Magery

Magery is the skill of casting arcane spells from a spellbook or scroll, the primary expression of magic in Ultima Online. A trained mage commands fire, lightning, the dead, and the very fabric of reality through spoken words of power and the consumption of reagents. Few schools of skill rival its breadth: Magery's sixty-four spells cover offence, healing, summoning, transportation, and utility, and a grandmaster casts them all.

Casting Spells

A spell is cast either from a spellbook or by reading a scroll. Most spells require a target — a creature, an object, or a point on the ground — and produce a targeting cursor when invoked. The caster's hands must be empty of anything other than a spellbook to cast, although items with the Spell Channeling property suspend that restriction. A spell takes time to cast equal to 0.25 + (circle × 0.25) seconds, so a First Circle spell requires half a second and an Eighth Circle spell, two and a quarter.

Reagents

Eight reagents power Magery, each consumed when a spell is cast. They are:

• Black Pearl
• Blood Moss
• Garlic
• Ginseng
• Mandrake Root
• Nightshade
• Spiders' Silk
• Sulfurous Ash

Every spell calls for a specific combination — Fireball requires Black Pearl and Sulfurous Ash, for example — and the reagents must be present in inventory at the moment of casting. The Lower Reagent Cost item property reduces the chance that a given casting consumes its reagents at all; at 100% LRC, no reagents are consumed.

Mana

Each spell draws mana from the caster's personal reserve. Mana regenerates passively while resting, faster with Meditation skill, and faster still with the Mana Regeneration item property worn on equipment. A spell that costs more mana than the caster currently holds will fail to cast.

Spellbooks and Scrolls

A spellbook is a permanent vessel: a scroll dragged onto a spellbook is inscribed into it and never removed thereafter, and the book may then cast that spell as often as reagents and mana allow. A scroll, by contrast, is consumed in a single use but requires no reagents — it draws on the magic already bound into it. A character may recite scrolls up to two circles above their current skill, so even a novice with First Circle ability can use a Second Circle scroll.

Words of Power

Each spell carries a phrase in the magical tongue of Britannia, spoken aloud by the caster as the spell is invoked. An attentive opponent can identify the spell being readied by the words alone — a discipline of significant tactical value in player conflict. Each spell's words appear in its row of the tables below.

The Spells of Magery

The school's sixty-four spells are organised into eight circles of eight spells each. Higher circles demand more skill, more mana, and longer casting time. Two further Mastery spells are unlocked by the corresponding skill-mastery system, available once a character takes Magery as a mastery school.

First Circle

Apprentice spells. Any character with measurable Magery may attempt them.

Second Circle

Third Circle

Fourth Circle

Fifth Circle

Sixth Circle

Seventh Circle

Eighth Circle

The grandmaster's repertoire. Each spell is expensive in mana and time; each is decisive.

Mastery Spells

A character who designates Magery as a skill-mastery school unlocks two additional spells, gated behind a separate mastery primer and skill-mastery levels.

Training

A new mage begins by buying skill from any NPC mage in a Magery shop, who will train a character up to thirty Magery for a fee. From that point onward, training proceeds by casting spells appropriate to one's current skill: spells too easy yield nothing, spells too difficult fail too often. The reliable progression is:

• 30–45: Third Circle, e.g. Fireball
• 45–55: Fourth Circle, e.g. Lightning
• 55–65: Fifth Circle, e.g. Paralyze
• 65–75: Sixth Circle, e.g. Reveal
• 75–90: Seventh Circle, e.g. Flamestrike
• 90–120: Eighth Circle, e.g. Earthquake

Spells need not be cast at enemies; targeting an inanimate object — anything on the ground or in the caster's backpack — counts toward training without consequence.

Mage Weapon Technique

A weapon with the Mage Weapon property reduces the wearer's effective Magery by a fixed amount, up to a maximum of −29. Equipping such a weapon lets a high-skill mage cast lower-circle spells, which finish faster and consume less mana, while still continuing to gain skill against challenging opponents. A grandmaster mage with a −29 Mage Weapon, for example, casts as if at 71 Magery — fast Sixth Circle spells in place of laborious Eighth Circle casts. The trade is one point of Faster Casting, since Mage Weapons carry an inherent −1 to that property.

Advanced Training

A long-standing technique uses a tamed pet to provide a steady stream of training targets. The trainer equips a poison-only weapon — one with no other hit spell on it — enables jewellery that brings their Magery slightly below the pet's Wrestling skill, and casts on the pet, which has been instructed not to retaliate, over a long period. The method is permitted by the game's rules but must not be left unattended; inactivity is grounds for jail time at a Game Master's discretion.

Useful Equipment

Several item properties accelerate both training and combat casting:

• Lower Reagent Cost (LRC) — at 100%, reagents are never consumed.
• Lower Mana Cost (LMC) — at the 40% cap, spells cost 40% less mana.
• Faster Casting (FC) — at 2 (the cap for armoured casters), spells cast a half-second faster.
• Faster Cast Recovery (FCR) — at 6 (the cap), the post-cast cooldown drops to a fraction of a second.
• Mana Regeneration — additional points return mana faster between casts.

A mage who reaches all five caps can sustain Eighth Circle casting indefinitely.

Supporting Skills

Three skills compound with Magery:

• Evaluating Intelligence discloses how much mana a target has remaining and, more practically, increases the damage of offensive spells.
• Meditation raises the rate of mana regeneration; an active meditation session multiplies it further.
• Inscription at grandmaster grants a +10% Spell Damage Increase and an additional 5% Casting Focus that exceeds the equipment cap, making it a quiet but significant force-multiplier for any caster.

Magic in Towns

Town guards do not look kindly on offensive magic. In Felucca, casting an offensive spell within a town zone calls the guards on the caster, and any damage dealt to a victim is reduced to one hit point regardless of the spell. In every other facet, most offensive and summoning spells are forbidden outright while the caster stands within a guard zone.

Related Schools

Several other skills produce magical effects, each with its own focus:

• Chivalry draws on virtue and grants holy spells useful to warriors.
• Mysticism combines arcane and elemental magic with summoning.
• Necromancy binds spirit, blood, and the dead.
• Spellweaving is the magic of the Elves, slow but powerful.

Trivia

In the earliest years of Ultima Online, a mage could not open their spellbook while holding any other object, and could not cast a spell while holding anything other than a spellbook. Both restrictions have since been relaxed: a non-Spell-Channeling item is now automatically un-equipped at the moment a spell is cast.