Starter tips for RDM

[Aeni]

Re: Starter tips for RDM

Don't new characters starting as RDM start with a Onion Dagger?

Yes they do. LOL Not sure why people are posting that you start off with sword. I should know. I started off as RDM when starting Akemie and had to dump it and bought a Wax Sword +1 instead.

Also, Dia isn't pre-learned. You have a scroll of Dia in your inventory and you must use it to learn.

[Lasswyn]

Re: Starter tips for RDM

Just wanna throw something out there that I wish someone had explained to me when I entered Vana'Diel as a baby red mage. In your spells menu, there's a coloured block next to each spell. The connection is obvious when you're looking at things like Water, Aero, Fire, Stone...but less obvious when you learn your enfeebling spells, like Poison, Paralyze, Slow, etc. Learn the colours and what they mean, and you'll notice an elemental alignment for each of your spells.

<tangent>

I solo'ed to 15 RDM because I was terrified of getting into a party situation and screwing up royal. Ended up in the Dunes eventually, by necessity, on one of the beaches. Fighting crabs, I'm just standing in the back casting stuff, and after awhile, this self-righteous @#$% with a mentor bubble (undeserved, imho) essentially tears me a new one for casting Poison. He says, "You can't poison crabs, you should know that by now." Uh, no, nobody told me about this before, and it wasn't in any of the guides I'd read. But I took his word for it, and felt pretty awful.

The elemental alignment was a key part of this guy's logic. Crabs are water-based. Poison is aligned to water. Crabs are resistant to water. Therefore crabs are 100% resistant to poison.

WRONG!

You *can* poison a crab, it's just bloody difficult at times because of the resistance. Later on, more factors come into play as to whether your spells are resisted or not. That guy was sorta right that I shouldn't have been wasting MP on a spell that would likely be resisted, but the logic he used to get there was flawed, and he didn't even bother to explain his thinking to me. He just called me an idiot, basically, and left it at that. And I went on levelling with the entirely wrong idea about a lot of things.

Went back to the Dunes around level 36, though, and poisoned crabs just for the hell of it. Felt good.

</tangent>

If you don't know what element(s) a monster is weak or stong to, look for lists online, especially lists for WHM's, because they need to know what Bar- spell to use on their party. Then go back and look at your spells, and the colours next to them, and how often this or that is resisted. You'll start seeing patterns that will help you more as time goes by.