PSA - What Starting Elements to Chose

[KitteninaBox]

This is an agonizing choice since it seriously shapes your early game. Here's what I've discovered so far, let me know if you have anything to add!

#1 - Lightning! Both research and summoning better students are locked to certain levels of Lightning magic. I find the game seriously frustrating without at least one lightning mage from the beginning, it just takes too long to train up an apprentice.

#2 - Nature. This is a tough call because both Fire and Nature are really useful but Nature barely nudges ahead because being completely locked out of cutting Runewood and other higher tier crafting materials is really frustrating.

#3 - Fire. This may seem like a strange choice but cooking is a lot more important than you might think. The material crafting beasts require a type of feed that needs levels in Fire. Crafting beasts are how you get all of the absurd amounts of stone you will need to build your tower. If you are running out of stone, it is because you don't have a well-fed Lavalina.

#4 - Darkness. It's all about the cute little undead slaves. Quilted do all the drudge-work so your mages can focus on more important things. Clutter filling your halls? Plants going untended? Floors covered in brightly colored #&%^? You need some Quilted.

#5 - Water. This may be more important than Darkness if you are really pushing your mages into fights since Water is what makes the most of your Hospital Beds. Water is also needed to craft the higher level potions you will need for level 3 wands but level 2 wands are enough to unlock most things you need for a beginning tower so having a mage specialized in water can wait.

#6 - Earth. Nothing I have encountered thus far has been locked to Earth skill so it is not essential for your starting team. However, Earth mages are actually really useful in combat. Early on they get a spell that can taunt the enemy and cast armor on themselves all in one cast. Combine that with a Fire mage's Vengeance spell or pile more armor on them and an Earth mage can keep your whole team happy and healthy.

#7 - Air. Wow...just wow. They like to haul things to storage and move furniture. I'd call one the next time I'm moving house but otherwise there isn't much here. They have a haste spell but it's not quite as good as the Lightning mage haste spell. They do have a spell that hits multiple times but a Darkness mage can hit the whole enemy team. I hope they get some love in a future patch or something.

So there are my notes for now. I hope they will be of some use to others.

[ExMachina14]

Nature and Lightning. Both Wolfkin, both with an extra point in Air and Earth.

Spend the first day or two just gathering resources. Build storage containers and an arcane secretary in the underground.

[Jay]

I disagree with most of your PSA. :)

It really isn't a significant choice on standard difficulty.
If you're training and hiring starting students, you will have the skills you need before you need them. The first few staff just need to carry the school until new students can be trained to replace them.

The one part I agree with: I usually have a lightning mage in the starting set.

Nature and earth are useful for gathering resources. Nature - faster gathering and harvesting. Earth - faster mining of stone, iron, crystals.
Quilted don't replace these skills in the early game.
By the time we need Runewood, we will be using staff who started as students.

We don't need a Fire cook in the early game.
There aren't many mages to feed at first. Some will be wolves (eat birds or rats) or vivified (only needs berries). Fire mages do cook faster, but for 3-5 meals a day it doesn't matter.
By the time it matters, we can have trained and hired a new staff member.

I never start with Dark.
Dark magic hurts the caster, and we can hire new staff before healing potions are common. Every hour the mage spends in bed healing after a fight is time any other mage would be productive. And the rest of the time outside combat, every other type of mage is better in the early game.

Quilted are very important, but the early ones (haulers and cleaners) don't need Dark skill. The ones that do need Dark 4 are gated behind research and a room.
By the time Dark skill is important, we can have trained and hired a new staff member.

[KitteninaBox]

Like your points Jay, thanks for giving a different perspective.

[Jay]

Originally posted by KitteninaBox:

Like your points Jay, thanks for giving a different perspective.

It's a game with space for many different approaches. There's probably lots of people looking at mine and knowing that theirs is better. :)

[Soul4hdwn]

earth is building those walls and floors and supports.
air is for building furniture.
nature and earth are for gathering materials (thus speeds beginning up).
fire is cooking and combat.
water is only to make potions (when ready to leave begining for wand tier 2)
dark is to make quilted... but begining quilted (carriers and cleaners only need rank 1 though, so ghost will handle those...)
dark is good fighters but must be quilted if beginning. then build a medic bed eventually soonish anyways.

[Kylorian]

Air also builds every item. "assembly" not really needed at the start due to low numbers but more then worth getting one unless you want to sit around all day for things to get built.

