Well, you don't necessarily need to place stats for growth if you don't want to. But if you do make it to the high levels, chances are that you'll want to purchase a fixstat at some point. Just be aware of the cost: currently fixstat is available for either 1m bounty points or 22,500 Simucoins (or at least $166 or 18.5m silver).

You also don't need to swing a claidhmore. Spell 1700 is a recent addition. It has no mana cost and, as a bolt spell, hits about as hard as minor shock with the tradeoff that it initiates a 5s hard RT which cannot be reduced by haste effects. The spell may also be cast as a warding spell. You would rely on this spell heavily at first in order to stretch your mana, and less and less as you level.

Having said that, since you also have 30 days of near-instant skill migration, there's little reason not to train a weapon skill. You can always drop it before the end. Having access to both a weapon of some sort and a free warding/bolt spell adds a great deal of versatility to a low level wizard. Mana becomes far less of an issue.

You won't be able to 2x twohanded weapons as a wizard, and CM is a poor investment for the short-term. Unless you're planning on being a full-time war mage after your 30 days are up, I'd say just train 1x in a weapon skill and that's all you need as far as weapon use goes.

Encumbrance is definitely an issue for a halfling, especially if you don't place your strength score high. However, strength and disk help a lot and these days you have other options such as enhancives, weightless coin containers, weight-reducing containers, and Simustore encumbrance potions. Encumbrance is a problem, but you do have some options for managing it. On the other hand, dark elves make great wizards, too. They are nearly as good with bolts and significantly better with warding magic than halflings, and you won't have as much of a problem with encumbrance.

On the hunting/enchanting plan. There is a slight conflict between the two. Both 400s and 500s provide +0.5 bolt AS per rank once you learn 513 and 425. You probably won't be able to sustain 3x spells, so you're forced to make a bit of a compromise between the primary factor in enchanting and your bolt AS. The good news is you'd only be giving up at most 0.5 AS per level. In reality, less than that, since you'll almost certainly exceed 2x spell research. You would probably maintain 500s and 900s at level, so assuming 400s are trained at 0.5x you would lose about 12 bolt AS by level 75. So nothing game-breaking, but I thought I would make you aware of it.

As far as stats go, there is no perfect plan I can suggest to you except to say that, if it were me, I'd probably just skip the fixstat and place for growth. The worst levels by far are those first 30 days, but you gain levels quickly at the low end and with stats placed for growth you optimize your stat gains during that time. With 1700 and a weapon to get you through, the low levels shouldn't be a problem no matter what you do with your stats. Otherwise, just place your stats with whatever priorities appeal to you. The fixstat will take care of any oversights down the road.

You still gain exp for going to places around town, but the places you need to go aren't always obvious. Last I checked I was able to gain the entire level in the Landing easily enough, but I swear I went to every place on the Icemule list and was still at least one short and never did figure out which one I was missing! Also, I think you still gain experience from the Raging Thrak or Trevor Dabbings.

No, I think picking your starting town is a premium perk only.

~Taverkin

Okay something seems wrong, if you could look this over please. My CS at level 2 is half that of my wife the empath for the same spell (1700).

Here are my stats:
Race: Halfling Profession: Wizard (not shown)
Gender: Male Age: 0 Expr: 7390 Level: 2
Normal (Bonus) ... Enhanced (Bonus)
Strength (STR): 94 (7) ... 94 (7)
Constitution (CON): 73 (21) ... 73 (21)
Dexterity (DEX): 56 (18) ... 56 (18)
Agility (AGI): 70 (20) ... 70 (20)
Discipline (DIS): 77 (8) ... 77 (8)
Aura (AUR): 65 (2) ... 65 (2)
Logic (LOG): 73 (16) ... 73 (16)
Intuition (INT): 63 (16) ... 63 (16)
Wisdom (WIS): 73 (11) ... 73 (11)
Influence (INF): 22 (-19) ... 22 (-19)
Mana: 11 Silver: 0

and skills

(at level 2), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 15 3
Physical Fitness...................| 15 3
Arcane Symbols.....................| 30 6
Magic Item Use.....................| 30 6
Spell Aiming.......................| 30 6
Harness Power......................| 30 6
Elemental Mana Control.............| 15 3
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 15 3
Perception.........................| 15 3

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 3

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 4

I know my spells are more than double per level but I have enough spare points for it. Am I taking the wrong spell circles or something?

Halflings make good wizards, but they do have a penalty to aura, which will cost you some CS. It's not a deal-breaker at the high end, but at low level you will feel the difference, especially if you place your aura stat for growth. The good news, as Doug points out, is that you're a wizard and you don't need to rely much on CS spells. I pretty much only use mana leech as far as CS spells go, and I'm well into the post-cap.

However, if you're interested in compensating for your halfling aura penalty you have the option of overtraining spell research or collecting aura enhancives. I personally don't recommend aura enhancives for wizards unless you're planning to go the immo route eventually. Immolation requires both a strong CS and heavy fire lore as well as a large mana pool, so this would likely be a post-cap goal.

~Taverkin

Yes, well the CS spells are mostly situational and we have to stance dance. Critters are quite easy until mid-20th levels. That new 1700 spell has gotta be great for early hunting.

Just an elf about town...

Here's an alternative script that lets you save some settings like stance and spell preference and uses the incant and targeting mechanics.

~Taverkin

# Usage:
# Set a default spell: .incant 9 0 3
# Use the default spell: .incant
# Specify a spell without changing the default spell: .incant 903
# Set or change your casting stance: .incant stance offensive

DEBUG OFF
IF_3 GOTO SPELLDEFAULT
IF_2 GOTO SETSTANCE
IF_1 GOTO START2
GOTO START

START:
COUNTER SET %spell
put %stance
GOTO INCANT

START2:
COUNTER SET %1
put %stance

INCANT:
put incant %c
put stance guarded
exit

SETSTANCE:
SETVARIABLE stance %1% %2
ECHO
ECHO Your casting stance has been set to %2%.
ECHO
exit

SPELLDEFAULT:
SETVARIABLE spell %1%%2%%3%%4%
ECHO
ECHO The default spell # has been set to %spell%.
ECHO
exit

I use macros for all my combat related stuff, they are simple to create and use, and as long as you have a good cheat sheet or a very good memory of what those F-keys are it works great.

An example of one of my macros for my wizard looks like this, tied, for instance, to the F-1 key:

stance off \rincant 901 \rstance guard \r

General Radeek Andoran
Drakes Vanguard
Defender of Wehnimer's Landing
Black Raider of the Mir'Sheq

Empires exist through conquest, they live on by exercising total control of the conquered.

Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato

My new-ish warmage is dwarven, and has essentially set stats for cap but also they are highly playable, since the stats I need for now are the physical stats.

This is actually the first character I've ever set stats for cap for as a character to play that way. I don't even imagine this character will get to cap in the next decade.

In any case, that was a feature I really like about warmages.

---

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>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

>>My new-ish warmage is dwarven, and has essentially set stats for cap but also they are highly playable, since the stats I need for now are the physical stats.<<

Heh, indeed. I went to level 100 and never had to convert a single TP; all the physival ones got sucked up by weapon/cman training. At level 100 I ran out of physical stuff to train in, so I started converting then.

"So, what does that green line on the graph represent?"
"Oh, that's the projection of a hypothetical offspring from a union between Sauron and Cruella de Ville; we use that as a baseline for determining character alignment."