Apprentices

[Hawke]

Has anyone figured out if it's better to specialize in 1 skill or to dual specialize?

EG: You have a fire mage with a level 1 fire wand. They level up to max with initiate. Is it better to double specialize when they become an apprentice, or to pick one of the adjacent schools of magic (for this example; earth or lightning).

I know that if you double specialize your main skill will get +3, but if you take one of the adjacent schools you will get +2 in each school of magic.

Confusing? I hope not. I'm really curious what you all think.

[Tobijon]

I always use an adjacent type. that last level doesn't matter too much while a second specialty makes them much more usefull (unless you just want them to graduate for the relic in which case it doesn't matter). That being said, I recommend a second level wand over apprentice, much less effort involved.

[Philtre]

Apprenticing them in the same element makes them better at tasks that require that specific element, while apprenticing them in a different element expands the range of things they are good at, and gives them additional combat skills corresponding to their new element. So it's a question of whether you want someone who is really good at their specialty, or someone who can dual- or triple-task. If you want to keep your school fairly small, the latter may be more useful. Having a wider range of combat skills can also be useful on the people you take into dungeons.

[Hawke]

Both good ideas. Thank you for your input.

[Hawke]

So now I have a double Fire and double lightning mage, while the others are dual mages. I only select the best school that is adjacent to their current school. IE: The ones that have a power of 2, not 1. 2 becomes 4 and 4 becomes 6. That is with wand level one! When they get a power 2 wand, things become VERY interesting and powerful.

[Aldehydra]

Both can be good, for both work and combat. For work, dualists are generally preferable for jobs that aren't needed at all times. Pure fire, lightning, and nature are great. Pure water isn't particularly useful, so go water/nature.

In combat, it comes down to specific ranks of desirable spells. With a supporting air mage, you really want rank 3 barrier, so you need a very high skill. For a primarily tanking earth mage, you don't really care beyond the final rank of armor.

[Asa]

Dual classing a mage could also be useful when they weren't the most ideal mage that you would want to take into staff. Level 8 skills takes significantly more time to master, so dual classing a mage would keep their skill cap at a more manageable 7 and still leave behind a decent relic.

[B-Kun]

In most cases dual specialization is better. There are a few cases where 1 skill is best. For example there are a few level 8 combat spells that make combat much easier.

For cases such as that I graduate mages until I get a mage with the right stats. Then I make that mage specialize in 1 skill and specialized for that purpose only.

For example the level 8 fire magic spell is devastating, but requires high power and high mana stats to be used effectively. Bonus if you can get a mage with high speed as well who can go first. If you can get such a combo you are guaranteed to take out the first row in most combat encounters before the enemy can even get a turn.

My rule is: most mages -> specialize in multiple skills. mages chosen for a specific task (i.e. damage dealing in combat) specialize in one skill.

Of course this is unnecessary if you get good artifacts. In most of my play throughs by the time I was ready to use level 8 spells I had already manifested at least 1 artifact with the appropriate skill boost.

If you do the math, dual specialization is +4 and 1 skill specialization is only +1 total since you have a -1 on two other skills. So unless you have a good reason, dual specialize.

[ExMachina14]

Originally posted by Hawke:

Has anyone figured out if it's better to specialize in 1 skill or to dual specialize?

Cross-train them as Sorcerers.

Single specialty mages are terrible and unnecessary.

This game revolves around combat (especially in the end-game), and Sorcerers are the most powerful combat mages.

[n3mes1s]

Better to specialize. The only advantaje of dual skill is that you can use two skill sets of powers in battles. But the performance of the second skill is going to be really subpar compared with any specialized one. And im not sure but i think if you daul an apprentice, you lose the ultimate skill on your main one...

With relics you can raise the cap of any other skill easily if you want mages to be good in more than one skill.

The only time i dualed some initates was because i wanted mages that were never going to be in battle to do daily tasks and leave combat for others.

But in general terms, specialization is always the best course of action. In late game you will have many mages and since combat is the only thing you will do you will have specialized combat mages to go with. Ultimate spells is the way to go. Dualing other apprentices is just something you do when you dont have anything else to do in late game lol or you want to have 3 or 4 dualed apprentices for daily tasks, and 4 or 5 for combat.

[ulzgoroth]

For non-combat, I'm pretty sure mono-focus is always wrong. The points in lower skills are more useful than the ones in higher skills, and the adjacent-pair setup where you gain a huge +4 total skill levels is great.

For combat, depends some on where you are and what relics you have.

Getting a level 8 spell may be worth the mono-focus. However, it may not be necessary. If you have a decent skill buff relic, you can get 8 in your main skill without focusing on it, and thus also get the benefit of one of the multi-skill builds. I do have a necromancer who was able to reach Dark 8 much earlier than would have otherwise been possible and used it to trivialize some battles. But that's my only 'mancer.

Dual-skill builds have two aspects. One is that you have twice as many spells to work with. Which can be very useful, even if some of them are lower level - the level difference on attack spells is way less important than weakness/resistance, and buff spells are all unique anyway. Of course, keep in mind more options doesn't mean more actions. (Unless you use those more options to get Haste into your party...)

But the other is that most dual-skill apprenticeships have a bonus ability. The two adjacent doesn't (instead, you get a huge total skill level), but all the others give +2 apprentice skill +1 wand skill, -1 to two other skills, and a special effect. For apprentices with one skip in between skills, you get an extra relic slot. Which can be useless or great depending on the exact composition of the mage and your relic pool. For apprentices with two skips? You get a unique special trait depending on the two skills. At least some of those can be pretty dramatic. For instance, earth/water gives you a mage that generates armor every time they spend mana. Very nice for Shattered or other fragile factions.

