Spell crafting and how it works

[Zaniaac]

I got this game a few days ago and I am really loving thus far, but I'm dumbfounded on how to create spells. So far I have the Kinitic, fire, ice, and corruption sigils, but have no clue on how to combine them or how the spell wheel works. The video sorta showed but didn't seem to give that much detail on how to combine them. Any help would be great thanks.

[Monoclebear]

This is completly quoted from this awesome guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=241547970

Inventory, Items and Crafting
4 - Inventory, Items and Crafting

When you press I (for Inventory), it doesn't just bring up your Inventory. It brings up your entire character menu. When you get on to it, you'll notice that it shows three circles: fire, ice, and a black one (because we can't access it now).

In the center if the Shield, which isn't from any school of magic - it's your RMB without any other button pressed alongside it.

You can go to the Synthesize tab, where you'll find all of your items (and a bit more). But first, let me explain the difference between an Augment and a Shape.

A Shape is the type of spell you're using. Shields are your health, work passively, and when you're not in combat for a certain amount of time they'll start to regenerate health up to the highest not-fully-depleted bar (so if you lost one bar completely, you have to recover it through exploration), and Shields are NOT the way you block. Barriers are used to block attacks with RMB. Targeted Attacks are your LMB, and it works best on a single target. Barriers are your Space Bar dodge+AOE combo. And the AOE itself is LMB+RMB.

Basically, the Shape of a spell tells you what it does...

...and the Augment are buffs, to give your spell some more stats (like condition duration, damage, speed of projectile, etc). And Augment is a passive upgrade, but only to ONE spell. It is NOT a passive upgrade to your character (sorry).

When you're going to craft a spell, you need to first select what type of school of magic you want - Ice, Fire, or the other one? (That other one will only allow you to use the Shield Shape, so don't worry.)

After you've selected the school of magic you're going to use, you need to select the Shape you're going to use. There will be a list, but if you're using Fire or Ice (and most of you will be), you'll find that you can only use Targeted, Barriers and AOE.

OMAKE! (japanese word for "extra", "more", or "encore" - although this could just be an EDIT in disguise):

On the bottom-right corner of the screen, you'll find three icons within a circle. The bottom-left of that is the symbol for the Targeted Shape (long-range, single-target). The top one is for the long-range high-damage AOE attack. And the bottom-right one is for the Barrier (Dodge+AOE attack).

That'll help you at first.

Augments use colors and letters. Here's how they read:

Destruction = "De" in Red
Description: Destruction is the Spell's Intensity. For Shield, that means how much "HP" your Shield has. In Targeted spells, it means direct damage. Etc. It could be renamed "Intensity" so it's easier to understand.

Control = "Co" in Blue
Description: This determines how well you control the "Shape" of your Spell. So this means the general characteristics of Targeted Spells, Shield, Barrier and AOE. Things like area, speed of projectile, and things of that nature fall in here.

Mastery = "Ma" in Green
Description: This determines how well you've mastered a particular school of magic (get it? because you're becoming a master of this school of magic? wow, I need to get Mastery in coolness... much sadness, so tragedy, such drama). With fire, that means damage over time. With ice, that means freezing or slowing down enemies. (I think this affects Critical chance, which give you the status effects when you charge an attack.)

Destruction gives more damage in most spells. I haven't really checked what Mastery and Control do, I'll share more as I find out. =)

What's a Spell and what's a Sigil? Well, a Spell is an active effect, while a Sigil is a passive effect. Shield is an example of a Sigil, while Firestorm might be an example of Spell. (More sigils might come later.)
5 - Synthesizing and Crafting Spells
5 - Synthesizing and Crafting Spells

Here's where this game's ingenuity shines more than anywhere else. When you defeat a monster, or destroy one of those orange egg/nest/swarm things, you'll be rewarded with an item. You can also be rewarded for finding scrolls, checking out those weird-looking rifts (the long purple and black things, that cause you to see purple holograms and wonder "is this real life?"), or going to those pinkish-red areas with bones or the remains of less-fortunate characters (or NPCs).

When you're going to Synthesize an item, you have three main types of Shapes (plus the Shield shape), and three main types of Augments.

Shapes - Targeted, AOE, Barrier, Shield (Barrier is NOT the same as shield)
Augments - Control, Mastery and Destruction

Items also come in several rarity levels. You've got Common (white), uncommon (green), rare (blue), epic (purple), and legendary (color unknown to me so far). These indicate how valuable or powerful an item is.

3x Common (white) => 1x Uncommon (green)
3x Uncommon (green) => 1x Rare (blue)
3x Rare (blue) => 1x Epic (purple)
3x Epic (purple) => 1x Legendary (orange)

(Three Legendary items, as I've found out the hard way, don't make anything better. They just give you a concussion once you realize what you've done, and they have about an 80% chance to dent your desk or flatten your keyboard. Why is it 80% chance? Because if it takes you 3 out of 4 times to realize your mistake, you'll end up slamming your face against the desk a fourth time because you didn't realize just how stupid what you were doing really was.)

When synthesizing, try to synthesize three items of the same rarity type, and of the same sub-type. Example: If you synthesize 3x Control Augment (common rarity), you can get either an Uncommon Shape (random) or an Uncommon Control Augment.

However, you can also synthesize three different Augments of the same rarity, in which case you'll get either a random Augment or a random Shape of one rarity level above. Example: If you Synthesize 2x Uncommon Targeted Shape and 1x Uncommon Barrier Shape, you can get either a Rare Shape or a Rare Augment.

You can also synthesize a Spell (that's been crafted), an Augment and a Shape - but you'll get a random item.

You can also get a Legendary Item, and synthesize it with two Epic of the same type, to get a new Legendary Item. That could be helpful if, for example, you wanted a different Shape than the one you have. (Note: I haven't done this myself, only seen the previews.)

Overall, save up your items, and synthesize items so you can get the items you want. Saving Destruction Augments and Targeted Shapes can be one of the more awesome things you do, especially if you can get a really nice Homing Targeted Shape (which allows you to be less precise when aiming, and can help you even if you enemy moves out of the way from where the spell was going). This is especially nice when trying to use crowd control to slow down or freeze that ranged enemy, and then get up close and personal to finish (and ditch the mob of close-quarter enemies that are probably surrounding you right about now).

And for the holy gourd's sake (did I just make a Charlie Brown reference? am I the only one who got that? wow. much sadness. so age. such oldschool), save your Shield Patterns. You'll want to use them, trust me. And ditch the "Quick" shields, because they may be quick, but they break easily. You're better off with more HP in your Shield, since sometimes you can't avoid getting hit when there are too many enemies. If you've got a Quick Shield pattern, try to use it later to Synthesize another Shield of a better rarity, but don't feel afraid to toss it in with two other Shapes to get a more useful Shape of another kind - and yes, it's that bad.

NOTE: Thanks to joshuawhere and his amazing guide (check the bottom section), he mentioned that some items will have more slots. Never mix items of more slots with those of fewer slots, because you'll end up with the lowest number of slots of any item Synthesized. More slots = More good. And more good = more good, there's just no way around that kind of circular logic. Circular logic works because circular logic works because circular logic works... =P

[Zaniaac]

Thanks for the info