Playing a Mage
1. Learn how to get used to carrying the necessary amount of prismatic tapers and the required scarabs to cast the spells you plan on using. Running out in a dire situation usually ends in quick death of a mage.
2. Get into a guild, look for any active players. Many players of AC tend to be very helpful, sometimes TOO helpful (Lol) but always willing to do just about anything for a new player, or even returning players.
3. Practice on learning about the main pro's and con's of a mage, i.e. having to take 4 schools of magic, definately needing to specialize war magic, also trying to understand the concept of how mana conversion works, and how a higher level of it can drastically change how many spells you can cast.
4. Practice learning how to cast spells with the keyboard...this is a must, its just to damn hard to cast fast enough with a mouse anymore...try mapping a certain keyboard button to cast and use that, i currently use R for previous spell T for next spell and F for cast spell.
5. Understand that as a mage, you will not be using a shield...ever...so if you intend on hunting monsters that are melee based, then roll a mage that has melee defense somewhere in the template and I even recommend putting a few starting attribute points into quick for the bonus to melee d in the end.
6. For fastest method of leveling, I suggest first going to the olthoi arcade until 20, which is cake, then I would suggest Black Spawn Den with the tusker guard kill quest out there that is 20 million xp, you should be able to get close to 50.
7. As soon as you hit level 50, you should have over 320 war magic buffed, should have no problems going to abayar's study, which is also called Fiuns, and you can easily level up there to 110.