Invokers newbie guide

[Nierth]

(Originally by Kontis)

Alignment: any
Ethos: any
Races: gnome, elf, dark elf, half-elf, human, draconian, wild elf, half-kender, kender(?)
Clans accepting invokers: Tower, Takhisis, Warders, Guardians

Requirements: patience(!), stable connection, some game experience (recommended).

Patience is necessary because you need to spend at least tens of hours mastering your spells (some of them you probably won't use ever after), and then to look for, get, and master spells from the books.
Losing connection in battle almost inevitably leads to death.
Game experience includes, but is not limited to:
- knowledge of the basic preparations
- knowledge of damage type names (needed to use proper shields)
- ability to recognize the class of your opponent and knowledge of damage types, optimal against that class and race
- knowledge of some places where you can relatively safely master your spells (when guilds aren't good enough).

Pros:
1. This is probably the least equipment-dependent class in the game. Good stuff makes your life better, but usually you don't need it. Sometimes you need the preparations (mostly easily obtainable), sometimes spell saves become very important, but your best means to offend and defend always stay with you.
2. It is one of the most dangerous classes in PvP, and at the same time relatively well-defended. If you have decent spell protection and do not forget to use the preparations, you can be really hard to kill.
3. While usually being helpful for a team that accepts you, you can easily live on your own, almost no matter what you do.

Cons:
The character costs much time, but you still won't be at the top of your power until much later, when you have the most important books (10-15). (On the other hand, you're pretty good even with just a couple of those books.)

Details:
1. Lots of damaging spells, covering 6+ damage types and including targeted, area, randomly switching targets, or hitting the whole group. Additional effects include blinding, stunning, and throwing flying opponent to the ground.
2. Six elemental shields (fire, ice, lightning, energy, air, and earth; up to 3 may be used simultaneously) protecting you from physical damages and giving complete immunity from the respective element (this includes most of additional effects brought with the damage, like blindness from fire breath).
3. Wall of ice, one of the most dangerous offensive abilities (which might as well serve defensive purposes, and sometimes can be used for training).
4. A number of unique and spells which aren't very useful in general but on some occasions can help you a lot.
5. Alarm spell, warning you when someone enters the predetermined place.
6. Transfer object spell, allowing you to send items to other players.
7. Very limited means of magical transportation and hiding, no abilities defending against maledictions.

List of spells gained by mastering of simpler spells can be found here:


(Originally by Masni)

A very handy tool for those new to invokers, shows you the various spells you can obtain, including what elemental branch they belong to (and therefore how to gain them).

Level  1: armor                          5 mana
             read magic                   5 mana
             detect magic                5 mana
             magic missile                15 mana
             ventriloquate                5 mana
Level  3: faerie fire                     5 mana
Level  4: detect invis                  5 mana
Level  5: icicle                            20 mana
Level  6: create spring                 20 mana
             invisibility                        5 mana
Level  7: infravision                      5 mana
             alarm                               50 mana
Level  8: brew                              35 mana
             lightning bolt                      15 mana
Level  9: earthquake                       15 mana
             identify                             12 mana
             shield                               12 mana
Level 10: locate object                  20 mana
             blink                                 25 mana
Level 11: protective shield            50 mana
             frostbolt                     15 mana
Level 12: dispel magic                  15 mana
             teleport                           25 mana
             earthmaw                    20 mana
Level 13: fireball                      15 mana
             fly                             10 mana
             wizard watch                   30 mana
Level 14: shatterstone                15 mana
             faerie fog                         12 mana
Level 15: pass door                      20 mana
             windwall                      20 mana
             trace teleport                  20 mana
Level 16: heat metal                    25 mana
             transfer object            30 mana
Level 17: mana leech                   30 mana
Level 18: fork lightning              30 mana
Level 19: ignite                           50 mana
Level 20: cancellation                   20 mana
              tsunami                        30 mana
              cone of cold               30 mana
Level 21: chain lightning            25 mana
              word of recall                  5 mana
              wall of ice                 25 mana
Level 23: vapour chain            40 mana
Level 24: interposing hand         60 mana
              incendiary cloud           55 mana
              meteor swarm           40 mana
              magnetise                 45 mana

Level 26: animate object            100 mana

Level 30: fireshield                    30 mana
              iceshield                     30 mana
              lightning shield               30 mana
              earthshield                  30 mana
              airshield                     30 mana
              energyshield                 30 mana

Level 32: ring of lightning                     30 mana
              ring of fire                             30 mana
              ring of energy                     30 mana
              ring of ice                             30 mana
              ring of air                          30 mana
              ring of earth                           30 mana

And more than 20 spells from spellbooks and manuals...

