Spell & Skill Tactics

This guide reviews all spells & skills in the game, thoroughly discussing their worth, combinations and tactics. It also gives advices on your general build, on the near-magical talents and so forth in the process. Note: there are no actual descriptions of spells here because other people have already done such guides and I don't want to encroach on their territory.

Witchcraft Part I

Note: while witchcraft doesn't seem to be based on any kind of element, it actually can get discount from the Elemental Affinity talent. It's native surface is blood which is easy to produce by hacking or shooting any member of your party once (don't forget to heal them up after that). And there's no penalty for standing in blood, so it's one of the easiest elemental affinities to setup before combat. Or you may just run into numerous puddles of blood that get produced during the combat quite naturally. Also, as there are lots of cheap spells in this school, it benefits a lot from affinity – with it, Lower Willpower+Blind+Oath of Desecration are measly 7 AP in total.

1. Enfeebling Touch – 2/5

Cheap action point cost (further I'll just write AP), but the range is pretty short (which is common for this school so Far Out Man is strongly advisable) and most enemies are not dangerous because they hit you hard – it's all about their spells and abilities and even summons (which this doesn't prevent). There are exceptions, but in most fights you want a better kind of debuff so use it only if everything else is in cooldown.

2. Bloodletting – 1/5

Extremely low basic damage and the majority of tough targets are actually immune to bleeding, so this does rather little. Waste of spellbook space.

3. Oath of Desecration – 5/5

Huge effect for the small AP cost, especially when combined with the simultaneous casting of pyrokinetic Wildfire. One of the most commonly used spells in the game. Even the four mage party will want it as it works for all kind of damage - spell too. Note that its cooldown is rather considerable so you'll need 22 intelligence to cast it each turn. Totally worth it, though. It's also worth splashing for.

Note: “Splashing” is the act of giving any kind of non-mage character +2 points of intelligence (up to basic 7), wearing an intelligence boosting sarong (magical cloak) and taking a couple of magical abilities at level 1, so he can cast buffs reliably. It's a very cheap way of significantly boosting your party's power level – even a glass cannon caster can't keep everyone buffed continuously. A 9 action points ranger with quickdraw splashing for Oath will do almost as much damage in one round as the same ranger without splashing. The difference is, he'll do much more damage in the next two rounds, what's not to like?

4. Malediction – 2/5

Same problems as with the Enfeebling Touch. Better range, but enemies have a rather large basic chance to hit you (more so on the hard difficulty – it's pretty much autohits there), so for everyone but high Dexterity characters it won't provide much survivability. Use stricter disables.

5. Blind – 5/5

One of your main tools. High casting range, low AP cost, great chance to succeed and very few enemies are immune to blind. Works against the majority of bosses. Also, needs only 16 intelligence to be used each turn – that can be achieved relatively swiftly. Even at 12 intelligence you can pretty much perma-blind someone.

6. Absorb the Elements – 3/5

The effect is rather strong and can pump your resistances past the 80% cap (making you immune to incoming elemental damage and it even making it heal you), but the problem is, it's duration is short (which makes it not that good for exploration purposes) and it's just 1 character protected. There's no guarantee that the enemy will actually bother to hit said character, unless it's an elemental creature and they're in melee. Sure, you can protect the most vulnerable one, but you can just use good disable or line of sight denial as well. It becomes a 4/5 spell if you have two lone wolves, however (less targets – more guarantees to get hit), and a 5/5 spells if both of those wolves can cast this spell reliably and with the short cooldown as this can cheese them out through many encounters.

7. Destroy Summon – 3/5

Against certain bosses it'll feel like a 5/5, but such battles are rather infrequent and outside of them this spell is a blank. It's good to have if you have spare spell slots, but if you're starved for them it's not a big loss.

8. Summon Undead Warrior – 2/5

Only useful in the short period before you get the Summon Armoured Undead Decapitator. And even then, it's mostly against the heavily-poisoning enemies as the Undead Warrior is immune to that (and, unlike the spider summon, he can actually damage those poisonous enemies in return). If you have a full-caster party (whether lone wolf or not), it becomes 3/5, being your main early game source of physical damage.

9. Vampiric Touch – 3/5

The description of this spell is wrong and incomplete – obviously, it doesn't drain just 5 vitality. Maybe they meant 5 constitution? The amount equal to that? Anyhow, at the time you'll get it, it'll probably heal/drain about 70 life (unlike other healing spells, it has a varying effect, just like all damaging spells). By the end of the game, it'll increase to somewhere around two hundred. Drain damage is piercing, but the amount of life gained doesn't seem to be tied to the amount of damage dealt. It's a decent and cheap spell and it's only weakness that mages are not exactly mobile and, generally, you want to keep them as far away from enemies as possible. So it's more of a last resort spell. With the Lone Wolf talent, it becomes a 4/5 – one way or another, your mage will have to get tankier and fight at the close distance more frequently.

Patch v1.0.219: kk, now the amount of damage healed is tied to the amount of damage dealt. Makes it worse, obviously, but not enough to really change the rating here - it's still ok.

10. Drain Willpower – 5/5

This spell is insane as it cannot be resisted – no matter how huge your enemy's willpower is, it'll get cut by the humongous amount of 50. After that any kind of willpower-based disable (that said enemy is not immune to) will get him. Heck, even the low-int characters will gain quite a good chance to disable their targets, so with two witchcraft users in your party you can easily splash for disables (something which generally is a big no-no). And everything else about this spell is perfect – low AP cost, big range, light cooldown. More like 6/5 spell, lol.

11. Mass Weakness – 2/5

Having an AoE debuff is cool, but most of the time you're fighting against rather diverse hostile parties and often only a handful of enemies there will use direct attacks. So it's great that you'll weaken their mages, only not really because this influences attack damage only. Also, it doesn't do much about their abilities, specifically disabling ones and that's what you fear the most. Not a spell you'll cast often.

12. Summon Armoured Undead Decapitator – 4/5

Decent summon. Immunity to poison and 50% resistance against piercing damage make him quite durable in certain fights and he's not that bad at dishing out damage. Quite good, actually. Knockdown ability is a joke, though – never expect him to knock down anyone but the weakest foes. For the full-caster party, he's more like a 5/5 because there are fights when you absolutely must have physical damage dealer and he's one of the few summons who provide that and, actually, he seems to be the best summon in that category.

13. Horrific Scream – 3/5

Mass disable sounds delicious, but you don't get it until quite late into the game, most enemies have some amount of willpower there and the base success chance is rather low. Even with high intelligence, it's not difficult to resist. Also, even if they get afraid, they're allowed to reroll each turn – if they succeed, they're instantly ok and ready for action. So it's mostly for the trashmob encounters. And, speaking in terms of convenience, I'd even give this thing 2/5 – enemies scatter around so it takes more time to mop them up, incredibly so if you have 2+ melee party members. This game is already huge, prolonged trashmob battles is not what it needs.

Witchcraft Part II

14. Death Punch – 3/5

In terms of raw spell power, it's definitely a 4/5 – it deals heavy damage and that damage is crushing, something that's not commonly resisted. However, short range means you have to get close to land it and long cooldown (you need 26 intelligence to cast it each turn – unless you're lucky to find a Codex of Pestilential Thought or two, that's not an easy mark to reach) somewhat deflates the value of doing so. Still, if you're lucky enough to reach that point it certainly turns into a 4/5 spells and, for the lone wolf runs, even a 5/5.

15. Resurrect – 1/5

A surprisingly pointless spell. Now, not that it's a bad spell, it's good and certainly needed, but Resurrect scrolls are the most abundant scrolls in the game – you will be finding lots of them and they're always available from the shop in good number with quite affordable price. And the spell is pretty much the same as the scroll, only it has a freaking base cooldown of 30 turns – even the good mages will cast it once in a 20 turns or so. It's ok to have if you have a spell slot to spare, but otherwise it's just a waste of spellbook space.

16. Soulsap – 4/5

The only thing which prevents this puppy from reaching the ultimate height of 5 is its rather long cooldown. Once again, without 26 intelligence, you won't cast it that often. But if you do reach it somehow, it's one step of being utterly broken, especially against bosses. It cannot be resisted (so, no matter how high the target's willpower is, it always succeeds), it provides a huge penalty to the willpower and bodybuilding (so it's easy to follow up with further disabling effects against the target), it subtracts 5 from every attribute of the victim (which results in it losing quite a chunk of its health points) and, finally, it reduces all victim's resistances by 50% (so it's easy to focus it down). It's the ultimate tool in bossfighting. Oh, it also has a 16 meter base range instead of the more common 15. Do mind that it lasts only a turn, so you'd better prepare to do a lot in that turn.

Patch v1.0.219: huge nerf to this one. Now it can be resisted and, well, since it affects only one enemy and has a long cooldown, that really kills the utility of it. Probably went down to 3/5 or even 2/5 - what's the point of a boss killer spell if you can't hurt bosses reliably?

17. Invulnerability – 2/5

Like many other skill level 5 spells in the game, it's a huge disappointment. It can be cast only on the mage himself (who, let me remind you, wants to be as far from the battle as possible), it lasts only two turns and it has a base cooldown of 100 points. So no way in hell you're casting this twice per battle. You're not even casting it each battle. And even when you do, it's up to chance whether or not you'll actually do something useful with it. I guess it's somewhat better in the two lone wolves mode, it certainly rises to 3/5, but even there it doesn't do much that cannot be achieved otherwise. With an Absorb the Elements, for example. I guess if you go for that solo-mod, where you play with only one character, there it's a definite 4/5 or even 5/5. But in normal game it's quite negligible.

Conclusion: 1 or 2 points of Witchcraft are good for splashing and for the full-time usage the ability level of 4 is the best. Level 5 is quite expensive and nothing really justifies it – no special talent offered, level 5 spell is a flop and 9 level slots are enough to learn everything you really need.

Aerotheurge Part I

Note: the school is rather bad with the Elemental Affinity talent. Contrary to what you may think, the air surrounding your character doesn't enable it – you need either electrified clouds or puddles of water & blood. Clouds are rather hard to create (the easiest source is the special arrows, but they are rare and you really want to save them for tough enemies) and they don't last very long. Puddles of water also are available mostly through arrows (though water arrows are not that precious) or barrels (if you bother to carry them), but their duration is quite short. You have plenty of blood inside you, but small puddles of it get evaporated quickly when electrified and it's a huge chore to create large ones. And that's only step one – step two is actually getting into that puddle or cloud without being stunned. That requires either an Aerotheurge ability level of 5 and Lightning Rod talent or an item with stunned immunity or the casting of an Air Shield spell. Yeah, lots of groundwork required here. Too much of it, probably.

Note 2: if you go for the Aerotheurge school, you absolutely need to invest at least 1 ability point into the Hydrosophist so you can keep the Rain spell always going. It increases the effectiveness of all your stuns by the 30% (an equivalent of 6 intelligence gained) and decreases the enemies air resistance by 20% - a huge, huge boon. Never throw lightning without some rain going on.

Note 3: Another thing is that, sometimes, if your enemy stands in a puddle of water or in a huge puddle of blood, shooting any kind of electric spell may electrify the puddle even if you didn't aimed for it. So, if some of your party members are near that enemy (say, a rogue who was backstabbing it for all previous turn), they'll most likely get stunned. Care.


