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Library: Channeller guide

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Author: gurb
Date:Feb 23 2003

More or less misleading explanations to some channeller things

Introduction
------------
Channellers are a caster guild equipped with somewhat weaker offensive
spells than most other primary offensive caster guilds, but their spells
have quite nice dam/spcost ratio. Channellers also get a spell, which can
raise their spmax with about 300 points. The downside of this spell is spr
penalty, which forces you to use drain spells if you want to have good
(compared to other guilds) spr.

Energy aura
-----------
Energy aura spell gives channeller more spmax. The weakest aura, yellow,
gives about 100 sps, red one gives 200 and blue aura gives 300 sps.
But this doesn't come for free. More spmax you get, more spr you lose.

Depending how you measure spr penalty, it seems to be either:
yellow: -7spr, red: -10spr, blue: -14spr (resetting spr to 1 and then
                                          ticking negative with aura)
or:
yellow: -5spr, red: -10spr, blue: -15spr (average ticks)

Energy aura also affects to the power of the channeller spells. Without
aura different channeller off spells do about 100-150dam, but for
example with blue aura you probably do 300+ dam.

How to get different aura colors?
---------------------------------
Getting yellow aura is easy, even my stupid golems can get it :P.
Red aura is little harder, you need about 70%-80% flow of magic for it
(I cannot remember how much, usually I train flow of magic high
enough already = 95%+) and probably some decent amount of other masteries
(I have trained them always 85%+). The best aura color (probably the best,
nobody, except the coder of the guild, knows is there one aura color more),
blue aura is the hardest one to get. You need to have high masteries,
mastery of draining/channelling 80%-90%(not sure how much), flow of
magic 95% or more and some amount of leadership points to get it (you get
points when you use channeller skills and spells). If this doesn't suit you,
then another way to get blue aura is to get the leadership of the channellers.

Me and my friends have got blue aura after 5 guild quests (drain guild room,
drain orb, drain enemy, one ton golem and the slap (tm)) and following
skills/spells (mastery of draining/channelling 80-95%, flow of magic 95%+):
Me:     45 craft orbs, 164 channelballs, 252 drain rooms, 107 energy auras
Friend1: 3 craft orbs, 300 channelballs, 130 drain rooms, 50 energy auras
Friend2: 1 craft orb,  561 channelballs, 160 drain rooms, 100 energy auras

Me with mastery of draining 85%, channelling 90%, flow of magic 100%:
5 guild quests + 60 craft orbs, 380 channelballs, 350 drain rooms,
200 energy auras (+20 transform golems, 2 animate golems).


Duration of the energy aura
---------------------------
Yellow aura starts to drop in 400 seconds, red aura in about 700 seconds
and blue aura drops after 1000 seconds.

Drained energy supply
---------------------
Supply is little similar to the druid staff, but it resets on boot. More
energy in the supply, more efficient your spells are. Always when you drain
something, your supply gets better (it also goes down slowly if you do
nothing). About 20 drain room spells with 85%+ mastery of draining should
give supply to maximum, but you can keep overpowering your supply as much
as you want. 100-200 drain rooms should be enough for whole boot.

Offensive spells
----------------
Channellers get 5 main spells. Channelball, channelbolt and channelburn are
all similar, except they do different type of damage. Channelball does
magical dam, channelbolt electricity and channelburn fire dam. Channelray
and channelspray are special spells which can hit multiple targets at once.
Channelray hits everyone who are in the same column in the same party as
the target and channelspray hits to everyone in the first row of the target
party.  If you try to use channelspray as normal area spell and shoot at
multiple monsters in the same room, channelspray seems to hit randomly to
1..n monsters in the room, depending on luck (there might be some stat which
affects to this, but I haven't figure out what).

The damage of the channeller spells depends mainly on your energy aura color,
supply status and intelligence. Sprite channeller with blue aura and 150
int without supply seems to do about 250-300dam. Elf channeller with blue
aura, 230+ int and maxed out supply does 350-400 dam including few random
400-550dam blasts. Thrikhren psichanneller with blue aura, 250+ int and
maxed out supply does over 400dam most of the time (I haven't measured this
myself, actual results might be little lower or higher).

Spell point cost of the spell also depends on the energy aura. Formula for
channelball/bolt/burn is base cost(~40)+(aura level*10)+6, where yellow aura
means aura level 1, red aura level 2 and blue aura level 3. 

