If you know me at all, this is what i'm most known for: AOE maging. For those that aren't familiar with this technique, it is the practice of using a Mage with area spells (spells like ring of fire, shadow lightning, gas blast, etc) I haven't seen any journey-semi-blog on forums before so I figured i'd give it a try. Here is where I will blog my journey from 1 to 100 as I go along, starting fresh as always and going to the top, no assistance, no pl'ing, no twinking. My Char is SleepyMan and if youd like to ask any questions or whatnot, feel free to whisper me in game or leave a message here. I will start part 1 of Day 1 at the next post.

Day 1 Part 1:

So I made a new mage char, called SleepyMan. Throughout this whole journey I will try my hardest to always keep the difficulty at normal. I will be using AOE spells as soon as I can get them and finding the tightest-packed places I can find at my level.

I farted around a bit when I made the char, wasting a few hours of /played, but who cares. I went through Dew Valley until I was level 4, did Rattle Tooth once, and set my eyes onto Algernon. I went through Algernon, level by level, and did Sissirat once just to do it and get KC from a quest, ending Algernon at level 10. I went to Algor's Terror Dome. Being a mage with a total offensive skill set of fire bolt and shadow lightning, I decided to run through the levels until level 5 where it turns into Ice. I faught here at level 5 for a bit, got to floor 7, leveled to 12, got my Ring of Fire, and decided that I was going to camp here until 20. I end this part 1 of day 1 being level 16.

The big skill I am looking forward to at 20 is Crispy Critters, of course. Once I get Crispy Critters, I will toss out Fire Bolt and be lights-out with my EXP gain, getting quicker and quicker as my CC gets stronger and as I acquire BSOL.

Day 1 Part 1 Stats:
Levels Earned: 1-16
Offensive Skill set: Fire bolt, (leftmouse) Shadow Lightning(rightmouse), Ring of Fire (1 hotkey)
Training Place: Algor's Terror Dome Level 7
Rough Hours Played: 6;
Total /played: 9 hours 20 minutes

Sounds interesting. It's always nice to see "class veterans" willing to share their knowledge and techniques. Personally, when I was a mage (full INT) I went to Balzack's, just charged in and used Shadow Lightning+Ring of Fire or I ran around condensing mobs to dispatch them with Gaseous Blast or RoF. IMO, that's good EXP there for higher levels, because the mobs are fragile and are positioned close to each other.

Anyway, I was just curious what kind of a role do Crispy Critters fill in AoE leveling?

Good luck, hope it turns out well for you.

Crispy Critters is a godsend for fire mages, and I would go as far as to call it an AOE attack. It will be my main attack simply becauase it's spammable and it kills everything in it's path (aka, area). It's a bit of a mana drain and pot drain but eventually, with BSOL, I will only need Mana pots, and not so many as in the earlier levels of BSOL. I will gather up a lot of groups and go into a corner, and spam out CC , shadow lightning, ring of fire, etc (my main attack will be Crispy Critters). Last time, I went from 90-100 in the matter of a single morning because I was raking in 12-15k xp an hour easily with the rhythym I had going and the place I chose. Some people don't believe it's that good, and too much of a waste to consider, but all I care about is the XP, and CC helps me get more of it, almost as quick as before the AOE spells got nerfed.

I didn't realize it was that useful. I personally stuck with the old AoE combos, never thought of utilizing corners and other positions to condense mobs for better EXP. All I did was mob control spinning. I look forward to the completion of your "guide".

BTW, you're basically going to be an Obsidian Mage then? And could you please list the skills most essential for the success of your project? And will they vary across dungeons/higher/lower levels of your character?

I'd have to agree, CC is perhaps the best aoe spell in the game when it comes to leveling later on. When NCSU was leveling, he went from 91-100 in a single day (9 hours) in balz3. Was full INT at the time, although I gave up one of my fire rings, and my fire ammy so I could use 1 + end+hp ring and a similar amulet. For skills I kept Crispy Critter on my left click, my pyro buff on my right (personally found it easier to buff that way). For the rest of my skills I used BSOL, Gym freak, gaseous blast, book worm, mental prowess, monster bait, extra crispy, and thickheaded.

