Guaranteed/Possible Spell Locations

[Eldritch]

Hello all...

I've been playing this excellent game for weeks now and am loving it but there's this thing that bothers me enough to register and ask about at teh official forums so... just bear with me guise :cool:

While the item/creature randomization in the game is a necessary evil for entertaining replays, it also seems to be real pain in the a** if you're a particularly unlucky player.. I have a level 15 Mage now in the Dwarven lands (just reached the capital) on hard difficulty which is a fun build geared towards direct damage spells. With a real high intelligence and all the right skills maxed out it scaled pretty well up until now but the problem is: I have been really... REALLY unlucky with the spells I've stumbled upon. I only have this really damaging fireball spell which is pretty much the only useful DD spell going for me right now. ( I also have the Poison skull which is p. lame and the F. Arrow which is just pathetic). I still haven't found any trace of the Ice Snakes, Fire Rain or the Geyser I keep hearing about and this makes me a sad panda... or a battle mage :confused:

Can any you guys tell me where I am guaranteed or likely to find any of these spells? I know the Geyser is Distort. Magic which I got on lvl 2 but I'm even down with that, I'm that desperate believe me! Anything but the Fireball, I'm even sick of the goddamn animation now :!:

All in all, Randomization is cool and all but if it's too extreme to the point it can actually make perfectly viable builds ridiculously difficult to progress is just f**ing annoying :evil: Or I'm just extremely unlucky and the randomization in the game is perfectly balanced :)

[milo]

Are you familiar with the obelisk quest? That map you get when you find all the obelisks can be traded for a number of scrolls from each school of magic. Once you have the map goto the academy in verlon forest. I only have one character able to test which scrolls you obtain when you trade the map in but the new spells for me were fire rain, necro call, hypnosis, sheep, blind. In choosing to trade the map in you lose some other good bonuses but might be the best option for a mage if you have been unlucky with drops.

[Eldritch]

Dude, I just found the friggin Armageddon spell for sale in a giant whales gut! How awesome is that? Anyway, yeah I'm familiar with that quest but It seems to be a pretty huge undertaking so early in the game. I mean, don't you have to visit the obelisks in the elven lands or the necro lands for that? On hard difficulty the army that guards that castle the dorf king wants me to take out to proceed to other lands is GINORMOUS. There were like 5 black dragons for chrissake. I just want to grind a bit, progress nice and slowly and I know fire rain is maybe too good to hope forso early but you'd at least expect a more mediocre ice snakes or whatever medium tier DD spell to show up! Say, I have skipped visiting the Orc Embassy until now, is it likely to find good chaos magic there? Seems reasonable :) I'd better try out this Armageddon for some cheese tactics too. Just got to find some fire resistant/immune creatures... or creatures fom infinite "horde" stacks could be viable maybe... Any suggestions?

[Namel]

I believe you are guaranteed of geyssir spell when you finish titan's tear quest. It can be finished very early in dwarven lands. One more reason why distortion is important to max fast. :)

[sector24]

Geyser is a guaranteed spell. In the Freedom Isles there's a pirate who gives you a map to find a Dwarven treasure (Titan's Tear). That treasure is in Arlania south of the Griffin's island. Once you dig it up, go to Creiston Mines exit into Kordar, and take the first left. You turn it in to the dwarf in the building on the left after you buy him a beer.

[Namel]

That treasure is in Arlania south of the Griffin's island.

Actually place can change. It has been in Arlania every time for me but in different places. Couple times on that island you say, once in end of peninsula where you can only get by boat. Look at map pirate gives.

[Eldritch]

Hey guys, thanks for all the helpful responses but...

DAMN I was really hoping Ice Snakes to be the guaranteed one. Turned out to be Geyser. Gonna have to settle with this one I guess.. Good thing I upgraded distortion to lvl2 over getting excited to find cool spells like phantom/pain mirror before... (btw, does intellect have anything to do with their effectiveness? Would be a shame if it didn't) I think I'll just have to grind the s**t out of the last remaining organism on Freedom Isles and the less dangerous areas of kordar to max distortion a bit earlier than planned...

