a guide to summoning (tips and tricks)

[Canderel]

Some of those are real bugs (like the light radius thing with the monsters...) you should post bug reports on the bugs forum...

[Final Master]

120!? I was getting slammed with 250+ regularly...

I still haven't quiet got a Wilder up to level 10+ yet, but they are starting to show some real promise. I've found Spiders to be particularly useful, especially if you have something like an uber warhound or minotaur out. Spider + Warper has shown some promise, but nothing too good yet.

[Jaorin]

One thing that might help with meditation is taking it off of your quick keys. I've died so many times to that and phase door that I completely remove them from the keys or assign them to 8. You can change it using the 'm' key.

Maybe these types of skills should automatically be assigned to something like 8. You certainly don't want to be using meditation by accident.

Edit: It would also be nice to have equilibrium regen very slowly like it used to.

[marvalis]

Meditation could do that. Right now there is not much reason for increasing that skill. You should never have to much equilibrium to avoid spell fails. Suggestions: Make meditation regenerate equilibrium and/or lower the recharge time when you increase its level and/or make it lower the cost of equilibrium skills.
I play mostly with turtle and imp. Turtle is the basic tank. Taunt is very good for keeping your other summons alive. Once I have the monsters tanked in a nice spot, I summon my imp for 1v1 dmg and/or my hydra for aoe damage.

You get one more summon for every 10 levels of cunning. At 30 cunning you get 3 summons.

I usually play a summoner with a human dunadan. At level 1 they get 16 willpower and 16 cunning when you use the free stat points. I play the game in the following order:
Get 2/5 imp at the start and keep increasing until 5/5
First get 20 cunning for two summons and 18 wis. Then get 20 wis and 30 cunning.
After getting 3/5 imp i get 1/5 turtle. After this I keep leveling my imp and get 1/5 hydra. Then I boost my turtle to 5/5 so he can really tank. I tend to keep war dog at 1/5 but I should really try it some day to see if its good.

In the generic tree, get heightened senses 5/5 asap, then get meditation 2/5 for utility (I don't see any point in increasing it further?). After that you could get earths eye or nature's touch but neither are really useful. Earths eye lets you see some terrain but no monsters. Nature's touch can help you heal the escort quest ally. It is not good for healing your summons because of the high equilibrium cost (just re-summon them) suggestion: lower equilibrium cost to 5 instead of 10. Note that in beta 10 nature's balance is bugged so don't bother investing in them.

Useless summons, and why:
Melee:
* Jelly, turtle tanks better
* Minotaur, high equilibrium cost, short duration, overall low dmg output (because of the short duration) and low utility.
* Stone golem, messes up the level, don't use it.
Utility:
* Spider, sub-optimal damage and limited utility.
* Benevolent spirit, cannot sustain much damage does not heal much at 1/5. It makes more sense to have an extra damage dealing summon. Just re-summon if they die (you have to do this anyway every few turns)
Since summon control is currently bugged (you cannot see anything beyond your players eyesight) there is no point in investing in spider and benevolent spirit.
Distance:
* Warper: High cost, low hp, low dmg, limited utility (only good in combination with summon control assuming it would actually work like it should, and thus requires allot of class points to make it useful)
* Drake: High cost, average dmg, splash dmg. Might be good when 5/5 but I never tried this. I would first level up my hydra to 4/5 (is 5/5 still bugged?).

After level 10 you can open the summoning (augmentation) tree for increased summon duration, which is very useful so get 'resilience' to 5/5.

Playing a summoner is all about control of the battlefield. Getting surrounded is a sure way to die. Always carry several teleportation scrolls and phase door scrolls.
Also, like mentioned before, meditation is likely to get you killed if it stays on your hotkey bar. I personally set it to CTRL+1.
Another great way to get killed is having your pets run over a ball trap a few times.

[Repton]

You write off minotaurs and stone golems, you don't bother with war dogs -- how do you deal with fire resistant monsters? When I play summoner I use turtles and fire imps mainly, but they're no good for fire drakes. In dealing with them, I like to use minotaurs. A minotaur at 5/5 with resilience at 5/5 will last a reasonably long time, and you can summon-control it to increase that further (and to let you concentrate on the fire resistant foes if there's a mixed group).

Generally agreed, though. Warpers would be more useful if they were a bit smarter -- I found they tended to cast time prison first, and then follow it up with a manathrust :-/

[Zaive]

Earth's Eyes, if you're patient, allows you to reveal the entire map.

[marvalis]

You write off minotaurs and stone golems, you don't bother with war dogs -- how do you deal with fire resistant monsters?

War dogs at 1/5 are surprisingly good considering you got them for free and are cheap to cast, with help from the turtle who is tanking. And Hydra does lightning, poison and acid damage so fire resistance is not a problem. I haven't gotten beyond lvl 24, and haven't seen allot of fire resistant monsters.

Earth's Eyes, if you're patient, allows you to reveal the entire map.

If I get an escort quest, I body block him and find the portal first with earths eye >_>.

[Final Master]

I'm actually thinking that the fire drake summon should be changed to a different type of drake. Possibly a cold drake? The reason is purely so that the summoner is able to deal different types of damage with the various summons. Fire imps are fire, warpers are arcane, fire drakes are fire, spiders can cause nature, hydras breathe a small but random array of damage and everything else is physical.

[Shoob]

I'm actually thinking that the fire drake summon should be changed to a different type of drake. Possibly a cold drake? The reason is purely so that the summoner is able to deal different types of damage with the various summons. Fire imps are fire, warpers are arcane, fire drakes are fire, spiders can cause nature, hydras breathe a small but random array of damage and everything else is physical.

The fire drake summon was put in before any drakes were actually in the game, which is why that is so .

I am probably going to edit this some , I have a crazy idea.