A beginners guide for dummies like me

[Zorp the Surveyor]

I'm somebody who's still learning, but I do know the stuff that was hard for me to figure out, and that's the same stuff that could really keep a beginner from enjoying the game.

There are some awesome threads out there about how the mechanics of the game work (Atavist, CallMeFray, and warrax40) but I still found that I had a hard time wrapping my pea-brain around them. So I put this together for people who learn better from narrative than abstraction.

So, Beginner Dragon, here's a crash course based on my limited knowledge. I can't tell you everything about the game, but I can give you enough to get you on your way without feeling overwhelmed, which is what stops so many gamers in their tracks when it comes to Lichdom. I'm going to write this as a spellcrafting narrative, which would have helped me tons starting out.

Quick glossary:

• Sigils: The "elements" (fire, ice, kinesis, etc) on which you base each spell
  
• Spell Patterns: The 3 ways you can deploy your spells (targeted (think projectile), AOE, or nova (localized explosion using your shield)
  
• Spell Types: The 3 types of magic your spells can use (destruction, control, or mastery)
  
• Damage: The number of hit points a spell will do
  
• Critical Multiplier: A percentage the spell damage will be multipled by on a critical hit or fully charged hit
  
• Destruction: The spelltype that initiates most of the damage you'll inflict. Think of it as a match -- you use it to start big explosions.
  
• Control: The spelltype used to immobilize the mob so you can dump on gasoline and then light the match. can be used to "store" extra damage applied when a destruction spells hits. (Note, some sigils use control to do damage over time instead of immobilization.)
  
• Mastery: The spelltype that's key to bigger damage -- a debuff that mastery spells apply to a target and destruction spells then convert into damage. Think of it as gasoline -- it makes explosions bigger.
  
• Critical Hits: All spells have a certain percentage chance to hit as criticals, which will multiply standard damage by the critical multiplyer. If, however, you don't feel like gambling, just fully charge your spell and it will always do as much damage as if it had critted. If a fully charged spell also happens crit, you get what's called an apocolypical. More on that later. Regardless, doing fully charged damage is key to your success because that's what brings in the critical multiplyer that amps your damage.

The damage system is built on your understanding how destruction, control, and mastery interact. If you can get that figured out, you're going to be about 80% ahead of where most people start. If you don't get that figured out, you absolutely cannot succeed.

So, let's take it step by step as if you just dropped into the game...

You start out with only the fire sigil. You can use targeted to toss a damage fireball, AOE to drop fire from the sky, or the nova to blast fire from your shield. Use these to get through the first few enemies until you've got some spell components. You should easily be able to get through the city this way.

Once you start feeling like the mobs are pushing back a littler harder, /don't/ start spamming fireballs or turn to the evil Smart Inventory (it will get you killed). Instead, back up, and pop open your custom inventory. Here's where the fun and real challenge with Lichdom starts.

To take those mobs down, you need to do more damage in less time. So, let's upgrade your spells to do just that.

First, create a new targeted spell and choose mastery augments. Mastery based augments can do all sorts of things, but their main function is to apply mastery to enemies. Think of mastery as gasoline. Sure, you can burn something with a match, but if you douse it in gas first, that match is going to get amplified A LOT. That's what mastery does. If your targeted spell does 120% mastery, that means every time you hit the target with that spell, another 120% mastery will be added to the target. Generally we want higher mastery numbers because those mean more gas.

Now, let's craft a new AOE spell, and go with destruction augments on it. Picking destruction means you're putting down your gas can and picking up your matchbox. As you build your destruction spell, look at 3 things (later in the game you'll look at many more). First, you want good raw damage. Let's say our spell does 100 damage. Second, you want a good critical multiplier. That multiplier can jack your damage up up to 200%. So in our case, a 200% critical multiplier would mean that a fully charged spell would do 200 damage (100 damage * 200%). The third figure you need to look at is mastery consumption. Remember, how we used our targeted spell to heap on some mastery? Well, a destruction spell's mastery figure tells how much of that heaped mastery will be ignited (to stick with our analogy) when the destruction spell hits. So let's say our 100 damage, 200% critical multiplier spell has mastery of 200%.

Now we've got two spells. Let's use them. Jump back into the action and unleash your targeted spell on the next enemy. You didn't do any damage but you did just drop 120% mastery on him (or more if you fully charged). Hit him again. And again. Now he's got 360% mastery sitting there. Think of it as 360 units of gas poured on him. Now switch to your AOE, fully charge it, and hit him. Your attack should do roughly 400 damage ((100 damage * 200% critical multiplier) * (200% mastery consumed) = 400 damage. Now the enemy is toast. But let's say he survived. We would have consumed 200 of the 360 mastery on him. So if we hit him again with a fully charged destruction spell, we'd get ((100 damage * 200% crit mult) * 160% mastery consumed) = 320 damage. If he survived that, then all the mastery would be gone, and you'd either have to finish him off with straight destruction or start pouring on mastery/gas again. (Here's a good place to say that if your fully charged destruction spell also crits, then the formula above will also be multiplied by the apocolypitcal multiplier. You can see how that could do /massive/ amounts of damage.)