Draining spells
---------------
Channellers, as the name says, are meant to channel magical energy to and
from various things. You get more sps with drain item, drain room, drain ally
and drain enemy spells. With replenish ally you can give a part of your sps
to your party members.

Probably the most useful things what you can drain with drain item are
herbs. Some herbs give more sps than others when drained, but mostly
you get about 25 sps from each herb.

Drain room spell allows you to drain sps from outworld rooms. Again
you get more sps from some rooms than from different ones (jungles and
valleys are nice). If you drain room where is some deposit or plant, you
get few sps more than normally.

Drain ally gives nice way to balance sps between party members.
If your religious tank is sizzling all the time, just draw few sps
from him/her and you get those sps in use too. The drawback is that
at the same time you draw few hps and eps too and your tank would
probably like to keep them.

With drain enemy spell you can drain sps and hps from monsters (or other
players). Amount of sps you get seems to be related to the size of
the monster. Probably bigger monster loses more hps too, although
I haven't tested it. You cannot kill monster with drain enemy and
you can drain one monster only a certain amount (depends on size too,
I guess).

Replenish ally is very neat spell. With high masteries and maxed out
supply you can have about 125% transfer ratio. Maximum amount of sps what
you can transfer depends on your aura color (and masteries). With blue
aura limit seems to be about 600 sps (target gets 700+ sps).

Orbs and salves
---------------
Channellers are able to craft orbs and mix salves. Orbs are slightly
similar to wands, but cannot be targeted and you need to craft the orb
from a ball (armour, merchants can make them and the channeller shop has
few too). Unlike wands, you can have multiple orbs in inventory and
they don't blow up or anything.

Salves are like potions, but you need only a mineral and a herb when
mixing them. Salves can give you different kind of type prots,
bonuses to stats, ability to see in dark/invis people, healing and
so on.

Some salve combos:
adamantium + carrot = +str
gold + water lily   = +wis
sapphire + cabbage  = +int
iron + ginseng      = healing

Any material mixed with borage, mandrake or mangrel seems to give
poisonous salve.

Guild quests
------------
The creator of the guild doesn't want to give any info about guild quests,
so I am not telling you how to do them. Just finger -q current guild leader
and try to figure out the quests yourself (it should not be too hard to
figure out how the Drain the guild room or One ton golem quest is done).
The guild quests are designed so that you probably do them accidentally
if you just play the guild actively.

Leadership
----------
The leader of the channellers is always the person who has been most active
in his/her reinc (= person who has leadership points more than others
is the leader). You get leadership points (which are not visible) always
when you cast a channeller spell or do some skill. Different spells and
skills give different amount of points. I haven't yet confirmed this, but
quick skills/spells which you use mostly (energy aura, channelbxxx spells)
seem to give less points than rare long ones (animate golem, craft orb).
(Next you probably think that repeating craft orb n+1 times will give
you leadership quickly. It used to be in this way, but it has been tuned
down a little.)

Pkilling the current channeller leader reduces leader's leadership points
and might give the leadership to you, but this requires that the leader has
energy aura on when he/she is pkilled. One can also clear (or reduce atleast)
his/her own leadership points using command "forfeit power".

Guild quests give you leadership points too, some more, some less, depending
on difficulty.

If you reinc from channeller to channeller within one boot, you lose half
of your leadership points and all guild quests (if reincing from channeller
to something else you lose everything).

Golems and golem tests
----------------------
The shop at the channeller guild sells 'Golem book', which explains
basic things about golems and how to build/use them.

Passing golem test with your golem gives new abilities to your golem.
Currently following tests exist:
Track, Gather, Eat, Weapon, Dig, Memory, Report, Blast.

I am not going to tell you how to do those test, just giving a hint:
Don't try those tests with your best golems first. Most likely you
will a) die or/and b) lose your golem when trying to figure out how
the test works (or atleast happens to me usually :P).

Some statistics
---------------

* Blasting (I was lvl55 elf channeller, target naked ent tigerloc)
| Mastery of channelling        |  90 | 100 |   229999 |
| Mastery of draining           |  90 | 100 |   229999 |
| Flow of magic                 |  95 | 100 |   229999 |

Int: Impressive (188) and +45 int set.
Aura color blue. Supply at full strength

ball: -418 -336 -429 -413 -346 -339 = -2281, avg = -380, std dev=39
bolt: -374 -454 -552 -327 -316 -591(damcrit) = -2614, avg = -435, std dev=96
burn: -273 -274 -318 -392 -343 -441 = -2041, avg = -340, std dev=51

I included that one damcrit there too, because with 75% damage criticality
you do extra damage with about every 20th blast (or I did atleast).

