Are mages viable?

[Cthonyxa]

I'm just starting out the game and have been toying around with making my adventurers different "classes" based on their stats and main skills. The only problem is that my "mage" character uses melee attacks at roughly the same rate as my melee characters.

Is the game just set up for melee (STR) focused primary attacks or is there something I'm missing?

[dubesor]

I had a mage all game just so I had someone with high INT for enchanting before I had 999 with melee guys. Feels weak to me. Maybe I understand magic wrong but the highest magic dark magic lvl3 does pitiful damage and doesn't seem to scale. The Ultima spell (ultimate spell) also seems very weak compared to just melee. I am currently on Impossible ice map and they have melee counter so I am trying all sorts of magic combos to no avail yet.

the problem with mages is also that they can't use lifeleech as it only works on melee attacks. sure, if you can 1shot trashmobs it's fine but vs bosses/drawn out fights you need a recovery spell, which takes 1 extra slot and when it's used you lose dps since it's using heal over a damage spell. it even seems to use heals when already full hp. double magic works a bit but still, massive dps loss. Overall mages seem super weak. Just level 1 guy for int stat for enchants imho though.

[Cthonyxa]

That's unfortunate :/ Thanks for letting me know

[Lain½]

I'd like to add that even though I also think mages are not that viable, you should still do the character quests, which unlocks new skill slots but most importantly also new recipes

[seVen.16]

总结楼上的发言 法师太弱了 需要加强
Master is too weak

[CelticMutt]

Yeah, I'll agree - even DoubleCast Ultima with the Break Limitation skill doesn't do as much damage as an optimized melee character in my experience, and as stated mages don't benefit from health stealing skills. They do have Recovery which heals for full, but it takes an action to use unlike the health stealing skills. Also, they don't benefit from Double/Triple/Quadruple Hit, even with the Magic Basic skill line (see below).

However OP, you are missing one thing. I think you get the recipe from the Magic Researcher quests, but there is an early wand (staff really) called the Apprentice Wand that teaches the skill Magic Basic. What Magic Basic does is it replaces your mage's melee basic attack with Black Magic level 1 - that is instead of pointlessly hitting with the wand, they'll always attack with magic. I don't remember which wands give the skills, but there is also Magic Advance and Magic Master, for Black Magic level 2 and 3 respectively. It's still not enough to really compete with melee though, sadly, even with Pamela who gets a small bonus to magic damage.

[timchen214]

This is a very good topic.

At the beginning of making this game, I didn't really thinking about jobs in this game. jobs means limit in most games, and I hate it.

There is magic in the game, and in 1/4 of the weapons give you magic skills.

However, magic is just another way of attack, or most time a solution.

What if you meet some monster with unlimited def?or some monster you can never hit?

Try use magic, it will be a surprise.

[dubesor]

I tried pretty much all magic skills and combinations for 70+ hours and it wasn't a suprise, lol.
I ran 1 mage right from when you got the first one (Sandal) and never took him off. He has learned every single magic spell that is available in the game, I have tried dozens of combos and none are even remotely close to being viable.

Mage needs a heavy damage spell and a way to choose which spells are used. Ultima should be renamed to represent it's true damage potential. Dark Magic lvl3 and the master level is way too low. Autohitting with stick does more in lategame. Doom is just inferior to Water bladed. 20% chance water bladed means on average 5 turns to instakill, doom is 7 turns and gets shielded from targets you wanna hit most of the time. Double Magic is too random, sometimes uses the same spell twice also uses stuff that makes no sense (eg waste turn to double heal when full hp). Disable spells like lullaby etc are too unreliable because of random and zero AI. Mage needs 3 skill slots to do what Fighter does with 1 skill slot. And then it's still worse.

No / extremely bad lifegain, pathetic damage, unreliable skilluse, low armor (if you want intgain) all combined make mages really bad. Their only use is a lanewaster to grind for the enchant stat, which gets obsolete once your fighters are maxed stats.

[Cthonyxa]

@CelticMutt I restarted shortly after making this thread (a bad habit I have with games like these...) so I haven't unlocked that skill yet and I ended up making my one mage a combo magic/melee character (which hopefully will be a good compromise for late game stuff). It's good to know it's in the game, though.

@timchen214

At the beginning of making this game, I didn't really thinking about jobs in this game. jobs means limit in most games, and I hate it.

