More Wish advice

[vogonpoet]

I don't understand the Phial thing. Over the years, people just keep on posting it as the best method for training Ma. I play a lot more wizards than anything else, and I am really 90% certain that the best way to train mana is to empty your PP all at once and recharge it back to full, rinse and repeat. The more PP you take away, the faster you will train mana - In my experience, the Phial barely does anything, but bookcasting SoAtlas/LordlyM in the wilderness until < 10 PP, crossing a few more squares, and bookcasting again, or better yet, book casting death ray, pumps your Mana stat nicely. Am I really the only one who thinks this???

[Concillian]

I don't understand the Phial thing. Over the years, people just keep on posting it as the best method for training Ma. I play a lot more wizards than anything else, and I am really 90&#37; certain that the best way to train mana is to empty your PP all at once and recharge it back to full, rinse and repeat. The more PP you take away, the faster you will train mana - In my experience, the Phial barely does anything, but bookcasting SoAtlas/LordlyM in the wilderness until < 10 PP, crossing a few more squares, and bookcasting again, or better yet, book casting death ray, pumps your Mana stat nicely. Am I really the only one who thinks this???

At my current PP level, 'u'sing the Phial when in the tool slot uses all my PP. A lot quicker than bookcasting half a dozen times... a lot lighter too.

Maybe if you get a very large number of PP, you don't drain all your PP when you 'u'se the Phial. I dunno. But at my current status, it's pretty effective at draining my PP. Just '>' 'u' '<'

My problem is that I'm doing something else while trying to train Mana and I always forget to hit 'u'. Or I play on my laptop, which needs a function keypress in order to activate the keypad overlay and I accidentally lift off that key while moving left (4 / u) and lose all my PP when I don't want to.

[johonka]

I'm pretty sure that like mindcraft, 'U'sing phial does not train mana.

[Concillian]

Spellbooks of Veil of God might be a solid choice depending on whether you have other permanent invisibility sources...

Use Garth to get Le to 18-19 and then eat the oracle while sick/starved. PoEX are unnecessary.

I did the Garth thing and ate Oracle, though not while sick or starved. I got +5 to bring me to 24 Le. Used the doom / curse to go boar hunting. Decided to pop the crown on for double effect. Insight noted it was "enhanced through an item". I managed to get a corpse from the second boar and a skull from the third. Day 122 now, and a lot of that was jumping in and out of the ToEF when I was scumming for corpses without full fire immunity.

Once I had all that done I went to get my books and my one un-id'ed spellbook was Veil of God =). Acid Bolt also dropped somewhere along the way and a wilderness bandit gave me a PoGA. With 24 base Le plus 13 for ring + crown, I was getting around 300 casting points a read for spells under 100. This was a very welcome change from the 30-100 per read I was getting in the past. I feel like I might be able to actually cast spells without much worry now.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I don't understand the Phial thing. Over the years, people just keep on posting it as the best method for training Ma. I play a lot more wizards than anything else, and I am really 90% certain that the best way to train mana is to empty your PP all at once and recharge it back to full, rinse and repeat. The more PP you take away, the faster you will train mana - In my experience, the Phial barely does anything, but bookcasting SoAtlas/LordlyM in the wilderness until < 10 PP, crossing a few more squares, and bookcasting again, or better yet, book casting death ray, pumps your Mana stat nicely. Am I really the only one who thinks this???

I never bother to get the Phial (quite useless if you ask me), and just train mana by casting and bookcasting. My intuition from playing is that you train Ma by regenerating PP, just as you train Healing (and maybe even a bit of To) by regenerating HP. Just use magic a lot (if you're a wizard with plenty of available spell castings, and relying a lot on spells, you don't even need to bookcast that much) and your Ma score will be nice soon.

[JellySlayer]

The phial always empties most (all?) of your PP in one shot, so it would be far more efficient than repeated bookcastings if it trains Mana. I'm not sure if it does though.

[mike]

I don't know for sure - like AK, I don't usually bother getting the phial (unless I'm giving it to our purple friend in DT). But the logic doesn't seem sound. Strange magical shocks also empty all PP, but I've never seen reports of + mana from stairhopping.

[BurnedToast]

It's not regenerating mana that trains Ma - mindcrafters DO NOT train Ma from using mindcraft like johonka said. You can drain your PP with confusion blast all day long and never gain a single Ma point.

That said, I have no idea if the phial trains Ma or not - I haven't bothered getting it in so long. If it does, then I guess it has at least some marginal use.

[vogonpoet]

The phial always empties most (all?) of your PP in one shot, so it would be far more efficient than repeated bookcastings if it trains Mana. I'm not sure if it does though.

Gaa, now I am even more confused... I though the phial cast light every turn for a small amount of PP used, so that it takes quite a few turns (loads if you are a wizard) before your PP is drained...

[Sami]

Phial always uses all your PP in a single use but the range depends on how many PP was used. With high PP it is possible to light whole level with a single use (maybe somewhere around 600-700 when used in middle of the level).

Using phial does not seem to train mana (tested with level 1 bard who had 1 mana, concentration naturally increased from 20 to 54 but mana didn't raise within thousands of turns).