Book of Demons - Class Builds for Normal

Sample builds intended for Normal mode for each of the three classes - Warrior, Rogue and Mage

Game Basics

Book of Demons is an isometric hack and slash action role-playing. While its story is a blatant homage to the original Diablo, it differs from Diablo style games quite significantly. Movement is limited to only fixed one-tile width paths, there are no stats outside of health / mana, equipment to find or a skill tree. Instead you find cards in dungeons which represent consumables, equipment and spells and equip these in your skillbar.

There are three classes - Warrior, Rogue and Mage. Warrior starts off unlocked by default and Rogue and Mage are unlocked once you reach level five with the Warrior.

Book of Demons has the following game modes:

Casual:

• Cards drop in a random order that allows you to counter enemies abilities
  
• Combat mechanics are more forgiving and monsters are less vicious
  
• Healing is easier
  
• Can get more challenging after completing the main campaign
  
• You can change this mode to Normal at any time
  
• No leaderboard

Normal:

• Cards drop in a random order that allows you to counter enemies abilities
  
• Can get challenging during the main campaign
  
• You can change this mode to Casual at any time
  
• First death leaderboard eligible
  
• Speedrun to Cook leaderboard eligible

Roguelike:

• Totally random card drop order
  
• Limited healing (fountains don't refill, amulets don't work outside combat)
  
• Healer in town charges you for health/mana restoration and costs increases farther into Freeplay mode post main campaign
  
• Resurrection costs an increasing amount of gold
  
• Without gold to resurrect character dies permanently
  
• This mode cannot be changed during the game
  
• First death leaderboard eligible
  
• Final death leaderboard eligible

The builds provided for the classes are primarily intended for Normal mode and taking you to Massacre difficulty. Generally the builds are built around:

• A single target skill to burn enemies down quickly.
  
• An escape ability. With movement limited to only one tile paths, enemies and objects can block you in. Each class has at least one effective way to escape these situations.
  
• Multiple sustain and protective abilities to recover or mitigate damage taken.
  
• Counter(s) for dealing with special mechanics (ice/flame hearts, shields, spells, etc.)

Card Types

Items, equipment and spells are represented by three type of cards. Each of the three classes shares a pool of generic cards in these categories as well as a pool of their own unique class cards.

Artifact cards are cards that represent equipment and have a green background. These cards add permanent buffs and traits to a character and/or his Spell cards and Item cards. Equiping an Artifact card reserves a part of your mana which you cannot use. If you don't have enough current or maximum mana you cannot equip the Artifact card.

Item cards are cards that represent consumables and have a red background. They have no mana cost to use but have a limited amount of charges. The Fortune Teller in town can refill charges for gold or you can find charges as drops in dungeons from monsters or objects. The Fortune Teller cannot recharge healing and mana style potions if you are playing in 'Roguelike' mode.

Spell cards are cards that represent skills and have a blue background. They require mana to activate their affects. Most are unique to their class with only two generic spells.

Card Variants and Upgrades

Card Variants are version of cards that have special buffs on them. There are two of variants: Magic and Legendary.

• Magic cards have 1 to 3 magic affixes randomly applied to the base (common) card. Some Magic affixes can appear on all types of cards and some may appear only on specific types.
  
• Legendary cards are special cards that comes with fixed special affects. Generally speaking there is 1 legendary for each common card but some cards have 2-3 Legendary variants.

You can find Card Variants as random drops in the dungeon. As well, quest bosses seem to have 100% chance to drop a Legendary card. After defeating each of the three quest bosses, you can re-fight a more challenging version of the boss using Golden Keys. Card variants appear as Unidentified until you identify them in Town at the Sage. Unidentified cards can also be an Upgrade card instead (Life, Death or Truth Rune).

You can freely swap between card variants in town. To select a variant (or revert back to common), open your card inventory, find the card you want to change and click the icon on the bottom of the card. This will open up an option to select the variant you want to use.


