Feedback & Frustrations from a Mage Playthrough

[waryorx]

How are players expected to make money in this game?
I started out as a mage, and although I got a companion early on—a woman wielding a two-handed weapon—she keeps dying. That’s because bandits and monster mobs on the map are always in large groups. She gets overwhelmed and doesn’t last long.
Eventually, I took a job as a doctor’s assistant in the first town. It pays around 5 silver a day, but between hunger, morale, and lodging at the inn, I spend 2.5 silver daily—leaving only 2.5 profit. Each work loop takes roughly 3 minutes, so one hour of grinding earns me about 50 silver.
As I progressed through quests, a slaver gave me another companion—a rapier-using rogue. With three party members, we could barely handle four or five enemies at once. But since I'm a mage with low DPS, one companion still dies almost every fight.
The issue isn’t just that they die—it’s that every death means an injury, and healing each one costs 5 silver. Just five doctor visits already burn through 25 silver, often wiping out any money I made from loot. To afford food and shelter in town, I have to keep running delivery or hauling tasks.
And I haven’t even mentioned equipment repair costs. Just repairing their armor (not even weapons) is around 20 silver per item. With how often they fall in combat, I simply can’t keep up financially.
To avoid deaths, I try to only take fights with 2–3 enemy mobs—but those are rare. And while wandering around to find them, I still have to spend money on food and rest without making enough to cover the cost.
Something needs to change—either doctor services and repair prices should be rebalanced, or the early companions need to be stronger. If they’re meant to be fragile, then the game should offer weaker mobs suitable for lower-level parties.
At the moment, I can’t afford new gear for my companions or even myself. Merchant prices are high, and if I skip repairs, I can’t replace gear with anything decent either. I'm basically stuck.
Also, I'd strongly suggest making jobs like doctor’s assistant or blacksmith apprentice accessible via the campaign map's town menu. Having to walk around town repeatedly to take and turn in tasks becomes frustrating and repetitive after a while.
Right now, I’ve spent about 2–3 hours roleplaying as a medieval intern—working 8 to 5, grabbing drinks at night, sleeping, and going back to work. The grind is too real. It's starting to feel more like my real-life routine than a fantasy game.
I’m seriously considering quitting. Did I miss something crucial? Because choosing a mage shouldn’t feel like a punishment.

[Vvv]

You can access to town services without entering the town from the map. You get that option before entering the town, That does include the doctor. You can cook and craft and so on as well.

The game is supposed to be hard where learning is rewarding. And ofc you can always cheese things. If there's a fight you are not sure if you can take on or made a mistake, reload or just run until they stop chasing you. You can always skip fights since you gain experience from many things. Fighting is optional in many cases meaning also less chances of you getting hurt and breaking your equipment. You will figure out things as you learn more in the game, it's mostly if you are having a hard time thing.

Your equipment does not have to be always in top condition, repair only when you need to. Martina's armour for example has like 400 or 500 durability so it will last for long time before you need to repair it.

I think repairing kits might help you a bit, those are not that expensive if I remember well.

It's really a game that forces you to analyse your environment and act as if almost all your actions have meaning. Just talking to people, introducing yourself and giving them a complement for ex will give you exp in persuasion and eventually you can even buy and sell their items. Talking to gang members and bad people will increase your intimidation a bit.

Depending on what mage you are, I would strongly suggest you invest into the magic shield your school can offer. Mages can be dps, but funnily enough they're the best tanks because of the shields their school magic offers. And the girl Martina is more of a duellist type and not a tank meaning she can only do so much as front row.

Also as last thing, if you lack strong front line you can invest your magic points into elementals that you can summon.

You don't have to pay to rest, resting in wilderness is free and in some places the chances to get ambushed are non existent. Your health and vigour will get back gradually, Learn to cook also or at the very least have someone who can for you. Actions like sitting on a chair and just sleeping in a bed like you have the option to do in Garald's basement will restore your fatigue and health slowly. I do those for example, when I am ready to level up a character and when I need to organise things in my inventory. It can help you early game to save a bit.

[waryorx]

Originally posted by Vvv:

You can access to town services without entering the town from the map. You get that option before entering the town, That does include the doctor. You can cook and craft and so on as well.

you missunderstood. working as an assistant to doctor you need to talk to him personally. i meant that.

