Re: Asteria: a new fantasy MUD
Right, adjusting to how casters function on here takes a bit of getting used to.
Starting out, the one advantage casters have over the melee folk is the very fact they can blast things extremely hard. If you use the starting gold from the tutorial to purchase a full set of caster equipment and rings from kalmyr, that should boost spellpower up enough to literally take down starting stuff in one 1-2 spells. Just keep track of your mana.
However, once stuff starts surviving long enough to be threatening, crowd control or obstruction options will need to be looked at. mob's won't let you retreat and cast so easily, so investing in spell trees with a stun or rooting ability will help, especially the rooting ones.
If branched into mysticism for regen stuff, psychic nova has a short cooldown, and sends everyone out of melee range and knocked down. This grants you a good 3 seconds before they move on you, and it only has a 1 second cd. and is instant cast.
Naturalism mages get access to thorny vines. A single casting roots a mob in place until hit by another source, and a second casting starts a piercing dot without breaking the hold. You can then line up another spell to blast them with something else, and quickly prepare another vines on the target or targets.
Divinity gets void prison, but that one mainly serves to take mobs out of a fight, and are useful for any melee hybrids not wanting to deal with a certain mob in a swarm of enemies whenever that comes up.
And of course, there's always the use of pets to take the heat off you. Necromancy gets raise dead to get skeletons that use the weapon/shield style to fend off opponents. Necromancy also get the fairly brutal ancient plague, which if you kind of try hard enough, results in the swarm of the undead. Anything killed while infected gets raised as a temporary minion which does not take up your pet slots. They only last for 2 minutes but they can build up if you're capable of striking down things.
Evocation has access to wall of ice. The spell puts up an obstruction with the defense tactics to draw mobs into it rather than on you. This spell is really good early on, but it's usefulness goes down later in the game. However, later in the game is when you have other options to keep mobs off you.
And illusion gets invisibility for scouting, and the all mighty spectral dragon. combine crowd control and a pet for a unit that'll give misery to your opponents fighting it and you. Apparently it rapid fires high damage attacks that also stun and roots. Though the dragon only has a life span of 1 minute before needing to be resummoned.
For other options of pets at least, there's always the guild abilities for Sin Shade liches to enslave undead mobiles as permanent minions, or the Wild Enclave's tame ability for beast mobiles.
There's more I'm probably forgetting, but this gives a few dozen options to try to stay out of the way of melee attacks at least. Archers will actually be more of a bane, as well as other spellcasters you ar enot prepared for. In fact, other mages might be a lot more dangerous due to the fact they too will happily employ crowd control abilities upon you and your group to disable you while melee and ranged mobs attack.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
