Ultima Online Magery - the eight circles, 106 for no fizzle, and the skill that actually does the damage

The eight circles, and what each one asks of you

uo.com’s own table. The “INT/Mana” column is both at once: it is the mana the spell costs and the Intelligence you must have to cast from a book at all.

Circle	Minimum Magery	INT / Mana	Cast time [!]
First	0.1	4	0.50s
Second	0.1	6	0.75s
Third	10.1	9	1.00s
Fourth	24.1	11	1.25s
Fifth	38.1	14	1.50s
Sixth	52.1	20	1.75s
Seventh	66.1	40	2.00s
Eighth	80.1	50	2.25s

The cast-time column is not from uo.com’s table: it is the unpublished formula 0.25 + circle × 0.25 seconds [!], worked out. uo.com says only that each circle “takes more skill, mana and time” and prints no seconds at all.

From a scroll the requirement drops two circles. uo.com’s own example: a seventh-circle Gate scroll casts at 50 Magery. That is why a scroll of Gate Travel is worth carrying on a character who is not a mage at all.

What makes a spell hurt, and it is not Magery

This is the section worth reading twice. Evaluating Intelligence is the damage skill, and uo.com publishes the formula:

damage multiplier = ((Evaluating Intelligence × 3) ÷ 100) + 1

Eval Int	Multiplier
0	1.0×
50	2.5×
100	4.0×
120	4.6×

A grandmaster mage with no Eval Int does a quarter of the damage of one who has it. Two more things stack on top of the multiplier, both from uo.com:

• Intelligence — 1% Spell Damage Increase per 10 points, i.e. INT ÷ 10. At 125 INT that is 12% SDI you did not have to find on a piece of jewellery.
• Grandmaster Inscription — +10% damage, but only on nine named spells (below).

Inscription gives a mage two completely different things

They get run together constantly, so here they are apart.

One: +10% spell damage at Grandmaster, on nine spells and no others — Magic Arrow, Harm, Fireball, Lightning, Energy Bolt, Explosion, Chain Lightning, Flamestrike and Meteor Swarm. uo.com is specific that it does not slide evenly: “the damage bonus is 1% for every 20 points of Inscription with a 5% GM bonus”. So 100 Inscription is 5% earned plus a 5% bonus for being there — and 99 Inscription is worth 4%, not 9%.

Two: Casting Focus, which is the property that stops a spell being interrupted when you are hit. uo.com: “from Apprentice to Grand Master a 1% increase to base casting focus per 10 points of Inscribe. (5% at Grand Master)”. One thing uo.com does not say: the bonus can go past the item cap of 12% [!]. A GM scribe therefore runs at up to 17% [!] where everyone else stops at 12.

Neither of these touches Mysticism. uo.com’s list is nine Magery spells; Mysticism is not mentioned on it, and uo.com does not say Inscription does anything for a Mystic’s damage. [!]

The item properties that matter, and where they stop

Property	Cap	What it buys
Faster Casting	2	Each point takes 0.25s off the cast. Magery, Mysticism and Necromancy cap at 2; Bushido, Chivalry, Ninjitsu, Spellweaving and the bard masteries cap at 4. Chivalry drops to the 2 cap if you carry 70+ [!] Magery or Mysticism.
Faster Cast Recovery	6	A total of 6 [!] removes recovery time entirely.
Lower Mana Cost	40%	Every spell costs that much less mana.
Lower Reagent Cost	100%	At 100 you carry no reagents at all.
Casting Focus	12%	Chance to resist interruption. Inscription adds up to 5% on top of the cap — see above.
Spell Damage Increase	—	Adds to the Eval Int multiplier’s result. [!] The suit cap is unpublished; the imbuing range per piece is 1–12.
Mage Armor	—	Lets you meditate in armour that would otherwise block it.
Spell Channeling	—	Required to hold a weapon or shield and still cast. Carries a mandatory −1 Faster Casting on the piece.

The two caps above are the reason a mage suit is a jigsaw rather than a shopping list: Faster Casting 2 and Lower Mana Cost 40 are hard ceilings, and every point of either past them is a point of weight spent on nothing.

The skills a mage is really made of

• Evaluating Intelligence — the 4.6× above. Not optional on any offensive mage.
• Meditation and Focus — both regenerate mana, and uo.com says they stack.
• Inscription — the +10% and the casting focus, plus it is how you write your own scrolls.
• Resisting Spells — the other half of a duel, and the reason a mage who only trains offence loses to one who did not.
• Anatomy with Eval Int — together they give defensive wrestling, capped at 120.0, which is how a mage carrying no weapon skill still has a defence number.
• Poisoning — uo.com: it affects the potency level of the poison spells.

In PvP

Magery’s PvP value is options rather than damage. Paralyse, Mana Drain, Dispel, Reveal, Invisibility, Teleport, Gate Travel, Magic Reflection and the Curse/Bless pair are all on one skill, and no other school has that spread.

The two thresholds that decide a duel are 106 (nothing fizzles) and whatever Casting Focus you are carrying, because a spell interrupted at 2.25 seconds is a spell you paid full mana for and did not cast. That is why Inscription on a PvP mage is about interruption at least as much as about damage.

[!] The interruption rule itself is not published. uo.com does not state how much damage interrupts a cast, or whether the check is per hit.

In PvM

Against monsters the multiplier is everything, which pushes the template towards 120 Magery / 120 Eval Int and a suit built for Lower Mana Cost 40 and 100 Lower Reagent Cost so that sustained casting costs nothing but mana.

The other half of PvM Magery is the summons and the field spells, which do not care about Eval Int at all. [!] What decides summon strength and duration is not published — not Magery, not Eval Int, not a formula.

What is not published

• [!] The fizzle formula. uo.com gives the minimum skill per circle and the 106 figure for never failing. The success chance at any skill in between is nowhere.
• [!] Base damage per spell. The multiplier is published; the number it multiplies is not.
• [!] The Spell Damage Increase suit cap. Not published by uo.com.
• [!] Any per-point table of casting time against Faster Casting beyond the flat 0.25s per point, and no published figure for base recovery time.
• [!] Summon strength and duration.

Caps, and how to train it

Magery has Power Scrolls, so it runs 105 / 110 / 115 / 120 against the 720 total skill cap. Primary stat Intelligence. The thresholds that matter are 80.1, where the eighth circle opens, and 106, where nothing fizzles — note that 106 is above a +5 scroll, so the no-fizzle mage is a 110 or better.

You train it by casting, and the cheapest route up is the highest circle you can reliably cast, repeatedly, on a suit with 100 Lower Reagent Cost so that each cast is free. The Guaranteed Gain System and Scrolls of Alacrity (0.2–0.5 per check instead of 0.1, for 15 minutes) apply here as to any other skill.

Where these come from

uo.com Magery · uo.com Evaluating Intelligence · uo.com Inscription · uo.com Meditation · uo.com Skill Titles · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.