Magic skill fails/timers

I think overcasting costs too much mana. I prefer to cast at max power (with the un reach).

If we're talking about min/maxing, when ICly feasible, I prefer to find the conditions that lend themself to boosting your elementalists regeneration rate (heat/wind/plants/etc) and just cast more often because I'm generating more mana.

I've seen someone fully branch a whiran in 4 days played. It wasn't me, but I'm fully aware of how to.

To branch, you have to keep failing, there are MANY ways to fail

Chances are you were casting above your power level.  I unwisely got caught up in this argument with some others on this board who think they "won," because I in good faith accepted their fuzzy memories and anecdotes since they didn't understand how logs can be used to make conclusions about the skill system, nor did they trust my own careful, meticulous observations as both player and staff and powergaming experience.  (This is similar to how creationists and the like can appear to "win" arguments.)  So I went back and actually ran a character to test this.

If you cast the normal way -- at our below your powerlevel -- you will branch your first level of spells at about 8-12 fails based on .  Every single time.  (Granted you allow ~45 minutes or so between fails.)  That was the case for every spell I trained in the normal way. I picked one spell to train only by overcasting.  Want to know what happened?  I racked up about 20 spaced-out un-cast fails and didn't branch, getting the spell to mon, and branched it at about ~8 fails after that.   It was the last spell I branched, after all the nil-cast spells, even though I cast it more often than all the others, at un, and it probably used nearly as much mana as all other spells combined.  You don't have to be a genius to see what's going on. (In some cases it *might* pay off to rush power level, but I haven't done extensive enough testing to tell what is the most economical use of mana if that is your goal.)  It's possible in theory that improvements could happen (my overcast test spell branched at the short-end of the 8-12 range -- so those 20 overcast fails MAY have been associated with some 1-4 actual skill improvements), but frankly, the results give me every reason to think it locks out improvement entirely.

In the interests of being helpful, here are some actual ways of increasing the failure rate while still improving (these are not as drastically obvious in causing failure as overcasting -- which is a clue that they aren't obviously crippled for skillgain purposes):

Regen in your element.  Already mentioned, this just allows you to cast more often.

Cast out of your element.  For elements like Krathi and Whira (And Drov/Elkros RIP), where environment makes a big difference in mana regen, it also makes a noticeable difference in failure rate.  This can be leveraged by regenning mana in a "good" area and then moving to a "bad" area to cast.  I.e. a Whiran can often exploit this by regenning in high outside winds, then going inside a building or cave to cast, or finding a zone boundary where the weather is still in an adjacent room and regen in one and cast in the other.  Similarly, Krathis can get more failures by casting at night, so they should probably try to save enough mana from their midday practice sessions to guarantee they will have a full mana bar at night.

Cast in the wilderness.  Every mage has experienced the feeling of heading out on one of their first trips into the wilds and those "no-fail" spells are suddenly not so reliable.  I've seen this enough to be confident it's not clustering illusion, and the wilderness probably imposes a small casting penalty.

Cast in combat.  Similar to the wilderness, there seems to be a noticeable casting penalty in combat.

Don't fully drain your mana bar.  I'm less certain about this one, might be just an illusion, but I think that the lower range of the mana bar regens more slowly.  Either way, it's still good practice not to empty your mana, lest you be caught defenseless.  it also promotes discipline in your use of mana if you try not to dip below half too much.  You don't just want to avoid overcasting because it's useless -- you also want to avoid it because it can potentially ding you for 75 mana, and there's virtually no good reason you would ever want to do that.  Sure, if you're some half-assed gemmed sitting in a temple, do whatever you want, but if you're a gemmed, you shouldn't be asking for advice -- the only advice you need is "go sit in your temple and spamcast."  Rogues are the only true mages. 

It's easy to imagine that there are casting penalties associated with hunger/thirst, encumbrance, being at low HP/MV/Stun, certain spices, etc., but I haven't done extensive enough testing to be able to say for sure.  These are things you can investigate while developing your own twinking routine.

I got jumped on for doing this by some anal player during the Copper War. There my character was, templars all leaning on her to become more useful with her spells, and this turd complains to the staff that she was "spamcasting" in the magickers' little tent.

Lol, when the singularity gets here I think our lives are going to be drastically changed by whatever it wants. 

I suspect the difference lies in how people play. Those who report fully branching in 5 days of play time may be the ones who log in for an hour or so a day. Those who struggle to branch may be playing for six hours a day. I noticed that when I left off playing for a while, power levels would start jumping upon my first casts when I returned. Maybe the limit is partly based on real time passed as well as time played.

In any case, it was frustrating when I struggled and worked and tried to branch a spell, only to be told "finally" by the senior mage of the temple when I did it. Sorry I didn't know your OOC tricks for shitting out new spells, bitch.

Not that it matters much now that mages have been removed from the game. All there is now are warriors, rangers, etc. with a few spells and a heavy stigma if they use them.