This is why I won't use magic in the ashlands anymore...

[Draconis]

Edit (another disclaimer): May (okay, okay... DOES) contain self-irony

Disclaimer: This is neither a rant, nor any other kind of criticism. It's more a report about personal experience, maybe with a little bit of "asking for advice".

So... I know, the ashlands bring a few new, cool staves like the trollstaff, staff of the wild and so on.
And I read over and over again how powerful magic is against a fortress.

Welll - I guess that's not valid for me. So here's what happened.

I found a fortress. At that time I had my thundering nidhoegg on level one, all armor sets on level 3, flametal shield on 3 and the best foods available at hand. I also had staff of the wild and trollstag on 1, frost and protection on 4, embers and fractioning on 3.... so I could change my playstyle "on the fly" if I am in the mood.

My plan was: I build a small outpost near the fortress. A small trench between post and fort to trap patrolling warriors. And a high-risen stand to fling roots into the fortress from.
I built it. It was in the range of the skugg, so I had to refill the shield generator after a time. I could throw whatever magic I wanted from my siege-stand, within the cozy safety of my shield generator, unreachable for almost all the foes.
So the first skugg went down in no time.
Great! So now I would have to figure out where the spawners are. To do that, I decided to get closer to the fortress and build a structure up the wall....

On the way over a valkyrie crossed my way, seemingly out of the blue. It must have been somewhere near outside my active field of view. So... well, this might mean some kiting.
Then the charred pushed two warriors and three marksmen down from the wall... and then a morgen joined the fight.
Constantly out of eitr and out of stamina I decided to return home and change gear.
So I did, returned in heavy armor, let the valkyrie kill the morgen, the valkyrie got killed somehow by the volleys of the marksmen I guess. At least it was gone.
So I went back to build my ladders.
The charred had re-assembled on the wall now. After some time I managed to block them off with a floor piece that was just too high to push somebody over.

Well, time to change again, I thought. At that time my foods were running out, so it was the best moment to change to eitr and stamina, put my robes on, grab my staff (the troll one, you know...) and head back.
Bubble around me, ready to summon a troll into the fortress, I fearlessly approached the walls, climbed up my ladders.....
And....
Pop, goes the weasle - my bubbles gone almost immediately.
So back down, re-bubble, trollstaff ready again and this time I would be quicker.
So I managed to summon the troll. I managed to see it attacking something. I managed to witness the morgen havin respawned INSIDE the fortess and runhing along the walls!
And then - darkness. The screen said "you died".

Well, in the end I put on my heavy armor again, went back to the fortress and cleared it like I did clear the other two - with sword, shield, feet and courage. The morgen rolled the remaining undead into full-dead while I focused the spawners. It also rolled down the two chests that had been around the tower.
Maybe it had been one more at some time, but I guess either my roots, the troll or the morgen can have destroyed them and the contents had despawned... also, there was nothing obviusly usefill in them. Jade and bloodstone. Which I could use to upgrade the staves that actually led to my demise. If that's not irony, I don't know...

Well. At least there is always a chest inside the central tower. Right?

Wrong. When I opened the central gate with the battering ram I found the bell fragments and two molten cores. No chest.
Must have been destroyed by the morgen, the troll or the roots.


Well, that's the end for magic for me I guess. It's squishy, takes long to kill anything and can even kill your loot.

Maybe, just maybe, that has to do with the fact that my sword skill is at 72 while my elemental magic is at.... 5? 10? And my blood magic at 20 when I started the try.
Might have went differently with higher skills, but honestly:

Is it fun to level blood magic to a decent level? Can that even work with regular play, without camping spawners of bonemass with skeletts on the run?
Is my approach just totally the wrong one?
And... what do mages actually do when they encounter a morgen and a valkyrie at the same time, accompanied by a few warriors?


Maybe my next playthrough will involve sticking to magic from the mistlands on... just to see if that changes anything for the ashlands.

[Nooberix]

I guess magic gets useful when farming the firesword. The boss hits like a truck and cannot be parried as far as I know. But so far, I played 90% of the game with sword, shield and bow. And the double axes in the end.

[Famine]

im just far enough into the mistlands, that im just starting to make magic gear and food.

and i also got the feather cape, and tried running around with that and the fenris set. ooh man, 50 armor is waaaay to low for infested mines. easier to go with the carpace armor and just have fire resist mead. plus the magic food leaves you with less stamina and health.

i think its down to playstyle, magic just looks like its a different, higher player skill tier to use properly. im finding im better in heavy armor, with a couple weapons and a bow.