If you run fast runs through here, you can easily average 1 level an hour from about 80+, maybe even sooner -- here is the process I was using.

Always keep thickheaded up as much as you can -- makes it alot easier to pull large groups when you are getting stunned much less. Starting out at the entrance, I would run through and agro as many rooms as possible (takes some getting used to, always want to make sure you aren't losing mobs wandering away if you go for too long). Once you have a large enough group, run into a corner (very important, cornering the mobs makes sure your CC is going to be as effective as possible). Once in the corner, I would use gaseous blast (this would kill off a large portion of the smaller mobs, and at the same time cause them to scatter a bit, thus saving you some health/mana from being attacked). Right after gaseous, I would toss out a monster bait directly in front of me. From there it was just a matter of CCing non stop til everything ahead of you died (a very fast process). Rinse and repeat.

The loot in balz3 during this process was pretty much useless, so you will likely want to save up some money before starting the process so you can afford the potions as the cost adds up pretty quickly going this route. Another huge benefit of running on balz3 is Gypsy Sally, who you will come across pretty frequently. From 91-100, I was lucky enough to find RB sally 3 times, countless KC sallys, and a ton of normal sallys.

All of the mobs in balz3 are generally ice and poison based, and extremely tightly packed in - making it very easy to get large groups once you figure out the limits, and they die so fast its almost funny.

i'll be following you progress as I have my 3rd who is my mage. Made it to lvl 19 with her already but since I'm setting Steele's sights on 100 she get's very little play.
I also can't wait for lvl 20 and CC fits very well into her skill set and my play style, remebering all the time that was spent in Demonic Crypts
Most I've been able to accomplish with Steele has been a sustained 8k per hours. It's just hard to find a good solid XP factory like DC was.

Gary

So Day 1 comes to an end (Not really, since it's still 9 pm but I was doing things around the house, fell asleep, woke up, and decided to write this first. I purposely left some things out so I can come back to them during the journey.

My Ultimate Goal:
My goal is to get to 100 by September 2nd, which is..well.. not that far away. I will have to crunch bigtime and play multiple-digit-hour days, being as efficient as I can. Getting from 1-100 in 10 REAL days isn't going to be easy. Realistically I should be going for 15-20 REAL days.

Lucky Me
Luckily, I was in the right place at the right time. A player apparently was leaving or something, and she dropped over 3 bank pages worth of rainbows. Big drop party, with atleast 30 people huddled around her. I managed to scrape up 5 rainbows from this, which is a very lucky coincidence, seeing as how I will need gear desperately. I have been actively trading these 5 rb's for Mage Weapons/Bodies at levels along the way. You have no idea how helpful a single rainbow can be when your gear is seriously lacking.

Basic Strategy For Levels 1-20
Use the default fire bolt and shadow lightning. Add ring of fire at 12, and you're gonna
want to add Pyromania as soon as you can, since CC will come at 20. Make sure you have enough money at 20 to purchase CC and all the rest of the upgrades at 20. Stay away from fire areas and if you want to go into terror dome, head to the 5th floor and up; Recommended Level 7 from 11-20. Stay away from boss fights.. they end up being longer exp-per-minute than regular grinding.

My controls/setup:
Left hand on keyboard, right hand on mouse; left hand doing wasd keys for movement , q e for camera change, hotkey 1 for Ring of Fire. Left button Fire Bolt, Right button shadow lightning. If you have it, pyromania at 2. Work your way steadily 1 or two groups at a time.

The Build
I am using the standard 3 to 2 Intellect to Endurance ratio for my base stat points. The whole idea of this build is to just look for whatever end/int gear I can find and tack it on as I go. Levels will fly by so fast that it's a waste of time to debate gear changes. Once you get a higher lvl gear, switch to it, and move on. For levels 50+ I switch my build up a bit to work my way into almost full Int by level 100. I will get into more detail as I reach that level.

