It is my intent to offer words of wisdom for those who wish to follow the scholarly profession of scribe, for wisdom is a requirement in this art. Be sure you have sufficient intelligence to pursue it, and a strong back to carry the heavy scrolls you will need to practice it.

Tools and Resources

You will need pens, of course. You can get them from town if you wish, but those crafted by a grandmaster tinker will last longer.

You will need scrolls to write upon. These can be bought from a number of townspeople. Scribes in the libraries, mages in the mage shops, real estate brokers in the carpenter shop (or Skara Brae town hall) and map makers. If you know a friendly cook who will supply you with wood pulp you can even make your own. One wood pulp will make five scrolls.

If you are planning to write spell scrolls you will need the reagents that cast the spell and you will need scrolls to copy from, you can’t write a spell if you don’t know what it should say. A full spell book is a must.

The final, very necessary resource, is mana. The more you have, the more you can write without a rest, and the faster you regain it, the sooner you can write again. Meditation skill in your template is strongly recommended. It is also worth building a specialist suit for the purpose, including such properties as intelligence bonus, mana regeneration and mana increase. Neither lower mana cost nor lower reagent cost are effective for inscribing.

When writing items for sale, after training is completed, it is advisable to obtain a talisman. This will reduce your resource consumption by increasing your success rate. Exceptional bonus on a talisman is of questionable importance, since the only known advantage comes in the form of a higher number of possible charges in rune books.

Learning the Art

To begin using the skill, double click your pen to open the inscription menu.

The mage shopkeepers in town will teach you the beginnings for a small fee, then take a trip to New Haven and visit with Jillian the Inscription Instructor. She will help you reach 50 skill, and give you a worthwhile prize to boot. A Hallowed Spellbook.

If, however, you reside in wilder climes, under a Siege Perilous ruleset, you will be unable to find a teacher and must learn the art alone. Purchase from a provisioner a number of small red books. Open the first book and write in it, then select the skill from the skill menu, or create a macro ‘use skill, inscription’. Copy the book onto each of the others you have bought. It is possible to copy over books that have already been written. This method will take you to around 50 skill, though gains will slow down and you may find it beneficial to switch to writing spells around 35 – 40.

After 50 skill

Remember that to write spells you must have the spell to copy from. Therefore to write magery spells you will need a full magery spell book, to write necromancy spells, a full necromancy spell book and to write mysticism spells, a full mysticism spell book. You do not need to have skill points in these three arts to write the spells for them. The calculator will help you determine which spells to write for your current skill level. If you’ve plenty of scrolls, once you reach 75 you can put the reagents away and scribe spell books instead. Unless you have skill points in the art for which you are writing the book, these will have no properties.

Books with Properties

If you do have skill points in the arts you will be able to write books which have properties such as lower reagent cost, mana regeneration, skill bonus etc. To write magery books you will need magery skill, to write necromancy books, necromancy skill and to write mysticism books, mysticism skill. Likewise the + skill possible on these books will also be appropriate to the book type. While + resist spells, + evaluate intelligence and + meditation are possible on all three book types you will only get + magery skill on a magery book, + necromancy skill on an necromancy book and so on. Obviously the higher your skill, both in inscription and the book-type skill, the better the books you can potentially write. Below is a writing sample.

Using the library talisman ‘my book’ which had 30% exceptional bonus and 23% inscription bonus I used 1000 scrolls for each book type.

Character skills: 120 magery, 120 necromancy, 120 mysticism, 100 inscription. Intel 130 (including 5 from the talisman)

Other Items Produced By A Scribe

The range of items a scribe can produce has increased considerably over recent time. The skill level and resources required for these items can be found by following this link. A full explanation on the crafting and use of rune books can be found here.

Earning a Crust

The most saleable items from your inventory are:

• Spell books (filled or unfilled with properties)
• Scroll binders
• Spell book engraving tools
• Runebooks
• Recall spell scrolls (for charging rune books)
• Scrapper’s Compendium

Scrapper’s Compendium is the most expensive item a scribe can produce. It can only be written by a scribe who has read the recipe, obtained from the Heartwood Elves. Strangely the quests which offer this recipe as a reward are the Tinker quests. If the scribe writing the Scrapper’s compendium also has high magery skill it is possible that up to three properties, in addition to the fixed recipe properties, may be produced.

Spell Books in Siege Perilous Rulesets

Note that player written books in this ruleset are not blessed. To sell blessed, filled spell books on shards with this ruleset you will need to purchase the empty books from npc mage shops.

Inscription in Battle

While most scribes are peaceful, scholarly types, inscription also gives benefits to spellcasters. These benefits are in addition to any bonuses from items.

• Spell Damage Increase, a 10% bonus at Grand Master level.
• Casting Focus – from Apprentice to Grand Master a 1% increase to base casting focus per 10 points of Inscribe. (5% at Grand Master)