Advice on Mana Increasing Items

[Kilarin]

Ok, I'm looking for some advice on using mana increasing items in LOH. for example, you pick up an amulet that gives you a +50 to mana, should you wear it?

CONS: (reasons not to use it)
Since most of the spells cost a percentage of your total mana, I'm not certain adding to your mana total actually helps you to cast more spells.

Since the health penalty for casting spells is based on the mana used, increasing your total mana actualy increases the health lost at each cast.

More mana means sucking on mana potions is more expensive.

More mana decreases the effectivness of mana regen bonuses? (I'm not certain on this one, your regen rate tied to stats, not your total mana, right? Didn't Xaa say somewhere that regen bonuses were a percentage of your regen rate?)

PROS: (reasons TO use it)
Some spells, such as Swiftness of the Dead and Soul Lance have damage or duration based on your total mana.

Some spells have minimum mana requirements. If you have your mana boosted (and have the health to take the hit) you can cast spells much too high level for you.

I think I'm missing some Pro's here, and perhaps misunderstanding how a higher mana total ties into mana regen rates and helath penalties.

Any advice?

[NARAYAN]

Ok, I'm looking for some advice on using mana increasing items in LOH. for example, you pick up an amulet that gives you a +50 to mana, should you wear it?

I can wear it only if I don't have choices of amulets.I mean one of the best amulet can be bottled fairy queen which can give regenration and life after death in MP.If you can find +2 to intellegence then it will be more better.

I found that regeneration bottles are very much cheaper than mana bottles.Most of towns sells elf wine as regenration.A powerful spell caster is having double mana as compared to health.When you low on health you are low on mana and just use regenration bottles to compensate both of them.When you use some specific spells health is not decreasing and it is recommended to use them,like life leech.When T'Vril gets life leech ,she gets much powerful then before.I recommended to use druidism for mana,health bottles.


The spells which eats more mana is having very deadly result.Like Ice fury.Xaa has set the mana cost of the spell depending upon the power of spell.If SoD takes more mana, it will last much longer.This is one of reasons Xaa makes mana bottles very costly.In Xaa's opinion char will be very powerful if loaded with tons of mana bottles.So the shopkeeper selling super mana bottles is in the town of Goblins and only dark chars can easily travel there.

This is my way of thinking .If I get this amulet on begining of SP ,I am sure I will give this to T'Vrill as life leech stands longer.

[NARAYAN]

At last I found the reason why you are asking about this.I have used soul lance throughout lots of spell caster and able to recognise your problem.

Now what I can suggest is ,If after wearing the ring and amulet of mana and after using soul lance caster will become unconsious then don't wear it.If not it can be used to enhance damage of soul lance.Your char should be able to drink regenration potions.

[Kilarin]

The strategy I am working with this game is:
I don't use any mana enhancing devices on my mages most of the time (Unless the other bonuses on the device are too good to resist). That keeps my health loss low when casting spells. I'm not certain if it improves my regen rate or not, but it certainly reduces the cost of sucking mana potions.

AND I keep several rings/amulets with mana bonus handy. When I need to throw a soul lance or cast swiftness of the dead and every point counts, I put on all the mana enhancing items that I can take without killing the character.

[Xaa]

kilarin said:

The strategy I am working with this game is:

Interesting.

Remember that Soul Lance does a number of points equal to the mana you had when you cast it, and costs a number of hit points equal to half the amount of mana you had when you cast it. This means that your most effective Soul Lance characters have health of at least 60% their mana total. The best solution is STR and HP boosters combined with a staff to double the mana.

[Kilarin]

Xaa:

The best solution is STR and HP boosters combined with a staff to double the mana.

There is a staff that DOUBLES mana in LOH?
Boy, I had forgotten that! I'll keep my eyes open for it.
I'm really not very far along in my HARD game yet, even though I've spent hours and hours and hours on it.
I snuck ahead to the light elves after TirMalani, I'm currently having some fun with the giants, then I'll head back to Hamlin and get on with Darlar's quests. I'll check out the dwarves staves VERY carefully, If I remember correctly, the BEST staves were sold there.

Current levels:
TVrill: Ranged 2 CM 20
Hero: NM 14 CM 3
And I'm carrying FIVE hard earned giant clubs. Sheesh those guys hit HARD.

Thanks for the advice!

[NARAYAN]

There is a staff that DOUBLES mana in LOH?

As far as I know only staff of war is considered as best staff sold in market.You can get lots of regenration staffs in game.If there is any staff which doubles your mana as wizard staff in MW,I am still missing a big secret of this game.

[taltamir]

i think he meant the staff from mageworld...

CONS: (reasons not to use it)
Since most of the spells cost a percentage of your total mana, I'm not certain adding to your mana total actually helps you to cast more spells.

The spells don't cost a percentage of your base mana, a spell (other then sorcery and druidism which have level requirements) is designed so that at its "correct" level it will start using about 10% of the mana you are expected to have at that level. Your milage varies... And each spell has a "mana:damage" ratio (the more expensive the spell, the better the ratio, the worst being 1:1). However you can cast it at earlier levels at MUCH greater cost. At level 0 those spells can cost tens of thosands of mana... Those spells take half as much health as they do mana to cast ALWAYS. So if you put on a +mana ring it will allow you to cast more spells without changing your cost in health or mana.

