User blog:Waldere/The Earthquake Singularity

''Recently, a commenter in the The Keep asked about the possibility of using two mages to infinitely chain Ethereal Surge so that a party can infinitely cast buff spells. I wanted to repeat my response here to make it easier for myself to reference, and because I may change or add to it as I think about it more.''

A fascinating topic! I'd always eyeballed the mage skills with suspicion, myself; it always looked like mages could use Earthquake and Ethereal Surge to create a Morrowind Singularity through exploding intelligence.

Checking the mage skills again, however, I see that Ethereal Surge can only restore a maximum of 25 MP, meaning a loss of 5 is guaranteed. That means that it is impossible for a single mage to chain infinite spells. Two working together, however, can. Perhaps a thought experiment will help.

Suppose you have two mages, each with 250 INT, meaning they'll get maximum Mana restoration, and 465/500 MP. (The exact numbers don't matter much, but as I envision it, they both casted Earthquake to get their INT past the 250 mark.)

Mage A casts Ethereal Surge: A goes down to 460 MP (-30, +25); B goes up to 490 MP (+25).

Mage B casts Ethereal Surge: B goes down to 485 MP (-30, +25); A goes up to 485 MP (+25).

Mage A casts Ethereal Surge; A goes down to 480 MP (-30, +25); B goes up to 500 MP (+25).

Etc.

As we can see, at 250 INT, Etheral Surge becomes: "5 MP: every other party member restores 25 MP." When one of those party members possesses the same ability, it means you'll walk away with 20 more MP every cycle. And, since Earthquake doesn't have a limit, it means two mages working together can infinitely explode their intelligence until everyone gains so much XP per task that they'll hit Level 100 after a single click! (In theory.)

Of course, this setup requires a lot of, erm, setup. The party would need to be very well-coordinated to ensure that every spell is cast in the proper order. Plus, you would already have to be a very high level to attempt this, limiting its application. Even with the Royal Magus Robe and Golden Staff (with their attendant class equip bonuses, meaning a total INT boost of 45), and even allocating every stat point into INT, even a Level 60 player would only have 135 INT. This would give them 270 mana, enough to cast Earthquake seven times for a final INT of roughly 185.

On the other hand, math isn't my strong suit, and these numbers completely overlook both the Perfect Day Bonus and the possibility of two mages casting Earthquake on each other to shore up the numbers. In fact, now that I think about it, as long as the two mages had INT scores greater than 150 and started the cycle with a decent amount of mana, they could just add more repetitions to the above sequence so they could squeeze in more castings of Earthquake until they reach peak efficiency, and with max gear and the PDB, one could achieve 150 INT as early as Level 53 and begin the ascencion to omniscience...

Nevermind, breaking the game is easier than I thought.

This is assuming my understanding of these skills is 100% accurate, which may not be the case, given that I am not a mage. Has anyone tried this? Can they confirm or refute my explanations?