People's Army of Sonoma

Ello out dare! Badgirl here. Im gonna try to layout how I solo many high end monsters.
*Template*
-120 magery
-120 meditation
-120 mysticism
-120 evaluating intelligence
-120 spellweaving
-120 imbuing/gonna switch for 120 focus after next publish 64
I use a gargoyle for the imbuing but this template works ok with a human/elf too. Gargoyles are nice because you can fly and still use your Rising Colossus (5 follower slots).
Stats are 128 str/17 dex/150 int with suit. 120str/10dex/125int real stats
*Suit*
Imbuing has made it fun to make custom suits and has unlocked some great setups.
-all 70s resist
-100 lower reagent cost
-40 lower mana cost
-47 spell damage increase
-other mods are up to you but I use mana increase and hp increase. my current suit has 189 mana and 138 hit points and some stam regen for my gargoyles flight. (flying seems to drain stamina somewhat, i have 2 stam regen and it seems to keep me filled)
-36 defense chance increase

Now my most valuable spells are:
-Invisibility
-Rising Colossus
-Gift of Life
For nearly all of my fights I cast a Rising Colossus and invis myself. If I am fighting something that reveals, I make sure to keep casting invis on myself till im safe. It takes some practice but you can learn how the monsters think quite well.
The only weakness of this template is highest tier magery using monsters that can dispel the RC. Shimmering Effusion is the worst for dispelling. Now if your RC gets dispelled by something doesnt mean you cant still kill it, keep trying your RC, some mage monsters get lucky with dispelling but can still be slaughtered quick by the RC.
Some monsters with high hp go faster with your help.
-Bedlam Peerless, the grizzle. You keep RC up on him and keep yourself at a distance, be sure to keep the grizzle from following you by using invis spell. Keep your RC's health bar up at all times so you can be ready to recast when the RC dies. Now to make this go faster you can cast Earthquake from a distance, be sure not to cast EQ when your colossus is near death, if your eq hits the grizzle after the RC dies it will target you and youll need to invis. With spellweaving be sure to have a Arcane focus with you as high as you can get so you can cast Word of Death as soon as possible.
This setup and tactics work for alot of bosses and high end stuff. Ill be back with another writeup detailing other fights like the shimmering keys and Doom.

Thank you for the write-up! It's good to hear how you do it.

Is a RC much tougher than a Greater Dragon pet? Can you heal the RC?

the RC with my template is very very strong, its as strong as a GD but not as many hp. you cant heal it, you just have to recast when it dies or gets dispelled. The RC uses Mysticism which makes it quite powerful. the Spell Plague it puts on its target makes dmg reflect onto the target. It has a special attack that looks and sounds like Armor ignore and for me it does over 100 dmg every time on most monsters. It does it kinda regularly, example, one time i had it do it 4 times in a row so was about 400 dmg in 4 seconds. its big dmg output is why it works even when you have to recast often.

For shimmering reference, you can check here for extra help: viewtopic.php?t=4503

Nice write up! Makes me want to go give it a try.

Badgirl, I have 120 Focus, 100 Mysticism on my Gargoyle. I brought him to Destard to see how a RC compares to a Greater Dragon. The GD ate the RC's lunch! It pounded it with damage quickly, and often would just dispel it away completely.

Have you tried to take on a GD with your Garg? Any strategies you could suggest?

Thank you.

Very interesting and nice writeup. I'm still trrying to figure out my templates, but this is pretty neat. I just hate that being a caster or warrior takes all your skills slots now ... I miss when you could be a GM mage/fisher/tailor and have all the relevant supporting stats in one template.

How many battle characters do you have? How many supporting chars? Maybe I'm strange but I want to try a lot of different skill combinations, but cant bare to drop a skill that i've spent an ungodly number of hours raising (I don't macro ... although I've heard its legal now, I still would rather play for my points)

Someone find a Developer and lobby them to add 120 more skill points per char ... =P (I'll settle for an 8th char slot!)

Lol/Myst,

Soul stones are a good way to move skills from character to character so that you don't have to loose one skill to gain another.

If you're at 720, you can use a soul stone to store all points from one skill. So if you want to drop 120 Music, for example, just drop it onto a soul stone and then raise your fishing skills on that character.

You can then take that 120 Music and move it to a different character in the same account. so often people will have a "mule" character whose main purpose is to absorb extra skills off a soul stone. That way you can just use a few stones to move your skills around.

One thing to watch out for is that your mule character won't be able to absorb any skill that is above 100 unless that character uses a scroll. And since it seems a waste to use a 120 scroll on a mule character, it can get tricky knowing how to swap skills around. Still, it's a good way to try out mixing and matching skills.

Ya, knowing what I know now I would definitely have left an open character slot for a few more crafting skills and to hold various other skills. I do have one stone and three or four shards that I can use, but at the end of the day they will end up having to go somewhere.

Its a little sickening when i think of all the skill points i've dropped over the years ...

dlwiii wrote:Badgirl, I have 120 Focus, 100 Mysticism on my Gargoyle. I brought him to Destard to see how a RC compares to a Greater Dragon. The GD ate the RC's lunch! It pounded it with damage quickly, and often would just dispel it away completely.

Have you tried to take on a GD with your Garg? Any strategies you could suggest?

Thank you.

Yes the greater dragons are a harder fight with the RC mystic, as with anything able to dispel or hit very hard. Thats when you need to learn a good pattern of keeping invised and recasting RC as needed. You need that alot in the shimmering key area. if you can stay up for a few RC attempts on the GD youll get a RC up that will stay alive longer and hit some Armor ignore. Some fights with mystic can end up that way, where you may cast RC over and over and have each RC hit once or twice. thats when the new Focus requirement is nice for the added mana reg.