Mage Treaties - by Frair.Fuk

Welp, I suppose the time has come to organize my experience and various rantings into one cohesive tactical essay. Here it is, lucky you...

I play the mage almost exclusively, though I can certainly do the other characters. I prefer the mage, and find that many find the ironman mage too overwhelming to have fun with. The mage does have the most responsibilities by far in the party, and it can be confusing and irritating to have to juggle them all, If done well, however, the results can be quite gratifying.

I have said it before and I will say it again - the mage is the airforce. Very powerful, but with limited “bomb” carrying capacity. The mage is to be broken out in full glory only when the situation is dire, and the rest of the time, plays a supporting role.

Another point before I really get into it, is to say that our group plays a very open style of ironman. We have found that you can artificially extend the length of games by tirelessly holding doors and playing safe, but that a game doomed to end is going to end no matter what. I prefer to go one level less, and save the 2 hours of door-holding than to hang onto a game that is fated to end. Our average time to finish level 4 is 1.5 hours and our average time per level in the cats is 45 minutes, 1 to 1.5 hours if it becomes necessary to start holding.

Don’t get me wrong here. We do hold doors! We just don’t hold doors if we have the cumulative and individual powers not to. I mean what a waste of time. Thing about door holding is that it lulls you into a pattern that if broken, and chaos ensues, will lead to a dead game because nobody was ready for the real action.

So, try to loosen up a bit, you will have more fun, and gain real playing skills. A single character surviving a roomful of goats just wont happen if you are used to only holding doors. Let me tell ya, hold doors or not, these breakthroughs happen, and you need to know how to react when they do.

Ok, enough of that then.

In town I suggest that the mage buys 2 pots, and that the party otherwise buys the best equipment available for their paltry holdings. Warriors buy that shield ac8 for 90 bucks if you have the chance - you won’t regret it!

Church levels mage tactics, and other thoughts:
1) Get out in front of the party, go your own way if possible. Dodge the critters and get well ahead and then open up with the ole CB stick. I prefer refreshing the stick as often as possible. I hit skels and rats with the CB and handle monkeys and zombies with the stick itself. I play like this until about 1200 exp, where I switch over to FB and finish my first leveling the same way - only with FB.

a) So, why use CB first? Well, often you won’t have armor and some monkeys and zombs will get a lucky hit in. So, then you can’t very well use any books you might be lucky to come across will you now?

b) Keep the critters between you and the wall. Know where your party members are. This minimizes any party damage from errant CBs. Takes a little extra running, but this gives you good dodging practice as well. If only every rogue I ever played with could follow this one simple rule.....

2) Do not hit enchanted, ornate or sacred shrines. Save the enchanted for when you have lots of spells and only use the Ornates if you don’t have a HB to go to 3 with. Sacred - yuck who needs extra CB? Keep your mana!

a) DO hit fascinating shrines!!! At level 7 the FB spell costs 3 mana. By the time you get that - if you do, you will have around 150 to 180 mana points - this is serious firepower! A level 5+ Fb takes out a normal goat in 2 shots.

b) The rest of the shrines leave to party discretion. Save Eldritch till after level 3, this is where you will have max potions, on average. I like to hit the holy shrine and yell WHEEEEEE!

3) Do not use glimmerings until the end of level 4, and do not even use them then if you are strong enough to continue without magical enhancements.

a) Do not use any ids until the end of 4. Do not id anything without full party consent. Do not id but one or two of the best items after level 4 - like a nice quilted armor (ac10). Do not id things from the floor or from chests. Do give preference to items from bosses.

b) Do not id weapons unless better than a falchion, do not id hunter bows, never id any staves. Do id jewelry. Do not id hats of any variety. Check the items DURATION before IDing it. If it is too high for that particular item type DO NOT id it.

c) Exceptions: unique items - but KNOW what uniques are junk and what are not. DO NOT id unique staves with no spells (equip them and see if they give you a spell). If they give you a spell but suck otherwise - do not id them. Use the spells and discard. Remember a staff is only as useful as its residual spells. Many uniques are better just used without ID’ing them.

d) Seems like a lot of time spent on ids, but you will find only 1 id per level on average in the cats and caves, so if you want to be able to id the REALLY good stuff - keep them!

4) Only hold doors when you need to. Everyone split up and freelance otherwise. The church levels just aren’t that tough. Okay, okay sometimes they get tough:

a) Red skel archers on level 3! ACK! This is the worst. Leo will have 30 - 40 with him to boot, what a nightmare, what is a guy to do?

b) Well, stand way way back. I have been as far away as a large room and a half. Open up your “c” window, (the character stats window). Begin firing HB in the general direction of the skels, two at a time. Watch your exp. If it goes up, keep shooting, if it stops, change your shot direction. Every so often send in a war or rogue to scout for you. Watch the arrow angles as well to gauge where they are coming from. If you don’t seem to be hitting anything, you have to “call the artillery.” This means that you send in a scout and have them run about as you are actually shooting. They can tell you “s” or “e” or whatever, compass directions as they run in other words.

c) Don’t have HB? Hehehehhe. Good old-fashioned bum rush then.

