For people who find the spells lackluster:

[Keeptrucking]

1) Upgrade your spells, they get added effects. You need quills for that which you get through exploration.
2) Look for enemy interactions. Spells aren't weapons that you can use in every situation, but some enemies are weak to some elements and can be disabled and/or killed.

That is all. Have fun. :)

[Lechuza the Scoot]

literally with the 1st upgrade they get good. And you can upgrade each one 2 times.

l m a o

[DeckchairVonBananaCamel]

im practically maining the fire spell

[elgerifico]

Even at its most basic, unupgraded level, the fire spell will burn the shields the skeletons wield, and can kill them relatively quickly.

[Vesperas]

No offense but I'm not really sure what the point of this thread is.

The criticisms surrounding the spells all come from their value early on and due to the incredible cost of spell upgrades, it's prohibitively difficult to get them to a point where they begin to shine until you're fairly deep into the game.

Regardless of how you spin it, even fully upgraded spells are still only circumstantially useful and best used for their intended environment / puzzle functions or crowd control in specific scenarios, as none of the spells are even remotely close to being efficient compared to some of the weapons when it comes to actually defeating enemies. While I don't personally have an issue with using the spells in this way, I can see how some players might find it disappointing or even underwhelming.

The problem I have with them is that their intended crowd control functions, upgraded or not, are difficult to use effectively because of how encounters are designed. Nearly all player deaths are likely going to result from scenarios involving swarms of enemies descending upon the player at once, so unless you already know how to deal with it beforehand, it's unlikely you'll have the correct spell ready or know how to apply it when you need to. The worst of it is, once you are aware of it beforehand, it's usually still easier to approach these encounters from an alternative angle or just using a different weapon.

In my experience, going straight to bombarding an area with the upgraded peat mortar or lining up enemies for an instant kill with the upgraded ballista is far more efficient than attempting to use the upgraded spells.

Originally posted by elgerifico:

Even at its most basic, unupgraded level, the fire spell will burn the shields the skeletons wield, and can kill them relatively quickly.

Yeah, it's decent against the most basic skeleton enemies with a spear and shield. Obviously, it doesn't hold up as well against the skeletons with cuff arrows (or much else, for that matter) due to its extremely limited range and mana costs with extended use.

The upgraded fire spell is decent against groups of infected, corpse piles (largely due to it igniting the swamp gas left behind) and in a pinch, can be used against the imps encountered in chapter two. Fully upgraded, it actually does half decent damage.

[normalredux]

Once you kill the ghost in the library, the game is over.
Upgraded fire is completely broken as long as enemies are on the same level.

And to the poster above, fire doesn't actually work on the zombies. It works on everything in chapter 1 except for the flying dudes, zombies, dog monsters and the big ogre guys.

[Vesperas]

The fully upgraded fire spell causes burning enemies to set nearby enemies and objects on fire and explode when they die. From what I've experienced, it works best on precisely what I outlined. Burning infected can ignite swamp gas, including the swamp gas left behind from destroyed corpse piles and killing one with a ranged weapon can easily cause a chain of explosions when enemies are packed heavily together (as the infected zombies often are).

Against most of the other enemies in the game, I don't find it to be all that great compared to most of the upgraded weapons however. It's either completely useless against them (such as the totems, birds and fish) or extremely dangerous to use, either due to the explosion or range requirement, since a lot of enemies can easily mess you up if you're relatively close. If you move into close / medium range of a crossbow cultist, they'll start channeling a poison bolt spell at you which deals ridiculously high amounts of damage, while other enemies like the chanters or death knights will quickly destroy you.

[Aria Athena]

In my experience the fire spell is mostly good for saving ammo. I haven't encountered anything weak to fire that is any kind of threat. The only thing I can think so far, are the Olympic runners is act 2, against which the lightning spell is much better. The lightning, while mostly pointless in Act 1, becomes quite useful in Act 2. I have yet to find a use for the necronomicon, but I am also neither upgrading nor using it. It's a waste of mana that obscures your field of view more than anything else.

