Mana Vampire / Mana Drain do not function

[Slade]

These spells appear to do absolutely nothing whatsoever aside from suck my mana and regs.

Freeservers are notorious for these two spells not working very well, but here they simply don't work at ALL.

I've tested it out dozens of times on characters with 0, 50, and 100 resist and every single time is the same result. "You feel yourself resisting magical energy" and there is absolutely no effect whatsoever.

They don't appear to work on monsters with mana pools either.

Both spells are quite broken now, and were quite useful during the era.

[Derrick]

Thanks much for letting me know. I've actually had this jotted down to verify for quite a long time and it kinda got washed by becuase no one had mentioned a problem. I'll try and get these fixed tonight.

[Hemperor]

How exactly do these work? Do both caster and victim lose around the same amount of mana?

[ClowN]

both spells were pretty worthless in the t2a era. i dont remember ever using them actually.

[Derrick]

The only real documentation on them that I've been able to find is that they were pretty much broken in era once the Eval/Resist thing came into play.

[platy]

i never saw anyone use these spells until the UO:R patch that made magic reflect work by spell level:
ie. you cast magic reflect (5th level) and it well reflect spells up to 5th level or higher depending on inscription
meaning: if i casted reflect with gm scribe i could reflect 7 magic arrows, or 2 manadrains or 1 manavamp or 3-4 harms etc.

[Slade]

I used it all the time in PvM to avoid dispells and I'd always throw 2 of them at any dexer that reflected my initial attack, because I'd know he had magery and would likely use it later to heal/cure to supplement his bandaids.

Mana Vampire was the spell of choice in PvM because you'd mitigate some of the cost of the spell by the mana return.

These spells were not useful against a player with 90+ resist. They would work, but only drain 3-4 mana.

Thieves Guild, new skills, and more Feb 24 1999 1:06PM

Magic

* It will not be possible to learn magic resistance in towns.
* Some third-party exploits involving using items in the bank when not at the bank were fixed.
* The following spells have had their chance of resist and their effect adjusted:
o Mana drain
o Mana vampire

They were BROKEN when this update went in. You could drain 100 mana from a mage in 4 or 5 casts. 2 mana vampires left them with nothing, and you with 60ish after the returns. It was broken.

The next update, like 2 days later... in PvP with high resist, they had their chance of resist increased significantly. It was a sliding scale. They'd still hit someone with 0 resist for insane amounts of mana drain. But at 50, they were like 70% less effective. At GM resist, you'd only get 3-4 points of drain, making it useless.

But it was still useful against monsters.

[Derrick]

The original funtion of mana vampire was to take All the mana of the target, and give it to you. Do you know when/if this changed?
http://web.archive.org/web/199910030358 ... agic.htm#1
I recognize that some of the info in this link is plain wrong, like monsters not using mana

[Slade]

I saw that page as well when I was trying to find documentation to back it up.

I have to assume whoever wrote that guide was quite high on something at the time.

Mana Vampire never, ever took ALL your mana away as far as I know. There was some very broken game balance concepts over the years (during beta, we could use any level scroll with 0 magery and 0 mana) but you'd never have justified taking away 100 mana from a mage and giving it back to you.

[Faust]

Here is the text straight out of my t2a playguide book.

Ort Sanct(Mana Vampire)
This spell allows the mage to absorb all of one victim's mana. The mage's mana is replenished, and the victom is left with non. (The victom's mana is then restored normally, however.) This spell is incredibly difficult to achieve, as the level of resistance to it is high. The best defense against it is the Fifth Circle spell In Jux Sanct(Magic Reflection).

Spell Reagents: Black Pearl, Blood Moss, Mandrake Root, Spider's Silk

My memory on this spell is that it was completely pointless to use on anything over 50 resist. It was even more worse using mana drain at that level or higher.

[alatar]

Actually you could use about 6-7 mana drains on a target with 90+ resist and do some decent damage.

Mana vampire did have a chance of successfully stealing sometimes 70+ mana, which is large enough to consider "all". Though the chance to resist it was large enough that it wasn't worth hoping that a 40 mana spell would drain 40+ mana.

[Faust]

I'm assuming you meant mana instead of damage? It was possible to drain mana with the mana drain spell, but the resist rate for it compared to the mana output made it worthless. The difference between the two spells is that mana vampire gives you the gained mana, and mana drain simply drains the mana. It was better to use mana drain wands or staves instead of casting it.

[alatar]

The difference between the two spells is that mana vampire gives you the gained mana, and mana drain simply drains the mana.

[Redbeard72]

They changed it not to long after the mana vamp worked , BUt there was a time where it did not do a resist check and would take all Mana {Vampire} from monster or player, and give it to you, well then week later they changed it cause it was giving you there mana points on top of yours so you would end up with 200 mana or more. hehehe then weeks later they made it do the resist check and it was never used again... on div it works this way fills your mana back up , great for pvm takes a couple times , use half my mana casting ev and bs then mana vamp the monster and start casting ev and bs again. hehe anyways thats what i can remember