Reincing thoughts
-----------------
In theory every guild should work somehow with any kind of totals.
Although I have always been a full channeller and probably never want to
take less than the maximum amount of guild levels (30). For some reason
when not taking all the guild levels and knowing that my skills/spells
would be more efficient if I just could take more levels makes me depressed.
So I am talking only about full magical channeller with 30 guild levels and
few extra ones for secondary guild(s).

Probably the required amount of exp for ~lvl50 magical channeller is between
25M and 30M. With 30M you can take 2 types (channelball and channelbolt for
example), masteries near 70-90% and all other spells/skills to usable
level(50%+).

Elf channeller with 45M gets all offensive/draining spells near 90%-95% and
masteries around 90% too (or you could take 100% masteries and leave some
spells out).

The race choice?

Personally I like sprite, but "a minmaxer" would probably take thrikhren
or duck. Elf is good too, since it has high skillmax (for plant
lore, mix salve and craft orb). Almost every caster race is usable since
you get spmax boost and regen aid from the guild. Your skills and the playing
style affect more than statistics, so stats are not very important
(of course one with 300 int does more dam than one with 100int, but for
me, ~150int with blue aura has been enough).

Civilized background?

No, never! If I could I would remove the civilized background possibility
from the channellers. It is a sacrilege. (I have no reason for my opinion,
it just feels wrong.)

Spells/skills you should study/train:
 Generic casting skills
  + Cast generic, Cast channelling, Cast magical/electricity/fire,
    Mana control, Quick chant, etc. Take as high as you think you need.
 Energy aura
  + Don't forget this, take 80%+ atleast (percentage doesn't seem to affect
    to how powerful your aura is)
 Masteries
  + Flow of magic, this affects your energy aura mostly, although for some
    reason it isn't mentioned in level requirements. Take 95%+ if you can.
  + Mastery of channelling. No idea about the actual picture of this mastery.
    General all around thingie, I guess. I have took it 90%+ always.
    (Probably affects to the energy aura and the power of the blasts)
  + Mastery of draining. Mastery for those draining/replenish spells.
    In one reinc I forgot this to 85% (instead of normal 90%) and it took
    double effort to get blue aura compared to earlier. (Might have been
    because of something else too)
 Offensive spells
  + Take Channelball, channelbolt and/or channelburn to 90%+. Channelbolt
    seems to do more damage than others when tested.
    For me channelray and channelspray have been mostly useless, but
    if extra exp study them some. Both, Channelray and spray, do more
    damage than ball/bolt/burn, but they also require quite much more sps.
 Draining spells
  + If you don't have very good spr (eqs), you probably want to use
    get more sps in other ways. Study Drain item and Drain room to 90%+.
    Replenish ally and Drain ally spells are nice if you need to balance
    sps between party members (that always sizzling lvl50 10 full boon mage
    with 1.5k spmax in eq-party is annoying ;P).
 Golem related spells/skills
  + Cast transformation affects to animate golem and transform golem.
    With 80% cast transformation you can handle about 3 ton golems,
    which should be enough. Animate golem can be left to 40% (requirement)
    if no exp available and transform golem and golem heal are usable
    when near 50%.
  + When animating golems you need orbs, so train craft orb some (50%+).
    I usually train this to 83%-84%.

 Hmm, I think I forget something, well, you will probably notice it sooner
 or later ;).
 
Secondary skills/spells
 + Summon, navigator spells are always nice, study as high as possible :).
 + Feather weight, Identify. Good utility spells, especially your tank(s)
   will love your feather weight.
 + Plant lore. I am "plant lore fan" and always train this at maximum.
 + Mix salve. There are some interesting salves. Good when bored and nothing
   else to do.
 + Personal force field. This spell is designed to be useful only to
   channellers (and psis). It gives about 50% resistance against any damage
   except physical. When this spell is on, you can cast only certain
   offensive spells, channelling and psionic ones (non-offensive spells are
   available without big special limitations). I usually survive from
   golden arrow with PFF and 239 hpmax, but killing cloud is little too much
   (with unpain it goes too). 70% spell fails only 10%-20%, so no need
   to study it higher :).