Cards can be upgraded up to two times using Upgrade cards and gold. The base Sun and Moon rune cards can be found in the dungeon or by downgrading level one variants. Higher tier runes can be fused together for gold from lower tier runes or found in the dungeon.

Upgraded cards get better and possibly additional bonuses at the expense of having higher recharge costs (item cards), higher mana reservation costs (artifact cards) or higher mana activation cost (spell cards). Higher variants cost more runes and gold to upgrade (ie: Common is cheaper to upgrade than Magic which is cheaper than Legendary).

Costs to upgrade cards from level 2 to 3 is considerably higher than upgrading from level 1 to 2 so you will likely want to aim for upgrading most cards to level 2 first and upgrade to level 3 only the most useful cards in your build until you have enough resources in Freeplay.

Freeplay Modes

Once you defeat the Archdemon, your character enters 'Freeplay' post campaign mode. Completing dungeons in Freeplay will progress your char further along to unlocking higher Freeplay difficulties. Higher difficulties increase the challenge, adding increasing restrictions and punishments.

Game Mode	Gold loss on death	Cards cursed by Boss	Imposed cards	Cards lost on death	Healing service cost (Roguelike only)
Standard	20%	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Hard	30%	2-3	2	N/A	Healing service in town costs more
Nightmare	40%	3-4	3	1	Healing service in town costs even more
Nightmare	50%	4-5	5	5	Healing service cost increases with every use (starting from 50 gold for 1 point and increasing by +20% every use)

As you can see, the final Freeplay modes can really limit 'builds'. Imposed cards are randomly assigned when starting a dungeon at that difficulty level and are cards you are required to have active on your skillbar. So in Nightmare and Massacre you will be relying on a certain 'core' skills and work with whatever else you are giving. Personally I try to keep these 'core' skills in a consistent place on my skillbar as this helps with muscle memory, get used to whacking the same key for a skill especially when I'm using it constantly.

The other big thing is cards cursed by a boss. The boss will randomly select a number of your cards to curse. These cards are disabled and cannot be used again until the boss has dies. The counter to this is cards with 'Left/Right-Winged' fix. This prevents cards to the immediate left/right of the card in your skillbar from being able to be cursed. Basically all your non-core cards need to have these types of fixes on them to prevent your core cards from getting cursed.

Warrior - High sustain tank (Part 1)

Build: High sustain tank
Strengths: Excellent survivability and sustain, easy shield removal, effective AOE
Weakness: Lacks good anti-spell

This is a simple and straightforward build for the Warrior class that uses a mix of defensive cards to minimize incoming damage and recover damage taken while also having effective single and multi-target damage.

Card Selection

Card 1: Mighty Blow

Mighty Blow serves as the build's single target attack skill. It's an extremely solid skill that helps counter a wide variety of enemies while also doing good single target damage. At max level, it instantly breaks shields, counters special burning and frozen hearts and has a excellent chance to stun.

For magic variant, the 'Healer's' prefix is great as this will allow you to regain health when using the skill which you will do often. The legendary variant also comes with this fix built in making it ideal.

Card 2: Throw

Throw serves as the build's AOE/escape ability. At level 1, it's primarily used for knocking enemies back, given you breathing room to avoid taking damage from melee enemies or remove enemies blocking your path if you have been surrounded. At level 3, the skill has a wide range, always stuns and hits like a truck so is very effective at clearing entire packs of enemies.

Once again, look for Healer's prefix on magic variant for the extra health sustain. Legendary effect isn't too interesting for the build so Healer's or Left/Right-Winged (in higher difficulties) might be preferred.

Card 3: Amulet of Health - replaced by Heal

The Amulet of Health is a generic artifact card that regenerates your health over time. It's not as good in Roguelike mode as the regen does not happen out of combat but heals are in short supply there so should still be useful. For non-Roguelike mode, it's quite useful early game for some extra sustain.

