The Summoner is Going Chapter 114 part3

Translator: Eisen　Editor: Weasalopes

3.15　Summon Magic

To this date, there are known to be Spells up to Level 12.
I will not be mentioning the details to each individual Monster Summon in this report.
You can find more information about those in the Summoners' thread in the forums, or through external links.

I will be covering the basics of Summoners.
The Summoner job is a powerful one.
Its main problem is that the burden on the player is quite significant.
However, it is hard to pass on the fun of growing your own Monster Summons.
This is a rare job that does not come out too often during character creation.

Level 1
Summon Monster: Summoning spell
A spell that summons a Monster under the Summoner's command.
It can be used not only to summon already available monsters, but also new summoned monsters as well.
Its range is extremely short. Small-to-medium MP consumption.
Additionally, the caster can have several Monster Summons with him at the same time, depending on their Summon Magic Level.
The number of monsters that can be summoned simultaneously is as follows:
Lv.1: 1 Monster
Lv.3: 2 Monsters
Lv.6: 3 Monsters
Lv.10: 4 Monsters
(Presumably) Lv.15: 5 Monsters　(Maximum number of party members)

Return Monster: Summoning spell
A spell that recalls a Monster Summon.
Its range is extremely short. Slight MP consumption.

Level 5

Call Monster: Summoning spell
A spell that calls nearby monsters and guides them to the caster.
The target needs to have been Identified, regardless of whether it has been fought against before or not.
It is very useful for leveling while there are not many monsters around.
Be careful when calling monsters that are part of a group, as there is a high chance that you might end up calling the whole group towards you.
Its range is very long. Small MP consumption.

Level 12

Change Monster: Summoning spell
A spell that replaces a Monster Summon for another one during battle.
Further details are unknown.

3.16　Spell Song and Spell Melody

To this date, there are known to be Spells up to Level 8.
There are not that many spells under that category, but all are very useful, especially from a support perspective.

Both Spell Song and Spell Melody are treated as Spells in this report, but they are somewhat different from normal spells.
It would be more accurate to refer to them as blessings that are bestowed through sound.
Additionally, both Spell Song and Spell Melody have a set of spells that have similar effects.
Although only one of them has an actual effect, a synergy is created by exhibiting both simultaneously.

However, the Bard cannot perform any other actions while casting Spell Song and Spell Melody at the same time.
Keep in mind that while it is highly risky to use, it has a tremendous effect.
It becomes even more complicated when a musical instrument is involved.
The use of flutes is particularly unique, and I don't understand it very much myself.

Furthermore, the range for this type of spell is as distant as their sound can be heard, and the caster decides how much MP to consume when casting.
You can find more details in the Bard's thread in the forums, or through external links.

Level 1

Song of Minuet / Melody of Minuet: Recovery spell
Music that recovers HP for the entire party.
It gradually regenerates HP for as long as the music continues.

Level 2

Song of March / Melody of March: Support spell
Music that inspires the entire party.
It boosts STR and AGI for as long as the music continues.

Level 3

Song of Lullaby / Melody of Lullaby: Support spell
Music that puts all monsters to sleep.
The targets will continue to sleep for as long as the music continues.
Even if it is resisted at first, this spell will try to affect its targets again after a fixed amount of time.

Level 5

Song of Chants / Melody of Chants: Offensive spell
Music that intimidates enemies.
It continually deals damage at a certain interval for as long as the music continues.

Level 8

Song of Requiem / Melody of Requiem: Support spell
Music that calms the spirits of monsters.
It reduces their STR, AGI and SPI for as long as the music continues.
It also makes monsters less likely to attack.
It is particularly effective against Undead monsters.
Even if it is resisted at first, this spell will try to affect its targets again after a fixed amount of time.

3.17　Spirit Summoning

Spirit Summoning is limited only to Elves, but it is a considerably powerful Magic skill.
To that extent, the cooldown time for its spells is rather long, and casting them imposes a penalty on the amount of experience points that the caster earns.
It is also greatly influenced by the terrain.
It is rather difficult to use.

However, at this point there is no known reliable user of this type of Magic skill.
The strength of the summoned spirit seems to depend on both the caster's own level, as well as their Spirit Summoning level.
Please note that these spells are not divided into categories such as attack, defense, support, and so on.
For more information, please refer to the Elves' Forest thread on the forums.
Here I will only introduce the names of the Spirit Summons.

Light: Will o' Wisp

Dark: Shade

Fire: Salamander

Wind: Sylph

Earth: Gnome

Water: Undine

Dust: Haboob

Lava: Laeva

Steam: Gas Cloud

Thunder: Riot

Ice: Jack o' Frost

Tree: Dryad

Spacetime: ?

