Geomancer Areas Of Particular Competence

Geomancers excel in Geomancy and the four elemental schools. They are combat mages. Out of 21 in-specialty spells, (Thunderstorm counts) 10 have damage-dealing, direct or indirect, as their primary focus, and Fire Golem would arguably make an 11th. Out of 8 Geomancy powers, Vaporize and Wave are direct damage-dealers, Channel is mostly a direct damage-dealer, and Minion calls up a friend to deal damage for you. Beyond that, Geomancy itself requires that a mage staff be wielded. Geomancers were not designed to be played as hybrids. Their areas of competence are interesting, though.

Cloud Spells: The Wave and Vaporize effects out of the Geomancy skill are both cloud effects. Of the 10 damaging spells, 5 are cloud spells. The Geomancer focus skills contain every cloud spell available except for those from demonology and music. Frequently, Geomancer strategy consists of throwing up a few cloud spells and relaxing while your enemies die. Breeders fail to be a concern for Geomancers (and that's *without* Sterilize). It's worth noting that, between mana regen and cloud effects, the Geomancer cares less about speed than just about anyone who isn't a primary summoner. Speaking of which...
Summoning: There's only one power to look at here - the Geomancy "elemental minion" power, but it's a doozy. It's the last Geomancy power that you get, it costs a lot of mana, it requires a terrain feature, and you only get one creature per casting, but that creature can *easily* have three times your level - and since the base critter is frequently a number of levels *below* you, by this point, that means they go *fast*. There's an interesting aspect to it all, though, and that is that these are coaligned, rather than pet. You don't get experience for what they kill. You also don't have to spend any of your mana regen on maintaining them. You also make an enemy for life if you damage them in any way. Still, for situations where clearing the room is more important than gaining EXP, they can be tremendously useful, if you're careful.
Terrain Alteration: Geomancers have the best terrain alteration in the game. Aside from the fire, water, and ice spells with their pretty little side effects, you have three spells of the Earth school and fully four of the eight Geomancy effects that do nothing *but* terrain alteration. The four remaining Geomancy effects actuall have terrain alteration as part of the *cost*, as they consume the terrain that powers them. No one alters terrain like a Geomancer.

Dangers and Pitfalls

There is quite possibly no other class so capable of unintentionally bringing about its own demise as the Geomancer. There are three ways in particular that this happens, and it's worth knowing about them *before* they kill you.

Cloud spells and Elemental Minion: Elemental Minions are fast, durable, and hit hard. Cloud spells dissipate only with time. If one of your minions takes damage from a cloud spell you cast, they will immediately become hostile, and they will come after you, and they can kill you very quickly if you let them. Unintentionally angering a minion on a noteleport level is almost sure death. Solution? Don't summon minions when you have a cloud spell up. Banish all minions with pet commands before casting any cloud spells. If you're not sure whether or not you have a minion, try to banish them anyway. As a sidebar, avoid aggravate effects like the plague, and be very careful with your area effect and beam effects when you have minions trolling around. As a secondary concern, if you have reflection on, and a bolt from an enemy bounces off of you and into one of your minions, that will also anger them. Having three or four minions out at once (or immediately creating a couple in response) will tend to mitigate the threat.
Unintentional terrain modification: Geomancers, not surprisingly, have a large number of spells that change terrain randomly, either as a primary intent or a side effect. One of the more common terrains to change to is lava. Lava can and will both kill you and burn up your books if you aren't paying attention and do not have enough resist. Beyond that, there are a number of petty effects - icy terrain and deep water can both be difficult without the right intrinsics, but nothing as serious. Finally, it is important to remember that sandwalls + fire = glass, and glass is (oddly enough) indestructible. As a geomancer, you are quite capable of creating both sandwalls and fire effects. Have a bit of care to make sure you don't cut off access to anything you might want or need later. Solution? Keep your fire school below 8 until you are no longer dependant on Call+Vaporize for killing. Don't use fireflash or firewall as primary attack forms until you have fire immunity. Be careful about using fire effects around sandwalls.
Cloud effects and terrain modification: many forms of terrain are only distinguishable by color (assuming you aren't walking over every square with the "look" command). Cloud effects render terrain colors meaningless. It is entirely possible to walk onto a friendly bit of lava and die because you weren't paying attention to your hit points and couldn't see the ground color. This is especially the case if you are throwing around terrain effects under preexisting cloud spells, or using firewall/lava vaporize/lava elemental wave, each of which serves neatly as both all by itself. Solution? Be careful with throwing around cloud spells and then walking in areas where there is lava. or a mixture of deep and shallow water. Be careful with your lava-generating abilities until you've got the immunity to deal with them