The Amulet of Life will be replaced as soon as you get the generic spell Heal which is a much better alternative. Heal is incredibly efficient, only requiring one mana to cast and heals at a much faster place than the Amulet. Should be a core skill for Roguelike mode due to the lack of available heals (fountains don't refill, amulets don't work out of combat, healer in town costs gold). With a cooldown of only one second, you can recast Heal almost immediately after its effect drops so you should be able to keep it active 100% of the time.

Card 4: Health Potion - replaced by Rejuvenation Potion (or alternatively Divine Potion)

This provides instant health recovery. Good for emergencies like when you load into a cluster-f of a dungeon full of annoying enemies and there's not much else you can do but try to grind against them until the die. Any magical variant should be fine until Nightmare and Massacre, then use Left/Right-Winged. The Red Tears legendary variant immunity effect is quite nice as well if one drops.

Rejuvenation Potion will replace Health Potion as soon as you get it. Not only does it heal more health than the Health Potion it also instantly restores just as much mana to boot. Cornucopia protects both left and right cards from getting disabled by bosses making it even better for Nightmare and Massacre and every fountain counts as Rejuvenation fountain.

An alternative is the Divine Potion. It grants immunity to damage for a limited time and all attack effects (freeze, poison, stun, etc). The Ambrosia converts damage you would have taken into healing instead making it quite effective if you're surrounded. Charges are very expensive for the Divine Potion compared to the other potions through.

Card 5: Amulet of Mana

The Amulet of Mana is a generic artifact card that regenerates your mana over time. It's not as good in Roguelike mode as the regen does not happen out of combat but sustain is in short supply there so should still be useful. For non-Roguelike mode, this is a vital artifact card. It regenerates mana at a much faster rate than the Amulet of Life does for your health and by itself can provide all the mana sustain you need.

Card 6 - 10: Choice of Artifact Cards

Shield:
One of the best early artifacts you can get, the Shield greatly mitigates incoming enemy ranged attacks. Otherwise you can find yourself getting helplessly barraged by mass groups of ranged enemies hiding between annoying tanky enemies. The Shield can really help mitigate damage in the early going until you've buffed up your health pool and unlocked more cards and card slots.

Boots:
The Boots are a defensive artifact that helps protect you from ground affects, clear path obstacles, crush annoying small spiders, and tank lightning attack bosses sometimes get.

Rabbit Foot:
The Rabbit Foot is a defensive artifact that helps give you a chance to avoid that annoying stun affect and reduce critical damage taken.

Bloody Armour:
The Bloody Armour is a defensive artifact that spawns hearts on the ground when you are hit. Helps a lot with early survivability through in chaotic situations it may be difficult to pick up the hearts, things can get hectic at times. The Legendary Crimson Armour variant causes critical strikes on you to spawn a ton of hearts. Overall a good artifact until you get the Heal skill.

Warrior - High sustain tank (Part 2)

Skeleton Belt:

The Skeleton Belt is an artifact with a lot of versatility. Damage mitigation against skeletons, chance to stun enemies when hit, more powerful potions, faster card cooldowns (besides potions) and more charges for your item cards. The Legendary Tight Belt variant also comes with Left/Right Winged fix for Nightmare and Massacre.

Shadow Sword:

The Shadow Sword is an offensive artifact that acts a damage multiplier against mass enemies. Instead of 1 hit you get 2 or 3 hits. Very useful for clearing weak swarms quickly and efficiently. Starting from level 2 other card's effects apply to the extra hits which is quite useful when combined with the Frozen Flail or Burning Axe.

Burning Axe / Frozen Flail:

These two are offensive artifacts which destroys freezing / burning hearts respectively. I would strongly recommend having the Burning Axe equipped at the Catacombs and the Frozen Flail equipped at Hell due to the large number of enemies with freezing / burning hearts there.

Magic Ring:

Your best card for dealing with spells. The ring artifacts don't drop until pretty late so you won't find this for a while but should have one by the time you reach deep into Freeplay. Will help with dealing spell casters but you still got to get near them and nowhere near as good as options that Rogue and Mage get.

