Hows Ancient Magic, now?

[robert.s_a]

Been nearly 10 years since I played this, (I stopped after losing a bunch of my void knight gear to the traps in the Regicide quest area). Finding it on steam seems like as good an excuse as any to give this a try again.

Been wondering though, Im aware theres been a bunch of changes to combat and such. Have any of those changes made Ancient Magic any more practical in standard PvE? I worked my ass off completing Desert Treasure while badly underlevelled to get it, and I was disappointed that every spell needed a ton of runes, while not really giving enough upsides over standard magic to be worth it.

So, is it any good now? I'd rather not be stuck using it in PvP and nowhere else.

[the evil one]

Ancients are great especially now with eoc where you cast far less
they trigger enough to be very useful but without the massive rune costs now(still not cheap spells but worth it)
For new to you skills like invention ancients are a god send with Aoe's

Main uses for me are
Gano beasts
Elf warriors at priff lorweth zone( worth it just for these)
vyrewatch lords
some of gwd 1/2
mustapahs

Aoe ing bandos side room and vyrewatch were my invention 120 ,really fast to do

out of combat the seren spells on ancients

rapid growth, skips 1 or 2 growth stages of a tree
and crystal mask for thieving are my favs

[Numbaz]

Its good for xp farming mobs such as inside the abyss. It is also used in pvp but rarely. it's not usually used for anything else I don't think.

[Aquasword480]

Barrage spells are still the only auto-attack spells that are AoE which makes ancient magic the fastest for any sort of slayer if you plan to use magic, also the fastest for training invention if you do so with magic.

The secondary effects only happen during auto-attacks but freeze and blood are still really good. With the advantage that now that we can dual wield you can have two effects possible at a time. With the introduction of abilities like wrack that deal extra damage on bound enemies this synergizes with ice spells freeze.

High End PvM or mob slayer is where you will use ancient magics the most, otherwise regular combat spells are used in most other situations just because you don't necessarily need the AoE all the time and bloods can still be expensive.

That being said as mentioned by Evil One spells cost less as a whole because they are only consumed during auto-attacks, not abilities, AND a long time ago they rebalanced the rune costs of spells to make them cost significantly less runes.

On top of all this you can get an upgrade to ancient magics which adds Seren based skilling/support spells to the book and there are some really useful ones in here, like crystal mask and crystallise.

[robert.s_a]

Ok, so they are usable now against somewhat tough stuff, but still too expensive to throw around at anyone that looks at you funny?

Not ideal, but thats orders of magnitude better than what they used to be. Good to hear!

Should point out that my combat level before i left was only 76 (Idk if EoC made any changes to how those work), so I'm probably pretty far from getting the fancy new stuff. Magic was my best stat and even that was only 63.

[the evil one]

Originally posted by robert.s_a:

Ok, so they are usable now against somewhat tough stuff, but still too expensive to throw around at anyone that looks at you funny?

Not ideal, but thats orders of magnitude better than what they used to be. Good to hear!

Should point out that my combat level before i left was only 76 (Idk if EoC made any changes to how those work), so I'm probably pretty far from getting the fancy new stuff. Magic was my best stat and even that was only 63.

Thing is robert take a look at this

https://runescape.wiki/w/Money_making_guide

It's been a while since you played, believe me buying a few runes is not a issue anymore

63 mage already has saved you a lot of work
if you need help getting set up again in game, whisper me, lost realm

[Aquasword480]

Originally posted by robert.s_a:

Ok, so they are usable now against somewhat tough stuff, but still too expensive to throw around at anyone that looks at you funny?

Not ideal, but thats orders of magnitude better than what they used to be. Good to hear!

Should point out that my combat level before i left was only 76 (Idk if EoC made any changes to how those work), so I'm probably pretty far from getting the fancy new stuff. Magic was my best stat and even that was only 63.

I mean no runes are not anywhere near expensive enough that they aren't worth using or people would look at your weird, just speaking in pure efficiency if you don't need AoE and you aren't doing high end PvM then you might as well just be using say air spells.

[the evil one]

Originally posted by Aquasword480:

Originally posted by robert.s_a:

Ok, so they are usable now against somewhat tough stuff, but still too expensive to throw around at anyone that looks at you funny?

Not ideal, but thats orders of magnitude better than what they used to be. Good to hear!

Should point out that my combat level before i left was only 76 (Idk if EoC made any changes to how those work), so I'm probably pretty far from getting the fancy new stuff. Magic was my best stat and even that was only 63.

I mean no runes are not anywhere near expensive enough that they aren't worth using or people would look at your weird, just speaking in pure efficiency if you don't need AoE and you aren't doing high end PvM then you might as well just be using say air spells.

Yep just saying the cost isn't the issue it's just the natural state of RS players to be hoarders and not like waste anything
I just wouldn't like him to be put off playing again by cost of anything, just showing him the difference in gp making from then to now

[nop277]

Originally posted by Aquasword480:

The secondary effects only happen during auto-attacks but freeze and blood are still really good. With the advantage that now that we can dual wield you can have two effects possible at a time. With the introduction of abilities like wrack that deal extra damage on bound enemies this synergizes with ice spells freeze.

I just want to add that secondary effects do trigger when cast through abilities but only like 10% of the time (or 20% of the time with dark form prayer).

[ptp]

You can let your character autoattack 1 time then use abilities, autoattack and sneak a ability attack in the animation , 2 tick abuse. You can go as far as 4 tick abuse with magic but that requires quickbinds, great memory with the rotation.

[Trindalas]

Originally posted by Aquasword480:

Originally posted by robert.s_a:

Ok, so they are usable now against somewhat tough stuff, but still too expensive to throw around at anyone that looks at you funny?

Not ideal, but thats orders of magnitude better than what they used to be. Good to hear!

Should point out that my combat level before i left was only 76 (Idk if EoC made any changes to how those work), so I'm probably pretty far from getting the fancy new stuff. Magic was my best stat and even that was only 63.

I mean no runes are not anywhere near expensive enough that they aren't worth using or people would look at your weird, just speaking in pure efficiency if you don't need AoE and you aren't doing high end PvM then you might as well just be using say air spells.

or water spells with the tome of frost and an air rune granting wand. (I only know of the low level one myself as I dont cast often enough to have looked into higher level ones, but there must be one)

As for ancients, I used them to kill Jad, but I don't use them for much else. I don't use the new combat system because it is too involved for my tastes, lol.
Yes it is better for efficiency and surviveability, but I just don't enjoy endless clicking during fights. its part of why I quit WOW.

I love ancients and would love to use them all the time, but as mentioned above by the evil one, I love to horde, so unless I have thousands and thousands of the needed rune, I don't use them XD