FAQ Log in
Search Profile
Memberlist Usergroups
Log in to check your private messages
Register
Jump To: Haelrahv Main Site | My Haelrahv Account | Haelrahv Play Page
General New Magic System Notes & Explanations
Post new topic   Reply to topic
The Official Haelrahv Message Forum Forum Index » Mages » General New Magic System Notes & Explanations
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
HR-Trevor
Boss Type Guy


Joined: 04 Oct 2002
Posts: 6683
Location: Louisville, KY

 Post Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:05 pm    Post subject: General New Magic System Notes & Explanations
Reply with quote

I thought I'd explain a little more about the elemental magic spells, since a lot of change is going on. Hopefully this will clear up some questions and misunderstandings.

First of all, in the elemental sphere there are five tiers of spells:

Single target - weak
Single target - strong
Single target - powerful
Area effect - weak
Area effect - strong

Weak is at it says, weak. It's intended to be used by low level mages and it should be expected that multiple casts will be necessary. Buffing intellect and spellcasting skill can help to make these (and all other mage spells) more effective. There is such a tiny focus cost to cast these, however, that you might well regenerate focus more quickly than you burn it in the course of hunting.

Strong spells hit much harder, and cost more focus to cast. You still probably will need multiple casts, but they do more damage in each cast. A major factor of how quickly you kill things is where you strike - something you have no control over. You hit where you hit. Still, every hit is a value. Even limb hits contribute by lowering attack and defense of your target and causing bleeding. Strong spells are more likely to cause stuns than weak spells.

Powerful spells are the top of the line as for single-target damage, and they have a higher focus cost than strong spells. They are more likely to cause stuns than strong spells.

Area effect spells will damage multiple targets in the area. Whether this is several targets in the room, or every target in the room depends on the spell in question, but regardless, these are great when you face multiple enemies. They have a higher focus cost and failure rate than their single target counterparts. PvP is disabled so these have no effect on players, but when PvP is re-enabled, these will injure players not in your group.

In the past, many players have favored certain elements because they seemed to hit harder. With these rewrites, the choice isn't so black and white. For instance, cold spells have been considered less desirable because they do far less damage. Now, cold spells do only slightly less damage, while having the potential to sometimes strike more areas of the body at once than other spells, plus the increased stun rate. This makes them different than a fire spell, but just as good from a statistical standpoint.

Cold: Slightly decreased damage, chance to strike more body areas at once than normal, increased chance of stun.

Heat/Fire: Steady/consistent damage output with little fluctuation. Especially useful against certain types of foes.

Electrical: Hits hardest of the single-element attacks, and often will hit the same body area twice to do heavy damage to that area. However, these attacks will do less hits overall than other attacks.

Acid/Erosion: These attacks do less damage than the other elements, but tend to produce a "splatter" effect, meaning that they hit many body areas at once. Overall, these can be the most effective attacks for targeting health points rather than body areas.

Now, in addition to these elements, there will be spells that use all four elements at once. The prime benefit to these attacks will be against foes where you don't know which element is most effective or where you would like to combine the benefits of several elements, and in addition, each cast will generally affect a high number of body areas.

Here is the Elemental Circle spell list:

Cold/Ice:
- *Icy Aura: Weak, single.
- Frostbite: Weak, area.
- *Howling Gale: Strong, single.
- *Glacial Winds: Powerful, single.
- Blizzard: Strong, area.

Heat/Fire:
- *Singeing Strike: Weak, single (this spell was previously called Flame Wave).
- Pillar of Flame: Weak, area.
- Flame Wave: Strong, single.
- *Incineration: Powerful, single.
- Rain of Magma: Strong, area.

Electrical:
- *Jolt: Weak, single (this spell was previously called Lightning Bolt).
- Static Cloud: Weak, area.
- Lightning Bolt: Strong, single.
- *Chain Lightning: Powerful, single.
- Thunderstorm: Strong, area.

