Best - worse magic paths

[Endoperez]

HoneyBadger said:
Earth has built-in usefulness because it's got lots of nice early game forged items that you can make en-masse, and earth drakes.

It's nice that you can sell the gems for 15 gold a pop, but earth gems are much more valuable, and they're only worth 10.

I'd like if you could use mastery in fire to combine more with other paths: more magma, steam, some kind of eldritch death-fire Anthrax spells, maybe something with Astral to make Aether magic? Aether (along with fire, earth, water, air) being one of the Platonic elements. Water, overall, seems to be a little bit more useful, especially considering the ability to freeze your enemies solid. You can set your enemies on fire, but so far I haven't seen this have too much of an effect..

Sea Serpents and Cave Drakes can be good in the early game... but they are also expensive. 8 gems is often way too much, even in the early game, because you could save those gems and use them for something better AND more cost-effective later. Cave Drakes are good... but are they worth 8 gems? That's much harder question.

The gems aren't sold. It's called alchemy for a reason. Lead to gold etc. In MP games, all gems have the same price AFAIK.

There are already quite a few combination Fire spells. Fire-Air has one - Sulphur Haze. Fire-Earth has the Magma spells, very useful. Fire-Water has the Acid line of spells, and Boil high in Alteration. Fire-Astral has Astral Fires, nice AoE spell that ignores armor but is gneated by magic resistance. Fire-Nature has some low-level spells, Seven Year Fever and such, not very useful, but there's also the new global for the Kindly Ones... Fire-Death has Banefire, Lord of Banefires, Reanimate Archers which summons undead archers armed with magical Banefire bows, etc nasty stuff. Fire-Blood has Devils, Archdevils and Hellfire.

Manual page 78 explains the effects of being aflame and frozen. Basically, it's some damage for fire, some fatigue for frost.