How many spell picks do I need to save?
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 Wizardry 8 Spell Picks |
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What's a spell pick? For anyone wondering "Just what's a spell pick anyway?", a spellcasters may get a number of these when you create them, and also "earns" one each time they levels up. In other words, with a spell pick, they can pick a spell to learn (without requiring the spellbook to learn it from). In order to be able to use their spell pick(s), a spellcaster must still meet the spell learning requirements (number of levels in the requisite profession and the required number of skill points, explained in detail here) before they can pick a spell. During the creating of a new pure spellcaster (Alchemist, Bishop, Mage, Priest and Psionic), they will be able to pick a number of their Spell Level 1 spells immediately, as they only need one Character Level and 0 (zero) skill points (every new character starts at Level 1). Hybrid spellcasters (Lord, Monk, Ninja, Ranger, Samurai and Valkyrie) only start learning spells and "earning" spell picks once they have achieved five (5) Character Levels in the appropriate Spell Book profession. So they will get their first spell pick at Character Level 5; if you profession-change your character prior to this, then add all the Character Levels that share the same Spell Book. For example, during a level up for a Character Level 5 character who was one (1) level as a Bishop then four (4) levels as a Monk would earn a spell pick, as they have five (5) Character Levels in Psionics. Whereas if the same character had spent the first level as a Fighter, in the same situation, they would not have a spell pick until their next level up, as that character would only have four (4) Character Levels in Psionics. During a level up, I didn't get a spell pick, why? In order to learn a spell, a character must meet two (2) criteria, a specific number of Character Levels in the same Spell Book profession, and a set number of skill points (refer to here for the full explanation). During a level up, if a character has no spells available for them to learn (ie, don't meet the criteria or have learnt all the spells they currently can), then the spell pick is carried over to the next level up. In other words, at the next level up the character would then have two (2) spell picks. How do I save spell picks? The above paragraph describes one way in which a character is "forced" to save a spell pick. The other is when a character has saved spell picks and then profession-changes to a non-complementary profession, ie Alchemist (Alchemy) becomes a Samurai (Wizardry). In this case, the spell picks from the previous profession are stored away, and only become accessible if the character is profession-changed back to a complementary profession, as in the example above, the Samurai changes back to an Alchemist, Ninja, Ranger or Bishop (all these professions have access to the Wizardry Spell Book). A player can also voluntarily choose to not use their spell pick(s) immediately, this is referred to a saving a spell pick. To do this, during a level up process you first allocate bonus points to the Primary Attributes (Strength, Intelligence etc), then move on to the Spell Pick screen (unless one of the above situations occurs). On this screen, in the bottom-left panel of the screen, will be shown the number of "Spell picks remaining:". If you choose not to use up all the available spell picks, but rather just click on the Next Page icon, you'll get the following prompt:  If you select the affirmative (tick), the remaining spell picks are carried over to the next level up. Why should I save spell picks? All Spell Level 1 to 5 spells can be learnt from spellbooks (once the character has attained the required Character Levels and Skill Points of course, otherwise they get the "Bloggs is not powerful enough to understand the writing" message, refer to the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet). These spellbooks can be bought from merchants and found laying around Dominus (view the list here). There are two exceptions. The Spell Level 2 spell Holy Water, which no merchant offers for sale nor can it be found anywhere (although can be obtained as a random drop from certain monsters). The other exception is the Spell Level 5 spell Instant Death, the Book of Death was not flagged as usable by professions studying Psionics (Psionics and Monks), even though they are entitled to have the spell (guess either a bug or developer oversight). On the other hand, there are no Spell Level 6 or 7 spellbooks available for purchase or locatable to enable your spellcaster to learn those spell (again, there is an exception, the Spell Level 6 spell Banish which is easily obtained). So, if you want your spellcaster to learn all the available spells to them, including the Spell Level 6 and 7 spells (and who wouldn't?!), you need to use spell picks to get these high level spells. The thing is, as detailed above, the character only gets one spell pick per level up, hence the idea of "saving" spell picks, ie, don't use them the moment you get them, but keep them to learn the higher level (and more powerful) spells. So how many spell picks do I need to save? Saving spell picks is most important for Bishops than for any other pure or hybrid spellcasters, as the table below shows:
So from this table we can see, all other spellcasters only need 6 to 8 spell picks to learn the otherwise unavailable spells, this many level ups is easily achieved. Whereas the Bishop needs a more challenging 25 picks, so that's twenty-five level ups of not picking a spell to learn, certainly can be done (I've created over a dozen, what I call "Arch-Bishops", ie, learnt all 101 available spells), it just takes a little more effort and discipline. The important thing to keep in mind is, in order for a spellcaster to learn a spell (before a spell becomes available as a spell pick or learnable from a spellbook), they have to have the required number of Character Levels in the appropriate profession(s), and have the required number of Skill Points. This is detailed here, and you can use the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet to do all the calculations for all your party members (there's even links to a FREE-to-download spreadsheet application, called OpenOffice). |
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Comments to: Wolfie (wizardry8 AT mail.com). Last Update: May 15, 2005. |
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