Originally posted by Vvv:

You don't have to pay to rest, resting in wilderness is free and in some places the chances to get ambushed are non existent. Your health and vigour will get back gradually, Learn to cook also or at the very least have someone who can for you. Actions like sitting on a chair and just sleeping in a bed like you have the option to do in Garald's basement will restore your fatigue and health slowly. I do those for example, when I am ready to level up a character and when I need to organise things in my inventory. It can help you early game to save a bit.

sleeping in an inn is just 50 copper. its not expensive. the drinks are since when you work for 12 hours as an assistant you characters morele go down pretty fast so you need to use alchol and not always the market sells food gives you morale so you need to use tavern servises and cheapest option is 2 silver

Originally posted by Vvv:

Also as last thing, if you lack strong front line you can invest your magic points into elementals that you can summon.

i know thats how i can manage to kill 5 person parties but problem i always lose one companion that is very costly.

also i know that i dont need to repair them everytime but damn they are broken. 0 is 0 so you need to repair them there. its more expensive to repair them later.

[wendigo211]

Honestly, mages are OP compared to non mages. I'm running a 4 mage party and it's smooth sailing. Here are some tips:

• Don't pay for healing. Buy food (mostly meat) and healing ointment. Milk is basically the cheapest healing ointment. It may only heal 3 health, but it doesn't spoil so you can stockpile it. Learn how to cook, roasted pork is 8 health restored (which is almost as good as the 10 health minor healing ointment). It has the added benefit of raising your medical skill.
  
• Similarly, buy (or craft) a repair kit and fix your own equipment. It's bugged right now, so as long as you don't repair more than 500 for a single item, it lasts forever.
  
• Crafting is cheaper that buying. So keep an eye out for recipes of useful things.
  
• Don't buy gear, take it from your enemies. If you knock out a human enemy instead of killing them you can take them prisoner. When you loot a prisoner, you get all their equipped gear, you can also recruit them as mercenaries once you get their obedience high enough.
  
• Don't hire mercs at the tavern, take prisoners (or kidnap NPCs) and press them into service. You'll save coin on in the initial hire and potentially get better recruits (e.g. you can't hire mage mercs, but you can get them this way).
  
• The game doesn't really explain this, but you can use your XP to buy abilities, which are going to be the game changers in combat for you. Press 'k' to bring up skills menu and you can see weapon abilities you can buy just for having a high enough skill level in the weapon. You'll also see class and magic abilities, but you'll need to read books to unlock those abilities first.
  
• As a mage you should have a damage shield spell that will help you mitigate damage. IMO, the best shields are:
  • Dark (doesn't drain your mana, but has a fixed duration)
    
  • Ice (freezes enemies)
    
  • Lightning, Fire (basically the same)
    
  • Wind (randomly slows enemies, but doesn't stop as much damage as the other elemental schools)
    
  • Necromancy (a much weaker version of the Dark one)
  The other good spells are the summons and, if you're using weapons, the weapon damage buff.
  
• Spend some time with a training dummy, you can just attack one and leave your computer running for a couple of hours. Before you do that, make sure your food (satiate) and rest (vigor) meters are full and unequip your weapons (so they don't wear down). You'll gain a bunch of attribute points. They'll be melee attribute points but, just because you're a mage, doesn't mean you shouldn't use a weapon; you have a mana bar and a stamina bar, use both of them.
  
• Early on, follow merchants and the roving mercenaries around and join in their battles. They'll do all the work and you get the rewards.

[waryorx]

thank you for tips guys. appratiate it. i dont use doctor for healing i use food and rest but when a character gets wounded they get debuff and only way to remove it use doctor servises and its 5 silver per debuff/wound. i actually got the combat thing nicely y only problem is money right now.

as for reapir kit bug. i dont like cheesing the games. I intend to use it how it suppose to work because ıt should be balanced in the first place but in case of emergeny i will keep that in mind :D


if anyone wants to share more tips please be my guest i will read all of them

[geologyrox]

Honestly when I switched to easy mode, I had a much more enjoyable time, and I learned a ton for my next playthrough where I'll be switching back to normal mode. I do recommend this as it eliminates the need to repair things, food no longer spoils, and wages are cut in half (1 silver for every 2 levels of a merc).

If you want to continue normal mode, here are a few of mine alongside the things people have already posted.

• The repair kit is a definite lifesaver, even if it's bugged. Use it after every battle and you will save quite a bit of money.
  
