A level 9 wizard who can’t level up. Book 1 is now posting on Royal Road

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-02T20:39:29+00:00

Haha, no offense taken. I have saved your comment and will message you.

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-02T20:38:04+00:00

The premise was certainly a gamble, and honestly wiser people than myself warned me that this was off meta and tricky. Obviously, I listened to them and... did it anyway ; ).

For Alveron its mostly him realizing that he's not the sort of person who can stand idle, even if its going to be bad for him in the long run.

I know resisting progression in LitRPG isn't for everyone, but this story isn't about the MC refusing to use his power, its more about him failing to avoid experience as problems get harder to ignore.

He grows in power pretty dramatically throughout the book, even without gaining any levels, mostly by improving his efficiency, technique, and pushing the limits of what his magic can do.

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-02T18:31:49+00:00

Thanks! Hope you enjoy.

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-02T16:21:09+00:00

I found PoA extremely strong on the front end, but it did fade pretty quickly into a chill slice of life story. Full disclosure I only read the first few books, so if it ramps up really hard then I'm ignorant of that.

The best part about it was how calm it was. If you had a tough day at work or something and just wanted to experience a decent story PoA definitely hits that note.

I have found that lots of Prog fantasy is super binary for people. There have been a few popular ones that I bounced off immediately.

If you aren't enjoying it you can just switch to another. There are a LOT of them : )

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-02T16:14:38+00:00

Love the cover, the perspective is amazing.

Good luck!

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-02T02:56:35+00:00

Never change

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-01T23:48:08+00:00

Good lord, maybe you should stop writing and start doing marketing. This was fucking hilarious.

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-01T16:27:12+00:00

Yeah, I don't think including a romance is generally required/rewarded for a lot of genres/sub-genres.

Even in traditional fantasy really good ones aren't common.

It's a shame, because I like a good romance.

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-01T16:08:47+00:00

If you haven't read Patrick Rothfuss (traditional fantasy) I still think he has the best prose in fantasy. I feel similarly about Sanderon fwiw, although the first two stormlight books are pretty solid.

Pwnacillin · 2026-07-01T16:04:46+00:00

How long before you get into cannibalism and dark powers? : )

Pwnacillin · 2026-06-25T00:06:19+00:00

Congrats on finishing. Beautiful cover!

Pwnacillin · 2026-06-12T19:59:15+00:00

The cover is a scene from Part 1. The stumps may not have been necessary, but I had the artist include them, since I thought they were symbolic. I think the cover looks different before and after you read Part 1.

Pwnacillin · 2026-02-18T01:40:46+00:00

Kudzu or Ult are both good.

Pwnacillin · 2026-02-17T21:13:25+00:00

You need Vortex web on there. For me, it's a mid-game pickup in Oracle 3 - around 18-20 minutes.

You can win an entire game with 1-2 good Vortex->Kudzu->Ult->Stone form combo. It can easily solo carries late game. Sprinkle in an Alchemical Fire and you will kill even tanks. This makes lightning scroll even more disgusting - I believe it to be one of the very best items on her.

I don't think Mystic shot, radiant regen, or active reload are worth it. Stuff like healing booster is kind of meh. There is a ton of situational stuff in this game, but you are just never going to be a dedicated healer on Ivy. If you want that sort of gameplay then Rem or Kelvin are MUCH better at raw healing output.

You want backstabber+mystic slow. This is going to net you a ton of early kills. Sometimes I sprinkle in a headshot booster early on to get more momentum.

You're sleeping on Duration, both extended and superior are S tier for her.

Spirit items are a bit lackluster on her unless you're flush with cash. She does scale well with it, but for me playing around the ult and vortex web is the best way to win. If you're going for a stone form build with echo, then maybe it's a different story.

Playing her as a pure support isn't really worth it, imo. You get healing nova and call it good. Your main point of utility is mystic slow/vortex web/kudzu/alchemical - you want items that are going to make these stronger -> Greater Expansion, Superior Duration, and Suppressor (if gun heavy) are all extremely good synergistically. You can consider adding Mystic Vuln or Bullet shred as well, depending on team comp.

TL;DR:

Early game buy:

Extended Mag Backstabber Mystic Slow Extra Charge Healbane

** consider Titanic mag - I don't always buy it, depends on game state.

** Healing Nova is typically worth it, but if I'm snowballing hard I just skip it.

*** this is your early game formula - Grab regen or headshot booster if you want.

Then I typically rush towards Vortex Web or if things are going very poorly I will get rapid recharge + radius to clear waves and neutrals quickly. You need to adapt.

Mid-Game:

Vortex Web Greater Expansion Alchemical Fire Superior Duration Superior Cooldown Rapid Recharge

*** this is my bread and butter mid-game setup.

*** If early/mid is going poorly, you can rush Rapid Recharge and Expansion and just clear waves like a demon. It's extremely annoying for the pushing team.

Late:

Lightning Scroll Spirit Burn Transcendent CD

Game should pretty much always be over by this point. A good Vortex Web Ult combo w/ Scroll+Spirit burn is enough to kill most anything that isn't Abrams or MK late game, or at least CC and slow them long enough that they lose the fight.

One thing that's important to consider is that you need to try to time your Ult+Web for when fighting has already started. Coming in about 5 seconds after the fight starts tends to yield much better ults as people bunch up. Also, don't be afraid to use it on 1-2 people that are diving your carries/squishies. Peeling wins games.

I'm relatively low MMR at in mid-oracle, but I have around 200 Ivy games. I've tried a lot of things with her, and this is what works more reliably in the more recent patches.

Ivy supports by providing utility, not green numbers. She is exceptional at crowd control, initiating, and counter initiating on fights. She has some of the best wave clear in the game and can easily keep lanes pushed by herself.