I still cling to the hope of findin' the snakes on the orcish embassy though. Even if I don't, I hear there's still some delicious shamans to be found there.. *win-win situation*

Srsly, do any of you remember where you've stumbled upon the Ice Snakes before? It seems to be a mid tier spell unlike fire rain so it should've been available in the earlier stages. I read here in the forums that some guy found them for sale at the Coastal brotherhood shops, all I found there was utter disappoinment and broken dreams. :)

[sector24]

I found both Ice Snake and Fire Rain as random scrolls in the Freedom Isles. Either as the scroll bag or just a regular scroll lying around on the map.

[milo]

necrocall can be found in chronicles of lost town I think it is called. The quest item you obtained from a crypt in morshan swamp.

[Eldritch]

I found both Ice Snake and Fire Rain as random scrolls in the Freedom Isles. Either as the scroll bag or just a regular scroll lying around on the map.

Man, I've searched EVERY inch of the isles and all I found was either the same book of fail, kamikaze or sacrifice. I got like millions of them right now. (sold)

...

I think I've figured out the lame randomization system of the game. All the scrolls are a completely random spell of a certain schools certain tier and that's why I constantly keep getting the book of fail etc. instead of ice snake or fire rain. Because those spells are somehow considered the same tier as THOSE spells which just doesn't make sense. Either the parameters could have been made a bit more mild, giving you more chances to get more spells without ridiculously missing out most of them till cthulhu knows how long further through the game OR more importantly the spells which are considered the same tier could have been made more sensibly balanced. The book of fail or kamikaze just does not provide a viable alternative to the more decent spells of its school.. Frustrating game design is frustrating. :evil:

Lucky players of course can be rewarded for their "luck" and can find the better spells a bit earlier than others, it could even provide a pleasant surprise in the replays but the "unlucky" players should be able to at least actually find the good ones sooner or later. Not until after the friggin mid game. It very well could have been game over for me if I've been playing on impossible instead of hard maybe...

[blueshrike]

I'm in the same boat right now as you, only further. As a 17 mage I'm clearing out the mines and peaks (just cleared out the upper and lower dwarven lands). I only just found a small stack (80) of Evil Beholders and larger stack of Polar Bears... but I've found Giants in abundance and cyclopses.

However with spells, not so lucky. I have yet to find the Ice Snake or Fire Rain, and the best I have like you, is Fireball, Geyser, and Phantom... I do have Kamikaze which can be good, but I do NOT have Hypnosis either. So, basically we're in the same boat.

My stack right now is 4 giants, roughly 36 cannoneers, 41 shamans, about 93 griffins (useful for phantom), and about 124 Royal Snakes with Cyclopses and Griffins (for sacrifice) in reserve. I'm just about at the point where I'm going to take over the castle but there's a demoness walking around that's overpowering and I dislike losing too many troops... the castle seems doable though. Chaos(3), Distortion (3), Higher Magic (1), Destruction (1) because any more takes more than 1 giant to use Sacrifice... at least now I can Sacrifice for free and get usually 7 or so Royal Snakes back from less than a Giant. :)

[Eldritch]

Mang, I'm lvl 16 right now and cleaned the entire freedom isles, upper/lower hadar includin' the spider queen and WAS on the progress of grindin' the ardan peaks/t. mines until I realized my greater druids staff has an incredibly hippy habit of slowly deteriorating its morale the more I defeat creatures. The more you kick ass the less it likes you, how gay is that? Anyway, reminding myself of the battle where I first suppressed and upgraded the item, I thought I could manage such a reasonable fight until I found out that this time... the peace lovin' staff has GINORMOUS legions of not so "peaceful" forest creatures and lots of gremlins with like 6500 hit points as keepers... All I had to say was, well... F**k. with lots of ***'s.

Well I'm off to Arlania now, to finally face that ridiculously powerful staff of destruction in hopes of getting the staff itself or some other magic related reward. I think I read the ungrateful s.o.b. that is the archmage doesn't actually give you the staff stating you're not strong enough and gives you another intelligence boosting staff similar to the druids staff (archmages staff iirc) which is better than nothing I guess. Either way it sure beats having to suppress THAT army of tree hugging doom. I got a recent save with the staffs morale just about to go zero, so I'm gonna use it to get the replacement, heh.

