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Neji’s Mage FAQ 1.0
This is how to play a REAL mage!
Author: nejiGo
class: dark wizard subclass: all
Type: general Difficulty: all
Average rating:  5.3/10 Total Votes: 21
Neji’s Mage FAQ 1.0
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A lot of people complain that mages level the slowest and no one wants them in parties, etc, etc. The truth is that mid-level mages can level faster than the other classes IF they are played correctly. There are 3 main problems most mages face -- 1) They have no clue what equipment is good, 2) They have no clue how to use their spells effectively, 3) They have no clue what they should be fighting. So here we go!
Contents:
1--The Equipment
2--The Spells
3--Leveling up
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1: The Equipment
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Staffs:
Skull Staff: Only useful until you can use Angelic Staff. Don’t bother seeking out a +X+12 Skull Staff because by the time you can use one, you can use an Angelic Staff
Angelic Staff: Mages should only use 2 handed staffs! Use this until you can use a Serpent Staff that does more damage
Serpent Staff: You are stuck with this staff until way past level 80. Angelic Staff to Serpent Staff is a sizable jump, but the jump from Serpent Staff to anything higher isn’t enough to justify pumping the strength to use it. Serpent Staff is cheap cheap since most people skip right over it. Try to work up to a +4+12 or +5+12 staff. Don’t go nuts trying to find a +5+12 though, just get whatever serpent staff you can get. Get +luck if you can but it’s not necessary (worry about getting a set of +luck armor first)
Lightning Staff: I said don’t go beyond Serpent Staff! The main thing people don’t understand is that even though the higher staffs have higher % damage rise, the strength you pump to get this staff (or higher) almost completely cancels out the higher %... even at level 100!
Staff of Gorgon: NO!
Legendary Staff: NO! You are supposed to be a mage. Mages don’t use shields
Chaos Lightning Staff: NO! Unless you are using Hellfire, this staff does less damage than a Serpent Staff even at level 100
Armor:
Pad: Pad is great, and really cheap, but it is a bit hard to find a set of +luck Pad because most people sell it to NPC. If you don’t mind spending a bit of time trading, go for a set of +luck Pad. IT MUST BE +LUCK! Damage is your first priority, so you really need +luck. At really low levels, don’t worry about +luck – but your final armor set NEEDS +luck (+4+X+luck armor/pants and +5+X+luck gloves/helm/boots). +12 option is way more expensive than +8 option, so personally I wouldn’t buy anything past +8 option
Bone: Costs more, but way easier to find someone selling it. Don’t worry about Bone until you can afford it easily. Again try for +4+X+luck armor/pants and +5+X+luck gloves/helm/boots. Pad or Bone can get you to level 80 EASILY. As long as you can take one hit from an enemy and survive, you got enough armor. Note I said ONE HIT. The one hit becomes necessary because of a couple issues: 1) sometimes a monster spawns right on top of you and you don’t have enough time to teleport away, 2) sometimes lag happens and a melee monster somehow hits you from across the screen. Since you can teleport and chug a HP potion in mid-teleport you shouldn’t need higher armor than Pad/Bone
Sphinx: Too hard to find and you shouldn’t really need anything higher than Bone anyway
Legendary: NO! You defiantly don’t need this before Lost Tower, and when you get to Lost Tower you’ll always have a cleric boosting your defense. Your HP and mana pots cost so much money that you should be spending you money on pots instead of uber armor!
Actually you can eventually get Legendary Armor, but don't bother pumping up for it until you have Hellfire. You have plenty of time to get Hellfire and Legendary Armor before you hit level 80.
2: The Spells
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1. Energy ball - Use until you get Meteorite
2. Fireball - Use until you get Meteorite
3. Powerwave - Use until you get Meteorite
4. Lightning Spell - Use with Teleport for PKing. You might also use Lightning to KS or anti-KS. People in your party might get annoyed if you use Lightning on stuff they are trying to hit
5. Teleport - Essential spell. It basically allows you to get away with bad Defense. The most important feature of Teleport is you lose all locks enemies have on you. Any monster that is chasing after you loses its lock on you (though if you teleport too close to them the lock might immediately happen again), also any automatic attack locks another player has on you breaks too. You also have enough time during Teleport to drink a HP potion and completely heal before the Teleport ends. Teleport also lets you Teleport -> Double Hellfire (you can drink a MP potion during teleport if you don’t have enough mana to double hellfire, and still double Hellfire). Teleport -> Double Hellfire lets you kill ranged characters that do a lot of damage to you. Also since your armor isn’t very good you need to learn how to hide behind tank characters, and sometimes Teleport is the best way to do this
6. Meteorite - This is used a lot until you get Flame Pillar. Also, sometimes you can't really tell if an enemy is hiding behind all the flashy junk happening on the screen. Hold down right-click and sweep the screen -- if you hear/see a Meteorite, they you found an enemy. This is the easiest way to find the next spot to Flame Pillar since the 3D terrain sometimes makes it hard to judge the exact spot to Flame Pillar. Also, since the total damage from Flame Pillar happens a while after the spell is cast, Meteorite can be used as a finisher if you really want the fastest kill-rate possible. People in your party might get annoyed if you use Meteorite on stuff too much because it means you’re useless.