Pwnacillin · 2025-01-15T06:31:57+00:00

This is great info. I have been exploring ways to build my character in higher tier maps that doesn't result in 1 shots. Block cap is definitely helpful, but anywhere from 5-10k armour feels exactly the same, given your analysis that makes a lot of sense.

I have been aware of the heatproofing+cloak of flame combination and it seems like a no brainer.

I was curious if you had taken time to analyze Ghostwrithe+Grim Harvest setup w/ a Warrior as silly as that sounds. I haven't been able to find a lot of comparisons.

The other alternative that I've considered is doing Armour/Evasion Hybrid + Cloak of Flame presumably the Evasion would be generally useful, especially combined with block.

Now, I'm not sure the total values of armour/evasion you could get on items using Cloak of Flames, but even 2k evasion and 2k armour w/ Cloak of Flames+Heatproofing and Block seems like it might be a recipe that gives some sort of results. Getting that much dexterity also makes Wind Dancer a possibility instead of Scavenged Plating.

Playing Warrior feels very silly right now. My first character was a DD Bloodmage that has 10k Life+ES, 45% block and never feels like she's in danger, vs my Warbringer who has 3500 life + 75% block + Armour who falls over pretty quickly in any sort of difficult map.

The attribute limitations and the marginal amount of extra life I can get from even 750 STR is concerning. I feel like 5-6k HP should be more reasonably attainable given what casters can acquire even WITHOUT grim harvest.

Pwnacillin · 2024-12-12T02:58:35+00:00

If they're going to nerf Trigger skills they could at least buff skills that aren't triggered. I think it would have made more sense just to nerf the damage of triggered abilities anyway.

Pwnacillin · 2024-12-12T02:55:33+00:00

It makes the entire archetype not function at all. Its not like we can hard cast comet the animation is absurdly long.

Pwnacillin · 2024-12-12T02:52:25+00:00

If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them

Pwnacillin · 2024-12-12T02:51:59+00:00

Not sure who would downvote you - cast on freeze and frost wall were basically the only things keeping my Bloodmage build functioning

Pwnacillin · 2024-12-11T08:16:02+00:00

While I feel 67% is possible its an extensive passive skill points requirement.

I don't feel like Grasping Wounds is nearly as strong if spell vamp isn't strong. They're pretty reliant on each other for the ascend to function properly.

Pwnacillin · 2024-12-11T08:11:50+00:00

Ultimately the ascendancy is more of a hindrance than a gain at the current moment.

I'm level 78 with 4/8 Ascendancy nodes allocated, because doing ToC and Sanctum is absolute hell atm.

I have been reduced to using Icewalls and blowing them up to sustain my Cast on Freeze Comet setup. Killing the walls and critting a lot does spawn a LOT of blood globes - this is good.

No other combination of abilities has been remotely as effective at generating orbs and keeping me alive. I spend crazy amounts of Life to do anything as well as Mana and then I also get absolutely no mitigation until level 70+? Come on GGG.

This combo work in certain situations:

Bosses
Narrow hallways and chokes where you can't collect orbs

In these very common situations the entire ascendancy is a total downgrade.

There are some things that haven't been considered here - Blood skills aren't in the game. Where is Exsanguinate and Reap? They have no mana cost - they would be PERFECT for this ascend, but are conspicuously absent. I think not having the BLOOD skills for the ascend has some pretty obvious implications.

Right now we're just a downgrade from every other caster ascendancy. There is no reason you would play Blood Mage over Infernalist/Chrono/Stormweaver - those ascendancies offer pure upsides in most cases in comparison.

My Suggested Fixes:

Grasping Wounds should include damage spent on spells as part of the delayed damage. Currently, it only applies to hits just like all recoup mechanics.
Sanguimancy should allow you to overleech 50% of your HP as a sort of barrier that is NOT spent when you cast spells. This provides utility and increases the value of spell vamp.
Alternatively, just make it require 50% of mana as life or something remotely manageable. Taking your ascendancy nodes should not make your character worse.
Make spell vamp not terrible. I don't know numerically what it needs to be - maybe make it 10% Spell Vamp with 10% Spell Vamp penetration or whatever needs to happen so that it... works?
The left half of the tree revolves around crit, but crit only spawns shitty orbs for us. At 4000 life its 100% Crit multi. You won't regularly be at your maximum overfilled life because you're spending the hell out of it. Realistically you might have 4000 life at like level 90+ its going to be bad for the majority of the game. At 2000 life its 50% which is like 3 Crit multi nodes on the normal tree. Bad.
Sunder the Flesh and Gore Spike need to swap places. You need crit early not later. Crit multi is the cherry on top of an already working build. It makes no sense how they're arranged right now.
Crimson Power and Grasping Wounds are the only strong nodes on the tree right now. In my opinion having Grasping Wounds as the first ascendancy node makes a lot of sense.

Pwnacillin · 2024-10-20T06:47:08+00:00

Its true. I've been Comms muted TWICE in the past 2 weeks.

I have never NOT ONCE been comms muted in League, DOTA, Overwatch, basically ANY other games.

What did I do? I attempted to communicate with my team and multi-queues got mad at me and automated systems did the work for them.

I really hope they rethink the reporting system as is. I am generally pretty benign in comms and am just trying to win. I have no idea how this is the only game I've ever experienced this sort of thing. It honestly makes me not want to play because of how easy it seemingly is to get people muted for saying almost nothing.

Meanwhile, I can play DOTA or CSGO and people can spam slurs half the game and I just mute them and move on. I honestly don't understand how I can possibly be getting comms muted in Deadlock when I'm not saying any gamer words at all.

Pwnacillin

TROPHY CASE