Casters: An Introduction

    The most obvious thing to do first is to determine what you want to occur then pick your class order accordingly.  It's also a good idea to figure out your playing style (how you mud).  Then of course stats have to be considered as well.  In addition to all this, there's also the problem of the avatar classes. Then there's the prime only eq and the prime skills/spells.

Prime Spells

    This depends on how much you like specific skills and spells.  It also helps to know what your style of play is so you can better pick skills and spells that complement your playing style.  Equipment is always a consideration at some point in the life of a mud character. For casters, their spells will rise with use, their skills must be pracced. In the long run, casters have more abilities, but only a few will be high leveled and trained.

Casters enjoy mana, they do not gain much armor class. All casters revolve around their max mana and mana regeneration rates. Mages are more destructive, and have quicker fights. Clerics do more damage over time. While sorcerers are a more Long-haul-infinite-run-of-small-medium-things with runs that last for 10-15 minutes. Clerics and mages have pets to help them out, sorcerers have only their spells to fall back upon.

Prime only EQ

    In general there will be a consistent theme among the prime equipment.  This theme may help you select your class order better as you will be able to fill in some stat gaps very easily for certain class orders.  It's simply a way to ensure that bad stats can be fixed easier.

Cleric Divine EQ

  1. Almost all the divine equipment has +mregen and almost no stat bonuses.
  2. The immense diamond warhammer is 2-handed and has a frost cone_3 protect.  It's pretty much worthless if you want to take advantage of a shield.

Clerics need the most thought process with regard of stat order since they receive almost no help with their stats with their prime equipment.  However some things have occured that may make it simpler to choose.  Dual wield is no longer accessible to secondary warriors or thiefs.  This means that there is almost no reason to take warrior secondary as a cl/wa while they may have impressive HP and regen, will never be able to dual wield nor tank if there is a warrior prime who has chosen damage absorption as his skill tree.  Cleric thieves are a very rare breed and doesn't seem to work logically.  This leaves the choice of cl/ma and cl/wa for the diehards that don't mind using a shield and finding one good weapon to use.

Mage Divine EQ

  1. A lot of stat points exist on the equipment, mostly +dex as well as +int.
  2. Mana is on almost every piece.
  3. The staff of the arcane lord is easily one of the best weapons in the game, despite being 2-handed as it sucks mana for the mage.

Mages seem to have the easiest time of it.  As long as they keep thief last, they will be able to fix their dex pretty easily.  The +int on some pieces makes it easy for the mage who reaches avatarhood by raising their int very easily to raise their maximum mana.  The only problem is that they may want their hp to be higher than their mana.  Picking cleric relatively early ensures that it won't be that much of a pain to regen all their mana.  The worst feeling in the world is when you've got 800 mana and 40 mana regen.

Avatar Classes & Class Aligned EQ

    As this hasn't been completed fully yet it's hard to explain this section.  Basically you pick an align by looking at your class order to determine what skills and spells you would be acquiring first.  Some people may actually pick their align based on which align has their favorite skill or spell at the avatar level.  Choose wisely though, as there is eq that only people of a certain align can wear!

Some Suggested Class Orders

Skills versus Levelling

    DO NOT level without a plan!  It's much easier to spend a few hours early on than several hours later trying to level your skills.  One of my favorite tricks is to stay at level 1 and max your level 1 choice skills out (eg: meditation, absorb pain, backstab, etc...).  Then if you run out of practices, level your most useless class (if you're thief quad, level thief) to gain practices to use.  Stop at certain levels to max out certain skills and spells that are most useful to you.  Do not practice useless skills or spells.

It should be noted that if you enjoy going into a room full of mobs and casting area spells (eg: Gnolls, Lycanthropia) to max out BOTH the singular version of the area spell as that's the level the area spell itself works off of in addition to the area spell itself.  Fireball / Meteor Swarm is an excellent example of this, as is Colour Spray / Prismatic Spray.

[Written Mar.28.2003 -- Xare]

[Modified Jan.19.2005 -- Kell]