1. Bitter cold – 5/5

Another reason to keep that Rain constantly up. Without it, it's more like a 3/5 – nice debuff, but nothing serious. However, if the target is already wet or chilled (and Rain makes everyone wet, obviously), the chilled effect from this spell gets upgraded to the frozen automatically. And that's a 2 turn hard disable. For 3 action points. With a really high success chance. Yeah, it gives the target lots of armor so you'd better not whack it with anything physical (or throw fireballs at it – there's also ton of fire resistance there), but it's still an AP 3 disable. Which you'll eventually become able to cast each turn. Good stuff.

2. Blitz Bolt - 4/5

Of course, this is a starting spell and, over the course of the game, its rating deflates to a 3/5 (if not 2/5 near the end of it all). It even has a higher spell which is a carbon copy of it, only better. Still, until you find that, Blitz Bolt will serve you nicely – decent damage, low stunning chance (35%), but that's what the Rain is for (providing a sudden bump to quite usable 65% and that's without intelligence bonuses), minimal cooldown, can also target water or blood to electrify them (and note that the puddles have a 100% base chance of stunning and with Rain that's 130% - I hope now it's crystal clear why that spell is essential). Lots of utility and that's always decent.

3. Headvice – 3/5

In many situations, Blitz Bolt is preferable as it deals slightly more damage and has a much better disabling chance (thanks to the Rain). However, some enemies are immune to the stun, but not to the blind. And, most importantly, this spell requires no line of sight. Unlike the Blitz Bolt. So if your enemy is obscured by any kind of a cloud (which is a commonly used tactic to keep archers from shooting at you), you can't throw Blitz Bolt at them but you still can Headvice them. This is also a low to mid-game spell, so it will get outclassed eventually and deflate into a 2/5.

4. Teleportation – 5/5

One of the most iconic spells of the game and for a good reason. Honestly, it's so good and variable that everyone may splash for 1 level in Aerotheurge if only to cast this spell. The damage they'll deal with it is gonna be low, sure (btw, the damage here has an AoE, albeit a really narrow one – still, if you drop the enemy as close as possible to another foe, they'll both get hurt), but the positioning aspect won't go anywhere. In some areas or with a certain Pyrokinetic spell, you may even perform insta-kill combos with it. And, in the hands of a proficient mage, it's quite a devastating spell actually – it deals lots of rather rare crushing damage. You can't teleport certain bosses (usually the big-sized ones), but that's only fair, to be honest. And it takes quite an amount of work to be able to cast it each turn, but the reward for that is truly sweet. Teleportation is so important that it's the reason you want your 1st level mages to start with 7 speed – so you may cast it from the get go. You can also teleport chests, btw.

5. Farseer – 1/5

It's for the bow users, mostly, so you can actually abuse that 26 meters weapon range. It doesn't help that much, though, and the majority of the areas are not that wide to allow you to exploit long-range shooting freely. It's a forgettable spell.

6. Become Air – 3/5

Really nice spell with cheap AP cost, but being able to cast it only on yourself really limits it uses. The mage doesn't want to be on the frontline, after all. Now, if you splash for it as a warrior or rogue or if it's a two lone wolves party, it may easily rise to the mark of 4/5 – getting half as much physical damage may be huge, more so if your character is already quite tanky (like a shield user, for example).

7. Shocking Touch – 3/5

Strong, cheap and reliable disable yet the range prevents you from casting it often, making it another last resort option. Good for splashing, though – Rain makes it potent even in the hands of a not highly intelligent user.

8. Immune to Electrified – 3/5

This is a decent spell, but you have to think out of the box to profit from it. Use it straight and it's way too short and situational. Even the “I'll cast this spell so I can enter the electrified cloud to benefit from Elemental Affinity” approach is not that great because if the spell will end while the cloud is still there, you're getting stunned. Also, enemies don't use lighting spells that often and when they do, they don't have Rain (unless you help them) so they're rather easy to save against. Air resistance is nice, but there's the Absorb the Elements or just potions for that. So what's the reason for 3/5 rating here? The fact that you can use it on your enemies, of course. This spell can not be resisted so it's a guaranteed -25% earth resistance debuff for just 4 AP. Your geomancer will love that. Just don't aim anything air-based at it. This spell's only actual weakness is that pure earth damage spells are not that common and you really need to craft the Boulder Dash spellbook to gaint the best of them.

9. Lightning Strike – 2/5

It's too counterproductive. Pure mages don't want to be anywhere near close combat. Evenly spread hybrids are horrible in this game so you'll either be warrior or a rogue, splashing for int, or a mage, splashing for strength and the shield. Warrior and rogue have much better and cheaper teleporting skills and for them, the stunning chance will be quite low. Even with the Rain going on. And even a hybrid mage with a shield doesn't want to charge headlong into the foes. Even if he's a Lone Wolf. I mean, maybe in that solo mode where your character can easily be great hybrid, maybe there it can be 3/5 or even 4/5. But not in the normal game.

Aerotheurge Part II

11. Feather Drop – 4/5

It's another Teleportation, only this time it has a lower AP cost and deals no damage. Which means that you can finally teleport your fighters and rogues without making them half-dead and, well, it's still a useful positioning tool against enemies. Which also has a lethal combo potential in the late-game. It's good enough.

12. Air Shield - 4/5

All shield spells are great. First and foremost, it adds a number of temporary hit points to the target which equals her maximum hit points. And those hit points are spent first so, unless you're seriously outleveled by your enemies, you gain a pretty much invulnerability for a turn or two. Do I need to say that with a Lone Wolf talent any shield is a 5/5 spell? Second, it has a 20% chance to stun your foes, but, unlike usual stuns, it's not a 20% roll on the willpower table – it's an actual 20% chance to cause a 100% stun. Kinda confusing, yes. Obviously, Rain makes that a 130% stun. And even if your opponent misses his attack, he still may get stunned. Oh, and you're getting 50% resistance to air. And 25% penalty to earth is almost insignificant as very few things actually do pure earth damage. With a base cooldown of 6 turns, you can easily keep it up constantly. Together with other shields, it's one of the best protective tools in the game.

13. Lightning Bolt – 4/5
Blitz Bolt 2.0. Pretty much the same, only 50% more damage and great stunning chance. Your bread & butter Aerotheurge spell in the midgame. Note that it's not being sold in the common shops and the easiest way of getting it is to unlock air elemental in your Homestead early.

14. Tornado – 3/5

It's great in theory but, by the time it arrives into your disposition, surfaces begin to matter much less than they do in the early game. Also, since it's gonna be mostly you, the player, who will abuse the surface interaction tricks, it doesn't often make sense to destroy the results of your work. It does, occasionally, but that word sums this spell – occasionally, it's useful.

15. Remove Petrification – 2/5

Only a handful of enemies in the game can cast the petrification spell and that happens mostly late in the game where your characters have high Willpower and are not that easy to disable. You'll be lucky or, rather, unlucky to have an opportunity to use this spell even once. So, unless you max out Aerotheurge, why spend a full spell slot on it?

16. Summon Air Elemental – 2/5

Probably the weakest summon in the game when adjusted for level. Undead Warriors, for example, are also weak, but at least they have the timing window when they're useful. By the time you get Air Elemental, you don't really encounter strongly air-based enemies so its immunity can't be abused that much and in terms of combat stats its simply horrible. No armor, weakness to piercing damage (hello, archers!), bad attack rating, bad damage, bad hps. I guess its only redeeming quality is that, after it dies, it leaves behind an electrified cloud. So you can use it as a kamikaze, I guess? That's the reason for the 2/5 here, otherwise it would've been pure 1.

17. Make Invisible – 3/5

Could've been great earlier in the game, but once again, you just get it too late. At this point, many opportunities for invisibility usage have already passed and you also have better tools to salvage your combat. It's still not horrible, but not that great either.

18. Chain Lightning – 4/5

As decent as a level 5 spell gets. Solid burst area of effect damage and your intelligence will be high enough at this point to provide a good stunning chance. But it has its flaws. Unless you have divine luck, its huge cooldown cannot be worked around – even casting it every 5 turns is quite an achievement. And its area of effect damage is not as precisely controllable as one of a template-based spell, so keep it away from your melee fighters and don't cast it at enemies who are closer than 7 meters to you. You have to be really careful with this one. To be honest, from a level 5 spell you want much more than that and, considering how expensive said level is, I'm not sure if this is not a 3/5 spell.

19. Storm – 1/5

This spell is beyond ridiculous. On the verge of being insulting. It strikes a random amount of random targets, your party members included. And, since its area of effect is humongous, it's almost impossible to cast it without touching your entire party. First time I've used it, it singled out my archer out of 20 or so combatants (I've decided to test the spell in the city, yeah, so there were many civilians around). Without harming anyone else. Next turn it killed a couple of poor legionnaires, only it also stunned my magician. And that's with an abnormal amount of enemies – against the average 5 men parties it's gonna be much worse. I guess you can make everyone immune to stun one way or another, but you still have no control over whom this spell focuses first (if it focuses enemies at all). I guess it's better if you have a two lone wolves party and they're both immune to stunning – the chances to hit enemies are much better that way. And it's even greater if you're solo. With some kind of a mod or just solo – maybe you can try to cheese out some battles by doing a Storm + Invisibility combo. With an airshield precasted. But outside of these experiments, the Storm is plainly bad.

Conclusion: all of the Aerotheurge's best spells are situated in the first three ability levels so you can easily escape with an ability level of 3. 4 maybe. 5 is probably an overkill and something to be used mostly in the lone wolves run.

Geomancer Part I

Note: geomancer Elemental Affinity is activated by either oil or ooze. Oil is easy to create, but it may slow you and your party so, unless it's the late game, where you have good Willpower saves and possibly even an “immune to slow” item, it's not a good idea to waddle through it. Ooze can be quite damaging unless you have the Zombie talent where it may even heal you. So if you want to go for heavy Geomancer usage, having a Zombie caster (or maybe a Zombie party, wheee, zombie party!!!) will be a great boon for you.

1. Fortify – 3/5

It starts rather strong, pretty much a 4/5, but, as it gives a constant, non-scaling bonus, somewhere in the mid-game it begins to fade away, especially after you get the access to elemental shields (and, skipping fast forward a little bit, you're gaining earth elemental shields rather quickly). Another problem is that, for a buff, it's quite expensive in terms of AP and, just like with all other protective buffs, you can't truly guarantee whether the protected target will be hit or not. But, by the very same reason, it's much better in the dual lone wolves mod. But even there it's only for the early game – shields mercilessly obsolete it.

2. Magical Poison Dart – 2/5

It's an early game poisonous spell but problem is, poison is really weak in the early game due to most enemies being immune to it. And even outside of that this gets outperformed by other spells way too fast to be in frequent use.

3. Midnight Oil – 5/5

Extreme utility. It's a 100% AoE slow (and slow is a rather strong debuff, mind you) which can easily target two or three enemies with cheap AP cost, huge range (for a template spell it is the center of a template which should be based in the spell's 15/17 meters range; therefore, with the edge of a template you may actually go beyond that maximum), almost no cooldown. If the target doesn't get slowed immediately, going through the surface causes extra Willpower saves so even the toughest critter will eventually fail one. Actually, the AI prefers to avoid it altogether and will often take a long route around it, wasting many action points. It also lasts long enough so you can cast it pre-combat, meaning that you can setup many obstacles on the battlefield. Note that if the oil puddles get united, they acquire the duration of an earliest one, meaning that, as it will expire and vanish, it'll also take the newest ones with itself, despite them being supposed to last longer. And we're not even finished yet. Once you add the fire into the mix, either via pyrokinetic spell or just some kind of a burning object (like casting oil over torch), the oil ignites, dealing immediate damage, setting everyone in it ablaze and producing smoke. Which, in turn, blocks line of sight and many spells cannot be cast through smoke. You also can't shoot arrows through it, so creating your own smokescreen is a valid and vital tactics against the early game archers. It's about ten times more than you can expect from a level 1 spell.

