Mage Build?

[goewi]

Any tips for starting out as a mage? I get one shotted, and it takes 5000 fireballs to kill a bandit

[Tyrax]

add skill points to spirituality>combat>spell power (first node). Max that out to 50%, then max out the bonus spellpower from wands/cubes (first tree, first node). Once you have 300-400% spellpower, you literally one shot everything common. If you have the lightning spell, you can charge it up and instantly delete 5 enemies at once.

Attributes: all in spirituality, but you might want to put 6 in endurance early game for the awesome druid set which needs 6 spirituality, 6 endurance. That one also gives you +50% spellpower.

By level 12 (super early game) and with the full druid set you should already have around 500% spellpower.

[grahfstampede]

The trick to mage is finding some decent spells. Summon wolves in the mine right next to the starting beach helps. If you go through that mine and exit on the other side, then head north there is a good fire spell at the top of a tower there. Plenty other good spells, but those are some nice starters.

[Tyrax]

Originally posted by grahfstampede:

The trick to mage is finding some decent spells. Summon wolves in the mine right next to the starting beach helps. If you go through that mine and exit on the other side, then head north there is a good fire spell at the top of a tower there. Plenty other good spells, but those are some nice starters.

Lightning is the most OP. I don't know if it's bugged, but the light cast does more dps than the heavy cast of other spells. And the heavy cast is over 100 during early levels, whereas other spells barely do 50-70.

[Ranyk]

Actually, it's all about the spells you use. The first spells are weak AF. Bumrush north of the Keep to the druid site. Run through it and you'll find a ramp up above the site. Follow it all the way around the end and you'll find a much better spell at the very end. Once I got this spell, getting the third spell was almost a cakewalk. I've been using the third fire spell ever since since it's so OP. I tried getting the third spell before this since it was closer, but...it didn't go well. It's just north of the cemetary.

[TimsGamingDen]

Im level 30 mage and zooming.
I use mainly a lighting and fire spell, thunderlash and sorching blaze.
The lighting does around 180 and the fire one around 400 damage. (heavy cast)

I use 4 battlemages who seem to be good at tanking.
I have a mix of spellpower and mana regen gear and an +3 arcanist sword (200 damage) with 2 relic slots.

Enough mana regen to be still using spells with my reserved mana (summons).

All skill points atm in spirit tree, most in summon skills.
Attributes spirit en endurance.

[Ranyk]

Originally posted by TimsGamingDen:

Im level 30 mage and zooming.
I use mainly a lighting and fire spell, thunderlash and sorching blaze.
The lighting does around 180 and the fire one around 400 damage. (heavy cast)

I use 4 battlemages who seem to be good at tanking.
I have a mix of spellpower and mana regen gear and an +3 arcanist sword (200 damage) with 2 relic slots.

Enough mana regen to be still using spells with my reserved mana (summons).

All skill points atm in spirit tree, most in summon skills.
Attributes spirit en endurance.

Lightning is good for drowners, but fire is stronger most of the time. I have found that freezing guards made them super weak to fire, but taking that out into the world proved...worthless. I tried 2 ice spells and they just couldn't build debuff at all. For a game with debuff skills, it seems oddly hard to build debuff.

[SKN The LISPer]

Originally posted by Tyrax:

Originally posted by grahfstampede:

The trick to mage is finding some decent spells. Summon wolves in the mine right next to the starting beach helps. If you go through that mine and exit on the other side, then head north there is a good fire spell at the top of a tower there. Plenty other good spells, but those are some nice starters.

Lightning is the most OP. I don't know if it's bugged, but the light cast does more dps than the heavy cast of other spells. And the heavy cast is over 100 during early levels, whereas other spells barely do 50-70.

This is wrong, lightning is not the most OP. I've provided a table bellow (scaling of spellpower % is not taken into account since all would scale equally based on it, so base damage is what matters).

TL:DR depending on a few caveats, the best spell is frost, fire or 'thorn'. Though 'lightning' isn't a tier 1 spell, and so is 'usually' first tier 2 spell you find, making it best until you find any other tier 2 spell-ish.

Added within spoiler tag incase someone doesn't want to be spoiled on what spells exist.


Note: tiers are made up by me to make it easier to understand the 'spell upgrade' pathing. I.e; comparing Thunder Lash to Hailstone is disingenious.

spell	Tier	Light dmg	heavy dmg	Note
Hailstone	1	4-6	15-22	Lowest mana cost + highest chilling effect
Burning Ember	1	5	18	Does high burn effect which causes DoT
Blood transfusion	1	3-4	2 pr second	None
Thunder Lash	2	17-25	25-37	Somewhat easier/more guranteed AOE than the others
Merlin's Thorn	2	20-22	63-69	Auto target at light cast, and shoots 7 (weaker) projectiles at heavy cast. Unsure if dmg is each projectile, or just an assumed average of x-hits
Flame Torrent	2	18-20	9 pr second	none
Winter's Crone's Wrath	3	15-20	22-30	Tooltip on this is misleading, the longer you hold the less spread you get*, at max charge the 5 bolts go straight as a single bolt. I havent' done extensive testing, but considering heavy = 1hit-KO on most, and damage on light-cast with 1-2 bolts hitting (on avg), It's most likely pr bolt damage, so heavy is 22-30*5 = 110-150 base dmg.
Scorching Blaze	3	80	96	Auto-targets closest and has AOE explosion

-- Edit: --

Obviously enemy resistances play a role. On a drowner, frost only does half of it's usualy damage (fully charged) for example, while on undead it does double(?).

