The Complete Rift Wizard Strategy Guide

Tips on tactics, synergies, and how to git gud.

Gameplay Overview - So You Want to be a Wizard

In Rift Wizard, you play as a small wizard starting with no power and a large spellbook with the intention of traveling across enemy-filled maps and abyss-filled walkways before finally confronting Mordred, the archwizard who cast the universe into chaos. You knew this already, or I'd like to know how you ended up reading my guide.

In order to safely navigate the rifts and defeat Mordred, you will need to build an understanding in three strategic arenas: positioning, your game plan, and synergies. Each of these has their own section, but I'd like to give a brief overview here.

Positioning is often the most overlooked arena of tactics, but also one for which many gamers develop an innate understanding. You should position yourself to destroy gates, spawners, and difficult enemies early, preferably in an area where you won't get ganged up on while doing so. Let your health be a resource you use, but treat it as precious - it might be better to destroy that spawner before warping away even if it means you take some damage from the enemies surrounding you, but try to put yourself in places where the enemies can't reach you all at once.
It goes without saying (yet I will say it REPEATEDLY) that a good translocation spell is a must for survival.

Your game plan is how you get from point A (a weak and defenseless wizard) to point B (destroying the map in a single spellcast). It requires that you plan ahead and be willing to take sub-optimal rewards so you don't die to challenges above your capability. There is no single combo or solution for every fight in the game! (Though a couple come close...)

Synergies are the key to Rift Wizard's magic. You can win the game by buying basic spells and trying to use them effectively, but it will be much easier (and much more fun) if you think about the spell, skill and shrine interactions to make them truly powerful. Restless dead? Good spell. Restless dead with a swamp shrine? Amazing spell.

Basic gameplay tips

* Look at the rift's description of enemies before you look through the rift itself, because it will help you to catch that one boss or spawner that you weren't prepared for.
* Most deaths in this game could be avoided by picking a different rift. While finding a good spell-circle is nice, it's generally better to go through rifts you know you have the tools to conquer than to fight in rifts that look difficult, but possible. Sometimes you don't realize just how far away that gate is and just how quickly it will build up reinforcements, or you overlooked a boss or enemy type that completely negates your gameplan.
*Movement is key because positioning is key. Do not forget to take a translocation spell!
*Diverse damage types are necessary for survival. An amped-up Chain Lightning spell is great until you have to finish a level filled with lightning scrolls, storm fiends, constructs or copper imps.
* Adaptability is your friend. You might want to play a Restless Dead build, but if you're only getting levels filled with undead, spirit or demon enemies, maybe spend your SP on something to kill them first (like Melt) and save Restless Dead for later.
* Get a good AoE spell and a couple high-damage single-target spells early, and especially buy or upgrade a good single-target nuke by the mid-late game. You don't want to confront a 400 HP megaboss with only weak AoEs, because you'll eat through your mana fast and likely take damage on top of it.
* Target priorities: Game-changers first. Spawners second. Healers and heavy-hitters third. Everything else is just chaff. These priorities may change based on your build (summoner vs chain killer vs straight wizard) and positioning - if the heavy hitter is bearing down on you and you're out of translocation spells, obviously you want to take it down before finishing off the spawner.
*Just buy an Earthen Sentinel, or at least SOME type of reliable summon that can give you breathing room in a realm filled with corridors. Anything that stops the shambling zamblies from chewing on your face for a few turns is worth a bit of investment.

Positioning - AKA, Why You Should Always take a Translocation Spell

Some enemies have the ability to teleport you, the wizard. When that time comes, you will live or die based on only one factor: do you have, or have you saved enough SP for, a good translocation spell?
In a single turn, you can take 200 damage because you were petrified, stunned, teleported, or otherwise surrounded and had the living mana juice beaten out of you. You need a good escape option that will never fail you. Teleporters are nice for this, but to help keep it from happening in the first place (and to reposition yourself when you realize that wall to your right isn't as impermeable as you once believed), you will need a translocation spell.
Turn economy is how you avoid getting surrounded by a horde of leaping lizards and trololoing trolls. If you need to cover 20 squares before you're in a good position to start firing off your spells again, chances are you don't want to spend 20 turns getting there. Translocation.
Sometimes the fighting in one area of the map has left those two spawners on the other side totally unguarded. Wouldn't it be nice to take them out now instead of slogging through a pile of enemies for the next forty turns while they constantly spawn more mana-sponging polar bears? Everybody say it with me: TRANSLOCATION.

