Magic Build

[gamoreno94]

Im tryna make a battle mage build n im not sure what im missin cause im close to 20 spirituality but my mana regen is still awful n my damage output isnt much on harder enemies even with stronger spells

if you have any tips lemme know

[RetroGrade]

Ive noticed the same thing. Until it gets fixed, I just am using the healing spell and going melee or ranged bow.

[living_one]

Isn't there only one skill which gives mana regen, and that's capped at 1 point per second?

Meanwhile with melee, points put mainly into STR and an upgraded warhammer one bonk is needed to kill anyone except that one large boss in the northern dungeon. He needed two bonks.

[misterbill5]

Hmmmm...I am doing well with all my attribute points going into Spirituality (at 18 or 19 now). Mana seems to regen pretty fast. There are some armor items that add to mana regen...I use a summoned skelly to keep the mobs off me while I hit them with fire and/or poison spells. My pets regen from a kill and explode on death. Occasionally I have to use potions in the tougher fights, but the build seems perfectly viable up to this point...

[narokusama]

the heal spell and melee after. Use the life steel sword and just upgrade that. Made combat way easier when i added a shield and could parry arrows back at enemies

[brgr-]

Magic build isn't viable at this moment. I've tried to play as battlemage and it was bad, really bad. Spells either do no damage at all or cost insane amount of mana. It's better to get those perks from spirituality that increase melee capability. At some point in the game you will just one shot enemies with melee attacks, which isn't possible with spells.

[Wiphand]

did you guys make sure to use light armor? medium and heavy armor penalize mana useage

[Raven Claw]

I was using light armor, and I have to agree with brgr that the balancing around magic is off. Around 3-5 minuites after a fight to recover my mana and that is with both the perks to have mana regen (cough 1 is unbalanced should be more), and 10% mana per kill(this seems like I get less then that).

Lets compare two different builds, earlier in this thread a person said they were 1 shotting everything. I will assume 2 handed strength build. Now let's compair me killing wolves with poison it takes 2-3 hits. That is wolves which are cheeezy easy to kill. Yea I could use my summons which work till they don't. Meaning if you are going against a "normal" mob (IMO this is starter area so I expect these things should be easy) the summons can wreck it easy, if it is against a boss the summons dies in one hit.

Mana regen, like I said takes 3-5 minuites to regain. Like I said should be higher then 1, maybe 5-10?? Maybe more, not sure what the design goal is. I am just trying to get some symmetry between the classes.
Weight/carrying capacity: I can't carry boo. So because of that my damage should be much higher then it is now. You know to balance between not being the burly type but I'm the intellectual/spiritual type.
Components: OMG the weight on them, should all be 0.01 or 0.001. IMO they should never amount to any weight because they are components being used for crafting, not the actual craft.
Potions: Seem ok, although getting enough to make them seems off. /shrug might be down to spawns and respawn timers.
food: Seems ok heck even somewhat balanced with the timer for the effect to happen. The weight seems a bit heavy, but might be my hording too. Again being a caster I should be given more lee way on certain things because I am not a str build.
Have to wear light armor: So because I have less defense my damage should be increased. Glass cannon. Although because I am wearing light armor I can run like a mad man very easily. Effectivly kitting.
Spells in general: seem like they need to be balanced, as in cost of mana and damage. The scaling seems like it should be fine once they get some minor tweaks. Also a few new spells for summons. As it is now it feels like the summon weapons are a waste of mana which is very precious. Maybe adding a trivial dot effect to them would help in balancing them.

Also a bit of a nitpick. What can be seem in the various equipment slots is off. One of them I can see my +4, +5, +6 crafted food but can't see my potato stew and other cooked recipes.

Equipment seems very sparse. I couldn't really find crafted gear that I could make other then a heavy set. Might be me missing it, might be just early access, might be both. In particular finding multiple rings that did anything, or necklaces that did anything, so I could have a choice in what to equip. Again this is a starter area so I might be asking for too much. What I found was 2 necklaces and 2 rings. I did find a theif set in the wild, forget what I killed to get it. It would be "nice"(tm) if we could craft various sets to help make a build, and link in crafting but again early access might be a bit much to ask at this time.

Again this is early access so I know that balancing is required, just trying to offer some constructive feedback is all.

[misterbill5]

I must be playing a different game. Nothing close to 5 minutes to regen mana--maybe a minute or so and I have 220 mana now. I did find out that you need the every-other-level ability (on the right side of the Character sheet) for mana regen in order to have any mana regen at all, but pumping up Spirituality (at 21 now) adds to regen according to the description, and there are armor pieces and relics that do the same. As for one-shotting mobs, poison bolt kills the low level mobs in one shot or maybe two for only 15 mana. The higher level spells for fire and ice can one shot higher level mobs, but they cost 80 mana which does seem a bit high. To each his own, but I don't think combat where you can one-shot enemies would be much fun...
As far as summons go, the perk that causes them to explode with AoE damage is pretty effective and they are cheap to re-summon so they can do considerable damage even if they don't last very long...

[renton212]

Originally posted by misterbill5:

Hmmmm...I am doing well with all my attribute points going into Spirituality (at 18 or 19 now). Mana seems to regen pretty fast. There are some armor items that add to mana regen...I use a summoned skelly to keep the mobs off me while I hit them with fire and/or poison spells. My pets regen from a kill and explode on death. Occasionally I have to use potions in the tougher fights, but the build seems perfectly viable up to this point...

