This post is intended to be a guide to spells and abilities in Everquest 2. More information will be added as it becomes availible.
AS YOU GO DOWN THE LIST, SPELLS OR ABILITIES GET STRONGER.
Spells and abilities become more effective, either by lowering resist rates, increasing duration or raising damage. This benefit often comes with a small cost- such as a slight increase in power consumption- but it's well worth it.
Apprentice 1: Gained automaticially as you level.
Apprentice 2: Bought from NPC merchants (Scribes, marked by a Quill on the map).
Apprentice 3: Player-crafted from common ingredients.
Apprentice 4: Quest of fairly minor difficulty.
Adept 1: Uncommon mob drop.
Adept 2: Quest of moderate difficulty and length.
Adept 3: Player-crafted from rare ingredients.
Adept 4: Difficult and long quest.
Master 1: Recieved from Quests or Traditions.
Master 2: Very, very high level mob drops.
Master 3: Player-crafted using very high level mob drops.
Master 4: Handed out by GM events; Artifact-level spells (i.e. one per server).
You do NOT have to collect and use the abilities in order; you can go straight to Apprentice 3 from Apprentice 1, or even all the way up to Master 4. This is subject, however, to your skill level in that particular area of casting; if you right-click on the scroll, it will tell you the skill level required to scribe it and what skill it falls under. You may not be able to scribe, say, a Master 3 version of the spell at the level that you recieve it, but you will be able to once your skill level increases to a sufficient level.
A small note; you may not notice a large increase in the output of your spells or abilities when you first get them. Upgrading a level ten skill from Apprentice 1 to Adept 3 will actually not cause that large of an increase- at least, not at level 10. As you level up, spells and abilities increase in power; so while an Apprentice 1 is quite good when you first recieve it, it won't increase in power as you level up. An Adept 3 spell, however, will continue to increase in power level as you gain levels; an Adept 4 could increase further, and a Master 1 could increase further than that.
Postscripts;
So far, no one has seen Apprentice 4, Adept 4, or Master 2/3/4 spell scrolls, but the information regarding how they are acquired seems to be correct. If anyone has information contradicting or supporting mine, feel free to post and I will update this thread.
If someone wants to correct my description of the benefits of the abilities with accurate information (prefferably either collected yourself or with a link to either data or a dev post), feel free. That's from a post by a Dev during Beta, but I can no longer find it due to the purging of the Beta boards and haven't found anything more current.
Edited, Fri Nov 19 13:58:15 2004 by RPZip
Edited, Mon Nov 22 16:44:46 2004 by RPZip