Spell Song / Spell Melody: Faun, Sandman, Leanan Sidhe

4. Convenience of Recovery Spells

The six basic attributes all get a Recovery spell at Level 3.
It's easy to see that they can have their strong and weak points when comparing them with each other.
I have listed them below if only to give the reader a slight feel on the subject.
It is up to each reader's own judgement to decide which of these is more convenient than the rest.

Note that there is a similar correlation between Level 3 single-target offensive spells.
However, it is far more complicated to list since this type of spell also exists within not only the six basic attributes, but in the derived ones as well. For this reason, I prefer not to cover them at this time.
In all honesty, it would be quite troublesome.

4.1　Recovery amount

Taking the Earth Magic variant's recovery amount as 100, the comparison is as follows:

Earth: 100 > Light: 90 > Water: 85 > Fire: 75 > Dark: 70 = Wind: 70

However, in the case of the Fire variant, it also bestows a regeneration effect.
Taking that into consideration, Fire might recover between 105 and 110, depending on the circumstances.

Furthermore, a Regeneration spell has yet to be confirmed.
I suspect it might be obtained at a derived Magic skill's Level 6.

4.2　Effective Range

Taking the Wind Magic variant's effective range as 100, the comparison is as follows:

Wind: 100 > Water: 90 > Light: 80 = Fire: 80 > Earth: 70 > Dark: 0

In Dark's case, it is 0 because contact is required.

4.3　MP consumption

MP consumption is small for all of these Recovery spells.

The one that stands out is the Dark variant, as it uses the target's MP instead of the caster's.
Only when the target's MP is fully depleted will that spell start using the caster's MP.
Dark Heal is the least effective of the Recovery spells, but it recovers more HP than what frontline fighters can normally recover on their own.
It is also very efficient for parties with six members.

4.4　Overall Evaluation

It's hard to say which Recovery spell out of the 6 basic attributes is better.
There is nothing extremely outstanding that may put either of them at an advantage over the others.
In my personal opinion, I prefer Fire Heal.
I've grown used to it so much that it can't be helped.
Wind Heal comes right after it.
It has saved me numerous times.
Below that, I have no particular preferences.

5. Event Log

Why am I including this here?
I have my own motives to complain.

5.1　Fear of the Night

This has been thoroughly detailed in the Fear of the Night thread.
But let's just go over the lessons learned here.

Even if it is one of the initial maps, do not underestimate it.
Monsters change their behavior between day and night.
At night, stronger monsters appear as well.
Even the top parties at the time of the event have been defeated on this initial map.
Everyone should be careful, especially when starting off a new character.

5.2　Titles

They are a prerequisite to go beyond the initial five maps.
It is a well known fact that this game is packed with titles, so that's as far as this section goes.
It should be more than enough to search on the Spoilers thread for more information.

Should we think of them as something we are forced to obtain?
Is is a trap from the GMs?

Furthermore, it is advised to speak with NPCs regularly and be on good terms with them.

5.3　The disaster of derived magic

It was thought that this would only happen during the game's beta version, and that it would be fixed after the game's actual release…
But why is it like this?

As mentioned earlier, the DEX stat is greatly related to the requirements needed to be able to obtain derived Magic skills.
But let's think about it for a moment.
How many starting players who wanted to focus on Magic skills have actually trained their DEX?
Most of them would logically choose focusing on their INT or SPI rather than DEX.

This was first discovered during Mr. Lumberjack and Mr. Summoner's match during the tournament.
The match has been posted in the top page, I believe everyone has seen it by now.
The first derived Magic skills to be discovered were Thunder, Ice, and Tree Magic.
Many players were quickly attracted to these skills, enthusiastically wanting to learn them.

Soon after that, Spacetime Magic was discovered.
And the existence of the spell Return Home was quite the uproar.

First of all, in order to be able to see in dark places or at night, you only need either one of Light and Dark magic spells, not both.
Furthermore, since Elves and Dwarves are forced to pick Dark Sight during character creation, Light and Dark Magic were left mostly unpicked in favor of other skills.
Because of this, to this day there are no more than ten players that can use Spacetime Magic.

The recent reveal of the spell Instant Portal has also caused a great commotion.
It was quite a big fuss.

Why am I repeating myself so much?
It's because this is a complaint.

5.4　Tonfas

Tonfas are awesome.

It seems that many things can be done in the range of common sense in this game.
Are you expecting any other unique weapons?