I can see where you're coming from; jobs/classes can definitely limit characters in RPGs. I think it's different with a system like yours, though, where you're essentially making your own character's roles by choosing their skills. Balancing the game so that a bunch of different skills are viable in endgame opens up more playstyles for people, which is the opposite of limiting them.

For me, I dislike having to optimize all my characters to one specific set of skills in order to win. I like the idea of being able to choose skills based on what kind of character I want. Like having a "mage" who I can use the spell skills with or a "pirate" who relies on their DEX and steals from enemies and whatnot. I find being able to do that adds to the "roleplaying" part of the RPG experience.

In any case, I think it would be awesome if the magic skills could be rebalanced to be more like the melee skills in terms of skill slot usage, power output, and life steal (Drain is actually a very common mage spell in most RPGs so I was a bit surprised to hear that it wasn't in this one). But whatever you do, I appreciate that you're reading posts in the forum and taking what people say seriously.

[Bad Cookies]

The problem i see with my mage is that she doesnt use magic. I mean she does, just rarely. She mostly uses that tiny stick wand with no dmg to hit stuff instead of using magic.

[Amicus]

I had great success with my mage with magic attached skill. The damage is constant that way, and you don't have to wait for casts to see good damage.

[CelticMutt]

Originally posted by Brotha PhoonZang:

The problem i see with my mage is that she doesnt use magic. I mean she does, just rarely. She mostly uses that tiny stick wand with no dmg to hit stuff instead of using magic.

You have to learn the skill Magic Basic from ... I think the Apprentice Wand. It makes mages always use Black Magic level 1 instead of hitting with their wand. You don't even need Black Magic equipped for it to work. There are also level 2 and 3 versions called Magic Advance and Magic Master, but I forget which wands teach them.

edit: Also, make sure to always have your wand enchanted. That's what determines your magic damage.

[FrozenHell]

I believe you don't have to differentiate between "warrior" and "mages" in this games, just like timchen214 said :

Originally posted by timchen214:

This is a very good topic.


However, magic is just another way of attack, or most time a solution.

What if you meet some monster with unlimited def?or some monster you can never hit?

Magic really is just another way of attack, you'll eventually want to have your adventurer both have good str and int so they can hit hard (damage from melee hit comes from both physical and magic part via enchanting)

Using "magic skills" is a completely different story though since it has limited use, albeit really important at some part of the game where the opponent has really high evasion or counter your melee hits really hard.

Even if you trained someone with high int and very little str, you can still do high melee hit with enchanted wands especially if the element supress the enemy. The best part is you can still use skills like life leech and quad hit and benefit from it. Which one do you prefer, spending one skill slot to always damage and restoring your hp or spending two skill slot to use "magic skills" for damage and another for recovery skills. And even then, your adventurer will rarely use active/magic skills unless you use another skill to make them use skills more often, so that more like three skill slot. And even then.....you don't get to choose when they cast recovery or attacking skills and you'll probably see a lot of instances when they heal at full hp

[Cthonyxa]

The problem with Magic Basic is that it isn't available early enough. You can get the "mage" character (Pamela) right after unlocking the first set of maps, but realistically you're not going to get the RECIPE for the Apprentice Wand until you unlock the third set (the first Normal map, I think? Or was it the Light/Dark maps?) and one of the MATERIALS (eyebright) is (I assume? I haven't gotten any yet) the next map set after that. That's way too late in the game for what is, literally, a basic skill.

I think that the magic stuff should be rebalanced in the following ways:

1. Magic Basic should be on the Oak Wand. This makes it so that a "mage" build is viable from the beginning, thus encouraging players to use the magic skills more.
   
2. The Apprentice Wand should teach Black Magic Lv1. Maybe also using materials from Normal Forest instead of later maps.
   
3. The Magic Basic type skills should always be available before the Black Magic skills (a swap where necessary is the easiest way to achieve this).
   
4. Pamela's Staff quests should be based on Magic Basic/Magic Advance/Magic Master to open her skill slots instead of Black Magic.

I think that would open up a lot more paths, especially in early game, for magic-based characters.

[LaikWQC]

how to use double magic? I have double and black lvl3, my mage using double magic and... that all, nothing happen - where is 2 cast of black lvl3? what I'm doing wrong? sometimes he using black instead of double