So, after trying out a few characters and exploring around,
I rolled up an invoker character. It seemed really interesting to play.
I also really needed to play something besides a warrior so I could use identify on things.

So, at this point I'm running into problems because

1. My only successful pk strategy with this character has always been run, run, run, with the occasional potion or scroll use. This got magnified with the addition of teleport to the spell list.

This would be fine, except...

2. I don't seem able to kill any NPCs except the ones so far below my rank I get 0 xp. This makes the character somewhat useless and completely unfun for id and exploration since I can't acquire anything not already on the floor, and my exploration is limited to judicious looking around without passing any guards that see invisible.

At this point, the character seems completely useless except for perhaps teleporting around, looking around, and identifying anything I'm lucky enough to find on the floor. Since I admire the elegance of this game and the way the classes are balanced, I have to ask:

What are the right ways to play an Invoker, and what are the balancing things that make this class playable?





I suppose if I happened on a solo warrior fighting something or someone else to the death, and I happend to be invisible and he happned to be convulsing on the ground, I might be able to snipe him, but I'd give myself worse than even odds.

I expected this to be the case when I was playing a level 3 invoker.
That's par for the course for a mage in almost any role playing game. But in the mid 20s now, and able to cast fireballs and lightning bolts and such, I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong.

I've tried things such as getting the jump on a lone warrior by blinding him via a scroll while invisible, but my character was hacked and slashed to the point where I must flee before the recite lag has faded.

In other MUDs I've played, mages even the score against stronger warriors by being very nimble. They cast a spell, flee, and run back in to cast another spell. This gives them at least a fighting chance.
The melee sysem here doesn't support that sort of hit and run tactic to my understanding.

On some DIKU muds I've played haste spells decrease spell lag by 1/2, allowing a mage the ability to cast spells twice as fast. This advantage doesn't accrue to users of haste on CF, by my examination of the help files.

And against NPCs, I have no idea what to do. This char can barely survive 3 melee rounds against most things that are evenly matched.
I've tried training up hp, but it doesn't seem to be a significant help.

What should I be doing? It's not very fun to play a teleporting
rabbit, both for PK and NPCs, and at this point I'm considering abandoning the character after many hours and many deaths thinking about and trying different ideas.

But if you are trying to get the jump on a warrior and blind him, do it just after he starts hitting a mob, so that whilst you are lagged from reciting, the mob is taking hits and not you (unless you happened to fail the recital or he saved vs the scroll).

My gnome voker basically killed people as follows:

Used size to avoid being lagged so easily. Cast a spell or two (exploiting vulns where poss), then recalled, healed and refreshed at healer, went back and hit the warrior again until he died. Worked more often than you might expect. Of course, it is a quite expensive process.

Let me start by saying that conventional wisdom is that invokers shouldn't fight at the lower levels. They should try like hell to level to at least about 40 ASAP. Many of the toughest invokers in recent memory have worked on this philosophy.

Now, I'm about to tell you that's all crap, but I wanted you to be aware that mine is something of a minority opinion before I continued.

Exploration and killing mobs first: The answer that would best serve you right now is, you can't do these things alone. You might be well served to think of your character as like the archer/artillery division in a medieval army -- not meant or able to really deal with the thick of combat (tanking, in CF terms) but able to dish out a lot of punishment/damage if others stand in the way. Group with a warrior or assassin or someone who can take the blows, and lay down damage from behind them.

PK next: an invoker is incredibly deadly at the low-midlevels. Often, you won't be able to live through three rounds of combat. That's okay, because if you play your cards right, your opponent will be dead after two. An invoker can't solo PK for long and be undefeated at those levels; it can, on the other hand, kill a lot more than it dies.

A bit of preparation can be useful here (e.g., flight for opponents likely to trip you), but honestly, it only goes so far and you can throw the whole wad at someone and still get smoked. Ideally, you just want to not tank if you can help it. Mercenaries are an option up to a point here, and PC groupmates are a much better one. Working without them, you can try to catch your prey fighting a mob or someone else and lay into them.

Good luck! An invoker is unmatched magical firepower, but it's also one of the most fragile characters in the game in many circumstances and in many ways.

And all of the below are just my opinion.

1. For gear identifying, and this may be a day late and a copper short (HA!), but playing a good-aligned mage will allow you to request items from good-aligned mobs that are higher level than you and then ID them.

2. Sure, you may be in your mid-20s and unable to kill mobs in the mid-20s to ID their gear...but there's still some pretty good gear on lower level mobs that you can use. And if you take notes (or have a good memory), this knowlege will help later characters. So when you make it to the mid-30s and are killing mobs for gear in the mid-20s, you'll find out what you were missing...but you'll still have that knowledge for later use.

3. There aren't a whole lot of high-level mobs with uber-gear that can be soloed by a Hero character...but of the three classes out there that I think are the best at doing this, invoker is one of them. The point is, at hero, invokers are very, very, very powerful. You pay for this power (to a certain extent) by being less powerful than others at the lower ranks.

4. For PK, invokers have the ability to exploit some racial vulnerabilities through their wide arsenal of spells. Fighting an arial? Bust out your lightning bolt. Fighting a felar? Lay down some fireballs on his ass. Fighting a fire giant? Cone of cold (yes, I know you don't have that yet) or iceneedles...ouch! Fighting a human...well, that's going to depend a lot more on his class. However, you can translate this to fighting mobs. For the same reason folks love to rank on elves (iron vulnerability), invokers do really well ranking on (or just killing to ID gear) mobs that have racial elemental vulnerabilities.

5. If you can't exploit a racial vulnerability, don't fight warriors at low levels. I say again: don't fight warriors at low levels! They will easily outmelee you in the mid 20s, probably using a weapon you aren't familiar with and therefore have a lot of trouble parrying. Classes that only have two or three attacks per round...those you'll have a better chance against.

Remember, not every class is good against every other class at every level. This is intentional. But every dog has his day, and invokers are no exception. It can be done. I had a level 14 assassin character of mine sent packing by a level 15 invoker, and I was the one who initiated combat. And I've had heros spanked, I mean *spanked*, by high-level invokers. Stick with it, you'll be rewarded.

> Fighting a fire giant? Cone of cold (yes, I know you don't have
> that yet) or iceneedles...ouch!

Iceneedles do physical damage, and thus, fire giants are resistant to them. You should have said iceshards.

>Iceneedles do physical damage, and thus, fire giants are
>resistant to them. You should have said
>iceshards.

But iceneedles can knock several of their more important stats down to nothing in one blast. I'd advicate opening up with iceneedles. Afterwhich, yes, I'd switch to iceshards.

*heh* Yeah, I did mean iceshards, not iceneedles. Thanks for pointing that out!

Magi dress up differently than warriors. Magi tend to gear for hp, while warriors gear for damroll and hitroll(or at least my warriors do ;D).

Many invoker spells lag you only one round and deal pretty good damage. Dress up for hp(you should have no problems getting desert cloaks from Araile and glauruk-hide gear from poacher in that swamp southwest from Feanwyyn. Both are goodies, so you can request them if you are a goodie, but you should be able to kill them as well). Use the target character's vulnerability against him(ice against fire giant, fire against felar, etc.).

Invokers deal a lot of damage, but as magi they are also frail. Getting invoker shields at level 38 helps a lot if you bother to play that far. If you can't handle the invoker PK now, rank up to shields and you have nice elemental immunities(that finally allow you to solo-rank if you know what you are doing) and some damage reduction as well.

My advice to you is rank up to 38(with a group, of course) and start PK:ing after you have shields. I suspect that you'll just keep losing before that.