4. Summon Spider – 4/5

Well, it's a specific kind of 4/5. It's an early game summon, pretty much your first one, and I'd say that it falls into obscurity over the course of the game (apart from the situation where you want to exploit its poison immunity) if not for the fact that it's the only ability level one summon. So it's really easy to splash for it, meaning that a full party can easily have 4 spiders at any given time. And while they won't cause much damage, spiders have a good amount of HP so it's a lot of decoys. Outside of that tactics, however, it's more of a 3/5 degrading into a 2/5 in the midgame as you just gain better summons.

5. Boulder Dash – 4/5

Not to be confused with the Boulder Bash, lol. Actually, it's a semi-secret spell – you can't buy a spellbook with it and you can't find it, so you have to craft it from a scroll. And a scroll is also hard (if not impossible) to buy in the shops, so you'll have to craft it too. Which, unless you're very lucky, isn't that possible without several reloads – blank earth scrolls are somewhat rare and the scrolls created are rather random. The spell is worth it, btw – it's like a geomancer's version of a fireball. Somewhat harder to aim, but also dealing about 33% more damage. And it's a pure earth damage which is somewhat of a rarity. It also leaves oozes on the place of its crashdown, which can be ignited to deal even more damage. And, if it goes over the ooze while it rolls, it'll grow in size. That doesn't seem to be influencing damage, though. Anyway, great spell if you can get it.

6. Bless – 3/5

Hitting certain monsters with swords and arrows might be problematic for your party, yet Bless isn't truly the best approach to that problem. After all, why buff just 1 character when you can cast one of many disables at monster and set an automatic 100% to hit chance for your entire crew? Summons included. Not to mention that the monster itself won't be able to do anything. Sure, the disable doesn't help you to hit other monsters, but that's why you have plenty disables in your spellbook. And lots of them are cheap too, so... In reality, its major utility lies with the ranger's long range Guerilla sniping tactics. If you try to abuse that 26 meter range of a bow or to insta-gib people with crossbow criticals, you need all extra accuracy you can squeeze. Outside of that, it's only useful in the early game.

7. Boulder Bash – 5/5

One of the strongest spells in the game. The damage it deals is slight, but it requires no line of sight (so you may cast it in situations where other spells won't be accessible) and it has a huge knockdown chance. Area of effect knockdown. Disabling 3 to 4 enemies in a turn is a norm with this and you need only 18 intelligence to cast it each turn. Once you start throwing these babies, few enemies will remain on their legs (or whatever they have). And it creates a circle of ooze so you can setup your elemental affinity with it (don't cast it on yourself, obviously – cast it before you and step into it if you're prepared for that) rather easily. Or just burn it for extra damage. So strong that it's almost broken, to be honest.

8. Immune to Poisoning – 1/5

Worst Immune spell in the game. Sure, poison is a real trouble early in the game, but even so it suffers from being a defensive spell (it's better to be active rather then reactive in this game) and getting outclassed almost instantly. And, unlike other Immune spells, it has no penalty so you can't use it offensively.

9. Earth Shield – 5/5

Compared to other elemental shields, its upside is that it gives you two resistance bonuses at once – both earth & poison. Of course, as pure earth damage is rather rare, it's more like one and a half. And sure, the chance to poison your foes is not as cool as the chance to stun them, especially as the latter one can get improved by the Rain. But what makes this shield a 5/5 (when the rest are 4/5) is the fact you can get it at level 7 instead of 10. And that you need skill level 2 instead of 3. And 9 base intelligence instead of 11. So you get it early and it can be splashed. That's quite an attractive option for the two lone wolves run. After all, you cast your shields to double your hps and all that resistance stuff is rather secondary here.

10. Magical Poison Arrow – 3/5

It's an ok run-of-the-mill spell. Magical Poison Dart 2.0, basically, but if poison dart dealt very weak damage, this one does average. It's main weakness is that it's very generic and unimpressive, so you'll be casting it mostly in-between the cooldowns of other spells. And only when you have no better options (which you'll quickly amass). It's only temporary useful.

11. Petrifying Touch – 3/5

Another ultra-cheap and almost point blank range disable with a high percentage of success. It's rather good, but it's just that you won't get to cast it often. As with other such spells, it's much more useful in a two lone wolves run – 4/5 there.

Geomancer Part II

12. Deadly Spores – 4/5

The description of this spell is quite misleading – it writes that each of the spores deals an amount of damage but in reality it's all spores combined that deal that damage. So it's not as insane as it looks. It's also tricky to aim as the spores require not one, but five lines of sight to hit your target. You're allowed to cast it anyways, but missing two or three spores means losing 40-60% of damage dealt. And it has a rather steep action point cost. So what makes it a 4/5 spell? The synergy with the burning surfaces. Cast it on them and each spore will explode on the contact with fire, which will result in this spell dealing almost as much damage in fire as it does in poison. In a rather large area. Yes, that's an 15 AP combo here so it's hard to pull of without a Glass Cannon talent, but the trick here is to throw the fireball before the combat begins, use it as your initiation spell. Then you follow up with the spores. It's a neat tool to quicken the trashmob fights and it's a solid damage dealer in the tough ones.

13. Acid Breath – 3/5

Decent damage potential, but it requires you to be quite close to your enemies and your party tends to get in the cone. As mages usually aren't that mobile and even when they are, they have better ways to spend their AP than on slogging. So don't expect to cast it often. It's much better in the lone wolves run, though, 4/5 there.

14. Summon Wolf – 3/5

Most usable from level 10 (when you gain it) to 12 (until a certain area of the game ends). After that, you just don't encounter water-based monsters that often so his immunity becomes hard to abuse. And it terms of other combat stats he's below average, not to mention that he has a short casting range and lasts only 4 turn instead of the average 5. Quite a temporary tool.

15. Blessed Earth – 2/5

By the level 13 your party acquires a critical mass of various disables and uses them constantly, so their natural to-hit chance isn't really used at that point. Therefore, a bless, even if it affects all your crew members and summons, just doesn't do much. Perfectly skippable.

16. Summon Bloodswarm – 3/5

Probably the best Geomancer summon. It's relatively fast and it has a good resistance against piercing damage – no immunity, just 50% resistance. And it can apply a disease debuff which is quite strong in terms of taking your victim down. The damage is also physical so it's a 4/5 for the full-caster brigade, I suppose. It's a little bit squishy, however, and requires the otherwise unattractive 4 levels in the geomancer ability, hence the average rating.

17. Nature's Curse – 2/5

It's the same as with the Blessed Earth – at the time you get this you have so many tools to prevent group of monsters from attacking you altogether that just lowering their chances to do so doesn't seem like a viable option.

18. Summon Earth Elemental – 1/5

Plain awful. Extremely situational earth absorption, poison immunity (which is good but, if you remember, lots of other summons have it), slashing vulnerability (I thought traditionally rock pawned scissors, not the other way around) and just horrible stats – poor HP pool, damage, action points and armor. It can cast deadly spores ones, but so can you instead of summoning this walking turd.

19. Earthquake – 2/5

Yet another disappointing level 5 spell. Theoretically, it's awesome – deals huge earth damage to everything within 15 meters of you and has an immense chance to knock them down. The problem is, that “everything” includes your party. And since your crew members' bodybuilding scores are usually lower than those of the monsters, you have a great chance to knock your friends down. Well, at least you're not knocking your girlfriends up, that's a plus. Nevertheless, it still does as much harm (or more!) to you than to your enemies. You can maneuver around, of course, but it's a hassle and not always there's a space to maneuver. Now, I guess in the lone wolves run it can be 4/5 (more so if you're playing with the live human) and in that solo mod it can be 5/5 (though note that the cooldown is huge so you're not casting this every turn), but in the normal party mode it's way too unwieldy.

Conclusion: For mages, geomancer is best left at 3. You can easily limit all you wish here into a limit of 7 spells and those higher tier ones are just not worth the investment of ability points. For splashing, it's really good to have 2 so you can have an extra shield in your party.

Hydrosophist Part I

Note: hydrosophists have the easiest time with the elemental affinity. It is enabled by either puddle of water (can't be created by spell, but you can shoot water arrows at the ground or drag around the water barrels) which is more or less harmless unless you're fighting lightning enemies, or ice surface (can be created by aiming ice spell on the ground) which is slippery but that can be circumvented by having high crafting level and applying nine inch nails to your mage's boots. And hydrosophists also have plenty of cheap spells so they can squeeze out 2-3 AP per turn out of the affinity.

1. Minor Heal – 5/5

The wording of this spell is crappy – it says that it heals X vitality over 3 turns when, in reality, it heals X vitality during each of those 3 turns. Big difference. And it's a big small level spell – it progresses through the game really well and, in the hands of the qualified mage, it will heal about 50% of your average health pool over those 3 turns. If you just splash for it (and, with the minimum intelligence requirement of 7 instead of the common 8, it's easier to splash for), it's not as majestic but still a roughly 25% heal. Not bad. And heal being stretched over 3 turns really helps to negate stuff like burning or poisoned – the damage gets done and then gets negated immediately. So it's an excellent heal with a short cooldown, long range and cheap AP cost. Which still remains useful in the late game as sometimes you want to heal more than one person per turn. Great stuff.

Patch v1.0.219 note: the low lvl heal spells now are not as good as the high ones, but you see, they were so overkilly before (in terms of healing much more than they needed to kill) that it's not a huge issue.

2. Rain – 5/5

Haven't I already complimented it enough? It makes your electric spells turbo-charged, it helps your chilling spells to freeze instead and it protects you from fire by giving you resistance and dousing the already existing flames. One thing that is undocumented is that, apparently, it adds +30% success rate not only to the stuns, but also to the freezes (which is incredibly important for any self-respecting hydrosophist). It also has big AoE and long duration so you can easily cast it pre-combat. A definite must-have.

3. Slow Current – 2/5

There gotta be losers, right? The problem with the slow current is how it is really inferior to the Midnight Oil – it's more expensive, affects but one target and has none of that other utility. With the big intelligence, of course, it can have a higher than 100% chance to slow, but then, why use single target soft disable when you can get single target hard disable? Blind, for example. Initially, I gave it 1/5 but then I remembered that it can be used to enable Bully talent – if a boss is immune to knockdown yet vulnerable to slow, it may be a semi-valid option in the early game. But it'll get obsolete sooner or later (my bet is on sooner).

4. Water of Life – 4/5

While it may not look that way, this is one of the strongest heal spells in the game. It's also a really decent buff and the only thing which prevents it from being a 5/5 is the very long cooldown and the inability to cast it on other party members. With just a 7 intelligence requirement and zero need for a higher INT, it's rather easy to splash for, though. But let's start from the basics. The health calculation formula in this game is rather bizarre – 1 point of constitution gives you from 5 to 10 vitality points for every character level you have. Roughly. Precise formula is unknown, but it squares your attribute to calculate vitality somehow is so the higher your constitution gets, the more do you gain for each additional point. And it may give you even more than 10 if your constitution is really extreme. Then it may get adjusted for some multiplier – on the Hard difficulty you get a base -25% to your vitality, Lone Wolf talent gives you +80% vitality, Glass Cannon gives a -50%, Picture of Health may add up to +25%. All modifiers are simply summed, so maximum Picture of Health negates the Hard difficulty penalty, for example. Therefore, it's not that easy to calculate the benefit from the Water of Life – approximately, you'll get from 25% to 50% of your total hit point pool. For example, a 1 level lone wolf with a sizeable 80 starting vitality points will get an extra 40 from this. And, unlike some other RPGs, you get full 40 no matter what portion of current health do you have, i.e., even if you're one millimeter away from death with a 1/80 vitality, you get bumped to the 41/120 after this. And once it ends, the maximum hit points are taken away, but the current ones remain, so it's 41/80. That's why it's a potent heal. And late in the game, where your character may have around 12 constitution, it's gonna bring you even bigger results. Maybe not percentage-wise, but it can easily add 400-600 hps to a character. It's also synergistic with elemental shield – since your elemental shield doubles up your vitality, the more of it you have, the more effective it is. Cast Water of Life first, though. And need I to say that for a lone wolf with his immense vitality modifier this spell is a 5/5?