Any translocation spell will do, but I like to use Blink because of its reliability, versatility, and cheap cost. Always upgrade it to be able to teleport you through walls, because it will allow you to get out of line-of-sight, and feel free to take the range upgrade too.

Now that we've hammered down the bit about translocation, let's talk about your positioning in general.

First of all, your goal is to kill enemies before they can kill you. This usually means making sure that they don't all have line-of-sight on you at once, at least once they start getting powerful ranged attacks. Finding alcoves from which you can fire AoE and chaining spells can help clear out the chaff in a few turns while still protecting your health bar. Jumping through a rift to land near spawners gives you an early advantage and helps to preserve your mana, and taking out that enchanter before he can shield everything coming out of a bag of bugs is probably your first priority. You see that one special wizard who has a spell that switches places with you? Yeah, that's a game changer too, and he'll throw you into a horde of enemies that will get you killed. Kill him first.
A large part of the game is dependent on knowing which targets to prioritize and which are just there to distract you, but knowing the difference won't help you if you can't reach your targets in the first place.

Synergies and You - AKA, why Death Cleave is Overpowered

Arc Lightning and Heaven's Wrath are not a synergy just because you can fire them from outside line-of-sight. Chain Lightning and an Energy Shrine though? That's a heckuva synergy. You get about 20 shields per cast of chain lightning and nothing can ever damage you again. Ah, so sweet.
Remember, a synergy doesn't mean "It's a good spell Jeremy," it means "These two things work together to achieve much more than they would alone." It's the power of anime friendship, just without 20 episodes of drama between battles!

How to recognize a wild synergy:
There are three kinds of synergies: Individual, Self-compounding, and Multi-step. Generally speaking, compounding synergies are the strongest, but they each have their place.

Individual synergies are essentially a flat-out upgrade to a spell. Fireball with a +2 radius shrine? Bigger fireball. Basically if your spell does what it always did, but better, that's an individual synergy. They're fine to use for single-target nukes (since you REALLY want your nuke spells to work), but they rarely change your gameplan.

Self-compounding synergies are synergies that then synergize with themselves for an increased effect. Restless dead with a swamp shrine is an example of this, because the poison damage increases the amount of damage your horde of undead do each turn dramatically, which then creates more restless dead, which then increases the damage further. If a synergy makes itself stronger over time without any direct effort from you, it's a compounding synergy, capice?

Multi-step synergies are often the hardest to pull off in a way that's worthwhile, because they require multiple steps to perform and a failure at any point causes the entire synergy to stop working. Freezing an enemy then casting Arcane Vortex on them is an example of a reliant synergy, as is inflicting any kind of debuff then hitting them with a spell enhanced by the Butterfly Shrine. For every step of setup required, a synergy becomes less powerful because it takes longer to pull off, thus you must divide the final effect by the number of turns taken to reach it.
That said, if you happen to get a wide-area freeze effect spell then hit enemies with a butterfly-enhanced chain lightning or whatnot... mmm, Pacha hands, it can be quite beautiful. Multi-step synergies are only worthwhile when you have the time and space to cast all the required pieces, AND the payoff is greater than what you could have otherwise done with those turns. (The strongest synergy in the game is actually a reliant synergy, but it requires only one turn of setup.)

Recognizing strong synergies:
Anything that provides free and immediate damage or provides you with health or shields should strike a chord in your mind as a good component for a synergy. Anything that multiplies spellcasts or targets affected also multiplies the power of any synergies it applied to it, which is why death cleave is overpowered.
To reiterate, the more times a spell will proc an effect, the greater the synergy. You want to find ways to guarantee that the effect in question procs, and if possible, maximize the number of times it procs in a single turn.
For example: A lightning bolt enhanced by an entropy shrine (-25% arcane damage resistance for 10 turns) followed by a magic missile is technically a synergy, but a realistically useless one. It sets up a single target for a bit more damage from another single-target spell, requiring two turns to do the damage that a higher-damage spell would do in one. Chain lightning enhanced by an entropy shrine is much better, but still leaves the problem of taking out the remaining enemies one-at-a-time with magic missile when additional casts of chain lightning or other multi-target spells would likely be faster. Sadly, there are no chaining arcane-damage spells, so the entropy shrine gets to remain mostly useless.
Lastly, you can spot synergies when you notice a spell that enhances other spells, and if you find any spells that are especially powerful for certain situations but with noticable drawbacks that make them seem like "niche" tools.
If you can recognize a spell's shortcomings and then find another spell that helps to overcome them, you've got a synergy. An example would be Cantrip Cascade paired with Mystic Vision, which can destroy about a third of any map per cast (at least if you've been upgrading cantrips or have Arch Sorcerer), or Death Cleave paired with Mega Annihilate (Death Cleave's weakness is that it only chains if it kills, and an upgraded Mega Annihilate kills almost anything.)

