The failure of spiritism and possible solutions

Anachroniser

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Aug 9, 2020
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If you look at what spiritism is capable of in combat it really only offers a bad mana transfer spell and a decent burst damage spell that requires you remain still. Other than that you are able to consume all of your mana to revive somebody or make an ether portal for some misc shenanigans. At best the mana transfer and ether portal are gimmicks and if it weren't for the fact that necromancy used spirits, I doubt anybody would really spec into spiritism unless they just happened to have 100 spare points. The only unique mechanic of spiritism was the ability to banish ghosts, perhaps this could be useful in a siege but was mostly still just a gimmick or a creative means of trolling. Perhaps the main use of spiritism was the ability to have both ether momentum and ether portal for extremely quick travel. Is that really worth all of the effort to get the scrolls and then also the 100 skill points? I can see getting transcendental seance on your necromancer for easier spirit generation(I even did this) but much beyond that is rather underwhelming. It seems like you could do a fair bit with the idea of manipulating somebodies soul, so why do so few spiritism spells interact with the living?

So what can be done about this? Kau seems rather similar to mana in the way that it is tied to the character stats, perhaps make certain spiritism spells able to affect the mana pool of another player. Maybe excess mana damage gives them a debuff or deals a certain proportion of stamina damage. Perhaps you could summon and control spirits in combat similar to the skeletons and mummies of necromancy. Perhaps you can even have limited interactions with the living while in the spirit world. While I did like that spiritism played into its theme more than "heres a buncha damage spells and some vaguely thematic things", most spiritism spells only helped you attack spirits which was not particularly useful. Take for example kau regeneration, it helps you while dead/in the spirit world and little else. The problem is that it effectively helped you while you were next to useless. You might have well as added a spell which stuns you for 5 seconds when cast and buffs your damage during that same duration. Could it have a use? Sure. Is it in any way a good spell or worth paying 4000 gold for? NO.

I think the best way to look at it is to go "why would I take spiritism INSTEAD OF another school of magic?" and there really isnt any reason. It was a support school at best and frankly deserves better.
 

Teknique

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Jun 15, 2020
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A little talked about fact. Spiritism was actually the death blow to Mortal 1.

I had some guild mates try to convince me that increasing the jump height in ghost mode by 1000% and making it so you can resurrect from ghost mode with portals "didn't change the game at all"

but common logic dictates that can't be possible.

Otherwise yeah kau regen and all those other useless abilities were pretty lame. Only collecting spirits ressing and portals were worth anything oh and banishing.
 
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Rhias

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"The only unique mechanic of spiritism was the ability to banish ghosts "
You completely underrate the resurrect ability. It's after healing probably the second most useful spell when running dungeons.
People at forums seem to tend to say that all professions that are no mainly for PVP are "useless".
Yes, spiritism was not a PVP focused profession. But I still think a lot of people enjoyed it.
Am I wrong? @Xunila @GrayFox
 
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Agead_Drem

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"The only unique mechanic of spiritism was the ability to banish ghosts "
You completely underrate the resurrect ability. It's after healing probably the second most useful spell when running dungeons.
People at forums seem to tend to say that all professions that are no mainly for PVP are "useless".
Yes, spiritism was not a PVP focues profession. But I still think a lot of people enjoyed it.
Am I wrong? @Xunila @GrayFox
Spot on. Spiritism is a very strong support school. Refill mage kau from the ether, dungeon rescue, infiltration, and scouting.
 
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Anachroniser

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While resurrect was a powerful ability in dungeons, I think you missed the last sentence. My point is that spiritism is not a useful school of magic on its own. I never said it wasnt a useful tree to have in addition to other trees, I said it was a useless tree to have in place of other trees.

The uses of ether portal were kind of gimmicky at best and using it as a means of locating dungeon running players so you can gank them as they leave was also kind of a gimmick. I'm not saying it wasn't used I'm saying it doesn't justify the existence of spiritism as a standalone magic school.

