Players Guide/Magic

The magical energy in Yliakum is divided into six ways of arcane: Crystal Way, Azure Way, Red Way, Dark Way, Brown Way and Blue Way.

Yliakum Magic : The Ways

Each Way has a particular colour and a mental stat associated. The three mental stats linked to magic are: Charisma, Intelligence and Willpower. They give bonuses to the casting of spells that pertain to that way.

Each way is composed of a set of spells and each spell can be casted by a wizard thanks to the combination of a set of runes, called "glyphs". The spells of a particular Way are related to the same energy and the same concepts (Water, Air or Healing, Drain). They produce either a direct damage or a damage over time on the opponent.

The ways are all somewhat linked by relationship of opposition or attraction. A specific way opposes another and is "friendly" with two others (ie. Crystal Way opposes Dark Way and is friendly with Blue and Azure Way). Therefor, each spell giving a buff for a given time will provide at least a small way resistance (ie. Casting a Brown Way protective spell will protect you slightly againt Azure Way).

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|===Crystal Way===

	Glyph Colour	Focus	Speciality	Mental Stat	Damage Type	Relationships
	White	Energy, Life and Light	-	Charisma	Direct Damage	Opposed to Dark Way, friendly with Blue Way and Azure Way

Dark Way

	Glyph Colour	Focus	Speciality	Mental Stat	Damage Type	Relationships
	Black	Entropy, Death and Darkness	Fear, Drain	Charisma	Direct Damage and Damage Over Time	Opposed to Crystal Way and friendly with Brown Way and Red Way

Azure Way

	Glyph Colour	Focus	Speciality	Mental Stat	Damage Type	Relationships
	Light Blue	Mind, Illusion and Air element	Charm	Will	Minor Direct Damage and Damage Over Time	Opposed to Brown Way and friendly with Red Way and Crystal Way

Red Way

	Glyph Colour	Focus	Speciality	Mental Stat	Damage Type	Relationships
	Red	Strength, Chaos and Fire element	-	Will	Major Direct Damage	Opposed to Blue Way and friendly with Dark Way and Azure Way

Blue Way

	Glyph Colour	Focus	Speciality	Mental Stat	Damage Type	Relationships
	Blue	Divination, Purification and Water element	Polymorph	Intelligence	Major Damage Over Time	Opposed to Red Way and friendly with Crystal Way and Brown Way

Brown Way

	Glyph Colour	Focus	Speciality	Mental Stat	Damage Type	Relationships
	Brown	Nature, Protective magic and Earth element	Summon monsters, Minor Polymorph	Intelligence	Direct Damage	Opposed to Azure Way and friendly with Blue Way and Dark Way

Casting a Spell

The Glyphs

At the beginning of Yliakum History, the god Talad, forged pure magical energy into shapes called "Glyphs". They form the base of Yliakum magic, no spell can be casted without a glyph.

Glyphs of the Six Ways

They are found in nature with no real explanation, no one knows exactly why they form but when some type of energy is strongly present in one place a glyph can form. Glyphs patterns appear on very different materials from a leaf to the fur of an animal and usually on any type of rock.

During the centuries many glyphs have been found and studied by the wizards. They discovered that each glyph can create a spell effect and that several glyphs can be combined to obtain greater effects. To simplify casting of spells, the glyphs are associated with a concept (ie. "Weight") and wizards combine those concepts to form new spells (ie. "Weight" and "Negate" to become very light).

Nowadays, glyphs can be found rendering services to the people of Yliakum or can be bought to mages like Levrus Dahrenn in the magic shop for the more basic of them. The more rare and powerfull glyphs can be obtained by joining a Way Circle (school of magic) and follow its path to the Mastery of a particular Way.

• The glyphs purchased or rewarded will appear in your Inventory and be visible in the Glyphs Window in your Spell Book.

Purification

Before your character can use a glyph, he or she must purify it.

There is a strong magic link between the wizard and his glyphs. That requires a process of purification when the wizard gains a new glyph that may take some time (hours or one day). After that purification process the link is established and if the wizard dies the glyphs will be destroyed with him (or taken to the Death Realm with him).

A wizard can trade a glyph, but in this case the glyph can be used by the other wizard only after purifying it and after creating a new magic link with it.

To purify a glyph, open the Glyph window from your Spell Book. Pick up the glyph to be purified and drop it on the Purify Glyph icon. You will see a message in your Chat Window indicating that purification has begun.

Once the purification process has finished, you may use the glyph in combinations to create spells.

Combining Glyphs

Once you have one or more glyphs, you can start to create spells. To combine glyphs into spells, open your Spell Book and click Combine Glyphs.

Shown above is a glyph screen with three glyphs. The six main boxes represent the glyphs for each path of magic. The small box at the bottom is where you put glyphs in order to combine them.

In this example, the Freeze glyph has been placed in the combination box and has formed a valid combination.

When you have a valid combination of glyphs in the bottom box, a description of the spell you have created will appear. You can then click Save Spell to add it to your Spell Book.

Casting Spells

To cast a spell, you must first target a player or NPC if the spell requires it.

Next, determine the Spell Power to use for the spell.

Next, open your Spell Book, select a spell and click Cast Spell.

A window will appear that counts down the time to cast for the spell. When the count down is finished, the spell will be cast.

Spell Power

The spell caster can decide to channel more mana into casting by setting the additional spell power, allowing the caster to cast a more powerful spell.

The additional spell power factor is expressed as a percentage value, from 0% to 100%. If you set an additional spell power factor of 50% then you will channel an additional 50% of the base mana requirement for a spell into the spell.

The more you push the additional spell power, the more you must have affinity with the ways and its associated Mental Stat to control the effects. The power level of the spell is raised by the additional spell power, so the spell will be more powerful.

The use of additional spell power has the side-effect that the spell can fizzle or even produce damages to the caster, depending on how much the spell goes out of control.

To set your additional spell power, use the slider in your Status Window.

In Character References

In game, a couple of books refer to Magic. They can be found in the famous Hydlaa library owned by the Ylian Jayose or in the magic shop:

* History of Magic Vol 1: The Birth
* History of Magic Vol 2: The Taming
* History of Magic Vol.3: The Invasions
* History of Magic Vol.4: The Heresy
* History of Magic Vol.5: The Ways

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