Mage soloing tactics

[shrike]

When you play a mage you must always keep in mind that you are not a tank. Therefore, do not attempt to tank (aka do not let mobs come into melee range).

This can be either accomplished by letting someone else tank for you (doh!) or using utility spells like fear, root, stun or blind to keep mobs away from you. Those spells do last only ~3 seconds unless you stand still doing nothing, but that is enough to cast a damage spell and then root, stun or blind again.

Fear is more useful, since it causes the mob to run away from you. Meaning you usually have time to cast *two* damage spells between each fear, since the mob must first has to walk back to you after the fear effect wears off.

With fear & acid my usual spell order looks like this:
0-2* acid (depending how close the mob is to me) - fear - 2* acid - fear -2*acid.....

The main danger with this tactic is that if you fail a cast of a fear or the mob resists it it will jump into your face instead of turning back shortly before it reaches you. So you need a failsafe.
Which are enchantments. Enchant your staff with fear and use it each time a "normal" spell of your is failing. The advantage of the staff is that it can cast spells almost instantly (only if you use it once, if you use it twice in a row you have the usual waiting time) and that it cancels your current action on it's own (so the mob will get feared instantly even if you are in the middle of the next acid cast).

There is a little problem here currently, though. Due to a bug (which is STILL not fixed... oh well, it only exists since at least one month) you have to attempt to craft something and drop it while it's in the crafting process when you want to create crystallized spells or sap crystals after you quartered a mob or harvested a recource - otherwise the crystals won't appear in your inventory.
So, don't waste SP on sap crystal if you cannot craft and are not planning to learn i, at least until that is finally fixed.

It is absolutely no problem at all with this tactic to kill alone at lvl 20 lvl 44 springhtly yubos (which are conveniantly also an important source for the mats you'll need for your q40 staff) or at lvl 40 lvl 65 robust bawaabs fast and effecient for max exp.


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A little bit general advice:

- Don't waste magic SP for health upgrades, buy them with SP in foraging or fighting
- Don't trust the visual info how far a mob is from you too much when it it running towards you. The display is often lagged.
- Do not use time credits, their cost/profit ratio is horrible. Edit them out of bought spells ASAP.
-For the same reason never buy premade spells past lvl 20, always buy upgrades and new credit bricks (at least those you actually need) on their own. All premade spells have time credits, which you will never use and which cost you 5 SP each time you buy one.
- There are no good harvested magic foci (which you need to produce staffs) for elemental mages. Fine eyes from yubos and cyprynis give very good boosts, though. You need at least excellent harvested mats to get a similar bonus as fine yubo eyes will give you.