Which spells do folks consider worth learning or upgrading ?

[Longasc]

Geyser, Pain Mirror -> get to level 3 Distortion Magic, both spells rock.

Also important: Resurrection, later on after you got "Time Back" Sacrifice.

[Monstruel]

Level 26 Mage on Impossible, and I still use direct damage spells with frightening efficiency.

My Kamikaze spell does a max over over 8000 damage. Fire Rain does just over 6000 damage. Ice Snake does 6750 damage to the initial target.

42 intelligence will do that.

Actually it'll be 47 soon, since I'm about to finish "draining" the Pain Skull.

I actually find Geyser kind of weak for the mana cost, unless it's a battle with exactly 8 stacks which do not resist physical damage (much or at all).

Right now I have a full army, since the Pain Skull halves my Mana. But I actually got from level 18 to level 25 by winning battles against hordes in Death Land and Elinia with a single stack of Necromancers. No other army. That's due to a little Invisibility abuse.

THAT is one of my favourite/most powerful spells in the game.
With the Might tree undead upgrades, your Necromacers have 9 Initiative (8 if enemy has Black Dragons present). It means you get to cast first, before any enemy action. Invisibility is your first spell, then just do Kamikaze on the next three turns. Invisibility lasts 4 turns (and you can replenish it without ever getting movement from the enemy, with the wait command, thanks to high Initiative, the enemy finishes its turn before you have to press "defend"), so the Kamikaze cycle starts before even your first cast of Invisibility expires.

At 5500-8500 damage per each bomb for 15 mana, the Kamikaze cycle is a wonder to behold.

After that my Necromancers raise the dead three times, and these mop up the survivors (if any).

And the wonderful thing is that while Kamikaze can't be cast on Black Dragons, it CAN be cast on the units NEXT to them.

If for some reason I'm running out of mana, there's the magic spring + poison rain trick. Or even just summoning a Demon Gate and then using magic spring on the demon. Doing so in conjunction with an Ice Ball taking away some attention from the summoned stack helps it survive.

So, even on Impossible difficulty, you can still go with direct damage spells IF you push your Intelligence (and mana) up at the expense of everything else. My Attack is at 7 and defense only at 15, IIRC. Really low, yes, but then it doesn't matter when 90% of the damage comes from my spells and 90% of enemy units never get to hit anything.

Of course if I was still playing a Warrior or Paladin on Hard/Impossible, I'd get myself a nice stack of Skeleton Archers and use Dragon Arrows on 'em. Now THAT is some insanely broken damage (10 Black Dragons gone in a single shot from ~1500 archers)!

[klasicni]

Monstruel I tried your Kamikaze tehnique and it's really great! I don't have such high INT as you only 35, but I have killed lvl 30 fight (dragon) at the tournament with lvl 23 mage (only 5 green dragons in my army).

I must say that you found a gem! Wonderfull!

I started with this at lvl 22, because I haven't found Invisibility spell before. In other fights I have also combined with some Demon gates and Magic spring if needed, that's all...

So far I have found only one problem with this kind of fighting. Evil book and Plants... they still seem to see me, so there this does not work...

[jwallstone]

I'm a bit confused. Are you casting Kamikaze on your own troops and just moving them next to the enemy?

[klasicni]

No no... you hide one troop you have. I think the best one unit to have right now are emerald (green) dragons...

So first you cast Invisibility spell on them, then you put Kamikaze (bomb) on the enemy units, and you just press defend or wait on your dragons... till round four. Then I use Invisibility spell again and do the process again. The only troop you can not cast Kamikaze on are Black dragons, but the unit exploding next to them kill's them.

Since I started this I killed everything only with spells, no need for units. There were maybe 5 out of 50 fights that I used demon gate to clean up everything. Right now I have 149 mana and 39 INT.

BUM all the way!

[jwallstone]

Wow, that sounds great. But the description for Kamikaze clearly says that it's for your own troops: "A bomb is attached to the friendly target...", so I always thought that it could only be cast on your own troops and never tried it out. Is this possibly a bug?

Regardless, it sounds like fun and I'll try it out.

[Elwin]

Well in my opinion name of spell speaks for itslelf .. should be only on your units so i think its bug

[Hayte]

Originally Posted by jwallstone

Wow, that sounds great. But the description for Kamikaze clearly says that it's for your own troops: "A bomb is attached to the friendly target...", so I always thought that it could only be cast on your own troops and never tried it out. Is this possibly a bug?

Regardless, it sounds like fun and I'll try it out.

You can put it on friendly units if you want but of course that doesn't work for the strategy noted on the previous page.

A nice way to start against an army with at least 1x stack of non mind immunes is with Hypnosis + Magic Spring in turn 1. Now wait as the AI beats that unit stack to a pulp giving you all your mana back to cast...Kamikaze on the hypnotized stack in turn 2.

It leaves you with alot of opening options in turn 3 and alot of mana. you can detonate the bomb yourself by killing the weakened stack with your own units when Hypnosis wears off. Or the AI might kill it off and detonate the bomb that way but its great way to:

1) kill off a powerful enemy stack without having to do anything. And you get tonnes of rage for it too.
2) prevent most baddies from attacking or moving against your own units for at least 2 turns.
3) deal a metric tonne of damage to all melee units wailing on your puppet through retaliation and the spell Kamikaze.
4) leaves you with enough mana and rage + good unit positioning to cast whatever you want coming into turn 3 with little or no losses, even against armies much stronger than you.

It also sets up an awesome Pain Mirror because we are talking full enemy unit stacks attacking your puppet with total abandon.