Upgrade Priority

Shield, Amulet of Mana, Throw and Mighty Blow are your priorities to upgrade to level 2. Shield upgrade will help mitigate ranged attacks which will be the biggest danger early on. Amulet of Mana upgrade will let you use your skills more often. Throw and Mighty Blow are your primary spammable skills and upgrade will make them more efficient.

Upgrading to level 3 is a lot more expensive gold and rune wise so you'll probably want to hold off until later and use gold to open up card slots instead and upgrade other cards to level 2 when you're able to. Lower quality cards are cheaper to upgrade so you can upgrade a common card to if you really want the level 3 stats instead of magical fixes. Once you're around Hell or so, you may want to look into upgrading a few of your non-Legendary top cards to level 3.

Basic Strategy

Enter dungeon, activate Heal if you have it. Use Mighty Blow as a single target nuke and against any enemies with shield. Use Throw to push away enemies and kill packs of enemies once you level it once or twice. If you find your health drop to ~50% health, just pop a Health / Rejuv potion. Early game you need to be more careful as your health pool isn't very large but once you get to mid-game you should be tanky enough to shrug off many hits before getting worried.

Dealing with spells can be a pain. You need to get close enough to enemies to cancel the spells so if that's not practical try to clear out weaker enemies first. Some rooms in Hell can be incredibly grindy to finish, just play slowly and smart.

For high difficulty freeplay dungeons, protect Amulet of Mana (so you keep spamming Mighty Blow and Throw constantly) and Heal (because it's super efficient heal) from bosses. Then at least one of Throw or Mighty Blow so you're guaranteed to keep at least one of your DPS skills active.

A couple of other skills are also useful if you want to swap out one of the artifact cards for it. Disarmour is generally good overall but Mighty Blow kind of deals with shields for the build already. Disenchant is good for dealing with enemy special hearts and lets you drop Frozen Flail / Burning Axe. I don't really care for the bombs. Charge can be a way to get into range of spell casters but its a bit difficult to control. Also can try Cluster or Blade Storm for CC/clear.

Rogue - Decoy + Sharpshooter (Part 1)

Build: Decoy + Sharpshooter
Strengths: Decent single target damage from special arrows, good mobility, easy shield and spell removal, decoys distract and kill enemies for you
Weakness: Enemies in melee range cannot be fired on with special arrows

This is a build for the Rogue class that fires deadly arrows from range while decoys dominate for you. Can easily remove shields and spells and has an artifact to help deal with enemies that enter you melee range.

Card Selection

Card 1 (or 1+2): Fire Arrow / Ice Arrow (or alternatively Epic Arrow)

These two items give you arrow charges which you can fire off at enemies with right click and destroy freezing / burning hearts respectively. I would strongly recommend having Fire Arrow equipped at the Catacombs and Ice Arrow equipped at Hell due to the large number of enemies with freezing / burning hearts there.

If you want to use both at the same time you can drop another card to equip both. You can swap between which special arrow type you are firing with the 'Q' key.

You can stack up to 99 arrows of one type at a time but cannot fire at enemies that are within your melee range (represented by a red ring around you) so your power is restricted against enemies that are close to you. Makes entering a packed room an annoyance until you find a vital artifact card.

Alternatively you can use Epic Arrow. It does a bit of everything but it hits like a wet noodle, doing the same damage as your regular attack.

Card 2: Health Potion - replaced by Rejuvenation Potion (or alternatively Divine Potion)

This provides instant health recovery. Good for emergencies like when you load into a cluster-f of a dungeon full of annoying enemies and there's not much else you can do but try to grind against them until the die. Any magical variant should be fine until Nightmare and Massacre, then use Left/Right-Winged. The Red Tears legendary variant immunity effect is quite nice as well if one drops.

Rejuvenation Potion will replace Health Potion as soon as you get it. Not only does it heal more health than the Health Potion it also instantly restores just as much mana to boot. Cornucopia protects both left and right cards from getting disabled by bosses making it even better for Nightmare and Massacre and every fountain counts as a Rejuvenation fountain.