For me too, I killed a necro and his robes/helm solved my mana regen problems. I wish the range on the summon skelly was further and he doesnt attract aggro very well, mobs run past the summon cast and he only springs into action once I am in combat so they are literally just staring at a skeleton unless I start combat myself which kind of negates the pre cast summon.

[misterbill5]

Originally posted by renton212:

Originally posted by misterbill5:

Hmmmm...I am doing well with all my attribute points going into Spirituality (at 18 or 19 now). Mana seems to regen pretty fast. There are some armor items that add to mana regen...I use a summoned skelly to keep the mobs off me while I hit them with fire and/or poison spells. My pets regen from a kill and explode on death. Occasionally I have to use potions in the tougher fights, but the build seems perfectly viable up to this point...

For me too, I killed a necro and his robes/helm solved my mana regen problems. I wish the range on the summon skelly was further and he doesnt attract aggro very well, mobs run past the summon cast and he only springs into action once I am in combat so they are literally just staring at a skeleton unless I start combat myself which kind of negates the pre cast summon.

Yes, the Necro gear from the Crypt really helps! Also, as someone pointed out here earlier, anything heavier than Light Armor seriously gimps a magic build. I have developed sneaking too and there is some Assassin armor that adds to that ability that I am wearing along with the Necro robes and mask. Armor relics can help too, although the Weapon relics haven't been useful since I don't have any loadouts other than spells in both hands...Mobs that hit me now burst into flames...

[BeerdedPhantom]

Also don't forget about consumables... there are potions and ingredients all over the place to instantly regain mana and to increase mana regeneration.

There are also spells for controlling enemies by pushing them away, slowing them down, weakening them, so it doesn't have to be all damage, all the time. Summons as it stands now seem to be more for a divide and conquer kind of strategy.

Personally I'm having a lot of fun most of the time softening up enemies with magic and finishing them off with a sword while dodging as needed, but sometimes I do take out a whole pack of monsters with just spells, and I'm less than half invested in spirituality, so... I don't know, I guess I'm just saying I'm not having the same experience.

[Sparhawk122]

Originally posted by living_one:

Isn't there only one skill which gives mana regen, and that's capped at 1 point per second?

Correct.

Which in the later levels/content does not balance well.

[BeerdedPhantom]

The spirituality stat increases that mana regen, if you read its description. I think it's actually regenerating faster than the skill and stat would indicate, but I haven't bothered to time it out myself. There are also multiple other ways of regaining mana that have already been listed out in this thread.

This isn't Diablo, where you're just facing endless hordes of enemies. You're meant to use the resources available to you to fit the situation, including gear choices and consumable items.

Melee combat is always more efficient and more dangerous in video games. The efficiency is its advantage, and the danger is its disadvantage. Conversely, ranged combat (bows and magic) are less dangerous but also less efficient. That's the classic trade-off.

Also remember that they've only "finished" Chapter 1 of this early-access game. There's no "late game" to speak of, so late-game "balance" is not really a relevant talking point yet.

I just finished my playthrough using a hybrid magic/melee build, so not even built for exclusively using magic, and magic feels plenty powerful. I was able to take out half of every group of enemies using magic and have all of my mana back by the next time I needed it, and very rarely even needed to use a potion. I remember taking out at least one boss-type enemy using just repeated casts of a basic ranged damage spell and only one potion.

[foxpwnsyou]

Originally posted by BeerdedPhantom:

The spirituality stat increases that mana regen, if you read its description. I think it's actually regenerating faster than the skill and stat would indicate, but I haven't bothered to time it out myself. There are also multiple other ways of regaining mana that have already been listed out in this thread.

This isn't Diablo, where you're just facing endless hordes of enemies. You're meant to use the resources available to you to fit the situation, including gear choices and consumable items.

Melee combat is always more efficient and more dangerous in video games. The efficiency is its advantage, and the danger is its disadvantage. Conversely, ranged combat (bows and magic) are less dangerous but also less efficient. That's the classic trade-off.

Also remember that they've only "finished" Chapter 1 of this early-access game. There's no "late game" to speak of, so late-game "balance" is not really a relevant talking point yet.

I just finished my playthrough using a hybrid magic/melee build, so not even built for exclusively using magic, and magic feels plenty powerful. I was able to take out half of every group of enemies using magic and have all of my mana back by the next time I needed it, and very rarely even needed to use a potion. I remember taking out at least one boss-type enemy using just repeated casts of a basic ranged damage spell and only one potion.

"Melee Combat is always more efficient"...no, no it literally is not lol have you played only one RPG in your life? Magic ALWAYS outperforms melee 10 to 1 the trade off is your insanely squishier than melee and with "Ranged" you do ok damage at a distance but are slightly tougher than mages...this is the "standard" idk the RPG's YOU have been playing but that is definitely NOT the norm or you've just blatantly never played mage fully optimized in your life in literally the dozens of RPG's where they are OP as crap. This includes games like Darksouls 1-3, Elden Ring as well as Elderscrolls and just about every RPG out there...Magic is always king, always has been, people who don't get that havn't played many RPG's and or are terrible at optimizing and building them such as in the cases of Pathfinder: Wrath of the RIghteous where a Wizard is god period. At any rate what you've said is blatantly FALSE information about "norms" in RPG's.

[Yandy]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.