If you can just get that, it'll make Lichdom amazing for you. But you can take it a step further by adding in control spells.

Let's take your nova and build it around control. Control spells don't focus on pouring the gas or lighting the match. Instead they focus on strapping down the bad guy so you can pour or light... or both.Control lets you stop enemies in their tracks and also suspend them so you can do /extra/ damage that then gets figured into the final damage calculations for your desctrution spells.

Combine mastery, control, and destruction on the same enemy and you'll be doing thousands upon thousands of damage in no time. And then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions after that.

And knowing that you created the spells yourself -- /that's/ what's fun. Enjoy!

A couple of things to note. First, destruction, control, and mastery can manifest in really varied ways depending on the sigil you use. While ice, kinesis, and lightning immobilize enemies with control, fire does DoT with control, and corruption incubates bugs(!). Lots of variety! Anybody who says the game is boring hasn't considered the idea of suspending an enemy tumbling head over heels in mid air, infecting him with bugs and a giant flying hive larva, freezing him solid, and then using pure kinetic energy to split him into a million pieces, at which point the bugs and flying hive emerge to attack other baddies. I think that fits the definition of a mage who's a total bad @$$. And that's just using 3 sigils 5 different ways (stuff you can do by the 3rd map). There are 8 sigils and 24 ways they can be used. Think of the possibilities!

Second, your damage figures will vary from what I used above because the game uses RNG to vary base damage on each cast. I think the variance is .85 - 1.15, but I can't remember for sure.

If any of you experts want to add to this or correct me, please feel free to. This is all about making the game easier for new people.

[Asuzu]

All I wanted is a new Heretic, without idiotic system where you have to cast spells in certain boring orders/patterns.
Was it really that hard to implement?

[Zorp the Surveyor]

Originally posted by Asuzu:

All I wanted is a new Heretic, without idiotic system where you have to cast spells in certain boring orders/patterns.
Was it really that hard to implement?

I get what you're saying, and what you want isn't that hard to impliment. But that's not the game the developers wanted to make.

Lichdom isn't coincidentally deep. It's fundamentally deep. The point was to create a game where a million different approaches could be used to taking out enemies and where those approaches could be determined on almost every level by the player himself.

If you want some cookie-cutter game where you've got 5 classes which each have 3 attacks and 2 skills, there are tons of mostly re-skinned clones to choose from.

But if you want to create your own truly unique mages with a massive variety of approaches to inflicting pain, damage, and death, then Lichdom is what you're looking for.

[Muninn]

the devs were morons for a variety of reasons (wont get into it. old news everyone knows at this point)

personally, like Asuzu i was hoping for something it wasn't (BUT that it was advertised as being erroneously). i woulda been perfectly happy with a mode that removed any reqs for stat and minmaxing of numbers, and just went with the raw spells themselves scaling as you went in such a way to provide difficulty. where the creativity was specificly in the use, NOT in the statting.

didnt help that if you DIDNT stat it very specificly, that in and of itself precluded advancing. you had to stat one way or else. thats not really depth at all.

anywho, regardless of my opinion, my bottom line is good guide! gives the important basics that are never really explained. still holding out hope the folks that grabbed the license after the devs went broke might someday rework it a bit somehow for us non-numbercruncher types.

[warrax40]

Very nice write up.. Yay for another one who gets it..

I thought the Gasoline/mastery and match/destruction analogies are a great way to explain that.

[Zorp the Surveyor]

Originally posted by Munin:

the devs were morons for a variety of reasons (wont get into it. old news everyone knows at this point)

personally, like Asuzu i was hoping for something it wasn't (BUT that it was advertised as being erroneously). i woulda been perfectly happy with a mode that removed any reqs for stat and minmaxing of numbers, and just went with the raw spells themselves scaling as you went in such a way to provide difficulty. where the creativity was specificly in the use, NOT in the statting.

didnt help that if you DIDNT stat it very specificly, that in and of itself precluded advancing. you had to stat one way or else. thats not really depth at all.

anywho, regardless of my opinion, my bottom line is good guide! gives the important basics that are never really explained. still holding out hope the folks that grabbed the license after the devs went broke might someday rework it a bit somehow for us non-numbercruncher types.

Thanks! And that's such a great idea. My son would love to play, but he's not old enough to get the numbers part, let alone brave the math guestimation.

Originally posted by warrax40:

Very nice write up.. Yay for another one who gets it..