An alternative is the Divine Potion. It grants immunity to damage for a limited time and all attack effects (freeze, poison, stun, etc). The Ambrosia converts damage you would have taken into healing instead making it quite effective if you're surrounded. Charges are very expensive for the Divine Potion compared to the other potions through.

Card 3: Amulet of Mana

The Amulet of Mana is a generic artifact card that regenerates your mana over time. It's not as good in Roguelike mode as the regen does not happen out of combat but sustain is in short supply there so should still be useful. For non-Roguelike mode, this is an excellent artifact card. It regenerates mana at a good rate and by itself can provide all the mana sustain you need.

Card 4: Flaming Leap (or alternatively Knock)

Flaming Leap lets you jump over obstacles in your path. It's a vital escape tool if you get swarmed and something is blocking your escape route. Try to avoid jumping in the wrong direction, sometimes I do that lol. The cooldown is pretty short so you should have time to jump again fairly quickly. If you get the Leap of Faith legendary, the immunity and heal affect is terrific for avoiding damage.

An alternative is Knock. Similar to the Warrior's Throw it knocks enemies back and stuns them. Unlike Throw, through, Knock does pitiful damage. At least during the card effect your arrows and attacks are faster. Personally I preferred Flaming Leap in my setup.

Card 5: Decoy

Creates decoy(s) that distract enemies away from you while simultaneously mowing down your enemies. The decoy(s) can apply other cards' effects to their attacks as well. One decoy is spawned per card skill level. Easily Rogue's greatest skill, you just enter a room and fire it up. It pretty much single handedly makes the Rogue the best endgame class.

Card 6: Intuition

Excellent single card that counters both shield and spells and combos great with Decoy. Cooldown is a bit lengthy at level 1 but once you get to level 3 it's at an okay level.

Card 7: Claws

Game changing artifact card that helps deal with Rogue's main weakness - enemies in melee range. Claws damages targets entering your melee range and is perfect for slaughtering low health swarm style minions and at higher levels there is a chance to throw and stun them as well.

You can combo Claws with Flaming Leap extremely well. Enemies that you leap into trigger Claws' attack allowing you to do hit and run attacks if you're in a crowded space. Combine this with Decoy to distract enemies while you are doing so.

Rogue - Decoy + Sharpshooter (Part 2)

Card 8 - 10: Choice of Cards

Shield:

One of the best early artifacts you can get, the Shield greatly mitigates incoming enemy ranged attacks. Otherwise you can find yourself getting helplessly barraged by mass groups of ranged enemies hiding between annoying tanky enemies. The Shield can really help mitigate damage in the early going until you've buffed up your health pool and unlocked more cards and card slots.

Rabbit Foot:

The Rabbit Foot is a defensive artifact that helps give you a chance to avoid that annoying stun affect and reduce critical damage taken.

Quiver:

The Quiver is an offensive artifact that increases the number of arrows stack when using Item Card charges, increases all arrow speed, gives them a chance to explode and small chance to enhance your normal arrows with a random magic effect. Overall a solid offensive buff.

Fear:
Powerful CC ability but has a very long cooldown. I haven't used much, using Flaming Leap primarily but this should be quite useful when you need to enter a door into a small room.

Heal:

Heal is an incredibly efficient heal as it only requires one mana to cast and heals for a good amount and rate. Generally excellent for sustain, you shouldn't need it for lower difficulties of Freeplay but can be very good for Nightmare and Massacre. Should be a core skill for Roguelike mode due to the lack of available heals (fountains don't refill, amulets don't work out of combat, healer in town costs gold). With a cooldown of only one second, you can recast Heal almost immediately after its effect drops so you should be able to keep it active 100% of the time.

Arrow Rain:

Gives you a bit of AOE damage but it's not exactly very controllable.

