Magery, Evaluate Intelligence and Meditation

Magery Basics | Magery Alone | Skill Levels | Magery & Eval | Magery & Inscription | Meditation & Focus | Meditation & Armor | Item Properties | Magery & Melee

Magery Basics

Magery is a complex skill requiring the addition of evaluate intelligence, inscription and meditation if it is to operate at full power.

The basic requirement of any spellcaster is his spell collection. There are a total of 64 spells of magery, which can be added into a spell book for his convenience. The spells are divided into eight circles. Each circle progressively requiring more skill, more mana expenditure and more time to cast. A full description of the spells, their effects and costs in terms of time, reagents and mana can be found by following the ‘spells’ link at the bottom of this page.

It is possible to equip spellbooks with useful properties to add to the mage’s effectiveness, including slayer spellbooks to target specific monster types. (slayer bonus is only applied to direct damage spells).

Magery Only Spells

There are a few spells that call only on the caster’s skill in magery and his intelligence for full effect. Intelligence gives 1% spell damage increase for every 10 points, or (intelligence / 10). These spells include:

• Mind blast (Damage based on Magery + Intelligence)
• Poison (Chance of poisoning = Your Magery vs Targets Resisitng Spells)
  • (Strength of poison = Magery + Poisoning / 2)
  • Less than 65.1 : Level 1 poison
  • 65.1 to 85 : Level 2 poison
  • 85.1 to 99.9 : Level 3 poison
  • 100 and higher : Level 4 poison
• Poison field (Strength calculation same as Poison spell)
  • (Duration 3 + (Magery * 0.4)) seconds
• Heal (Hit Points healed = Magery/10 + 1-3)
• Greater Heal (Hit points healed = Magery*0.4 + 1-10)
• Cure (Chance to cure % = (Magery * 0,75) + (110 – (Poison level * 33))
• Arch Cure (More reliable at higher levels of magery)
• Unlock (Magery determines what level of chests it can open)

Casting Spells

It is worth noting that when casting the spell from a scroll the magery requirement is two circles lower. For example it is possible to cast gate (a level 7 spell) from a gate scroll with only 50 magery, though it may take several attempts. Failure to cast will not consume the scroll. For a 100% chance to cast the spell without a scroll the skill requirement is 106

The spell scroll ‘recall’ is a special case, when used to charge a rune book. Casting recall by using a runebook charge requires no magery skill.

Magery with Evaluate Intelligence

Eval Int is the skill that allows a mage to function offensively, without it spells will do less than 10 damage. The formula for damage increase through evaluate intelligence skil is: ((Evaluate Intelligence * 3) / 100) + 1.

Which means that if you have 120 Evaluate Intelligence, your base damage would be more than quadrupled, ((120 * 3) / 100) + 1 which would be 4.6.

Even bless and curse type spells rely on Evaluate Intelligence for their powers, a grand master mage can fizzle casting a simple 3rd circle bless.

There is no real need to train evaluate intelligence separately, it will go up quite naturally as you cast spells to raise your magery skill however at low levels it can be amusing to use the skill directly on npcs and fellow players, using it this way provides the following responses:

Magery with Inscription

Inscription can add spell damage increase to your spells as well as affect the result of buffs. Grandmaster Inscription adds 10% to damage spells. This is not on a pure sliding scale, the damage bonus is 1% for every 20 points of Inscription with a 5% GM bonus. This 10% SDI bonus at GM isn’t part of the PVP SDI from items cap.
Which means if you take the 20% or 25% SDI cap in PVP and add the 10% from GM Scribe on you get 30% or 35% SDI. Spells affected by this damage bonus are:

• Magic Arrow
• Harm
• Fireball
• Lightning
• Energy Bolt
• Explosion
• Chain Lightning
• Flamestrike
• Meteor Swarm

Inscription adds Casting Focus – from Apprentice to Grand Master a 1% increase to base casting focus per 10 points of Inscribe. (5% at Grand Master)