Think of you rolling up a mage character and having to choose only one magic school. Why would you choose spiritism over other schools? I understand using it in addition to other schools but it offers little in the ways of a practical alternative to necromancy elementalism or ecumenical.
 

Rhias

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While resurrect was a powerful ability in dungeons, I think you missed the last sentence. My point is that spiritism is not a useful school of magic on its own. I never said it wasnt a useful tree to have in addition to other trees, I said it was a useless tree to have in place of other trees.

The uses of ether portal were kind of gimmicky at best and using it as a means of locating dungeon running players so you can gank them as they leave was also kind of a gimmick. I'm not saying it wasn't used I'm saying it doesn't justify the existence of spiritism as a standalone magic school.

Think of you rolling up a mage character and having to choose only one magic school. Why would you choose spiritism over other schools? I understand using it in addition to other schools but it offers little in the ways of a practical alternative to necromancy elementalism or ecumenical.

You should think of the magic schools more as a specialization rather than stand alone professions. Every skill in the MO skill tree is only effective with other skills in combination. But their advantages sum up. The combination of different skills makes a character strong.

In MO1 I actually never saw any mage that did not have ecunemical spells (at least to some degree for healing).
All elementalists had ecu spells.
Almost all necros had ecu spells. The only exception were those who were basically fighters with a DK, and didn't cast any spells at all.
 

Anachroniser

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Yes, most mages had at least 20 levels in ecumenical for heals (generally more for corrupt too) but that doesn't change the fact that every other school of magic could stand alone. Elementalism was useful on its own, and even had healing. Necromancy also had healing and was useful on its own. Ecumenical had utility spells damage spells and healing. Every other school of magic could stand on its own. Spiritism was relegated to a position where it had to be a support school of magic and needn't be. It could be a fully fleshed out and functional standalone school of magic. Think of a hybrid which generally only has one school used, how often did you see a spiritist hybrid? How about necro hybrids or ecu hybrids? I understand that ele hybrids were rare but the point still remains I think.
 

Xunila

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The PvP part of Spiritism is resurrection. Very useful in dungeons (ok, that's PvE) but also in large fights when a group has support players not far away from the fight location. Dead players can be resurrected, healed and trade new armor and weapons. And another PvP spell is the detection of players in the world of living from ghost world.

The PvE part goes with all the spells about fighting ghosts and gathering spirits. But this is more or less equal to all other magic schools where you have to get reagents for the spells. The only difference is that you need spells to gather reagents instead of buying them from other players (or killing animals or extracting).
 
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Eldrath

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Jun 18, 2020
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the Jungle. Meditating on things to come.
My experience with any school beyond ecu is limited but I think it´s a false assumption that every school must be able to stand on its own.

With the amount of skillpoints you have you can easily invest into A. multiple schools or B. go for a hybrid.

There is obvious problems with this (mana for resurrection for example) that require creative builds, but I don´t think the premise should be that every school on it´s own is useful in every situation. It´s actually kinda cool if mages can be as specialized as crafters.
 

Anachroniser

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I think then that this discussion simply amounts to the following: Is it acceptable to have a "utility" magic school which is only useful when used in conjunction with other schools? To me the idea of mastering a school and being specialized appeals to me. It seems many others like the jack of all trade style of most mages. I'd like to hear reasoning behind that all. As I like the idea of being a specialized master of one thing I'd like that to be an option even if it requires additional points in a subskill. That could mean there is a "basic" and "advanced" skill set for each school of magic I think that could be an interesting solution. For example: basic necromancy gets all of their damage spells and darkness and such, advanced necromancy is a precursor for animal magnetism and also allows summoning of skeletons and mummies and such. I think this would allow each school to stand on its own at the advanced level and perhaps require mixing at the basic level. I'm interested on how people would feel about this. I would like to see mages have more variety instead of all running the same distributed spec. Maybe getting the advanced level in a school increases the mana costs of other schools. I'm not sure how to balance it other than to require more points but I'd like magic to be a very specialized role.
 

