You'll still use them later. They do good damage. Generally our more advanced spells fill different niches - if you just want to get some damage on a single target and don't need the shield-bypassing of lightning bolt or the spash damage of fire ball, the intro spells are usually some of your better options.



- Starlear, Warrior Mage and Lieutenant of Ilithi's Crystal Vanguard -

>>The recent addition of F2P has lured me back to the game after around 5 years of absence. I've poked around at Elanthipedia and learning what has changed. I've decided to start fresh with a guild I haven't played before, Warrior Mage. I'm a little lost on what spells to choose as my first ones. I'm definitely getting Ethereal Shield and Substratum to train Warding and Augmentation. I've read that Ice Patch is a great Debilitation spell so I plan on working towards that. As for the starting TM spells, are they all about the same in usefulness and training and just pick whichever one feels cooler. I imagine I won't use them much later on once I've got 'bigger' TM spells. Or is that not the case? Any advice here is greatly appreciated.<<

Welcome back! Something like the following could be a good progression:

1st circle - 1 slot Air Lash (TM). Lets you climb the Air tree
2nd circle - 1 slot Ethereal Shield (Warding)
3rd circle - 1 slot Substratum (Augmentation) ---> Warding, Augmentation and TM can fill your reqs 10th.
4th circle - 1 slot Zephyr (Utility)
5-7th Circle - Bank those 3 slots
8th circle - 0 slots Elementalism (metaspell that opens up all the spell trees whether you have the basic spell or not), pick a debilitator you like. Any of Ice Patch, Arc Light or Anther's Call is fine.

Then start working toward Sure Footing and Swirling Winds.

What Starlear said about starting TM is right on.




Mazrian

As a player who has literally just climbed the first 6 circles (I'm not new, I make a lot of low level characters for messing around): I agree with what Mazrian said.

His path gives you access to the useful spells as early as possible; I went the earth route (stone strike, ES, anther's call, sure footing) and it's less optimal. I have to fish around a bit to find a good utility trainer.

I'll make a minor suggestion though. Pick up an ease burden scroll at level 1. You can raise the 1.5 gold in a few minutes doing tasks or foraging for branches, and being able to train augmentation from level 1 instead of level 3 is nice (not remotely a game changer, but nice) and I find the low-level TM spells hit hard enough that substratum probably wouldn't be a game changer, but the burden decrease from ease is nice.

Yeah, those would probably be better.

Mazrian

Ice patch is flat out ignored by water-immune critters like snowbeasts and swamp trolls, too. (Am I remembering that right, swamp trolls?)

There aren't bigger tm spells these days, and with the exception of fireball and cyclics the intro TM spells are going to be the best you get. Damage type matters but since you can't tell that it matters it functionally doesn't!

You miiiight want a multistrike and a single strike but thats about the only reason to pick more than one tm spell, other kinds of TM are lackluster at best and forum rage-inducing at worst.

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>Forgive my snark, but welcome to the life of a warrior mage.