Race and Subrace

Sirrocco: Personally, I'm pretty fond of vampire dark-elves. Dark-elves are good because the somewhat cheaper Magic skill gives you a few more skill points to play with for a class that can find a use for every skill point it gets. They also have an intrinsic magic missile bolt attack. It's not all that strong, but it is extremely efficient after a few levels, and if you run out of magic entirely you can power it off of health. Geomancer spells can burn through mana extremely fast, especially if you go the spell-power route, which can make that little magic missile a lot more valuable as a holdout weapon for the mid-levels than it would seem at first. I take vampires primarily because both geomancers and dark-elves are a bit on the fragile side, and Vampires give a bonus hit-die without any additional spell failure. Beyond that, the resists make the late-game equipment handling (and the endless quest for more spellpower) that much easier, the stat line is nothing to sneer at, and the blood-drain can serve as an emergency backup holdout weapon if you're *really* in trouble. It's a little on the easy side, but I'm not going to worry about that until I actually win one or two.

Gods

Eru: Go here, unless you have a particular reason for choosing some other god. Complete all of your god quests and seriously consider putting further points in. He gives extra mana, his weapon restriction is meaningless to someone who'd never put down his mage staff anyway, he gives Divination, first through god spells and then through the school itself, and he'll hand you a powerful enough manabolt (given skill and equipment bonuses to spellpower) to fill in both the "unresistable" hole and the "single target" hole in the Geomancer attack spell lineup. (technically you can cover the space with a high level geyser and/or careful use of the Strike spell, but neither is nearly as efficient for single target direct damage.) His Sea of Runes and Not Quite Dead Yet effects are just *bonus*.
Manwe: Speed, Conveyance, a few handy intrinsics and Recharge out of the Meta school. He's not as helpful as Eru, overall, and it seems a shame to go Manwe with a spellcasting character who doesn't care about his boost to the Air school, but he's not useless.
Yavanna: Yavanna was really designed to let people who *aren't* Geomancers play in the shallow end of our ocean. For those who *are*, however.... Well, the fact that Water and Earth schools are entirely redundant hurts. Her godspells are also either largely redundant or intended for melee. Nature school can be useful, but that's pretty much all that she really has going for her here. Not worth it.
Melkor: The only real reason to take Melkor would be Udun. Well, actually, Udun, fire imunity, and invisibility. Fire immunity is more important to Geomancers than to any other class in the game, and invisibility is nothing to sneeze at either. Mind school is essentially useless, and the godspells aren't that helpful for non-melee, but that just means that you can ignore the god quests and don't have to spend any skill points. Drain would be near-free, and quite helpful (or so I've heard) except that worshipping Eru is the *only* way for Geomancers to get access to the Mana school. Genocide will require getting a serious investment in Nature and Udun. It is *also* quite helpful, and Nature spells certainly aren't bad, but it's a nontrivial percent of your total available skill. You'd have to craft your build around it, but it might be worth doing. For Flame of Udun? Well, you're going to max out Fire school anyway, so the real cost is that you have to sink 50 skill points into getting an Udun of 20. It's conceivable that you could come up with a way to make that worthwhile. Wraithform isn't even worth considering. Overall, if you don't want to bother with god quests, and you don't want to spend any skill points on prayer, Melkor could be your best bet, even with the statwarping. Beyond that, if you have your heart set on playing a melee hybrid and/or casting genocide with native skill and/or if you really want the drain spell, and are willing to worship a false god up until Mount Doom to get it, Melkor can be worthwhile.
Tulkas: Don't be silly.

