To expand on these...

1) If you want to maximize your efficiency follow his first piece of advice. Higher your level, lower percentage of mana it takes to cast. I also theorize that you will learn spells much lower in level a bit better, but could be wrong.

2) Location is no joke. The RNG should not be so bad you aren't learning ANYTHING in four hours- especially if you follow step 1. Unless something's changed, spamming in a remote guild worked for me.

3) Yep. Take a break. This is more for you, the player, to keep your sanity. This game should be FUN! .

4) Invokers were (intentionally or unintentionally) designed like this. If you are going crazy with create water, better quit now. As a side, I say assassin kicks are the same thing. Sort of a CF personality test of sorts.

Some other things I can think of.. which really helped me are:

- Ask an appropriate higher level invoker IC how he/she did it! I know I learned a TON of tips like this. Nobody here is going to tell you "go to XXX location", but someone IC might. This probably cut my time learning in half. Almost every invoker knows the pain of practicing spells and will probably want to lessen that pain for others.

- Figure the nuances of learning early. Remember what worked better, worse. Take notes! In all seriousness, you'll get the knack eventually and be able to knock those puppies out quicker when you get more experienced. Vortex aside .

- Plan ahead! Give yourself some goals. Know which are area spells, targetted spells, spammable spells (you can find this by asking or searching boards a bit).

- One questionable tactic is to neglect practicing hth until later in life. This will allow you to knock out targeted combat spells on easier mobs quicker. This is sort of a bang-for-your-buck one, meaning you won't hit those mobs with your lousy hand fighting skills and can get more casts in in a shorter amount of time thus improving your odds a bit. IMO. I found the "not knowing weapon" clause to not apply to hth. Of course, there are some serious downsides to this.

- Another questionable tactic is to try and resist practicing all your skills/spells until you are ready to work on them- for added gains from level bonus. This includes spells outside of your affinity. These can really add up. There's not much worse then gaining a 4% skill up in lash as an invoker .

- I know I'm gonna get grief from some Imms on this as it goes against their plan on learning (hah), but one school of thought on targeted combat spells is to find a place with fast-repopping low-low level mobs and run through them over and over. You can do this in a couple !!very!! safe areas without ever resting. Again, ask IC for some locations.

- Law of diminishing returns really bites you as an invoker. Spells get exponentially tougher to learn once approaching 100%. Often, the time it took me in RL hours to get from 75-95 equaled the time it took to get from 95 to one hundred.

- Sometimes it seems like you're just never gonna learn another percentage in a particular spell. You think something's wrong and want to give up. Them's just the breaks. Stick with it and you'll get there!

- There are easier and tougher spells to learn. Approach it like a test in school: tackle the easiest spells first. Then, on a day when you are feeling like you have exceptionally more mental fortitude then you normally do (hehe), go for a tougher spell (you'll know which are easier/tougher pretty quickly). This may or may not be your personality type, but most people become more motivated and reinforced knowing they accomplished something. Otherwise it's just overwhelming. That's the name of the game.

Good luck, invokers are not for the faint of heart...