The Mage
Mages are both the most complicated and most versatile characters to play, and for most people, the most enjoyable as well. It is difficult to start out as a mage, as being a mage is quite expensive and requires a deeper understanding of the game than other classes, but a mage's power increases rapidly as he levels. At the highest levels, there are few things mages can't do well.
How to Start
All mages rely on the same set of skills - War, Life, Creature, and Item Magics - to attack and defend against monsters, but the specialization of each character lies in which skills each person values most. Almost every popular mage template specializes War Magic. Just like a melee or archer specializes his weapon skill, it makes sense to raise your primary offensive skill as high and as quickly as possible. There are exceptions, of course, which I will detail later. You may also want to specialize your primary defensive skill. This decision is a lot more personal than choosing to specialize War Magic. Just like Archers and Melees, Mages can either rely on their ability to evade melee damage by using Melee Defense, or they can use magic to protect them by using Life Magic. Up until about about two years ago, this decision was a no-brainer. Life Magic was not only a good defense, but it joined with War Magic to serve as an offensive skill too, by casting vulnerability spells (read more about that later). Times have changed, however, and Life Magic isn't nearly as necessary as it used to be. Melee Defense is much more popular these days because of the addition to melee D bonuses to wands. Even though most mages won't start with high coordination or quickness scores, a good wand can make up for a lot of disadvantage. Instead of choosing to specialize one skill or the other, I recommend choosing between training both Melee D and Life Magic or Specializing Life. Life Magic is going to be your primary method of healing yourself and making sure you don't run out of mana, so it's really a skill you can't afford to be without. Specializing Melee D instead of training it won't make much of a difference until later in life anyway, so you can afford to wait until later. The choice between Life Magic and Melee Defense is one of personal preference and in all likelihood, you will have both skills by the time your character is complete.
Because War Magic is such an expensive skill to train and specialize, you won't have many credits free after taking your offensive and defensive skills. If you specialized War and Life Magics, you will have a whopping two credits left and if you trained both Life and Melee, then you will have 0 credits. There really isn't anything worth buying with those two remaining credits if you have them, so leave them unspent. There are still at three essential skills every mage needs that you will need to train after character creation - Creature Magic, Item Magic, and Mana Conversion. Of those three skills remaining, the one you should take earliest should be Mana Conversion. As a mage, you will need as much mana as you can muster and Mana Conversion is necessary to that process. Item Magic should probably be your next investment. Not only does Item Magic allow you to strengthen your armor, but it allows you to use portal magic, which will make transit far more bearable for you. Creature Magic will allow you to be completely self-sufficient, but it's not as vital as Mana Conversion or Item Magic. You should be able to have all of those skills before you reach level 50. After you learn Creature Magic, the only important skills left to pick up are to either train or specialize Melee Defense (10 credits) and train Arcane Lore (4 credits). My Mage is actually specialized in Life, War, and Creature magics, but that is a somewhat obsolescent template that you will probably not find to be very useful. Another archaic template includes the OG Mage, which relies on specialized Creature and Life magic, while leaving War trained. Although they made sense at the time, these older style templates aren't nearly as useful today as they were years ago and should probably be avoided.
Once you select your skills, you get to allocate your attributes. The first two attributes should be obvious - raising Focus and Self will improve all of your main skills, so raise both of them to 100. Now you have 90 points left. This is another personal preference issue. I recommend dumping at least 20 points into your strength, as mages need to carry a lot of tapers with them. I personally raised my mage's starting strength to 60. The rest of the credits are totally up to you. If you prefer having a lot of health, dump points into Endurance. If you can't stand to be slow, dump some into Quickness. If you are planning on specializing Melee D, you might want to put some in Coordination, although I think Coordination is wasted on a mage. My personal choice was 60 Strength, 10 Endurance, 10 Coordination, and 50 Quickness. That choice allows my mage to be able to carry a good amount of weight in tapers, weapons, and loot and to be both fast and reasonably skilled in Melee Defense. I've never cared much about high health, but if you do, spend points on Endurance.
What You Need
Now that your character is finished, you will need to equip him. Every character in AC needs Armor, a Spellcasting impliment, the appropriate Spellcasting Foci, and spell components, so don't forget those. As a mage, you can't carry as much weight as a melee, so sticking to lighter armors like Amuli is probably in your best interest. Even if you do have Melee Defense specialized, your lack of a shield will make you more reliant on your armor rating than melee characters. Your casting device is your weapon, so it does have to be well thought out. I'll go into more depth on your wand below. You'll also need Foci in whichever magic schools you have trained. Buy these from Scriveners in all the major towns, but be aware that each one takes up a backpack slot. Having a Foci allows you to simplify your spell component needs down to Prismatic Tapers and Scarabs. I carry 2000 Prismatic Tapers, 5 of each scarab from Lead to Gold (except for Iron), and then 50 Pyreals and at least 50 Platinum Scarabs. As a lower level, you won't be able to carry 2000 tapers, so start with a more manageable number like 500 and then work your way up as your strength increases. At lower levels, you won't burn as many tapers either, so such a large number isn't really necessary. I carry 20 iron scarabs because I use level II Drain spells. Most people don't use drains anymore, so you may prefer to just keep 5 Iron Scarabs. If you do use Drains, make sure you have a good number of the appropriate scarab.