[Bankai9212]

haven't used lightening but as someone already mentioned there are far better weapons to use.

[normalredux]

No, I mean the CC element/perma burn. If you set a susceptible enemy on fire, for example the guys at the start of chapter 2, they'll burn forever. They ignore you and run around setting every other enemy on fire, too.
So just a tiny click will wipe out an entire room of enemies with zero effort.

When you upgrade it to level 3 for the explosion (which makes it good against zombies), it however makes it dangerous to use against other enemies.
If you keep it at level 2, you can just light and run past packs of enemies, then clean up whatever doesn't burn with your weapons. You can simply remove 90% of enemies in a given encounter right off the bat then fight the rest like normal, ignoring the burning ones.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by normalredux:

No, I mean the CC element/perma burn. If you set a susceptible enemy on fire, for example the guys at the start of chapter 2, they'll burn forever. They ignore you and run around setting every other enemy on fire, too.
So just a tiny click will wipe out an entire room of enemies with zero effort.

When you upgrade it to level 3 for the explosion (which makes it good against zombies), it however makes it dangerous to use against other enemies.
If you keep it at level 2, you can just light and run past packs of enemies, then clean up whatever doesn't burn with your weapons. You can simply remove 90% of enemies in a given encounter right off the bat then fight the rest like normal, ignoring the burning ones.

That is if the area is confined, and if they are even weak to the element. The issue is how certain encounters are handled in a game with better movement that wouldn't be an issue problem is that the devs don't know what kind of game to make.

[normalredux]

Don't get me wrong I think it's a huge problem. It's way too strong and it actually does work in open environments because the burning enemies will beeline to their buddies. They live long enough to sprint all the way across an open area.
You spend 3 red mana to do the job of 25 crossbow shots.

I think the game has a lot of bad choices and dumb design decisions but spells being weak isn't one of them.
If anything, they should change the effects to look more cool and powerful. They're massive sleepers.

Also nerf them because they're honestly broken, and so are several other weapons.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by normalredux:

Don't get me wrong I think it's a huge problem. It's way too strong and it actually does work in open environments because the burning enemies will beeline to their buddies. They live long enough to sprint all the way across an open area.
You spend 3 red mana to do the job of 25 crossbow shots.

You mentioned that particular environment with the ice zombies, but most of the time fire won't stop the fast ones before they land a hit, cause they do not ignite instantly. Lightning will though. After stunning them I set them on fire, but once again I am only using fire to save ammo, something which to be frank I don't need to be doing.

[normalredux]

Yeah I do the same thing, guaranteed safe kill on the whole pack.

I gotta mention the Orthogonal Hymn though, that thing is a death cannon.
Wouldn't be a problem if you didn't have practically infinite ammo since you can carry mana potions with you.
It'd be a nice dynamic if you had to decide between conserving ammo and dealing high damage as you do in the early game but in Graven you really can have your cake and eat it too.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by normalredux:

Don't get me wrong I think it's a huge problem. It's way too strong and it actually does work in open environments because the burning enemies will beeline to their buddies. They live long enough to sprint all the way across an open area.
You spend 3 red mana to do the job of 25 crossbow shots.

I think the game has a lot of bad choices and dumb design decisions but spells being weak isn't one of them.
If anything, they should change the effects to look more cool and powerful. They're massive sleepers.

Also nerf them because they're honestly broken, and so are several other weapons.

If you are using that much ammo its do to not baiting enemies to a choke point which is easy to do. As for open areas the on in act 2 is just poorly design as you'll just get swarmed out of no where. Since the game has not journal for enemy types its difficult to gauge what is more effective in terms of damage. This is ignoring all the mana specific weapons(to many) and the hotbar situation.

[Keeptrucking]

Originally posted by Vesperas:

No offense but I'm not really sure what the point of this thread is.

To let players know how usefull upgraded spells are, since I saw people saying they were useless in combat.

I understand you feel they are too expensive and difficult to whip out in a fight. This was not my experience tbh. I am just starting hub 2 now.