You have to improve the most recent elemental (coloured in the list above) spell to 90%-98% (usually about 93%, for some very simple 80% may be enough) to gain the next spell of the same element.
***************************************************************

(Originally by Kontis)

Guide part

Levels 1-4: same as everybody else.
Levels 5-15: you gain first few insights: magic missile -> transfer object, icicle -> frostbolt -> cone of cold. At these levels you need no team.
Buy maps and brew haste and word of recall potions.
Levels 16-18: you still can live without a team. Kill lower level mobs (not too much lower) that don't hurt you (not the trolls), raise frostbolt to 100%, then switch to lightning bolt ( -> fork lightning).
Levels 19-23: try to find a team. Preferably one which won't rely on your damages so you can spend your time improving expensive spells like fork lightning ( -> chain lightning) or weak like earthquake ( -> earthmaw), chain lightning ( -> magnetise), or just calmly learn non-damaging spells like fly ( -> windwall), transfer object ( -> interposing hand).
If you could not find a team, don't worry, just take your time and gain the insights you'll need later. In order of importance/appearance: fly -> windwall, invisibility->100%, fork lightning->100%, cone of cold -> wall of ice, word of recall->100%, windwall->100% -> tsunami -> vapour chain, chain lightning -> magnetise, fireball -> hit metal -> ignite, transfer object -> interposing hand, earthquake -> earthmaw -> shatterstone -> meteor swarm.
At the same time you can also make quests, and should equip yourself (you can get most of good non-limited items easily at that stage).
Even if you don't ever find a team, 15-25 hours of running for quests and mastering spells should bring you to level 24.
Levels 24-29: choose the feats (or postpone it till later). If you have not gained interposing hand and mastered word of recall yet, do it.
If you are going to join the clan, master the spells and skills you'll need in battles (riding, mounted spellcasting, faerie fire, vapour chain and/or meteor swarm, anything else you can think of).
After level 24 it is possible (though not recommended until level 30) to grow alone, damaging multiple targets with fireballs/cones of cold/windwalls.
Levels 30-35+20: gain all the shields you haven't got yet.
... you can live without a team again.

Some additional advices:

1. Some spells (invisibility, frostbolt, fork lightning, word of recall) should be mastered as soon as practical (if the spell will cost 15 or 5 mana but now costs 40 postponing does make sense).

2. Spells you don't need at 100%:
icicle
earthquake, earthmaw*, shatterstone
heat metal*, ignite, incendiary cloud**
fly, tsunami*
lightning bolt, magnetise
transfer object, interposing hand, animate object
all of the rings
* - on rare occasions could be useful though, ** - seems useless now, but this might be changed.

3. Most useful damaging spells:
  frostbolt - easy to get, cheap (15 mana), does decent damage (very good with spellcraft), best one against some very tough mobs. Not very useful in PK due to common damtype, but sometimes is pretty nice.
  fork lightning - has a chance to stun the enemy, but costs much (30 mana) and seems to be useless against good spell defense. Damtype is relatively common as well.
  fireball - cheap (15 mana) area spell (with all the usual pros and cons: danger of hurting someone you didn't want to, attacking the hidden enemies, damaging multiple enemies, cannot be turned against you), common damtype, good damage (especially with spellcraft).
  windwall - inexpensive (20 mana) area spell with a chance to throw a flying enemy down and (in the right place) blind him/her for 2 ticks. Does moderate damage, but has an uncommon damtype.
  vapour chain, meteor swarm - expensive (2 rounds lag, 40 mana) spells with high (and highly varying) damage and uncommon damtypes. Meteor swarm has a chance to stun the target. Very good against mobs protected from the common damtypes. Against players it iss usually inconvenient even when the damage/time ratio is the best, due to the lag, but is very good to finish the enemy off.
Also they do become useful if you choose the Improved Alacrity feat, which is probably the best option if you aren't convinced you will find the gold-lettered spellbooks with better spells.
  cone of cold - relatively expensive (30 mana) area spell, common damtype, average damage against zero resistances is just a bit more than that of fireball, but more stable (better than fireball without spellcraft, worse than one with).
  + a few spells from spellbooks.

[Holtrou]

What are the best feats for the invokers of different races?

[Raider]

Difficult question.
My opinion: 3x toughness for everyone but elves.
Elves(dark elves, wild elves) should pick toughness, mind over body, toughness.
Tower invokers should consider picking balance instead of 1st toughness to protect themselves against heretic's body crushing.

some other people think that empower spell or spell penetration are worth to pick. I cannot agree with them considering how easily reflex saves can be obtained.