Btw at lvl 16 I got Chaos(3), Distortion(2), HigherMagic(3), Destroyer(3) with a whopping 27(!) intelligence with the g. druids staff. One more level and I got Distortion (3) which means spamming geysers with like 2500dmg twice a turn for 3 turns until I run out of mana. I think the demons won't like it. :evil:

Also I think I got shamans(42), evil beholders(42), horsemen(42), cannoneers(36), archmages(42), knights(42), alchemists(30) including reserves and yes, apparently I have sacrifice too. I usually use it to either create full stacks of scarce new units like I did with the knights and the horsemen or to replenish heavy losses (never had to/last resort) always by sacrificing infinite "horde" stacks. I even kept a few weak mobs alive here and there should I need an easy battle to do that... *controlled environment* :) I think I can access hypnosis by supressing an artifact I have, never bothered to do it before buy maybe I should... What school is it anyway?

[Eldritch]

I think I can access hypnosis by supressing an artifact I have, never bothered to do it before buy maybe I should... What school is it anyway?

OK, I just read in another thread that you can actually sacrifice hypnotized enemy stacks and with higher magic you can do the whole thing in one turn, so... I think I really should get that now. ;). I thought it kinda worked like the beholders thing but apparently it doesn't.

[ender]

sacrifice spell is common in game? first game as mage (normal) i found it early.

as a paladin (impossible) I don't found it and is hard to get good troops without it.

[Infiltrator]

I am in elven lands and still no fire rain.. anyone know if it is guaranteed to be found somewhere?

[Zhuangzi]

Fire Rain was a big problem in my third game too. I don't think there's any guaranteed location. I thought Demonis would have it but it didn't this time. But you can get spells by trading in the map of Endoria at the Mage's Tower in Verlon Forest. I got Fire Rain this way. :)

[Infiltrator]

It's a good thing I saved in front of it.. I traded the map like you said and they had no spells. Reloaded, bought all scrolls from them and traded, nothing again. Sigh.

[laffwis]

It's a good thing I saved in front of it.. I traded the map like you said and they had no spells. Reloaded, bought all scrolls from them and traded, nothing again. Sigh.

i think the game creates all the parameters at the beginning of a new game, so no matter how often you reload, you still get the same result for randomized things like altars, shrines, etc.

[Infiltrator]

I know, what I meant was - it's good I saved and then traded because I didn't get anything worthy for it so I reloaded. I found fire rain anyway, it was on one of the platforms in hell.

[Smiley]

Dude, I just found the friggin Armageddon spell ........I'd better try out this Armageddon for some cheese tactics too. Just got to find some fire resistant/immune creatures... or creatures fom infinite "horde" stacks could be viable maybe... Any suggestions?

there is a "description bug" there. Armageddon is actually Astral Damage, not Fire Damage. and there is no resistant/immune creature to this kind of damage.

[Eldritch]

I found fire rain anyway, it was on one of the platforms in hell.

I found both fire rain AND ice snake for sale on that platform. :cool:

Did a lot of dodging/sneaking in demonis at lvl 18 for that one. I did kill that "very strong" death knight dude guarding the portal with zero losses though. Then I returned at lvl 20 and fought HARD to make Xeona my beloved, submissive wife.

[Rainc]

what about Armageddon + "The spell that leaves the last creature alive in the troop"?

[taltamir]

i am in a similar situation to the poster, or I was, then a stroke of luck gave me resurrect spell (i bought it along with sheep and phonix from the youngest of the three cooks)... wow what a difference it makes, it is much easier to have flawless victories now. (that and a wide variety of spells... Chaos 3, Order 3, Distortion 2).
Honestly, i hate randomization. But the game is so good it doesn't detract much.

[YENKO]

i am in a similar situation to the poster, or I was, then a stroke of luck gave me resurrect spell (i bought it along with sheep and phonix from the youngest of the three cooks)... wow what a difference it makes, it is much easier to have flawless victories now. (that and a wide variety of spells... Chaos 3, Order 3, Distortion 2).
Honestly, i hate randomization. But the game is so good it doesn't detract much.

Lucky you! I find my Resurrect spell in Eerie Peak (sp), and the fire rain and Sacrifice only in mid-Demonia (had to sneak all the way to the Demoness castle for that). Ice snakes i found somewhere in Dwarfland, along with geyser which i use the most, at least two castings in the first turn to thin the enemy ranks. All i need now is Hypnotize :)