[DomDiaemus]

Ok being a mage isn't your strong skill... I get it...

"... On the way over a valkyrie crossed my way, seemingly out of the blue..."
That is the beauty of ashlands... and the sky is either dark or red... definite not blue... and nothing appears out of the blue, only when you do not pay attention to the surroundings. But then when not playing attention happens to anyone regardless of gear they are wearing.

As for me... I use mage gear since they were introduced in the game, so my skills are not just maxed up but also I enjoy the playstyle in either support of others/or just go alone in offensive front regardless what biome/dungeon.

As mage weapons go... staff of protection, skellies and the green (as I call it) slap-a-tron
As armor goes... full mage ashlands gear (blue)... and yeah my mage skills reached 100

But even with low mage skills, if you are aware of what surrounds you and let your skellies do the close combat... and you support them, you may find the ashlands is far too easy post the update which devs nerfed the game.

just as tip... ashlands fortresses... a single mage can take them... and destroy everything inside, but from its outside walls... so no other playstyle can do that unless brute force destroying the gate or using stairs climb the fort wall.

[[1DoD] Dodge]

The mage thing is only genuinely good if you spec yourself into it fully. Get the robes that regen, use the right foods, you're weak, dont worry about health because you have to run away from everything and use the staffs to distract and kill the enemies. if you try to multiclass the only thing youll really be doing is having two weak classes.

[Draconis]

Thanks for all the feedback.

I agree in most points here.

- That valkyrie did not come out of the blue but out of the red. To give the sky color some credit ;-)
- It wasn't actually that much of a surprise. I just thought "Eh... that one's far away enough and in doubt I'll kite it through the spikes". In fact, the real problem were the warriors that came down from the wall and the morgen that must have been hidden behind the fortress.
- Practice is gold. That's why I will maybe do the game full-mage from mistlands on. I remember I did that a lot before the ashlands update, but I guess I really need a lot of training again.

I also totally forgot about the skellies, although the terrain actually was quite good to use them (not much lava around the fortress). I think I just underestimated them.

But I do disagree on the "even at low skill points" thing. Simply because of blood magic and the staff of protection. At my skill level the shield broke from a single hit of a non-starred asksvin.
To me that means I would have had to play dedicated to magic from mistlands on, instead of just training blood magic to 20 and then try to switch playstyles in the ashlands. For various reasons. Not only skill levels, but also playstyle training for myself.

And I disagree on the take that "battlemages" are not a viable choice. They are. It's just a bit more complicated because you switch betreen magic and combat regularly. You use magic as long as you have eitr and switch to using a weapon while your eitr regenerates. However, I did not try that playstyle past mistlands yet. it's just that you actually won't use blood magic in that case.

[MeSoBad]

Played mage since mistlands, played it again on another server with friends. Loved it. Some days ago we arrived in the Ashlands and to be honest, it made me sad. As long as im playing alone, it feels quite strong. As soon as we run around in a team, I'm just dying over and over again. Dropped from almost 60 skill lvl at elemental magic to 37, which makes it worse and worse.

Now I changed to melee with berserker axes and it so much stronger and I'm not a onehit-victim at every third occasion.

[i have 2026 vision fear me]

Magic is by far the safest option when fighting as you don't use stamina for damage unlike every other weapon. You could argue bows are also safe, and yeah true, but they use stamina, and until you have high bow skill (which i never had so not sure how powerful bows can be) they can leave you in a bad spot by draining lots of stamina, or you just get less damage per stamina compared to melee.

But imo, that's sorta how it should be. A safe option shouldn't be the most powerful, but depends on what you'd consider powerful. Fighting the Queen as solo melee vs solo magic is a day and night difference. For melee you gotta kite and run, kill the adds with a demolisher preferably, and then you can maybe hit the boss for a couple hits before it scurries away. For magic you can run, aim and shoot, then run whilst recharging your Eitr, and shoot again and repeat. In that regard magic is far more powerful imo.

And also i love the root summon staff, by far one of the most powerful magic staves since you can place a couple nearby one another, and then kite enemies around them. Combine that with just a shield and sword, or a frostner heavy attack - knocking the enemies back and freezing them, is super powerful and low risk.

But i can't like, the Dundr is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible. It's cool, but i remember trying to use it, and it just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks. The knockback is decent i guess ? 12 shots, each doing 26 at the current max (realistically something like 12-18 though considering 26 is the max damage not accounting for skill level) with a 1.9 second reload ? It's actual ass crack. Low dps, and the UMPH is not there either really. On average you'd be dealing 200 lightning damage a shot, aka every 2~ seconds ? Unless it ends up being good against Deep north enemies, it's pretty crap. Against wet enemies sure it does 50% more damage, but so does the staff of frost, and i'd prefer that in most cases anyways.

