So i am mythical in aeromancy, have a staff. I also have forcefield.

What else should I learn to be more effective at hunting?

Resilience.

Enough influence also gives you that -5% to all ego damage thing, which helps forcefield, but it's a fairly minor bonus for a lot of lessons.

This.

If it were me, I'd also invest in getting a throne, and pretty much as many Cha buffs as possible.

I'm pretty sure every Mage out there has the dream of getting a Rune of Charisma to get the stupidly ridiculous 25% less ego loss that applies to Forcefield when combined.

I just did a forum search and found an old (and possibly outdated) thread in which Iasmos states that trans Resilience grants approximately 25% physical resistance and poison shrugging.

Some before-and-after testing by a person who was upping their Resilience from inept to trans also indicated that trans Resilience grants approximately 25% physical resistance.

So yeah, that's quite substantial. It's like having another greatrobe on top of your normal greatrobe, unless it doesn't work the way I think it does (that happens to me a lot).

If you're willing to go to extremes, there's a slew of artifacts that can help, naturally. Also, if you're willing to be a 'thoid, you can run your ego waywaywayway up, which makes forcefield all the better.

There's also the simple, marginal stuff that gets overlooked. Consider playing around with karma blessings like war, life, beauty, to see which combination works best for you.

Also, general skills, like, teaching your thunderhawk bodyguard, from beastmastery, and also healing, from the same set, can help out!

Frailty is a concern, but so is your kill speed. Mages have sad kill speed compared to the major hunters (warriors/monks, lesser extent bards).

More Aeromancy will boost your damage by a trivial amount. So will Highmagic, supposedly. That's old info and might be incorrect by this point.

Surviving is highest priority, naturally, but you will tend to focus on the areas that are a challenge without being dangerous. So frailty can and will be compensated by your choice of hunting grounds. Kill speed will always apply, unless you're hunting vermin or other small fry. I'd suggest you play around with Knowledge/War karma blessings and see what tradeoff works best for you.

Resilience and Discipline are skills that pretty much everyone should look at transing shortly after guild skills. Some more than others. Mages <3 Resilience though.

I thought it was changed to no longer affect Forcefield. Hrm.

The rune no longer gives that bonus. readnews announce 1539

Edit: Okay, Eldanien kind of ninja'd me, but I provided proof of the change!

I'm pretty sure that's not the case. I believe they changed that back for Ceren.

Yeah, because supposedly that's the only reason he bought it, he issued and asked beforehand and that's how they told him it worked, and when it got changed he wanted his credits back, which makes sense.

Illithoid is a really good tk race.

Not all mages, I don't use TK, prefer TP. , but if it gives an ego boost I'd still like it for TP.

I was stunned when he paid so much for the rune (over 2000 credits, wasn't it?), and I got one for about 400 credits in the next auction. It is a very useful rune, but it's not worth what he paid for it, and I don't think it should work for Forcefield.

If it works with Forcefield it's a solid 25% damage reduction that stacks with everything and requires no upkeep. I'd price it at LEAST at 1k. If it doesn't work for Forcefield, you're right, not worth it.

I can honestly say I didn't keep track during the ascension, but if he's the one who became Fillin, he paid 2705 credits for the Great Rune of Charisma (AUCTION INFO 13).

Point is that it shouldn't provide him a solid 25% damage reduction and allow him to tank an obscene amount of guards.

It does though, and he did check to make sure it would before he bought it. Lusternia "fixing" it to not affect forcefield could be a legal issue. I'm not sure how their legal stuff works, but with what I know, it would certainly be a breach of contract.

You know what happened the last time someone abused a certain way artifacts/skills/race/demi stacked together in order to guardbash at 3 AM? DMP was implemented.

Plus I'm pretty sure there's a blurb that covers changes to arties or things bought with credits in the terms of agreement.

Nah, it wouldn't. Can't remember the exact wording, but they've got something in their ToS along the lines of "the contents of the game is ever-changing, and we make no guarantees as to your items or their use". Looking up the exact text right now.

EDIT: There we go.



EDIT 2: And yes, this means that the admin could, technically, turn every single artifact into hearts shooting fluff and every single character into a carebear, and no one would be able to do anything. Aside, y'know, from stop playing and let IRE bury itself. Which is why they'd never do anything like that.

I'm aware of the ever-changing clause. I'm not a lawyer, either (I do know a few things about it though), but I would bet that Ceren contacting the admin directly about the artifact changes the rules of the game a bit.

What you have is a "verbal" contract (written, of course) between consumer and seller. Even if the ToS covers changing artifacts, you can argue that it would be a breach of the "verbal" contract. How well that will hold up in court, however, is beyond me. So, my very not professional opinion says that you'd have two conflicting agreements.

Had Ceren not contacted the admin, then yes, no second contract would exist, and Lusty's ToS would cover the change.


EDIT:

Additionally, I'm pretty sure that the quoted section that Ssaliss posted means that Lusternia has to actually value things. That means they can change the value, but they have to stick to their changes.