The Downfalls Of The Build:
Lack of Good Gear Coming Regularly
The way I am playing, and the way my build is set up, leads me to obtain very little gear and very little rainbows. Normal difficulty with tons of lightweight mobs.. you do the math. I make due with what I have and rely more on the power of my skills to kill the mobs. The mobs are like paper anyway; It's not like i'm going to go storming into HDOL to beat up all the Heros and Champions.


Money Crunch:
Without the bling gnome, expect to be late a level or two in getting a new level for a skill. With the bling gnome, you may just squeak by. The way I will be playing especially at 50+ demands that I have a lot of pots on hand. I expect to just makes ends-meet
like usual, and be flat broke at 100, like usual. Pots and Skills are what you will be spending your gold on, so prepare in advanced if you have a skill upgrade coming up.

The Little Things That Help (Secrets)
If I think of more I will add them in later posts, but these are some little secrets to my journey that will help me chug along.

Kings Coins Townston Vendors
Believe it or not, I DO use the vendors in Townston to gear myself up from time to time. Why? Here's why:
As previously stated, playing on normal killing paperweight mobs naturally leads me to have crappy gear. Levels go by so fast, that I could be 5-10 levels behind in gear , and the gear isn't more than purples and yellows. I have tons of Relics from running through Algor's Terror Dome and I will have more from running normal dungeons. I trade these in for Kings Coins, which I then use to gear myself up. Sure they are just yellows, and generally using KC to gear yourself up is frowned upon, but if you try my style you will quickly notice that it's worth it. When all you care about is getting to 100 as fast as you can, that's just a sacrifice you're willing to make.

Determination
Leveling is boring. (Even I agree) Leveling is what people hate to do most. Most just like to boss farm or PVP or just fart around not doing much, picking up a level here and there as they go. Well, for some weird twisted reason, I manage to keep myself in the mood to level all the time. Listening to music, attempting to get many versions of Linux working on my crappy work computer, etc; This isn't my first time from 1-100.. So I know what to do and what not to do as far as wasting time goes.

This is it for Day 1. I will count play from now until Saturday night as Day 2 (it's only 10 here so I have 2 hours of today still left to play, but tomorrow I won't be on for the majority of the day because of real life things, which will be a big blow to the journey, seeing how I have almost single digit days to go, lol). Hope you enjoy the journey so far, and Happy Dungeon Running!

I've been sort of following this, since my next char after this one will be a mage, and I have a Sissirat's Cousin something staff I'll be happy to trade for fighter RBs, if you're interested. I can get you stats and numbers and stuff when I am back home at my own comp, where the game is installed, though if I remember right, it calls for level 28 or 29. I really have no use for it, and it's collecting dust in a corner.

I actually think I'm going to do this as well. I have enough Mage experience to recognize good-bad planning/dungeon trips etc.

So in short, this would be the strategy you suggest?

-use corners to position yourself so you can make most of your Crispy Critters skill
-Crispy Critters will be the primary mob dispatching skill, along with Shadow Lightning, L and R to be precise (?)
-don't bother farming as it will only eat up your time and funds; buying a ton of pots for wasting your time and taking chances at getting something good doesn't fit in this concept
-gear up through KC gear (this is actually something I have experience with and TBH, I haven't noticed any downfalls, plus even normal mobs are known to drop useful purples)
-other AoEs would include Ring of Fire, Gaseous Blast
-get Pyromania to boost your CC skill

Day 2

Basic Strategy 20-50:
Start finding places to pull multiple groups at once. Pull them and then run into a corner, so that none have access to your back. Spam CC forward and a few SL's and RoF's for the stragglers. This stage is getting used to the feel of groups and pulling groups and getting ready for the bigtimes (50+, where we get into other dungeons that are MORE tightly packed with MORE monsters) BSOL isn't of much importance, but if you have enough money, and can afford both a lot of mana and health pots, then go for it; Keep your build the same (2 end 3 int) along with gear. You don't want to phase out END until after level 50.


