How do you use magic?

[Faceplant]

I've made at least half a dozen runs from start through Mistlands, but have never seen a reason to take the time to learn magic. By the time I was able to make everything, I was pretty much done with Mistlands and saw no reason to put the time in to learn it or train in.

Now that Ashlands is out, I'm thinking it's finally time, but I don't even know the basics, like can you spawn the skellis, put a shield on you on them, and then use the fire staff? I assume that takes a huge amount of EITR.

I've tried the fire staff in the past, and it seems like not a huge departure from "traditional" combat styles. I was able to take out a couple lox and fulings earlier without too much difficulty and just a single EITR food.

I also took out a couple of walls on my plains farm, but I learned that you can actually avoid deathsquito attacks with the feather cape and (I assume) a reasonable jump skill, just by jumping over their attack!

How do you use magic, and how much training do you recommend for a usable level? What combo of food?

Of course, I'm preparing for Ashlands, so my focus is mostly what will work there. Mistlands and earlier are not an issue at this point. I also just realized that fire staff is probably not the best choice...

Edit: No significant ashlands spoilers please. I know a bit about it at this point, but would rather learn about it when I get ther.

[Zep Tepi]

I haven't gotten to Ashlands yet, currently still messing around in Mistlands, so I don't know how things change there.

I like to carry the protection staff and the flame staff while exploring. The protection staff gives you a bubble that will take a certain amount of damage before it pops, perfect if something attacks you by surprise, if there are ticks, or even just taking the edge off of a hard landing if you're not wearing the feather cape. The fire staff is just fun. Who doesn't like a ranged AOE? The ice staff doesn't seem as useful because it has a shorter range and eats eitr.

The skeletons are fun and you can put your bubble on them if they are close enough when you cast it. But if you use them you're committed to being a mage at that point because you will need two eitr foods for summoning. Taking the skellies to a greydwarf nest or something similar can help level blood magic which also applies to the protection staff. They're not very useful for actual gameplay as far as I can tell. Kinda like dragging pet wolves around but much slower.

[SertanDoom]

Use magic? use the staff. Eityr food x2 and either stam or health. Blood magic and elemental magic around 40+ for ashlands. Skeletons are equipped when summoned if you're looking for a specific combination knife the ones you don't want and summon, repeat until you get what you're looking for.

Staff of embers has more than "fire" to hit with and it leaves a ground effect "fire" which will burn mobs, minions, and yourself. It also has long range so you can use it to hit spawners from far enough away that mobs don't see you. Up close you'll want the staff of fracturing or the ice staff. Ice staff downs single targets pretty quick. staff of fracturing hits, does knockback, and seems to stack burning on targets.

[Zombits]

I thought mage was best way to play solo, in tough biomes like ashlands. Got 4 tamed skeletons, useful as bait.

Zero chance to tank 20 mobs and fight melee here.

btw magic is very simple to use, to answer ur post. it's like having a range weapon and self defence at same time.

for Ashland I used 2 eitr and a stamina. But if I don't plan to run much, take 3 eitr. like taking a fortress

[Gunnar Hurtya]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

I've made at least half a dozen runs from start through Mistlands, but have never seen a reason to take the time to learn magic. By the time I was able to make everything, I was pretty much done with Mistlands and saw no reason to put the time in to learn it or train in.

Now that Ashlands is out, I'm thinking it's finally time, but I don't even know the basics, like can you spawn the skellis, put a shield on you on them, and then use the fire staff? I assume that takes a huge amount of EITR.

I've tried the fire staff in the past, and it seems like not a huge departure from "traditional" combat styles. I was able to take out a couple lox and fulings earlier without too much difficulty and just a single EITR food.

I also took out a couple of walls on my plains farm, but I learned that you can actually avoid deathsquito attacks with the feather cape and (I assume) a reasonable jump skill, just by jumping over their attack!

How do you use magic, and how much training do you recommend for a usable level? What combo of food?

Of course, I'm preparing for Ashlands, so my focus is mostly what will work there. Mistlands and earlier are not an issue at this point. I also just realized that fire staff is probably not the best choice...

