Combining Glyphs

[Ilea]

Hi,

I have another question about magic. When I read the Planeshift guide it talked about combining glyphs for spells. So I tried putting combinations of glyphs down in the four boxes. For instance, I put an arrow glyph and a freeze glyph side by side and pressed research. Nothing came up (I did this a few times with other (glyphs). So is it actually possible to combine glyphs or can they only be used separately? In addition, what benefit do I get from uping my level in a magic way. Does it cause the spell of that glyph to be more powerful or last longer?
Thanks.

[Kieve]

There are certain specific combinations - not all glyphs will produce a spell, some have to be combined with other glyphs in order to produce anything, and many of the combinations are only available at higher levels, depending on how advanced you are in a given area of magic.

As for the benefits of magic, they are (IMHO) less than the effort required to train them, but we hope for that to change in the near future. And typically, you can ask around in-game to get an idea of what glyphs are worth training for, which aren't.

[Morla Phlint]

Leveling up in magic will lead to:

a) fewer failed attempts when casting a spell
b) after gaining significant knowledge in one or more of the Ways, you'll be able to combine glyphs and discover more powerful spells

I do agree, however, that magic is probably the most expensive skill to train and since the system isn't well balanced yet, it'd be difficult to rely only on magic for the time being.

[yanom]

I want to make spell with just fireglyph. How much redway training is neccesarry? Do I need to do a quest to do magic?

[Morla Phlint]

It's glyph specific. There's at least one glyph for each Way of Magic, however, which you can get started with. All glyphs you can buy from NPCs are such starter glyphs. So what you need to do in order to use them is:

1) buy from the NPCs
2) open your glyph window and drag the new glyph onto the "purify" icon
3) wait until you get a message it's purified
4) train the Way you like (and to which your glyph belongs to) from a trainer who teaches low levels (train until the bar is only green and red or click the "buy level" button)
5) put your glyph in one of the slots in your glyph window and then click "research"
6) you should discover a new spell; if it's not the case (and you are reasearching a starter glyph, try again).

And yes, to get facier glyphs for stronger spells (which often require respectively higher skill levels to use), you'll need to complete quests or just buy them from other players who are selling.

Well, the fire glyph is a starter glyph but I'm not sure if the bug with its spell is fixed yet...

[yanom]

What is the fireglyph bug? Should I get another starter
glyph?

[Morla Phlint]

It's bug #122 and it's still open so I think the spell is effectively turned off for safety and if you are able to cast it at all, you'll get "no effect". Btw here is the link to a list of all spell bugs if you are curious.
And here is a magic guide for you as well (it's a bit outdated but still useful).
With the information you now have, I'm sure you can decide on your own which glyph to take .

[Gravemind]

The way I thought it worked (though it's seeming less likely now I'm level 60 in Dark Way and the spells aren't THAT much more powerful) is that levels increase in an extremely slow exponential growth. As in going from level 1 to level 2 will add 0.01 to spell damage, and going from 99 to 100 will give like 250% on whatever the increase from 1-99 was. So it's starts off being very small and very weak, and gaining levels is very slow and difficult, and by the end you can destroy worlds.

But the current system is that gaining levels has two effects: small increase in power of effect and small decrease in casting time

[Shaman]

I'm not sure if this is a spoiler, but you can combine glyphs if they have at least one of the same words when you right-click them. This means that if you right-click your fire glyph in your inventory window, it might say something like "This glyph can be interpreted as fire, flame, heat, etc". Now, if you have another glyph and you right-click it, let's say: "This glyph can be interpreted as blast, heat, wind", then you can combine those two glyphs because they have "heat" in common. This is just a theory, and it may not always work since other glyphs can also have that "Heat" attribute in their description, meaning you can only combine those glyphs if all 3-4 of them are being combined together.

Hope that helps.