Which reminds me; what secondary implement do you prefer, if any, Kadzar? A second Magelock?
Actually, that's a good question, since it's something I've been struggling a bit with lately.
First off, I will say that, despite being an avid proponent of Magelock Pistol usage, I've never really seen much of a point to using two of them. Sure, you can cast spells a bit faster by dual-wielding, or there might be situations where it's useful to have Magelock with slightly different enchantments, but, at the end of the day, as a Magelock-user your ammo is limited. Even if you've got bottomless bandoleers, the fact is the more you use, the more you have to make or *shudders* buy.
Then there's the fact that, once you've made a Rune Bullet, there's not much you can do to change the spell it casts. You can still modify it with enchantments on the Magelock, of course, and I always carry some attachable accessories in case I need to increase or decrease the area of effect or cast silently or do a little more damage, for example, but in the end there's only so much tinkering you can do with a Rune Bullet, and you have to cast what you have, since it's not like you can just make whatever bullet you need right in the middle of combat.
Now, don't get me wrong, despite it's drawbacks, nothing beats the reliability of a well-made Rune Bullet. If you shoot a death spell bullet at someone, so long as you hit them you'll have a guaranteed kill barring very powerful protection magic. Granted, death spell bullets aren't very practical for general use since you need a cast-off part of your intended target's body and a bit more time than usually to craft the bullet, and they do go off after a while, so it's only really good for premeditated assassinations. But then there's also healing someone from long-range with guaranteed results or pinpoint precision teleports. There are a lot of marvelous things a Magelock user can do that, well I won't say that other mages can't do, but more marvelous things than any single mage can do, for the most part, provided they have the right Rune Bullets.
But I suppose I might have gone on a bit of a tangent there. The topic at hand was secondary implements.
Now, as you might have picked up from the original post, I've spent some time wielding a staff. It was in fact my second implement, after I had been convinced by the likes of Lord Dragonsoul to use a wand and found it's power lacking. Then, when I learned about Magelock Pistols and started using them, I tried using my staff as a secondary implement, but I found it's pretty much a primary or nothing. At one point I experimented with Arcane Knuckles, but, though they have a considerable amount of power, perhaps even surpassing the staff, their precision and range are near next to nonexistent. They're certainly handy in an emergency, but not much good for anything else.
I'm currently planning a trip to see an old hermit who can apparently teach me to make Spirit Bullets, so I can create Magelock bullets from pure aether on the fly. From what I've read, it's rather more mana-intensive than regular casting, but you get the power and (nearly) the precision of a Rune Bullet with the flexibility of regular casting. It's by no means a replacement for such, of course (I'd still want to carry a full complement of Rune Bullets with me), but it gives me more options and stretches my magical ammo supplies, so it should certainly be a useful technique, for me at least.
That said, I might instead go for another sort secondary implement, since I certainly haven't tried them all. If I had the opportunity, I certainly wouldn't mind trying out a good Runeblade for a while. But I feel like, to do that properly, I'll need one made to be a secondary rather than a primary, and, for that, I would have to have one specially made, rather than being able to borrow one, since no one I know has one of such make. And that's a bit more of an investment than I'm willing to make for something I just want to try.
EDIT: Oh, and since we're on the subject of implements again (or at least I am), do we have any orb or tome users here who can give some input on what they're like? Or maybe someone who uses a more unusual implement, perhaps even one I haven't heard of?
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Topic: Wizard Chat (Read 12222 times)