5.5　But don't be naughty

In the fighting tournament, there was a vote for the best bout, but the match that became the top of the list was banned.
Those who have taken screenshots at that time were careful about it.
When commenting on the forums, the whole thread is very likely to be buried.
Also, don't post external links.
Don't get me wrong: I am not involved in any inquiries regarding this matter.

6. Wrapping up

So, what can we conclude from this report?
I want to wrap this up by saying that every player should ultimately play the game as they please.
More than a conclusion, let's take it as my personal opinion.

So, what else?

I would like to briefly cover some of the questions I see from time to time.

6.1　Are status effects any good?

This is a question I see posted very often.
They are good.
But not everything has to be about fighting!
I recommend obtaining what I consider to be the minimum necessary skills.
What do I mean by that?
It depends on the rest of your party members, your races, jobs, and play styles.
There is no absolute answer for that.

6.2　What skills should I learn?

Same as above.
There is no perfect set of skills.
You can get whatever you want during character creation.
But if you have friends to play with, you should consult with each other and get what suits best for you.

6.3　Is it okay to learn a lot of Magic skills?

It's okay.
If you have the confidence to choose a spell depending on your situation, you should do it.
However, you'd better be prepared to face some slow growth, since setting and leveling multiple Magic skills decentralizes growth.
For example, the Mr. Lumberjack vs. Mr. Summoner video in the top page is a great example of this.
It's a case of someone who heavily prioritizes STR versus someone who took too many Magic skills.
Take it as a "specialist versus generalist" scenario.
Well, the match itself is very interesting…

I'm sure it's okay since I haven't heard that Mr. Summoner is having any sort of trouble with having learned many Magic skills so far, so…
But still, like I said before, be prepared to face some slow growth rates when taking many Magic skills.

6.4　I'm no good at exercising, is it okay?

It's okay.
The interface is very user friendly and it will help you balance your skills accordingly.
However, your VR gear should be up to date.
During beta, there were cases of unmatching in the VR gear's feedback function.
If you are still an old type of VR gear, you will need to upgrade.
Since there are VR gears that can not be fully supported, do check with your VR gear store in advance.
Use second-hand VR gear at your own risk.

6.5　Is it painful?

Pain Settings at 100% is going to be painful, sure.
There were many players who didn't like it and decided not to participate in the battle tournament.

The pain settings can be changed by the player.
It is okay to set them all the way down to zero if you'd like.

However, your sense of touch decreases to about 30% when your Pain Settings are at 0.
The VR experience will also be impaired, as vision, taste, smell and hearing will be reduced to about 70% as well.
But if you're okay with that, feel free to do it.

6.6　Are there PKs?

Yes, there are.
At the same time, there are PKKs who hunts PKs down.
The PKKs are quite reliable.
Apparently, looking at the PKs' common trends, they seem to have an untasteful tendency to target beginner players.
So make sure to level up quickly and beat them at their own game!

6.7　I want to be a PK!

Go ahead, then.
Feel free to build up your karma.
There are many misdeeds that you can enjoy, such as treachery, surprise attacks, stealing, killing passersby, scamming…
And they are all targeted by the PKKs.
Have fun washing your own blood stains with more blood!

6.8　The GMs are so coldhearted!

Everyone seems to think that way.
"Let's give up!"
There is too much mask data!

6.9　Can I do H in the game?

No one has been brave enough to try.
Or maybe there is someone who has…?
You can expect to be banned for something like that.

6.10　What about martial arts?

I won't be covering those here.
I leave that to somebody else.

6.11　Is solo play okay?

It's doable.
It's easy for Hunters and Treasure Hunters to go solo.
Dwarves have it easy, too.
Summoners are a bit tricky to use, but they're meant to be played solo.
However, be prepared to take an entire day trying to get the Summoner job to appear during character creation.
Though there are some brave solo Bard players, it gets really tough for them when it comes to fighting bosses.
Depending on how you play, you can even go solo with jobs that aren't meant to be played solo.

6.12　I want to have a Summoner in my party, but everyone will hate me for it, right?

There's an increasing number of cases of Summoners joining into parties during the earlier stages of the game.
If you have two Summoners, with two Monster Summons each, you can make a fairly reasonable party with them in terms of fairness and experience points.
It seems to work well enough even when having a Summoner with three Monster Summons.
But I cannot recommend going beyond that, as the amount of experience points obtained will not be that good.
Avoid large-scale battles, except for boss battles.

6.13　I want to get Spacetime Magic as soon as possible!

Elves have the easiest time when it comes to learning Magic skills.
If your character has a hard time learning Magic, you might be better off giving it up and creating a new one.
Good luck!

－ End of report －

Chapter end