Blood magic not well balanced at all.

[Damnion]

You can't level it at all until you get to mistlands, an area in which it is wholly useless in. You have to eat 2 eitr foods just to cast minions that can't stand up to the enemies in the zone as they all have aoe attacks and your guys all stand clumped up together. Not to mention that only leaves you 1 food slot left to decide if you want health or stamina in a biome that eats your stamina like candy and the mobs do serious damage. Add to that the fact that in addition to high casting cost you also have to pay a hefty chunk of health for every cast. Why not it's not like you didn't already have to pay the max health drop from not being able to eat 2 health foods. Then you've got the horrible AI that will stand around shooting at an enemy behind a rock instead of the enemy that is standing out in the open, or how they have trouble navigating the terrain. The direct damage spells are a lot more useful (elemental staves), and don't cost current health to cast.

Oh and minions should travel with you through portals. Having to recast everything and then top off your health with a potion every time you run back to base is a pain.

[Salty]

Nah. The minions do seem useless at first. Level up your Deadraiser so you can get 3 or 4 skelies, then just walk around. You can level up your Death Magic by walking around lower Biomes and letting the minions kill everything. The Staff of Protection is probably a must have (I do use it always) but also adds to Blood when you cast. My Necromancer has like lvl44 Blood Magic and I can pretty much walk through any Biome on Normal except Ashlands. The food is a killer, that gets really expensive. Stick with them they'll get better. The food with what will really get ya.

[Cattastrafy]

Having to level up magic skills in older biomes is definitely a design flaw imo.

Wtb low lvl magic!

[Eightball]

@Cattastrfy It would be nice, but they would need to introduce several new items. A new magic stave that would do damage on par with starting weapons (maybe an earth elemental one that basically hurls rocks) as well as at least one if not several new foods that give Eitr (the lowest one now is a plain Magecap at like 25 Eitr) and perhaps a new piece of clothing that game some type of regen.

Then they would need to scale it all so it does not surpass the starting stuff you find in the Mistlands, but instead progresses up to it.

Even with just a staff of frost and come magecaps you will rip through the early biomes because magic is so powerful.

But, yes it would be nice to be able to play magic from the start.

[Cattastrafy]

Originally posted by Eightball:

@Cattastrfy It would be nice, but they would need to introduce several new items. A new magic stave that would do damage on par with starting weapons (maybe an earth elemental one that basically hurls rocks) as well as at least one if not several new foods that give Eitr (the lowest one now is a plain Magecap at like 25 Eitr) and perhaps a new piece of clothing that game some type of regen.

Then they would need to scale it all so it does not surpass the starting stuff you find in the Mistlands, but instead progresses up to it.

Even with just a staff of frost and come magecaps you will rip through the early biomes because magic is so powerful.

But, yes it would be nice to be able to play magic from the start.

You're entirely right, of course.

It'd be a lot of work, but I feel like the immense replay value added would be worth the effort.

Perhaps the low lvl staves should be less "unique" and more simplistic in design (low lvl fireball staff, low lvl frost etc) and save the unique ones that currently exist for mist/ash

[drKorf]

I have 2 ways I level up Blood Magic. (1) Make a Greydwarf spawning factory where they drop into a pit. Put your skeletons in the pit. Watch YouTube videos while your skeletons kill everything. If you place a strategic campfire, the Greydwarfs will be passive and your skeletons will last a long time. (2) Go to a Draugr village and bring some weapons you want to level up. Put a bubble around yourself and let Draugr pop it over and over while you kill them. You only level up BM when the bubbles pop. If you go to the Swamps, you can get both Skeletons and Draugr attacking at the same time and you can pop faster.

To level up Elemental, go to the Mountains and trap a Golem in a hole. Then make a shelter with a fire so you regenerate magic faster. The Golem is resistant to frost damage but you still get credit for blasting it. I also like going to the Plains at night. You can do a lot of group damage blasting mobs with fireballs.

