How do you start a wizard-type character?

[szabtom]

Besides the attributes (high Per, Int, Con) and the skills (Elementalism, Meditation, perhaps Alchemy) which are obvious, I guess I would need one more thing to start a wizard apprentice: a set of spells. So, after grabbing the 300gp from Maddock I go the store to check but there is no damage spell to buy. How can I start a wizard-type character without dagger-fighting or staff-bashing my way to Blackwater to get a spell? My idea is reloading a chest until it drops a useful spell. Or am I missing something really obvious?

[agnari]

obviously you missed something in the 1st note about out back your old hiding place by the well, tree stump, tab key: 32 173. It will usually have a knife and sandles in the case where you rolled a spellcaster there is a fire dart scroll in there.

[szabtom]

Thanks for the help! There was no scroll for my fighter nor for the rogue and I didnt bother to look this time. Now I know that the hidden starter pack is class specific.

[Garett]

Best thing in my opinion is: start with Elemental, Meditation, get them to 6/5 and put one point in Picklock.
Save the rest.
At level 2 you now have 8 points to distribute and you can spend 5 of them on a certain skill... so you will have 10 in either Elemental or Meditation by lvl 2...

[Josia]

Best thing in my opinion is: start with Elemental, Meditation, get them to 6/5 and put one point in Picklock.
Save the rest.
At level 2 you now have 8 points to distribute and you can spend 5 of them on a certain skill... so you will have 10 in either Elemental or Meditation by lvl 2...

Pick Locks seems silly, with the Lock Melt spell fairly easy to acquire early on.

I would recommend something like Light Armor (to avoid unskilled penalties) or even Mercantile.

[Garett]

Early? Bordertown or Blackwater, but even earlier? Don't think so ... and there are lots of chests before and none of them I wanna miss.

Armor for a mage? No use. Maybe Dodge, saves your life.

[Josia]

Early? Bordertown or Blackwater, but even earlier? Don't think so ... and there are lots of chests before and none of them I wanna miss.

It's random. It can absolutely show up in Aridell. There's always the possibility of +Pick Locks items as well. Plus, what's to say you can't simply go back for locked chests as soon as you go back?

Better to spend the 3 skill points on something else that won't be completely obsolete.

Armor for a mage? No use. Maybe Dodge, saves your life.

Even a mage may need to swing a weapon once or twice, and Unskilled penalties are a great way to make yourself really bad at swinging that weapon. A single point in an armor skill is enough to ward off the unskilled penalties.

I agree that Dodge is definitely a more useful skill to put more than one point into, though early on a single point of dodge will very rarely be the difference between life and death.

In any case if you're eschewing melee / armor skills entirely then again I propose a skill like Mercantile over Pick Locks. Even a single point early on can translate into a non-trivial amount of gold over the course of the game, although returns won't be noticed until you're buying and selling big-ticket items.

[szabtom]

Thanks to everyone for the input. I am trying to completely forego on using weapons and armor and picklocks. My char is a druidic Rifter, just emerged from the deep forests, blessed with great magical talents but incompetent in all other aspects of ordinary life. It is going to be somewhat harder than using the perfect skill mix, but not much, and I want to try and learn as much spells as possible.

[Loriac]

To be completely honest, its probably easier playing a mage this way by focusing on the essentials. My recommendation would be to try and roll 14's in End, Int and Per, and then raise End to 20 and put the rest of the points into Per (so you should have Per 25, End 20). Then, completely ignore Int and pump up Per until you have around 40 or so. After that, raise whatever abilities you want to.

I would also forgo meditation using this technique; from all the characters I have used, it seems that if your Perception + Meditation = 38+ then you recharge mana at 1 every 3 rounds. I.e. if you plan to raise Per a lot, then meditation becomes useless quite quickly.

The reason this character is easy to play is that by level 2, you have elemental skill of 11, and you have a nice healthy mana pool (probably around 72-73 at level 2). A level 6 firebolt is overkill for most of the early monsters, and you can get off 6 before you're out of mana. This is more than sufficient to get you through most of the early stages of the game, and you never need to let monsters get close enough that armor or weapons actually matter.