[Ilthe]

I used to start with earth + nature + lightning (all wolfkin) for fastest resource gathering and research, tried earth + nature + fire instead because I had bad experience with runway ravencult students eating bad food and having many breaks, but after spending a lot of stone on wands instead of building (trying to get fast earth mage to act as replacement tank - wolfkin tanks shields are not very strong and they get hurt a lot leading to them becoming insufferable and needing replacement) I switched to earth + earth + air (all wolfkin) so I had a replacement tank on hand and didn't lose half of starter limited stone supply.

But now I discovered the true power of vivified earth mage + wolfkin air combo, I'm gonna stick with it for a while.
These two can win many battles by themselves, and vivified shields are very strong so they don't get scarred so fast, leaving third mage optional - my current save is with one more air mage, since air wands need stone too, and I don't want to spend any stone on non-refundable things in the beginning while stone is still a finite resource.
Tho maybe next time I'll get lightning mage as third one - quickly researching essentials before I get first students was much more comfortable then my surrent experience.



Nature, dark and water all need higher level wands or apprentship to fulfill all their tasks, and apprentices with basic wands give less headache to manage, so they probably shouldn't be starter mages - you harvest basic plants with any mages no porblem, the most important quilted - haulers - can be made by any mage too, and by the time you will need high level water mage you would probably have him naturally, and basic potions you use most in the beginning don't need any advanced levels.
Nature mages require most picking since only shattered can interact with advanced plants without problems.
Dark would need high health for battles and water - high mana for rituals.

Fire mages are my first hires both because students can roll a race that can't munch on berries or rats, and that leads to bad experiences AND because fire wands are the most resource-easy to craft. Fire mages are also my shard farming students because of cheap wands.
All races have their advantages with fire mages too, so you even don't need to be extra picky.

Then it is lightning mage for more research. Any race - he will not go far from his research station for a long long time - and first mana lantern goes to that room.
Only after you have a fire mage, because there is no point having a good researcher who is constantly breaking because he had to eat bad food.

If your starter earth mage is vivified, you wouldn't need a replacement for a long time. Otherwise get the vivified earth mage asap. Wolf earth mage doesn't need speed buffs, but will need replacement sooner and is a worse tank overall for higher level combat - just fine for taking students of a field trip tho, and can take three guys instead of two, compared to vivified.

And air mages probably have their use outside of buffing your vivified tank, but in later game. That would be my last hire, just before I start rebuilding my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ into a proper academy.

[KitteninaBox]

Interesting, I wasn't thinking about possible Race/Element combos.

I have noticed that Vivified Earth mages make great tanks but I didn't realize that they also will eat berries without complaint. I hadn't even thought about how their high health would make them good Dark mages too!

I like Wolfkin for Fire mages because they can get to their kills faster. I guess Wolfkin would also make good Air mages because of their speed.

I think Humans might make good Lightning mages because their bigger mana pools would let them research for longer without having to pause. They might also make good Water mages since refilling beds takes a lot of mana.

Thanks for the info about Shattered not being effected by plants. I was getting frustrated by my poor Nature mage being constantly itchy and unhappy. I'll have to get a relic to call a specific one but it sounds like it will be worth the trouble.

What are Cultists good for?

[Ilthe]

Cultists have relatively good health and damage, so they are nice dark mages.
Their mana is nice too, so they probly can be useful as other mages that need mana.

I'd say they are betveen human and vivified.

I used to hate them with passion because of them requiring extra care for their scar from very moment you get them and got rid of them asap, so I didn't test different combos - but my current save has cultist dark mage and she slaps hard.

[UltiBand]

For Standard

1-3: I prefer Earth, Fire and Nature start so I can easily build my starting school. Until I hire 4th mage I simply lock The Founder on Research priority since starting techs aren't expensive anyway.

4: Then I summon 3-4 lightning Initiates to hire one of them as main researcher, right when I reach T2 techs.

5: I'm pretty sure next staff member should be a dark mage since it can replace Water and 2nd Nature staff, and logistics become a problem at this point of the game.

6+: From this point I choose whoever I feel my school needs, heavily depending on Greater Wand Transfigurator (T2 > T3) being found or not. It can even be 2nd lightning mage so I can get Apprentices faster and fill more roles, getting rid of 1st lightning mage shortly after.

Why I don't like water mages? They're practically useless in combat on Standard difficulty. Weak stats, worst targeting, only useful utility option is Slow, which can allow you to avoid unnecessary losses. But just Slow is not enough to make me add a Water Mage to my party.