Edit: No significant ashlands spoilers please. I know a bit about it at this point, but would rather learn about it when I get ther.

I suggest a spawner farm, dig a pit under a g.d spawner, and use the victims to the skill up. Mine are all below 10 again, but I can kind of hold my own with the new staves, and the baddy spawn is so insane, you can level up quite fast when you have all the good stuff.

[jonnin]

to use it you need to eat the weak eitr foods that feed the staves energy. this leaves you with low hp/stamina so while its powerful, its a bit risky too. Its probably best to go find a dwarf spawner or 10 or some swamp zombie village spawners and level up on them for a while.

[Mineralwasser]

You have good options for training elementalmagic and bloodmagic.

For this i recommend building "traps" for your trainingdummies. Training elementalmagic requires the staff of ice and a ice golem. Find one in the mountains and trap it with a hoe inside a wall of dirt so it cant move. The golem is immune to the dmg of the staff but it will still provide exp for the hits it recieves. If i remember correctly you can level up to 30 with ease. After that it becomes a long run. Depends of your patience.

The approach to bloodmagic is smiliar. I advice a 3x spawnsite (mix of drauger and skeleton) in the swamps. The ones where sometimes is a chest in the middle of the stones surrounding the spawners. Build a dirtwall around the spawners and put some dirt on the spawners to protect them from dmg. Now the arena is almost finished. You could build a plattform on top of the stones in the middle. There you can spawn your skeletons buff them with a shield and shove them down into the arena. It is no problem if they lose the shield. You can apply the shield from your plattform if build correctly because the skeletons run and attack the enemies directly under you. Getting to level 30 bm is easy this way. 40-50 is achievable too. After 50 it becomes incredible timeconsuming. I dont recommend the greydwarf approach. One spawner is not very effective to level bm fast.

Google for these 2 trainingmethods if you need help to build them.

For food i dont advice health food. Your bubble becomes your lifepool.
There may be a "battlemage" approach but if you go for classic mage you could go for 3x eitr or 2x eitr and 1x stamina. The reason i dont recommend health food is related to difficulty mostly. If you play on nightmare and your bubble pops, 1x health food wont save you. Maybe on normal or easy. In the end you could use 1x stamina or more eitr to outrun enemies or reapply the shield with your big pool of eitr.
Spinesnap is a good option in ashlands too and i dont recommend dropping this option. So 1x stamina is a good option.

3x eitr can be combined with the power of eikthyr if you need to run.
2x eitr and 1x stamina i would use the power of the queen.
In the end it depends on you and the difficulty you are playing with.

Some people dislike the skeletons but they provide some good options. But they work well with the 3x eitr variant. First of all you dont outrun your skeletons with your staminapool. Your friends will be near you most of the time. They are like an additional shield that swarms near you. And you dont have the problems that you had in mistlands with these guys. They work better in a flat environment. Who would have guessed. There seems to be some prioritizing of the enemies. If you are in a situation where you would need to run drop a skeleton and distract your enemies.

I want to give a last advice to the bloodmagicshield. A 400 life bubble seems much but you need to consider some things. It is a pure hp shield. No armor or resistance applys to it. Additional to that you recieve dmg you normally would not recieve. Some enemies deal dmg to the environment. (Chop/Pickaxe) This dmg will directly impact your bubble. You should be aware of that.

[Lorska]

Just do yourself a favor and instead of wasting your time grinding up a skill with no challenge, just open the console and set your skill to 50...
If there was any skill to it I wouldn't recommend this but all efficient skill grinds are absolutely brainless afk farms thanks to how skill gains work, so yeah just save yourself the time tbh...

[FREEZED]

staff of wild is pretty wild thing

[Mineralwasser]

Originally posted by Lorska:

Just do yourself a favor and instead of wasting your time grinding up a skill with no challenge, just open the console and set your skill to 50...
If there was any skill to it I wouldn't recommend this but all efficient skill grinds are absolutely brainless afk farms thanks to how skill gains work, so yeah just save yourself the time tbh...

