Difficulty: Hard
Hometown: Arabian Nights
Stat Order: Mind, Dexterity, Perception, Constitution, Strength, Spirit
Arabian Nights is chosen as a hometown because it is the only hometown that can learn third circle words.
Spirit is chosen last because there is a lot of great spirit gear and the target spirit isn't that high.
This build is a very good and versatile build that can do well solo and in groups, but is also very difficult for a few reasons. Creating an equipment list for this build is quite the balancing act, as there are so many important stats to improve while trying to maintain minimum requirements. The other difficult aspect of this build is learning all of the intricacies of playing a mage, learning words, learning spells, and learning how mobs react to each spell. Playing this build requires you to remember how each mob reacts to you and learning a different way to beat some of them.
For typical solo mobs, you're going to be using sleep, meteor, and immolate spells. Weaken, clumsiness, and curse are great spells to use on some of the harder mobs. Idiocy is good to use if you want to try to stun the target as stun compares the mind of the caster to the mind of the target in order to decide success. Stun is a great spell against mobs that cannot be slept. Mobs take 66% more damage from all sources, including spell damage, when they're sleeping or stunned.
In groups, you'll need to spend your mana more wisely and use mostly immolate instead of meteor, as immolate is more cost effective. Meteor is really only good in groups when you need the target to die really quickly.
Some additional notes from Tupai'a
The stat recommendations up top are good, and honestly they're probably what I would recommend going for; I went with 40 str, 105 min, 40 dex, 60 con, 44 perc and 53 spi instead (the extra perc and spi are primarily because of secondary stat itemization... I could have moved some of the extra perc and spi around using the quest in KSM but never bothered) and threw on some extra +hp gear while staying maxed out on mana reduction and spell damage. I was still able to manage -160 AC and 550+ hp with these stats. 40 dex meant I couldn't tumble, but once you're maxed out on Seven Heavens reps, this becomes a lot less of an issue than one might imagine. Also, a viable strategy to avoid being bashed is to fear mobs (that aren't rooted) after your initial meteor, then follow them and spellcalm them (if they're not agg). While I can't say that tumble wouldn't have been great, I think this build was really pretty much ideal. Also, 550 hp was more than enough to tank about 80% of the stuff I farmed for the requisite four rounds and survive to get off another meteor after that round.