Necromancy Announcement:

We've finished our testing and balancing of this new system, and are preparing for its release in the next coming weeks. This unique system has been scripted with the original U8 spells, reagents, and methods. In order to balance and maintain the uniqueness of the Necromancy skill, it will only be available to training in game, and cannot be chosen during the character creation skill room. Also, use of the Necromancy skill will cause a limit of 50.0 Magery for the character roleplaying it, requiring the IC dedication that a new school of magic would entail. If your character has more than 50.0 in their Magery skill, the first time you use the required tools to practice this new art, it will automatically -reduce- that character's Magery skill to the 50.0 skillcap. Loss of skill from its use will not be recompensed by the staff, as this is a personal IC choice for each character.

Clarifications on the Necromancy Skill
(posted March 1 2003).

Since there seems to be a great deal of assumptions and confusion, hopefully this will clear things up. The skill loss was not intended as a punishment, or aversion to having people not use the Necromancy skill, but to keep both it and magery as two seperate school of training.

You -can- dabble in Necromancy if you're a mage already, just like you can dabble in Magery if you choose Necromancy as your main skill. If you are higher than 50.0 Magery, and decide to actually -practice- Necromancy for skill gain, you will automatically be dropped to 50.0 Magery. By this, that's the act of actually using the skill, having the skill gain checked, and creating the Foci involved.

However, since players will be able to ICly train via the Necromancer NPC, they will also still be able to dabble in the low end Necromancy spells without loosing their magery skill. In order to use a Foci, the skill checks your present Necromancy skill, and determines if it is high enough. If it is not, the Foci will not activate. A mage with 80.0 Magery and 35.0 Necromancy would be able to use the Foci within that range of Necromancy that they obtain from other necromancers. They would -not- be able to use higher Foci spells, nor could they create new Foci, unless they chose to drop their Magery skill and actually focus on the Necromancy skill.

Question from Kyra Jade:

So, to properly clarify, casting necromancy skills from foci, while it checks skills for a lower limit, does not in fact count as practice, and does not raise necromancy skill. Skill raising is done through some other medium, by which skill is raised and new foci are created. Thusly, I can technically pay a trainer and buy my low end foci just like I would buy low end scrolls, and I can cast the low end ones over and over to my heart's content, and my skill will never go up, and my magery will not go down, unless I try to research new spells.

Answer from Houston:

Basically so. You have to have the basic knowledge in order to focus and make use of the Foci, but before you are entrusted IC with the knowledge of creating them, you'd be required to sacrifice your path on magery. This was also a side effect to allow Necromancers the same basic money making ability as with scrolls. Difference is, there's no skill gain involved from using the foci, where scrolls and wands check the actual Magery skill gain numbers.