[Damnion]

Running around in area's you no longer need to be in, or standing at a spawner for hours and hours to get a skill up to a point that makes it usable and can easily be knocked back down on your next death doesn't exactly scream enjoyable gameplay.

[Eightball]

@Damnion There really is no need to go back to lower level biomes as your skills will raise fast enough through normal use in the Mistlands and Plains (which most of us will still visit when we first get magic). That is unless you are striving for 100, Blood magic is viable at low skill.

If I recall the protection bubble grants a blood magic skill increase when it drops due to taking too much damage and not when you merely cast it. So I cast it on my skeletons, let them fight and lose their bubble then cast it again.

Since I am pretty sure you don't get any skill increase by just casting protection trying to keep it refreshed on your skellies is actually not good for skill raises. Cast it, let it get beat down, recast.

Same with the bubble on yourself. It will grant a skill bump when it is dropped due to taking damage.

And Blood Magic is far from useless in the Mistlands, at least for me. The bubble alone has saved my hide more than once and the skellies are a good distraction and, if you spawn all archers, can be the equivalent to a good DoT.

[HunApo]

Blood magic is balanced enough, the skeletts are super strong, even in ashlands are viable with bare minimum levels.
Level 10-20 is enough to make them not only a good meatshield but to deal a lot of dmg even on hard difficulty.
The bubble is strong at whatever levels.

Elemental magic on the other hand is super OP, namely staff of the wild.
After the buffs it got it makes any content on any difficulty a joke.

[Draconis]

Even whith all the tips given here, blood magic should get more methods to skill up.

But like others said, you should not rely solely on the skeletts. Use the staff of protection to shield them. If you do and don't die too often, your skill will rise by just keeping playing.

You can also summon your skeletts outside your mushroom farm while you do harvesting and planting tasks, so they can hunt hares for you.


If I play magic I tend to use even three eitr foods. Especially if I plan to use blood magic.
Having much max HP does not make much sense if you want to really use the dead raiser, because summoning costs a percentage of your max HP. And most of the time your shield from staff of protection has more HP than you lose from not having health food.
Just upgrade your staff of protection as soon as possible, so the shield lasts three minutes instead of one.

[CubedToTheMax]

Well, it would be better if they changed the Dead Raiser so it only asks for 95 Eitr, since you can get it from one specific food and have the other 2 slots for stamina and health. I believe Marinated Greens gives 95 Eitr, which seems good enough for the damn staff.

[Eightball]

@CubedToTheMax But that is what is nice about this game over some others. Players have choices to make that actually matter. Food being one of them. Do you sacrifice one stat to raise another or try to balance them?

For instance my mage is a true glass cannon as I made the choice to give up health to have more Eitr. I might not be able to take too many hits, but I can summon an Undead Troll. A trade-off I am more than happy with.

Depending on how 'deep' you choose to go in magic you can make do with just one Eitr food (and hurl fireballs and spit frost), but it is a choice and that is what makes the game interesting. Choices that have at least a little impact on gameplay.

[Buwaro Elexion]

The new feasts are great when going
2 magic foods. Plains feast gives 55 to both health and stam. I no longer need to choose.

[CubedToTheMax]

Originally posted by Eightball:

@CubedToTheMax But that is what is nice about this game over some others. Players have choices to make that actually matter. Food being one of them. Do you sacrifice one stat to raise another or try to balance them?

For instance my mage is a true glass cannon as I made the choice to give up health to have more Eitr. I might not be able to take too many hits, but I can summon an Undead Troll. A trade-off I am more than happy with.

Depending on how 'deep' you choose to go in magic you can make do with just one Eitr food (and hurl fireballs and spit frost), but it is a choice and that is what makes the game interesting. Choices that have at least a little impact on gameplay.

Well, I play with 2 friends, so we all choose different boss powers to help each other. We mainly use Eikthyr, Bonemass and Queen for all 3, might change the first one to Yagluth for the final boss. My friends will most likely fight with magic summons while I bow it down. After that is done, I'm either starting a modded world with them until the next big update, or joining an already existing modded server.