7. Ice - This is mostly used in Noria, and against Worm/Larva. It doesn't like to work against anything higher level than that. If you hit something with Ice and the status effect fails to happen, you have to wait until the status effect would have worn off before you can attempt to status effect them with Ice again. This is essential against Stone Golems as it makes them go so slow that you can easily Flame Pillar them
8. Poison – If you poison and ice something at the same time, the enemy stays iced for the entire time it is poisoned… after the poison wears off it is still iced until the ice wears off. (the elapsed ice time stops when poison is in effect). Basically if you ice and poison something and you haven’t killed it before both status effects wear off… you should be killing something easier. Poison (like ice) doesn’t like to work on anything higher than Worm/Larva. For some reason it just seems you get a bit less experience from things you kill if they took a lot of poison damage. Maybe not, but I stopped using poison because of that. By the way, you can’t run around the map smacking things with poison once and collect exp when they finally die.
9. Flame pillar– Under the right conditions this does more damage than any of you other spells if there aren’t 5+ monsters on the screen. This is VERY IMPORTANT! I still haven’t seen any other mages use Flame pillar, so you really need to learn this. Seriously, Flame pillar can do more damage than any of your other spells (except evil spirit when 5+ monsters are on the screen at the same time). Basically in any Ghost room or P-bull room party you have should have 3-4 n00b knights that keep the monsters in one place so you can Flame pillar them. Balis are good tanks too in the P-bull room too. Knights will automatically run up to monsters to hit them, which cause the monsters to stand in one place and hit the Knight. This is your chance to Flame pillar the monster until it is dead. If there are enough Knights in your party, this is your BEST DAMAGE RATE! (unless there are 5+ monsters on the screen at the same time, at which point you can spam Evil Spirit until the # goes below 5). Basically your ideal Ghost room/P-bull room parties involve you using low amounts of Meteorite, really high amounts of Flame Pillar, and moderate amounts of Teleport (you Teleport more in P-bull room than Ghost room since P-bull room is more cramped)
10. Twister – This spell does more damage than Evil Spirit if you can line up the monsters. If you don’t have enough tank characters to use Flame pillar, you should try to line up the monsters and Twister them. Just about every monster that chases after you uses the “shortest path to you” idea. This means if you hit and run in the same general direction, the whole mob lines up. The easiest way to start lining up monsters is to use a couple Evil Spirit spells to hit everything on the screen (or Meteorite if you don’t have Evil Spirit yet) until they chase after you. Don’t do a lot of Evil Spirit spells or the monsters will be too busy stuck in spin stun to chase after you… Sometimes you have to move a bit closer to a monster to get its attention… Don’t bother using this on Stone Golems because 1: Ice/Flame Pillar is much faster on them and 2: Stone Golems really don’t want to chase after you. Now that you used a couple Evil Spirit, move in a direction, hit a couple more times with Evil Spirit, and move in the same general direction… and once they are lined up smack the whole line with Twister. Now you don’t need to use Evil Spirit anymore unless you 1) find other monsters that need to be lined up 2)for some reason the line fell apart a bit 3)you ran out of space to run to. If you run out of space to run to, you should Teleport to some other direction and start the Evil Spirit -> Twister idea until they line up again. (if the direction change is small then run to the other direction, if the direction change is really big than Teleport to the other direction). After some practice you should be able to get the enemies to line up very closely to each other so you can Flame pillar them while they are spinning. Getting the enemies to line up closely sometimes involves running between them, around them, etc… after a while you’ll get a feel of it and can do it easily
Twister is your first replacement for ice, since ice stops working mid-game. When Twister hits, the enemy is in spin stun, but the enemy moves very slowly during the spin stun. Since the enemy is slowed down, you can add some Flame pillars in the line of Twisters. This way you get to use Flame pillar without a tank! So put as many Flame pillars in the line of Twisters that you can and still have the Flame pillars do good damage. Then send out more Twisters and Flame pillars. If you get down to 1 enemy, it gets hard to hit them with all the Flame pillar hits so you might switch to just Twister at that point
So if you don’t have enough tank characters to handle a mob that’s not at least 5+ creatures, the Evil Spirit -> Twister -> Flame Pillar strategy is your best option. You can even Evil Spirit -> Twister -> Flame Pillar in a room as small as the P-bull room, so this strategy works in any size area!
