Hi Everybody,

Hope this is the right forum, if not please move it to the appropriate one.

As I'm on my path to uberness ;-) I'm trying to keep my skills up. But with the exp boost in OT I'm levelling faster than most of my skills. Melee I'm grinding when I can but I want to keep casting skills up. So I put together a list of spells that I can sit an spam for awhile to get them up. My plan is to sit in the guildhall pool and cast away. I figure I'll make some macro that casts multiple spells (I've seen them around somewhere). How does this list look?

Abjuration - Endure Fire
Alteration - Lull Animal/Minor Healing - Will lull animal work on me? Or should I just use MH?
Conjuration - Dance of Fireflies - ? - Can this only be cast at night?
Divination - Sense Animals
Evocation - Burst of Flame - Can I cast this on myself in the guild hall? Or do I need to go find a corpse in the lobby?

Thanks for looking. I picked these since they seem to be the lowest mana & shortest delay for each skill.

Saibbo

Evocation - Burst of Flame - Can I cast this on myself in the guild hall? Or do I need to go find a corpse in the lobby?

Saibbo

no you can't, and you can't in the lobby either

any detrimental will require you to go outside of PoK, GL and GH.

For conjuration: Summon Food or Summon Drink works all the time.

Abjuration - Skin like Wood (only 10 mana instead of 20 for Endure Fire)
Alteration - Minor Healing
Conjuration - Summon Drink (or Summon Food) since they stack. Add a line in your macro /autoinventory so that they don't get stuck on your cursor.
Divination - Sense Animals
Evocation - Burst of Flame but there are restrictions as mentioned by the above post. Firefist is a 'beneficial' evocation spell but is pretty mana intensive.

Sitting on a mount will help mana regen.

For skillups, I make a hotkey like so:
/pause 45, /cast 1
/pause 45, /cast 1
/pause 45, /cast 1
/pause 45, /cast 1
/pause 45, /cast 1

Put the spell you're using for the various casting type in spell slot 1. Adjust the pause to match the cast time/ refresh time for the spell. I set it up so the hotkey fires when I hit the number 1. Turn up the volume.
The I can read or something and hit the number 1 on my keyboard when I no longer hear the spell casting. When you're done skilling up in abjuration for instance, swap out the spell for alteration or something, adjust your pause and continue.

Thanks for the replies everybody. Good catch on skin like wood. And of course summon food & drink! Can't believe I forgot about that. Every time I play that's the first thing I do. Can't see the forest for the trees and all that I guess...

Question on the summons though. I do it so much I did create a macro to autoinventory it but it wasnt working. The items would stick on my cursor. I basically used the same macro I use for autoforage. Off the top of my head I think it was:

/cast 5 (or whatever the gem is)
/pause 10
/autoinventory

Did I miss something?

Thanks for the info on burst of flame. I'll just go to Misty and nuke wolves & spiderlings (and their corpses) to practice that. Or I'll use firefist when in the guildhall, i don't mind the mana so much, especially sitting in the pool, it's the casting time difference that might move me out. And actually most of my skills are close to the max for my current level. A couple are about 20 points out. Divination is really low, and I'm using superior camo more, so that is the primary target.

Thanks again.

even though Skin like Wood is 10 less mana, you have a long recast time, I found it better to just spam endure fire.

If you have spare Guild Training Points, use those to bypass some casting time provided you have no other use for them.

Dance of the Fireflies is night time casting only.

For working Conjure during exp groups, use the Magic Based wind spells we get or swarm style dots.

If you worry about food stuck on cursor, add /autoinventory both before and after your cast.

If you want to take advantage of both a lower mana cost and faster refresh time, you can create a macro that casts both skin like wood and endure fire:
/cast 1 (skin)
/cast 2 (endure fire)

This way when the gem for skin like wood is still greyed out you end up casting endure fire.

More great information, thanks everybody. I'm still learning this game and getting into the macros more and more. So if I don't autoinv the food will it just build up on the cursor? Or will it prevent the spell from casting? (If my firewall at work allowed EQ I'd try it my self. :> )

More great information, thanks everybody. I'm still learning this game and getting into the macros more and more. So if I don't autoinv the food will it just build up on the cursor? Or will it prevent the spell from casting? (If my firewall at work allowed EQ I'd try it my self. :> )

hotkeys, they're hotkeys.... the EQ police patrols this area, macros is contraband.

Not sure of your level or gear (especially Flowing Thought gear), but thought I'd share a tip:
Beastlords have an aa called Perfection of Spirit that (when maxed) gives 110 mana per tick regen for around 30 seconds. Find a friendly beasty to cast this on you in the guild hall (or in the guild lobby and zone quick to the hall!) and you won't have to worry about medding or the mana-cost of the spell you're using.
Note that there is no level requirement on this aa, unlike buff spells normally do.
I used this trick to help my baby chanter do a bunch of metal-enchanting :)

So if I don't autoinv the food will it just build up on the cursor?
Or will it prevent the spell from casting?

Yes, and yes (eventually).
If you cast summon food and don't remove it from your cursor (by inventory, destroy, drop, etc), it will stay on your cursor and sorta stack up.
If you're chain casting summon-somthing, once you have 20 (I think it's 20?) items on your cursor, you'll no longer be able to cast and will receive a message telling you this.

Thanks again for the replies, very helpful! Nice to know I don't need to worry about inventorying them every cast.

And got it, HOTKEYS, I will do my best to get rid of the "M" word from my EQ vocabulary. For the record I do not use third party programs - it's just me and some quality time with my keyboard. :)

CuteLittleDruid, good tip on the beastlord AA, one of my guildmates is a beastlord. I'll see if she has it.

Thanks again!

hiho all,

do i realy rise my skills with lvl 1 spells as fast as when i cast lvl 70 spells?


moh

hiho all,

do i realy rise my skills with lvl 1 spells as fast as when i cast lvl 70 spells?


moh
I haven't parsed it but it does appear that your skills increase just as fast no matter what the level of the spell you are casting.

Yep, I used mostly my lowest level spell to increase my skills in the Guild Hall pool.

Thistlecoat - Abjuration (no recast time)
Summon Drink - Conjuration (/autoinv, cast 1)
inor Heal - Alteration
Cammoflage - Divination
Solstice Strike - Evocation (was XPn)

Firefist is an evocation buff that you can cast in the guildhall

Summon food and drink stop stacking on your cursor at 11. (Yes, I spent countless hours raising my casting skills back to cap after the raise, and I counted the blasted things then.)

I've noticed that at level 70, my skills didn't go up as fast when I was using lower level spells. With the mana regen in the guild hall though, sitting on a mount in the pool, I would cast some mana intensive spell until my mana was super low, then cast my summon spell, or see invis spell, to let my mana regen without losing time. *shrug* Might just be the luck of the RNG though.

Clearbrooke
71 Druidess of Underguild
Quellious

GENIUS!!

This may be important to you or not, but on the note of using Skin to skillup Abjuration - you will need to have Pot9/Steeloak down in order to cast this spell, so your mana pool will actually be effectively lower when doing this than when casting Thistlecoat/End Fire

Yes

This may be important to you or not, but on the note of using Skin to skillup Abjuration - you will need to have Pot9/Steeloak down in order to cast this spell, so your mana pool will actually be effectively lower when doing this than when casting Thistlecoat/End Fire

Or what I do is stand in the mana pool in the GH and cast my pet bear and use him as the target. That way I can have all my buffs on and just use ol boo boo as my guinea pig :)

And btw... firefist is a GREAT way to increase Evoc!!