But i'd say magic is perfectly fine if not most of the best weapon types. And i imagine it'll only get better and more diverse in the deep north.

[Draconis]

...and I had quite the opposite with the queen to be honest.

Magic: At some point the queen just disappeared and I could not find her again before she started regenerating.. when I found her she called her seekers, I had to kill them first and... well, hide and seek again. Less damage dealt than she actually regenerated. Also, I had to look for a safe space to re-cast the shield - a moment of huge vulnerability, because the health for casting are taken before the shield is active. With unlucky timing you will rest in pieces.

Melee: approaching the queen, anticipating the attack, roll 45° towards her, strike a few times, repeat. When the seekers come, parry them, kill them, back to the queen. When the brood comes, switch to an atgeir and spin them away (or just use a bomb). This worked much better for me. But: As I had sword somewhere around 72 at that time, the seekers were dead with two hits an the mistwalker did a decent amount of damage to the queen.

If my skills would have just been the other way round, I might have been able to actually fight the queen with that.

It's just that magic seems to be really depending on the skill levels. Which is bad for blood magic, because there does not seem to be a way to actually level that except from building an afk-trainer.

[GuardianRobot121]

Forgive me if I repeat things that have already been stated -- I am reading this on the fly. Mage is a viable class but robes are an essential part to it due to the eitr regeneration. That said, with the robes you can still take on the job as a battlemage. With this, I speak from experience. However, knowing which staffs excel against what situation is the key. For example, the trollstav is not an item you want to use in every scenario. While effective in distracting enemies, it can also leave you fighting your own summon. The dead raiser also is complicated due to AI pathfinding and their lack of high HP but when given a bubble, these skeletons can prove to be somewhat beneficial.

As a mage, your "heavy armor" should not be actual armor (as you need your robes for regen) but rather your bubble shield. As you increase your blood magic, your shield will increase in HP. However, know this: if your shield has taken any form of damage and has not been disabled when it is recast, it will not reset the HP, just the duration.

That said, the bubble staff (Protection Staff) is your armor, health, and compensation for two or three eitr foods since these foods fail to provide outstanding health as their health-focused food counterparts (i recommend two eitr foods and one stamina). Staff of the wild is also an essential part of your mage class. The vines are capable of rooting enemies, which leaves them stunned for a long duration to allow you to use your melee to backstab them with a high DPS weapon, such as the berserker axes (recommended) or the special attack of the slayer. Combined with the constantly hitting vines and their ability to serve as a wall to block attacks or alter the enemies' pathfinding, this staff is a must.

Frost and Fireball staff do have their purposes as well, but mainly for picking off targets like warriors and twitchers or frost for vultures. Trollstav is needed to go up to a wall and summon the trolls through the wall so that their impact disables the fortress spawners and they can draw agro of the enemies.

TLDR: Mage robes, Two Eitr Foods, Staff of the Wild, Protection Staff + Beserker Axes, Practice = Battlemage.

At least, this is from my experience and what I use when playing both solo and battle both Valkyries and Morgens at once with the occasional warrior and asksvin group or while assisting friends in the ashlands by focusing on rooting the enemies and using the protection staff to allow my allies to remain in the fight.

I hope this helps your future engagements. Mage can, and I do not exaggerate, solo the Ashlands. I would recommend increasing your elemental damage of course, but the vines from the Staff of the Wilds will obliterate enemies while you kite and launch fireballs or wait for the larger enemies to be rooted to switch to your axes.

[Osirine]

Originally posted by GuardianRobot121:

Forgive me if I repeat things that have already been stated -- I am reading this on the fly. Mage is a viable class but robes are an essential part to it due to the eitr regeneration and eitr foods not providing outstanding health as their health-focused food counterparts. That said, with the robes you can still take on the job as a battlemage. With this, I speak from experience. However, knowing which staffs excel against what situation is the key. For example, the trollstav is not an item you want to use in every scenario. While effective in distracting enemies, it can also leave you fighting your own summon. The dead raiser also is complicated due to AI pathfinding and their lack of high HP but when given a bubble, these skeletons can prove to be somewhat beneficial.

As a mage, your "heavy armor" should not be actual armor (as you need your robes for regen) but rather your bubble shield. As you increase your blood magic, your shield will increase in HP. However, know this: if your shield has taken any form of damage and has not been disabled when it is recast, it will not reset the HP, just the duration.

