Evaluating Intelligence

Evaluating Intelligence ("Eval Int") is the offensive half of a mage: while Magery decides whether a spell lands, Eval Int decides how hard it hits. It also lets you size up an opponent's intellect and mana, and powers the classic "mage wrestling" defense.

Spell damage

Every damage spell compares your Eval Int against the target's Resisting Spells:

• If your Eval Int is higher, damage rises — up to about +20% at 100 Eval Int against a target with no resist.
• If the target's resist is higher than your Eval Int, damage drops sharply — a low-Eval caster can lose up to half the damage against a Grandmaster resister.

A serious mage therefore treats Eval Int as mandatory: without it your Energy Bolts tickle. Held Grimoires can add up to +25 Eval Int in PvM through their Enchanted property, on top of their damage multipliers.

Judging a target

Using the skill directly targets a creature or player and estimates their Intelligence; from 76.0 skill you also see their remaining mana percentage — handy for knowing when an enemy mage is running dry. Accuracy improves with skill.

Mage wrestling

While your hands are free, your defensive skill in melee is the higher of your Wrestling or (Anatomy + Eval Int + 20) / 2 — the classic UOR mechanic that lets a mage with high Anatomy and Eval Int dodge like a wrestler without spending points on Wrestling. See the PvP overview.

The tank-mage insta-hit nerf (PvP)

The UOR "insta hit" (your first swing being ready the moment you equip a weapon) is active on Sagas, but nerfed for mages: if you equip a weapon while having Magery 80+ and Eval Int 80+, your first hit against another player within that first swing window deals half damage. Pure warriors are unaffected. Details in the PvP overview.

Skill cap and mastery

• Eval Int caps at 100 normally and can be raised to 120 with skill scrolls — one point per scroll, once you are already Grandmaster.

• The scrolled points only count outside PvP. While you are flagged for PvP combat anything above 100 is ignored — both for spell damage and for mage wrestling below. Grimoire Eval Int enchantments are not affected and keep working while flagged, exactly as they always did.

• It has its own Skill Mastery (PvM only), taught by mage and scribe NPCs from skill 90: Arcane Insight (bonus fire/energy damage after assessing a target), Vitalizing Spirit (stronger healing spells), Annihilation (bonus damage on wounded targets) and the ultimate Arcane Tempest (triple spell damage proc).

What the 20 points are worth

Spell damage is scaled by the gap between your Eval Int and the target's Resisting Spells, and the two directions are weighted differently: every point you are ahead is worth +0.2% damage, every point you are behind costs 0.5%. Closing a deficit is therefore worth two and a half times as much as extending a lead, which makes Eval Int scrolls scale up against tough targets:

So against ordinary monsters the scrolls are a modest gain, and against high-resist bosses they matter most. (The separate ×2 bonus all magery does to non-human monsters multiplies on top and does not change these percentages.)

Training 0 → 120

Eval Int is one of the easiest skills to raise, because it gains passively with every spell you cast — while you train Magery, Eval Int climbs alongside it for free. If it lags behind:

Past 100 the method is the same — keep casting. Gains slow down the closer you get to your current cap, so the last few points before 120 take the longest.

Gains follow the normal region modifiers — see Skills Overview.

Related

• Magery · Meditation · Resisting Spells
• Grimoire — Eval Int enchantments and PvM damage
• Evaluating Intelligence Mastery
• Skill Masteries — how the mastery system works