Starting out as a mage?

[Tickled Pickle]

I'm curious how exactly would be an effective means of doing this. Any thoughts, suggestions? I haven't even touched magic as of yet, and am curious as to getting an actual start with it, seeing as equipment/training is a bit sparse in the early game (at least one the coast).

[Darth Revan]

its not really that sparse on the coast, you have 2 shrines and a mage you can learn from. :)

one of the shrines is even directly in the starting village.

i can not help with the rest though, sorry.

[GombaPorkolt]

You literally need 0 eqp for a mage (okay, later on it is advised, but wholly optional to have a +mana staff in your left hand or +mana eqp.). It depends on your patience how many free LP you have. If you are willing to look up guides/for some weird reason, remember the location of ALL the ancinent knowledge-giving bookstands, you can (without CP) reach 100 AK easily, with it, I think it's gonna be around 60. Still more than enough for half of the game. Then you can dump ALL your LPs into mana, that way you'll have more than enough mana to cast spells, especially early-game spells. Skills you need: Mana Regeneration, Fast Learning, and maybe Acrobatics. Other than that, Brew Mana Potions is optional as you'll have a sh*tton of money by the time you need to chug mana potions like crazy. FYI, Mana Regenaration is precentage-based, so the more mana you have, the more you get back. The rest of the points, you can dump into even more mana or AK to get the most OP spells. Ice Explosion is just killer, believe me. Went through half of the game with just Ice Spike and Ice Explosion, and will probably have little difficulty completing it with them (have played through the game 8 times BTW, even though I only recently bought it here, as I had it on disk back then).As for armor, wear normal armour you would as a warrior, as the magic prot. and the occasional skills the robes get you does not help you all that much, but you WILL need good protection. I got Ice Spike and Fast Learning at the beginning of the game, then dumped all my LP into mana for the first 10 or so levels.

[Hasefrexx]

Playing as a mage, I started going for fighter build very early in, to get going and kill early weaklings. You could go mage directly but it will take a bunch of points and money to get anywhere decent (you need the mana, knowledge and then a good bunch to learn spells), Gothic start is hard enough like that and you'll need extra health even as mage so it makes sense to me to start with it. Once I had enough points to pick up the charm animal spell, that's what I did and it effectively gives a permanent follower that can be renewed anytime the previous one got killed. Don't expect that it will king things for you but it will distract things for you, I find it pretty convenient.

From here on you should be strong enough to go whichever path you want.

The first mage trainer I found is not near the start, I had to follow the road where there's one guy who lost wathever, just keep following the road, when you reach a farm with a river, you're getting close. Then keep following the road along the river until you reach an abandonned village with a few guys left and a druid in a grotto. Since it's vague, I think on map it's North and slightly west to your starting location. You can do it fairly early on but should be confident in killing starting mobs before getting there... Then as already mentionned altars can already teach you a lot and there's one in the starting location and another right next to the nearest orc town (different altars can offer different things).

[SLISKI JOHNNY]

To be honest, the only thing you need for start are LPs. I don't remeber how much ancient knowledge is required to learn the basic offensive spell but you need 5 LP for the spell, enough to reach the required knowledge level and some LP to raise your mana level so you don't have to drink a potion every 4 fireballs. I've never played played as a mage, hell, i didn't even learn spells throughout those years but now I see that it's OP. I don't even care about other skills anymore, I dump all my LPs into mana and ancient knowledge. I got to 250 and learned mana regen; now I don't even need a melee weapon anymore lmao

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Some merchants sell a random amount of stone tablets giving Ancient Knowledge. The number of determined the first time you talk to the merchant. So, for some cheese, save before talking to a merchant for the first time. In the worst case you are offered no stone tablets at all. More commonly, it's just a single tablet. Getting 2-4 is more rare.

Also, because freedom is great in this game, you may choose to travel south very early - even swimming across the ocean is possible as to reach Bakaresh directly and so some of the easy quests there.

[GombaPorkolt]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Also, because freedom is great in this game, you may choose to travel south very early - even swimming across the ocean is possible as to reach Bakaresh directly and so some of the easy quests there.

Or travel to Varant and go for the free stone tablets lying on the ground or the stone obelisks ready to read. A bit dangerous tho' because of all the higher-level enemies in the desert, or more so because of their great numbers, but even if you do not go there, you can max out (or achieve a pretty high level of) AK relatively early on. Unpatched mage is wrecking af only some hours in the game. Patched mage is kind of the same, only needs a bit more hours.