question for optimized magic play

[razorpine123]

just starting to use magic and i gotta say its painful how much eitr you need so whats the optimal food spread? i went 2 health 1 stamina when i was using regular stuff and now im using 1 stamina, 1 health and, 1 eitr food. can cast like 3 fireballs with seeker aspic then i have to wait for regen so is it better to be whole hog and get 3 eitr foods and just rely on bubble for "hp" or is there a better food combo?

[razorpine123]

forgot to bring up also the proverbial go grind out your magic levels strategy but leveling up is slow as heck

[Zachward97]

Just got 3 magic food the shield at lvl 100 gives like 600 dmg protection its insane and always keep 2 skeleton up for extra help and then spam fire balls

[OctoberSky]

Are you in the Eitr Weave armor (level 2) to help eitr re-gen? That plus full rested bonus and then 2 eitr foods and a good health food like honey glazed chicken should get you on your way. As @Zachward97 pointed out, get your blood magic as high as you can at greydwarf or draugr spawners before heading back into the Mistlands. There is also the eitr re-gen potion to help if you are in a tight combat setting.

[archelonian]

Unless you are really bored, you never need to grind levels for anything including magic. Higher levels will increase your damage, but they are not required for any of the content and the time investment is not worth it. In general spamming fireballs is not an efficient use of your eitr. With careful timing/aiming 1 eitr food will suffice for any situation you encounter in the mistlands. A notable amount of the fireball damage is the dot effect so your eitr damage efficiency will considerably drop by rapidly spamming them. I'll typically run 2 health foods and 1 eitr and primarily use fireball on most enemies (this is without caster gear). When fighting seeker groups careful aiming and timing can make it easy to hit multiple seekers at once, + points if you can stun them first with the lightning atgir secondary attack to make your fireball deal massive damage. Soldiers should be handled with a mix of fire and melee and combos to its rear do a lot of damage and are a great use of your time while waiting for eitr to recharge. Gjall are best dealt with using a bow or crossbow. Ticks can be dealt with either with fire or melee. Fire is the easiest way to damage the boss, but melee can do a lot more damage if you are able to manage your stamina well and dodge the boss' attacks (but is also a lot more dangerous).

[chewer]

Mostly agree and slightly disagree with @archelonian.

For food, I run 1 health, 1 stamina, 1 eitr. Combined with the Eitr Weave Set, this is fully sufficient to be safe, mobile, and aggressive. Note that magic drains eitr, meaning your stamina can be used fully for mobility.

Rapidly spamming fire balls does make sense insofar as fire damage stacks. The more mobs are burning, the sooner they drop.

There seem to be two playstyles: The tank relies on having high HP and armor. The bubble will be very useful for her. The "rogue" (not sure about the name) relies more on mobility, light armor, not getting hit. I prefer this second playstyle. For her, the bubble is still useful, obviously, but in no situation I've found the bubble to be a must-have. As a mage, all your stamina can go into being mobile, avoiding hits, seeking out advantageous positions.

Skills will help somewhat insofar as they lower eitr consumption and damage. It's not much, but it's something. Elemental magic increases automatically just by fighting. Leveling blood magic is more challenging / grindy and, IMO, not worth the effort. If you want the bubble, upgrade the bubble staff to level 2 for the 2 minute duration, that's it.

[OctoberSky]

For each player and player style the best solution is what enhances your enjoyment of the game so agree with all of the above. Rather than investing your main character and seed world you can create a throwaway seed with a throwaway character and go into creative mode (devcommands, debugmode, 'B') to build a personal combat arena and then supply your throwaway character with combinations of equipment, nutrition, rest and skills (console raiseskill) to learn what works for you and what does not as you spawn in any number of opponents with various star rankings. When you have your optimal from your game laboratory, return to your real game and go in that direction. In Valheim 20 players will have at least 40 opinions but what works for you is what makes the game fun for you. Another player might rage quit if they did that formula and yet another might issue a steam award as the best player advice ever.

[Happy]

As a mage I roll with porridge, aspic & any top tier stamina food, usually fishnbread or Omlette. I figure I'm going to be squishy anyway, why bother with health food- you can always use shield bubble on yourself & allies, as it skills up, the better the damage it can absorb, kill anything else with Frost Staff or Staff of Embers.

