gnome wizard (Starting out)

[gosos]

I saw several people on here say that Gnome Wizards are a strong combination. I am having alot of trouble starting them. They are not real forgiving.

-- always start with treasure hunter (figure this helps with spellbooks even though wizards get more)
-- since you get healing and herbalism, do the druid quest, but max herbalism before finishing to get gardening (I have never gotten this far)
-- suggested to start in the UD (but I seem to die)
-- candle (is this still the bets for gomes)
-- max concentration immediately, then raise up herbalism (enough to max before finishing druid), healing, first aid, alchemy.
-- i get 4 trains to start with
-- talents during early game: take talents to get power points (All 3), then 1 to raise Magic damage. Then I would guess speed increase, but I don't tend to live too long.
-- gnomes level really,really fast which is helpful.

What I have noticed
-- highly dependent on the luck of the starting spellbook. you can start with no offensive spells. so no point in continuing if you don't get atleast 1 offensive spellbook
-- best start would be 2 offensive spellbooks, Small Cave has the down dungeon right next to the entrance. so then can leave and hit ID to level some and get some spellbooks, etc...
-- raising up STR is trivial. can get to max potential of 15 or so in the first dozen levels
-- learning and mana don't seem to go up real fast. even when i read all spellbooks and cast alot. the farthest I got was level 13 and I got 1 point of mana and 1 point of learning.

Questions:
1. how do you deal with early golems? Clay golems seem resistant to just about all spells and wizards are not fast.
2. i can freeze water with cold spells right? I never got any. you don't get swimming and low HP makes crossing really hard
3. is it worth it to try to sacrifice mobs to crown? with paladins you get the holy symbol which radically lowers the loss of Piety. Plus gnomes are neutral so I can't sacrifice Animals. so its probably not worth it. PRobably best to do some, so I can eat the oracle and remove doom/curse
4. how do you work around food preservation? i don't think I can keep corpses alive long enough to get kleethrax back. so no cure corruption and I doubt I can keep other stuff alive long enough. so ill be in trouble on cure corruption scrolls. are magical writing sets more common? So the one I get in high mountain village can be copied? won't i lose mana doing this?
5. you may get alot of spellbooks, but there are many different types. if i only get 1 offensive spell I run out of uses after a while. then I'm done. what do you do?
6. if i go to ID and stay in the first 3 levels am I more likely to get spellbooks since the spell books are danger level 1? If drops are random and there is less stuff that can drop, I would think staying at low danger levels is important.


any other tips? These are tough to get started. I tend to do better with paladins, though i have never gotten that far, but one or two mistakes with a gnome wizard and I am toast where as paladins i can recover from mistakes.

[Stingray1]

Why don't you just continue with the Paladin.

[gosos]

trying out different things.

also what do the numbers mean next to spells? I use up different amounts when I cast. WHen I get better at it, does the number I use up go down less? Eventually down to 1 per use? I don't see this in the guide or wiki.

[Stingray1]

All the numbers are explained in the ingame manual

[persy]

I suggest you shouldn't try to kill black driud for now, it takes a bit of luck and/or experience to take him down with a low gnome wizard.
Magic damage talents are not so good to be picked in early game.
Also candle is not the ultimate birth sign, try others. Be fast with raven, smart with book. Or have extra pp with Salamander.

[JellySlayer]

-- since you get healing and herbalism, do the druid quest, but max herbalism before finishing to get gardening (I have never gotten this far)

You don't need gardening as a wizard... it is definitely worth considering the spellbook and wand. Drakes and dwarves are better than gnomes, IMHO. The druid is only weak to acid and magic missiles. He resists fire/lightning/cold.


-- suggested to start in the UD (but I seem to die)

I don't recommend UD start for beginners. Other areas are much easier. UD is quite challenging.


-- candle (is this still the bets for gomes)

Candle is always the best, though Raven is definitely worth thinking about.


-- talents during early game: take talents to get power points (All 3), then 1 to raise Magic damage. Then I would guess speed increase, but I don't tend to live too long.

Magic damage talent isn't so good. Better just to take speed right away. Or even Hardy/Tough skin/Iron skin


-- learning and mana don't seem to go up real fast. even when i read all spellbooks and cast alot. the farthest I got was level 13 and I got 1 point of mana and 1 point of learning.

Ma tends to go up if your PP gets very low. Cast high PP spells or bookcast.


1. how do you deal with early golems? Clay golems seem resistant to just about all spells and wizards are not fast.

Keep a melee weapon on hand. They are not so terribly strong. Spells like burning hands can't be shrugged and are handy for this as well.


2. i can freeze water with cold spells right? I never got any. you don't get swimming and low HP makes crossing really hard

Choosing 'power' from the druid quest will give you these. Frost bolt books can spawn occasionally otherwise.


3. is it worth it to try to sacrifice mobs to crown? with paladins you get the holy symbol which radically lowers the loss of Piety. Plus gnomes are neutral so I can't sacrifice Animals. so its probably not worth it. PRobably best to do some, so I can eat the oracle and remove doom/curse

I never bother with early crownings. My character usually get crowned around level 18. Wizards aren't a great class for early crowning because most of their gifts are fairly lame.


4. how do you work around food preservation? i don't think I can keep corpses alive long enough to get kleethrax back. so no cure corruption and I doubt I can keep other stuff alive long enough. so ill be in trouble on cure corruption scrolls. are magical writing sets more common? So the one I get in high mountain village can be copied? won't i lose mana doing this?

You lose lots of Ma writing SoCR. Not recommended unless you're desperate. You can keep corpses from rotting by blessing them with holy water or casting remove curse every time they start to rot, though neither of these options are particularly good. You can also cook valuable corpses with fire spells, which tends to preserve them better.


5. you may get alot of spellbooks, but there are many different types. if i only get 1 offensive spell I run out of uses after a while. then I'm done. what do you do?

Don't waste your spells. Kill weak monsters in melee. Also, don't read your books completely right at the start. Read till you get a few hundred castings then store your book somewhere safe.


6. if i go to ID and stay in the first 3 levels am I more likely to get spellbooks since the spell books are danger level 1? If drops are random and there is less stuff that can drop, I would think staying at low danger levels is important.

This effect is very small, but yes, technically on lower DL you are marginally more likely to find books.

[grobblewobble]

Instead of going through the UD, you might want to try going to dwarftown directly. The lower CoC is one of the easier places to start and very rewarding. Along the way you get the arena (unlimited light food and a nice sum of gold if you do the first 19 fights), followed by guaranteed herbs, then in dwarftown you get a guaranteed shop that usually has something good, a guaranteed altar and the most rewarding early game quest there is: Nonnak.

By the way Nonnak is vulnerable to fire, so as a wizard you should ideally use burning hands on him.

[anon123]

Also candle is not the ultimate birth sign, try others. Be fast with raven, smart with book. Or have extra pp with Salamander.

Cup is also good for a wizard.

[asdf]

Candle is always the best, though Raven is definitely worth thinking about.

Book is decent too, with its +3 Le bonus/+1 skill per level/+easier spell learning.
It is easily ultimate pure spellcaster starsign, and also could be used as a "i have bad race/class combo, but i want to cast spells too". With some luck it could also result in going from 3skills/lvlup to 5skills/lvlup, which is really big deal for some characters.

[anon123]

Book gives +3 Learning? Is that an undocumented trait? I'm curious now, I've generated several Book PCs with a little more Le than they'd usually have...

[asdf]

Book gives +3 Learning? Is that an undocumented trait? I'm curious now, I've generated several Book PCs with a little more Le than they'd usually have...
Seems to be undocumented, yes. I was curious about how much St would perfect Troll Barbarian roll would give, and while researching mechanics behind character generation - found this unknown stat increase for Book-born characters.

ps: perfect roll would give troll 40-41 St at the beginning, iirc, Trolls are so OP, they have 18 base St + 0-9 random St (in case of random attributes) just for being Troll...

[anon123]

Wow, that's awesome. In that case, I think Book will be my starsign of choice for wizards. Thanks :)

PS: what was the St potential for the perfect troll? 80? :D

[gosos]

1. why is +3 learning so valuable? Its only 3 points?
2. why would i hold onto spellbooks and not read them all the way down? I thought they get a random number of uses each.
3. someone said to cast when pp is low to raise mana or bookcast. what does book cast have to do with raising mana? by low pp to get mana, how low? less than 10% left or a set amount? or take my mana to 0 when I cast?
4. so drakeling or dwarf are best for beginniner wizards? the pre-releases say gnome wizard, but they are tricky. one mistake and dead.
5. i would think gardening would be awesome for a gnome wizard. my dex, wil, and tough potentials were quite high, but my stats were low. why would i want the items over gardening as a gnome wizard.
6. i read the manual, but how do the numbers on spells work. when i cast the amount that the number of casts I have go down by different amounts. does it go down by less as I get better? I am having trouble figuring out how many casts I have?
7. does anyone have any other race/class combos to try? So far I have played troll/bezerker, drakeling,dwarf/paladins, gnome wizards, and troll/healers, I want to try different things to learn different mechanics.
8. is pickpocket (even nerfed) useful to wizards? since you get alot of light items, i would think the scrolls,rings, potions would be more useful? However, wizards are not very forgiving, so wasting turns pickpocketing is uber dangerous?
9. is stealth useful for wizards? I read that it was enhanced in 1.2. i dont know how well it works.
10. one of the tricks with wizards is not nuking drops. so any offensive spells besides magic missile not destroy stuff on the ground?

So CoC for wizard first. it also seems like what spellbooks you start with make a big difference in whether you get somehere. I would think that ID might be bets first to stay at high levels to collect stuff and play it safe, then CoC to dwarftown.
Thank you for the tip on the talents. I thought the +15 power points for the gnome mage was good, but i level so fast i dont really need. quick, ironskin is probably better. makes getting hit more forgiving and i can move. plus you need to be burned alot early to get your strength to a decent level .
Thank you for the tip about cooking corpses and remove curse on a corpse when rotten. i didnt realize that they were considered cursed when rotted

i like the idea of running to dwarftown early because Ill get a lower level monster quest.

[anon123]

1. why is +3 learning so valuable? Its only 3 points?

It's three points of a stat that's rather difficult to increase.

Reading books trains it, but is likely to fail if it's low to begin with, which is when you want it the most. Even later on, it doesn't usually yield increases unless you read a ton of books in a row, or some complicated ones like Create Item. The oracle corpse used to give a very nice +6 Le if you ate it using starvation training, but on 1.2.0 that doesn't work anymore. Crystals of knowledge are also affected by the potential nerf, not to mention Gemology isn't guaranteed and few R/C combos start with it. Garth can train Learning, but 1.2.0 also removes a few means to get the prerequisite lots of gold easily. So every point of Le gained is more precious than it already was before, and +3 is a nice bonus.

[GordonOverkill]

@gosos:

I am not the biggest expert for magical chars, so use the information carefully ;-)

1. From my experience a higher lerning stat gives you more castings per try and also increases the chance to successfully learn a spell. The chance of additional skill increases is not too bad, too.
2. Because failed attemps to read a spellbook could have fatal results (from destruction of the book to high damage... I even killed some wizards that way), so you may want to increase Learning and/or Literacy at first. Also you might want to bookcast certain spells at certain times.
3. I think the process of regenerating mana points trains your mana stat, don't think that it matters how many points you have spent. Not sure about the training effect of book casting.
4. If you want some more HP to start with, chose a tougher race like drakeling, dwarf or even troll. Gnomes and elves have the strongest magical powers but you have to be damn careful. Chose what you like better ;-)
5. Never used it with a wizard and didn't play the brand new releases, so I have no clue.
6.The first number is a rough indicator of how many castings you have. How many points you need for one casting seems to vary from situation to situation... don't know how exactly. Second number is PP cost and also varies a little, if I am not wrong. Third number is your experience with this spell, somehow makes it more effective. Fourth number is the range of effect. Fifth number is the amount of damage done (or the amount of points that are healed, depending on the spell). Actually from my experience it is not all too important to know how many castings you have exactly. My wizards very, very rarely run out of spells. If you are concerned about that, maybe play an Elemantalist who get's new offensive spells with each experience level.
7. As long as you don't play an exaptionally bad combo, it doesn't matter that much. All my four game-winning characters were randomly created and all of my really overpowered ones died because of carelessness. No barbarian or wizard among the winners, no Candle- or Raven-born. For an unexperienced player a good dose of luck during the game is alot more important than a powerfull race/class-combination... and the extra-attention while playing a weaker char might be exactly what you need in order to win.
8. Never used it, so no clue.
9. Works and trains passivly, so no need to care too much about it.
10. No. But some do more often than others (acid more than all).

[Stingray1]

What I can add on Mana training is; that it seems to train better the more PP you expend on a single casting, hence casting high PP cost spells or bookcasting. Don't HP cast in 1.2.0 pre7 and later, unless you have loads of morgia and don't mind having your Wi and To dropping on checks.

[grobblewobble]

7. does anyone have any other race/class combos to try? So far I have played troll/bezerker, drakeling,dwarf/paladins, gnome wizards, and troll/healers, I want to try different things to learn different mechanics.

Archers play really differently than the things you tried, they rock. Duelists are the best melee class once they reach the midgame. If you're looking for more challenging ideas, you could give mindcrafters a try or bards.

[gosos]

@anon123: you said that 1.2 makes it harder to get gold. when? I notice a huge increase in value of items i find below dwarftown. I can make a run and come back and make 30k gold easily and that is just a couple levels down and not alot of time.
i am confused.

[anon123]

Dragon doubling is fixed, casino gambling now corrupts, and summoned monsters no longer drop items, including gold pieces.

[gosos]

you mentioned bookcasting to train pp? why would bookcasting help?

[anon123]

When you cast a spell, Mana is trained in proportion to the spell's cost (unless you cast from HP). Bookcasting increases that cost (3x without any special talents), and thus the training received.