Magery Training: Scrolls vs Regs

Discussion in 'Guides' started by corruption, Aug 17, 2013.

  1. corruption

    corruption Well-Known Member
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    The goal of this guide is to try to lay out the total costs associated with training magery through a variety of methods; and determine what the cheapest and most effective route from NPC trained to GM is. This will only explore the magery side of gains; resist is a separate set of gains that I will not be exploring. I will be comparing the costs of using casted spells vs spell scrolls, as well as the cost of using damaging spells vs neutral or beneficial spells; these costs will be broken down to reagent and scroll cost per cast, with the goal of revealing the method with the lowest cost per .1 gain.

    The theory, is that scrolls may well be a superior option for low to mid-level training of magery; like a failed cast attempt, you do not spend mana with a failed scroll attempt. However, unlike a failed cast attempt, you do not spend the scroll when you fail – if you can get a higher number of failed attempts, while in a gain 'sweet spot' for your current level, then you should be able to benefit from the reduced number of resources and associated cost for the training of magery. I expect that high level magery will not be effectively trained with this methodology, as you have a greater than 70% chance to succeed with an 8th circle spell using a scroll with 80 skill; it does seem like it could significantly reduce the cost, and potentially speed up, the training of magery up to the mid to high 70's however. I aim to prove this.

    Chance to succeed at casting is being based on the following formula:

    Code:
    X = Player Skill
    Z = Minimum Skill
    Y = Chance of Success
    Y = (X-Z)*2.5%
    
    Where 2.5 is the the average percent gain of one skill point.

    As a note here; this is a project that I had already initiated on another shard, and the numbers I have presented here are based on my preliminary work on this project there. These numbers, as far as I know, are accurate to this shard as well; staff, please clarify if my calculations are off anywhere.

    The chance for casting with scrolls, follows the same requirements per circle as casting normally, minus 2 circles. So, the required skill for magery per circle breaks down as such:

    [​IMG]

    The breakdown of chance per skill looks like this for magery:

    [​IMG]

    And the breakdown of chance per skill looks like this for scrolls:

    [​IMG]

    These possibilities to cast will be the basis of my spell choices; I will be trying to ignore the established conventions to come to my own neutral conclusions on the best way from 30 to GM.

    Data will be added as I collect it, along with thorough documentation of all methodology used as well as macros. My results will be as easy to reproduce as I can possibly make them; though this will take some time to accumulate the guide as a completed entity. Feel free to get at me via IRC if you have any questions/suggestions/wish to discuss; if I have time I'm always happy to chat :)

    MORE TO COME -- INCOMPLETE

    There is still much work for me to do, and now others have offered their assistance in helping figure this out. As preliminary results, I'm quite happy to report that my theories about reducing the cost of Lightning casting appears to be accurate. Thus far, I've used just over 500 scrolls on my first test char, and gone from 39.8 shown, to 58.7 shown. The cost reduction is drastic; though the hard numbers still need to be shaken out. There is much more to come on this; this has not been forgotten.
  2. corruption

    corruption Well-Known Member
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  3. corruption

    corruption Well-Known Member
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  4. jefferyjay

    jefferyjay Member

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    Hey man, just wondering if you ever came to a conclusion on this? I cast 100 lightning scrolls at 30 real magery with 0 gains. I'm casting 25 Ebolt scrolls now, still at 30 real magery with some gains. Any info/ideas?
  5. corruption

    corruption Well-Known Member
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    As I stated on my profile, but I'll reiterate here for others benefit:

    Well, the conclusion was largely that it was a wash. If you have scrolls, they can be cheaper than buying regs -- but the scroll cost ultimately balances out. The key, however, is to use a high circle scroll -- as high as possible -- so that you fail as much as possible. Casting with scrolls will cast 2 circles higher (if you have 40 real skill, a 6th circle scroll won't give gains often, if at all).

    What I found to work, was using 6th/7th circle scrolls until about 62, and 8th circle scrolls until about 85 -- however, this was just testing how far I could take skill gains off scrolls alone. Its likely more efficient to just target regs unless you have the scrolls, but I never finalized my findings. I still intend to at some point, but the grand conclusion was that its only really worth it if you have scrolls of circle 6/7/8 already from working up a scribe. I saw my best gains with invisibility (6th circle), flame strike (7th circle) and resurrection (8th circle) scrolls -- but the specific spell doesn't matter, only the circle does.
  6. Wodan

    Wodan Well-Known Member
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    I've been using scrolls for magery training ALOT now, thanks Cocobot for the initial research.

    My experience is, that training beyond 60 REAL magery isn't worth it and you should start with a higher level scroll as soon as you have 0.001% success chance.

    Every time I start a char that gets higher magery (which is the case in 518% of the time) I first make sure to get INT to 100.

    Then I get a ghost and put 200 res scrolls on my char-in-training and just use up all those res scrolls. This will ALWAYS take me to 59-62 REAL magery. Yeah I know I suck for using REAL skill as a reference all the time but YOU suck if your training with less than 100 INT.

    Well actually you're pretty smart if you train with less than 100 INT. If you wanna maximize REAL skill gain here, make sure you train with exactly 50 INT. This will increase the failure rate and lets you gain up to 65 real skill with just 200 res scrolls.

    Funny thing is the scroll consumption kinda develops exponential. While you get the first 5.0 gains from 30 scrolls, the last 1.0 will probably cost you 30 scrolls as well. I tried 150 and 250 and 300 scrolls and found 200 scrolls to be the sweet spot.

    This only makes sense if you make the scrolls yourself. The going rate for bulk res scrolls is pretty nasty and kinda ruins the whole idea of saving some coins.

    If you ever train a scribe make sure you keep the 8th circle scrolls you craft and use them for the following char you train.
  7. Sheepdog

    Sheepdog Well-Known Member

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    Question:

    Has anybody experimented with some sort of "all in one" scribe/magery/resist/heal training?

    In my head it would be:

    Restock macro for relevant regs to make scroll
    Make scroll
    If successful use scroll

    2nd character heals.

    I figured that would technically reduce the cost of training magery in a sort of 2 for 1 skill train.

    If anybody has tried this I'd be really interested to know the results/viability and if no ones tried this I'd be happy to give it a bash to see what's up.

    Thanks!
    Althorn likes this.
  8. PaddyOBrien

    PaddyOBrien Well-Known Member

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    That would actually be pretty interesting... go for it!!
  9. Sheepdog

    Sheepdog Well-Known Member

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    I will! hope you are all ready for a detailed analytic breakdown in due course because I will totally nerd the f*ck out on this. Hah

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