Wand or Apprentice?

[Justin Sellers]

The first staff member I usually hire is a lightning mage, to assist in better research, but after him, I get stuck.

Do you prioritize upgrading wands for existing staff members?
Do you prioritize making really good initiates into apprentices? or wands for those initiates?

While I'm here, which apprentice option do you go for? An adjacent element so you get double +2, same element for the +3, or fill in needs?

Thank you all.

[Kahri]

Since upgrading wands requires a wand upgrading station only found by exploring the underground (and I don't like to needlessly kill off my little squeeky toys), I like to strengthen them first before I make a run to obtain the wand upgrade building.

Strengthening could perhaps be just from attuning - but that still needs a few cycles of graduations to get some choice relics.

[Mermidion]

my advice, first upgrade the wands of the existing staff to 2, maybe add one or two more if you missing a crucial element. but after that, just raise students you want to be future staff to apprentice and give them better wands and eventually have them replace your already existing staff. mages who became staff after apprentices are so so much more powerfull then mages who didnt.

Also go for adjacent element, better if the second element you are going for already is at 2. cause then you can turn it into a 4. and 4 is in many situation the minimum requirement to archieve stuff. (cutting certain plants/trees, making certain quilted helper,doing certain rituals etc etc etc...)

[Ivydoom]

We don't know yet as this is a new system recently implemented. Devs seem intent on changing the games and removing all work-arounds/short-cuts players find.

Excuse mynegativity.

[Ghostwalker]

Originally posted by Justin Sellers:

While I'm here, which apprentice option do you go for? An adjacent element so you get double +2, same element for the +3, or fill in needs?

I did the same element option exactly once, only adjacent +2/+2 since then ^^

[FDru]

Get staff for which important skills you need right away (fire, nature, etc). Then start training apprentices for those skills instead, eventually replacing the staff with those apprentices.

It takes an extremely long time to train apprentices so it's a long term project...

Also double-dipping on fire (even getting TWO double-fire mages) is not a bad idea at all.

[Mermidion]

Originally posted by FDru:

It takes an extremely long time to train apprentices so it's a long term project...

Thats true.
thought doing trials as soon as possible, even before they become Apprentices helps alot.
Also certain relics can help in that regard . got a relic on a plinth that does +60% trial XP and now most of my apprentices are just one level short of max as soon as they become apprentices.
Huge Timesaver.