Note: Using this setup in the Swamp mostly, next to a Mistlands, where I farm ticks from a Gjall I keep finding for more blood clots & kiting back into the swamp, it's almost too perfect. Most mobs in the swamp are weak to the elemental damage from staffs (Abominations, Wraiths & Skeletons are a joke for staff of embers) And Blobs, Oozers, Leeches & semi-submerged Draugr are weak to Frost.

I use a Skeleton spawner in the Swamp with raised ground made from the hoe to protect the spawner, and to farm the Blood Magic skills, (in the same Swamp using skeletons vs skeletons) and keep poison mead & Major health mead or medium health mead for when I want to top my healthbar quickly after Protection of Dead Raiser use, works well.

[Zombits]

Your best HP food like misthare supreme , with the 2 eitr boosting food . That way you can spawn 2 skelletts as bodyguards while mining or carry a cart . Only way to have fun with magic is 2 eitr food

[Kursor1]

Originally posted by razorpine123:

forgot to bring up also the proverbial go grind out your magic levels strategy but leveling up is slow as heck

Yeah, raising your magic skills is... not fast...
You can get elemental up to 40-some without too much pain by going to the mountains and trapping a golem in a pit and then just blasting away with the frost staff at least.
You can autotrain your blood magic skill while you're asleep or afk with a properly designed grey dwarf farm (while also going blind with the amount of wood and stone etc you get in the process), but even thats slooowww. Still took about a week overall to make 100.

[Rhapsody]

You won't be fully "optimized" until your magic skills are like 70 range anyway.

Everything else depends on your other skills like blocking and running as well as the kind of territory and opponents you are going to be engaging. There's no single build or setup that works in every situation.

Originally posted by chewer:

There seem to be two playstyles

There's no such things, you can avoid death in many different ways from stealth to just ignoring opponents and moving away. Reducing damage by avoiding attacks entirely or trying to absorb them are the primary means in close quarters against bosses, but outside those scenarios simply moving out of the way by walking prevents incurring damage, regardless of what kind of gear you are in.

You can only try to optimize for a single given situation, not all of them simultaneously.

[chewer]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

You won't be fully "optimized" until your magic skills are like 70 range anyway.

Everything else depends on your other skills like blocking and running as well as the kind of territory and opponents you are going to be engaging. There's no single build or setup that works in every situation.

Originally posted by chewer:

There seem to be two playstyles

There's no such things, you can avoid death in many different ways from stealth to just ignoring opponents and moving away. Reducing damage by avoiding attacks entirely or trying to absorb them are the primary means in close quarters against bosses, but outside those scenarios simply moving out of the way by walking prevents incurring damage, regardless of what kind of gear you are in.

You can only try to optimize for a single given situation, not all of them simultaneously.

Strongly disagree. With an elemental magic build, I've yet to encounter a situation which I couldn't handle. Or one which was even remotely dangerous. Using 1 health food, 1 stamina, 1 eitr, and light armor, you have high mobility and high aggressiveness. This setup has worked in every situation so far. And my skills are not even close to 70. How did you come up with this number anyway?

In addition, it seems you kind of agree with my two playstyles. Either have enough health to just take hits (my "tank") or move out of the way (my "rogue"). Sure, there are playstyles in between these two. But these are the two extreme options. However, maybe I don't understand your argument ...

[i have 2026 vision fear me]

I'd say 1 stamina, 2 eitr foods is good. Stamina allows you to kite, jump, run whatever, and the 2 eitr food gives you a good level to use magic based weapons. Plus, the staff or protection is really good, since it also costs % based hp rather than a flat amount, going for more health makes you take more damage from it. It's a really powerful buff that even stops you from being staggered from any attack if i'm correct, and that's huge.

So one stamina food for kiting and general stamina based activities, and 2 eitr foods, and make sure to use an upgraded staff of protection (2 minutes from one is really powerful, as it means you need to generally use less health and eitr for protection since it lasts longer.)

Also to add on, if you can equip a fenris hood in combination with the eitr weave robe and trousers. The eitr weave hood has the least bonus to eitr regen so therefore you can trade it out for the +3% movement speed bonus. Though that depends on you whichever you prefer or perform better with.