Now a brief note on level synergies and antisynergies: If the realm is generally open, chains are stronger because enemies can cluster and the chain can reach a large number of targets from any individual point. If a level is more maze-like then beam spells and high-health minions are stronger because they can damage entire routes and block lines of approach. If a level is spotty then WHERE IS YOUR TRANSLOCATION SPELL. Find locations in the level that synergize with your spell list, whether that's alleyways or wide open areas, and lure your opponents there. If you took my advice and took Blink, feel free to take out a couple of gates on entry before warping to your killbox of choice.

Feel free to post your favorite or most interesting synergies in the comments below!

A Note on Summoning and Hard Counters

It's always interesting to see how games handle summoning minions, because they're independent actors that provide damage and targets to enemies without any further effort from you. In most games, they either turn out completely useless or brokenly overpowered with the right setup, but in Rift Wizard they're often both.

Summons are a fantastic utility spell that don't get mentioned enough, especially high-health summons like the earthen sentinel. They pull in aggro from surrounding enemies, meaning that as long as you aren't in their range yet, they will waste turns killing a summon that would have disappeared in a few turns anyway. They can block off routes or distract entire groups of enemies while you wait for the right moment to fire your heavy AoEs, or while you deal with a particularly troublesome boss or game-changer. And as Restless dead will prove, they can make a very effective army... most of the time.

This is a good time to talk about hard counters, because everything in the game has a counter. Enemies with lots of shields will counter one-hit wonders like Mega Annihilate or Pillar of Fire, those with lots of resistances basically force you to have specific damage types to deal with them (looking at you, constructs), and summons get countered by... other summoners.

Restless dead mitigates this problem a lot, because many times it simply grows faster than the enemy can cut them down... but for most summoners, you will find that your worst enemies are those who summon smaller, weaker enemies that distract your summons and cause them to eventually run out of time or HP to deal with anything that was actually a threat. The worst of all early-game summoners are gnomes, who can spam a multi-summon spell every turn. Just a few of them can stop an army.

I wanted to combine the sections on summoning and hard counters because they're short, but the point is that you don't want to rely entirely on one tool or type of tool like chaining spells, summons or high-damage nukes. Your best bet is to build a diverse toolset that can handle the various hard counters the game will throw at you, rather than building around a theme or basic idea like a "pyromancer" or "shadow wizard."

But whats the most powrful spell, dood?

Rift Wizard is a game about discovering synergies and playing with combinations and themes. Having me tell you the most powerful spells and combinations outright would just make the game less interesting, wouldn't it?

That said, this is a guide. So if what you really want to do is win, here you go...

Death Bolt with Soul Battery. I don't take this one personally, as it means taking longer to get my chain spells going... but it can grow unreasonably powerful by the end of the game if you commit to using it. Just don't be so focused on it that you forget your positioning or the wise use of your other spells to stop a horde, yeah?

Energy Shrine with Chain Lightning. I mentioned this one earlier. It's great for clearing huge rooms and gaining 20 stacks of shield in the process, but there will be plenty of enemies this doesn't work on. It's an early-game wonder and still works well in the end-game, but it won't carry you through everything. Remember to upgrade the chain distance on Chain Lightning, please.

The most powerful combo... Death Cleave empowering Mega Annihilate. This one *will* carry you if you need it. The vast majority of enemies in the game will succumb to a single cast, and upgrading Mega Annihilate to deal Arcane and Dark damage makes it able to handle more enemy types who might resist the fire, physical, and lightning damage. Often, with an upgraded chain distance, a single cast can clear an entire realm. It's biggest weaknesses are shielded enemies, liches with soul jars, or the very few bosses with enough HP to survive it... but even in these situations, it's almost always worth using. Especially when combined with...

The Restless Dead. Or really, anything combines well with the Restless Dead except for Death Bolt. It synergizes with every damage-dealing spell in the game because it turns them into conjuration spells against about 60% of enemies. Getting any shrine that increases your skeletons' resilience, damage or (horror of horrors) provides a damage aura will make it stronger exponentially, especially if you use chaining or wide-AoE spells for damage as they provide faster army growth than single-target spells.

