Constructive Mage Research Post
I haven't done research on a mage in years, and after trying to buy breath of solusek for a couple days in /auc I scrolled down on the wiki past the list of monsters that drop it and found it was a vendor item just like Scent of Marr for air pets.
After that I've decided to just go ahead and make this post to outline my own "pet" strategy going forward.
I'll be saving materials for both Earth and Water at 49, attempting to brave the gods of RNG and have just a single 49 spell scroll (or spell materials) ready to go for both pet types once I've hit trivial research skill myself (or find someone who has.)
To that end people will need to have someone on Green that is 48+ to do 44 pet combines until reaching 162 if the Research Cap from trainers is 160. Maybe if dev staff is feeling benevolent they'll +2 the research skill of every first caster on the server to reach 50 after they've trained their research skill to 160 at caster trainers.
Other than saving Earth (which is a beast in this era) and Water (second best tank pet that works with high level fear kiting / dungeon crawls that rely on mobs running when snared and not moving or dealing damage to the actual tank) nothing else about my pet strategy will change from regular research for every level.
Earth is the only spell that takes the same reagent for 24-39 (air, water, and fire all take pearl shard, ice of velious and jade shard materials then transition to scent of marr (vendor), flame of vox, and breath of solusek (vendor)) - so that means unlike every other pet it will take the same dropped material for 4 combines. Meaning if you make one every spell level you need at first 1 Glove of RZ, then 2 GRZ, then 3, then 4 and 8 more again for the final two spell combines which require the 24-39 spells. Thats 18 gloves of RZ in an ideal world with no combine failures, which isn't that hard to acquire yourself when leveling or backfarming 16+ mobs (or earth eles in steamfont).
However most people aren't leveling by themselves, and from 1-30 you can easily find multiple mages in every group all of whom won't need to bother with research beyond saving the materials they do get to give to someone else that will make their pets for them. The only boon for people that bother with research, at least for those who aren't already 24-28+, is that they they have a use for words of Tyranny and Dominion which are best used to research Earth pets using just vendor materials (lvl 12 Earth and a small brick of ore then topaz). All done without having to travel to OoT to pick up a level 20 pet scroll – though the price will be significantly higher.
Which is good for dark elf magicians as I don't believe they can purchase the spell from the OoT vendor directly.
So beside evil mages (or perhaps just dark elves) that may wish to do their own research without relying on proxies to buy OoT spells for them, or those whose group strategy 24-39 relies on a pet tank (the only period for mages when all pets are their weakest against HIGHER level mobs when tanking) which isn't particularly efficient in duos or trios as mages don't yet have renew element / summon to help priests heal their pets against mobs that higher than the pet is, most people will I think be likely to opt for the Fire/Air vendor supported route over Water/Earth.
If you have a different strategy in mind, or don't agree with some part of what I've written please contribute! Also feel free to correct me on anything I got wrong from evils besides dark elves using OoT vendor to strategies for getting the last 2 research points beyond 160.
Also Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself and WTS Handmade Backpacks, buy Flame of Vox, and trade 16-24 enchanter research words for Words of Dimension and Coercion (I don't have the 100-500pp people are asking for the words =P).
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