Upgrade Priority

Shield, Amulet of Mana, Decoy, Intuition, Fire/Ice Arrow and Claws are priorities to upgrade to level 2. Shield upgrade will help mitigate ranged attacks which will be the biggest danger early on. Amulet of Mana upgrade provides vital mana sustain. Intuition's lower cooldown will make it more reliably available. Arrow skills are your primary spammable skills and upgrading will make them more efficient. Claws is useful for dealing with enemies entering melee and upgrading will boost your damage.

Upgrading to level 3 is a lot more expensive gold and rune wise so you'll probably want to hold off until later and use gold to open up card slots instead and upgrade other cards to level 2 when you're able to. Decoy is your priority for hitting level 3; each level gives you an extra decoy so this is a huge upgrade. You can upgrade a common version if you need to as they are cheaper to upgrade. After Decoy, Amulet of Mana is always a good option. Then upgrade other skills to level 3 when available once you have skillbar all unlocked.

Basic Strategy

Enter dungeon, activate Decoy to get attention of any initial enemies. Use Fire/Ice Arrow charges to build up arrow stacks and spam it at enemies. Trigger Intuition if any shielded / spell caster enemies. Use Flaming Leap to escape issues and exploit Claw to finish off enemies entering melee range.

If you find your health drop to ~50% health, just pop a Health / Rejuv potion. Early game you need to be more careful as your health pool isn't very large but once you get to mid-game you should be tanky enough to be able to take a few hits if needed.

For high difficulty freeplay dungeons, try to protect Amulet of Mana (for mana sustain), Decoy (for it's pure value) and Flaming Leap (for mobility). If you have enough Left/Right winged fixes, also protect Claws (to cover up melee weakness), Intuition (to counter shields/spells) and maybe Heal if playing Roguelike(for super efficient heal) from bosses. Losing Arrow skills is a pain but Decoy will carry you quite nicely.

Plenty of other artifact, item and spell cards available so go ahead and try them out as well.

Mage - Heavy Spell Slinger (Part 1)

Build: Heavy Spell Slinger
Strengths: Strong single target DPS, tank minion for support, good mobility, access to anti-spell and shield
Weakness: A bit too many spells required so you'll have to drop spells for late Freeplay, Fireball / Ice Bolt require frequent re-activation

This is a build for the Mage class that specializes in using lots of spells. Mage in general has plenty of available spells to choose from. Maybe a few too many spells, makes it hard to get everything you want when you hit Massacre lol. On the bright side, you have a minion to tank for you, your attacks home in on enemies and each attack can hit very hard.

Card Selection

Card 1: Fire Ball (or alternatively Book of Fire)

Fireball gives you charges, which you can fire off at enemies with right click, destroying freezing hearts. I would strongly recommend having Fireball equipped at the Catacombs due to the large number of enemies with freezing hearts there.

Fireball does one more damage than the Rogue's Fire Arrow but only can have 20 missiles max so you'll have to recast it quite often.

Alternatively you can use Book of Fire to boost your regular attack damage. The level of Fireball shot from the book is equal to the current active level of the Fireball card but in in order to gain the effect of legendary Fireball effect (chance to unleash Fireball inferno) you need to have the Legendary Fireball variant card equipped as well. In addition, it also buffs you golem's damage and orb of Magic Robe.

Card 2: Ice Bolt (or alternatively Book of Ice)

Ice Bolt gives you charges, which you can fire off at enemies with right click, destroying burning hearts. I would strongly recommend having Ice Bolt equipped at Hell due to the large number of enemies with burning hearts there.

Ice Bolt does more one more damage than the Rogue's Ice Arrow but only can have 20 missiles max so you'll have to recast it quite often.

If you are using both Fireball and Ice Bolt you can swap between the the missile types you are firing with the 'Q' key. One thing to note is that Ice Bolt costs less mana to use than Fireball so Ice Bolt can be a more appealing option for dealing with enemies with regular hearts.

Alternatively you can use Book of Ice to boost your regular attack damage. The level of Ice Bolt shot from the book is equal to the current active level of the Ice Bolt card but in in order to gain effect of the legendary Ice Bolt effect (chance to unleash Ice Bolt blizzard) you need to have the Legendary Ice Bolt card variant equipped as well. In addition, it also buffs you golem's damage and orb of Magic Robe.

