[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by MrBlister

Thanks for the advice guys, it helped a lot.

I have a few questions though:

1. I got this ring that gives me +3 int. It says, on use it will give fuse or something and give me +3 int (after 50 won battles or something). So, I win the battles and use the ring, but it doesn't give me +3 int, it just turns into a ring that gives +3 mana.
   

1. It does give you +3 int. You can now take off the ring, and your int is the same as before when you had the ring. Now you can equip some +5 int item instead.
   
   

   Originally Posted by MrBlister

   Is there a way/mod to speed up animations or cancel them? Especially the pet dragon--it just makes fights take so much longer than necessary.

   Well, in options you can set combat animation to fast. It isn't too bad with that setting on.
   
   

   Originally Posted by MrBlister

   Trophies--as a mage, do I need them? I can honestly say I've only once upgraded a unit with them early on. I unequipped the parchment early on in favor of a different item. Am I hurting myself in the long run? I mean, like, lategame am I going to find some dude who's like "Hey, wanna buy this sweet golden dragon of the gods? No problem, just hand over 50,000 trophies."

Can be handy for fielding key units early on, then using Sacrifice to bolster your numbers.

Sacrifice hurts one friendly stack unit (can't be a summon), and a percentage of that damage is used to INCREASE your maximum unit numbers of another stack. Very handy if you need more of another unit.

Originally Posted by MrBlister

Honestly, I tried several of the other pets that seemed better suited for a mage, but the red one just worked best for me.

When you get more experienced, you will find the blue one? (+1 initiative to dragons) is probably the best one unless you are doing a very specific strategy.

Originally Posted by MrBlister

The advice about focusing on summons really helped as well. They also made great fodder for the suicide bomber skill, which did great damage for its relatively low mana cost. Mostly it was oil fog thing, fire arrows, and fire balls. I'd use stone walls to mess with the monster pathing to get them to cluster up, and then nuke the group down. I always have one meatsack unit in my group that I tried to put out ahead of my other units to keep my squishy casting/ranged units safer. However, going against enemy heroes and enemies with strong ranged attacks was extremely hard. It's easy to get to the point to where there are nothing but lethal and invincible mobs left to fight. Buying expensive items almost cost me the game a couple of times, as I was too broke to restock my army. I've had to return to save games that were like 3 fights previous. But, later I got the pirana spell, and man, that thing is beautiful.

If you can time it right, Kamikaze on a summon that is going to die does a lot of damage per mana. In fact, both Trap and Kamikaze do tons of damage per mana. I agree, Kamikaze probably isn't worth upgrading if you can avoid it.

Also, you can consider berserking (Berserker) demons the demonologists summon. Deadly stuff.

Don't forget support spells like Stoneskin, Phantom, and Target. Those are some of the strongest spells in the game and they are relatively cheap for the crystals. In fact, for a more full-bodied mage army, you are better off with support spells than damage spells (because the enemy is too strong).

Save up for Turn Back Time too.

Also, you can cast spells that cost MORE than 20 mana as your second spell during a dual-cast.

e.g. Pygmy (20 mana), then Call of Phoenix (35 mana) in a single round. As long as the first spell is at the limit, the second spell can be cast as a higher mana spell.

Also, try to get used to winning with no-losses. This helps a ton on the restocking bit and it helps your leadership score by getting that medal (+1000 leadership if you win 50 fights, no losses).

Get level 3 Summoner Skill ASAP. Helps Phantom and Phoenix a lot.

Originally Posted by MrBlister

One thing I wish I had known early on was how important it was to save your crystals to upgrade your better skills. Early on, I decided to learn as many scrolls as possible, since learning them cost very few crystals and it is nice to have the versatility. However, it delayed upgrading some of the key spells when I ran out of crystals. I have so many spells that seem good on the surface, but that I never use. Kinda frustrating.

Get the Neatness Skill in the Mind Tree. Just get level 1. Buy up crappy low level items, and "destroy" them for magic crystals. The problem is, you are not playing No-Loss, so you don't have enough money to buy the cheap items.

Originally Posted by MrBlister

I'm doing pretty well now. I'm level 24; I've unlocked like 2/3rds of the map, and I'm sitting on over 200k gold. I'm working my way through some mines--can't remember what the name of that area is. A big help has been getting black dragons. There was some land where there's this black unicorn guarding a cave. I managed to drag the unicorn away from the cave and slip in and buy 2 black dragons. Oh man, they are such badasses. Also, the rune mages can resurrect black dragons even though they're magic immune. I have enough leadership now to get a 3rd one, but I just haven't gone to pick it up yet.

Rune mages are GREAT. They were not in the original AP; just Crossworlds. A real game changer.

Originally Posted by MrBlister

My biggest complaint about the game is that it wastes a lot of time. Not just the painfully long animations, but also, having to wander around and wait for your mana to recharge is honestly so stupid. There should be a rest skill that you can use on the main map that lets your hero sit down and regain all their mana and lose all their rage. I found some cheat codes that help with that now; after a fight, I just do "mana" then "rage -x". Really, though, there should just be a button to do that in the game. I mean, I'm not going to waste skill runes to upgrade the recharge skill since the skill doesn't actually give any in-game benefit besides saving you from having to stand around in between fights. Pretty dumb, tbh.

Sorry. Now your final score will be tainted since you cheated. Not sure if you care or not. It will say "Amelie the Cheater" in the end game. Here are some ways to avoid that and somewhat save time.

Try to get Transmute Skill. It lets you get mana everytime you kill a stack OR if one of your stacks are killed.

Don't forget to get Anger Skill (Might tree), you want to get Rage faster.

