This is my first post to the Forum, I guess you could say I am relatively new player, so I wont flame something I dont understand, I'll just ask my question and see what kind of response I get. Is it just me, or do conjurers die ALOT? I mean at 100 hours my conjurer is down to 8 con, and he is a Hero. Ive found a ton of 'preps' as everyone calls them, aura, shield, barrier, stoneskin, but even when using them I tend to get my ass handed to me. Fighting Kostyan and Igbah is out of the question if I want to live and keep the little gear Ive managed to collect, mostly donations from friendly types. I know one factor is I'm just not the best at PK, but taking that into consideration even, a terrible angel, and a fire elemental who shows me his teeth when I consider him, aura, barrier, shield, and stoneskin up, ohhh, I forgot my mantle of the phoenix as well, which I understand grants protection from evil, and Im spanked handily. Just wondering what I'm doing wrong, or if its just supposed to be this way? Another thing I just remembered as well, my familiar is a faerie dragon, warded, and warrior edges, and it was attacking him too, but Im dead and he has some small scratches, my servitors could not hit him. Like I said, not a flame, just a query from a frustrated someone who spent alot time heroing a wimpy conjurer.

Facts of life of a conjurer

1. Your archon will never sanc you when you need it most
2. Your archon will ALWAYS give you the least needed prep at a time (e.g. you will be given fly when you could really use that protective shield or SANC..SANC > than everything else)
3. Your servitors will always be 1 hour away from leaving when you need them the most
4. You will get the weakest servitor when you need the strongest


Seriously I've been on a conjurer kick and played about 4 in the last six months or so, and a total of 6 up to 40ish in my CF lifetime. They are not weak, and I have had the most success PK wise with an EVIL conjurer(though my successful pk != to most others). They are annoying sometimes, and require a little more forethought than any other class. Invokers can react on the fly, a conjurer must think ahead about what they will be fighting for the next 50 ticks to decide what kind of servitors to call. Angels if you are fighting obviously evil classes (think necromancers). Archons for tougher stuff where a win is not necessarily killing them, but not dying either. Lots of races have elemental vulns, and the elem command gives you even more utility.

And like others have said..some people are just beasts and either require very creative thinking or gangs to kill them..(even then that won't work everytime or even most of the time if they are that good).

But no its not supposed to be the way you are thinking it is. CF has gotten more newbie friendly over the years, but still has a high learning curve, I've been playing for years and I consider myself just 1 step past a newbie. When you play second conjurer and your third conjurer you will find you survive more, maybe even kill more. The things you learn from your previous characters definitely help on the next.

Anyways good luck, and don't give up.

There are some tough characters (Kostyan, Kornuel, Igbah, Fatfrumos, e.t.c.) whom you cannot kill. So NEVER fight them alone (even if you have to reraid from them). NEVER fight in a group against group with any of those characters within. If you fight as a group against 1 of them - ALWAYS use archon (not angel) and always cast dispel magic on them as many times as needed to dispel their preps (only aura, barrier and shield cannot be dispelled - even dispeling their enlarge can win a battle for your group).

You can use angel and preps against weaker enemies, but i wouldn't recommend it. ALWAYS use archons and spend last points of your constitution for exploring (because conjurers are very good at it and you'll need this knowledge for your future characters). Try to find how to regear your future characters at different levels.

Nobody expects you to kill evils. But we all expect that as goodie conjurer you shouldn't die at all!

Few years later after playing many different classes you can attemp to play conjurer again and it will be VERY different game.

This advice kind of sucks. What's the point of fighting a Kostyan or Igbah with an archon, other than to just cover your ass RP-wise? You don't have much hope of killing one of them with an archangel, but you have even less with an archon.

If/when you do have to fight someone scary, be sure to get the archon to sanc you before engaging the person. I used to use mephits for that (attacking and killing them immediately after conjuring), but that may be a no-no for some good-aligned conjurers.

I killed Igbah with an Archangel. Maybe not solo, but it pwned him. It wouldn't have happened if I'd used an archon. I also chased off some of the most competant pkers around at the time, including Eoria and Ravon, using an angel. Using an archon wouldn't have done that.

There are many arguments you could use, both for and against that fact, but it essentially proves Shapa is wrong. Angels will kill your enemies far more than archons will - and if not, they're far, far more likely to chase them off. A competant user of angels can scare off the likes of Igbah and Kostyan - however broken Kostyan's defenses may be, angels still use Pillar of Lightning and various other very nasty attacks. Throwing out a random and unblockable OBLIT just after a bash is exactly the kind of thing that will kill.

Yhorian

I said "not much hope" not "no hope". So you're not really contradicting what I said.

My point was mostly to discredit what Shapa said as non-sense, but I think you'd be surprised at just how much a prepped conjurer with an archangel has versus any evil. I've still got a lot of Siphana logs I haven't posted, but you've already seen fortress versus scion and how people died to the angel despite us technically losing the fight.

