Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Familiars For Skillers

I was fishing monks up in Piscatoris and wondered if I should hop into the bank and get a familiar to help out. Nah, I decided - too many clicks for just a +1 bonus.

The next day I read an article berating players for not making better use of summoning familiars. Hmm . . . guilty. I then looked and saw that my Ibis would have given me a +3 to fishing, not just a +1. I probably should use familiars more often.

One of the problems with familiars is that most of the bonuses they give are invisible. This means, of course, you can't see the bonus. This makes it seem less real to me and causes me to forget what the bonus is. Invisible bonuses also do not let you do things you can't already do: the +10 invisible mining bonus from a Lava Titan will not allow you to mine any ores you can't mine without the titan - it just helps with speed and efficiency.

But the biggest reason I fail to use familiars is that I just forget. There are so many familiars with so many different traits that I can't keep track. So I learn two or three of them and those are the only ones I end up using.

In an effort to fix the situation I made a table I call "Familiars For Skillers". It divides familiars up into categories based on what skill they might help. None of the combat familiars are included in the table unless they have non-combat benefits. I don't know if the table will help me yet, but check it out. If you think it could be useful then you are welcome to borrow it, steel it, munge it to your own twisted purpose, whatever. Enjoy.

Familiars For Skillers