Mage Walkthrough

[11BravoMan]

Playing again after....ages. Installed the latest patches and mods. Started the game with Alt Balancing ON to make it more challenging and decided to focus my gameplay as a Mage.
Looking for any help/guide to how to effectively spend my Learning Points. Considering the Alt Balancing, everything's obviously dialed down, so any walkthroughs on YouTube I found irrelevant.
If anyone can direct me to some helpful resources, like what I should learn first second third, what to focus on, what NOT to do, that would be greatly appreciated!

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Well, Google finds some guides, but regardless of whether with AB on/off, guides differ. People disagree about how to boot a mage.

Even with AB turned on, you can get +177 or more permament bonuses for Ancient Knowledge. More, if you max out the number of stone tablets. The +3 and +6 stone tablets sold by merchants are random. That is meta-gaming hell, because a merchant's inventory is generated on-the-fly when you talk to him for the first time. If there's no stone tablet to be found in the inventory, one can reload and retry. A merchant may get 1-5 stone tablets, but more than 2-3 is rare.

What else?

There are enough Alchemy bonuses, so I would not invest much into learning Alchemy. Eat most of the plants that give permanent bonuses, such as Goblin Berries +1 to hunting. Possibly keep Flame Berries, so you could create permament Concentration max. Mana +8 potions late.

Start with a few points in Hunting to use a bow and to fulfill the requirements for higher skills, such as sneaking/silent hunting and taking trophies from beasts. Keep pelts and tools for a long time, since you can use a high number to solve some side-quests. Selling orc weapons will create massive amounts of income.

From the thieving skills, learning early how to pick difficult locks is useful as not to return to caves and other locations later. For impossible locks, there are enough scrolls to open them.

As for melee combat, which sucks in this game, winning arena fights gives STR +1 and stone tablets in a few cases. Just in case you want to wield a staff, katana or other melee weapon with low STR requirements, too. There's an early spear that is okay for the beginning.

Fireball should be the first damage spell to learn, even more so if you plan to become a fire mage later. Else lightning bolt. Next Ice Lance, if you know where to learn it. Paired together they are good. Flame Wave is crap, since the time to cast it is long. Fire Rain and similar high level spells can only be learned late.

Other spells? Depending on whether you like using them, such as Sleep or Amnesia to deal with individuals.

Once you've reached Ancient Knowledge 200, you can learn mana regeneration from a few guys. If you don't know how to reach them, you may need to use mana potions for some more time and/or rest often. Max Mana and Ancient Knowledge for skill/spell requirements and better mana regen should be your focus.

If you fetch stuff from chests in towns, even if not seen by anyone, guards still learn about the missing items and will warn you. Be careful.

[11BravoMan]

D'amarr, many thanks for your reply! May your livestock prosper and your fridge never go empty!

Re: Ancient Knowledge
I did not know how much you can collect in bonus from stones/bookshelf so I've already
spent a decent amount of LPs to learn some. I still do not know all the merchants that
potentially could have the stones so I'm never sure when to save/reload and I hate the load
time so I never bother to do it. Majority of the guides I found did not have AB and so their
stones would add +5 each so it got me worried if I'll have enough.

I find myself needing plenty of mana potions and to learn to brew them I lack about 60 in alchemy which of course is a substantial amount of LPs to spend. To make up for it, I decided to purchase all mana potions/plants from every merchant. Money isn't hard to get in this game, considering the glitches and exploits so it's never a problem.

I guess the ultimate question would be how much LPs will you have earned throughout the entire game with AB on? Considering if I completed majority of the quests, and learned the essential skills/spells for a mage, how many LPs would I have left over as extra that would allow me to train up a different class. AB is obviously made for you to specilize in a certain class, but how strict is it, how narrow is that path? Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this...

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Level 70 is where the path of Innos ended for me as a fire mage. I've not spent all LP, I've not maxed out the stone tablets sold by merchants and I've not completed some side-quests.

Investing into Ancient Knowledge via LP isn't a bad decision, because once you reach AK 200, you can learn Mana Regeneration. And then you don't need to learn any other fighting styles anymore. You can finish anyone with hit'n'run tactics.

[Cryomancer]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Level 70 is where the path of Innos ended for me as a fire mage. I've not spent all LP, I've not maxed out the stone tablets sold by merchants and I've not completed some side-quests.

Investing into Ancient Knowledge via LP isn't a bad decision, because once you reach AK 200, you can learn Mana Regeneration. And then you don't need to learn any other fighting styles anymore. You can finish anyone with hit'n'run tactics.

Is 250 AK. In other words, 25 levels only in AK... But worth the cost. For the beginning i recommend learn how to make mana potions so you will spend less money to get mana potions and take weaker enemies with bow/sword

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Mana regeneration requires just 200 AK, if Alternative Balancing is turned on. Without AB, it would be 250 AK.

[shawnsanf93]

where o you learn Quick Learner? Says I need it to learn Fireballo.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Sebastian at Reddock rebel camp is the first to teach it.

[shawnsanf93]

Thank you.

[Zaciss]

I believe first step should always be getting the "Learn Quickly" perk (50ak with AB i think). There is a way to get it on lvl 2 with tablets and stuff but if you want to play mage with AB on i wouldnt recommend it. Because learning it on lvl 2 will save you like 5 LPs, but saving all tablets for after reaching 250 should save you more. (because of AB the LP cost of all skills is doubled after reaching a 250 threshold).
Also i think that mana regen speed is based on your total mana pool So increasing mana should be a good idea. Im not sure if AB affects the cost of LP for mana and health)