Blink, sightless upgrade. No, this isn't a synergy. It's just one of the most powerful spells in the game.

Nightmare Aura with the Stoning Shrine. You essentially keep everything in a large radius around you permanently petrified. This can make killing them rather slow... but the point of this synergy is that it gives you all the time in the world anyway.

Closing Thoughts

Thanks for reading my guide; I hope it was helpful! Leave a comment if you liked it or have any questions. I can't promise I'll continue to update this guide or respond to questions, but I do like to know when someone found my guide useful.
This guide was in production since before 1.0, and it was delayed for so long because it was originally going to include a complete spellbook with upgrades and descriptions. Thanks to Moasseman, that hard work has already been done and I can link his spellbook here without having to spend many more hours typing out descriptions and filling in details. Thanks, Moasseman!

[opalwolf42]

thanks for the advice. been pouring a bit of time into this ridiculously difficult seeming game lately. I especially appreciate that you have the spoiler tags at the end of the guide because I want to figure out the powerful spells and synergy combos on my own. I want to develop my own style. I am grateful for the translocation advice though. I've gotten to realm 11 (at least) without ever using a translocation spell... might get even further now. thanks again!

[pixels]

Also you mention cantrip cascade + mystic vision... this is a killer combo but takes a while to set up. Add this to the death bolt + soul battery trick and add magic missile with shield burn, take lightning or fireball for more aoe in the meantime - nothing can stop it, and it resurrects. Get an eye spell on the cheap for damage while building sp. Hard to pull off, but super OP if you can.

Probably should mention holy armor for survivability somewhere in the guide, it really cuts heal pot use. CCs like iceball and petrify aura/basilisk armor can really help too.

Great guide! I really like the earthen sentinel recommendation, it's easy to overlook. Another great cheap summon worth looking at is Call Archon for 1 more sp you get 75hp 3 shield tank with powerful lightning attacks and 6 casts.

[pixels]

mega-annihilate + cleave doesn't work as well for me as it does for you... with full distance it's definitely not hitting the whole map even if it melts like 8 things near me, which isn't enough when I only have three casts of mega-annihilate.

One thing I'd like to see mentioned is how OP Seal Fate is when upgraded with blindcasting and range. Sure it's delayed 4 turns and all dark magic, but with blink this is a game changer in terms of nuking gates and a great nuke for many opponents from miles away, with tons of charges

[House of Eats, Shoots and Leaves]

Death Cleave + Death Touch is really neat as well. It's narrower elementally (whereas Mega Annihilate only struggles against something like chaos fiends, iirc), but the bounce range sidesteps the short cast range, and filling the map with reapers is really satisfying.

[Telendrassil]

I just beat my first game with a pyromancer build--maxed out fire ball with energy ball, flame burst with melting flame for wall clearing combined with searing seal. Got all the skills that add extra additional damage types to the fire damage--fiery judgment, starfire (and obviously got fire lord too). Also added chastisement for stuns with the additional holy damage. And also picked up multicast as well.

Basically I would activate searing seal and multicast before jumping through the gate. Hop into the densest enemy area and melt everything with flame burst. Searing seal would often clean up a lot of the left over enemies when it went off.

Later on I got meteor shower to clear out enemies across the map. Worked really well.

[RedPine]

If someone can make a dragon guide work, I'll read it. Personally, the friendly fire alone is so obnoxious that only Holy Dragons have ever worked for me. Even using the Dragon Horn usually backfires, and that summons far more dragons in a single turn than any dragon spell can across multiple turns.

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

You can leave a suggestion setup if you like, but it's fine either way.
It's true that you can spend forever just trying to keep adding examples to all this basic stuff,
so that's why there's already several different build guides up.
Maybe me or someone else can do a 'dragon mage' guide for each dragon type.

[Sir Slush]

@Vulpes Velox
That's definitely a good example of a synergy, and a useful one at that - but the synergy section is meant to just teach how to find synergies for oneself, and the powerful spells section is for spells or combinations that are explicitly overpowered. How about I leave a suggestion to post and check comments for your favorite synergies instead?

[CtenosaurOaxacana]

Great intro to understanding and surviving the rifts in this game!
If you can, maybe you can add something about Dragons to your synergy and/or summoning sections?

Fire, Ice, Storm, Void and Gold Drakes all have a 'Dragon Mage' upgrade, which takes (usually) the basic spell of that element type AND all the upgrades you applied to that spell. A fully upgraded magic missile spell means void drakes also casting fully upgraded magic missiles too!