Philthie

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Sep 13, 2020
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If they had made spiritism the only way to res without stat loss you could have charged people for ressurections
 

Anachroniser

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No more statloss. That was the worst mechanic in all of MO1.
I couldn't agree more. Also imagine the start of the game before there are any spiritists. The whole idea irks me and I don't feel the solution to spiritism would be to make it profitable more than it was(filled spirit boxes sold for a lot).
 

Agead_Drem

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Fully understanding all the uses of the magic should be in place before stating that it was a failure. Looking at spiritism at the level of farming spirit boxes and general resurrection does not give the full credit that this school deserves.
OP appears to be fairly dismissive of one of the most tactical magic schools in MO1.
 

Anachroniser

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Fully understanding all the uses of the magic should be in place before stating that it was a failure. Looking at spiritism at the level of farming spirit boxes and general resurrection does not give the full credit that this school deserves.
OP appears to be fairly dismissive of one of the most tactical magic schools in MO1.
The tactical applications of portal blockers are endless. But really what I'm trying to convey is that while it does present interesting tools that could be powerful they felt more like a gimmick in practice. The only good application i saw for ether portal in actual use was portalling into a training palisade and spamming mental projectile on afk necromancers. Resurrection is good and useful and all but doesn't justify the entirety of a school of magic. If you have evidence of a non gimmicky tactical use of ether portal and spiritism that couldn't otherwise be done, I'd love to see a video. All that I can think of is using a ghost to scout a dungeon for player activity and a non spiritist ghost could just look for campfires and accomplish 90% of the same effect. While I certainly COULD conceive of tactical applications of a spiritist, I have seen incredibly few of them in practice and never have I seen it done well enough to justify using a spiritist over a wheelchair fatmage or your standard foot mage. Again, I'd love to see examples.
 

Agead_Drem

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The tactical applications of portal blockers are endless. But really what I'm trying to convey is that while it does present interesting tools that could be powerful they felt more like a gimmick in practice. The only good application i saw for ether portal in actual use was portalling into a training palisade and spamming mental projectile on afk necromancers. Resurrection is good and useful and all but doesn't justify the entirety of a school of magic. If you have evidence of a non gimmicky tactical use of ether portal and spiritism that couldn't otherwise be done, I'd love to see a video. All that I can think of is using a ghost to scout a dungeon for player activity and a non spiritist ghost could just look for campfires and accomplish 90% of the same effect. While I certainly COULD conceive of tactical applications of a spiritist, I have seen incredibly few of them in practice and never have I seen it done well enough to justify using a spiritist over a wheelchair fatmage or your standard foot mage. Again, I'd love to see examples.
The lack of imagination on your part, does not warrant a search for evidence on my part.
If evidence you seek, peruse the MO1 forum.
 

Agead_Drem

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Sep 13, 2020
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Spiritism Reference
With that said, there are things that could be tweeked to certainly improve the Spiritism School.
While in the ether, allow for casting while moving.

Ether Momentum: Gives a short increase of speed while in the ether. Either reduce cast time, or allow it to be cast while moving.

Ether Barrier: Reduces Kau lost while in combat in the ether. Make this also a utility for in the living realm, reduce damage taken from spells.
 

Philthie

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Sep 13, 2020
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I couldn't agree more. Also imagine the start of the game before there are any spiritists. The whole idea irks me and I don't feel the solution to spiritism would be to make it profitable more than it was(filled spirit boxes sold for a lot).

I dont think I conveyed my point very well there. If my memory serves me correctly the actual reason Spiritism ressurections were awful and never used was because they gave you statloss.

Once TC allowed us to all have our own personal guild priests that avoided statloss it made spiritism ressurections even more undesirable than they already were.

If Spiritism res didnt give statloss I was proposing it might have actually been useful.