Magic skill fails/timers

Power level raises don't have timers. I've went up several power levels in several IRL minutes so often that I wouldn't call it uncommon to do so. (I've literally cast a spell 3 times in a row and went up a power level each time, MORE times than I can recall.) Granted, this kind of "speed raising" usually only happens on tier one spells.

Go for the one fail quit method. Honestly, unless I really want to raise the power for some reason, I don't focus on it. I've branched spells that were only at like kral or een level before. If it's something I'll never use again (such as flourescant footsteps or rewind) I'll branch it ASAP and never bother moning it until I'm so buff that I have nothing better to do.

I'm almost positive you don't gain by casting over your current level. It seems to help you raise the power level, but you will not learn from it. I used to do it all the time and it would take me forever to get my skills up. I turned to only casting AT level, and I started branching much more quickly.

Fastest branching magicker I've ever had, hands down, was a half-giant. He only had 50 mana, so could only cast at level, and was stupid so failed often. He was fully branched in like 5 days played without even twinking... it was ridiculous.

I've tried both methods, and I'm not sure which is better. If I fail at a spell, I move on to a different one. Especially at the beginning, you have a lot of spells to practice, so I don't want waste time practicing the one I just failed at. Failures happen a lot more when you cast at a higher power level. It seems that casting at a higher level is better in the beginning as many times it will fail, but as you get more advanced, you tend to succeed, which then takes 75 mana, where I think it might be better spent casting twice at 50 mana. It doesn't seem to me that the chances of raising the power level are significantly better at the higher level, but your chances to fail or definitely better.

Once you have it at mon, I would cast at the minimum mana level, wek, or if a spell has a minimum mana of 10 or 20, cast it at kral or pav, or whatever level you can and still use the minimum mana.  Do that until you fail, and then move to another spell.

For the power levels, I have in a few instances had it go up power levels multiple times in a short period of time, so I don't think the timer applies to the power level going up, only to the skill percentage. I still usually try a different spell when the power level goes up just to spread around my effort, unless there aren't many more spells that I still need practice on.

um.. the point of maxing those spells is to minimize their mana costs at lower lvls, dude.

I'd try to get utility spells up to sul. But I focus differently, depending on what kind of "role" each of my characters fit into. Some I want to be mostly outdoors based hunter types. Some are mostly social types. Some I want to be spy-types. Each role I play determines which spells I focus on at first. The overall goal is to branch everything and make all the spells I use regularly cost as few mana points as possible. The path to get to that goal differs from one character to the next.

To clarify, I wasn't arguing against moning your spells. I was simply trying to advocate that fails are more important than power level for most spells in the early game. If you've mon'd all your good spells, or if you've failed all the spells you want to raise and your timers aren't up yet, sure work at Moning rewind.

Each class has 1 or 2 spells that they're going to rely on to save their ass, and for most classes it's going to be a 2nd tier (or higher) spell. Whiran invis, Droivan ethereal, elk shield/chain lighting, etc... Therefore, even though it's useful to have high power spells, its MORE useful to get to your good spells as fast as codedly possible. Sure it's nice to have mon flamestrike, but once you get decently high fireball you're never going to use it again... (Rare, outlying cases aside.)

If you're over-casting your spells to try and raise your power-level:
A) Whatever small increase imparted toward raising the power level is insignificant to the 25-35 extra mana you're spending.
B) Your skill points don't increase from over-cast fails, thus you may be effectively slowing your branch, which is usually undesirable because very few first tier spells are useful to your character's survival in a combat situation.

Granted, getting to mon quickly and then spam casting at kral to get in fails is a legitimate strategy, and one I've used often myself, however my personal experience is that this has typically been slower than just sticking at or below your level from the get-go.

Another caveat to this, is that I believe your chance to success is still tied to your skill level in some small way. (Ie, a character with 60/80 and Mon will fail more often casting a given spell at mon than a character with 75/80 and mon (given that both wisdom scores are equal as well.)) This is a gut feeling of mine, so take with a grain of salt.


I guess I didn't explicitly state that there are some spells you shouldn't skimp on. Stoneskin/Strength/Fury/etc? Mon that shit asap. Fireball? Mon it asap. Chain lightning? You get the drift. Those are the primary spells which I was advocating focusing on. 


This is a bad example and even worse advice. Armor, strength and, to a lesser extent, sleep are clearly in the 50% of a mages "good" spells that you DO want to get to and focus on. However, you should NEVER cast een stoneskin/strength/armor/fury/etc in order to save your mana for sleep and earthquake. Rukkians aren't "casting machines," they're melee machines. If they have enough available mana to combat-cast, that's icing on the cake, but skimping on your buffs to reserve mana for it is generally ill-advised.

Someone (I think lulz ?) in another thread said something along the lines of, "When I realize that a Rukkian is relying on sleep and earthquake to kill me, I breathe a sigh of relief. When he etwos a weapon and stands toe-to-toe with me, I get nervous."

 I know how mana math works..

I can neither prove nor disprove that over casting does or does not "learn ya," or that my method is better than yours. I know I used to overcast liberally, and it always seemed to be a drag and take forever. I played a HG mage who was incapable of overcasting because of mana cost and low wis, and he branched out twice as fast as any other mage I've ever played, despite the low wis factor. After that, I stopped overcasting so much with my other mages, and they seemed to increase/branch a bit faster with less grind. I could be wrong, sure. But I'm just sharing my philosophy based on my experience, and to that end I've got nothing new to add.

I'd love to hear some fresh inputs on the matter, cause now I'm truly curious.