Card 3: Health Potion - replaced by Rejuvenation Potion (or alternatively Divine Potion)

This provides instant health recovery. Good for emergencies like when you load into a cluster-f of a dungeon full of annoying enemies and there's not much else you can do but try to grind against them until the die. Any magical variant should be fine until Nightmare and Massacre, then use Left/Right-Winged. The Red Tears legendary variant immunity effect is quite nice as well if one drops.

Rejuvenation Potion will replace Health Potion as soon as you get it. Not only does it heal more health than the Health Potion it also instantly restores just as much mana to boot. Cornucopia protects both left and right cards from getting disabled by bosses making it even better for Nightmare and Massacre and every fountain counts as a Rejuvenation fountain.

An alternative is the Divine Potion. It grants immunity to damage for a limited time and all attack effects (freeze, poison, stun, etc). The Ambrosia converts damage you would have taken into healing instead making it quite effective if you're surrounded. Charges are very expensive for the Divine Potion compared to the other potions through.

Card 4: Amulet of Mana

The Amulet of Mana is a generic artifact card that regenerates your mana over time. It's not as good in Roguelike mode as the regen does not happen out of combat but sustain is in short supply there so should still be useful. For non-Roguelike mode, this is an absolutly mandatory artifact card to keep up with the build's heavy energy costs. It regenerates mana at a good rate and provides effective mana sustain.

Card 5: Teleport

Teleports you to a chosen location. It's a vital escape tool if you get swarmed and something is blocking your escape route. Try to avoid teleporting in the wrong direction, sometimes I do that lol. The cooldown is pretty short so you should have time to teleport again fairly quickly. If you get the Chain Leap legendary, the immunity and heal affect is terrific for avoiding damage.

Card 6: Golem

Summons a tank type minion for you. You can only have one golem summoned at a time and it is not preserved from one dungeon level to another. Golem summons at random location around you if you do not have a current target enemy and is summoned near the target if you do.

Activating the skill while Golem is still alive (for a small mana cost) will instead teleport to a random location if you do not have a target and near the target if you do. So make sure you have a target otherwise it might teleport the wrong way from the enemies lol. You'll likely need to teleport the Golem somewhat frequently as it is extremely slow and not the smartest AI.

Golem is decently tanky having 2x (level 2) or 3x (level 3) your health and will attract nearby enemies. It's immune to poisoning and freezing effects and will only take damage from your lightning type skills and not other skills you have.

Mage - Heavy Spell Slinger (Part 2)

Card 7: Mass Dispel

Mass dispel is an excellent anti-spell card. It's range basically covers the screen and it quickly disrupts any spells enemies are trying to cast. Enemies spells can do annoying stuff like spawn tons of extra spawns for you to grind through or really nasty stuff like teleport a whole pack of enemies right on top of you so I'd say you'd always want this card equipped over the next card.

Card 8: Meteor (alternatively Chaotic Ring)

Meteor is the Mage's anti-shield spell, destroying on hit shields and doing heavy damage. Unfortunately, Meteor has a lot of drawbacks. It's expensive mana wise to cast each time. You require a target to cast so you need to get up pretty close to enemies to trigger and you seem to not be able to use if you're moving. Higher card level increases the number of meteors spawned but knockback from the skill can mean that the additional meteors miss targets. The cooldown is also fairly lengthy so you can't use it very often.

You'll probably have trouble finding any room for this in Nightmare and Massacre where you'd always want Mass Dispel instead. A lot of better cards available for your limited open card slots. You may even want to remove in easier modes if you find yourself not having too much issue with shielded enemies and want to use another card (Mana Sphere, Magic Robe or Heal good options to replace it with)

An alternative is the Chaotic Ring. Rings are found pretty late but it will allow you to destroy shields will less effort.