That said, the bubble staff (Protection Staff) is your armor and compensation for two or three eitr foods (i recommend two eitr foods and one stamina). Staff of the wild is also an essential part of your mage class. The vines are capable of rooting enemies, which leaves them stunned for a long duration to allow you to use your melee to backstab them with a high DPS weapon, such as the berserker axes (recommended) or the special attack of the slayer. Combined with the constantly hitting vines and their ability to serve as a wall to block attacks or alter the enemies' pathfinding, this staff is a must.

Frost and Fireball staff do have their purposes as well, but mainly for picking off targets like warriors and twitchers or frost for vultures. Trollstav is needed to go up to a wall and summon the trolls through the wall so that their impact disables the fortress spawners and they can draw agro of the enemies.

TLDR: Mage robes, Two Eitr Foods, Staff of the Wild, Protection Staff + Beserker Axes, Practice = Battlemage.

At least, this is from my experience and what I use when playing both solo and battle both Valkyries and Morgens at once with the occasional warrior and asksvin group or while assisting friends in the ashlands by focusing on rooting the enemies and using the protection staff to allow my allies to remain in the fight.

I hope this helps your future engagements. Mage can, and I do not exaggerate, solo the Ashlands. I would recommend increasing your elemental damage of course, but the vines from the Staff of the Wilds will obliterate enemies while you kite and launch fireballs or wait for the larger enemies to be rooted to switch to your axes.

Can confirm, he's our battlemage. Bubble shield is pretty OP once you get your blood magic high enough (His is around 40 I believe and its like an additional 300 hp)

[Draconis]

Originally posted by Osirine:

Originally posted by GuardianRobot121:

Forgive me if I repeat things that have already been stated -- I am reading this on the fly. Mage is a viable class but robes are an essential part to it due to the eitr regeneration and eitr foods not providing outstanding health as their health-focused food counterparts. That said, with the robes you can still take on the job as a battlemage. With this, I speak from experience. However, knowing which staffs excel against what situation is the key. For example, the trollstav is not an item you want to use in every scenario. While effective in distracting enemies, it can also leave you fighting your own summon. The dead raiser also is complicated due to AI pathfinding and their lack of high HP but when given a bubble, these skeletons can prove to be somewhat beneficial.

As a mage, your "heavy armor" should not be actual armor (as you need your robes for regen) but rather your bubble shield. As you increase your blood magic, your shield will increase in HP. However, know this: if your shield has taken any form of damage and has not been disabled when it is recast, it will not reset the HP, just the duration.

That said, the bubble staff (Protection Staff) is your armor and compensation for two or three eitr foods (i recommend two eitr foods and one stamina). Staff of the wild is also an essential part of your mage class. The vines are capable of rooting enemies, which leaves them stunned for a long duration to allow you to use your melee to backstab them with a high DPS weapon, such as the berserker axes (recommended) or the special attack of the slayer. Combined with the constantly hitting vines and their ability to serve as a wall to block attacks or alter the enemies' pathfinding, this staff is a must.

Frost and Fireball staff do have their purposes as well, but mainly for picking off targets like warriors and twitchers or frost for vultures. Trollstav is needed to go up to a wall and summon the trolls through the wall so that their impact disables the fortress spawners and they can draw agro of the enemies.

TLDR: Mage robes, Two Eitr Foods, Staff of the Wild, Protection Staff + Beserker Axes, Practice = Battlemage.

At least, this is from my experience and what I use when playing both solo and battle both Valkyries and Morgens at once with the occasional warrior and asksvin group or while assisting friends in the ashlands by focusing on rooting the enemies and using the protection staff to allow my allies to remain in the fight.

I hope this helps your future engagements. Mage can, and I do not exaggerate, solo the Ashlands. I would recommend increasing your elemental damage of course, but the vines from the Staff of the Wilds will obliterate enemies while you kite and launch fireballs or wait for the larger enemies to be rooted to switch to your axes.

Can confirm, he's our battlemage. Bubble shield is pretty OP once you get your blood magic high enough (His is around 40 I believe and its like an additional 300 hp)

And that is the point actually. If your blood magic skill is significantly lower (around 20 for example) the bubble can take 100 points of damage less. And that's not even comparable to 100 health points, because the bubble does not benefit from armor, blocking or resistances. All damage goes directly into the bubble. That's why it popped after one hit of an asksvin, and I think it won't work in the ashlands unless you use two eitr foods and use the skeletts for distraction.