Good day today, went from 18 to currently 31. I've been training at various places, pretty much every tight spot in every dungeon as I level up. The money crunch is starting to kick in. I don't have enough money to buy BSOL yet eventhough I could have at level 25. I will get the money eventually ;-)

Day 2 AOE Tip:
Stay away from wide open dungeons, where groups are far apart, like lower Algor's Terror Dome, lower Widow Maker, upper Frump; You'll be running forever to get groups together, and you'll have no place to keep them from your back. Stick with tight places with a lot of corners and monsters together (Algernon 5-7 Algor Terror Dome 5-7 Vergrim Vexation Widow 5-7 Frump 1-4)

Places I trained:
18-20: Algor's Terror Dome 7
20-25: Vergrim 1-4
25-30: Widow 7
30-X: Frump 4

Skills Obtained:
Improved Shadow Lightning
Start of BSOL (Haven't bought yet, so haven't equipped)
Upgrades along the way for current skills

Skill bar from left to right (including left and right mouse)
L Crispy Critters
1 Ring Of Fire
2 Pyromania
3 blank
4 Improved Shadow Lightning
5 Couch Potato
6 Bling Gnome
7 Bookworm
8 Mental Prowess
R Shadow Lightning


Hours spent Day 2: 9
Total Played: 20 hours 2 minutes
Levels Earned: 18-31
World: World 1
Donations: One guy gave me a level 40 Staff of Rarr for one of the mythics I got from the drop!; Sweet!
Average time/level = 9/13 = .69 x 60 = 41.4 minutes
Current Status of goal: 31/100
Days left until deadline: 11

It's now Saturday morning as I write this and I will be leaving for the day and night, so the next time I play will
probably be sunday afternoon or sunday night, which will be Day 3. Hope you're enjoying the journey and happy dungeon running!

Yes

Yes

Right. Don't bother farming Bosses, especially if your gear is lacking. You're paper to them, and it's not the EXP way, plus you'll be wasting valuable potions to get less EXP reward. Buy as many potions as you can afford; You'll need them down the road.

Yes, gear up through KC gear; When picking places to go at lower levels, pick ones that you kwow will have some relic chests. You'll be raking in enough relics to gear you up with yellow the whole way to 100.

Yes, but personally with BSOL and Pyromania taking up 2 valuable slots, along with the other passives, I tend not to use Gaseous Blast at all anymore. Plus, with the gear you have on, you won't be getting much poison bonus anyway. Bling Gnome is there too to hog up a spot, but if you don't have one then feel free to use Gaseous Blast. Keep in mind that you will want to make the best use of your time, so experiment a bit and see if Gas Blast really helps you as far as efficiency.

Yes, and Pyromania also helps your Ring of Fire skill too.



Edited by ForT2007 (08/23/08 07:30 AM)

Day 3 and 4: Disappointment.

Day 3 I didn't play at all.

Day 4 I gained 5 levels, among everything going on.

Not much to say about these 2 days except i'm falling behind badly! I need to get my act in gear and stay on longer. I now have about 7 days left to reach my goal, and still 64 levels to go.

Where I trained: Mutanous Malaise 4

Day 5: ADD, and more disappointment. Possible end/recontinuation later in life?

To be honest, i've been lollygagging a lot the past day. I seem to log on, and not have the motive to grind out levels anymore. I just sit around, talk about music in world chat, farm ROC for a bit, or just shoot the breeze with someone. All in all in day 5 I got to level 42, and thinking about what I should do next.

The main reason I set this goal and timeframe (Before September 2nd) is so that I can get to level 100 one last time before I return to school (This will be my last semester of college before I graduate, and move up in my internship to a full time job). I planned on getting 100, starting school, then coming on whenever I had some spare time, to check out the new build etc. This reality has made me want to grind out the levels less and less, and look for something more fun to do before I shove off to my last chance of education before going into the real world.

