Many people have trouble prioritising which skills to advance and in which order. Do you spend your first load of xp on fighting so that your next lot of xp will be easier to collect? Or do you advance your magic skills and start enjoying the benefits of casting spells which one would assume you joined the guild for in the first place?
There is a very good reason to advance fighting first, but there is also a good reason why people have such problems with this. Advancing your melee is boring and the benefits of higher melee bonuses aren't always clearly visible. It can feel like you're going through the same motions and getting no where, but if you can stick with it then your progress will be much easier.
Most people get restless hunting for experience, spending time and effort getting it, only to go and spend it simply to make more experience, but that is the rout which all of the top players take to get a good character quickly.
There is something to be said for a gentle method of advancement, where you spend your experience on magic, fighting and whatever else you have your heart set on in equal measure, but if results are what you're after then you're going to want to advance your chosen fighting.melee and fighting.defence to at least a 250 bonus as quickly as you can.
Using a combination of The Spellcheck Project and the spellcheck command you will be able to monitor your progress towards casting your chosen spells.
It's worth remembering that most spells can be successfully and reliably cast with one of the method checks saying "you would most certainly fail" (although this isn't advisable for spells which have fatal backfires). My character, Gelmir, has the following spellcheck for EHA:
| Evoking | Almost certainly succeed |
| Channeling | Almost certainly succeed |
| Binding | Almost certainly succeed |
| Dancing | Very likely succeed |
| Air | Almost certainly fail |
And he is successful 9 times out of 10, which is consistent enough for me to rely on it as my area offence spell. As you can see, the air check is at certainly fail and none of the stages are at the top for succeed. I have operated this method of advancement for all of the non-fatal backfire spells and it works very well and gets you casting the spells you want to a lot faster.
I struck on this advancement method because getting high elemental and spiritual bonuses is difficult for Gelmir, as he has very little con or wis. I decided to experiment by throwing my experience into the physical and mental skills to see if I could bulldoze my way through the elemental checks, and it worked.
To operate this method of advancement you'll need to figure out, using The Spellcheck Project, which of your spells has the highest requirement of each magic methods skill and work towards getting that level, for Gelmir and the spell targets I have I need the following:
| Skill | Max Bonus | Spells Used | Current Level/Bonus | Needed Level/Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evoking | 320 | 7 | 135/253 | 244/320 |
| Channeling | 360 | 4 | 155/265 | 310/360 |
| Enchanting | 340 | 4 | 146/260 | 277/340 |
| Binding | 290 | 4 | 135/253 | 195/290 |
| Chanting | 365 | 3 | 90/226 | 318/350 |
| Dancing | 310 | 2 | 135/253 | 228/310 |
| Fire | 310 | 2 | 55/161 | 257/310 |
| Air | 300 | 2 | 88/179 | 336/300 |
| Animating | 290 | 2 | 85/222 | 195/290 |
| Banishing | 280 | 1 | 51/157 | 295/280 |
| Earth | 265 | 1 | 15/73 | 265/265 |
| Convoking | 235 | 1 | 90/226 | 105/235 |
As you can see, my choice of rearrange and order for Gelmir has resulted in most of the bonuses he needs being within guild max, where the skill is a primary.
If you intend to use armour or EFF then you will need to learn fix quite quickly to stop you having to buy new equipment for every hunting trip. Fix is easy to learn, the guild teaches you enough of the skill it uses for you to learn it and almost any established player will be able to teach to you. Fix relies on your crafts.smithing skills and you need level 10 to learn the command and around a 100 bonus in the relevant sub skill (for example crafts.smithing.black.armour for armour) to start becoming reliable at it.
If you decide that using the lighter leather armour is the way to go then you will also need to invest in some crafts.materials, getting it to level 10 will allow you to learn leatherwork then advancing crafts.materials.leatherwork will make you better at actually leatherworking your gear.
What happens when your shielding drops? You fall back on your fighting.defence, your armour and your hit points. Hit points are vital for survival in tricky situations and in many spell backfires the only thing which decides if the backfire was fatal is your hit points, so advancing other.health is essential.
Without a good fighting.defence hit points will only enable you to survive one or two more hits, so simply relying on them to allow you to survive your shields failing isn't the best plan. My personal favourite melee defence is dodge, as it will still be checked against when you're casting a spell, unlike parry, and it is a contributing factor towards getting the 'although unable to avoid the blow' defensive messages with EFF up. Parry is more reliable and more powerful in a straight fight, but I think the added advantages of dodge make it an essential wizarding skill.
All of the above is my opinion, gained through observation and practice. If you have different opinions then that's fine, e-mail me and try to change my mind!
Of course, the links to the spell information wouldn't be possible without the fine work by Andrew White (Gaelen) and the numerous other contributors at the Spellcheck Project. Check it out, if you are serious about wizarding then that will be one of your best sources of information on spells.
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