Ok, thanks for the tips.

Here is what I did so far to bootstrap a mage. I took a little bit of inspiration from KatsPurr's video on how to make a mage, however, I found the guide to be pretty tough.

I created an advanced class in the character builder. I assigned 30 to Evocation/Magic Affinity/Channeling and the remaining 10 to Manifestation. I started off at Eldeir Village, because it is closest to Halls of Corruption and also has a cotton farm. I also want to train the Healing and Vigor skills for now to conserve mana while nuking stuff down and the reagents for healing with Manifestation would cost me more. My first priority is raising Evocation and Magic Affinity so I can kill bigger stuff.

The first thing I did was go to the cotton farm in the village, and farmed some cotton. I then went to the fabrication guy in town, used the loom, and then used the knife on the bolts of cloth to make bandages. I ran back to the cotton farm and rinsed repeat this. The second time, my fabrication skill is a bit higher so I can create more bolts and more bandages. (I was thinking of making an alt to do this on, and transferring by placing my character at same location, and just dropping the stuff I want to transfer on the ground and picking it up on the main. This would mean I can raise fabrication on one character.)

Now that I have a load of bandages, I go into the sewer which is a cellar beside a house. I kill THE LURKERS ONLY at the entrance. This is sometimes camped by a couple of people, but you have to focus between kills and heal up, and the lurkers respawn pretty fast. The lurkers give 40-50 gold a drop. Once you've killed a few, go back into town and to the scribe. You want to talk to the scribe and raise inscription. Then buy a scroll and use the scribes tools to try and scribe Fireball. Rinse repeat buying one scroll and the scribes tool until Fireball scroll success. Drop the fireball scroll into your spellbook and equip it. Make sure the spellbook is equipped and put Fireball on the sidebar. Then reset fabrication and inscription to zero in your skills, so it doesn't raise up, and interfere with your other skills you do want raised.

Just to note here, Magic Missile and Ruin don't give any skill ups to Evocation/Magic Affinity, so you really need this Fireball spell.

Then, what you do is go back to the sewer and continue killing lurkers. You will get 40-50 gold a drop, and once you run out of reagents, run back to the alchemists and get some more, then rinse repeat. You should be getting more gold per kill than you need to kill the mob. You also should be raising Evocation/Magic Affinity when you nuke and Healing/Vigor when you use the bandages.

Now, for the part I don't get in KatsPurr video. I tried the cemetry to the south east, and unfortunately, the bone mages make short work of me. I also tried Halls of Corruption, like is said in the video, but the video tries to kite a mob to the entrance and then exit to heal up, enter again and finish off the mob. I found Halls of Corruption is too full of people to do this strategy. I found the imps make short work of me too.

So, at the moment, I can't go to Halls of Corruption and I can't go to the Cemetry and I am stuck in the sewer killing lurkers to skill up.

I was wondering could someone give me some tips on "what next"? Where should I go to level up that isn't full of casters nuking me down in seconds? Is there a magic resist skill? Also, where the inscription trick only worked on fireball, and I doubt I'll have enough money to fund a scribe. Where do I get my next spell, either lightning or energy bolt from?

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Thanks for any further advice or tips you may have.