Yhorian

>I killed Igbah with an Archangel. Maybe not solo, but it
>pwned him. It wouldn't have happened if I'd used an archon. I
>also chased off some of the most competant pkers around at the
>time, including Eoria and Ravon, using an angel. Using an
>archon wouldn't have done that.

if you had used archont I could not kill you. As soon as you used angel I kicked your ass. Yep archangel made me ran and do few more tries but only because I was trying to kill you instead of just making you run(so I had to use different tactic). And killing you is way more easy if you have angel.

Yhorian i respect you, but please NEVER give advices to newbies. NEVER!

1. I WAS GIVING AN ADVICE TO DUDE WHO PLAYS HIS FIRST CHARACTER AND ALMOST CON DEAD. He DOESN'T NEED to kill anybody, he needs to spend his last points of constitution to learn how to regear for his future characters because good conjurer is the best for it (that's how i learned myself about worm, e.t.c.). I didn't give an advice for elite cf player how to play conjurers - because they DO NOT need my or your advice.

2. I don't know how much people it took to gang Igbah or did it happen at all.

3. Logs you posted on dio only proved that i'm 100% right. You only killed newbie bard who didn't want to teleport away when almost dead for a really long time. In another log you killed ambra with A LOT OF aid of your groupmate (and it was pure luck). In the rest of logs you was dying and dying and it probably wouldn't happen if you used archon.

4. Yes, you CAN chase off some competant pkers but you CANNOT actually kill them. Dude who plays his first character won't actually kill them for sure. WHY PUT YOURSELF IN THE SITUATION WHERE YOU CANNOT KILL ENEMIE BUT CAN EASILY DIE YOURSELF? (fighting toughest characters at the moment for a newbie is like fighting Cabdru for you - would you do it?) With Archon he will at least die less often to them!

5. Once again - we are giving an advice to the dude who plays his first character. And there is no way for him to kill anybody but 43-44 lvl unpreped people as goodie conjurer, but instead he can spend his con doing something good for him as player.

6. I can imagine what a goodie conjurer can do in the hands of very good player, but someone who is almost con dead as goodie conjurer should ALWAYS use archon.

If you have preps (and you mentioned having preps), an angel can often save you where an archon will not.

Typically a bard (or whoever), will dirt the archon.

Then it's melee will do very little to the bard, and meanwhile you are getting no healing.

An angel on the other hand will bust out nasty spells on him.

His point was that if you have protections, an angel can be safer than an archon.

I think you have a pretty decent chance of killing Igbah/Kostyan with an archangel. You just need to prep so that you don't get one shotted with flurry, then kite them with the angel. They might get away, but prepped conjie with archangel is nothing to sneeze at.

You stand a better chance of surviving against them with a strong angel than with a strong archon, imho, if you have aura, shield and barrier (and stoneskin, and protection). Also make use of size changes a little, and resist preps (e.g. whatever Igbah's attack type, and probably hot and cold because of apocalyptic overture, and resist mental).

Archon is really easily neutralised these days, especially by good tanks. As an ap I was able to basically manhandle archons whilst prepped, so I'm sure a good tank could.

Don't know what anyone else is really talking about. I think they've forgotten that preps is a lot more broad than they make it out to be. Out of say the major five, the OP is putting up three at best. Only way he's surviving and learning the game is through an Archon.

BTW, Angel is pretty much designed for PK. It's like suggesting someone roll their first character as a Necromancer. For all practical purposes, it is silly.

1) Don't conjure huge pets and then just run in and stand there or missile hoping the mobs will do all the work.

The successful conjurer will be fleeing a LOT keeping the servitors in the fight but themselves out of it. Use the elemental to open the fight, or initiate and the flee and come back when they are on the angel or the elemental.

2) Open with a really nasty scroll or wand. (wither, double energy drain, blind poison plague)

3) Also in general it's a very bad idea to have your familiar fight with you. Iggy starts bashing your familiar and it's done.

4) Against Kostyan and Igbah I would be using an archon all the way. One flee and a couple of steps and you are up to 100% health again.

5) If you just need to buy some time before you really start fighting have your air elemental lift you up, you will avoid all melee attacks.

6) Use your powers to find the big enemies at their weakest and then jump them.

You're a good conjie.

It is about the easiest class to regear that there is!

Get yourself an archon, and go kill stuff like the barrow wight. (Obviously get an elemental too.)

Go kill Ford (on battlefields) for helm (if it's in).

Go kill white dragon in tower for the shield etc.

If you don't know where stuff is, explore. A good aligned conjie ias about as good as it gets.

It's not so much that conjies die a lot, as new players die a lot.

Also, I wouldn't judge the power of a class by how it matches up against Igbah or Kostyan.

I played a bard and bards are crazy strong. But against Igbah I could barely get any songs to work. Normally fire giants are bard meat.

Conjurers are one of the toughest classes to get a grasp on. Newer players just don't have the experience to understand all of the tactics that are involved in making one successful. There is a lot more to playing a conjurer than having full protections and letting the conjured mobs do the work.