Just a few questions about Wizards

[glentc]

Trick: Drag Muckbane to a two weapon slot. Drag the half-full two weapon slot to your hotbar. Whenever you need to swap out a pair of spell boosting items, you'll equip Muckbane to your primary hand, and empty your secondary hand. Keeps the two-weapon-fighting penalty out of the calculation, and preserves your gear from slime damage.
My Wizard will buff herself with Mage Armor, and Shield before going after a jello. If going up against more than one, I'll swing, back up, swing, back up. This keeps them a bit strung out, preventing me from getting too slimed. Sometimes though, you also need the Acid Resist potion.

That sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Last night when I put on Muckbane again, I didn't see the minus so I must have placed it on the wrong hand. Well after an interesting PuG through Water Works, I picked the Sewar Smock reward. I would have picked up the +2 Bracers of Defense but it wasn't offered this time for this character. The smock made a big difference with it's acid absorbing ability against slimes. I didn't get too damaged when I was smacking multiple slimes with Muckbane.

[VonBek]

Waterworks gives some useful end rewards, Sewer Smock among them. If your outlook on the adventure will accept repeating it, some other good bits can drop:

1. The Black Widow Bracers give +4 AC; unsurpassed until you can locate +5 Armored Bracers after level 8.
2. Sometimes you'll see boots of Feather Falling.
3. Venn's Necklace isn't too bad, +25 Spell Point item.

WW is a pretty good adventure design. It's not too difficult to start or find a group running it. With practice and experience many players can solo it with a level 2-4 character. (And, it's conclusion directs you to a Wayfinder in the Marketplace to commence "the Seal Shan To Kor" (STK).

[Ghoste]

Hey Ghoste,
I hope I didn’t suggest that stealth is ONLY for solo play. Personally, I find that I use the stealthy approach mostly in solo play (when “I” dictate the pace) or when in a bad PUG (self-preservation/preventing wipes) – as most PUGS that I hop in on don’t have the patience to sit idle while I work the dungeon over. Guild play can be more forgiving, LOL.

Regards, -Daemonis

Not at all.

Understandably it's not a huge thing for party play (unless you've ever had the pleasure of running in a party of all stealth characters) but is a useful tool to have at your disposal. I PUG a lot, and without stealth I can think of many times an almost party wipe would have been a full party wipe had I not had the ability to vanish and lose agro.

As far as the idea about an cleric using invis: make sure you have points in hide, as invis works as an indirect bonus to your hide skill. At higher levels, many monsters will have enough spot to see right through an invis spell with no points in hide. Move silently too if you can fit it in, although I'm not sure how vital that is when in a group that isn't stealthed. In any case, ya, you can still do a range of things while invis without becoming visible, not just buffs and heals.

[glentc]

Waterworks gives some useful end rewards, Sewer Smock among them. If your outlook on the adventure will accept repeating it, some other good bits can drop:

1. The Black Widow Bracers give +4 AC; unsurpassed until you can locate +5 Armored Bracers after level 8.
2. Sometimes you'll see boots of Feather Falling.
3. Venn's Necklace isn't too bad, +25 Spell Point item.

WW is a pretty good adventure design. It's not too difficult to start or find a group running it. With practice and experience many players can solo it with a level 2-4 character. (And, it's conclusion directs you to a Wayfinder in the Marketplace to commence "the Seal Shan To Kor" (STK).

It looks like I'll have to give WW a try a few more times so I can get those Black Widow Bracers. I wonder if WW can be done stealthwise with a L.3 Wizard? I just wonder if it would be quicker with a PuG?

[Arianrhod]

It looks like I'll have to give WW a try a few more times so I can get those Black Widow Bracers. I wonder if WW can be done stealthwise with a L.3 Wizard? I just wonder if it would be quicker with a PuG?

WW isn't too hard to solo once you've memorized it (avoid all ogres), but will go quicker with a PuG (though you may not get exp, if you find yourself in a group running it just for favor or end reward.

[glentc]

WW isn't too hard to solo once you've memorized it (avoid all ogres), but will go quicker with a PuG (though you may not get exp, if you find yourself in a group running it just for favor or end reward.