11. Evil Spirit – Evil Spirit is horribly misused. Most mages that don’t use Meteorite/Lightning 99% of the time spam the absolute hell out of Evil Spirit and Hellfire. In parties this is cruddy damage rate most of the time. You REALLY need to understand that you can Flame Pillar 2 enemies to death way faster than you can Evil Spirit them. In parties you really shouldn’t spam the hell out of Evil Spirit if there aren’t at least 5 monsters in range of the Evil Spirit. ES-spamming 4 Monsters is semi-lame and ES-spamming anything lower is just dumb
Evil Spirit is your second replacement to ice. Whenever Evil Spirit hits a monster it is stuck in spin stun. Unlike Twister, Evil Spirit spin stun completely stops the enemy in one place. Evil Spirit has a low hit rate which is why you shouldn’t spam it if there aren’t 5+ monsters on the screen at the same time. If you see a bunch of damage numbers appear over a monster when you do Evil Spirit, it means the enemy will be stuck in spin stun for a while so you can give it a couple of Flame Pillars! So Evil Spirit -> Flame pillar is another combo you can do. Don’t try to spam Evil Spirit so you can combo it into Flame pillar though (unless you want practice)…
12. Hellfire – most of the time you use this in a Teleport -> double Hellfire Combo to kill ranged characters and PK. It also has some KS/Anti-KS value when you really need the instant damage now, and can’t wait for the other spells to damage something. But spamming Hellfire isn’t really useful. Also, if you have to teleport away from something, you can Teleport -> double Hellfire (you might as well get damage out of your Teleport). But don’t feel like you always need to Hellfire after a teleport, most the time it is better to get away from a monster instead of teleporting near one. Hellfire does a lot of damage per hit, but it’s not fast enough to be used for most cases. So don’t spam it because the damage rate isn’t as good as you think it is
3) Leveling up
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Summary: In general if a monster takes longer than 20 seconds to kill, you really should be killing something easier. Aim to kill things in 10-15 seconds. Level in Lorencia until level 10 (don’t try to kill Giants), then Level in Noria (don’t try to kill Stone Golems before you get Flame pillar). Once you get Flame pillar you can lead Stone Golem parties. Sometime after you get Evil Spirit, switch to leading Ghost room parties. You are defiantly stuck in the Ghost room until at least level 80 so get used to it.
Note that when leading parties the fastest exp party configuration is you and 4 n00bs (when you first start the ghost room you might need to replace one of the n00bs with an elf that can help you do damage… but only let 1 non-n00b person in the party if you really need them). The n00bs boost your exp so much that the Ghost room is good for a really really long time.
Basically, until you can get Evil Spirit you shouldn’t pump more than 3 levels of strength PERIOD. With 3 levels of strength you can wear +4+0 armor/pants, +5+0 gloves/helm/boots, and a +0+0 Skull staff (you can use a +1+0 Skull staff if you can find one, but +0+0 is fine too). Since you will still be in Noria when you get Evil Spirit you don’t need better armor. Once you get Evil Spirit you can start pumping strength to get your final equipment set. Since you will still be in Ghost room when you get both Hellfire and your final equipment set, it doesn’t really matter what combination of strength/energy pumping you use (it doesn’t matter if you get Hellfire first, or if you can better armor first). You might want some slightly better staff/armor before you go for Hellfire to help you in the Ghost room because at some point (I forget which level) you want to switch from leading Stone Golem parties to leading Ghost room parties.
LORENCIA
Lorencia is too crowded and the monsters are spread far apart. Giants only spawn in one area that is defiantly way too crowded and has a VERY slow spawn rate. You are stuck here from levels 1-10. Once you hit level 10, go to Noria
NORIA
When you first get Flame pillar, Ice/Flame pillar lets you kill Stone Golems faster than Agons (since you can’t Ice/Flame pillar Agons easily). Gather as many level 1-5 elves (or level 1-10 elves if you need to) that you can and lead a Stone Golem party. You will be stuck doing this until you can lead Ghost room parties so get used to it. Before you can lead Stone Golem parties, you can still probably pick up one level 1-5 elf to party with you while you kill the smaller junk. If you are really ghetto (I didn’t do this) and you have more than one computer, you can create a level 1 elf and have it use the “follow command” to closely follow your mage. If the elf ever levels up, delete it and pop out another level 1 elf.