I thought the Gasoline/mastery and match/destruction analogies are a great way to explain that.

Thanks! High praise coming from warrax!

So quick question for you and the other guys who really know the mechanics. Why is it that the order mastery -> control -> destruction tends to do more damage?

I remember reading in one of your guides that that's the order to use. For my entire first playthrough, however, I found that ice control -> kinetic mastery -> fire destruction yielded more damage.

Now, however, as I'm going through NGP, things have flipped and your m - c - d order is working about 3-4x better.

I'm sure that's a function of some variable I changed in a spell, but I don't know what it could be.

Any insight?

[Eden]

Originally posted by Josh FiveSeven:

So quick question for you and the other guys who really know the mechanics. Why is it that the order mastery -> control -> destruction tends to do more damage?

In general, because Mastery buffs the damage of both the control spell and the destruction spell. Note, however, it's only Ice control that stacks its damage into the damage calculation of the subsequent destruction spell. The other control spells do not work like this. At sufficiently high gear levels MA->Ice CO->DE will always yield the highest damage.

In essence, leaving affix bonuses and static multipliers aside, the damage of the 3-step combo is this (using Kin destruction as example because it has the highest native crit multiplier):

(Ice DE * (1 + Ice Crit * (1 + Ice MA) + Kin DE) * (1+ Kin Crit * (1+ Kin MA))

The lead term is cubic in terms of base stats and includes 2 crit multipliers: Ice DE * Ice MA * Kin MA * Ice Crit * Kin Crit. At high gear levels this is where most of the damage scaling comes from and why you can one-shot bosses to make the game boring for yourself.

Originally posted by Josh FiveSeven:

I remember reading in one of your guides that that's the order to use. For my entire first playthrough, however, I found that ice control -> kinetic mastery -> fire destruction yielded more damage.

I would guess that you weren't applying enough Mastery for both Ice control and fire destruction to consume their maximum quantities. In that case you're likely better off having your fire destruction spell consume the available Mastery given its higher base crit multiplier and so that fire's base damage will also benefit from the mastery enhanced multiplier.

[warrax40]

Very nice write up.. Yay for another one who gets it..

I thought the Gasoline/mastery and match/destruction analogies are a great way to explain that.

Thanks! High praise coming from warrax!

So quick question for you and the other guys who really know the mechanics. Why is it that the order mastery -> control -> destruction tends to do more damage?

I remember reading in one of your guides that that's the order to use. For my entire first playthrough, however, I found that ice control -> kinetic mastery -> fire destruction yielded more damage.

Now, however, as I'm going through NGP, things have flipped and your m - c - d order is working about 3-4x better.

I'm sure that's a function of some variable I changed in a spell, but I don't know what it could be.

Any insight?

Without getting to mathy like atavist did in the last post. The stored damage gets added to the base damage of destruction and the all respective multipliers go to work.

a simple example.. if an ice control spell can store 450dmg and then that 450 gets multiplied by mastery consumption, crit and apoc .. that 450 could now be say 5000...

then let say you have a destruction spell that does 500dmg, well now the base dmg will be 500+5000= 5500 and then all the typical multipliers goto work.

Unlike what atavist said i found this work work with kinesis and lightning control as well, but ice is the easiest to get working.

However all this aside by endgame i was barely using control anyways. A good mastery spell and a good destruction spell are enough to blow up any mob in one hit.

BUT HEY! if we are shooting for absurd damage numbers, i like Corruption destruction the most.

the biggest damage i've done was under these conditions.
- first get Delirium Apoc buff.
- Get mob in Ice control (single attack NOT pool)
- Drop Apoc Mastery pool on mob (any sigil)
- Rapidly spam a 100% crit chance Corruption Destruction Lob..

when that baby goes off, OMG! i got 7 million once and usually can get above 5 million repeatedly. Lol...


But whatever 200K is all you need to once shot any mob even at the Tier 20 level.

[Eden]

Originally posted by warrax40:

Unlike what atavist said i found this work work with kinesis and lightning control as well, but ice is the easiest to get working.

I should say that I haven't really touched the game in 2 years. At launch each of the CO effects worked differently (with Ice CO outscaling the others massively), but that may of course have changed.

The key point to underline is that, as you say, you don't need all that damage. Being able to do a few 100k damage efficiently is more important than dealing millions of overkill.

[warrax40]

such a shame this game reached so few people. at 4k on my 1080ti these days this game is darn impressive.

[warrax40]

Thought i would bump these while i was here.

[Zorp the Surveyor]

Originally posted by warrax40:

Thought i would bump these while i was here.

Man, you just got me to jump back in. lol. What a great game!

[DeadBabyJuggler]

I saw a lot of negative reviews about the difficulty and was very apprehensive. It's not hard at all if you understand how the game works. lol. Very good game albeit a little repetitive and grindy. Very fun though.

