The Mana World Forums

• ask-magic-exp
  The "bugged" version was really helpful, the current not so much.
• transmute-wood-to-figurine
  quest spell
• make-sulphur
  essential transform spell
• lesser-heal
  quest spell / trainings spell
• flare-dart
  nice basic attack spell for a mage but before level 3 in the long run a bit expensive
• magic-blade
  useless
• aggravate
  fun/support spell
• grow-mauve
• grow-alizarin
• grow-gamboge
• grow-cobalt
  unknown
• summon-maggots
  fun / trainings spell
• detect-magic
  mostly useless
• make-arrows
  requirs to many wood logs to cover average arrow wastage
• make-shirt
• make-tanktop
• make-short-tanktop
  rarely used spells
• make-iron-powder
  essential transform spell
• make-concentration-potion
  unknown
• merge-concentration-potions
  never used
• lay-on-hands
  common used healer spell
• lightning-strike
  very high dmg but to expensive to be really used(except sometimes for a skull)
• arrow-hail
  nice spell to kill groups of monster, but can't be used in nearly every place you would like to
• magic-knuckles
  useless
• flying-backpack
  rarely used
• protect
  nice spell good cost-benefit ratio
• happy-curse
  unknown/useless/fun
• rain
  quest spell / annoy people in pvp
• shear
  nice spell to collect hard spikes
• barrier
  useless / maybe pvp
• summon-spiky-mushrooms
  to expensive(to many stupid people around) to be used for fighting
• summon-fluffies
  useless
• detect-players
  great spell
• reveal
  unkown
• enchant-lifestone
  essential transform spell / training spell
• sense-spouse
  dunno, I am not married
• hide
  mostly useless

For me to many spells as listed here are useless or only fun spells, fighting as a mage is exclusive for people with to much money.

discussion

There is much worse issues than money IMHO (you can always compensate lack of moneys by hunting proper monsters yourself, after all).

I'm playing as mage (and let's say, I'm quite poor and rarely have more than 20k moneys in my pocket so mage do not have to be rich, actually). Most annoying headache here is that virtually all offensive magic requires "something". And what worse, this "something" is, uhm, reasonably rare items. Let's say, even weak flare requires ash (to get sulphur) so you have to spent some time on hunting fire goblins on regular basis and ash is quite rare drop. So you about to do some boring monotonous stuff (like hunting fire goblins) even to cast very simple offensive magic.

And more powerful lightning requires iron ore (to get iron powder). Which is very hard to get. So, there is permanent PITA getting ash or iron ore if you want to use some offensive magic. And once magic appeared, demand on iron ore increased drastically (due to it's usage for lightning) but looks like there was no increase in amounts of iron ore since magic introduced.

As for me, it is OK if ore is rare when it was needed only for some quest items so player about to have this headache in game only once and does not really needs too much iron ore later. But that's not so great when you're going to play as wizard. As for me, I would prefer lightning to use more frequent items or iron ore amount should be increased in game (raise probability? Make also red slimes to drop it?)

I asked for the same thing a while ago. The answer was that, when higher levels of magic will be available, you will no longer need consumables (such as sulphur and iron powder) to cast lower level spells. My guess is that the current war spells are learning spells just like lum (remember how expensive those life stones used to be at the beginning?) and that the real deal will be much cooler (I can hardly wait).

Kill3rZ wrote:I asked for the same thing a while ago. The answer was that, when higher levels of magic will be available, you will no longer need consumables (such as sulphur and iron powder) to cast lower level spells. My guess is that the current war spells are learning spells just like lum (remember how expensive those life stones used to be at the beginning?) and that the real deal will be much cooler (I can hardly wait).

It seems that at level 3 of offensive magic you won't need the sulphur, but you'll still always need iron ores, etc.
I think that level 3 is quite a high requirement. it would be really hard to get to level 3 if the only offensive spell you can do is flare which is so costy.

Why don't consume the MP as it's supposed to be intended and give some weak spell depending of INT that can be used for fighting? Currently it's of no use being a INT mage. Normal people without INT (and thus more powerful fighters) get nearly the same benefits from magic than INT-based characters. it's really hard to raise a mage, it's better to just raise a fighter, get level 3 of offensive magic and then do a stat reset (or even don't do.. just raising a bit INT is enough). I think that's not fair for the people who would like a pure mage, mages shouldn't use weapons that much and fighters/rangers shouldn't use offensive magic that much.

Magic level three! I should make a spell or two for them... ooh, yes, a really COOL spell... like Thunderstorm. This is an advanced version of the Lightning spell. Rather than just hurting one monster, it hurts all those on the screen... and it's more powerful. Level three cost: 2 x Iron Powder. Level four cost: 1 x Iron Powder. Level five cost: Free!!!!

~Lightning spells are always my favourites...
Enchilado

Actually I agree with Fern. I hope we'll get some developer attention on this one. We should have a dumb little int-based attack spell for magic lvl 1-2. I would become a full job mage with a depleted bank account in a blink of an eye if I actually had a fighting chance.

I already said it in the topic I created a while ago: I experimented a lot and being at lvl 60+ I actually couldn't find a way to be an efficient mage or at least mage-warrior. Wearing efficient armor and still being able to heal yourself (the only useful spell that works perfectly at any above-zero magic attack) requires at least INT 55 which brings a huge handicap to the rest of the stats. And even then, the magic attack is way too low for any other kind of magic to be efficient.

Making xp with healing only is dead slow, you can never do it by yourself (you need a few people who often get hurt A LOT)you are very vulnerable in dangerous places and it leaves you flat broke. It's not even remotely enough for it to be worth being a low lvl mage.

When there is nothing left to do, magic quests keep you busy for quite a while but then you have to leave magic alone like forever for being revoltingly cost-inefficient. It seems we never get tired of killing the same monsters over and over again, so we are not complaining, we'd just like to blow a snake's brains out by hitting him a few times with some cheap, reasonable magic spell.

It doesn't even need to be a ranged attack. If you made chiza really good and INT-based (we can always buy the knives like a bowman buys arrows) and make the amount of knives take only 1 slot in the inventory (like arrows) we would stand a chance to be fighting mages. It doesn't even need much developing and testing. I might be wrong, but I doubt that 1(one) developer needs more than half an hour to do that. Tinker a bit with the numbers and we can be happy today, not in late autumn (hoping that magic lvl 3 will actually bring some long-term solution).

Why not have it INT-based? I'm very happy with my archer character and DEX is the only stat I needed for his attack to be good. There is nothing wrong about having INT-based efficient characters.