Shattered Kingdoms

Hi all! I was wondering if I could get some tips for playing a warlock. I don't really know much about them and I'm stuck at an expert level. What's the best way to level? Is it using fireball? Earthquake? Having two pets? One pets?

It seems whenever I get a store bought pet, using fireball or anything of the sort turns it against me, unlike my elemental. That and there aren't many warlocks in game to ask tips from. If anyone has any tips on levelling or so, not places mind you, I can find those out, but just general warlock play, I'd be appreciative. Thanks!

You may as well buy a flying pet for ease of travel & for an extra smallish meat shield. Buying a non flying pet isn't really worth it. I believe that by expert you have stoneskin. Your fastest leveling from here out, then, is:

c summon elemental
c stoneskin
c fly self
c earthquake;c earthquake; repeat until NPCs die.

Earthquake is amazing for leveling. Just be careful that you don't pull more than you can handle until you really learn to manage it and don't be discouraged if you die a few times figuring it out.

Alternatively, if you want to go the slower but super safe route, summon an elemental, stand behind it, and lightning bolt to victory.

Have fun.

VoA and earthquake....fun stuff.

I know I am going to get yelled at by other players but this is the best advice:

delete; delete

I was going to say that, but give the guy a chance. You never know he might be the best lock ever.....

If you can find a priest or shaman buddy who's willing to keep your elemental alive for a few rounds, earthquake in some of the more populated areas (ask around IC if you're not sure) can literally rocket you through expert / mentor.


Having GMed a warlock in 14 hours with the help of a Miran priest, I can tell you that it is both possible and fun.

I am just being facetious!

There's two main ways to level your warlock.

One, is the straight and simple, textbook caster leveling strategy: Get a pet, stand behind it, spam damage spells at one target at a time. For a warlock, this means standing behind your elemental (Storebought pets won't hold a candle to an elemental) and spamming lightning bolt, which is by far your most damaging spell per mana consumed (Unless you are just looking to master other damage spells).


However, a warlock has an additional option, which both gains you more experience over time and per mana, but, that also carries much more risk of death. That involves using area of affect spells, namely earthquake or fireball. Fireball isn't a -great- spell for leveling in my opinion because you have to counteract it with healing rays lest you kill yourself or your elemental.

However, earthquake allows you to hit everyone in your room and all connected rooms that aren't flying: As a result you, naturally, can get a lot of experience because now you can target more than one NPC with any given cast. Typically, depending on your mana pool you will have to exhaust your mana almost completely in order to kill a NPC with earthquake, which means that even though it takes much more mana to kill one NPC, it takes that same amount of mana (and time) to kill 10 NPCs if they're all being hit.


However, the danger of doing this is that you then, naturally, aggro all NPCs that are hit by it, and they will walk into the room with you and start beating on your elemental. Even worse, not only will your elemental die, but all of those NPCs will also start using throwing daggers against you: And this is where it gets dangerous, because if you take too much damage from daggers, you will die outright, and if you ever flee, you're completely screwed because the NPCs you earthquaked will follow and kill you. You can, however, mitigate the thrown weapon damage by using stone skin (Which nullifies a set number of attacks after it is cast) or healing rays, which will heal both you and your elemental: The problem is that you can then end up running out of mana before you kill all the NPCs you aggro'd, which means you are going to end up dead.

Generally, I would advise testing your limits with earthquake. If you are leveling in a place that has a few NPCs grouped together, try finding one or two NPCs all alone and see how many earthquake casts it takes to kill them, then decide if taking on more will be too much: If so, then you may want to stick with lightning bolt. However, when I leveled a warlock a while ago there were a few areas where I could kill 9-10 NPCs at a time if I played my cards right, even though if I'd messed something up along the way I would have ended up dead. If you're -really- pro, you can even go invisible (in order to getting weapons thrown at you) after casting earthquake 8 or 9 times, sleep until you regen a little bit, then wake up, cast healing rays until you are healed, then finish off the NPCs with earthquake. In addition if at any point you feel like you have aggro'd too many NPCs and you're going to run out of mana and die to them, it's best to cast invis and just walk away and hope the NPCs can't detect invis. Your elemental may die (it probably won't, it will probably flee once you leave the room) but that's better than you dying.


General tips in addition: Try to take advantage of racial weaknesses and avoid racial resistances. Centaur take extra damage from fire, for example, and giants take extra damage from lightning... whereas halflings, elves, deep-elves and sprites all take half damage from spells, so avoid leveling on those races if at all possible because you will get roughly half as much xp. An exception for halflings: They're also weak to blunt damage, which is the damage type that earthquake uses, so halflings take a lot of damage from earthquake.

I think I GMed Syn's warlock by tanking with my paladin. I think she made it to GM in about 20 hours with that strategy. Warlock is easily the fastest class to level with, at least to reach GM status. It's just sad that they are so shafted in what they can do.

My suggestion is to find a merc/barb/paladin friend to level with to eliminate the dumb throwing dagger code.

If you are fighting grouped NPCs, use shocking grasp until you have cone of cold. if you are fighting single NPCs use lightning bolt until you have magma spray. ALWAYS have stone skin up and be flying, there are a lot of fly staves around to help with concentration. With this method I GM'd a warlock in less than 40 hours. Earthquake is pretty dangerous, as is fireball and chain lightning. Earthquake is really only good if you have something to heal you, or your elemental quickly as it can have some unexpected drawbacks.
If you are going to use earthquake, investigate the area completely first, judging the NPCs you may in fact bring to you. Also never use earthquake in a law area.

if you see ivstnesr about, she is a warlock that I have been playing for the better part of 3 years. I will be happy to help you, although she can be rather harsh.