[warrax40]

Originally posted by DeadBabyJuggler:

I saw a lot of negative reviews about the difficulty and was very apprehensive. It's not hard at all if you understand how the game works. lol. Very good game albeit a little repetitive and grindy. Very fun though.

Yeah basically this.... the game secretly expect you to understand the crafting system by a couple of hours into the game, the first 4 tentacle demon boss in shax's lodge is a CLEAR point where many players just give up and quit because that dude without mastery is near impossible.

Imo half of the negative reviews are correct. This game does have flaws and half of those reviews point that out. The other 50% are the players that never understood the crafting system. In defence of that 50% the game does NOT do a good job of teaching you (except through pain) about the crafting system. The journal is all you get.

Originally posted by Zorp the Surveyor:

Originally posted by warrax40:

Thought i would bump these while i was here.

Man, you just got me to jump back in. lol. What a great game!

I permanently switched to linux a few months ago, lichdom (cry engine 3 games in general) just doesn't run without going the full virtualization route. I plan on tamering with proton and/or wine again soon but right now parenting is keeping me busy.

[TheFlyingFudgeman]

Thanks, mate. The game really does kinda suck at teaching the player how to make their spell loadout just completely ridiculous and make their mage into a total badass, this guide really helps there. Heck, I went from beating the second boss by constantly pushing control spells up his rear end and abusing the short opening to deal my damage (which made me feel like I was like a dang mosquito just slowly tickling the guy to death, and it takes forever that way and completely sucks if you don't use agile shields as well because you'll still be dodging a lot) to blowing him up in what, 5 minutes or so.

To everyone looking for some ideas for creative killing sprees, here's some spell finisher combos to really spice up your game:

-Wasp Nest: Kinesis Mastery Ray (rays are actually good for something, and that is applying lots of mastery over short time. Especially useful with Kinesis, the NPCs are just god dang helpless if you whip that one out, they can't move even an inch, and since enemy attacks clash with spells and get cancelled, they won't ever hit you on range either, they are just stuck getting more and more helpless against the next destruction spell that's gonna come for their nuts) -> Corruption Mastery -> Corruption Control -> Kinesis Control -> Fire Destruction
Effect: The affected target gets smashed to the ground from the Kinesis Control being dispelled by the Fire Destruction. On impact with the ground, the target explodes and creates a bug swarm and a hive follower

-Sadomasochism: LOTS AND LOTS of Mastery (any sigil except Delirium because Delirium Mastery will mess up the last component of the combo) -> (Control (optional, but if you use this, then use a type of Control that doesn't prevent the enemy from attacking you)) -> Delirium Destruction -> get hit
Effect: The target will receive damage upon hitting you, as usual with Delirium Destruction. This damage will be amplified by the applied Mastery (and Control), to the point the attack will cause most targets to instantly kill themselves by attacking you. If enough Mastery is applied, this combo is a guaranteed overkill and can be used to quickly recharge Synergies linked to any sigil you add into the mix via Mastery (and Control)

-Recreation: Necromancy (make sure you make a fully charged attack with this) -> LOTS of Kinesis or Phase Mastery (depending on whether you wanna have time slowed down for a little with the final hit or make the target hold still until they stacked up a Mastery level that shoots their backside to the moon if you even so much as look at them from an angle) -> Kinesis Control -> Phase Control -> LOTS of Kinesis Destruction (reference: use a Phase Control Pool for the previous step and just keep dealing kinetic damage until the pool is gone, then proceed to the next step so you don't run out of time and muck it all up) -> Phase Destruction
Effect: The target will either immediately be wiped from existence or slowly travel to a random location near its previous location in a straight line and frequently receive damage along the line before being torn to bits. In the target's spot, an undead follower will appear. It will either use Phase or Kinesis attacks, depending on whether the initial impact of Phase Destruction or the stacked kinetic damage taken along the phase-shift's path killed it

-False Demon: Fire Control -> Corruption Control -> Delirium Control -> Corruption Mastery -> Fire Mastery
Effect: The target is enslaved. Other NPCs near it receive fire damage over time, and the enslaved target deals additional fire damage and infects targets with parasite eggs via its weapon, but its health will decrease over time. When the target dies, it turns into a swarm of bugs and spawns a hive follower

[warrax40]

Originally posted by It'sRashu:

-False Demon: Fire Control -> Corruption Control -> Delirium Control -> Corruption Mastery -> Fire Mastery
Effect: The target is enslaved. Other NPCs near it receive fire damage over time, and the enslaved target deals additional fire damage and infects targets with parasite eggs via its weapon, but its health will decrease over time. When the target dies, it turns into a swarm of bugs and spawns a hive follower

that one is neat..