How to build a magery bard effectively

[Saul]

Yesterday I got 7x on my bard. I made this guy on the first day of the shard. I could have probably done it about 2 to 3 days faster but idled a lot as i havent had much time to play. Anyway i will share how i did it for those who want to know.

The template i have is:

100 magery
100 meditation
100 evaluating intelligence
100 magic resist
100 wrestling
100 provocation
100 music

This guide assumes you are capable of getting money to do magery. I used this character to make my money, but when i first made the character i raised swords to 100 and then dropped it back to 0 when i had the cash to get basic magery started.

Here were the basic steps i used to make the character:
Starting skills/stats: 50 magery/50 provocation, 10 str 10 dex 60 int

Start in brit, run straight to the weaponsmith or blacksmith to buy a shepherds crook. Find a place that spawns animals, like the cow pens. Set up a macro that does this:

Useskill armslore
wait for target - timeout 1 sec
target newbie dagger

for (1 to 10)
use shepherds crook
wait 0.25s
target nearest grey
wait 0.25s
target self
wait 0.5s
endfor

Run this until you gm herding. I think it took around 6-8 hours i cant remember exactly. Now make sure you are in a place where stuff cant pathfind to you and make a new macro that does this

Useskill: Provocation
Wait 0.25s (do not use wait for target or you will get stuck on this step when there is no target)
target nearest grey
wait 0.25s
target self

for (1 to 5)
Use Instrument
wait 1s
endfor

if you want to get really tricky, you can macro wrestling at the same time as you do this, it just requires you to have other accounts present.


Music will gm in about 10 hours or so and then provocation will gm about 18 hours after that if you dont dc.

Now we will GM our wrestling skill to finish off those last points of strength. Make a new macro that simply spams the spirit speak skill, tab into a character which has 50 melee skill, heal the character with 50 melee skill that is tanking the hits. you will GM wrestling in about 12 hours. Very simple,

Buy resist and meditation up to 30 but dont buy eval yet. It is best to do eval last as you will deal less damage to yourself while macroing mage, meaning you can save money on bandages.

Train resist to 55 by running through a firefield. It is extremely fast here. I am sure you can work this one out. Your character will look something like this:

100 str/40 dex/80 int

100 provo
100 music
100 wrestling
50 magery
55 resist
0 evalint
30 meditation

Magery/resist gains:

• Do lightning until you have around 61 magery/65 resist
  
• Do ebolt until you are around 91 magery/85 resist
  
• Do flamestrike to GM/GM.
  

Others have told me they had problems with meditation, but i gmed meditation 5.0 full points before magery. There is a trick to macroing meditation here. The general formula for the amount of mana you should meditate on is

100 - meditation = % mana you should meditate at

So for example

• if you had 100 int and 30 meditation, you will get the best gains by meditating at 70 mana. 
  
• if you had 60 int and 30 meditation, you will get the best gains by meditating at 42 mana.  (100 - 30) * 60 / 100 = 42
  

take this into account with your magery macro, how much mana will you be at when you successfully ebolt? on average how many times do you fizzle and how much passive mana will you gain in that time? spam the hell out of meditation whenever you dont have enough magery to cast and you will gm med in no time.

I think magery/resist took about:

• 700 lightning regs (4.2k gold)
  
• 3500 eb regs(?) (28k gold)
  
• 6000 fs regs (36k gold)
  

I didnt really keep track though so it could have been a bit more/less.

Macro eval to gm if you havent yet and congrats on your shiny new bard.

Thoughts: the skill gain speeds are about what i am used to. possibly slightly too fast, I could have probably gotten 7x in 5 days from a fresh start on the server. 65k to gm magery might be slightly too cheap but i dont know what you are aiming for

[Rhapsode]

I believe I read in one of the patch notes that wrestling does not provide a defensive bonus.

Am I mistaken in this?

[Jack]

I believe I read in one of the patch notes that wrestling does not provide a defensive bonus.

Am I mistaken in this?

Perhaps I should have been more clear about this in the patch note, for the sake of brevity I just listed UO:R bonuses that were removed without detail.

-Wrestling provides a defensive bonus.
-( Anat + EI ) / 2 does not - this is commonly referred to as "defensive wrestling".

[Rhapsode]

Ohh okay. Thank you for the clarity

[SgtScooter]

<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 22.6666660308838px;">Now we will GM our wrestling skill to finish off those last points of strength. Make a new macro that simply spams the spirit speak skill, tab into a character which has 50 melee skill, heal the character with 50 melee skill that is tanking the hits. you will GM wrestling in about 12 hours.</span>

<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 22.6666660308838px;">Whats the rationale behind incorporating Spirit Speak into that? Is it just for stat boosting?</span>

[Saul]

Just for stats. You can use any skill that raises int there. I just chose ss because it has no target so it takes about 5 seconds to set up the macro

[yakka]

You can provoke the polar bear at the moonglow zoo onto yourself possibly to gm I am at97.1 and was still gaining when I stopped to go kill stuff. Also you can herd the same polar bear up to 100 str.

[SgtScooter]

If we wait to train magery until after resist is at 55, how do we find a firefield to run through?Does that require another toon with magery?


Also, is there anything particular about the magery macro that we should know, or is it straightforward?


Thanks for the this guide btw. It's working great!

[SgtScooter]

Nevermind, I'm a noob. Training now. Thanks again.

[yakka]

You can gm meditation with a magical wizard's hat. At this era mana level and skill level don't mean anything just using skill does.