Secondary guild(s)

Channellers get only Summon, so you need to get other navigator spells
from elsewhere. Three nav levels have been ok for me. If you have
extra exp after navs, take few conjurer levels for Ceremony and
Mirror image.

Two full guilds?

Since I don't have enough exp, I haven't tested how channeller works
with other full guilds and I don't give any advises. Currently bardchanneller
and psichanneller seem to be popular combo choices. And few weirdos are
channellerconjus. But anyway, if you have been able to make enough exp
for two guilds, you should have enough knowledge to reinc into some
working combo.

Partying as channeller
----------------------
Huh, what? Channellers can get parties?
(Like earlier, I speak only about lvl46-60 magical channellers.)

Personally I find myself from lvl 80-100 people parties mostly;
it is a night, I am only unidle magical caster around and they are
desperate ;) or then they abuse my kindness and want me to show them some
strange Shin-monsters...

But seriously:
Channellers get parties about as easily as other single guild blasters.

Although you might want to gather and lead party yourself since atleast
I am slightly troubled because of the energy aura when being in a big party
and not leading it. Every 15 minutes I need to recast aura or it drops and
then I am totally useless. It is annoying if cannot recast aura during
regen break and need to stop another time between monsters just for that.
If I can lead myself, I can time aura recasts to breaks and everyone
is happy. The possibility of the death is also smaller when leading myself ;)

Channeller is the best at exp making, in the party of any size. For eq
mages and psis have more efficient spells. (I have shot down 200k-400k
monsters alone or with other channeller. They go down, just need to do a run
or two more.) In 3 man party (tank, healer, channeller), normal
"n x blast monster, move to next, repeat"-tactic works. If your healer is out
of sps too soon, give him/her some or take from him/her if you don't
have enough. During regen you probably want to drain herbs or rooms.
Depending on your tank's abilities monster size varies from 5k to 150k.
For normal lvl50 nomad tank, 30k-60k ones are quite good choice.
(Of course some people might get better rate from bigger monsters,
but for a small boonless, 0% physres, no (conju)prot nomad tank bigger
monsters are too hard alone.)

In bigger parties (7-9man) you can alternate between normal
spells (channelball/bolt/burn/ray/spray) and drain enemy according to
what damage types the monster takes and how much sps you have. Even if the
monster resists your every type, you can regen in battle by draining sps
from the monster while other blasters take it down.

When no parties in the sight - soloing
--------------------------------------
Channellers are still quite new guild and people know nothing about them,
so if you don't like to lead and gather party, you might have to solo.
But pure channellers are horrible soloers. They don't get any healing spells
(only costly healing salves) and the amount of damage they do is low.
Sometimes even 2k monster requires multiple blasts. Soloing comes little
better if you take atleast 2 conjurer levels. Then you get mirror image
and can kill bigger (money) monsters and the use of salves comes reasonable.

Luckily channeller have so much extra activity (salves, golems, golem tests)
and studying those things is a nice choice instead of trying get yourself
killed to monsters. (You can try to get yourself killed in golem tests!)

Eqs for channeller
------------------
Normal caster eqs are fine for channeller. Personally I have about
+40 int set and +20 spr swap set (lvl 55 elf channeller with blue aura and
+20 spr set ticks around 90-105). I also carry multiple herb jars with me
all the time (about 200 slots for herbs).

There are few special eqs for channeller around. Currently all of them
are found from Shinarae's areas (oo, what a surprise, he is the designer and
the coder of the guild). For example you might want to look for a long
sky-blue scarf which gives +4 flow of magic (and some +spr).

Finally some random observations
--------------------------------
 + Jaslah leaf seems to give over 100 sps when drained with drain item.
   (I don't know yet is this a bug or a feature.)
 + Mixing kryptonite and turnip produces you a salve, which gives a blue glow
   (protection) to an eq when applied.
 + Good places to get material for golems: mountain dwarfs(iron),
   rock-diggers(iron), sauna elf(glass)
 + 'view <item>' command works in the channeller shop too.
 + Casting Drain room at the outdoor room causes the deposit and herbs from
   the room disappear (and new herbs might appear).
 + You get more than enough earth with golem's dig-feature.
 + 'place right hand in square' is quite complex command.

 -Gurb, Sun Feb 23 16:13:30 EET 2003


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