ATTENTION: they are invaluable on Relentless since they can dispell common debuffs, which knock your mages out of action for a long time and do not disappear even after battle.

[UltiBand]

Originally posted by Ilthe:

Cultists have relatively good health and damage, so they are nice dark mages.
Their mana is nice too, so they probly can be useful as other mages that need mana.

I'd say they are betveen human and vivified.

I used to hate them with passion because of them requiring extra care for their scar from very moment you get them and got rid of them asap, so I didn't test different combos - but my current save has cultist dark mage and she slaps hard.

Nah, idk. Dark mages have the biggest base damage in the game so they benifit from being a Raven Cultist the least. I prefer having Raven Cultists as Air Mages. "Boring", - you may say, but besides the fact that their natural Power stat is OP with Multiattack, which is common knowledge, their HP stat in combination with Shield of Wind allows you to put them in a front row, making room in the rear for weaker party members / initiates.

[KitteninaBox]

With a name like "Cultist" one would hope they make good Dark mages!

Looks like a lot of people like Earth mages as one of their starters. I feel like I was seriously underestimating them, probably because my first Earth mage was a wimpy human.

[UltiBand]

Originally posted by Ilthe:

I don't want to spend any stone on non-refundable things in the beginning while stone is still a finite resource.
Tho maybe next time I'll get lightning mage as third one - quickly researching essentials before I get first students was much more comfortable then my surrent experience.

Judging by your description, you play on standard. Why do you care about spending stone (resource) so much? I'd advice to replace starting Stone Wolfkin with Stone Vivified and you will not need to worry about fighting Dungeon Encounters for free stone - you just need one Medical Bed in starting basement to keep your Vivified healthy. Stone Wolfkin is a dead weight since you need your Earth mage to build rooms and sustain damage, not to gather.

[Ilthe]

Originally posted by UltiBand:

Originally posted by Ilthe:

I don't want to spend any stone on non-refundable things in the beginning while stone is still a finite resource.
Tho maybe next time I'll get lightning mage as third one - quickly researching essentials before I get first students was much more comfortable then my surrent experience.

Judging by your description, you play on standard. Why do you care about spending stone (resource) so much? I'd advice to replace starting Stone Wolfkin with Stone Vivified and you will not need to worry about fighting Dungeon Encounters for free stone - you just need one Medical Bed in starting basement to keep your Vivified healthy. Stone Wolfkin is a dead weight since you need your Earth mage to build rooms and sustain damage, not to gather.

I think I got scarred a little by my early game experiences with stone shortage.
Having to tear down parts of my school I just built to get some stone for the wands was unpleasant.

In my first few saves I didn't know that earth vivified can be speed boosted - and because of that they looked like useless waste of combat slot - by the time they had the opportunity to rise their shield, enemies would have their turn to hit everyone they want.
Quite obvious then was the decision to use fastest mages - wolfkin - to be earth tanks. It works, but only in low level battles, higher level battle enemies hit harder that starter wolfkin can shield, which leads to them and people they tried to protect getting scarred.
On both that saves all my mages had some scars by the time I was ready to start teaching, and instead of getting new mage types I had to sift through a lot of earth mages to get new tanks -> which quickly drained my stone even on forgiving difficulty, since unlike the building, stone spent on making wands is fully gone when you graduate the student.

I discovered earth vivified mightiness when I needed to get one of random air runaways their fighting trial - I never hired air mage before and didn't know they have spell that gives enough speed to raise the shield before enemies start attacking, making vivified actual best tank in the game.

In the beginning (before I build minimal amount of accomodations like basic bedrooms and dining + research, classroom and ritual room) I try to minimise amount of rooms I unlock in underschool, since if I remember correctly it raises MAGE score and triggers harder challenges overall.
Since my mages were always struggling, adding more challenge on top of that didn't seem like a good idea. And I quickly ran out of rooms I could clear out with bad team too.

Now I breese through things that were like deadstops and I feel stupid for not reading the things the game provides more careful.

[Ghevd]

I went with earth and nature on my current playthrough. Earth mage had a secondary in lightning and then prioritized getting a lightning mage up asap.

Doesn't take much to get a fire mage going when you finally do unlock enough to need a level 3 fire cook.

Next play through I plan to try either earth and air or nature and air. Also I will go with building two structures in the beginning on opposite ends of the starting foundation to help with rooms that require elevated.