Your wand is a reflection of your play style. You should carry with you at all times a full compliment of Resistance Rending Wands, one for each damage type. Until you reach the first tier of wands at 290 base War Magic, it doesn't really matter what rend you slap on each wand. Try to find wands with good mana conversion and melee defense bonuses, but aside from that, don't be too picky. Once you begin to use tiered wands, you will need to apply the correct imbue salvage to a wand based on what damage bonus it offers. This makes it harder to complete your set of rending wands, but it's worth the effort. My mage actually has an entire pack of wands, not just the seven she'd need to have one rending wand for each damage type. She also has seven Critical Strike or Crippling Blow-imbued wands for use against monsters with lots of health and a variety of quest-generated 'Slayer' wands. Weapons with the Slayer property do extra damage against monsters of that particular species. Like CS/CB weapons, these are most useful against big monsters with lots of health. The nice thing about wands is that they weigh practically nothing, so you can bring your whole arsenal with you wherever you go.
Beyond your spellcasting gear and your armor, mages don't really need anything else to fight. Having a few potions or some stamina fuel might be nice, but it certainly isn't necessary.
Basic Combat
Magical combat is substantially different from melee and archer combat. The most noticeable difference is that mages have to watch all three pools instead of just health and stamina. Stamina is less important to mages than to other classes, but stamina is easy to recover (through drain and revitalize spells) and can be used to replenish your mana quite easily by casting Stamina to Mana. Healing yourself can be accomplished in several ways. If you're certain you can beat your enemy's magic defense, try Drain Health. Although it isn't nearly as effective as it used to be, Drain Health II can replenish 80 points of health with practically no wind-up animation. Draining doesn't work against everything and is very ineffective if you are fighting a monster that is almost dead. Casting Heal Self is a mage's mainstay healing ability. So long as you don't fizzle, you will always heal yourself, but the biggest problem with Heal Self is that it's slow to cast and the variance in how much you heal is wide - Heal Self VII ranges from 80 to 150 points. If you are in trouble and only manage to heal for 80 instead of 150, you will be quite annoyed. For emergencies, you can use Stamina to Health. Provided your stamina bar is nearly full, you can fully recharge your health with this spell, regardless of how much damage you take. Also, since the power of the spell only depends on how much stamina you have, you won't get any dud 80 point heals. Of course, you will need to keep your stamina bar nearly full all the time to use this spell frequently. Some mages carry Health fuel, but honestly, I have never found those to be necessary.
The most basic method of attacking as a mage is to lead off with a Vulnerability spell and then use the appropriate war magic spell to kill the monster. Resistance-Rending wands save a step by removing the necessity of that first Vulnerability spell. If you have high Creature Magic and you are fighting a monster with a lot of health, casting Magic Yield is a good way to lead off too. Unlike Melees and Archers, Mages have a variety of offensive spells available. The most basic is the Bolt. Bolts are slow-moving war spells that go directly toward the target. Arc spells are identical to Bolts in strength, but as their name suggests, they arc over the terrain and they travel much faster. There are also Streaks, Volleys, and Blasts. All of these spells shoot out half-damage projectiles that travel faster than a Bolt. Volleys and Blasts shoot out several projectiles at once (3 for sub-VII spells, 5 for VIIs). The difference between the two is that volleys remain tightly clustered as they travel and blasts spread out from the caster. Streaks, Volleys, and Blasts are basically useless with one big exception - Eaters. Eaters are wide enough so that a Blast spell will hit the same Eater three times. The other two blasts can cause collateral damage on nearby Eaters too. Sau Kolin's Sword is the way to go against Eaters. The other two types of War Magic you should know are Rings and Walls. These spells can be found in Sturdy Iron Chests (use a Sturdy Iron Key to open!) and are still rather rare. Wall spells fire out two tiers of five projectiles in a wall that travels slowly toward your enemy. The damage of each projectile is low, but against very large monsters like the Burun Kings, you can do much more damage with a Wall Spell than a single Bolt/Arc. Ring Spells are much more useful, especially in close quarters with a horde of melee monsters. The spell shoots out a wave of 8 projectiles centered around you that have a rather short range. If you are surrounded, you can do an incredible amount of damage against a large number of creatures with a single Ring spell.
The Bottom Line
I personally find the Mage to be the most enjoyable of the basic classes, but it isn't easy to get started. Here are the Pros and Cons:
Pros:
Cons: