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8 Shard Mage Guide OK, I think I got a pretty good build going, so I thought I would share it for t he community at large. The shardmage is a Battlemage who will primarily rely on Ice Shards for his early leveling, until going to platinum where he will branch out a bit for additional safety. First let us discuss the skills to take, and how to place the points as you leve l up. Skill Choices Magic Lore (level 1) Meditation (level 1) Water Magic (level 3) Agility (level 6) Trade (level 12) Constitution (level 20) Air Magic (level 30) Parry (level 50) Ok you'll start off dropping points into Magic Lore, and Meditation. I like to k eep this up till they're around level 10 each. Once that happens, I catch Water Magic up to my level. From there on in, I keep Water Magic maxed out, and do so until after level 51. Base Skills by level 54 Magic Lore: 50 Meditation: 50 Water Magic: 51 Agility: 10 Trade: 1 Constitution: 10 Air Magic: 1 Parry: 1 Put any extra point into parry. Skills beyond level 54 From level 53 - 75: Work on Agility, Parry, and Constitution. Over this period we'll gain 88 skill p oints which should get those three skills in the mid 30's ranges. Apportion poin ts how you see fit according to equipment (for instance if you find a shield wit h a huge constitution bonus, place points primarily into Agility and Parry). From level 76 - 100: Put all your points into Trade, to pump it to level 100. From level 100 on: Maintain trade at your level, and pump up Air Magic, making additions to Constit ution, Agility and Parry. With the exception of Trade, you'll want to place your points into the skills yo u will feel to give the largest pay-off. The skill growth rate generally drops t o abysmal levels post 50, which is why I chose that as a bench mark for Meditati on and Magic Lore, and why you'll likely use them for the last 4 skills as well. Base Skills by level 108 Magic Lore: 70 Meditation: 50 Water Magic: 51 Agility: 27

Trade: 108 Constitution: 36 Air Magic: 2 Parry: 54 Beyond level 108, I'd work on Trade, Magic Lore, Constitution, Agility and Parry . Combat Art Selection Ice Shard Ghost Meadow Stoneskin Flameskin/Whirlwind/Shield Wall (pick one to suit your tastes) Gust of Wind Phase Shift Ring of Ice From the start you'll be using Fireball as your primary attack spell. If you get really lucky in an early quest and get another Fireball rune, feel free to read it, but I wouldn't recomment using more then 1. After this, hoard every rune you get, and make sure to pick up sellable loot so you can start a little gold stockpile. Largely for the first 50 levels or so, yo u'll be trading in every rune you for Ghost Meadow's and Ice Shards. The only ex ceptions to this are to read the first Phase Shift rune you get, you only seem t o really need 1, so the rest are exchange bait. Also read any Stoneskin rune you get (to a point where you are comfortable with it's regen time), and whatever c hoice you made of Flameskin/Whirlwind/Shield Wall. Starting around levels 30-40 I start reading any Gust of Wind runes I get my hands on as well. The same goes for Ring of Ice although I start that a bit later, closer to level 50. What level to aim for on Ice Shard and Ghost Meadow? I consider the optimal leve l for Ice Shard to be around 2/3 my level, and whatever Ghost Meadow it takes to get Ice Shard's regeneration time down to 1.5 seconds. Don't be shy about Ghost Meadow though. There is simply no such thing as having to high a Ghost Meadow s kill. I'm generally particularily pleased when I get Ghost Meadow above my chara cter level. Don't feel bad if you're not hitting the 2/3 character level for your Ice Shards . It isn't necessary. It's just terribly nice. You'll be fine maintaining Ice Sh ards close to half your level. I really can't recommend having a lesser Ice Shar d then this though, mostly cause I'm anal and will do Wolf quests until I meet a t least 1/2 Character level for Ice Shard level. Allright, now that you've been told how to level Ice Shards, lets discuss WHY yo u've chosen Ice Shards over the other spells. It is my opinion that Ice Shards is the most versatile of the attack spells. It doesn't have the absolutely concentrated damage of Meteor Storm, nor the wicked Stun effect of Gust of Wind. What it does have is a much greater utility and par ty friendlyness. Meteor Storm has a delay between you clicking a target, and the Meteor's landing which can cause them to miss should a creature move. Further, I'm just not thri lled with the delay overall. It is however less rune intensive then Ice Shards, which can be a nicer bonus for those of you who are less patient in the collecti on of runes through the early stages of the game. Gust of Wind is a powerful spell from my observations as well. It does however h ave a nasty effect of pushing creatures around the screeen which can severely ef fect your party members ability to enjoy grouping with you, or otherwise provide

damage output in the killing of creatures. However, we'll be using Gust of Wind as a secondary attack form with this build. Now let us discuss why we've chosen the other spells in our collection. Stoneskin: This is simply a great spell, and while with great equipment it's not necessary, it simply never hurts to be safe. It adds to our physical resistance as well as boosting our defense thus making it harder for creatures to hit us i n the first place. As an added bonus, it gives us a bit of Poison resistance as well. Flameskin/Shield Wall/Whirlwind: The primary reason for this spell type is it's chance to block missle weapons. I find missle users to be the biggest danger to my health typically (other then certain boss type creatures like Raptor's and Bi g spiders). My personal choice is generally Flameskin as it damages any creature close to me, and add's to Fire resistance as well for if you like killing drago ns. If you have enough runes it's quite possible to maintain all three at decent levels, and pick the one you want for different encounter types. Ring of Ice: This spell creates an area around the caster, which doesn't move af ter being cast. The bonus of this spell is it slows creatures, including their a ttack rate which is why I particularily like it. Oh, it also does some damage. I 've found keeping it around 1/4 or so of your level is enough to maintain it's g eneral effectiveness. Gust of Wind: This spell is something we're going to boost around level 80. Why do we want this spell if we have Ice Shards as our main damage spell? Well, it's damage is all poison, which makes it an effective back up for when we encounter creatures who are very resistant to physical and magical damage which is what o ur Ice Shards uses as a damage type. In addition if we find ourselves in a despe rate situation where we're getting mobbed, casting this will knock creatures far away from us and stun them, giving us time to deal with the situation in a much safer and more leisurely manner. Ghost Meadow: Lowers cast time, and once it's level 54 (I think) it last for 3 m inutes. All we really need to know is it lowers the regeneration allowing us to cast spells faster and thus increase our damage over time potential. Socketing your Equipment For the first 60 levels, I mainly socket Ice Shard and LL into all my available sockets. Socketing Ice Shard's only gives a 1/3 regen penalty of what we would g et to raise it by a level. Thus if you would normally get a 3 second addition to regeneration for adding an Ice Shard level, socketing an Ice Shard will give us a 1 second addition to regeneration. The Life Leech runes (Vampire Combat arts with 3% LL) will help keep us alive by continually drawing life from creatures you're damaging and giving it to you. Once you hit level 60, I highly recommend heading to a gold server, going verock, and doing some power shopping, looking for rings and amulets with s of 40 or more to defense. For those of you not knowing what to look for ou go shopping, I'll try and do a pathetic illustration of what you would to Bra a bonu when y see.

Super Cool Amulet Name RESISTANCE: 100 Level: 67 DEFENSE: 40 Minimum Level: 50 The part in Bold is what you're looking for. Socketing 12 or so of these in your

armor in addition to your parry/agility can take your defense from 1000 to over 5000 quite easily. This is quite an immense bonus, and will up your survivalabi lity considerably. Obviously the higher the Defense number the better. Until you reach level 90 or so, I wouldn't worry about what the ring/amulet has except De fense. Once you hit 90, and have a decent tradeskill, you should be able to start findi ng amulets/rings with additional bonuses such as Split, Life Leach, Experience b onus, and other wonderful things written in orange. (I learned all about socketing from RUN1, he's my guru! Love the defense bonus, thank RUN1 for teaching me, so I could share it with you.) Equipment in general For a large part in the early game you'll be relying on magical/rares/set pieces for your equipment. I start of with mostly Dagowits (once I start finding them) and then replace the Head, Body, and belt with Blackstaff pieces. For gloves, boots, arms and greaves I generally like rare items with a high Rege neration Spells bonus. Rares tend to be best here, as they'll give you other bon uses which can be excellent. For my rings/amulets I look for ones with the defen se bonus shown above, and equip those to help boost my defense early on. Of course however, you'll have to base your equipment on what you find in game. Generally what you want to look for when deciding which piece of equipment to we ar is this: Does it increase my damage while maintaining/decreasing the regenera tion time of Ice Shards. If the answer to this question is yes, then it's what y ou want. I always use a 1 handed weapon and shield post level 15. The reason for this is quite simple. More sockets, and more possible bonuses then a two handed staff wi ll give you. Side Note: A lot of people like to wear the complete Blackstaff set as it gives you permanent GM, thus negating the need to recast it every 3 minutes or less. I believe however, that the total bonuses you can get from wearing just a few sel ect set pieces and really good rares, outweighs the lazyness factor of needing t o recast GM. Desirable Item Bonuses This is largely stolen from Alexfrog's WE Guide, and slightly modified for the B attlemages special needs. Focus on items with as much bonuses to the following as you can get: Bonus to Ice Shards (more damage, without increasing regen times) Bonus to Mental Regeneration (more spell damage and faster spell regen) Bonus to skills you use, such as Magic Lore, Parry, etc... Life Leech %. ("Each hit draws life from enemies X%" This keeps you alive while killing monsters. You should have enough, once you get good items, that your lee ching keeps your health meter full, and constantly restores the damage you are d ealt. I like 15-20%) Split %. (Creates new monsters that die easily, increasing exp gained and giving more item drops). Bonus to finding special items. (This increases your rewards gained). Bonus to experience gained from monsters. (Also increases rewards gained, which by the way we get when socketing Ice Shard runes, which is another reason I like to socket them).

Critical Hit %. (A critical hit deals several times the damage of a normal blow, and helps you kill monsters faster). Bonus to Movement Speed (Running fast lets you get to monsters quicker, and incr eases killing speed). Spell Regeneration bonus (Even faster regeneration times for your spells, I have n't found the cap for this yet). Bonuses to Defense. Bonuses to Resistances, especially physical resist. Sockets! They allow you to put runes or jewelry in them, and can be very versati le in helping you get whatever item modifiers you are lacking.