5. Immune to Burning – 4/5

So good if you use it right. First, its fire resistance buff is small but, considering you have Rain going on constantly, that's the potential +45% fire resistance for one character. Throw a pumpkin helmet into equation and suddenly you can brawl those charred pikemen without much fear. More useful for the lone wolf, of course. But the point here is, once again, to cast this on enemies as a debuff. And note that this is a second level spell with 9 INT requirement so it can be splashed much effort and, unlike other debuffs, you don't need high intelligence for it to succeed. It can't be resisted. Guaranteed -25% to one target is really nice, especially if you freeze it as, together, that gives a -45% resistance total. And, with its low cooldown, your mage can keep it up constantly. Chill out!

6. Ice Shard – 3/5

The damage this spell does is really slight, but it's less about hurting your foes and more about freezing them. Just don't forget to cast Rain before the combat. Makes for a decent early game disable (which you begin to cast every turn rather quickly). And you can also cast it on the ground to create an ice surface which lasts quite a while – set up your Elemental Affinity or just make the battlefield less comfortable for your foes. Once again, before the combat.

7. Freezing Touch – 3/5

More of the short-range, last resort disables. This one is a little bit nicer (but not enough to be 4/5) because of how accessible Elemental Affinity is for the hydrosophists. You'll cast this for 2 AP often. Well, as often as some kind of enemy will reach your mage (which, if you do things right, should not be very often), but it's always good to be fail-safe.

8. Piercing Ice Shard – 4/5

It's name is quite telling – it's a strongly upgraded version of the simple Ice Shard. The damage increase is minor, but it can hit up to three targets in a relatively straight line. Like, it shouldn't be perfectly narrow and the exact limitations are somewhat hard to describe in words – you'll see it on practice. And, well, it's great to freeze two to three enemies per turn, given that the base cooldown is small and you need only 12 intelligence to do so. So this spell is a crossbreed between AoE damage and AoE disable. It has its issues, mostly the fact that enemies are not always standing in line and it's quite hard to position yourself properly to catch them so, meaning its AoE is not that reliable. Also it can easily hit your melee crew members if they rush into battle so take care. Otherwise, it's a great spell.

Hydrosophist Part II

9. Summon Ice Elemental - 1/5

Another kamikaze summon. You can abuse its water magic immunity, but outside of that it is rather weak – low durability, bad amount of action points, average damage. But when it dies, it leaves large area of ice surface behind. So it is sorta beneficial to you that it dies quickly, I guess. But then, ice surface is not that strong, so... Oh, and it can cast its own piercing ice shard once, but with poor damage and miserable freezing chance. Awful.

10. Strong Regenerate – 5/5

An upgraded version of Minor Heal, healing a large portion (up to 75% of vitality pool if your caster is decent; note that the spell itself heals a plain number, not a percentage, I'm just using it to showcase the power of the spell approximately) of your character's health over the course of two turns. Strong regenerate indeed. I wouldn't forget the Minor Heal, though – often enough, you'll need to heal two characters per turn so having both of these spells is fine. Especially since the better version has a bigger cooldown. And it's not as good vs the poisoning, bleeding and burning as the Minor Heal. Still, ideally, you want them both and you choose just one only if you're starved for the spellbook space (in which case it's mostly the matter of personal preference).

11. Ice Wall – 5/5

First thing first, there's only one spellbook of Ice Wall in the game, hidden in a certain place. So if you want more or if you failed to find it, you'll have to craft them out of the scrolls. Second, this spell is great. It's an AoE disable spell, quite capable of freezing two or three enemies. Maybe even more if you're lucky. It also deals almost as much damage as a Piercing Ice Shard, so if there are no enemies in a row, you can freely abuse Ice Wall. The resulting wall, btw, is quite big, it obviously prohibits movement and spells & arrows also must breach it first. It's either a path blocker or a portable cover. Finally, once it runs out (and its duration is not very long, probably the only flaw of the spell), it leaves a permanent field of ice surface behind. Huge field. Two casts pre-combat and you can turn an entire battlefield into a glacier. So if your party is immune to slipping and your enemies are not... You get the point. You can also launch fireballs or other pyrokinetic spells into said ice to create puddles of water or clouds of steam. And those can be electrified if you wish to. Pretty much a swiss army knife spell with lots of various (but wholly useful!) effects.

12. Cleansing Water 3/5

That's an ok curing spell. AP cost is somewhat steep but it can wash away quite a number of annoying ailments. The reason its rating is so low is that prevention is the best cure in this game – it's better to keep your enemies frozen (or whatever disable you prefer) than to let them mute, blind and cripple your comrades. It's a 4/5 in the lone wolves run, however, as you have less action points per turn and thus it's not as easy to make everybody shut up.

13. Water Shield – 4/5

It's an elemental shield and they're all good. Just the fact that it doubles its target's vitality makes it excellent, and in addition it gains extra water resistance (beware of the fire weakness, though), immunity to freezing (good to survive Piercing Ice Shard friendly fire) and a 20% chance to cause a 100% freezing on the attacker (130% with Rain). Great stuff and 5/5 for any Lone Wolf user.

14. Mass Disease – 4/5

It looks like a debuff, but in reality it's one of the strongest nukes in the game. To understand why it is good you just need to remember all I've said about Water of Life and, well, reverse it. If adding 3 constitution is an amazing buffing and healing effect, then reducing it must do great damage. And so it does. Depending on the kind of monster you're facing, it'll reduce from 20 to 40 percents of its vitality in one successful casting (and it has a high chance to succeed, btw; and they don't regain the health once the debuff ends). It ignores all the resistances (except for the bodybuilding saving throw) and scales perfectly (though of course it works better against high-constitution monsters). There is one catch here, however. Unlike the Water of Life, it does damage only if the monster's life is at the maximum. And if it is below maximum then it gets subtracted from the potential damage. If monster's health is below that 20 to 40 % vitality threshold already, the spell does no damage, unfortunately. So it should be your initiation spell, that's the reason why it's not 5/5. However, it's one hell of an initiation spell – it has a casting range of 16 meters (18 with Far Out Man) and the spell itself is a 6 meter radius circle, meaning that you can reach enemies up to 22(24) meters away. That's one of the longest reaching effects in the game. And we're discussing only the half of it, mind you – the bodybuilding penalty is also important. Knockdown is one of your main mass disabling effects and, well, -2 bodybuilding gives you at least 20% more knockdowns. Very strong.

15. Mass Slow – 2/5

Slow is a great early game debuff, but I must say that it scales rather poorly. It's one thing to take two action points out of the monster's seven and completely another to remove two out of fifteen or even twenty. So is the move penalty – late game monsters (that's when you get this spell) are rather fast so they don't care that much. It still hinders enemies somewhat, but not nearly enough to justify the 8 action points cost – you can cast two hard disables for them, after all. I guess it can be used to enable Bully talent against a knockdown-immune monsters, but that's pretty much it. And I'm not sure that justifies spending a spellbook slot unless you're maxing out hydrosophist. Luckily for this spell, you have good reasons to do so. Even then, don't expect to use it often.

16. Restoration – 5/5

The third and final healing spell. Instantaneous and healing around 70-80% of average's character health. It has a rather big cooldown, however, so don't expect to cast this one each turn. But something must be going seriously awry if you need to. Anyway, having 3 healing spells (plus the water of life for yourself) is great – if you're well prepared, you can patch up an entire party in one turn. And let's not forget (because I actually forgot to mention it before) that healing damages zombies. Meaning that for a Zombie talent party, all heals are 1/5, obviously. And that a three heal character makes a great zombie hunter (they're not that common in the late game, however). Anyway, having a plethora of healing options is undoubtedly good. The question is more about having enough spellbook slots for them all.

Hydrosophist Part III

17. Winterblast – 3/5

The issue with this spell is that it requires you to stay rather close to the monsters yet it has a huge cooldown. So you spend all the effort to close that distance, cast it once and then what? Not sure if investment is worth the payoff here. It makes a decent last resort spell (and, as usual, it's 4/5 for the lone wolves as they tend to get swarmed easily) as you can freeze two or three enemies at once while dealing decent damage in the process (and, as usual, the freezing chance is really high with Rain), but once again, the long cooldown really spoils it. And it doesn't even leave icy surface. Hence why it is mediocre.

18. Hail Attack – 4/5

Miraculous - a fifth level spell which is actually ok. At least when compared to the other fifth level spells. It's important to understand that this isn't truly an area of effect spell – it's very random and whether or not those shards hit anything is up to pure chance. However, it seems that 2 of those eight shards always hit the center of the spell's template, the point where you've cast it. And since this spell's base damage is extremely high, that means you're guaranteed to deal heavy damage to one target. Everything else is gravy. And that's against average target – against really large one the chances to score three or four hits are rather solid. The cooldown is colossal, however, so, outside of the scrolls, you're never casting this twice per combat. Which in turn means you really want a decent setup before casting this spell – give the target as much -resist as possible, then crush it.

Conclusion: splashing 1 level of hydrosophist can make your party pretty survivable. And while your caster can escape with just 3 levels of Hydrosophist, you'll have to make some hard choices for that. This spell school can justify getting 4 levels in it and even maxing it out. Just don't take the Ice King talent, it's horrible.

Pyrokinetic Part I

Note: since the resistances nerf, pyrokinetic mages don't have an easy time with the Elemental Affinity. To activate it, they have to stand in the burning surface and, well, until you build some tankiness that will hurt quite a lot. More so if you're a Glass Cannon. You can cast various buffs to avoid that, but doing so takes your time or AP and is somewhat tedious (if you do it constantly). And it wasn't the only pyrokinetic thing that was hit by the nerf – the school strongly relied on having 100+ resistance and healing yourself by some of the double-edged spells and that's no longer convenient. It can be done in the selected boss battles with the help of strong potions, but not in each and every battle. And, as of now, nothing really was given to the school to compensate for that. Doesn't make the school weak, mind you. It's just that it is extremely straightforward and could use some tactical complexity.

1. Burning Touch – 2/5

An so-so beginner's spell and it quickly deflates as the game goes. Lower than average damage, lower than average casting cost, unreasonably long cooldown, awful range – because of the latter, don't expect to cast it that often even during the early levels. Still, it's handy to have. But after initial part it's more like a 1/5, considering you gain a wide range of 3 meter disables and, well, if something is threatening your mage you'd rather disarm it altogether instead of slightly damaging it. Setting the burning status is nice, but pretty much everything in this school can do that sooner or later. Use it for a short while then forget about it altogether.

2. Flare – 2/5
Another beginner spell. Well, it's not like it has any flaws – it's as basic as it gets, a straightforward nuke. It can be your mainstay during the early levels, but that's if you decide to stick to the pyrokinetic school there and, well, I'm not sure that's a good idea. Because of the Rain synergy (and fire spells having an obvious countersynergy with it), water and air spells are much better there – they can disable your foes, after all. Later on, fire becomes more competitive – it still has no in-built disables, but it has a far greater damage output. So you choose whichever you need more. But in the beginning of this game, trying to nuke your enemies away can be quite painful. Hence the low score. And later in the game this becomes overshadowed by way too many spells, thus imploding into a 1/5.

3. Immune to Freezing – 5/5

Now we're talking. Because of the first sour rankings, don't think that the entire Pyro school sucks. It's good and so is this spell. Once again, it's not to be used against freezing – it's to warm up your enemies. This, coupled with the burning status effect, gives them -45 fire resistance – they burn twice as fast. Great against any foe, but the bosses are your main priority here. And see, what makes this much better than the other two decent Immunes is not only the sheer pyrokinetic damage potential, but also the fact it is a first level spell. So it can be splashed rather effortlessly. So your fighter or a rogue (if you have the spare points, any other archetype may want to get 7 intelligence simply to wear sarongs; and, of course, for these spells close combat fighters are better because the range is not that long) marks your target and your fire mage barrages all over it. Good stuff.

4. Wildfire – 5/5

Another great spell, another big reason to splash for the pyrokinetic (all schools have enough big reasons for the splash so you splash for them all, lol; magic for the masses). As an in-combat buff, it allows you to transform 6 action points on one character into 9 action points on the other. Note that you don't cast this on yourself – it's a zero-sum game that way (your current turn gets subtracted from the duration), but you don't get any benefit for that, no point to do so. You also don't cast it on a character who already had his turn. And, as a small bonus, it gives its target a somewhat faster movement speed, good for melee guys & girls. If you feel tired of all this limitations, just cast it pre-combat and enjoy 4+3 bonus AP during your first two rounds. Or maybe just 4 extra AP during the first one, still good. Gets even better once you chisel its cooldown down (sic) to the one turn – you can apply it pre-combat twice that way. Works nicely if you know how to apply it. Oh, and don't cast it twice on the same target (or on any of your party members who are warm at the moment) – they'll ignite that way, taking damage every turn.

5. Firefly – 2/5

Would've been more useful if not for the Midnight Oil spell. You never go Pyrokinetic without at least a measure of access to the Geomancer school and, well, it's much more efficient to spam Midnight Oil pre-combat and ignite it with Flare than it is to cast this spell. And it's just that using the oil gives you much more precise control over the battlefield – multiple templates are obviously better than single line. I guess this has the benefit of a really high basic chance to set burning, but, when you're slinging fire spell after fire spell, that's not a hard condition to give. So this doesn't really have a lot of practical uses and it's totally overshadowed by the next spell we'll review.

6. Small Fireball – 5/5

Despite being called small, it's as huge as it gets, actually. It is humble, I guess, but it has no reason to be so – this is definitely the best spell of the entire Pyrokinetic school. As everything else here, it's rather simple – just a great damage dealt to everyone inside the template. Being a freely placed template is the best part of this spell – you can put it with the extreme precision, harming your foes yet avoiding your friends. It also leaves the burning surface in its wake so you can follow up with either Boulder Bash or Deadly Spore – the very obvious and very damaging combos. Not much else to say here, really. You really wish to be able to cast this spell each turn and, once you'll reach the mark of 22 intelligence, you totally will. Fun times will begin.

7. Summon Fire Elemental – 4/5

Actually, as a combat summon he's not that great. Quite vital in a couple of early fights, but somewhat lacking afterward. Mediocre stats and his spell becomes useless quite fast. His real utility is spotting the secrets – it seems that he has the highest perception score out of all summons. And yeah, your summons can spot stuff for you, thus negating the need of either investing the precious points into perception or carrying around a lot of perception-buffing gear and putting it on and off. Of course, you need to resummon the elemental quite often so it's not an ideal solution, but I guess it is as good as it gets.

8. Burning Blaze – 4/5

A direct upgrade of Flare, pretty much. Its only quirk is that, instead of one charge, it fires two and they fly with the parabolic trajectories. Which makes it somewhat harder to target your foes with it as the line of sight for one of those charges tends to get blocked. Mildly annoying, but not fatal. Otherwise it's a decent spell with a low cooldown so you'll be casting them while you're waiting for your fireball to recharge.

9. Burn my Eyes – 2/5

One of the weakest buffs in the game. 2 perception means +1 initiative, +8% for the ranged shooting and +4% critical chance. Even for the rangers that's kinda poor. The only reason it's not 1/5 is that you can also use it for the secret detection purposes, either on yourself or your fire elemental. Of course, summoning elementals everywhere and casting this on them just in hopes to spot a random secret is way too tedious, so use this combo to find the secrets from the treasure maps instead. In dire situations, you can also attempt to set a warm status on your foes with this so you can add another warm later and set them ablaze, but you should be really desperate to try and attempt that.

Pyrokinetic Part II

11. Smokescreen – 5/5.

Yeah, the Pyrokinetic school is rather polarized (thematically speaking, that should be the prerogative of the Aerotheurge, though) – either really weak or really strong spells here. This is a second variety – cheap spell that blinds some of the enemies and merely denies line of sight to the others. Both parts are useful – blind is a strict disable, even if the initial chance of success is somewhat low here, and line of sight denial is great way to protect yourselves from the enemy casters and archers. Can't shoot you if they can't see you. Just for the 4 AP – is there really anything else to ask here? I guess it's not that good against the bosses, but hey, ordinary battles should be fought too.

12. Fire Shield – 4/5

Not the strongest shield bonus effect in the game, but hey, it doubles your vitality and gives you a ton of fire resistance (that works pretty sweet with the next spell we'll review or simply against fire foes), what else is there really to ask?

13. Explode – 3/5

Another spell devastated by the resistance nerfs. Previously, when cooked right, this was downright broken – you could've made a fire-absorbing party which reveled in flames as they immolated all nearby enemies. For 3 AP per cast. Currently that's hard to achieve and probably for the better. Of course, you can cast Fire Shield on yourself to avoid the damage, but what about your party? It's hard to have enough Fire Shields for everyone (unless you plan to build a 100% pyromaniac party – that's a nice idea). It's still usable in certain situations – late in the game, when your party has high resistances and good durability, or in the rare instances where your mage will get cut-off from the party and swarmed by the enemies. Not that it'll save him, but at least it'll hurt his enemies. Where this shines, however, is in the Lone Wolf mode – much easier to avoid hurting your buddy there and your mage will be built much tankier there. Everyone needs to become a tank in the Lone Wolf mode. So it can easily be 4/5 or even 5/5 there. In the normal mode, however, abusing it is a much harder task.

14. Purifying Fire – 4/5

Probably the best curative spell. Expensive AP cost, yes, but the biggest thing it does – it removes Charm. It's the only thing that removes it. And, well, player characters were balanced to fight monsters, not each other, and actually they're stupidly proficient at killing each other. I'll never forget the moment when enemies charmed my Caine and, in just one round, he proceeded to kill both my ranger and my wizard. That was really fun only it wasn't. And the majority of other effects here are not as humiliating, but still harmful – stun, petrify and frozen are all hard disables, after all. And the ability to remove elemental shield from your enemy would've been golden if only enemies actually bothered to use shields. But then, maybe it's for the better that they do not. Anyhow, that's a great ace to keep in your sleeve.

15. Immolation – 4/5

Burning Blaze was a direct upgrade to the Flare and, well, this is the upgrade to the Burning Blaze. None of those pesky line of sight issues and a really high chance to set burning condition – yeah, you tend to set it anyways sooner or later, but you know, better sooner than later. Not much else to be said here – simple, straightforward and good.

16. Infectious Flame – 4/5

And this one is the upgrade to Small Fireball. Though in nature it's more like a fire-based version of the Chain Lightning. Same mechanics, pretty much, just with the different element. And, while it deals more damage than a fireball, it hardly obsoletes it – first, you have to have incredibly high intelligence to cast this each turn. 26 intelligence is not a given. Second, a template-based spell is much easier to control than this one. It's much harder to understand what gets and what doesn't get hit with this, so expect a recurring friendly fire. And, well, a friend of fire you may be, but fire is never friendly in return – it's gonna hurt a lot. Still, that's a decent spell, just not very convenient to use.

17. Meteor Shower – 4/5
Astonishingly, this game has more than one level 5 spell that doesn't suck. The mechanics here pretty much copy the Hail Attack, just with the fire instead of the ice. So it has a huge cooldown and significant AP cost, but also deals terrible, terrible damage to its primary target, specializing in the huge bosses (it's somewhat random against them, but it will hit with 3 to 4 meteors on the average – that's already big amount of damage). And it profits a lot from having a good preparation – considering you're casting it only once per battle, you really want to time it with Nullify Resistances or Soulsap or both. It's ok.

Conclusion: like all other schools of magic, Pyrokinetic is certainly worth 1 level of splashing (to any character who wishes to splash). And for the full-pledged mages, you can easily level raise it up to the full maximum and never regret it. Though level 3 or 4 is ok too. Note that as their spells give enemies protection from each other, they're quite mutually exclusive with the Hydrosophist school and while you may learn them both, you generally don't cast them both in the same battle.

Expert Marksman Part I

Note: because they both are governed by the dexterity attribute, Expert Marksman can be perfectly splashed by the rogue. How far do you go in that depends on whether you want to use ranged weapons or not (if you want to switch between the bow & dagger regularly, you may even go full 5 here just so you can take the quickdraw talent), but even at the relatively low skill level of 2 you can learn all the utility skills and, most importantly, Rapture. Sure, sure, you'll cast it at the action point penalty of 2 that way, but hey, even at the increased AP cost (and it's not that steep of a penalty) Rapture is awesome.

1. First Aid – 2/5

It's not that bad, it's just not used often. Diseased effects are somewhat rare and crippled & bleeding are annoying, especially crippled, but generally they are not that hard to resist. Another issue here is that crippled is generally done by the enemy melee fighters to your close combat guys, whereas the ranger prefers to keep as far as possible from all that hand-to-hand crap. And the range of this spell is only 3 meters. So casting it will require you to move out of position which is never good. I guess if you splash it on the rogue (who is always close&personal so he will get crippled occasionally), it may be worth 3/5 there. And, in the dual lone wolves, you can add another point here as having your buddy disabled is extremely dangerous there.

2. Ranged Power Stance – 3/5

In the early game, it's more like a 4/5, but it becomes almost useless in the late game, hence the downgrade. First, it's much more useful with bows than crossbows. I mean, the bow has an action point cost of 4 AP per shot – sure, this skill increases the damage by 25%, but it also increases the cost by the same 25%. And, actually, it doesn't increase the damage by the pure 25% - see, damage bonuses are added one to another, not multiplied, so if you have a bow skill of two (+20% bonus), you'll have a total of 100%+25%+20%=145% in this stance. Instead of 120% without the stance. 145/120=120,8. So it actually becomes 21% instead of 25%. And that's at a beginner's combat skill. So you use this stance mostly with crossbows (or the high level bows which give you an action point penalty per shot; the bigger the penalty, the more efficient the stance is) – as they already have a big AP cost of 6, the increase of 1 AP is just a 16,6% of speed lost. So 21% of damage for 16,6% speed loss isn't that bad (though even that becomes redundant as you gain better weapon skills). Where this stance shines, however, is in the Guerilla sniping. Since it is done out of combat, you don't care about the action point cost at all (overleveled bows really shine here), you don't care that much about the accuracy lost (you can always compensate by the Bless spell) and all you want is just the maximized damage so you can do the one shot=one kill. Because if you do that, the combat is not initiated, i.e., you've just removed an enemy for free. And, against certain bosses, you can get a couple of shots on them for free which is also helpful. So this, along with the oath of desecration is quite vital for the snipers. Note, however, that this tactic is only efficient until the second half of the game (roughly) and after that it becomes almost useless (monsters get so beefy that you can't one shot anyone and bosses also get so tough that couple of extra attacks doesn't matter that much). So it should be done on one of your primary characters and then respec'd.