Card 9 - 10: Choice of Cards

Shield:

One of the best early artifacts you can get, the Shield greatly mitigates incoming enemy ranged attacks. Otherwise you can find yourself getting helplessly barraged by mass groups of ranged enemies hiding between annoying tanky enemies. The Shield can really help mitigate damage in the early going until you've buffed up your health pool and unlocked more cards and card slots.

Boots:

The Boots are a defensive artifact that helps protect you from ground affects, clear path obstacles, crush annoying small spiders, and avoid damage from lightning attacks (either from bosses or your own). If you wanted to go with a Lightning themed build (Lightning spell + Staff of Lightning artifact) then this would be an auto-include.

Rabbit Foot:

The Rabbit Foot is a defensive artifact that helps give you a chance to avoid that annoying stun affect and reduce critical damage taken.

Magic Robe:

The Magic Robe is an artifact that mixes defense and offense. It spawns orbs that orbit around you. When an orb hits and enemy it knocks the enemy back and on higher levels does damage, stuns and damages and destroys obstacles without using an orb. On contact with the enemy, the orb is destroyed and a new orb is spawned after a couple of seconds.

Mana Sphere:

Mana Sphere is an excellent defensive and mana recovery spell. It has a chance to absorb attacks and spawn mana instead and is really worth running overall. Unfortunately chance to absorb damage does not upgrade on higher card levels. On Roguelike you may want to auto-include this into your build just for the extra mana recovery.

Heal:

Heal is an incredibly efficient heal as it only requires one mana to cast and heals for a good amount and rate. Generally excellent for sustain, you shouldn't need it for lower difficulties of Freeplay but can be very good for Nightmare and Massacre. Should be a core skill for Roguelike mode due to the lack of available heals (fountains don't refill, amulets don't work out of combat, healer in town costs gold). With a cooldown of only one second, you can recast Heal almost immediately after its effect drops so you should be able to keep it active 100% of the time.

Upgrade Priority

Shield, Amulet of Mana, Fire Ball/Book of Fire, Ice Bolt/Book of Ice, Golem and Mass Dispel are priorities to upgrade to level 2. Shield upgrade will help mitigate ranged attacks which will be the biggest danger early on. Amulet of Mana upgrade provides vital mana sustain. Fire Ball/Book of Fire and Ice Bolt/Book of Ice upgrade will boost your single target DPS. Golem upgrade will make it more tanky so it doesn't die so fast. Mass Dispel upgrade will make its effect last longer and lower its cooldown so you can trigger it again faster.

Upgrading to level 3 is a lot more expensive gold and rune wise so you'll probably want to hold off until later and use gold to open up card slots instead and upgrade other cards to level 2 when you're able to. Amulet of Mana is your priority for hitting level 3 as you'll likely be burning through mana otherwise. After that, work on upgrading the rest of the priority upgrades to 3 when possible.

Basic Strategy

Enter dungeon, activate Golem to tank for you, use Fireball and/or Ice Bolt to get 20x charges for those (and activate Mana Sphere if you have it equipped). Golem is slow so teleport it towards enemies if required. Trigger Mass Dispel as soon as you see enemies start casting spells. If you have Meteor on your bar you can use that to deal with shields but you will need to get close to them. If you get swarmed, use Teleport to escape.

If you find your health drop to ~50% health, just pop a Health / Rejuv potion. Early game you need to be more careful as Mage starting health pool is pretty tiny but once you get to mid-game you should be tanky enough to be able to take a few hits if needed.

For high difficulty freeplay dungeons, try to protect Amulet of Mana (for mana sustain), Teleport (for mobility) and at least one source of single target DPS (either Fireball/Book of Fire or Ice Bolt/Book of Ice). If you have enough Left/Right winged fixes, also protect Mass Dispel (to counter spells), Golem (to tank for you + it costs a lot to resummon after you kill boss lol), and maybe Heal if playing Roguelite(for super efficient heal) from bosses.

Plenty of other artifact, item and spell cards available so go ahead and try them out as well.