Why Spell Casting (as of now) Is Erroneous and Inadequate

[RothGelen]

Hail MS:C Community! I hope everyone is enjoying MS:C.

Congratulations for inpleting magic into the game!

I have been experimenting with the spell casting in MS:C, and I hate to admit out of the good things about this wonderful addiction, I do notice some strange things...

-One-
There are seven fileds of magic. To level up your main skill as a mage, spell casting, you must level one of the seven sections. Like Proficiantcy, Balance, and Power of the other skills, spell casting requires you to balance out throughout each of the seven sections. How is this possible? I can compare this to trying to level everything from swordmanship to archary just to raise your main skill, which gives you mana.

-Two-
It is much easier and less difficut to find and buy health potions then finding buying mana potions. Not to mention that mana potions are very expensive. I remember seeing them for 15 gold. Need health potions...just sit for awile or goto the man 1337 freebe chests in the Thornlands that everyone seems to know about.

-Three-
Sitting doesnt replinish your mana...where the concentrate/meditate/rejuvinate option in the "v menu"?

-Four-
The first few spells (Fire Dart, Lightning (forgot its title)) are steeply expensive compared to the starter weapons of other classes. Not to mention you cant even by the starting spells of the other 5 areas of magic.

-Five-
Unable to compared to missing with non-magic weapons, magic continuously "fizzles out" and fails.

-Six-
When your able to buy spells, it requires you to read the scroll. If you dont have the req profission in the req filed (Summon Skeleton for Summoning and Ice Shield for Ice) you are unable to learn that magic. Compared to the avarge swordsman can go out and easily find Skullblades (perfect skullblades) and still use them. With no req. atributes.

-Seven-
Compared to the still low range of item you can get for each skill (only less then 10 swords/ axes / dagger, more of less) theres only two to three magic spells of each field.

-Eight-
Summoning is set up horribly. Rats can be spammed everywhere..as well as skeletons. You can overcrowd whatever area your in...cause the hostile monster to get instinly crowded, not to mention that you can summon monster on top of players and NPCs, causing them to become immoblie and free in place.

-Ten-
Where is the mage specific items? A least a staff (blunt arm catagory)would be nice.

-Eleven-
I see no mentioning or obvious weakness to certain elements on monsters.

I offer considerations for solutions, please consider them and any other changes.

-There is a sitting option that lets you regain mana.

-weapons have req levels. No more n00bs getting huggers and Skullblades.

-magic is split into more skills. Offering must more customization to your character. (For example you can be a warrior who heals and protect without having to worry about the other spell, but they are of course options)
(Fire, Lightning, Ice)
(Protection and Divination)
(Summoning and Affliction)

I am going to stop this post to see what people think, as well as share comment on what I had to say. I believe the things I offered do hamper the experience and simple,just adjustments could be made to make the experience better. Thanks for even reading this long post and showing the simplest interest.

-RothGelen (ToddLocke)

 

[Lanethan]

Great post! All good suggestions.

 

[Thor-Stryker]

It also seems that it takes three skill ups to gain one point in magic, which is the same ammount as weapons, but weapons level up three skills at once instead of just one. With only two spells that are able to be leveled up in the begining (Each costing 60gold a piece.) You have to have 6 in Fire, and 3 in lightning just to get 20mana.

A suggestion would be to have the user be able to level in three magic schools, and allow him to buy the scrolls for 5gold a piece (One to start with.) That way, the player has as many skills to level up as a someone with an axe.

Also, the lightning spell really needs a minimum damage increase for each level. I dont care if its .1 each time, but getting 0.0 damage on a target is a big waste of 1 mana. I know fire dart is supposed to be the damage dealer, but its such a crappy spell to aim.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Level requirements would be good. I found a Perfect Skullblade today in <location> while I was actually training my axe handling (Level 4 Barbarian), but when I found it I decided to go train swordsmanship because the Perfect Skullblade is pretty strong, which makes it easier than to train with some rusty old sword.

 

[Innos]

I have another question why wont the summoning skill rise l=|

I spent like three hours trying to get the skill to rise with summon rats

 

[ceriux]

i got another problem, i dont always see the magic animation i see the hand one but no magic... so i cant really tell if i hit all the time the only way i know is if the rat glows orange.

 

[Shirodan]

Are there any spells for divination, affliction etc. If so what are they and where can I find them?

 

[Thothie]

ONE (skillspread): I do not agree: Concentration and Wisdom are not gained by spells alone... There are plenty of non-mages who can come in from the rain and lack ADD. Basically, you must diversify so that you've learned more than one brand of wisdom to raise your mental faculties and your manna quickly.

TWO (mannapots): I wholly agree with. Manna pots are way too weak, and too expensive.

THREE (sitting): Also agree: Sitting should regen manna. Or manna pots need to be a hell of a lot cheaper.

FOUR (spells too expsneive): Disagree: I kinda like the idea of magic being a bit of a money hole. (Although I draw the line at those pots - expendables shouldn't be pricey) Spells should be prohibitively expensive, or you'll just get them all too quickly. A major issue with MS1.35 was there was no real motivation to get gold.

FIVE (Fizzle): Disagree: Fizzling is what keeps your mages from stopping learning magic once they have the spells they want and wearing heavy armor.

SIX (Learning): Disagree: see also Four.

SEVEN: What exactally is the issue there?

EIGHT (Ratspam): Summoning could be a lag issue, and such... But it's sure fun!

NINE: What happened to nine?

TEN (Mage items): There seems to be a wand... Somewhere...

