Get wands to help save mana. Befriend a ranger; they can imbue rods and wands for you from foraged sticks, which you can then embed. Zombies are terribly slow, you should be able to hunt them in total safety. Macros are your friend here. You have more than enough AS and MIU; stop training in them for a while (or even cut back a bit) and grab some lores.

You have lots of spells; start getting some lores. Most folks recommend 24 ranks of air lore for the effect on haste and to turn Hand of Tonis into a bolt spell, followed by fire lore for things like immolation.

I went from level 0 to cap as a warmage; I'd suggest that as a possibility, but it's a somewhat specialized niche training path, and I'm biased. Bolting is simpler. Also, you may or may not want to grab a couple of ranks of MOC to spread out the splash damage from ball type spells.


"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."

Just some quick suggestions. Look me up in game or shoot me an email if you would like to discuss things in more detail.

Wands are a good suggestion if you want to continue hunting zombies. When I was leveling the only time period where I had challenges in filling my head was around this level because I was determined to stay in and around Icemule vs. try a different hunting area. Zombies just seem to take a lot of mana for a wizard to kill them but there wasn't much else to hunt in this range. For a time period I resorted simply casting sand storm on them and then waiting for the spell to run its course (usually they would die towards the end or just require one more bolt to finish them). I definitely don't recommend this as a strategy but if you are stubborn about hunting them or hunting in that area this may help. You could try underhunting the arch wights near Icemule for another level or two (specifically the ones near Icemule because they don't wear armor). Super easy and fun for a pure wizard.

Maybe some folks could chime in with other critters to hunt in this level range (maybe centaurs in Darkstone?)

I would consider dropping MIU or AS down to 1x (keep the other at 2x) which may free up some additional point you could move over into Harness Power (I am a big advocate for 2x in Harness Power for life).

I don't recommend putting too many points into lore at early levels but a lot of people do like to get their air lore up early on for the tonis bolt, haste, and extra disk capacity.

I would recommend planning your next couple levels to insure that you can train 425 at 25th level.

You may also want to consider slowing your spell training down a bit. 2x - 2.5x is still a pretty good clip and you may want some points for tertiary skills like climbing, swimming, and survival eventually (not to mention finding some points to get you to 2x HP).

I would encourage you definitely not to give up! Whether you find a different hunting area that works better or stubbornly slug it out past the zombies where you are it's pretty smooth sailing after that all the way to cap.

-- Robert aka Faulkil

"All wizards are beginners; some of us have just been beginning longer!"

Thanks for all the responses so far. It looks like I should make some tweaks, at least. Is Tonis bolt a much better option than 904? I don't remember using Haste much at all. Is there a good reason to worry about it for bolting?

I was practically festooned with wands when I came back, so I must have been using them more than I thought. 1700 looks interesting. I will try that out some and see how much it helps.

I am not stubborn about continuing to hunt zombies, it just happened to be the one travel script I had that wasn't to another town or the guild, so I assumed that was what I had been hunting primarily. Any suggestions for better things to hunt are welcome. I'm based out of the Landing currently and I'm not in a hurry to leave.

Taverkin

Also, I notice you didn't mention 513 in your spellup script. If you aren't using this spell your AS is significantly lower than it should be! So make sure you're doing that!

That was an old script from 6 years ago. Looking through my lists now there are a lot more defensive spells than I remember running, and I have added 513 to the list.

So I think I will drop AS down to 1x and add more HP. I don't know if I want to drop any Wizard ranks, but I think I will at least stop raising that until I have 500s and 400s caught up to level, with a push to get 425 in two levels. I'm wearing robes right now, but looking at the guides and reading some things here, I wonder what the general thought is on getting into full leather.

Thanks again!

Haste is not as necessary for bolters as it is for warmages, but while it doesn't speed up your bolt attack rate, it does reduce the RT you get from being hit by maneuvers. This wont be significant right now, since currently most of your like level opponents lack such attacks, but by 60 trains or so your opponents will be using those type of tactics against you. I have gotten into the habit of having haste running constantly. As far as Tonis bolt vs 904, note that the bolt form of Tonis has a decent knock down rate, which 904 lacks.

"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."