Best Mage Build for a Newbie

[Grimace from Minecraft]

So I got the game during the sale and booted it up and I'm stuck on the character create screen. I wanted to do battlemage but will that just make me decent at everything and good at nothing? Or if it's viable what should I choose to start the game off with. I'm playing with a friend who is gonna be a rouge as well. Any help getting started is appreciated, thanks!

[Woland]

I found it's not really bad to be a jack of all trades, master of none for a wizard.

Fire spells are excellent for damage (also it has probably the best purifying spell in the game!).

It's worth to pick up one or two summons on the road as well, the most useful ones I found are the Fire Elemental and the Undead Decapitator.

Hydrosophist has heals which are qutie important (and rather decent Crowd Control, plus usefulness against fire-based monsters). Rain is also sort of a must have.

Geomancer works amazing with fire, as it tends to knock down and poison (which explodes when you shoot it with fire).

Aerotheurge got good stuns, teleportation and some alright skills, but personally never really got into this one.

Witchcraft got probably the best set of buffs, debuffs and crowd control skills, along with some other pretty useful skills which helps you getting rid of enemies quickly.

I tried not to spoil the fun of discovering and trying skills for yourself, so just explained the general idea behind it. So far with my friend we found that wizards seem to be far easier to build when you're new to the game than melee characters.

[Grimace from Minecraft]

Thanks for the help! I chose wizard for a starting class, I'm just having trouble deciding what spells, abilities, and talents are best good, any suggestions?

[Woland]

I did write a wall of text, but made it in a spoiler tag, however I'd suggest not to read it, for your game experience's sake. Really, experimenting with skill combinations and discovering all of them is part of the charm this game has to offer.


Starting levels:

Midnight Oil + Flare in the beginning is great combo to set multiple enemies on fire.
Small Fireball is going to pay off too on about level 4, for you're going to meet a lot of undead in the beginning (which are vulnerable to fire).
Minor Heal and Strong Regenerate are both great heals (even out of combat, it helps cutting the downtime between fights).
Teleportation helps you crowd control the enemies and get to places which would be normally hard to reach.

Low levels:
Boulder dash (earth) is a very useful long range AoE knockdown, damage and poison. Also works well with fire spells.
Fire elemental is decent damage dealer and a way to soak up damage.
Blind is extremely good, as it skips turns for most enemies basically and it's 100% chance to hit blinded enemies.
Rain helps to clean up fire so you can progress, also can be used for several other occassions, you'll figure it out.

Mid levels:
Oath of Desecration - Amazing damage buff from Witchcraft.
Armoured Undead Decapitator - excellent tank against physical damage (piercing, ranged, etc), has pretty solid movement range, deals nice amount of physical damage, immune to poison and bleeding and has attack of opportunity. The most useful summon I had so far.
Purifying Fire - can clean charmed effect.
Deadly Spores - Massive poison damage, hard to use when there're objects in the way (ie near walls, in caves, etc).
Destroy Summon - does what the name implies.

There're a couple more useful skills on these and the higher levels, you should be able to figure them out, however these are the most useful ones I've encountered.

Ability-wise, you should put points on these according to what you use the most (or where do you want to unlock more skills). Witchcraft isn't really that important in the first ~8 levels, I guess, so I'd go for Fire, Earth mostly and a point for Water just to have heals.

Keep in mind, you also don't have to pick everything on one character. You can get a wizard companion that does the healing, ice and lightning spells.

As for the talents, Far Out Man is pretty good for a start, so is the Know-it-All. Later on Glass Cannon is really amazing (although you'll have to get plenty of +Con items to offset the HP loss) and since the other talents aren't as profitable for wizards, I'd personally pick Pet Pal too, for the hilarious conversations and sidequests with animals (also steam achivements, if you care about those).

[Stabbey]

There is no "one" mage build. You should instead think about what you role your mage should fill in combat.

Do you want to just pile on direct damage? Fire and Poison (Earth) spells are a good choice.

If you want to focus on summons, then Earth is good as it has three summon spells. You can only have one summon out at a time, but Earth will let you rotate between them.

If you want to focus on debuffing enemies, Witchcraft is good. Buffing allies, Earth is good. Water is for healing.

If you want to lock enemies down with crowd control, the Water and Air schools make a good combination, with teleport spells, water + lightning for stun, water + cold for freezing.


Take a look at the Skills[divinity.gamepedia.com] page, and decide which role and which schools you want your mage to use.


A Battlemage is NOT a pure mage, it is a hybrid: a melee fighter who also uses magic.

[ROFLpl0x]

Pyrokinetic/Witchcraft is a good combination and you'll have the option to pick up another mage companion with Hydro/Aero within the first city you get to.

This mage also has crafting and blacksmithing abilities.

[zonker39]

Since you're probably going to pick up Jahan you want to start with Fire/Earth. You can buy as many skill points as you could ever need to max out whatever the heck you want anyway, one book from the Teller of Secrets can give level 2 in another magic type and one trade of a talent point can max out a new skill. There *will* be stuff that's immune to half the magic types so adding a third or even a fourth can be handy. Seriously, you can max out about ten skills up to level 5 without even trying so just go for it.