[pjennospam]

Depends how far your are in the game. 1st gen of mages you'll really want a specialised lightning lightning mage, and I found a fire fire mage to be great for keeping the pantries full of food. When you build a large storage box just for relics, you'll be thinking about your 3rd gen of mages, explore the rest of dungeon, and everything changes.

I trained up some air, earth, and air/earth mages for some major construction work, but I underestimated how many resources I'd need so they weren't actually needed XD

[Soul4hdwn]

the first mages should be singled so they can train the next generation to be faster (the first ones to 8 in an element takes forever)

[Manxome]

I'd like to note that this was a year-old thread that B-Kun necro'd.

But if we're going to talk about it...

Originally posted by ExMachina14:

Sorcerers are the most powerful combat mages.

I feel like Arcanists (extra relic slot) are better at combat than Sorcerers at least some of the time, and possibly most of the time...assuming you have a good relic to put in the slot, of course.

EDIT: Actually, I'm going to walk this back a bit. I keep looking at the Sorcerer abilities and thinking that most of these aren't helpful to me. But I'm currently finding the combat easy, so I'm focused on efficiency instead of upping the max difficulty I can handle. I can see how more of these would be useful if you were running up against combats at the edge of your ability.

And certain Mancers (extra ultimate per day) seem plausibly the best if you only care about doing one fight per day.

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

For non-combat, I'm pretty sure mono-focus is always wrong. The points in lower skills are more useful than the ones in higher skills, and the adjacent-pair setup where you gain a huge +4 total skill levels is great.

Strong disagree. For any mage who spends most of their time using one skill, a single rank in that skill is a larger productivity increase than 2 ranks in another skill (or even 2 ranks in ALL other skills, not that that's an option). This probably includes at least your researchers and your cooks, and plausibly includes a strong majority of your staff depending on the stage of the game and how you're playing.

The big caveat is that there's a hard cap of 8 skill ranks, and you can use relics to reach that cap without being a Mancer. Once you're at the skill cap, any further increases in that skill are wasted. So depending on the relics you have available, there might be literally NO out-of-combat advantage to specializing.

But if you're NOT at the hard cap, I think maximizing one skill is usually correct for non-combat efficiency. Which I think means that you want your first batch of apprentices to be mostly Mancers, but your endgame apprentices to be mostly not Mancers (unless you're doing it for the ultimate cast).

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Manxome:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

For non-combat, I'm pretty sure mono-focus is always wrong. The points in lower skills are more useful than the ones in higher skills, and the adjacent-pair setup where you gain a huge +4 total skill levels is great.

Strong disagree. For any mage who spends most of their time using one skill, a single rank in that skill is a larger productivity increase than 2 ranks in another skill (or even 2 ranks in ALL other skills, not that that's an option). This probably includes at least your researchers and your cooks, and plausibly includes a strong majority of your staff depending on the stage of the game and how you're playing.

The big caveat is that there's a hard cap of 8 skill ranks, and you can use relics to reach that cap without being a Mancer. Once you're at the skill cap, any further increases in that skill are wasted. So depending on the relics you have available, there might be literally NO out-of-combat advantage to specializing.

But if you're NOT at the hard cap, I think maximizing one skill is usually correct for non-combat efficiency. Which I think means that you want your first batch of apprentices to be mostly Mancers, but your endgame apprentices to be mostly not Mancers (unless you're doing it for the ultimate cast).

The difference between 7 and 8 +1/7th work speed, for only one skill, and becomes even less if you've got a relic displayed for that element. And TBH, I don't have tend to have people only allowed to do one job whatsoever...

[Manxome]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

The difference between 7 and 8 +1/7th work speed, for only one skill, and becomes even less if you've got a relic displayed for that element. And TBH, I don't have tend to have people only allowed to do one job whatsoever...

You don't need to be "only allowed to do one job whatsoever". If you are spending most of your time on one job, then boosting that skill is best, even if you spend a little time doing other stuff.

A fire specialist who does fire all the time plus a nature specialist who does nature all the time will do more total work than two fire/nature hybrid mages.

Basically, if you have 2 mages that both use the same element, probably at least 1 of them should raise that skill as high as they possibly can. If you don't have enough work in some element to keep a single specialist busy, then fine, maybe you don't need a specialist in that element--but then you certainly don't need a second mage with the same skill, if you can't even keep the first mage busy!

The fact that raising your higher skill is a smaller proportional gain is...basically not relevant? +1 skill means you do +1 unit of work per cast. +1 work per cast on a spell that you cast 50 times a day is more total work done than +2 work per cast on a spell that you cast 20 times per day, no matter what your previous skill levels were. (Again, this gets more complex if you can't even keep a single specialist busy, but if you're training apprentices then I doubt you have fewer staff than there are elements.)

This could change if you have large swings in the balance of work that needs to be done. E.g. if you have 1 week where you need tons of earth magic but no air magic, and then 1 week where you need tons of air magic but no water magic, etc. then everyone will be forced to use their bad elements and so specialization basically stops working. But I would be pretty surprised if this is regularly happening to you.

Also, possible exceptions for emergency jobs that happen rarely, but need to be done RIGHT AWAY when they come up. For example, maybe you want a lot of people to dabble in fire so they can all help out when a breathstealer or a fog incarnation shows up, even if their normal work routine doesn't involve using fire at all. (This means they'll do less total work, but sometimes timing is more important than efficiency.) But there's not many cases like this, and I doubt you really need to tailor your mage builds specifically to deal with them.