• Try to save up for a caravan and medical tent ASAP! You are able to use surgery kits (1 silver or less) to treat injuries from the caravan camp.
  
• Caravans also allow you to have a mobile warehouse, though it is limited in weight. I tend to use the caravan inventory primarily for ingredients and food, as recipes pull directly from there. I'll also use it to temporarily store weapons and armor, which I then dump into a city I return to frequently. In this case, Brea. The caravan allows you to move around more freely and make quick money, storing gear from roaming mercs that you can later sell.
  
• To increase survivability for your mercs, get the White Magic skill book as soon as you can find it. Travel between Brea and the Mage Tower to find it if you are having a hard time. Spend a few points to learn the healing magic skill at tier 1 white/positive magic.
  
• If you are unable to use magic, or want non-magic methods of healing, learn to make HEAL potions (not HEALTH). These can heal you in battle. Medium heal potions work well at 30HP/sec for 5 seconds, for a total of 150 points of healing. All you'll need to do is set up a trigger in the Tactics menu for it (example: Self is less than 50% health, use healing item).
  
• Another non-magic method to heal is to invest in Commander or Monk class abilities. They have skills that can heal. Commander skill books are easily obtainable, whereas the Monk class requires completion of a specific quest line.
  
• You can quickly earn money early on by capturing roaming bandits, and selling them to the slave captors in Stirrup. They can net you around 2-4 silver per person, and you can sell their gear for quick money.
  
• If your Thief skill is high enough, you can steal gold over and over from merchants in town. The amount shown in their pocket is always 10% of their total, so stealing a few times can net you easy money later down the road.
  
• You can learn any recipe and then sell the recipe right back to the vendor.
  
• When you're feeling confident, the fastest way to make money early on is arenas in my opinion. They can net you anywhere between 30-90 silver per match, you just need to find ones that are hosting games. Bonus points if you are able to challenge them right after they host a game, though these fights tend to be harder.
  
• Quicksave often!! F5 to quicksave, F8 to quickload. You can do this to save scum.
  
• You don't need to purchase every single skill. Just the ones that are really useful. There's plenty of guides and builds that you can find from the game Blackthorn Arena, which uses the same system and classes as this game (it's the dev's original game).
  
• Try to save your experience points for Skills rather than using it for Attributes. I only ever use EXP points for Attributes if the merc lacks the necessary points for a specific skill. Attributes will naturally level up depending on the actions and skills your character uses.
  
• Later on you can learn the Potion of Amnesia recipe for less than 50 silver, which can be found randomly in any town. Buy this from the alchemy shop as soon as you can! This allows you to respec a character's spells/skills so that you can build them to your liking. I craft this potion whenever I hire or capture a new merc, especially mages so that they don't have wasted or useless skills.
  
• Learn how the different combat styles work. Never set any of your characters to "Aggressive" stance, unless you don't plan on them dodging or blocking. I usually set my characters to Cautious, and Defensive for tanks or dodge characters. You can find these from the Tactics menu, or preferably from the little icons near the character portraits in the top left of the screen, as many of these options are missing from the Tactics menu. I also usually set all my characters to use skills on the skill bar only, that way they don't waste stamina and DPS from using useless skills.
  
• Martina, the 2 hand sword girl has a skill called challenge or something. This causes her to aggro enemies. If you toggle her to only use skills on her skill bar, and remove that skill from her bar, she won't use it. This should increase her survivability slightly.

If I think of more, I will add them to this list. Happy hunting!

[wendigo211]

Kind of a more complex topic, but use the tactics menu and set up a custom AI for your characters. Open up the tactics menu ('T') and under the strategy tab, deselect "Auto Cast". You can now construct an AI using the triggers under the eponymous tab. It's a bit tricky, but with a bit of trial and error you can set up rules for using each power. E.g. I set up the AI to activate Lightning Shield at the begining of combat, and anytime it's down and I have more than 25% of my mana.

The default AI is a very power spammy and it tends to burn through resources in ways that aren't always constructive. By doing this, I went from barely scraping through rank B merc missions to slaughtering rank As. It makes a huge difference to combat efficiency.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

I look for Apple Cider Vinegar recipe early. As well as people selling it. Doesnt spoil and pretty cheap to boost morale. You do need cooking 1. But just salt all of the meat from animal enemies and you will get it. Think if I am hungry I just buy veggies like pumpkins for 4 copper. In Brea you can take over the gangsters house and it sleeps 4 which hey saves you 50 copper.

