Mage solo strategy question

[Sage Truthbearer]

A focused fire pet is the most efficient pet for soloing. It self-casts a DS that's better than yours and damage from a DS counts as neutral damage. The fire pet has very decent HPs when it's focused. All you need to do is just send the fire pet in vs a single mob and chain-summon if needed. Remember to dismiss your pet when the mob is fleeing, and nuke the mob once to finish it off for 100% xp gain. Get a Burnt Wood Staff at 46 and your finishing nuke will be mana-free. This method will be ridiculously efficient with 0 downtime.

[Crawdad]

Originally Posted by Fettsack [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The focus item quest can only be done Level 33+.? At least wiki says...?

Quested all the focus items on my mage at level 1. They visibly work starting at 4 (pets are much larger). Can't click til 20 though.

If you're starting out, snag a dragoon dirk and eventually your pet for soloing (1-12 maybe). Relatively easy to out Dps a naked elemental. From 12+ I'd say stick to Fire elemental pets and chain casting if you have the resources. If not find another caster to duo with.

[B4EQWASCOOL]

You guys are thinking waaaaay to hard about this. Mages are simple, don't try to make them into a class that requires strategy and thought.

Step 1. Summon your highest pet that you bought from a vendor.
Step 2. Send pet to kill things.

Source: Level 55 Mage with no gear or focus items. (I lied, she's wearing cloth with only AC.)

The time you spend gathering more pets and focus items is time you could have leveled.

[Mygicmeen]

Originally Posted by B4EQWASCOOL [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You guys are thinking waaaaay to hard about this. Mages are simple, don't try to make them into a class that requires strategy and thought.

Step 1. Summon your highest pet that you bought from a vendor.
Step 2. Send pet to kill things.

Source: Level 55 Mage with no gear or focus items. (I lied, she's wearing cloth with only AC.)

The time you spend gathering more pets and focus items is time you could have leveled.

Sounds like a coth puppet.

I'd also have to disagree. I love my mage, and main my mage. I made him in 2010, and I have quested, camped, or raided for every piece of gear I have.

The fun of a mage is doing camps and quests and stuff.

I think a lot of lvling has to do with picking good spots.

Generally you want a little room to move, and you like singles.

I also highly recommend perusing Google for eq magician lvling guides. Lots of nice little niche spots out there

[dafier]

That's why I went with duoing, or trio. I just started out, I got some hand-me-downs but nothing great and my mana resource wasn't good enough to run that fire pet cast over and over thing.

Every mage I saw soloing and re-casting fire pet over and over had decent gear from way higher level dungeons than they are.

Plus, when you duo or trio, xp flows faster. Group xp > solo ALWAYS when you have constant flow of mobs.

[wwoneo]

First, you need to understand that chaining pets only becomes efficient as you gain levels because the amount of mana it costs to conjure a pet is static. It's 200 mana starting at level 20 and remains 200 mana up to the level 49 pet. This means that the mana / damage ratio for your pets becomes much more efficient compared to your other spells the higher level you become.

Second, you need to understand that the NPCs you are killing become much stronger compared to your pet as you level up. Meaning that the actual melee damage and spell damage (not dmg shield) becomes less and less effective as you level up, and the damage shield component becomes more effective as you level up.

Understanding these concepts we can come to the conclusion that for the early levels 1-24 approximately, using a water pet is much stronger than using a fire pet.

After levels 24 or 29 the fire pet becomes a much strong because the damage shield component becomes much more effective compared to the melee and spell damage components.

TL;DR
Use water pet from levels 1-24 and then use fire pets from 29-49. This is the most effective way to level.