Erosion/Acid:
- *Acid Bolt: Weak, single (this spell was previously called Green Haze).
- Green Haze: Weak, area.
- Disintegrate: Strong, single.
- Consuming Cloud: Powerful, single.
- Acid Rain: Strong, area.

Multi-Element (all four elements at once):
- Elemental Strike: Weak, single.
- Disruption: Weak, area.
- Meltdown: Strong, single.
- Eradication: Powerful, single.
- Annihilation: Strong, area.

* = Released, available either by purchase (Soleil Sanctuary), combat treasure, or fishing treasure.

For those who are unaware, you can learn to overload your spells once you reach level 40. You will need to take a quest started through the Mage guild leader, Krystle D'Arschon (ASK KRYSTLE ABOUT ABILITIES). To overload a spell, use PREPARE <spell name> OVERLOADED. This will greatly increase the damage your elemental spells do, but it will occasionally cause nerve damage when you do so.

I'd like to mention some changing culture in Mages themselves. In the past, the stance players took was to nuke things as fast as humanly possible, and hope you didn't get swarmed and creamed. With the changes a while back to defenses (which make you more likely to get hit) this is even more of an issue. While Mages are intended to do serious damage, this isn't the full answer to the issue. You also need protections too. This is why spells like the new damage shields are important. You have the ability to stack Static Cloak with Magma Shield, Glacial Coat, and Corrosive Armor for a combined effect to help protect you. Additionally, Arcane Shield (previously called Psi Shield) provides both magic and mental protections now.

However, while I'm on this topic, I need to mention a few things that we will be downtweaking for game balance. One is Armor Aura / Elemental Shield. These, and their group forms, will be changed so that they provide less resistance and they will have a degrading effect as you take hits, until they eventually fade. On the plus side, the focus cost will decrease and the duration will be high. The primary reason for this change is because they're simply way too powerful as-is. They actually exceed armor in usefulness, and can make players take very little damage in situations where they should take much more.

The other big change will be to Siphon Vigor and Blood Siphon. The amount of drainable health and fatigue will be decreased notably, so that these are less useful as combat and healing spells. However, their focus cost will be reduced to a very low amount and their cast time will be greatly reduced so that you can use these as fast tactical spells to gain an advantage when you need it by lowering your enemy's ability to attack and defend (less health or stamina means less combat prowess).

And speaking of fast tactical spells, the utility spell Null Gravity is also released and intended to help you in this way too. This spell has a very short duration, so short that using it all the time would just be impossible. However, while it lasts, you and your group have no encumbrance whatsoever, and those outside of your group have increased encumbrance. This gives you an advantage you can expose at a critical time to help win a difficult battle.

The overall idea here is to give you lots of tools, and lots of strategy to use. It's intended to make combat more fun, and it's more flashy too. I hope that you all find the idea of considering your moves in combat rather than prep l b, cast <target> over and over to be much more enjoyable in the long run, despite the adjustments you're experiencing at first.

Finally, I'd like to detail more about the spell slots and how they fit into things now. Essentially, the plan is to put new versions of existing slotted spells into the game and once the pages are reasonably readily available and players have had a little while to acquire pages, to then remove that spell from all player slots and make that spell no longer learnable in the Sanctuary library. The first to go will be the weak, single target elemental spells because they are very easily obtainable at a paultry cost of 100 credits. However, I will not rush to remove spells from slots, I will try to ensure that enough time has passed for most players to have dug up a page and study it, so that you aren't suddenly faced with a major lacking in your spell list.
_________________
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato

-- Trevor Rage / Rich Mondy
 Back to top »
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Display posts from previous:   
The Official Haelrahv Message Forum Forum Index » Mages » General New Magic System Notes & Explanations
Post new topic   Reply to topic All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Top Index




Solaris phpBB theme/template by Jakob Persson
Copyright © Jakob Persson 2003



Powered by phpBB 2.0.22 © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group