Healing and Morale you want to look for recipes, use crafted food/drink or food/drink you can buy from vendors. It saves a lot of money.

Yeah Mage you want a shield and an elemental. That is like the 1st two things I aim for. I like Dark if you are going to be primarily a magic damage guy. Electric is pretty good if you want to front line dmg as I believe 2 spells add dmg to melee attack weapons. And it has several AoE attacks.

I usually grab Dark at start cause I feel like I never find that book early.

You can also install c**t engine which has a time function so you train on the dummy and set time to 20x.

[wos]

wow you and have jobs i usely just rob and steal get some party members an hour or so and im farming all the mobs on the map

[Jivebot]

Also, do a forum search for "Need Beginner's Help". Some of the tips I gave in that topic are a bit outdated but for the most part the advice remains generally appliccable. Focus on speed recruiting some of the free Companions(Except Phoebe who sadly is no longer accessible in the early game) and use the nearby Dungeon to farm loot and XP til you're ready to beef up.

Or, just save edit yourself big money and stats, lol. There's a guide on how to do that for the Dev's other game called 'Blackthorn Arena' which is still mostly applicable to this game

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Also thieving really helps. Dont bother with lockpicking or looting "red" containers in cities usually nothing good in them. Steal directly from the richest merchants. Then stop 1 tick before the town turns red. Repeat in every town you go.

Once you grind thieving it snowballs 25 silver then 50 then 1 gold then 1+ gold etc.
Basically can steal every surgical kit and repair with minimum grinding and any food/item that gives health/morale. I am trying to collect every recipe by stealing everyone I see.

[Nickamus]

This is a bit of an old topic, but rushing to 3x summons and filling out your party with ranged mercs does wonders.

Summons don't have to be healed and your mage and archers will level any enemy.

I recommend just one or two archers, and then rush to get Phoebe and Lysanthir (mage quest). Give them one elemental each, and you can have 5-9 elementals tanking monsters while your wound-able party members attack from range and 3/4 have shield spells in case anything gets close.

When you can, capture a Dark Mage or Necromancer and interrogate him until he can be recruited, and then put your archer(s) in your caravan as reinforcements.

If you get a Necromancer you will have a ranged spell caster, an archer, and two front line fighters.

I hesitate to recommend this because, frankly, it makes the game *too* easy.

In my playthrough I am level 40. I started off slowly just doing town jobs and training against the target dummies in Brea. When I got around 50s, I started heading out and assisting in ongoing battles and picking easy fights to get experience. I got a light, dark, and fire elemental asap. I could solo any world encounter and the the bandit camp around Brea at this point, no injuries. Built myself a 5g nest egg, recruited some archers, and just started farming battles to level up my int, wisdom, and raw level to juice my elementals.

[Graygan]

Agreed. My current playthrough, I decided to do the full-on grind. I started as a life mage with 1 in every stat. I basically ran away from everything until I got to Brea. I spent a VERY long time in Brea doing the starting jobs until I had Alchemy, Cooking, and Smithing to 15. That got all my stats up to a great starting point. Every third or fourth day, I spent the day running around complimenting everyone which got my persuasion up quite high.

Buying food every day, along with the occasional buying of smithing materials/recipes and making items for sale helped quite a bit as well by getting cash and my bartering skill to max.

Once I had a full set of T2 light armor (doesn't reduce your magic all that much) and a staff, I was able to set out.

Then it was just a matter of hiring one merc in the tavern to watch my back while I got exp killing all the wolves, boars, baby spiders, goblins, etc. Kill, loot, repeat. Rush to your elemental first. Then it becomes so much easier. Then you can buy the magic books and learn other magics. I'm currently doing Life, Electric, and Air. It's a nice mix of elementals and spells.

Once you get that elemental and the merc, you can really do well. Get the brutewoman who also helps tremendously. Go get your merc license and do those. Then get the refugees and pick up the other sword lady for keeps.

At that point, I rushed to get the apprentice mage. We're currently rocking 5 elementals between us, plus the 2 swordswomen. I got rid of the merc a while ago.

Granted, the apprentice girl is low level for me, but she, her elementals, and the others are basically just backup for my elementals and spells. It's very easy except in certain situations where you have to survive long enough to get your elementals up. In those spots, it's just mildly annoying.

So far at least.