3. Ricochet – 5/5

Your bread and butter skill. Good area of effect damage for the affordable cost. Note that, while the skill gets the bonus from your dexterity, the base damage is 70% of your bow or crossbow's damage. That means that overleveled weapons sorta shine here as they increase the damage of Ricochet significantly without affecting the action point cost (yeah, the penalty for the high-leveled weapons is applied only to your common attacks, not to your skills). Late game, you don't find overleveled weapons often, but in the early game that might be quite a valid tactic (and you can combine it with the Guerilla sniping). The skill itself, however, remains very useful through the entire game, hence is the high ranking.

4. Tactical Retreat – 4/5

Teleports are good, especially for the low, low 4 AP cost. And, despite the name, you don't have to retreat at all – jump anywhere you please. A lot of strategic potential here. And it's also another great reason to splash rogue for expert marksman – considering their need to get behind their enemies, rogues benefit from cheap teleporting even more. Do this early in the game, however, as the earlier you get it, the more usage you'll squeeze out of it. And, in the late game, it somewhat wears off – basically, your movespeed may become insane and, once you move 5+ meters per 1 action point, moving 15 meters for 4 AP stops being such a sweet option. Before that, though, this skill is good.

5. Doctor – 2/5

Just as with the First Aid, it's not that bad but you won't use it often. All of the conditions here are not encountered that often (the most common of them is blind and even that is not that widely spread) and you have to be really close to the target to use it. You shouldn't skip it at all, mind you, it's handy to have, but more in the “just in case” fashion than for the actual benefit. And, as before, if you're going for the lone wolves experience, add an extra point here.

6. Ranged Precision Stance – 3/5

Don't like it that much, to be honest. You see, mathematically, it provides a great increase for its cost – for example, raising the to-hit chance from 60% to 90% results in the 50% more hits which will result in the 50% more damage dealt. Considering you lose just 25% speed (if not less with the crossbows), it's great, right? Yes and no. The thing is, with the plentitude of highly reliable disables in the game (and you hit the disabled targets automatically), it's much more beneficial to use that route – you're both preventing enemies' actions and increasing the damage you do to them (extra points if you knock your enemies down and have the Bully talent). It's just the natural flow of the game and this stance goes against it. Keep with the flow. And the only reason this skill is not a 2/5 is that you can use it for some ultra-long range shooting. After all, the bow has a humongous range of 26 meters while the disables are 17 meters at best. So yeah, against the targets from the galaxy far, far away, you may use it (probably in combination with bless). It's not a commonly used tactic, but, periodically, it can prove useful.

7. Treat Poisoning – 1/5

Another one of these. Only now costing 5 AP instead of 4 and even more specialized. Well, at least you'll encounter poison relatively frequently, but the thing is, Minor Heal is as efficient in treating that as this spell is (it doesn't remove the poisoning, but negates the damage immediately). And, unlike this, Minor Heal has a much better range. So you'll learn it, hoping to use it, only you never will (such was my case).

8. Mute – 4/5

Now that's much better. A long-range disable with a manageable AP cost. It's somewhat specialized, however, being only useful against enemy spellcasters (rather obviously) – whereas the archers and melee fighters can still do you plenty of harm even without their skills, mages are almost useless once you deprive them of casting ability. But the good news here is that the majority of encounters in the game feature some kind of a mage (and, at times, more than one), so you'll have a target for this quite often. The 8 turn cooldown is a bit disappointing, of course, but maybe it's just us getting spoiled by the ultra-low cooldowns of the spells.

Expert Marksman Part II

9. Barrage – 2/5

The bad news is that you can find only one skillbook of this in the game. The good news is that this skill is quite mediocre so it shouldn't matter that much. Well, initially, it's can be ok – for 8 AP it deals slightly less damage than two of your shots would. That's horrible for the bow of appropriate level (as their two shots also cost 8 AP so there's no point), but great for the crossbow (12 AP) or overleveled bow (10-12-14-16 AP, depending on how overleveled it is). However, once you'll gain the Quickdraw talent (and, mind you, as a ranger you totally want to rush that), you can perform two shots at just 6 AP and without the stupid 12 meters limitation. You also stop finding overleveled weapons at that point, more or less. So it quickly degrades into uselessness, unfortunately.

10. Survivor's Karma – 0/5

Meh. Inside of combat, +2 to luck means +6% to hit. For the entire party, yes, but this stupid thing demands you to spend 8 AP and you want much more for that. Outside of combat, it can be used whenever you loot any kind of container to up your chances of lucky find. However, the increase is miniscule (+2% of find and a slightly better loot quality; not all loot, but just lucky find loot) and there are lots of containers in the game while the duration of this skill is very short. Do you actually want to use it every time you loot a container? Economically, it's not worth it, believe me. It's an absolute waste of time and a chore. The only skill I'll give zero because it actually wants to lessen the amount of fun you'll gain from the game.

Patch v1.0.219 note: now it costs less AP and also gives a small critical chance bonus - ok, that's enough to merit a 1/5. It's still vastly inferior to other combat buffs, that's the problem.

11. Infect – 2/5

Disease is a very potent debuff, we've already discussed that in the hydrosophist section. That alone makes this skill rather strong. However, does the ranger really want to get that close and personal to his victims? Well, from time to time, that will happen anyway, but in many cases you'll just want to stand and shoot instead of rushing to your foes. And note that, because of the specifics of this spell, you want to cast it before you do any kind of other damage to your foe, so your ranger will have to bumrush them ( which is not his forte). The 3 meter range really hinders this otherwise nifty skill. I guess as a splash on the rogue (note that this is an expensive splash – 3 skill levels will be required) or on the lone wolf it'll make more sense, becoming a 3/5, maybe even a 4/5. Once again, the closer your effective range is, the better this skill becomes.

12. Rapture – 5/5

God-tier ability. It's one of the strongest initiation skills in the game – not only you prevent a foe from attacking you for 3 turns, you also make other foes attack their now-charmed buddy (thus evading their attacks too). And while almost all bosses are immune to the charming (thankfully, or the challenge would vanish from the game), their cohorts (and very few bosses fight solo) are usually not. Divide and conquer, as they say. And, well, the casting range is long, the cooldown is medium, the success chance is high, the action point is low for an effect of such caliber – as I've said, an ultimate move and the reason to splash the rogue for an expert marksman. And note that the monsters don't get angry if you hit them while they're charmed – whack at them as you please (once all hostile targets are dead, preferrably).

13. Arrow Spray – 4/5

Unlike Ricochet and Barrage, this skill is actually not dependent on your weapon's damage – only your dexterity matters. The secret to it is to cast it from a point-blank range – from the long distance, even against the groups of enemies, many arrows will miss, thus diluting this skill's effectiveness. But if you cast it directly into the monster's face, all arrows will hit, resulting in a rather serious damage. It's like turning your bow into a shotgun, lol. And the cooldown is really short so you can easily use it twice or thrice per battle. The only reason it's not a 5/5 is, once again, that the ranger doesn't exactly aim to move towards the enemy. Many enemies will move towards him themselves (thus making this an excellent protective skill), but the ranger prefers to stand and shoot. That's his lazy lifestyle. Still, the potential of this skill is rather big so it's not a crippling issue.

Conclusion: If you use ranged weapons regularly, there's not much choice here – you rush 5 levels in Expert Marksman just to get Quickdraw talent. It's essential. For the rogue, it's either the 2 or 3 levels of splash, depending on whether or not you want to use the Disease and on the ability points available.

Scoundrel Part I

Note: because both Scoundrel and Expert Marksman skills are governed by the dexterity, you ranger can easily benefit from some rogue abilities. Just 2 or 3 levels here will provide you a couple of excellent close range disables (if you give our ranger a sidearm, of course) and few decent utility spells, perfectly usable with or without dagger. The strongest of them all is, of course, a Charming Touch – sure, it's reach is not as huge as the Rapture's, but otherwise it's an identical spell (which you also get much earlier in the game – almost from the start) and any charm effect is worth consideration.

1. Fast Track – 3/5

The very important thing to understand about this skill is that it's not a combat skill, it's a pre-combat skill. It looks great initially, but look at it closer – it costs 4 action points, it lasts 2 rounds (including the round you cast it), it doesn't add anything to the round you cast it and, on the next round, you'll gain +3 action points. So, actually, that's a net loss of 1 action point. Now, you also gain +0,64 meters of movement per action point so, if you have to run really far, it might still be worth it, but in many cases it is not. In the late game it almost always isn't. So why the decent rating? If you cast it pre-combat (which costs your nothing but time) and attack the foe immediately, you'll gain +4 action points on your first turn. Yeah, it won't last past that, but still, 4 action points on turn is great. But not that great to merit a 4 – you may achieve the same effect with the Pyrokinetic Wildfire (which lasts longer and can be cast on any member of the party). It has a long cooldown so, until you get rid of that, you may use Fast Track to play around that initially, but later in the game this skill becomes almost worthless, down to 2/5 or even 1/5.

2. Lacerate – 1/5

Rather worthless. Higher than usual AP cost (when compared to other rogue disables), pathetic damage, bleeding also doesn't do that much damage and way too many foes are immune to it. I guess it was better in the times when Leech talent was awesome, but, since now it got nerfed into below mediocrity, letting the blood flow is not as useful as it was.

3. Razor's Edge – 5/5

First of the rogue's holy trifecta. A short range disable, but cheap in terms of AP cost and very reliable one. Unlike the mages, you don't really care about the short range – that's where you actually want to be, after all. And, like all other stun effects, can be amplified by the rain spell greatly. It also lasts longer than your average stun effect. Great stuff.

4. Walk in Shadows – 5/5

The earliest invisibility spell you'll get and that makes it the most useful one. And it's not weaker than other such spells so it remains useful until the end of the game. But it's just the availability from the start (note that you won't be able to buy the skillbooks of it for quite a long while so you'd better give it to your character during creation) that makes it so useful. At the very least, it makes robbing the NPC houses effortless, thus solving almost all of your early game money problems (which, for some party builds, may be significant). Past that point (a huge point, mind you) – just the usual invisibility goodness. Easy escape from unfavorable fights (or just a moment of reprieve), mandatory in some of the game's segments, great for scouting.

5. Charming Touch – 5/5

What can I say? The range is short (though, I'll repeat, for the rogue it's quite fine) and the starting chance is a little bit low (but not that low – 70% is not anywhere near impossibility), but a charm is a charm, and you're getting this at the ridiculous mark of 4th level (which, if you play your cards right, can be taken 5 minutes after exiting out of the first city). So it's a very potent tool that you get straight from the get-go – and people complain that rogues are too weak, lol. Also this is the main reason to splash Scoundrel skills on ranger. Charms are so crazy in the current game that they need to be patched, to be honest (like, the AI should be given a better reaction towards them – trying to move away from their brainwashed buddies instead of whacking them merrily) or it's just too unfair. But then, if you're into unfair stuff...


