Getting Started:
Ok, now if you read the basic info section before diving
into this, you'd have learned not to go straight into the diviner apprentice.
Spending your first 10 levels as a warrior apprentice is a much better idea.
As a diviner pre-mage, you have no skills to level as an apprentice. So
having the warrior skills and ability wear armor and use weapons will help you
quickly get to level 10. Then once you hit level 10, drop the warrior
apprentice, then pick up diviner and go get your mage class. Now you have
some spells to use.
Stat Distribution:
The most important thing for the mage is of course MP.
And the more Intelligence you have, the higher your chances are of getting more
MP each level. Intelligence also increases MP regeneration, which will
allow you more pets. Enhancement and healing pets will be your life blood,
so it's good to have high intelligence for that reason alone. So as for
main stat distrubution I recommend grabbing just a little bit of con between
starting and level 10. I'd stop at around 25-30 constitution, that'll give
you enough to have a decent HP gain on levels, but won't take away too much from
your more important stats. Those more important stats are intelligence and
dexterity. Pumping intelligence up quickly is key, so if you pump 1 int
and 2 con between level 1 and level 10, you should be doing good. Then
afterwards a nice healthy growth of int and dex would be 2 to 1. So 2 int
and 1 dex per level.
Now that you're at level
10, you've finally become a mage.
The most important thing with being a mage, is in
battle, you should never do anything but use spells. Your spell damage is
based on your elemental control level. And the only way to gain levels in
elemental control is to use your spells. The higher the level of spell you
use, the more experience you'll get. To do this you'll need a lot of mp,
but you have the prayer skill, so that's not important. But then you have
to worry about your HP, this is where a good healing pet comes into play.
Grab yourself a light owl. Light Owls are low level, between 10 and 12, so
you can use them immediately, and you can also immediately teach them recovery
at the light temple. The recovery pet skill will be able to heal you and
the owl and anyone else you may be partying with IN BATTLE, not outside.
This will lower your need for pots to just about 0.
Pets:
Pets, pets, pets. Pets are very important to a mage.
Since you have the ability to throw around spells like fireball and flame hail,
you'll cut through mobs faster. Which means the lowered experience you get
from using multiple pets isn't so bad. So go ahead and collect yourself a
group of pets. You'll want at least 3. One pet for combat/healing,
one pet for magic enhancement, and one for armor. Here's a few choices you
have to go through. I recommend you choose and obtain at least one of each
of these, and then train them up with you.
Healing/Combat - Light owl, light sheep, gem crawler, rice bunny, light pegasus, light cloud, light beetle, and light hedgehog.
Magic Enhancement- Black sheep, Big Bad Wolf, Dark Rat, and Dark Unicorn.
Armor Enhancement-
Pure Defense- Wood Crab, Pie Aibo, Wood Poli, Wood Hog
Defense and Dodge- Mud Slime, Mutt, and Earth Poli
Where should I go to beat things up now?
Since mages can hit cast row and even group damage spells,
solo playing with them is mostly a walk in the park. You'll be able to
drain in dungeons more easily than the single hit classes. That means
quicker and easier experience, that translates into quick leveling. So
here, I'm not posting a lot of diverse routes and mainly sticking with the slime
cave. The reason being is that you will level the fastest here no matter
what in those areas.
Training:
10-15- Here, with the mage, is where you'll have to take it a bit easy. You'll need to quickly get your EC levels up to at least 12 so you can learn your row damage spells, avalanche and fireball. So going straight into the slime caves or out into major combat areas isn't very smart. Since you'll be working with rather weak single target spells, you'll want to stay around your villiage and fight the weaker monsters. You might even want to fight the little level 1-3 monsters just outside the small villiages to get your EC up quickly. The beauty of the elemental control, is that it levels up just by using magic, it doesn't matter what you're casting it against.
15-20- By this point you should have your
row damaging spells and be working your way up the EC charts. Now you'll
want to head into the slime caves. The slime caves will be your home for
leveling for quite a while, so get comfortable in there. Once you start
getting too little experience from combatting the puppets and slimes, move up to
level 2 in the slime caves. Here you'll be up against more worthy apponent
but the experience will be much higher, and as long as you've got your pets with
you, you shouldn't have any problem.
20-25- Here you'll still be in level 2 of
the slime caves. As the experience starts to come more slowly, you'll want
to move west and start fighting the light and dark slimes. Watch out for
these, they can be a handful. Those dark slimes love to cast spells.
Dimension distortion and poison aren't a whole lot of fun when they're pointed
at you. Your healing and armor pets will be getting a lot of use here.
But what you take in damage, you'll more than make up for in experience.
25-30- Here's where you finish up soloing
against those annoying light and dark slimes and move on to the bigger fish.
Slime cave level 3. If you're not comfortable fighting the monsters in
here yet, you should still be getting enough exp. from those light and darkies
to keep you occupied for a couple of levels, then you can move on up.
30-35- Here you can finally move out of
the slime caves and put some diversity in your life. Now you should have
well over level 36 EC and a thirst for blood. Having spells such as
inferno and wrath of lands in your fingertips, you can pretty much go wherever
you want to. Goldburg lake might be some good game, or maybe crystal
mountain, sleepy lake. Anywhere you can find monsters at or around your
level.
35-40- Same applies here, the main
strategy is to keep the mobs at or around your level. For this you'll want
to head to places like moonglow, the tanrana maze, the dark caves, etc.
40 and beyond- For this, much like all
classes, you're at a loss of experience until updates. You can continue
fighting the level 40 mobs for for a few levels. But like other classes,
if you want to power level after this point, you're going to want to find an
acolyte of darkness that has the dark ritual spell to help you out.