Magic Spring spell (distortion tree), is great if you have a tank that will soak up hits. Every hit it takes (including post effects) will net you more mana! So it can be used to restore mana if you can ensure you will get that unit hit a lot. (think ... demons summoned by demonologist).

You can try to push for concentration as well. That gives you mana no matter what.

Anyway, these methods can be used, depending on your strategy. If you are big on "big sized armies" you want Anger and Transmute. Just one point in Anger will suffice for now. Transmute takes up Might runes, but it can really be worth it in speeding things up.

Also, get mana accelerator up fast, but not too fast if that is your primary mana regenerator. You might need to get Absolute Balance in the Mind Tree to raise your maximum Rage. Mages have trouble with Rage and going with the mana accelerator route can be very tough. If you keep levelling up the Pet Dragon, mana accelerator will EVENTUALLY become 25 rage -> 25 mana.

Also, you need one point in that "recharge skill" to get to Concentration skill. Also, you get +2 mana as well. It is better than nothing. If you win the battle faster than 10 turns, you can "delay" finishing the battle, so your mana will be more recharged (while you build up medals too).

Game time lost in the battle does not count against your final score. Mouse over the sunset picture in the corner, it tells you how many days you have spent. If you spent time out in the game board regenerating mana, then your score goes down a bit more. So, it isn't such a bad idea later on to max Mediation for the mana boost, and it does speed up regeneration quite a bit. Of course, it is not a high priority.

Originally Posted by MrBlister

[*]Get transmute early. You only get half-mana from summons that die, though.
[*]Get higher-magic as early as possible as well. The sweet spot for this skill is level 2.
[*]Spells I have found to be useful (note, of the spells I've found so far, and just the best ones) and worth the crystal investment (up to the level indicated):[/LIST]

Fire Rain 3 - good bang-for-buck.

Flaming arrow 3 - amazing bang for buck as the mana cost stays at 5. Early on, it's great for picking off priority targets.

Trap 1 - the best use of trap is to slow an enemy advance through a choke, and since it stops the enemy cold at level 1, it's really not worth any more points than that. I know there's a trap achievement and all, but I really can't see investing much in this skill.

Dispel 1 - there aren't a ton of buffs I'm afraid of seeing on an enemy that I'd waste an entire spell-cast to remove from an enemy, so I've never bothered to upgrade this. But, at level 1, it's very useful to keep your tank unit moving around, or to unsilence your summoning unit.

Ghost Blade 3 - the best, single-target damage skill I've found. I don't get the downside to this this skill. The only time I use flame arrow ahead of it is if the target is weak to fire, or I'm totally strapped for mana and need immediate burst damage.

Summon Phoenix 3 - I mean, it comes back alive--what else could you ask for?

Chaos Dragon 3 - I don't know if this guy is really worth the 60 mana if you were to do all the theory-crafting, but he's just such a party. If it looks like it's going to be a long battle, I'll usually have 2-3 oil shrouds on the battle field, and like to summon this guy right in the middle of one. You probably get more damage out over 2 turns with fire rain, but he just makes such an entrance it's hard not to use him.

Chaos Dragon sucks man. Phoenix is a lot better for the mana and crystals. For 60 mana, you can cast so many better support/debuff spells that will net you FAR more damage, and have you take far less damage.

Don't forget poison skull and fear. If you have all level 5 units, you cast fear. Then cast poison skull and flaming arrow... the guy will take 2 post effect hits, and won't initiate an attack on a level 5 unit.

If you have buffed up a unit with stoneskine and divine armor, and it gets hit by poison or burning effects, you want Dispel level 3 to get rid of poison/burning, but NOT your stoneskin buffs.

Ghost blade does not get any benefit from post damage effect. Flaming arrow or poison skull is much better since they will suffer from loss of morale, and take post-effect damage for 3 rounds.

If you use Ghost Blade to kill phys resistance enemies, you should be using magic damage (inquisitor) instead. Or debuff the enemy with Pygmy (20 mana), or if they are a cyclops with Helplessness (6 mana).

If a unit is hit by two negative status effects, the morale decreases, meaning, their attack rating AND defense rating drops (and their critical hit %), making them easier to kill.

Sadly, in Impossible games, the only damaging spells I probably get are

Flaming Arrow
Poison Skull
Trap

Level 3 trap AND trapping medal can be very good if you know your army composition will be a little bit weaker than the enemy. I believe my traps do like 5000+ damage, I get 3 of them for free at the start of battle (they are only level 2 though). The level 3 trap ALSO inflicts poison damage.

Trap probably does the most damage per mana (not counting aggregate damage like Pirana).

Of all classes, mages tend to benefit the most from trap.

In certain situations I will use other damaging spells like
Black Hole

A lot of people swear by Geyser... not sure why I never use it.

The best debuffs in the game is probably
Pygmy Level 3(for level 1-4)
Helplessness Level 3(for level 5s)
Plague Level 1 (for black dragons).

They are also VERY cheap for the crystal/mana usage.

Best support spells for yourself are
Stone skin level 3
Phantom level 3
Divine Armor level 2
Turn Back Time level 3 (if you use level 5s a lot... otherwise, just get enough to help your primary damaging stack)

Good crowd control spells are
Target level 3
Fear level 3
Blind (eh)

I am undoubtedly missing some, but those are the ones that come to mind.

In hindsight, you are already doing a lot of what I am suggesting. I think the key problem why you are running out of mana so fast is ... because you are using very inefficient damaging spells or spells like Chaos Dragon.

In Impossible Mode, damage by spells is really not that good.

Don't forget to abuse your Pet Dragon
Later on you will absolutely need

Ball of Lightning
Mystic Egg

Don't pick the mystic egg upgrades that will "give you leadership +300", just get the level 2-5, 90% leadership... etc.