Thursday 19 February 2004

Pic of the day: The golem is really fired up now! Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot, of course.

DAoC Cabalist

There is no Cabal ... but there are plenty of Cabalists in the online game Dark Age of Camelot. In fact, when I returned to the European server of Prydwen, I was surprised to see so many of them.

With the expansion pack Shrouded Isles, Albion got a new pet class (Necromancer) which many players considered overly powerful. Even after some "bug fixes" that powered down necros, they still have one benefit no other pet class has: The player character is invisible and untouchable as long as the pet lives. This means you won't see monsters turn from the pet to attack you, not to mention players from opposing realms who are not for a moment fooled by a roughly humanoid pet. Despite this, some still play Cabalists instead. Among them I.

To be honest, the "yuck factor" is part of it, in my case. All necro pets are ugly, creepy or disgusting, and the player character is a dark, transparent, gender neutral shade. In contrast,Cabalists are rather colorful. And anyway, I was not looking for the ultimate killer. Just someone that would drag home lots of loot and be fun to play.

***

What starting race is good for a Cabalist? As a magic user, intelligence decides your power, so Avalonian would be a good choice; they are really smart, and good looking too. (I know I've run with a wrong crowd when I tend to think of Avalonians as "Bishounen" ...) Avalonians are not good in realm wars, because they are all tall and easy to spot at a distance; and since they are horribly bad as armored fighters, the enemy know they are mages and an easy kill. They are also weak and frail. If you choose an Avalonian, you won't be able to carry much loot. And as a loot Cabalist, you better take the Lifter realm ability at level 20 instead of a magic one as you would probably have liked. Inconnu (Shrouded Isles only) trades ten points of intelligence for slightly better strength and constitution. Saracen has normal intelligence but high dexterity, which means faster spellcasting, better chance to hit in a fight and better defense as well. (This was my choice, although I am not sure it was the best.) And there's Briton, which is average in all things. Not a very good spellcaster, but can take a few more hits before they crumble, and carry more loot.

The starting class is mage; these can become either Cabalist or Sorcerer at level 5. For the first four levels, there is no way around some close quarter fighting, so I recommend you buy a better staff as soon as you can afford it. True, you will get a staff for free once your reach level 5 and choose your final class, but getting there will be simpler if you have a better weapon. (You should still do as much damage as possible from a distance, of course. Generally you should step away until the name of the monster is no longer visible before you cast your first damage spell.) As a Cabalist, money is not likely to be a worry for long. So get that staff.

***

Once you get to level 5, there is a Cabalist trainer in the Guild of Shadows in Camelot. (I still have this tendency to write Caemlyn ... Wheel of Time habits die hard!) Now you need to specialize. As a loot Cabalist, I chose Spirit (vivification) for my training. This specialization line helps you make your pet ("simulacrum" or "sim" for short) stronger. Those who prepare for a life in realm war tend to shun this spell line except to get the "convert spirit" spell so they can reclaim magic from a dying simulacrum. If you summon amber simulacrums and kill them with this spell, you will get back more magic than you invested. You can rapidly fill your magic power bar this way, then use the magic to damage your enemies. In groups, you don't want to bring your sim anyway, as they take experience points from the whole group.

If you specialize in matter, you will get good damage over time spells. You also get reflect shields on your pet, which do damage to all that hit them; a great way to make sure the pet keeps the attention of monsters rather than them going for you.

The third specialization line, body, has spells to steal the life of enemies and to transfer life to other player characters, very nifty in a group with no real healer. A group with a Cabalist and a Paladin is particularly great, because the heal chant of the Paladin will gradually restore the health you spend on healing him or others in your group. However, healing will draw the ire of monsters who fight the one you heal.

Even though my loot Cabalist specializes in Spirit, I branched out a little after level 10, and got the first life force snatch (which converts 70% of the damage to healing the caster, instead of the usual 30%) and the first life transfer spell so I could do some healing in a pinch. I also spent one level on improving my matter skill, to make the DOT (damage over time) spells more effective. Not that I use them all that much after I got the sapphire. The healing is a great way to gain friends, though. ^_^

***

You start your career with an amber simulacrum. As you level up, you will gradually get new colors of simulacrum, but for some reason the later types are not inherently better. Actually, the amber may be the best of the lot for most occasions. It has the most health points, automatically casts a spell that makes it more robust, and will randomly stun its target. All these are good things, and especially if you have made a high-IQ caster this is your friend. You will need to heal it occasionally, but it is your tank and does your dirty work for you.

For a lower-IQ caster, level 12 is time to rejoice. You now have the Sapphire sim, which is a bit weaker but instead of stun it randomly casts a "lifetap", a spell that draws health from the enemy and uses it to heal the sim. Thus, less healing work for you. The spell will fail on high level monsters, so use this pet only against critters from your own level down. These two sims are the favorites throughout your career, although there are situations where others may be useful.

The second sim, ruby (from level 7), casts fire spell from a distance. If someone else is your tank, this may be OK. But if you are in a group, you will likely be told to ditch the sim because it eats xp. The same holds true for emerald (20) which casts poison/sickness.

Jade, at 32, has its own damage shield. This is good, because the one you can cast yourself costs mana to keep up and you cannot cast other spells meanwhile. Since damage shield damages the opponents which attack the sim, this is good if you fight against groups of monsters, since they will stay at the sim instead of attacking you. You can either run a jade simulacrum and heal it from time to time, or a sapphire simulacrum and supply it with damage shield. The net effect would be much the same. Or so it seems, I have not actually reached that level myself. ^_^ If you specialize in the matter line, however, your damage shield would be better and you would not use the jade. This is borne out by the fact that I don't see many jade simulacrums running around on the servers.

The level of the pet depends not on its color or your specializations, but is just below your own, varying from ca 80 to 88% of your own but on average ca 85%. (It varies because you cannot have half levels.)

***

My experience is that the Cabalist is somewhat weaker than Enchanter, the corresponding pet class in Hibernia. The lack of a healer pet makes for a more cautious play style, and you are also less useful in groups than Enchanters. The ability to do some small healing however can literally be a life saver for a realm-mate running for his life. As a loot collector, I found that life really began at 12. The sapphire sim will kill blues one after another with minimal attention, and can take batches of 2-3 greens while I work on my crafting skills instead of fighting.

Cabalist may be not as exciting or glorious as my favorite the Paladin, but it is probably a lot closer to what I would have actually chosen if I lived in such a world. Why fight yourself when you can get a robot to do it for you? Or golem, to use a Hebrew word. "An artificially created human supernaturally endowed with life" sounds pretty accurate to me!

Anyway, I don't know if anyone found this useful, but it was worth a try. And since I have thrown away a few days all together to learn the ways of the Cabalist, I thought it deserved an entry. After all, it is all about me! ^_^