I would suggest that you obtain air shield as soon as possible with this build.

For added starting strength, pump up your divine skill as well - having access to all the 1st tier spells at 6th level by character level 3 is very powerful. However, the alternative here from a powergaming perspective is to wait for Blackwater, get trained up in Divine to level 7, then dump skill points into it to about 17 or so.

Anyway, a pure mage is fun in this game, I think you'll enjoy it.

[Necromis]

He could always just dump 3 points in to give basic access to the spells in Div. It does not hurt to have just minor access to things like cats eye and healing. I did the cleric type skill set at start. Not great offensive even with flesh boil. Of course I didn't under stand the stat set at start. I was trying for mystic monk with unarmed fighting and dodge, along with the div spells. So if you give yourself very basic points where you need it at the start you should be fine. Just make sure you have enought money to buy all those skill points you plan on getting taught.

[Noru]

My way was to get only Elemental and meditation, then if I'm not lucky to get the melt lock in Aridell, then I ran to Bordertown and buy it there. With level 2 I upped meditation to 10, elemental to 11 and owned everyone with lv6 fire bolt Still 0 in every other skill short of Alchemy and Cartograpy (both 7, npc+book). And as I luckily acquired a Zen amulet (+5 mediation), I now regen mana 1/3 rounds.

[Loriac]

He could always just dump 3 points in to give basic access to the spells in Div. It does not hurt to have just minor access to things like cats eye and healing. I did the cleric type skill set at start. Not great offensive even with flesh boil. Of course I didn't under stand the stat set at start. I was trying for mystic monk with unarmed fighting and dodge, along with the div spells. So if you give yourself very basic points where you need it at the start you should be fine. Just make sure you have enought money to buy all those skill points you plan on getting taught.

You can do this, but it is unnecessary for a pure mage. The reason being, you can pick up a graverobbers light or whatever its called if you need a light spell, and you're not going to get hit to need healing because you're killing things from several squares away by blasting with a level 6 fire dart. Part of the strength of the pure mage is that he really does only need two spells at the start - firedart, and air shield. The rest is largely gravy for the first 5 or 6 levels. You probably will throw in lock melt once you can pick it up, but this is more for convenience than anything else.

Divine spells come into their own from the middle game onwards, when you start generalising your character by adding in melee and armor skills. They allow you to make up for low attributes / skills through buffs, e.g. bless (at level 6, this is equivalent to 12 points of weapon skill!) or things like ogre strength / nimbleness at the second tier. They also provide very solid protection, particularly stoneskin, which can basically make up for not having points in armor (you can pick up the 1st point via reading a book, so for zero skill investment, you can still have armor equivalent to a fairly skilled warrior). Bolt on a haste spell, and basically you can't be touched in most fights, even if you're going toe-to-toe with what is basically a caster build.

My way was to get only Elemental and meditation, then if I'm not lucky to get the melt lock in Aridell, then I ran to Bordertown and buy it there. With level 2 I upped meditation to 10, elemental to 11 and owned everyone with lv6 fire bolt Still 0 in every other skill short of Alchemy and Cartograpy (both 7, npc+book). And as I luckily acquired a Zen amulet (+5 mediation), I now regen mana 1/3 rounds.

This certainly works, but I really think that meditation is for casters that aren't going 'pure', i.e. who aren't raising Perception to about 40 (which I personally think is a nice figure to aim for in this game). If you build around perception, you free up the 12 skill points you spent on meditation for something else instead - personally, I would use it to raise armor and weapon skills to mid-level (i.e. around 10-12) later in the game. For the first few levels, you're not really going to need a mana pool much bigger than 75-100, which is easy to have if you start with a Per of 25.

If you go the route I mentioned above, you can have a starting Per of 25 (along with starting End of 20, so you'll be picking up 4-5 hp per level depending on strength, which isn't bad at all for a caster type) which you can raise to 40 by level 6 (!). At this point, you don't need any meditation, you will have about 125 mana without items, and you're then set to raise whatever other attributes you want to.