By they way, I did the battlemage playstyle differently once and it worked good for the mistlands at least (haven't tried that in the ashlands yet though).
It was.. one Food of each type, no blood magic, only one or two pieces of the robes (usually just the leg piece). The strategy was to use magic as long as there is eitr. While using magic, your stamina regenerates. When out of eitr, I switched back to weapon + shield or bow (depending on the situation). And in the meantime I regenerated eitr while fighting, then switched back.... Ir worked perfecty against seekers, gjall and seeker soldiers. I don't know if I did the queen on that run, it's been a while ago.

My question is - do you get your blood magic to 40-ish by just sticking to the mage playstyle as soon as it is available or do you have to prepare some sort of trainer? Because... well, training a skill afk or fighting bonemass for an hour to get the skill to an appropriate level is rather... meh.

[orionmnt]

Recently finished my 2nd playthrough on very hard, on this one magic wasn't allowed and it felt as expected - Magic is so much easier compared to melee/ranged weapons.
The only downside of magic was that the shield doesnt refresh the damage block just duration (or at least was like that 2-3 months ago when I was playing with magic), not sure if it was fixed or still neglected, that bug (or feature?, devs?) might be the reason some magic users feels squishier than it should be). And yes, Im aware that it blocks the pure damage, but I had refreshed 700 shield broken by 1 hit even by deathsquitos or other single hits many many times.
Are you playing on normal or very hard, because it makes a difference, melee feels strong on normal, cuz you can tank a few hits, not really punishing and the low armored/low blood magic/shield mage can feel squishy.
Are you against farming elemental/blood magic, cuz having 700 shield compared to like 300 is big, didnt really spend much time farming elemental magic but you feel the difference between 30 and 60.

[Alienpope]

The problem with magic is that you get it so late. Magic is seriously amazing. But it's very skill based (As in, your stats in-game). Going into the ashlands with all of your magic skills at 0 - 10 is death. You need at least 40 for it to be viable over any other build.

I wish they would add some very basic magic earlier on. Maybe even as early as black forest. and have the mistlands be where magic gets fully realized with the spells you get access to by then.

[val_org]

It's good to remember that not all playstyles work for everyone. I am BAD at being a Valheim magic user. I do much better as a heavy-armored archer with an atgeir. That works for me.

Do what feels fun and playable for YOU.

[GuardianRobot121]

Originally posted by Draconis:

Originally posted by Osirine:

Can confirm, he's our battlemage. Bubble shield is pretty OP once you get your blood magic high enough (His is around 40 I believe and its like an additional 300 hp)

And that is the point actually. If your blood magic skill is significantly lower (around 20 for example) the bubble can take 100 points of damage less. And that's not even comparable to 100 health points, because the bubble does not benefit from armor, blocking or resistances. All damage goes directly into the bubble. That's why it popped after one hit of an asksvin, and I think it won't work in the ashlands unless you use two eitr foods and use the skeletts for distraction.

By they way, I did the battlemage playstyle differently once and it worked good for the mistlands at least (haven't tried that in the ashlands yet though).
It was.. one Food of each type, no blood magic, only one or two pieces of the robes (usually just the leg piece). The strategy was to use magic as long as there is eitr. While using magic, your stamina regenerates. When out of eitr, I switched back to weapon + shield or bow (depending on the situation). And in the meantime I regenerated eitr while fighting, then switched back.... Ir worked perfecty against seekers, gjall and seeker soldiers. I don't know if I did the queen on that run, it's been a while ago.

My question is - do you get your blood magic to 40-ish by just sticking to the mage playstyle as soon as it is available or do you have to prepare some sort of trainer? Because... well, training a skill afk or fighting bonemass for an hour to get the skill to an appropriate level is rather... meh.

Truthfully I did not touch blood or elemental magic UNTIL ashlands. For example, I fought the queen using carapace armor and krom (horrible idea but it worked out in the end). Reason is that the player who was our main mage stopped playing. My magic levels came from practicing in the ashlands and popping the bubble constantly, or initially, using the dead raiser. So, no trainer. The skill for me increased because I was having to use it while collecting items in the ashlands and at times, other biomes. Yes, initially the bubble may seem weak but as someone who did not use mage until ashlands, I can tell you that it can be done. For example the strategy you just described in the mistlands? It is similar to what I do, unless a high value enemy like a morgen is rooted, then I'll spam more vines and then switch to melee for backstab damage.

So yes, having higher skill in magic is recommended but, I disagree that it prevents someone from using magic entirely. Afterall, you have to earn the levels somehow, and while ashlands is a tricky place, there will be no shortage of enemies to fight and level it up in.