Since the health penalty for casting spells is based on the mana used, increasing your total mana actualy increases the health lost at each cast.

Health penalty is half the mana used. You are not consuming more mana per spellcast with more total mana. see previous explanation about mana cost not going up.

More mana means sucking on mana potions is more expensive.

Actually, you only need to drink a potion when you run out of mana and there are still enemies around (regen bonuses means you regen your mana really fast!) Since more mana means more spells cast before running out you are less likely to use a potion (but more likely to drink more of it if you do)

More mana decreases the effectivness of mana regen bonuses? (I'm not certain on this one, your regen rate tied to stats, not your total mana, right? Didn't Xaa say somewhere that regen bonuses were a percentage of your regen rate?)

Nope, you regen at the same speed, your regen is based on how much int you have plus how many +regen bonuses you have. Percentagewise it will be smaller, but you will regen at the same rate
EX: if you have 100 mana and regen at 5 mana per second your regen rate is 5%
If you wear a ring of +100 mana you will have 200 mana and still regen at 5 mana per second, meaning percentagewise you will get +2.5% regen rate, however the speed at which you gain individual mana points would be the same, you will just have a bigger reservour to fill.

PROS: (reasons TO use it)
Some spells, such as Swiftness of the Dead and Soul Lance have damage or duration based on your total mana.

This is a double edged sword, yes your soul lance does more damage when it burns all your mana off, but it also means it takes more health, and mana bonuses might actually put you in a position where you can die from casting a spell.

Some spells have minimum mana requirements. If you have your mana boosted (and have the health to take the hit) you can cast spells much too high level for you.

True... although it takes ALOT of mana items and they rarely give you more then one level... you are better off getting a plus to nature magic or combat magic level (as they drastically reduce the cost of the "level too high" spells). Thos are spells you wouldn't want to cast near an enemy anyways (summon staff, etc) so you might aswell put on the mana ring to cast those and keep it on the mule the rest of the time...


With all that being said, I would use it if its all you have... but as soon as you get the chance replace them with a better item. The ideal being a bonus to mana regen, then either health regen or caster level bonus.

[Xaa]

LoH Staves that directly increase mana:

Apprentice's Staff
Wizard's Staff
Staff of the Grand Archmage
Staff of War
Harvester of Souls

LoH Staves that indirectly increase mana by raising INT:
Staff of the Grand Archmage
Staff of War
Witch's Staff

Overall highest mana increase:
Staff of War

[NARAYAN]

This is a double edged sword, yes your soul lance does more damage when it burns all your mana off, but it also means it takes more health, and mana bonuses might actually put you in a position where you can die from casting a spell.

Not only the mana reserves but mana regenration can also be problem for new players.As far as I know the health regeneration of a pure mage is less than 50 percent of mana regeneration.When soul lance is casted the health lowers and before health regenerates, mana regenerates more and next soul lance will decrease more health .If player is not aware of this and don't drinks health potions ,he will be unconcious.If casters health regeneration is higher than 50 percent that of mana regeneration ,he will survive much more and don't need much potions.


Think about a mixed type valkayrie char.The valkayrie who is able to fight in melee and able to summon another valkayrie.This is a kind of very powerful char whose mana is little less than health and regeneration is equal in both health and mana.

[taltamir]

i dont use health potions on my casters, I just have them heal themselves every time they run low on health

[grobblewobble]

An interesting question imo. Increasing your mana pool will increase the cost of spells, too! So at first I thought there is little point in having more mana..

But it turns out the cost of most spells (especially the more expensive ones) increases less than your mana pool. So there is still a net gain.

I also took a watch and tried to figure out what the actual effect of +1 mana regeneration is, what effect mana chant has, whether this is dependent on your max mana and whether or not they stack.

The answers I found (please correct me if I'm wrong):
- your mana pool will normally fully refresh in about two minutes
(independent of max mana)
- with mana chant it refreshes twice as fast
- with +1 mana regen it's still a little faster, and this effect stacks with mana chant

However, the best ways to regain mana seem to be mana balance or harmony in SP and corpse transmutation in MP..

All in all, +mana items seem to be only worth it if the bonus is really big (like staff of war), in most cases.

[Kilarin]

nice analysis, thanks!

[klakabush]

Mana isn't required except for increasing the duration of SoD. While increasing your mana, itll increase the cost of spells, and thereby increase the damage you take by casting (bad). There are some spells that IIRC don't increase cost with your total mana pool, and IIIRC they spells suck. a lot. A short SoD may be annoying, so a mana of 3k is good enough. Which is manageable on a high level character, so extra mana is not necessary

In terms of regeneration:
Mana Regen works by numbers and not by percentages. Suppose you regen 40 mana a second. This means that if you have 1k mana, in 25 seconds you're set. If you bump your mana to 5k though you have a bit more time to kill before regaining mana. (of course this is what corpse transmutation is for) Now in terms of spells. with 1k mana a spell will cost 1/5 the cost of a 5k mana chracter. THis means that relatively, you will have to spend 5 times as long regenerating a 5k character to cast a spell again, then you will having to spend regenerating a 1k character to cast the same spell. Not to mention the effect on your health if you cast a spell that costs a lot.