DAVIAS
A lot of people will say you should join a big e-yeti party at level 15. Although this might get you from level 15-25 faster, the armor you need to survive 1 hit from an e-yeti requires too many levels of strength - which set back getting higher level spells by too much. Remember that you level faster at lower levels, so it’s better to level slower at low levels than get stuck having to solo with cruddy spells at higher levels after e-yeti party leaders think you are too high level to join the party.
Davias is overall useless. The lower level monsters are too spread out and it is way too crowded. The e-yetis are way too spread out, and even though you might get a mob of them every 5 minutes, it doesn’t make up for the fact that ghosts spawn way faster and way closer together.
If you really want to try e-yetis [hint: don’t bother] there are two major places to kill them - the corner on the right edge of the map (up right from town) and the corner on the left edge of the map (up left from town). The left edge is less crowded because the path to it has a lot of monsters with ranged attacks (yeti). It does have a peddler that sells potions though, so it is defiantly better to try the left edge instead.
The corner at the top edge of the map has ice queens. By the time you can kill them, they are WAY too spread out and they don’t give anywhere near as much exp to justify fighting them. As with all ranged characters that can kill you in a couple hits, kill them with Teleport->Medium HP potion->mana potion if needed ->Double Hell Fire
DUNGEON LEVEL 1
There are 3 places to note
1) The room right below the entrance (you have to teleport through the wall) that has a couple skeletons, a couple larva, and a couple cyclops in a small area. It turns out this room is absolutely useless for exp, but it’s usually empty and it can give you practice gathering/handling mobs
2) The larva room (small room down-left from room #1 that has 3 larva in it) can give you pseudo-practice for the p-bull room since it has 3 spawns in a small area. P-bull room is useless to you though… (hint: don’t bother with this room)
3) The Ghost room. Ghosts probably have the longest “monster is in range to hit you” to “monster will hit you even if you move 5 feet away before the attack actually hits” time. This contrasts with Cyclops (which probably have the shortest time). You might have noticed that melee monsters can somehow hit you when you aren’t near them. What happens is you were in range and the monster decided he was going to hit you. For some programming reason, the monster has to actually wait for a period of time after he decided to hit you before he can actually make the attack. If a monster decides to hit you, unless you teleport he will hit you even if you are way out of range when the actual attack happens. One of the really good things about ghosts is if you accidentally are in melee range of the ghost, you have a long time to teleport away before you get hit.
Ghost room is why mages can level faster than the other races. It spawns really fast, and has a lot of monsters in a small area. Mages are the only class that can do maximum damage from ranged distance. (archers only do good damage using triple-shot in melee range). This means that mages are the best suited for leading a Ghost room party because the other classes have to move around too much so their kill rate isn’t very good if they are the party leader. This is why the other classes like to use the P-bull room as soon as they can… because it’s much smaller and much less monsters so they don’t have to waste a lot of time moving
Another big bonus about the Ghost room is that since it is located in the middle of the only path that runs through dungeon level 1, there are a lot of low level knights running through it. You can run through the Cyclops hall before the Ghost room and collect some low level knights. Or since so many low level knights naturally run through the Ghost room, just ask the knights as they pass through if they want to party (if they look low level). If you are competing with another party, just collect anyone you can that runs through the Ghost room… otherwise don’t party mid/high level knights because they really don’t help much with the damage rate and they drop the exp rate too much. Archers don’t do too much damage at this point either, but if you need another mid level character helping out the damage rate a mid level archer is way better than a mid level knight. Elves that can offense buff you are likely to increase the damage rate also. Always check how much exp you are getting per minute before and after you let someone in the party, and kick them out if they drop the exp rate.
