Tips?

[Gold♥Shield]

I've played through the first game several times and I'm currently running through it local co-op with my girlfriend and we are getting slaughtered just from the sheer number of enemies and confined spaces. It's obvious they made this game considerably harder for some stupid reason and it seems most spells are noticeably weaker.

Any general tips would be appreciated.

[XoRt]

Play around with spell combinations, the combinations from the first game are not nearly as strong as they were but there are some very strong spell combinations to be found in the second game as well.

[Gold♥Shield]

We have been. If we hadn't already tried that, I wouldn't be asking for general tips.

I know in the first game, ice walls with lightning were extremely powerful as was Steam/Lightning/Arcane, but as you said, all the spells just seem really weak.

So far the best we've found is to use Arcane and Healing beams near the enemy to create an explosion for 2,000 damage, but the bomb takes a while to detonate and it's not always easy to get a clear line of sight for the beams to connect. More times than not, we end up missing entirely.

[XoRt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSjf7ihS3s0
There you go, took 2 minutes of searching on the web.

[Repsack]

Something that still works here is that you can stop enemy movement with earth and water. A quake stuns almost everyone and aoe water splash gets them wet too. Lightning and cold will jump to many enemies and freeze them solid! From here you can smash them with a rock or 5 aoe ice (cold+water)

[Gold♥Shield]

The problem we are having is that the enemies come in such large numbers it takes countless deaths and attempts to work past. In the first game, new encounters were fun and we looked forward to seeing what would come out way. Now, it feels more like a chore to work through these areas.

The best combo we've found so far is to start off by using the healing/death bomb until we are surrounded, then it's just the same kite/throw magick until their numbers thin. The big enemies aren't an issue - it's always being swarmed by the little ones and armored ones. I think if armor wasn't nerfed into the ground in this game, it wouldn't be so bad, but the movement penalty isn't worth tanking two extra hits or watching the armor melt because I got too close to a fire.

[Repsack]

AOE steam, lightning and arcane for the rest. That is a very good attack for being surrounded by enemies

[Gold♥Shield]

Well, we beat the game finally and it unfortunately sucked all the fun out of the franchise, so it's been uninstalled.

I appreciate all the responses. I'll leave this up in case anyone else searches for tips and stumbles across this. In the end, we basically just used Steam/Lightning/Arcane beams on everything and Healing/Arcane bombs for enemies we came upon.

[Repsack]

If you ever want to try again from the start, here is some tips that increases fun!

- with the early trivial enemies, try to think hard about many different attacks, just for style
- use an elemental Ward and try to defencively place many many walls and mines with 'that' element
- do not focus on damaging, just debuff them with as many different things you can, they will die before they even reach you

Here is a list of debuffs and how to use it:
- Lightning stuns enemies many times for just a few miliseconds
- Fire deals damage after the spell stops
- Cold slows
- Poison deals damage after the spell stops, AND slows, but not as much as fire or cold, but it stacks!
- Rock knocks enemies down, stunning them and bashes shields away, even as an AOE quake
- Steam applies the wet status, increasing lightning damage
- Water applies wet, push enemies around AND stuns enemies until they are not being pushed anymore!
- Any shield + element wall is a very local debuff, because it causes damage and other debuffs long after the spell has been cast!
- Rock+shield AOE makes for a loooong lasting closed off safe area, perfect for just thinking up the coolest next spell. You can even cast the wall AGAIN to extend thinking time forever!

[Gold♥Shield]

What's a ward?

Also, I loved debuffing and generally messing with the enemies in the first game because it gave you time to breathe. In this installment, they just throw hordes of enemies at you in a very small space. Half of our time playing was spent running in circles trying to heal ourselves just so we could attack again. With the way they nerfed healing mines, walls, and armor, there was no time to debuff and let DoT kill the enemies. If we didn't kill off a significant amount of enemies right off the bat, they would overwhelm us with sheer numbers and prevent us from moving around.

They tried to do what many soulless companies try and they gutted this game to make it more multiplayer-oriented. Basically giving a giant middle finger to all the fans of the first game in hopes of bolstering the number of people buying the game.

[Repsack]

A ward is shield+ 1 to 4 elements. If all 4 are the same element, that element will even heal you a bit.

[Gold♥Shield]

So a ward is a self-cast shield? Didn't know that was the name for it, but we used those often. Mainly for lightning, fire, and water. For water we just used the Feskar robes and didn't worry about electrocuting ourselves.

Still, the fact is that even with using wards, enemies wouldn't die quick enough and they would just close the gap and murder us.

They shouldn't have tried to turn the game into a roguelike. Some roguelikes are fun, but Magicka was never about dying hundreds of times just to reach the end.