Breaking Arcanist: Level 0 Prep

Abusing Arcanist stock spells to achieve Legend Casting and Magic without descending into the dungeon; Free Force Bolt casting and auto-learn Dominate. Takes 2 hours to set up!

What?

Yes, Arcanist is a pretty goofy class which, given "sufficient" time to prepare, can gain Legend status in both Casting and Magic in the starting area.

This abuses the fact that Arcanist can spam the Light spell for 1 MP per activation, which quickly generates a lot of magical skill proficiency (Expert in Casting and Skilled in Magic with Light alone). Then, we can grind for a much longer time after learning everything from Light, with Force Bolt. Once Legend is reached in Casting, Force Bolt can be spammed for free to also quickly level Magic to Legend, giving the Dominate spell for free.

This takes approximately 2 hours to set up!

Save-scumming is recommended (as it's all done within the starting area, so it's decently fair anyways), to save you the effort on every new run.

Another caveat is that hunger must be disabled unless you're playing as a race which ignores hunger.

Pre-Setup: Light Abuse

This stage takes roughly 15 minutes to complete.

1. (Optional, highly recommended) Grab "My Journal" from the table for training Appraisal. Most self-respecting Arcanists do this regardless of whether they run this weird setup or not, because Arcanist always requires at least 10 Appraisal to appraise literally anything (default -1 PER). By the time light abuse is finished, you'll have enough appraisal to bypass this major obstacle in Arcanist early-game.
   
2. Read the Light spellbook and equip the Light spell.
   
3. Hold down cast spell. This rapidly casts and then unsustains Light.
   
   • You should be gradually gaining Casting and Magic proficiency. If you're performing this for the first time correctly, you should also gain the achievement "Let There Be Strobe" (funny how the dev actually thought of this exploit).
4. Once you run out of MP, you can keep occasionally casting Light with the passive recharge.
   
   • Make sure that you aren't leaving Light on when you run out of MP, indicated by the candle icon to the right of your screen; this drains about 1/3 of your MP recharge. We only care about the initial casting of Light, which gives proficiency.

At one point, the game will tell you that you've learned all you can from this spell. This generally leaves you with just below 70 Casting and 40 Magic.

Proper Setup: Force Bolt Abuse

This stage takes roughly 1.5 to 2 hours to complete.

1. Read the Force Bolt spellbook and equip the Force Bolt spell.
   
2. Keep idly firing Force Bolts anywhere (except allies). You'll gain enough MP for a Force Bolt every ~30 seconds, so checking back every 5 minutes is also an option.
   
   • This is the long and arduous stage of the setup. Once you get 100 Casting, however, the fun can begin...
3. After gaining Legend Casting, revel in the glory of the Force Bolt by holding down cast spell and shooting free Force Bolts everywhere. This rapidly levels your Magic to Legend as well within 5 minutes.

Legend Casting, Legend Magic, character level 3. All done within the starting map, with no items consumed.

Post-Setup: Saving

We aren't quite done yet! If you don't save your newly trained all-powerful Arcanist as a savefile, losing them to a boulder early on can turn out to be a massive waste of time.

1. Enter Level 1 using the trapdoor.
   
2. Pause the game.
   
3. Through Steam, right click on Barony > Properties... > Local Files > Browse...
   
4. Open subfolder "savegames", and copy "savegame*.dat" (where * is your save slot) to somewhere else safe.

Whenever you need to load your buffed Arcanist again, simply copy the savefile back in.

Congrats and give yourself a pat on the back, because you've just made a super buffed starting character which only utilizes intended game mechanics and is fully achievements-compatible. I take no responsibilities for this potentially ruining balance and subsequently your enjoyment.

A word on Wizards

Wizards can probably also perform this setup. It's a bit tricky though.

For some reason, in my experience Wizards consistently gain only a few points from Light spam. They can still run the Force Bolt routine with Cold as a substitute (although the relative +1 MP cost means that it takes ~20% longer per point), but without Light boosting the first 15 to 20 points in Casting, Wizards will take around twice as long to setup (3-4 hours), with both factors considered. Whether this tradeoff is worthwhile is up to you. Wizards gains the same primary benefits, but learns Force Bolt as a new spell; a completely free but inferior version of fireball.

What about multiplayer?

Hmmm... maybe.

As long as you point your spell spam as far away from your allies as you can (I'd recommend the rest of the team probably lock the Arcanist inside the mine entrance using the lever-controlled doors while they practice), the procedure works out to be mostly the same. The host can copy a savefile and reactivate it when the run is lost (or won). However, because the save will be already started, players will be unable to modify their characters. And making your teammates wait two hours when setting up a game can be "annoying" to say the least.

[pewpewdewd]

i did this and pressed save and quit instead of entering level 1
pain