[myx0m0p]

What do you think about improved aclarity feat?

IMPROVED ACLARITY [Special] [ANY MAGE]
You gain ability to cast spells at a faster rate.

Did you try it out?

[Raider]

Yes, close to useless. Too unpredictable and quite low chance to lower spell delay. It works only on spells that has 2 or more rounds of delay, lowering the delay for 0.5 or 1 round. Sheet lightning, efb, firechain, crushing hand are the main damage spells, 1 round lag already.  1 round meteor shower would be great, but it happens not too often.

[Nuitari]

We're bla-bla-working on a bla-bla-system that will bl-allow to bla-bla-have clan-bla-specific helps and bla-helps checking the bla-knowledge of bla-bla-bla-skills.

That will allow us to have helps only visible to a member of certain clan, helps only visible if you have the skill/spell, etc.

Enthusiasts can start writing missing helps, they will be added immediately if they are to be public, or after introducion of a new system, if they are not. (Provided the helps written are of good quality)

[Lizzy]

Changes to red and white robed mages - depends on alignment and moon changes? I am confused.

One day I can enter the guild, next day I can't. How did I miss this important information?

So, if I am a dark elf invoker or transmuter, I can no longer use the white robe guild or red robe guild? Which guild do I use then?

[Nierth]

Use guilds for black-robe mages.

[Sirrion]

Evil invoker can enter guild of black-robed mages, or guild of invokers.

[Lizzy]

Evil invoker can enter guild of black-robed mages, or guild of invokers.

Thank you Sirrion. *walks away totally confused, scratches her head, looks back over her shoulder, and continues on her confused path*

[Sirrion]

 

Okay. You are evil invoker. Colour of your robe is defined by your alignment, so you are black-robed invoker. This means, you can practice in the guild of black robes (darkened laboratory in Palantas), or in the guild of invokers (in Caergoth, for example). That's easy

[Lizzy]

*blinks blinks blinks* Thank you. Yes, it is, but never having been *coughs chokes* black robed evil one, I have not seen their guilds - at least, not that I am aware of, but I got it. Thanks. And thank you to Nierth.

[xafelar]

Good day. Newbie invoker here.
Have some questions about starting.
1) First of all I got spellcraft skill as good/lawful elf invoker. But helpfile says this skill works just for redrobe mages (i.e. neutrals). It was changed or it simply doesnt work for good/evil?
2) Seen you guys advice to take mob feat at 2nd circle. Does it still works? (was announced it be removed). Any advice on feats with new changes?
3) Is it still possible to improve spells from 1% by using them in combat? Even if lose concentration?
Thanks.

[Daekrist]

Good day. Newbie invoker here.
Have some questions about starting.
1) First of all I got spellcraft skill as good/lawful elf invoker. But helpfile says this skill works just for redrobe mages (i.e. neutrals). It was changed or it simply doesnt work for good/evil?
2) Seen you guys advice to take mob feat at 2nd circle. Does it still works? (was announced it be removed). Any advice on feats with new changes?
3) Is it still possible to improve spells from 1% by using them in combat? Even if lose concentration?
Thanks.

1) There's no difference between invokers with different alignment/ethos. Spellcraft works for everyone.
2) MOB was removed. Something like empower spell, perhaps.
3) No

[xafelar]

1) Any advice with a race for invoker btw?
(is it just me or race stats was changed?)
If possible describe bonuses/maluses of different choises?
2) Also how important for magic users to max out str/dex?
3) What stat affect spell damage/mana gain?
4) How to check % of spells? 'spell' command shows just mana cost

[unreal]

First of all I got spellcraft skill as good/lawful elf invoker. But helpfile says this skill works just for redrobe mages (i.e. neutrals). It was changed or it simply doesnt work for good/evil?

just some time ago all invokers were called as Red-robed mages. And only not so long time ago it was changed and now its dependant on alignment which robe do you wear. And helpfile wasnt changed.

[ezus]

1) Any advice with a race for invoker btw?
(is it just me or race stats was changed?)
If possible describe bonuses/maluses of different choises?
2) Also how important for magic users to max out str/dex?
3) What stat affect spell damage/mana gain?
4) How to check % of spells? 'spell' command shows just mana cost

1) as for me half-elf (low exp-penalty, no race vulns)
2) not so, just for inventory (more dex=more capacity)
3) int/wis
4) spell p