Alchemy? Worth it?

[Tibster]

The importance of alchemy grows exponentially with the difficulty level!
The only time u dont really need it is easy!

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by Tibster

The importance of alchemy grows exponentially with the difficulty level!
The only time u dont really need it is easy!

Well I missed it even on easy - but the reason was that I played it first time, the UPGRAGE button didn't show the future upgrades and I was eager to know all be properties of all spells (still wasn't successful )

When I realized that ressurection for Paladin works only till level 4 creatures, I was sure that Mage can ressurect even LVL 5 creatures... how mistaken I was

Great about this game is that even as I played for fourth time I still found some spell I didn't get previously (now when I checked with the manual, I know em all, finaly )
When speaking of dissapointements - Slow has not mass effect... gosh...

[Archlord_James]

Early on u dont need it but as soon as u decide to get level 2 magic and start upgrading some spells u better max this spell out if u want to be FLEXIBLE in the late game. It is nice to have A LOT of level 3 maxed out spells so u can try all kinds of different thing and change your strategy when you need to. Alchemy allows you to get more spells upgraded to level 3 A MUST imo. How boring would this game get if u only cast 3 or 4 spells all the time. I like to mix it up sometimes direct damage, sometimes debuffing, sometimes buffing my army. The game also throws some curves at you with magic immune dragons, creatures immune to fire, or physical, or or magic damage, so u want to have options to deal with anything. Alchemy one of the best skills imo.

[milo]

Suggest holding off investing in anything unless you are certain you will want it. Twice I have wasted runes in tolerance so I could use demonesses with elven she fighters and twice I have ended up not doing this. If you plan on going the maximum spell damage root and boosting intelligence over everything else, many of the unit buffs will be redundant.

[Gatts]

Again - as all - it is about planning.

When you play impossible you start only with few crystals (20 or so) and I would not wonder if you would need more for the same spell upgrades (but for 80% I am sure that the price is the always same)

Planning is:
You have few runes of magic and mind - you could add them into alchemy, or chaos magic/ which one want choose?

At the beginning you have very few spells and even fewer are worth upgrading... so you won't save that much with alchemy, but will be more effective with upgraded chaos magick. BUT... But you may have level 3 chaos magic, spent all your crystals on fireball, you will find ice snake... hell! Darn! - where to get crystals now? You get hardly enough crystals to get ice sanke on second level, and you find fire rain... DARN! DARN! In such csae you would love to use more runes in achemy sooner...

Is Alchemy usefull? TOTALLY !
Is it usefull when you brainlessly use all your runes in this skill at the most earlier game stage? I would say NOT.

I just say : thank you for this great skill... and add : I will use it for my benefit, wisely.

[Dorkus]

There are only a handful of spells that are worth upgrading, imo -- mainly direct damage spells. The other useful spells in the game -- phantom, slow, blind, etc. -- are just as useful or even more useful at low levels as they are upgraded. E.g. before I realized that you could always cast down a level, I cursed myself many many times for upgrading phantom and blind, because the higher level versions of those spells cost significantly more mana.

[Metathron]

In my last game as mage, I maxed alchemy early on and upgraded a whole lot of spells (but certainly not all) to 3rd level. However, I ended up frequently using only about a dozen: battle cry, bless, resurrection, dragon slayer, demon slayer from Order; slow, precision, geyser, magic shackles from Distortion; fireball and flaming arrow (later made obsolete by fire rain), doom, and poison skull from Chaos.

Of course, that's not to say that the other spells are useless (though some certainly seem so...last hero - what the frell?), just that they require a different tactic.

[Smash]

Try use last hero with 1 troop and Armageddon . Working?

[Metathron]

Ah, I see!

Buuut...when do you actually find yourself in such a situation? Having to leave the rest of your army far away and divide it up among castles due to only 3 slot reserve in castles. Meh, seems like a bother.

[Smash]

First you have six in Darion.
Second why Armaggedon Mage would bother with rest of army in the first place?