Fireball fireball fireball.....

[Saridu]

Why does every body jump on poor Dragon Arrows? As Eldritch mentioned and I'll emphasise, apart from removing range penalies, Dragon Arrows are armour piercing! They will make almost no difference against mobs like peasants but are lethal against the high def units that dominate the later game. Even bosses, the turtle, laughs your spells off, try dragon arrows on your lonely archers and see the difference

Yeah as a mage it almost feels too easy fireball, fire arrow and later firestorm just one piece of advice for you, demons and that's all demons and all dragons (and you will be facing many) have at least 50% fire resistance, their top units have 80%! Though spells like Ice Snake do make up for this a lot of demon fights will be more CC/Buff than DD fights. You will be crying for support spells like dragon arrows!

Also second that advice mages do cast magic differently to Paladins and Warrior, the second two are more about buff and support with the Paladin maybe touching on some crowd control.

Fireball to second level is good advice for new mages, some like to rush to level 3, I prefer the long haul to Higher Magic 1 for the versatility - you'd be amazed how effective a beserk on Royal Snakes can be.

[Dorkus]

Fireball is always good. It's just that fire rain is even better, so fireball loses its relevance. I like to leave fireball at a lower level because it costs less mana, and is useful for winnowing down stacks that you're planning to keep hanging around, near the end of fights, so you can gather mana/rage and resurrect all of your losses.

[Stepsongrapes]

Originally Posted by Dorkus

I like to leave fireball at a lower level because it costs less mana, and is useful for winnowing down stacks that you're planning to keep hanging around, near the end of fights, so you can gather mana/rage and resurrect all of your losses.

Sounds like you don't know that you can always cast a spell at lower level, using the "shift" and "ctrl" keys.

No need to "leave fireball at a lower level" to save mana.

[alon]

Originally Posted by Dorkus

Fireball is always good. It's just that fire rain is even better, so fireball loses its relevance. I like to leave fireball at a lower level because it costs less mana, and is useful for winnowing down stacks that you're planning to keep hanging around, near the end of fights, so you can gather mana/rage and resurrect all of your losses.

Simply hold down Ctrl or Alt to cast a Lower Level spell - any spell. This is one feature of the game I only dreamed of having and this is the first game I see such a genius option available. (especially useful when you want to use Sacrifice Level 1 instead of Level 3 or 2 so you don't go over your leadership...)

[Eldritch]

Originally Posted by Saridu

Yeah as a mage it almost feels too easy fireball, fire arrow and later firestorm just one piece of advice for you, demons and that's all demons and all dragons (and you will be facing many) have at least 50% fire resistance, their top units have 80%! Though spells like Ice Snake do make up for this a lot of demon fights will be more CC/Buff than DD fights. You will be crying for support spells like dragon arrows!

Pain Mirror works wonders against demons. It along with Geyser and Phantom got me an early victory against Xeona on hard difficulty with minimal losses. Also a double lvl3 geyser first turn somehow froze the enemy for like 4 turns which was awesome. Like some kind of mass slow lol.

The distortion school is just awesome, everyone should max it asap. Phantom, Hypnotize, Pain Mirror and even an early guaranteed geyser for dd lovin' mages. Without Phantom and Pain Mirror I would have just LOST that battle. She had 400 demonesses ffs.

[Zhuangzi]

There is a nice shield that adds 20% to Pain Mirror as well. I think PM is probably the best Distortion spell. I am more of a Chaos Mage myself but Trap, Pain Mirror and Phantom are essential.

[Thurak]

If you have a 200 griffin stack with stone skin/magic spring and bless that is attacked by enemies... well then you don´t need a fireball any more

Later in my mage game I really used tons of direct damage inflicting spells (fire rain, lightning, pole axes and so on), but those "troop enhancement" spells can deal (much) more damage in certain situations so I used them quiet often.

And if you are not a mage, low mana can prevent you from firing one fireball each round.