ELEVEN (Elemental Resistance): And I see no monsters having such resistance.

I like the magic system (being a 5th level mage, and spamming Rejuv and Icesheild everywhere is fun) - but I do have some issues of my own:

Icesheild: This thing seems either defective or extremely weak - I've not tried it on Calrian yet - but I pumped 100 mana of iceshield into myself, and incoming damage of skeletons didn't seem to change.

GLOW: This seriously needs to be fixe. A torch is much more effective, even taking the two hands into account - as glow has a habit of going out in the middle of a fight when you need to run away in a dark cave. It fails to cast / fizzles more than any spell I have. Suggests for glow are:

- Make it last longer
- Make it brighter
- Make it easier to cast (low or no fizzle/failure)

I hate standing at a cave entrance casting glow 50 times cuz it keeps failing. ><
__________
"L'hippo a pique' ses pantalons." - Willow, Buffy
Thothie

 

[dookehster]

Doesn't your cumulative level have to be around 35?

Because to be lv 5, it has to be avged over 7 skills?

Meaning if you lved both fire and lightning, they would have to be lv15 each...

Kinda rediculus?

 

[Tradion]

Sitting does Regen Mana. I regen mana 2x faster while sitting than while standing. Other than that yeah.. I"ve not had a problem with glow yet. But the prices do seem a little steep at first. After playing for a bit though, my money value has increased much faster, and therefore, i've had no problems with buying magics

 

[Ewok]

One must remember, the better you get, the less fizzle. Which is the whole point. You're an apprentace early on and slowly make your way to become a fully fledged Wizard. Also, like with all games, Wizards always start out really weak and become really strong. If we increase the mana potions to providing the player a too handsome amount of mana for cheap, the inverse will happen and then Wizards will be too strong for any other class because once they've learnt their über spells, they can cast them like a million times because mana isn't an issue. Who knows what spells lie ahead. I'm not saying the current doesn't need balancing, but ones got to be careful by how much. No matter what, spells need to be expensive, buy it once and never again. Then you have it in memory. Also, how are mages to make money ?

- Ewok

 

[Skillasaur]

the mana regen is fixed by sitting in the test patch and tbh i kinda like the fact that u have to dual class to learn magic... didnt the devs say the summoning leveling was bugged atm and rats take quite a while to spawn [at least in the most recent patch... i can tell cose i only got it after i got the patch]

 

[Thothie]

Yeah, but fizzle% should relate to the level of the spell.

Rejuvinate almost never fizzles for me.

Glow fizzles about 60% of the damned time.

There's also not much point in having glow fizzle - its not something you are going to cast while under attack.

Levels don't seem to increase its duration nor brightness either.

And no, 15 in each is not too much - if you've ever seen Rejuvinate in action.
__________
"I’m not conceited. Conceit is a fault, and I have no faults." - David Lee Roth
Thothie

 

[Thor-Stryker]

Sitting for mana in the patch has been confirmed. You gain what ever your concentration level is. So with 10 concentration, you regain 10 mana every 4-5 seconds while sitting.

 

[Chopsuey]

i get mana when resting, and i got 40 mana points and it goes fast
lightning pwns, fire blows. rat summong is fun but how to level it? ice shield never seen anyone with it, skeli summon? gota be fun

 

[Joey Stalin]

Any way to raise concentration, or target it for leveling? I have seen ice shield. I have had it used on me. I didn't get to see its effects on dmg reduction though.

 

[Raptor]

concentration seems to go up with all other stats, just not as fast, obviously, magic will be the best, but i also noticed i gained 1 concentration and 1 wisdom the first time my parry skill levelled (this was when my highest 2 skills were level 10 and level 8), so i'm sure that would help, i'm guessing levelling archery might help as well

 

[Joey Stalin]

Agility and Awarness seem to be the slowest for leveling.

 

[Thor-Stryker]

Does anyone know what awareness does? Does it improve ambient audio(Foot steps.) Improve the Red Warning Bars (What direction your being hit from) Or does in improve visibility in dark places? (Infared.) I havent found a use for it yet. Also, best skills for magic users are Parry (Improves Concentration and Wisdom) and Bows, which also improves concentration.

I was looking at the Class names, and I saw that Parry + magic = Wizard, and I was like.... Wha? Now I understand ^_^

Also, I havent seen much of a difference with Ice Shield, although, if you cast it on a rat, right before it dies, it tends to bug where it will dissapear leaving only a blue shell, and monsters still attack it.

 

[Thothie]

Ice Shield

Okay, I figured the Ice Shield out... It's not bugged, it's just terribly ineffective.

Semi-spoiler: It reduces damage done by .1 per casting.... Each casting lasts somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds... As such, pretty much the only way this is going to absorb any significant amount of damage (given the monsters of the caster's caliber) - is if he constantly casts it on himself and forgoes the whole fighting back thing. (Then it absorbs up to maybe 5 points of damage per strike - you can keep that up about a minute before you run out of manna (with 100). Casting it on someone else your level is equally worthless, given the damage you could dish out to his opponent instead.

The only use I can see for this is power-leveling nubs. (Well that, and making people glow blue at night, so you can see something other than blackness).

Can we rework this? Maybe make it block say 5% of damage per spell casting level, maxing at 50% without stacking and/or have it last a lot longer?

...or does the % it blocks and its duration raise with CS level?

BTW - love the new glow... Still blind at night - but hey, this thing is the most useful spell I have now.
__________
"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road....." - Stuart Brand
Thothie