Eventhough this may mean the end of my goal to blog the road from 1-100, don't let it be a discouragement for you, if you happen to be reading this for inspiration. I've given my build, i've shown the steps up until now to level quickly as an AOE mage, and the rest of the road is left open for however you like to play. My next reply will be the steps I would have taken on the way to 100 including training places, build, and strategies.

Technically it doesn't. It just means you have a new time-line now. You don't have to have a 100 to be able to play far more casually, the way you described you'll have time to do once school starts. I've been doing it from day one, and I'm not even a 35 yet.

If anything it means you have your priorities straight and realize that there is life after college, and that DR is still going to be there after graduation.

It certainly was an inspiration, and a good guide to Fire Mages as well. I have a level 34 Pyromancer now, though I intend to level up at my own pace. Crispy Critters, as you said, was an amazing addition to my mage, especially when the mob sometimes lines up to attack the Turkey Leg Bait.

Best of luck to you IRL

Basic Strategy 40-50: Do wherever. Make sure you're sticking to the plan of A. lots of mobs and B. tight spaces where you can pull a lot of groups at once. I would stick with Frump level 4 or Mutanous Malaise (any level). I personally don't like MM much because a lot of the levels have combinations of banshees (which fear you so often if you pull more than 2 of them you'll puke half-digested lima beans) and blademasters (which will knock you back even if you're 1000 feet away from them. As long as they swing, they seem to knock you back. It's annoying, and you'll give up quickly).

Basic Strategy 45-55 or 50-55: Shadow's Embrace. A good place to
train is the Guild of Shadow's Training Camp. As you fight there will be monsters that spawn and fight the other monsters! Score!! You can kill the monsters as they fight each other, so you will use just a bit less pots than before. If you get resisted too much, go back into the regular Shadow Embrace levels.

Basic Strategy 55-75: This is my second favorite stage.
First of all, this is where a build change comes into play. Up until now, I have said "just wear whatever upgrade u get, u wont be getting much loot anyway , split into 3 int 2 end". Now is the time where we can start using BSOL. Hopefully you have it upgraded to as far as you can upgrade it. If you don't, it's ok to go farm for gold (make it quick) to get the upgrade. So now that you have BSOL, you're going to want to gradually switch out END for INT as you level up. Each level, start putting all your base points into int. If you are feeling comfortable and using a lot more mana pots than health pots, gradually switch out your END gear for END/INT gear, or even INT gear, if you can afford the HP loss. This whole time will be a balancing game, because the lower levels of HDOL aren't as useful as the higher. If you are using both mana and health pots wayyyyy too much, then you need to beef up your END a bit. If you are using no health pots and only mana pots, then keep dumping more into INT and slowly take away from END. You want to do this up until level 100, where you should be almost fully INT. If you want to respec during any of this, to take base points from END and put into INT, then godspeed to you. However, you should have an easier time with just phasing out END gearwise, plus respeccing all the time costs a lot of valuable money that could be used to upgrade BSOL or buy those Mana pots. Oh, and feel free to use a pot mule to lame your way to full inventories of mana pots! (i've been guilty of that a few times, hehe)

After that long paragraph, we move onto the second part, which is where to train. You're level 55, where you get access into my favorite spot to farm, Balzack's Burrow. Level 4 should be perfect. There are more mobs tightly packed than in any previous dungeon, since they are very paperlike. Using the same method as before (pull group, pull group, etc, run to corner, do pyromania, spam your CC and SL and RoF, etc), you should notice that you're getting more EXP per pull and per hour. This may seem very weird and backward, but if you do it right, and with consistency, you will be gaining MORE XP per pull, and MORE XP per hour, as you level higher. You will learn the perfect rhythym for grouping as many groups together as you can, and you will be pulling anywhere from 500-1k xp PER PULL, and getting stronger each level up. On great hours at level 55 I saw about 12-14k XP PER HOUR max.

Basic Strategy 75-90: Same as before, word for word, except you'll be getting more mobs packed together, as you reach Ratsputin. My word of advice is to start all the quests and just pull each level by level, killing all the farmers and finishing all the quests, because the gold is useful at this point, and it's easy to do the quests, since it's just pulling groups like you've been doing all along. So keep leveling here until you reach the marathon stage. Continue the BSOL strategy (phasing out end for INT).

