The Power of minions

Even before the Necromancer spell was made, players had ways of enlisting help from mobs. Void golems could be built and controlled, and had many of the powers of warriors and thieves intrinsically. Clerics were able to charm mobs to a certain degree. They also were able to animate corpses into undead zombies that did their bidding.

Now, both necros and mages can make minions using their mana alone.

Control Points

Main article: control points

control points keep players from making too many minions and also allow various combinations of minions. Each of the casting classes has its own control points. Following is a description of each class and its minions.

Mages Get Elementals

(Note: Since I do not have a mage primary, I may not be completely accurate on this elemental stuff. Please send athlon tell/mudmail in game if you disagree with anything in this section.)

Mages,, at the pinnacles of their training in fire, lightning, and ice spells, can summon elementals from the elemental plains to take hits or assist them in combat. All elemental minions also have a lesser form that requires fewer control points but is, well, lesser. All elemental minions improve with cast level, as well as the knowledge level of the spell that summoned them. Additional tip: elementals get healed up when they are hit with damage of their elemental type. For example, a fire elemental being hit with a fireball from the enemy will actually heal up because of it.

Fire Elemental

The first elemental minion summoning spell is the fire elemental spell at level 32. Fire elementals are merely ok in both attack and defense, and make general purpose mage minions.

Lightning Elemental

At level 34, the next elemental summoning spell unlocks. The user must know chain lightning to be able to cast the spell. Lightning elementals have high attack power, but do not take a lot of damage before disappearing. They also can cast lightning bolt on mobs, which can cause the boom effect. The normal lightning elemental can cast ball lightning as well, though the lesser cannot.

Ice Elemental

At level 36, ice elemental unlocks. It cannot hit hard, but it does soak up a lot of damage. Not much else is known about it at this time, because no one is level 36 yet.

Clerics can Charm

Cleric minions are, at this time, limited to charmed minions. At level 16, clerics can learn the charm spell and begin to attempt to charm minions. Unfortunately, a cleric can only charm a minion much weaker than himself, and the stronger the minion, the shorter the duration of the charm. Cast level allows a cleric to enlist the help of more powerful charmed minions, as well as increasing the duration of the charm.

Charmed minions can be ordered to do just about anything with the order command. Whether they can execute the order often depends on the stats of the minion, especially when it comes to spellcasting and wearing equipment. Make sure your minion's int , mana and wis is high enough before ordering him to cast something; if any of these are not high enough, he will most likely fail and mana will be wasted. As a rule, mobs regenerate much slower than players, especially when it comes to mana.

Charmed mobs also do not automatically enter portals. You will have to order charmed mobs to enter portals before you enter them yourself. There are also many no mob rooms, or rooms restricted to a certain type of mob. If you attempt to enter one of these rooms, your charmed minion may be left behind.

Charmed minions, after the charm spell wears off, will leave you and recall to the room they were in when you first charmed them. If this room does not exist (perhaps you charmed a mob in an instance and the instance is gone), mobs will stay where they are. If the mob is aggressive, it will begin to attack you as soon as the spell is gone.

Thieves seek Deliverance with Decoys

The only minions thieves can make are shadow decoys. At level 25, thieves learn the shadow decoy skill. The better learned the skill, the greater the chance of successfully making combat decoys. Shadow decoys rescue the thief, similar to a necromancer clay man, but take much less punishment. Unlike the clay man however, thieves can make many decoys at once, as long as they have enough mana.

Necromancers Master minion Control

Necromancers are the masters of minion summoning. From animations to undead, necromancers have the final say in almost anything minion-related. Read on to find out why.

Cast level makes a difference

Casting a minion spell at a higher cast level will almost certainly make the resulting minion stronger. The exception is the shadow fiend, which relies exclusively on the level of soulstone used. Note that your knowledge level of the minion skills and spells plays a smaller but still significant part in the power of your minions.

Animated minions: Cheap punching bags

Animated necro minion summoning is learn in the necromancer animation spell tree. All of these minions are used to take damage in the great majority of cases. They only take 1 or 2 control points, but require a little bit of mana to keep running. If your mana drops to 0 while you have an animated minion, it will break apart. This is usually only a problem for primary necros below about level 13 due to the sparse amount of equipment that has both cast level and mana regen on it. Animated minions are magical entities. They heal up from magical attacks, but take damage if dispel magic is cast on them.

clay Man

Level 1 necromancers learn their first animation spell, clay man. The clay man requires only 1 control point and nothing in the way of raw materials. You can even make a clay man in areas that don't actually have clay, like under the deep blue sea. Clay men are the cheapest and least powerful of the animated minions. You will probably have to cast a few clay men when running serious xp with it. Clay men have a bit of poison resistance, but other than that, are quite flimsy compared with other minions.

Wood Woad

Level 5 necro opens up the wood woad spell. Making a wood woad requires you to have at least 20 pounds of wood on the ground. Woads have much more hp than clay men and take 2 control points. Sadly, they are vulnerable to both fire and lightning attacks, but, in turn, are resistant to cold. They also can reflect damage back at mobs; you will know they have done so if a mob is suddenly stabbed by a wooden spike while fighting. Woads can also be deanimated into large pieces of wood that can be stored away and reanimated into fresh woads in the future.

Bone Guardian

Bone guardian is learnable at level 9 necro. The guardian requires a corpse to be on the ground before being cast. It has fairly high hp, though not even close to that of a woad, and only requires 1 control point. It is vulnerable to fire and crushing attacks, but can dodge, and is resistant to pointed weapons. Bone guardians are useful because whenever a mob with bones dies, it has the potential of being made into a bone guardian, thereby replacing a previous guardian that might be injured. Bone guardians can be deanimated into balls of twisted bones for future use.

Flesh Beast

Perhaps the worst of the animated minions, the flesh beast's only redeeming quality is that it has high hp, higher even than that of the woad. Sadly, in all other ways, it is inferior, especially when it comes to self-protection. It takes massive amounts of damage with every hit. The high damage it takes outweighs the hp advantage it has. In short, flesh beasts are plain pointless; do not use them if you and your other minions want to live longer.

Metal construct

Metal constructs are the most powerful of the animated minions. They have the same hp as woads, and also take 2 control points like their wooden cousins. To make one, you need 20 pounds of metal on the ground. The best part about metals,, though, is that saving effects on the metal used are transferred to the finished construct. For example, if you need a metal construct that has a high resistance to breath and poison damage, you can drop metal that has high poison and breath save effects on it, and your finished metal will have them too. Note that negative effects lower saves, so you may have to make a tradeoff. Metal constructs have damage reduction like their woad counterparts, and can be deanimated for future use. The saving throws are kept along with the deanimation. Use the identify spell to check the saving throws on your deanimated metals.

to be continued