The potency of the following ‘buff’ spells mainly depends on the caster’s inscription skill:

• Reactive Armor: Increases caster’s Physical Resistance by ((Inscription / 20) + 15) points, decreases caster’s Fire, Cold, Energy and Poison Resistance by 5 points each.
  Lasts until cast again.
• Protection: Allows you to cast spells without being interrupted. Lowers physical resistance and resist magic skill, increases spell casting delay. Lasts until cast again.
• Magic Reflect: Decreases caster’s Physical Resistance by (25 – (Inscription / 20)) points, increases caster’s Fire, Cold, Energy and Poison Resistance by 10 points each. Almost opposite of Reactive Armor spell. Lasts until cast again.

Meditation and Focus

These skills provide the mana the mage requires in order to cast his spells. Traditionally mages use meditation and warriors use focus, however the two skills do stack. Some mages will train both skills to give them the extra ‘fire power’ With 120 medi/int and 120 focus, you will have 2.1 passive mana regen. Focus is a totally passive skill, unlike meditation which can be passive or active. Pvp mages wishing to benefit from the single casting school sdi cap of 30% will want to avoid adding Focus skill to their template as the skill is grouped with Mysticism and is therefore part of a second casting school. (see the page Spellcasting Introduction for more details)
Mana regeneration can also be enhanced by using armor which has the mana regeneration property. This is not capped however it is subject to diminishing returns. For example the difference between 0 MR and 3 MR is substantially greater than the difference between 15 MR and 18 MR

Meditation and Armor

Some armor types impede active meditation unless it has the magic property “Mage Armor”.

• Medable Armor: – Leather armor (human or gargoyle), Leaf Armor, Gargoyle Cloth Armor
• Non-medable Armor: – Studded leather, Bone armor, Hide Armor, Ringmail, Chainmail, Platemail (human or gargoyle), Dragon Armor, Woodland Armor, Gargoyle Stone Armor

Item Properties Applicable to Mages

• Lower Reagent Cost (LRC): This property can be found on both jewelry and armor.
  Each 1% LRC gives a 1% chance of a spell not requiring ANY reagent to cast. So at 100% LRC you will not require ANY reagents to cast any spell whatsoever.
• Lower Mana Cost (LMC): lowers the mana cost of spell casting. This property is capped at 40%
  Example, if you have 35% LMC and cast a flame strike, the amount of mana consumed would be 40 – 35% = 26.
• Spell Chanelling: Normal spell casting causes you to drop any item you have in your hands, an item with spell channelling property will not be dropped.
• Mage Weapons: Mage weapons are weapons that use your Magery skill as if it were the appropriate weapon skill. These, with a few artifact exceptions, lower your Magery skill.
  Example: A kryss with the property Mage Weapon -25 would lower your magery by 25. i,e 120 – 25 = 95 Magery whilst it is equipped. You would be capable of melee fighting as if you had fencing skill of 95. If fencing skill is set to rise you could gain in that skill, however if fencing is locked it is possible to gain magery skill while melee fighting with the weapon. You would not be able to use the Special Moves associated with the weapon, only the actual weapon skill applies in that case.
• Mage Armor: This property allows normally non-medable armor types to allow active meditation as if they were a medable armor type.
• Faster Cast/Faster Casting Recovery: Faster casting reduces the casting time of spells, each point of this effect reduces the time by a quarter of a second. The cap for magery is 2, so the maximum casting time reduction is half a second. Faster cast recovery reduces the time you have to wait before casting your next spell. The unadjusted time between spells is one and a half seconds. Each point you have in this ability will reduce that time by a quarter second. The most you can have of this effect is 6, which negates the wait time completely.

Magery and Melee

Ideally the mage should avoid his/her opponents getting close enough to melee. Anatomy, when added to evaluate intelligence, gives a mage defensive wrestling.

(Anatomy + Evaluate Intelligence + 20) / 2 = defensive wrestling (capped at 120.0)

However it does not give any offensive capability, for that you will need Wrestling skill.