Basic Strategy 90-100: My favorite. You might just want to start this on a brand new day with a lot of time on your hands. For me, the quickest I did this after the AOE nerf last year, was 14 hours real time. That's only a bit over an hour per level. The secret to this is to think of it as a mini marathon. Your group-pulling skills should be fine tuned at this point, and with the monsters in Ratsputin, you should be raking in 1k per big pull. If you have the right motivation and determination, you can knock off a level per hour, with a small break for smoke,drink,eat, etc. Go back for another level, keep chugging away. The further away u get from 90 the more you'll want that 100. Think to yourself "im past the 10k left mark, im almost there", and the last 9.9k will go by in a flash. You should be almost all INT with the only END coming from your base points (if you haven't respecced). Trust me, when you get 1k per big pull each, you'll want to nab that 100 in the butt so bad, time will fly by and you'll magically be there before you know it. It's like running a marathon, good fast pace, but at the end, sprinting your heart out with every bit of energy you have left.

I hope you have enjoyed this last part of my post! I hope this has inspired you to consider this build in the future or just provided some good reading along the way. I apologize for not committing to my goal and achieving it, but too much of a good thing can be a bad thing in the end, I suppose. I hope you get something from all this, whether it be more knowledge about AOE mages, cool tips to level quicker, or inspiration to do your own blog/goal/post. Happy dungeon running!



Edited by ForT2007 (08/27/08 01:40 PM)

Camera/Angle Suggestion:

I suggest you switch your view to top-down and zoom out as far as possible. Not only does this give you a better view over mobs, it also helps to see how far and how many monsters your attacks would hit and REALLY fixes the bad corner-shocking view, because you can basically just view yourself from the front and not really know where to direct your CC and should you even use RoF, given the fact you don't see if any monsters are standing close by.

Proof.

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/n...ta/Proof-1.jpg

Cool. How do you make that change?

Awesome guide/info for all the new players leveling up their chars (and you old ones too!) --

Few things I'd suggest --

Balz 4 is a great place to level like he said and gives you a chance to find RB sam -- if you happen to have a stash of gold hanging around Balz3 is just as good IMO and gives you a chance for RB sally -- basically figure out which one you would rather find and run/run/run/run etc lol.

I disagree with moving past balz and leveling in rats to be honest though -- if you need the money, its a good way to go, however if you can afford the potions you can get more exp/hour by doing fast balz3 runs. You can literally do 1 level every 45min/1hour all the way to 100 this way.

Either way you choose, your path to 100 will be fast!

Thanks for the great guide ForT2007 --

NCSUSean

You zoom out by scrolling your mouse wheel and adjust your angle by pressing and holding your mouse wheel and moving the mouse to yourself (for top-down view).

If you hadn't noticed, in a sudden change of heart, I have decided to go back for the goal, and at the pace i'm setting, I may be done before the deadline! I've gone strong leveling for the past 2 days and currently I am level 79. I am hoping to finish the last 21 levels sunday or sometime monday, a day before the deadline (originally tuesday). I'll be on World 1 the whole time so if you'd like to cheer me on, that's always appreciated ;-)

I would like to cheer you as I'm currently playing a Crispy Critters mage (which is, IMO just amazing, 'specially the corner-gate-Bait EXP farming technique) but I don't even know when you log on, and you would know my IGN then... >_>

I'm on right now! I usually am on EDT 2 am - noon or even later, if i'm doing a long day of grinding

I've done it! After nearly giving up, deciding what to do, I went back and decided to go for it.. finishing a day earlier than my original goal! My /played when I dinged 100 was 4 days 12 hours and 25 minutes. Thanks to everyone who supported me throughout and I hope this journey has been inspiration to keep leveling, or atleast just some helpful info/tips!

Congratulations! That's impressive.

Gratz you freak. Don't forget to remember all the little people you left in the dust.