6. Venomous Strike – 1/5

I must say that Scoundrel skills are a bit of a rollercoaster, swooping between extreme highs and radical lows. And we're at the latter point. It's the carbon copy of Lacerate, pretty much, only with poison instead of bleeding. The overall damage output is just too weak to even bother and many enemies are just plainly immune to the poisoning. Ugh.

7. Trip – 5/5

And up we go! They go down, though. The second of the holy trifecta. As strong as the Razor's Edge with the additional bonus of enabling Bully talent. Some bosses are immune to knockdowns, though, but then, the bosses in this game are usually immune to at least one kind of disables so it's unfair to expect your skills to be always usable. And that's also why, despite Charm effect being much stronger than your common disable, the ranking is equal here – bosses are always immune to charm. You're also getting this pretty early, but that's a general advantage of being a rogue in this game – you get to open your presents before Christmas comes.

Patch v1.0.219 note: Trip was buffed in a very specific manner - it no longer requires a dagger for its use. Of course, it matters little to rogues as they can't really use anything besides dagger, but it makes rangers splashing for the rogue skills even better (and this move was already pretty potent).

8. Eye Gouge – 5/5

The third and last of the holy trifecta. Note that there's only one skillbook of this in the game so, if you plan to respec in the future, delay learning this until that time comes. Otherwise, it's as good as its comrades, just with the blinding this time. So, once you get this somewhere at level 7-8, you can get close to the boss and keep him perma-disabled for quite a long time. Hope you put an emphasis on maxing out your dexterity, though (like, taking 10 during the creation and then focusing in until you reach the limit of 15), so they have zero chances to resist. That's how the rogues rock, baby (not sure there are enough babies who are literate enough to get through this guide and, well, oldschool enough to play Divinity, but I like this phrase so I'll leave it here).

9. Self Medicate – 3/5

Lots of melee enemies in the second half of the game try to cripple you, some also try to blind you and, well, both make you quite useless for a couple of rounds. So having a get out of jail card isn't a bad idea. Still, the reason for the mediocre ranking here is that, generally, you invest into bodybuilding & willpower so enemy disables don't work that often. I haven't cast it much, for example. But there were a couple of times where it really helps so it's a nifty recovery tool. More like a 4/5 in the Lone Wolves party.

Scoundrel Part II

10. Precise Incision – 2/5

Weak is an ok debuff, but why would you weaken the target when you have so many ways of shutting it down completely? I guess the rationale could be to use it once your other debuffs run out (the cooldowns on them are significant, after all), but, generally, your enemies just won't survive all that stuff. There won't be many occasions for you to use this.

11. Cloak and Dagger – 2/5

TBH, it's much better to splash for the Expert Marksman's Tactical Retreat than to wait until level 10 for this. Not only their effects are quite similar (the radius of the smokescreen is just too small to put it to effective use), but Retreat also costs 2 AP less. Besides, you usually use teleports to get into battle (to get out of battle you use invisibility because that hides your from both melee and ranged attacks and if you jump away with low hps you can be shot down easily) so you smokescreen your friends instead of enemies. I guess that covers them from the enemy fire, but then, it also covers enemies from their fire. If you have free skill slots, it's ok to have, but it's not that good.

12. Daggers Drawn – 2/5

Very disappointing. So, for 8 AP you perform 4 of your average dagger attacks. Considering your dagger attack costs 2 AP and 2x4=8, what's the profit here? Well, it seems like those attacks ignore your victim's armor (but not the piercing resistance, mind you, armor only and I'm not 100% sure here – it looked that way) so, at times, that can come handy. But you also need to spend lots of action points on one target and, overall, the difference is not that huge. It could've been great with an overleveled dagger, but you don't really find seriously overleveled weapons past a certain mark of the game (unless you break down the Last chest manually, I suppose, if you get a level 20 dagger out of it, that might be a curious combo; note that breaking said chest manually is really tedious, do this only if you have a second monitor or a buddy nearby). Not a very productive skill.

Patch v1.0.219: this thing got a 2 AP discount so now it's a bit better, probably 6 AP. It's still not that great, though, because of the backstab issues with this skill (apparently, there aren't any, lol). So maybe it got up to 3/5 because of those rare situations where you have no option but to assault from the front, but otherwise it still sucks.

13. Wind-Up Toy – 4/5

First and foremost, this isn't really a combat spell. You can summon this in combat, but it's very expensive and also very risky – the toy has a low initiative, it's likely to go after all your enemies move and, well, if it gets hit even slightly it explodes. Considering how short the summoning range is, that means your party takes the blast – bad idea. Instead, you always summon it pre-combat. And, instead of hoping for it to slog into detonation range on its own, you just teleport it straight into your enemies. Kaboom! And quite a strong one – its explosion damage is insane, so this combo is one of the strongest initiation moves in the game. Or, if your mage has a high initiative and goes before your enemies do, you may start combat somewhat differently (with a mass disable, for example), but still, cast it pre-combat and with your first move throw it away. That's the only safe to use it. However, it's totally worth all the hassle.

Conclusion: while the Scoundrel school has some awesome moves, I don't really see the point of getting it past level 3. Said level gives you 7 slots and, well, Razor's Edge, Trip, Eye Gouge, Charming Touch, Wound-Up Toy, Self-Medicate, Walk in Shadows – all the best skills fit there. Everything else is gravy, so you can save some points here. If you splash it on the ranger (and don't want to use daggers), it's even easier – just 2 levels will give you all that you need. Your Wound-Up Toy will have a big penalty to AP cost, but hey, you cast it out of combat so what does that matter?

Man-at-Arms Part I

Note: the damage of the majority of Man-at-Arms abilites depends on the damage of your equipped weapon. So you have a very though choice between the two-handed and sword-and-board style – the latter one is very survivable, but the former one will deal twice as much damage. So it really depends on what you want to do with your fighter – with the well-crafted two-handed axe you play the role of a pure damage dealer. With shield and one-handed weapon, you're more about tanking, crowd control, debuffs and supporting your party (in that case, I strongly suggest a minor dip into the magical schools – going full-hybrid is a no-no, but taking 1 level of each and maybe 2 levels of Aerotheurge & Geomancer will make a decent paladin out of you). Look what your party lacks and choose accordingly. And, as these styles are so wildly different, each skill here will have two ratings - S&B (sword-and-board one) and TwH (two-handed one).

1. Battering Ram – S&B: 5/5 TwH: 5/5

No matter what you go for, one of your strongest spells. So you move across the battlefield, compensating for your heavy armor penalty (caution! You don't teleport, you actually move in a straight line so you'll be subject to all the dangerous surfaces you'll cross – don't try to ram through the electrified puddle, for example, else you'll just get stunned and stop immediately; and ramming through burning & ooze surfaces will hurt you, so plan accordingly) while having a great chance to knock down your foes (catching 2-3 with these is quite a norm) and dealing damage to them. And you also set up for the Bully talent. What's not to like? Useful from the start to the end.

2. Crushing Fist - S&B: 5/5 TwH: 5/5

The biggest weakness of a fighter is his lack of reach and mobility. Sure, Battering Ram is great, but it's just one turn, long cooldown and what after that? What if you're attacked from a multiple directions, how do you get to the other foes? Not to mention that you don't always want to cast it immediately, sometimes you really want to wait for a good opportunity. So having a long-range hard disable really helps here. More so considering that it sets up Bully talent. Very cheap, very potent, very useful.

3. Cure Wounds - S&B: 4/5 TwH: 4/5

One of the strongest heals in the game. So strong that it's actually often a total overkill. But that's the good kind of an overkill. The only reason this is not a 5/5 is the extremely long cooldown (you use it only once per combat) and the short range. Fighters are not exactly mobile (not initially, at least) and they tend to stand on the front lines, so if someone in your back row gets injured severely, good luck getting to them in time. On the other hand, it's minimal skill requirements and colossal amount of heal (meaning that, even if you get a penalty from a low strength, you still heal a lot) make it rather easy splash – any kind of a rogue, ranger or mage may invest just 1 point into the man-at-arms and get rewarded with this for their trouble. Very strong move, very good skill.

4. Divine Light - S&B: 5/5 TwH: 4/5

It may not look like much, but it's a very cheap and strong debuff. The hidden beauty here is that the willpower loss is absolutely irresistible – now matter how huge your target's willpower is, it'll always succeed. And a -20 penalty to both Willpower and Bodybuilding (yeah, despite the name of this debuff, it affects bodybuilding too) is tremendous – that's +20% to all your disables succeeding. And that's an area of effect spell (but be cautious – if your crew gets into this template, they'll also get debuffed). Groovy. But that's not all – it's also a sort of a leaf blower spell. This side of it is not exactly obvious, but if you cast this over a surface you clean that surface away. So you can get rid of the pesky oil or ooze with this, for example. More of a non-combat use, of course, but it's quite handy nevertheless. The shield guy gets the higher rating here as he's more about disables and the two-handed guy just wants to hack & slash. And, if you go for that man-at-arms splash on your non-fighters, this is another reward for that – once again, the debuff always succeeds so you don't need a high strength to abuse it.

5. Dust Devil - S&B: 3/5 TwH: 5/5

The difference between the two archetypes here is that the shield-guy will need to hit at least 3 foes for this to pay off, while the two-handed guy is fine with just 2 targets (the more the merrier, of course). And, obviously, the damage and the AP advantage is much bigger here for the ax-crazy maniacs. So for the former it's a fringe spell, for the second it's bread & butter. Charging into the hordes of enemies, swinging your huge axe left and right, the works, man, the works! Note that, while technically this get overshadowed by the later Whirlwind skill, the cooldown system makes you want them both so that's ok. Another note is that, at the moment, there are no skillbooks with this in the game so you really want this as your starting skill (and, unfortunately, it doesn't survive respec, so if you want to build around fighter AoE damage, you have to build him without a right for mistake).

6. Encourage - S&B: 1/5 TwH: 2/5

One of the weakest buffs in the game. All it gives to you is a 6% to-hit chance and 5% to spells & skills working chance and damage. And, if your mage's intelligence is odd, you'll shave another turn of cooldowns from his spells. The duration is pretty short too. As a shield-guy with a magical splash (it's almost mandatory for him), you have much better buffs than this. That's why it's better for the two-handed guy – generally, he doesn't have any other kind of buffs (though he may splash for the magic as well, it's not a common move,though, but it's also good, tbh, I call that archetype Paladin) so, if he has a turn with nothing to do, he may cast this. At least something, I guess. But, generally, it's quite worthless.

7. Melee Power Stance - S&B: 1/5 TwH: 3/5

Obviously useless for the one-handed weapons – losing 33% of your speed for a 25% damage increase (and, as we've discussed in the Ranged Power Stance review, it's not really a 25% increase, it's less than that on practice) is actually harmful. For the two-handers it's also not that important unless you go Jason-style. That's a somewhat inconvenient tactic of going Guerilla-warfare with melee weapons – you invest into sneak, you get behind your enemies and you aim to chop through them with one powerful thrust. Since it is done outside of combat, you don't care about AP increase and you want to get your attack damage as high as it gets. Cute strategy, but it falls away in the mid-game, once the foes become too beefy to insta-kill. But it can be fun while it lasts (if you're into such things).

8. Draw Blood - S&B: 1/5 TwH: 1/5

As all other bleeding effects, quite worthless (more so with Leech nerfed, but we've already discussed that in Scoundrel skills). I guess for Caine (the best melee henchmen in the game as he starts with the 5 man-at-arms skill on the first level – that's 10 extra ability points for free), who is stuck with that talent, this may be worth 2/5 or even 3/5 as a sorta self-heal, no matter how you build him. But everyone else should just avoid this.