5) Do not use spells like HO in the church, they cost a friggin fortune. Use a staff only if you have too. Don’t use the stick unless you have the spell - it will be massively ineffective, and you will burn up a valuable resource. If you do have to use HO on another char, have them check their exp to see if they are close to le4veling first so as not to waste resources.

a) If you play with people who are potion-siphons, well maybe they need to croak a few times and sit on the floor for an hour to learn their lesson.... But seriously, any more than 2 or 3 red pots used before the cats, and the people you are playing with don’t know what the hell they are doing. Find new friends.

6) Any high power scrolls like MS, or FW should be saved for the cats. Use up CB sticks before anything else as their effectiveness wanes with every level. Save all sticks with spells on them and use them efficiently. If you are lucky enough to find a stone shrine, use up each stick you have and then refill them all. Do not use this shrine before level 5.

7) There is no excuse to bypass Butchy. If you aren't capable of stair trapping him then you best spend more time playing rogue solo, or choose another character.

a) Leo - Well if you don't have HB, then skip him. If you come across him before you find the down stairs, then one character should lead him as far away as possible and die. This is what’s best for the party believe me. Get him way way far away from you - dodge and spin and move and run like the wind. Your mates will thank you later when they find that HB and res scroll. Have a person assigned to suicide duty before you even go to level 3. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens, be ready for it. The whole party should almost never die to Leo.

b) When you are on level 3 without HB, and even with it, find Leo before he finds you. Travel along all the possible walls before advancing. Look along the walls in every cleared room. While you are doing this avoid room openings, by going back and then crossing doorways. In big rooms, the mage goes in and “sneaks” cover the walls, and then cut across the middle of the room. Do not cross large rooms at corridors, there are many many critters in the corridors. Find Leo first, and your chances of success will exponentially increase. Oh, and the lights that bounce around aren't Leo, Leo stands still until he sees you.

8) Always kill boss’s minions before going after the bosses. The bosses aren’t that tough on their own. Warriors or rogue kill bosses in the church.

9) Warriors need to know when to switch items and how to split the killing duties into sharp/dull. If you didn’t know it, dull weapons are ineffective against animals and sharp weapons are ineffective against the undead. Demons are hurt equally by both, and goats are demons, as are many of the bosses. The war hammer is a bust-ass weapon it will get you to 7, unless you are lucky enough to stumble across a broad or bastard sword.

a) Rogues need to know how to shoot through their targets, especially in doors, and in close combat. In other words do not highlight the creature you are shooting at! Bows and arrows “track” the monsters, so if the critter moves, the arrow goes astray - more often than not right into the nearest warrior or mages fanny. This sucks.

b) In doors, shoot at an object or a piece of floor beyond the door, in a straight line. That’s a STRAIGHT line! The critter in your path will be unhappy with this, and your team members will like you more. Gold make a good object to shoot at. Shoot at one of those piles that falls in the door, toward the party, or beyond the doorway, but not IN the doorway.

c) DO NOT EVER shoot at critter adjacent to the mage. If the mage cant handle a church level critter then he needs to learn to run. Ro can kill a mage in 2 lucky shots. This also sucks. Find your levels elsewhere you darn back-shootin rogues!!

10) Mages add all their level-ups to magic. Exception is adding 5 at some point to strength. You will need to use the better staves in the cats.

b) Warriors add all to strength and dexterity. DO NOT add to Vit. Vit is pointless. The single most common item enchantment is a plus to Vit or to life. Remember, a dead creature can’t take your life points away!! Strength of 40 is plenty for the church, then add all to dex.

c) Rogues add enough strength to use a Hunter bow (35) and then all to dex. Remember that dex is “to hit” AND armor!

11) In a two men game choose war/mage. Mage can add to str use falchion (30) in the church, and then add dex(30) to be effective fighter. After that everything to magic.

a) Three men, I prefer war/war/mage. Better protection for the mage, and team killing of bad guys in the cats and beyond. This is a deadly combination. Some people like the rogue, well rogue/war/mage is swell too. It isn’t the best though, as time passes the rogue become more and more under powered. Believe me, the rogue is about as useful as a dishrag in the caves and in hell (when all the archers are gone).

b) Four men include the rogue obviously. Four men is not an undoable combination as some people think. It takes more time to level, but evens out as a 5th level character in the Cats levels quicker than a 10th level character. Four men is outstanding for the cats, because the doorways become almost impenetrable. Of course this holds true for the three men war/war/mage combo too (and is the main reason I favor it).

12) Warrior should avoid using the axe on any level that contains archers. Shields provide far superior protection from arrows. A good sword shield combo always beats a good axe. However keep in mind that if you have a suck-ass sword, the axe works great. The axe seizes up goats and horrors too, it can be your best friend if no decent swords are available. Problem with axes is the good one require obnoxious amounts of str, which takes away from the war adding dex, which is preferable.

a) Mages with weapons are useless in the cats and beyond. Prove it to yourself try a few solo ironman mage games - hah! Rogues are similarly screwed as they are only useful with the bow. Pray for that big battle bow!