Moon Mage new player guide

This is a page for the Moon Mage specific page for the Newbie Help Guide. Whenever possible, overlap with the general guide should be minimized.

For details, rules, and the other pages involved, see Category:Newbie Guide Contest.

The Moon Mage guild is a diverse collection of magic users unified by their use of Lunar Magic and prophetic ability.

Skills and Training

Magic

Moon mages have the highest skill requirements of any of Elanthia’s guilds. By 50th circle you will need to train every magic skill but one. To reach 10th circle, however, only Astrology and any four other magic skills are required. Since you will need to train Lunar Magic and Attunement you will only need to select two other skills from below in order to advance to 10th circle. From 10th to 30th circle you will need to train Astrology and any six other magic skills (meaning you can forgo training two magic skills) and after that you will need to train Astrology and every other magic skill except one.

Lunar Magic

You will gain experience in Lunar Magic every time you cast a lunar spell and therefore this skill will likely never need to be directly trained.

Attunement

Attunement is your characters ability to perceive the local mana streams as well as effectively use mana when spell casting. At first you will only be able to perceive and draw mana from Elanthias moons, but as you gain ranks in attunement your perception range will become larger and you will eventually be able to tap into more distant mana sources such as the sun and planets. Lunar Mana is unique in that it is constant in every place on Elanthia and instead varies with time and between spell books. Mana is increased when a moon is above the horizon or whenever two moons are in conjunction or opposition. Each moon provides a different amount of mana to each lunar spell book. Each planet that a moon mage is able to sense acts as a multiplier to increase the mana available.

At lower circles attunement is fairly easy to train passively as you will gain experience whenever you cast a spell. Later on you will need to harness mana when spell casting for this to remain an effective training strategy. Alternately one can use the Perceive command to detect mana from the various sources, cycling through each moon (Katamba, Yavash and Xibar, planets, yourself and each [Lunar Magic|lunar spellbook]] (Enlightened Geometry, Perception, Moonlight Manipulation and Psychic Projection. This can be done every 2 minutes and is a very effective training strategy.

Arcana

Arcana is ones skill with magical devices and can be fairly easily learned through two different strategies at lower circles. The easiest is buying a cambrinth item at [[Herilo's Artifacts]] for a few silver. Whenever you cast a spell using spell energy stored in cambrinth you will learn Arcana. This strategy will require that you have enough skill to cast a spell at higher than it’s minimum mana, however. Alternately you can get a runestone. Runestones are magic devices that contain a spell pattern and will allow you to prepare and cast the spell they contain. If you focus on them repeatedly you will learn Arcana fairly well and, if you choose a rune that contains a spell of another mana type, has the added advantage of training Sorcery. I would recommend not invoking the runestone because they have limited charges and (more importantly) most runestones cause you to prepare the spell at much higher than the minimum mana required, which could invoke a backfire or, worse, a Sorcerous Backlash.

Sorcery

Sorcery is the ability to use spells of other mana types and is analogous to the lunar magic skill when casting such spells. This can be trained using a Runestone that contains a spell of a different mana type as described above but I would discourage beginners from training the skill in other ways.

Augmentation, Utility and Warding

These skills are easily learned by casting a spell of the appropriate type. Clear Vision and Shadows are augmentation spells are will be available at first circle. I would strongly suggest that one of these spells be your first choice. The first Warding spell available to you will likely be Psychic Shield but you will need to learn Calm before you can learn this spell. Another option is temporarily memorizing Lay Ward.

Targeted Magic

Targeted Magic is learned by using offensive, damaging spells in combat. As we have no specific requirement to learn this skill it is optional, although each mage can only forgo a single magic skill. Most Moon Mages fall into one of two camps with regards to combat magics. Some train them as minimally as possible while others make them a heavy focus. As we have no other specific requirements to learn combat skills, my suggestion is to focus on other magic skills until 10th circle. It is fairly easy to learn this skill through classes (which are frequently available outside the Warrior Mage guild in the Crossing.

The main advantage of not choosing a Targeted Magic spell early is that the first spell available, Telekinetic Throw has some significant disadvantages that make it less than ideal as a sole combat spell. It requires an object on the ground to take effect at all and any object used will tend to be destroyed unless it is a weapon. Partial Displacement and Dinazen Olkar are excellent beginner targeted magic spells but the former requires that you be 10th circle and the latter has spell prerequisites. If you would prefer to start learning combat magic earlier I recommend either gaining a few circles until you can learn Dinazen Olkar or buying a Strange Arrow Scroll from Herilo's Artifacts for 15 silver. If you read the Scroll and then invoking it you can temporarily learn Strange Arrow. The main disadvantage to this strategy is the fact that dying will cause you to lose your memorized spell (although you can relearn it by purchasing a Scroll). You can also permanently memorize Strange Arrow by studying it, but I do not recommend that as we have a number of excellent one slot Targeted Magic spells, making it redundant at best.