And then you cheated and learned nothing while leveling up. Every once in a while you normally would test your skills in combat and test your performance on the current level. But hey, just level up and run in without the awareness of your current skillset.

[Lorska]

LMAO learning while afk farming.
You're special.
You'd have a point if people suggested levelling through normal means, not imprisoning enemies that can't touch you.
They didn't.
You can waste your time afk grinding as much as you want but don't pretend it's some sacred activity.

And if you're suggesting you could just test your level below that... Yeah? You can also just raise your skills to a lower level than that and test them.

[Mineralwasser]

Originally posted by Lorska:

LMAO learning while afk farming.
You're special.
You'd have a point if people suggested levelling through normal means, not imprisoning enemies that can't touch you.
They didn't.
You can waste your time afk grinding as much as you want but don't pretend it's some sacred activity.

And if you're suggesting you could just test your level below that... Yeah? You can also just raise your skills to a lower level than that and test them.

I told you not while grinding. I told you from time to time if you reach a certain level. You seem to be the special one if you cant understand and state nonsense or what you want to believe i wrote.

Just cheat. But why even play if you cheat? In that case just spawn the last boss in meadows, use "killenemies" and be done with it.

[Lorska]

I literally just told you that instead of raising your skill to say... 50 you can just do it in smaller increments and still have the exact same effect without wasting the time on a boring and brainless task.

It always amuses me when people compare skipping afk farming to killing the last boss in god mode.
One skips non-content no-skill brainless time wasting, the other one skips... Wait it actually skips nothing because the last boss doesn't actually give you anything beside his trophy so what are you actually doing here?

IF you feel the need to afk farm for whatever reason then just use the console instead. The only difference is that one wastes more time, outcome is identical.
I'm not telling people to just cheat their way through the game, just that it's more logical to raise skill to whatever instead of holding down a button for 6 hours straight if you were going to do it anyway.

[Mineralwasser]

Originally posted by Lorska:

I literally just told you that instead of raising your skill to say... 50 you can just do it in smaller increments and still have the exact same effect without wasting the time on a boring and brainless task.

It always amuses me when people compare skipping afk farming to killing the last boss in god mode.
One skips non-content no-skill brainless time wasting, the other one skips... Wait it actually skips nothing because the last boss doesn't actually give you anything beside his trophy so what are you actually doing here?

IF you feel the need to afk farm for whatever reason then just use the console instead. The only difference is that one wastes more time, outcome is identical.
I'm not telling people to just cheat their way through the game, just that it's more logical to raise skill to whatever instead of holding down a button for 6 hours straight if you were goingbto do it anyway.

Cheating is an excuse. And that continues further and further. Maybe i should cheat my gear i lost. Maybe i should cheat the other thing... And on and on and on.

To remind you on your readingcapabilities. Maybe cheat some of those for yourself. OP asked for methods to train. If OP wanted cheats he had asked for those.

[Lorska]

You understand the difference between "how" and "how much" right?
Please show me where he specifically asked for training methods.
I'll wait.

Edit: I'll remove the spite cause you tried the same.

And now I have to respond to all that edited stuff, gimme a moment...


Okay here we go.
Yes of course it's easier to do if you've done it before but again that is just a hypothetical and a problem for that person.
There is a vast difference between skipping the grind and skipping the game. The common training solutions are so mind-numbingly boring that you'll spend minutes preparing and then hours to just wait. You're not playing the game at that point.
To be fair this isn't a player issue, this is an issue how skill XP works which is a pretty horrible implementation.
If the progression was better there would be no need for this kind of uninteresting grind but that's not something we can change at this point.

In any case if people actively want to grind skills like that, it's okay, but if it's fine to exploit the skill system and monster AI to do this, it's also okay to suggest an alternative.
If you are a hardcore gamer and have lots of time to waste, go for it or just never grind and rely on your skills, both are fine.
If you are dad with limited time each day and you're playing with your kids... Maybe look into the alternative.

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

I would like to remind our fellow Vikings to fight the enemies of the all father in game, not each other. keep your response's polite and constructive.