, I guess I need to focus on one school (pref maces?) and then level that at least a bit?
Yes, mostly stick to one type. Which type is determined by what's available and aptitude. Gargoyle aptitudes are flat, so it doesn't really matter. Look for something with decent enchantment level and useful damage brand (like flaming/freezing). Train to at least 4, then train it to min-delay eventually.

Thank you <3
Torvon

[CypherZel]

I can bet money that you are using the Gargoyle Earth Elemenatlist guide from the wiki, that guide is not good and you shouldn't be referencing it. Don't use the wiki for things in general, use this forum and learndb. A rule of thumb is to only train spell casting for spell levels, if you are being a Mage spell conjugations will be your main skill and you will have a main elemental skill, and you should just dip into non elemental skills for utilities skills you find along the way like hexes and charms.

[Sandman25]

It is a good idea to train spellcasting for MP also.

[Sandman25]

Training air to get utility spells like swiftness and repel missiles is fine.

I dissagree on this one. I'd advise you to train charms instead. It is much more usefull when trying to get online haste\ozucubu's\regen\ddoor later on.

RMsl with low spell power is not that good (expires too often) so it is usually a good idea to train both Air and Charms. Of course you can stop training Air at 2-3 if you want, but training Charms to 3+ while Air is still 0 is always a mistake.

Some time ago I did a test for dual school spells and found that even with +1 and -3 aptitudes it is better to start training both skills for spell power/failure rate (unless you want to micromanage and change training after reaching every skill level, in this case you should get 1st level in +1 aptitude skill and then switch to training -3 aptitude skill, when it reaches 1st level too, switch back to training +1 aptitude skill).

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I had assumed (wrongly?) that for multi-school spells one should train the currently cheapest level of the schools in question, then train the next cheapest level (could be the same school). This has become much easier to do now that training costs are displayed.

Is that flawed thinking?

[Sprucery]

I had assumed (wrongly?) that for multi-school spells one should train the currently cheapest level of the schools in question, then train the next cheapest level (could be the same school). This has become much easier to do now that training costs are displayed.

Is that flawed thinking?

No, that's right. (And that's what Sandman25 refers to as well in parenthesis.)

[dowan]

especially with multi school spells remember that each level of spellcasting is like 1/4 of a level in every single magic skill. For a two school spell, training spellcasting is half as effective as training one of the two schools involved. For a 3 school spell, spellcasting is worth 3/4 of one of the schools.

This doesn't mean you should just train spellcasting of course, but if you're trying to get a 1 school spell online, you should train spellcasting whenever it costs 1/4 or less than the spell skill.
For a 2 school spell, spellcasting is a good deal at 1/2 the cost or less.
For 3, 3/4 or less.

And don't forget spellcasting also gives you more MP (always useful) more spell slots (useful when you need them) and less spell hunger (consider it a nice side effect)

For getting mephitic cloud going on an ogre, it makes sense to have spellcasting as your highest skill due to the ogre's good apt for it and miserable apts for the other skills. Of course you're asking about a gargoyle, I just list the ogre because it's an extreme example.

[Chicken]

The aptitudes and costs tell you a lot about what to train. I mean, conjurations is 0.8 for a level versus 13.1 for another level of spellcasting. There has to be some dart or blast you want to learn to nibble away at distant enemies - if you don't have one, Vehumet will provide.

With transmutations I'd be tempted to check percentages for Irradiate now and then. Love that spell... it's the only thing that can take down the Royal Jelly (with much additional effort required), and long before that it's good for hacking out some personal space when things are at their worst. Use ? / S Irradiate if you don't have it in a book, just to see if you've gotten enough Int/items and above all Vehumet's super boost [he supports it!] to start thinking about training it up to usability (it won't be yet). Of course, you shouldn't train further until you find a book, but that's motivation to go looking around in Orc and Elf at a higher priority. (if you do go that way, it's sure nice to have an axe to swing after you cast it)

[arandomperson12]

With transmutations I'd be tempted to check percentages for Irradiate now and then. Love that spell... it's the only thing that can take down the Royal Jelly (with much additional effort required), and long before that it's good for hacking out some personal space when things are at their worst. Use ? / S Irradiate if you don't have it in a book, just to see if you've gotten enough Int/items and above all Vehumet's super boost [he supports it!] to start thinking about training it up to usability (it won't be yet). Of course, you shouldn't train further until you find a book, but that's motivation to go looking around in Orc and Elf at a higher priority. (if you do go that way, it's sure nice to have an axe to swing after you cast it)

There are many ways to kill trj. Bolt spells, fire storm, or just meleeing him can all do so easily.