Skills

First Structure: Pure Caster

Combat: Nothing in Combat or any subskill, unless there's just nothing else to throw FF at.
Sneakiness: See Combat.
Magic: Max it. Given the sheer number of skills that you'll be raising that also raise this, though, it won't take all that much. If you're running much from Fumblefingers, you may want to let this lag behind in the hopes of getting points to spend elsewhere.
Magic-Device: You could put points here, if you wanted to, and it's as good a place as any for FF when he's not offering Magic, Spirituality, or a useful spell school, but it's not really worth investing in unless you're intending to go heavy in the high-powered junkarts.
Spell-power: Max it. Everything you do will be with magic, and this skill will help all of it.
Mana: Don't you wish.
Geomancy: Max geomancy and all four elemental schools. Remember, though, that Geomancy advances each of the elementals by a significant fraction of its own advancement rate. It's probably worth making sure that Geomancy is always the highest of the five as you approach level 50.
Meta: Interesting, sure, but and potentially useful in little ways, but probably not worth the points.
Conveyance: Very helpful from the "not dying" point of view. 10 points will get you phase door, teleport, and disarm, and is just about what you want
Divination: Helpful in many, many ways. You will want at least 8, for identify, traps, and monsters, and once you've got that, you may as well take it to 9 for doors and stairs. 15, to unlock Vision, is a bit pricey, but very useful - you can make up the 25 levels for full wizard lighting with equipment and spellpower skill, and wizard light is *handy*. Going for *identify* at 35 is a waste of points better spent elsewhere.
Temporal: Much like meta, it's interesting but probably not worth the points. Also, as previously mentioned, the Geomancer just doesn't *care* about speed as much as other folks, and mage lock just isn't as meaningful when you can create walls at will.
Mind: Ha! Right. Funny. Next.
Nature: Nature has a fair number of handy healing spells, but nothing at any sort of a low level. If you're going for Genocide, then by all means take advantage of them, but otherwise it's best to just stick with potions and grass-channeling. On the other hand, as long as you're maxxing Air already, it's probably worth sinking in the point or two to unlock Thunderstorm. Thunderstorm isn't a cloud, and takes no actions after you cast it. Having it up is just free damage at the cost of some mana, and free damage is *always* handy. Even if you do seriously invest in Nature, though, the tree walking ability probaby isn't worth it. Walking through trees can be a tremendous tactical advantage, it's true, but you get the same thing from a ring of Flight, with no skill point cost, and it covers pits, ice and rubble along with.
Udun: See Melkor.
Necromancy: Geomancers need utility from their non-elemental skills, not more ways to hurt the enemy or summon allies.
Runecraft: Bizarre and broken. Don't spend more than one point regardless.
Thaumaturgy: Geomancers need utility from their non-elemental skills, not more ways to hurt the enemy or alter terrain.
Spirituality: Not dying when the enemy points at you and curses... it's a good thing. Spirituality is where you put any the points you have left over, and if your final plan has it pretty low, you may want to cut back elsewhere. It's certainly the case that any points put in Spirituality will be put to good use.
Prayer: Varies from God to God. For any god plan other than Atheist or pure, loyal, non-hybrid Melkor, you'll want to do all of your God quests. It's worth taking Manwe to 20, for teleport. It might be worth taking Eru up as far as 35 for the Lay of Protection, especially given how it pumps manathrust.
Mindcraft: Don't bother. You can find spells that will cover just fine for any mindcraft effect you care about, and the spells all get benefits from your spellpower boosting. Also, FF mindcraft is cheese, and you should generally avoid any cheese that you don't have a good use for.
Monster Lore: For the most part, don't bother. You have no need for corpses, you don't have any good native way of generating pets, and you couldn't get possession even if you *were* willing to gimp your mana that hard. Symbiosis is a fine one-point-wonder from FF, and summoning is at least arguably the same, but neither is particularly neccessary, and if you wanted to use either for summoning abuse... well, there are better starting classes for that. Use one of them instead and leave the Geomancers alone.

Strategy and Tactics

Target Call Elements by room doorways to have something to work with upon entering.
To get an item over lava without having burn after you pick it up, use Call Elements till its grid changes, then pick it up safely.
Use Drip Tread, draw a monster's attention, walk away from it, and Channel Waves at them.
When in narrow coridors, and Dripping, remeber that some monsters cannot pass Deep Water or Lava before you Channel or Wave them.
When surrounded, Phase if possible, Grow Barrier around yourself, Rest, then Summon Minions from it.

Chatter

Sirrocco: Just for the record, this spoiler is in honor of Zizzo's Trilogy, who inspired me to try Geomancers.

SaricRitzden: This may be more appropriate to a spoiler on the Geomancy skill but I didn't see a page to post the question on. When casting a vaporize spell, is the damage rolled each time it is applied to a monster, or is it rolled once at the beginning and is a constant from then on? I have noticed that sometimes the cloud itself sometimes seems weaker and sometimes stronger.

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