[Micah]

A few comments:

You don't stress the importance of the Ring of Wizardry (RoW) enough, IMO. The RoW is pivotal to getting access to other path boosters, and is always central to my magic diversification strategies. It and a Ro Sorcery make access to Death magic a breeze, and nature nearly as easy. It will also provide a critical boost that will allow you a much better shot of forging a staff of elemental mastery, which can help out with elemental paths as well. Any long term game virtually requires that you get one of these things in order to get to most high-level magic. Basically any time you mention "empower" in the guide you really ought to replace it with "have a RoW." This item virtually eliminates the need to empower your mages for booster access. (example: Earth 1 mage > RoW > Earth Boots > Troll king > Earth king, instead of E1 > Empower > boots > Troll > Empower > Earth King...MUCH cheaper, and more versatile. Similarly, Death never requires empowerment if you have the astral boosters...Skullface/skullstaff/double ring will get you liches, which can hit D7 and cast pretty much anything with a ring and the 2 death boosters, which is great if you don't manage to snag the Sceptre.)

So, if you have to empower to get to your boosters, make sure it's in Astral. S3 if you can get a Crystal Coin, S4 otherwise. Once you get the RoW you're really pretty much set for other paths except maybe F and A.

Trading is a GREAT way to get booster items as well, especially for Air, since once you break into it you can generally forge more of the same.

The "Army of" spells only requre an E3 baseline to cast, not E5 as you state.