Reagents

Hi,

I am playing the Trial. I created a mage and am in the Blood River Outskirts. I've just noticed that most non-trivial spells require reagents, like 18-24 gold per cast. From the looks of it, melee and ranger characters do not, or much less. Is it really much more expensive to play a mage type toon? At any rate, looking at the drops I see around my current area, I won't be able to to cast those around these parts for long.

I am thinking of re-rolling a ranger, I'm not far into the game at all, at least arrows only cost a gold a dozen, I haven't done the math but it may also be cheaper to craft them. A pure melee seems the cheapest, but I didn't feel like playing one since the EQ1/DAOC days.

So, is it truly very expensive to play a mage, less so as a ranger, and way less as a melee? Or is there a catch somewhere, like melee equipment costing way more to maintain, to compensate?

 

There is a bit of a tradeoff. Gear does degrade faster when getting hit, so melee characters have to deal with that. Using weapons degrades them, so rangers have that (plus arrow cost) to deal with.

However, there is no classes in SotA, so you can easily pick up other skills and continue being able to use your spells or melee or range as necessary, shifting and combining those skills as needed. Many spells work great in combination with other combat abilities; fire magic gives you Fire Fist you can use in melee (without reagents), as well as Ignite Weapon to improve your melee damage. Air has Chain Lighting or Death has Corpse Explosion, which function well in melee as powerful AOE effects.

 

All reagents have node in the wild
you can find souce of garlic, nightshade on the map you have just to pay attention at some tiny grass
for spider silk it's "easy" you have to find, kill and skin spider
ect...

 

Starting out, being a mage can be tough. I usually level up new toons with a melee weapon and earth magic because it is very inexpensive and you can use these passive skills later on no matter which skills you decide to specialize in.

Eventually, playing a mage in most roles can be cheaper. There are a lot of very effective reagent free spells, the problem is you have to level up a lot of skills to make them effective.

 

Don't bother, its much more expensive to craft them

 

Sure, but are you in for 18-24 gp per hit in repairs?

Also, in the spirit of the forum - some actual new player feedback. I've just found out that I cannot create another toon, not sure if it's a Trial limitation or the game going early SWG on me. This doesn't feel right. I am definitely not grinding on this mage the initial ranger or melee skills that I would have had, had I started with one of those other paths, just to see if I like the playstyle better. I wouldn't even know where to start. Deleting this one, with the risk of having to delete the others if the mage turns out to feel better, is not very enticing either. Allow us 2+ toons, then make us choose one when we upgrade, or something like that.

 

Never mind, I'm a dumbass, I didn't notice the "10%-20% chance to consume reagents" part .

 

No, but in practice, you don't be getting that for each spell either. The chance to consume reagents is rarely 100%, and decreases as you improve you skill in a spell.

 

Like someone else pointed out, don't delete your character. You can lock skill progress to keep your xp from being use on skills you no longer use (I think even delevel then, though not sure if it returns xp to your pool) and you can just use another weapon and start leveling it up instead.

 

Take a look at the actual spells. most of them only have a 10% to 20% of consuming regents and that goes down as the skill goes up. I rarely have to buy reagents any more in fact I am currently taking in more then Im using. You also learn eventually to build farminga decks that use a minimum of spells that require reagents.

 

Yes, you can "unlearn" a skill by changing the arrow in the corner on your skills sheet (K key) to double red down arrows. The tooltip will let you know when it is set to unlearning... which will slowly de-level that skill and add xp back into your adventure pool. It won't be 100%, but you will gain most of it back to use on other skills.

However, if you have any intentions of using those mage skills once you become stronger... I'd suggest just setting them to maintain instead and just use new xp for the new skills you use. It doesn't hurt you to have those skills / spells on hold, especially if they are lower than level 40 (where there is no skill decay applied on death).

 

No You aren't!
You are on a pretty steep learning curve about so many things...
Always feel like you can ask a question.

Players with multiple GM's still find out new things that they overlooked.

Also, the higher up in the different skill trees that you go, your skills benefit you more.
But it will take time.
Be aware that the "Innate" skills cost a lot more experience points to level up,compared to primary skills, so be a bit selective as to which skills to raise at the same time.