9. Helping Hand - S&B: 5/5 TwH: 4/5

Cheap, with a medium reach, slight cooldown and helps against two of the most common debuffs in the game. What's not to like? Of course, the shield-guy is more aimed at casting stuff like this, but spending a 3 AP of your two-handed guy is a much better option than losing a couple of other character's turn. Great utility.

Man-at-Arms Part II

10. Melee Precision Stance - S&B: 1/5 TwH: 2/5

Rather useless. Generally, hitting something in melee is not that big of a problem and even if it is, you solve it by disabling our target, not by wasting your action points. In the unbelievably rare occasion where your party is out of such spells & skills (considering the sheer mass of them in the game, that's not gonna happen often), yes, precision might get useful. For a two-handed guy. But that's a once in a blue moon kind of happening.

11. Lower Resistances - S&B: 4/5 TwH: 3/5

Both ranking would've been a point higher if, at the present, it wasn't bugged and actually lowered physical resistances. As it is, it affects only the magical ones. Doesn't make it worthless, though – as all other such debuffs, it cannot be resisted, it affects a rather large AoE (you have to be in midst of your foes, but that's easy to setup with the Battering Ram and, well, both kinds of fighters are well suited to stay surrounded) and it provides a decent increase in damage. The higher your target's resistances are, the better the increase is, that's how the math works here – lowering a resistance from 60% to 40% results in your damage dealt increasing by 50%. And while it gets outclassed by the later Nullify Version, both skills have a 6 turn cooldown and a 2 turn duration, so there's enough need for each of them.

Patch v1.0.219 notes: lost a point of rating in each categories as now it can be resisted. Still great early game debuff, though, just not as broken as it were.

12. Phoenix Dive - S&B: 1/5 TwH: 2/5

Don't like it that much, personally. It was great before the resistances got nerfed – you just rushed a more than a 100% fire resistance for your party and used this thing not only as a teleport, but also as a heal. Nowadays, that's not really possible without potion abuse and outside of that it is not really convenient (and totally outclassed by the battering ram). If you need an extra teleport, even splashing for a point of Expert Marksman (leading to Tactical Retreat) might be more useful than this. A bit more useful for the two-handed fighters as they benefit more from the extra mobility, but even there it's not that great (you can just have your air mage cast Feather Fall on them, you know).

13. Whirlwind - S&B: 3/5 TwH: 5/5

A direct upgrade of the Dust Devil, just strictly better. So the logic is the same – the mainstay of the two-handed user and can be used at times by the sword and board guy.

14. Flurry - S&B: 4/5 TwH: 5/5

A discount pack of attacks. Even for the defensive shield-guy it provides a decent source of damage – normally, 4 your attacks cost 12 AP, here you get them for 8. Free AP are always a nice thing. But, obviously, where it truly shines is in the two-handed weapons section – considering their basic cost of 4 AP, it's a “buy two – get two more for free” kind of deal. And the beauty of such great amount of burst damage is that you can greatly set up for it. Knock your target down or cripple/slow it to enable Bully, enter Rage, cast Oath of Desecration & Nullify Resistances or Soulsap it and, out of some bosses, you'll slice half of their lives that way. It's a killing stroke. Very potent.

15. Crippling Blow - S&B: 4/5 TwH: 3/5

Crippled is not such a bad debuff and it enables Bully, but, generally, you want a sureproof disable instead of a limited one. Especially late in the game where the enemies begin to have so much AP that a loss of 4 doesn't harm them that much. The damage is also very low. It may work ok for the shield-guy as it suits his role of buffer/debuffer just fine, but ax-wielder wants more than that.

16. Rage - S&B: 4/5 TwH: 5/5

Extremely cheap AP cost and low cooldown – with 3 turn duration and 4 turn cooldown, you can rage a lot. And, while the damage increase is tremendous (as I've said, it's not gonna be a full 50% - but even the 25% is still ok), the disadvantages are laughable - -25% accuracy? Lol, just disable your foes like you were gonna do anyway. Cuts your dexterity in half? Rofl, as if, as a fighter, you were actually using it. And your defenses are so low that everyone autohits you anyway (unless you successfully block but that has no reliance on dexterity). I guess it was implemented to restrict the rogue/fighter builds – there is a strong Armored Rogue archetype (basically, a full-pledged rogue, just with 7 basic strength so, after you add equipment boosts to it, she can use shields and some men-at-arms skills) and yeah, Rage is worthless for her as all her dex-based clothes will fall from her that way. Hmmm, that's the kind of rage I like... Anyway, for pure fighters, it's a great option. Even for the S&B guys – yeah, you don't plan to attack directly, but periodically you still will have to.

Patch v1.0.219 note: now doesn't stack with the Oath of Desecration. Bogus. If you don't have a witchcraft user somehow, the rating doesn't change, but otherwise it's a definite drop of one or even two rating points.

17. Eroding Strike - S&B: 4/5 TwH: 3/5

Almost a carbon copy of a Crippling Blow, only applies another kind of disable. Weakened doesn't enable Bully, unfortunately, but, at the time you get it, it's somewhat stronger as a debuff than cripple. You still want a sureproof stuff, mind you, but, because the shield-guy is not that heavy on them, he may find this workable.

18. Inspire - S&B: 4/5 TwH: 3/5

A much better version of Encourage. Since speed, perception and constitution are useful for everyone (unlike the strength, intelligence & dexterity which are good only for the corresponding archetypes), this gives you enough benefits to actually consider casting it. And, because of how the constitution buff works, it'll actually heal your party for a slight amount – from 50 to 200 hps, depending on your levels and your base constitution. As we've already discussed in the Water of Life evaluation, the constitution formula is quite quirky so it's hard to know it for sure. But 100 HP on the average is a nice amount, especially if a couple of your characters are slightly scratched. Healing them with this spell saves you some time, that's cool – this is the only mass-heal in the game, actually (unless you go zombie and shoot poison template spells on yourself). And, apart from that, you will raise your initiative (even a small increase might be vital if you're tied with your foes), you might gain an extra action point from this and, well, boosting your primary combat attribute also helps. Neat.

Man-at-Arms Part III

19. Nullify Resistances - S&B: 5/5 TwH: 5/5

Supreme. It provides an extreme damage boost for your entire party and, like all similar spells and skills, your enemies will never resist it. 50% damage increase (minimum) is nothing to joke about, your enemies will melt. Combined with a couple of other resistance removers, you may even troll some completely immune foes, like slaying the fire elementals with fire just for the lulz. Outside such extremities, it's a simple but potent skill. Great in the hands of any kind of man-at-arms user and, if you splash your rogue or mage for a shield (the end-game ones require at least 12 STR which is also needed for this skil), you may also splash for this. Invest into 3 men-at-arms levels and yeah, they'll cast this with the 2 AP penalty, but even at 7 AP it doesn't lose its attractiveness. The 100% success rate means they don't need to max out their strength which is perfect for such kind of character builds. And you might want a total of 3 Nullify Resistances in your party – fourth is an overkill, but three allow you to keep your enemies constantly vulnerable. That'll make for a devastating party build.

Patch v1.0.219 notes: lost 1 point here because now it can be resisted. The effect is still huge and it's an area of effect spell so it's still devastating against the rank & file enemies, just not as good against the bosses. It's also doesn't work well when splashed, not anymore, so that's a considerable nerf to the armored rogues & battlemages. I dunno, I'd rather see them cut the value of the spell than its irresistibility - honestly, even at -25% it would've been really good. But eh, whatever.

20. Terror - S&B: 3/5 TwH: 2/5

Such are peculiarities of D:OS's design that the ultimate men-at-arms skill is not even half as good as the starting one. You'll use Battering Ram almost in every combat, while this... The range is so-so. The starting success chance is low and takes an almost impossible amount of work to max out. The fear itself is a good disable, but quite an annoying one – enemies run like mad so killing them takes more time than with the usual debuffs. And they get to reroll their saves each turn so they can shake it off suddenly, to your unpleasant surprise. What an ultimate skill! The shield-guy might find some value in it because he wants all the disables he can get, but for two-hander it's plainly terrible – you'd rather whirlwind them instead of scaring. Screw this.

Conclusion: Man-at-Arms is a very potent skill school and is quite worthy of taking at least 4 levels if not maxing out. It also helps that it provides an access to the great, great Picture of Health talent. Other manly talents are not that great, but picture is beautiful, especially on the hard difficulty (which is the choice I strongly recommend) and with the Glass Cannon talent (I recommend against that one, however – makes the game too easy, spoils the fun). Other characters may also benefit from 3 or 4 Man-at-Arms levels if only to cast Nullify Resistances – yes, you'll need to give them 12 Strength somehow (that is perfectly reachable with but 7 base strength, though), but the payoff is certainly worth. A party of one fighter, one shielded rogue and one shielded mage (the final character is for your choosing) will be diverse and at the same time face-melting with their constant Nullify spam.

P.S. Making such guides is a hard job. You can always thank the author by upvoting his project: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=388625087 - I'm a game designer and I wish to make full-blooded RPGs, but at the moment hybrids is all we can do.

[Harper]

Nice read, but kind of outdated since patches changed a lot. Esp. sneaking AP cost.

[7guest]

Привет nerdcommando.
Спасибо за прекрасную работу по созданию гайдов.
Хотел спросить, планируется ли гайд по DOS: EE?

[Ferg]

Terrible guide with not even a hint of creativity. Hands down worst guide I have ever read. See: "Lightning Strike".

[nerdcommando.gamestudios]

We'll see about updating - it's a good thing to do but the autumn is really crowded with all the simultaneous releases so I'm not sure about my time.

[bxnvdryll]

Will you be updating for enhanced edition? Love the guide.

[Teukro]

Great guide, thx for sharing,

[Wazat1]

Minor point: I want to disagree a bit with the rating of some of the poison spells. They're actually much more damaging in a fire fight (literal fire), as they ignite additional explosions, and the aim and area of effect of dart/arrow are narrow enough to avoid bombing allies. The combined poison + fire is great, though dart/arrow are overshadowed by boulder bash (though boulder bash knocks down allies if you include them in the blast).

They're also really handy for healing zombie allies, and dart can be splashed somewhat well for that purpose. Ideally you combine these purposes...

Zombies with high fire resistance in a flaming battleground, with a mage casting deadly spores, Acid Breath, Boulder Bash, or Acid Arrow? FUN times. :D Though I haven't devoted enough into exploiting air+water spells, so they may be much better thanks to the disables.

[Wazat1]

When visibility is blocked by clouds or distance, you can still attack foes with arrows, blitz bolt, etc. Any ray spell (blitz bolt), arc spell (Flare) or arrow attack can ignore the targeting problems of blindness or blocked visibility by simply targeting the ground just past the enemy (hold CTRL with a bow to fire at the ground). If you aim properly (and the UI shows you the path), you can hit the enemy that was supposed to have a 0% chance with your bow, or supposed to be untargetable with Blitz Bolt because you're blind. The AI can't do this, but you certainly can abuse it. This makes smoke clouds that much more OP!

[KIBERKOTLETA]

сколькоо текста, где картинки !?

[ninja crouton]

Love the guide, has helped me a lot.

One thing you might want to mention is that you can use mass disease on a group of enemies without having to go into battle with them. It's the only way to directly damage mobs with no danger to yourself at all (in fact, knowing that makes me think of it as a 5/5, because you can just keep casting it until everybody is diseased for difficult battles)