The reason why you want so many knights is your party is so there will be almost always a ghost stuck in one place (hitting the knight) so you can be using Flame pillar as much as possible. Ideally after one ghost is dead from Flame pillar, one of the other knights has a ghost stuck in place so you can Flame pillar that one. Don’t walk up to the ghost to Flame pillar it – you don’t want to risk the Ghost hitting you. Flame pillar has really good range, so use the range so you aren’t moving around too much. The most important skill you need to learn is not delaying the Ghosts from getting stuck in one place hitting a knight. This means don’t ES or Twister a Ghost a knight is running at to fight because it slows down the monster from getting stuck in one place. This also means learning how to move around to line a Ghost directly between you and a knight so that the Ghost runs right into the knight first and stops. If a Ghost looks like it is trying to run off the screen (happens most often if some random person runs right through the middle of the ghost room and off screen and the Ghost decides to chase after them), you might want to smack it with a couple ES to keep it on screen. The ES will put the runaway Ghost in spin stun, and by the time the Ghost stops spinning the random person is far away enough that the Ghost stops chasing it. If there is something to Flame pillar, use Flame pillar. Otherwise find whatever knight is closest to a Ghost and Meteorite that Ghost until it gets stuck and you can Flame pillar it. The Ghosts can get hard to see where they are exactly, so don’t forget you can use the “sweep the area with Meteorite” trick to quickly find the exact spot to Flame pillar
Ghosts have a weird AI. They have a “move phase” and a “sit there or attack phase” that are completely separate. This means if you accidentally are in melee range of a Ghost while it is moving, if you are out of range before the Ghost stops then the Ghost can’t hit you (this is in contrast to the Cyclops, which if you are EVER within melee range for even .1 seconds the Cyclops is likely to hit you). The move phase has a maximum distance, meaning the Ghost can’t move forever without stopping. The Ghost also decides its entire move phase before it starts moving. If a Ghost is trying to move in melee range to you, it is really trying to land exactly where you are standing… but it stops because you are blocking its path. This means if a Ghost starts moving toward you and you move a foot away, the Ghost will land where you used to be… which is outside of melee range. It will be a while before the Ghost can move again, so an advanced trick you can do against Ghosts (when a tank is not there) is always move slightly so the Ghost lands just outside melee range and Flame pillar it while it is stuck in the “sit there or attack phase”
Once you can afford it, your inventory is generally 1 defense pet, 1 damage pet, 4 alcohol, the rest of the top 2 rows are medium HP potions, and the entire rest of the inventory are large mana potions. You aren’t going to be able to pick up much zen drops (since you should be busy killing instead of running around picking up zen), so until you can afford this inventory configuration use smaller mana pots and just refill pots more often. The defense pet is in case you think a PK situation is going to happen and you need extra defense. The damage pet can be used in Stone Golem parties (since Stone Golem’s don’t do too much damage) and in the Ghost room if there are so many people in the room that the Ghosts really can’t get to you. The alcohol is for the Ghost room is case another party trys to compete with you. If another party is trying to compete with you, chances are the room is so packed you can use the damage pet without worrying about getting hit by a Ghost. One possible option is pump 2 levels into agility so you can use a Kris. It won’t give you better damage, but Kris+damage pet+alcohol+spamming ES and Hellfire could scare away the other party just from the sheer amount of junk on the screen at the same time
DUNGEON LEVEL 2
The only place worth bringing a party to is the P-bull room. P-bull room is slower exp than the Ghost room. It takes long long time for a n00b to get to the P-bull room and they usually die a couple times along the way – and a couple times while in the P-bull room. It’s also harder to get a big level % difference from the n00bs in the P-bull room i.e. if you are level 50, you can party level 25 people for the ghost room – which is half your level… for p-bull room you have to be level 80 to get people half your level – and getting/maintaining a full p-bull party of level 40-50 characters is super time consuming. The only people that can get to p-bull room fast are level 70+ characters and if they aren’t a cleric – they just drag down the exp rate
If you feel you must try the P-bull room, use the Ghost room strategy except note that the “monster is in range to hit you” to “monster will hit you even if you move 5 feet away before the attack actually hits” time is shorter with P-bull so you’ll have to be more alert. Also, even though the P-bulls spawn fast, there are only 3 of them and they don’t really spawn really fast… In a good party you’ll usually see a max of 2 P-bulls at once, which means you’ll just about never use ES. You’ll just about always be using a few Meteorite and A LOT of Flame Pillar since there are so few P-bulls that there will always be a melee character keeping a P-bull still. Try to hit 2 P-bulls at once with the Flame Pillar if you can.
DUNGEON LEVEL 3
Useless. Mobs/spawn rate aren’t big enough for a mage, and you absolutely cannot get n00bs to party there
LOST TOWER
I first thought Lost Tower would be like some super place for mages. A mage can kill a Ghost at least 3 times faster than Shadows from Lost Tower… and Shadows don’t even give twice the exp that a Ghost gives in a n00b party. At level 80 you are the n00b of Lost Tower… Your only hope is to make a 2 person party of you and a cleric. Don’t bother partying with any other characters because they will drop your exp rate. Maybe you should stick with the Ghost room... |
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