[SKN The LISPer]

Originally posted by Ranyk:

I tried 2 ice spells and they just couldn't build debuff at all. For a game with debuff skills, it seems oddly hard to build debuff.

Agree, best way to build up frost is dual-wielding hailstorm and heavy cast then spam. This builds it up pretty fast. It also depend on enemy, some are more resistant to cold buildup than others (bandits have high resistance it seem, for example).

Second best is slow time and spam the upgraded frost Winter's Crone's Wrath, spamming it's light attack standing right infront builds it up quickly. You notice it does this due to the bonus damage from hitting frozen enemies (guranteed crit?).

So I guess the slower builtup is an attempt to balance it due to the higher damage output total + it disables the enemy temporarily. Hailstorm is best tier 1 spell in term of pure damage output if you factor in the chill-effect's bonus damage.

[dcagle2011]

something i havent seen is get the summon skeleton and the cube that restores health and adds 50% bonus damage. plus the robes are way better than the druid armor. get bonus spellpower skill, then go for more summons. summon 5 skelies and then swap to whatever your best spell is, you can only cast it once but the bonus mana regen lets you pretty much cast one after the other, all while your skelies tank and kill ♥♥♥♥ for you, once they get low swap to the cube and heal them. when they die you get your mana back and can just summon more, every 4 summons you get to heal them and add bonus damage. took out the dueling guy at like lvl 13 without getting hit and just sat there summoning.

you can help them out and murder stuff, or just walk through and let them do the work. plus that robe and mask look cooler then any other armor ive ran across

[Chaosolous]

Learn to dodge.

[Watafaka]

I already have a prety OP mage built, but when I was leveling I put points into wands and cubes and now I don't need to use wands anymore, I just dual wield spells. My question is, do those points in wands still apply if you don't equip a wand or are just wasted stats, did anyone test this? I assume they're wasted stats, just want to know what you think.

[Seaspite]

Blood Transfusion is your best friend. I am guessing you could finish the game with it.

[JIK]

Originally posted by Watafaka:

I already have a prety OP mage built, but when I was leveling I put points into wands and cubes and now I don't need to use wands anymore, I just dual wield spells. My question is, do those points in wands still apply if you don't equip a wand or are just wasted stats, did anyone test this? I assume they're wasted stats, just want to know what you think.

they are supposed to work only with wand or cube and spell in other hand anything else is bug. if you don't use them origin potions are plentiful.

[Sharkinbear]

Originally posted by Tyrax:

Originally posted by grahfstampede:

The trick to mage is finding some decent spells. Summon wolves in the mine right next to the starting beach helps. If you go through that mine and exit on the other side, then head north there is a good fire spell at the top of a tower there. Plenty other good spells, but those are some nice starters.

Lightning is the most OP. I don't know if it's bugged, but the light cast does more dps than the heavy cast of other spells. And the heavy cast is over 100 during early levels, whereas other spells barely do 50-70.

A single target spell should hit harder than a chain lightning spell. That's

[Sharkinbear]

Originally posted by SKN The LISPer:

Originally posted by Tyrax:

Lightning is the most OP. I don't know if it's bugged, but the light cast does more dps than the heavy cast of other spells. And the heavy cast is over 100 during early levels, whereas other spells barely do 50-70.

This is wrong, lightning is not the most OP. I've provided a table bellow (scaling of spellpower % is not taken into account since all would scale equally based on it, so base damage is what matters).

TL:DR depending on a few caveats, the best spell is frost, fire or 'thorn'. Though 'lightning' isn't a tier 1 spell, and so is 'usually' first tier 2 spell you find, making it best until you find any other tier 2 spell-ish.

Added within spoiler tag incase someone doesn't want to be spoiled on what spells exist.


Note: tiers are made up by me to make it easier to understand the 'spell upgrade' pathing. I.e; comparing Thunder Lash to Hailstone is disingenious.

spell	Tier	Light dmg	heavy dmg	Note
Hailstone	1	4-6	15-22	Lowest mana cost + highest chilling effect
Burning Ember	1	5	18	Does high burn effect which causes DoT
Blood transfusion	1	3-4	2 pr second	None
Thunder Lash	2	17-25	25-37	Somewhat easier/more guranteed AOE than the others
Merlin's Thorn	2	20-22	63-69	Auto target at light cast, and shoots 7 (weaker) projectiles at heavy cast. Unsure if dmg is each projectile, or just an assumed average of x-hits
Flame Torrent	2	18-20	9 pr second	none
Winter's Crone's Wrath	3	15-20	22-30	Tooltip on this is misleading, the longer you hold the less spread you get*, at max charge the 5 bolts go straight as a single bolt. I havent' done extensive testing, but considering heavy = 1hit-KO on most, and damage on light-cast with 1-2 bolts hitting (on avg), It's most likely pr bolt damage, so heavy is 22-30*5 = 110-150 base dmg.
Scorching Blaze	3	80	96	Auto-targets closest and has AOE explosion

-- Edit: --

Obviously enemy resistances play a role. On a drowner, frost only does half of it's usualy damage (fully charged) for example, while on undead it does double(?).

Your magic chart is off. There is a tier 1 lightning spell. It's called flicker bolt and you can buy it off the alchemist at the keep.near your stash. I was using with my skeletons until I found the tier 2.