I don't mind the process of trying to get a quest reward. But now that I joined a guild last night, I'm willing to help out other members that want to go through WW. Not that I'm going to go through WW more then once and evening, but in general is there a anti-farming code which gives out valuable quest rewards if you go through a particular quest chain more then once a week or day? I heard something last night about chests becoming depleted if you repeat a quest too many times in a day. I also noticed that the XP reward becomes less if you repeat a quest. if you wait a day or two does the quest reward go back to full amount again?

[Arianrhod]

I don't mind the process of trying to get a quest reward. But now that I joined a guild last night, I'm willing to help out other members that want to go through WW. Not that I'm going to go through WW more then once and evening, but in general is there a anti-farming code which gives out valuable quest rewards if you go through a particular quest chain more then once a week or day? I heard something last night about chests becoming depleted if you repeat a quest too many times in a day. I also noticed that the XP reward becomes less if you repeat a quest. if you wait a day or two does the quest reward go back to full amount again?

Chests inside quests have 2 levels of "ransack" - one reduces the quality of the contents, the other causes the chest to just be empty. This "ransacking" does reset after a period (a week or so) of not running the quest/looting the chest. As far as I know, quest rewards can't be ransacked; they just stay the same/random no matter how many times you run the quest. Experience rewards do go down each time you rerun a quest, and never regen (once you've gotten all the exp a quest will give you, that's it for that quest, at least on that character).

[Fritz]

personally i would not build an arcane caster who tried to use weapons, its mainly for low levels when you have few spell points.

for you to be good with a weapon you are going to need the stats in either str or dex which will take away from your important caster stats of int and con, and you have to use feats on it to keep it good. then you have to deal with reload times and swapping weapons every time you want to cast a spell.

all in all i think it will reduce your performance in too many ways to be useful, except maybe situationally.


to be perfectly honest, if i had a stack of various repeaters and wanted to build a character that used them, i would not make that character an arcane caster. if i was looking for a buffer/control type caster to use with repeaters id go bard.




also to the person who said they needed to run a low level quest for the +4 armor bracers..... why?
you will never get enough AC to matter unless you completly gimp yourself.

you will always have lower ac than a fighter type of the same level who uses a shield, and they still get beat down and need to be spam healed on anything hard.

so at what point are you thinking your AC will matter?
when you are level 16 with the ultimate gear and can get good enough AC to tank a lvl 4 mission on elite?
woot, you go !!

its pointless.
you will only ever get enough ac to matter in quests much lower level than you are, which you would destroy anyways because you are a high level wizard... its just completly pointless.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Not at all.

Understandably it's not a huge thing for party play (unless you've ever had the pleasure of running in a party of all stealth characters) but is a useful tool to have at your disposal. I PUG a lot, and without stealth I can think of many times an almost party wipe would have been a full party wipe had I not had the ability to vanish and lose agro.

As far as the idea about an cleric using invis: make sure you have points in hide, as invis works as an indirect bonus to your hide skill. At higher levels, many monsters will have enough spot to see right through an invis spell with no points in hide. Move silently too if you can fit it in, although I'm not sure how vital that is when in a group that isn't stealthed. In any case, ya, you can still do a range of things while invis without becoming visible, not just buffs and heals.

Something I've noticed.
My Rgr and Wiz can run through the Vale while invisible and not get beat up. even when not hasted.
They get attention and agro, but the monsters do not successfully hit me (sometimes once maybe...but rarely) if I keep moving.

But when my cleric tries this by UMDing Invisibility scrolls.....I still get beat on a lot!
I assumed it was because my cleric is slow.....but are you saying that since her Hide is low, that they can Spot her even though she is Invisible...and that is why she gets hit?!
Where my Rgr and Wiz both have high HIde skills.

[Galapas]

Or, grab a scroll or two of ooze puppet, they have low will saves.

Oozepuppet is a fort save, and oozes have incredible fort saves.

When the spell first came out, I took my wiz to Durk's to experiment. On a 2nd level adventure on normal, my then 9th level wiz with 28 int was landing heightened oozepuppets less than half of the time. I imagine that casting it from a scroll has about a 5% of success.