Best - worse magic paths

[dirtywick]

I do like Blood a lot too. Battle magic is a pain, as your slaves can get killed easily by archers and make your mages targets too (although they can help in assassination attempts as fodder) and the spells are almost all massive in fatigue. But the summons (Demon Knights at level 4? Yes, please) and items are great, and it's pretty easy to mass slaves quickly and early compared to gems.

But, most nations without blood pick nationals are going to have a really tough time getting blood going, if they can at all without Wish, compared to other schools.

[Gandalf Parker]

blood, death, nature, and abit of fire. I like the summons they give

[Nerfix]

Blood, Death, Astral, Nature. Sorcery rules the world.

Weakest ones...Fire and Water.

[calmon]

Nerfix said:
Weakest ones...Fire and Water.

But instead here you get the best bless effects and combat stats (+AT/DEF)

[Tyrant]

Death is excellent largely because it's has so much variety. It has virtually no buffs, but it does have good summons starting at the bottom end and going right through to the top as well as good blasts, battlefield spam, and items. It's also easy to power up with items, and the kicker is that it's "self booting" in that you can use items to increase your level to summon higher level death mages who can then take the items and summon more of the same.

I would say that nature is more useful than powerful. I really hate playing without it, but it's hard to crush the world with nature magic alone, primarily because it lacks killing power.

I think astral is overrated. It's a great secondary suit, but it has jack for summons and it's excellent BF spells are almost all single target. If i want to kill things one at a time i'll hire a crossbowman.

[NTJedi]

Tyrant said:
I would say that nature is more useful than powerful. I really hate playing without it, but it's hard to crush the world with nature magic alone, primarily because it lacks killing power.

Yes nature works more in combination with other paths to be effective. A few examples would be gift of reason on the tartarians, swarm spell with undead archers, and gandalfs tornado with charm.

Tyrant said:
I think astral is overrated. It's a great secondary suit, but it has jack for summons and it's excellent BF spells are almost all single target. If i want to kill things one at a time i'll hire a crossbowman.

I always want some units with astral, but not my pretender unless he's a astral_7 or better. Astral works great for giving a large enemy of units the curse mark or providing increased magic resistance for your units. And the buff spells like body ethereal and luck are for already powerful units such as demon knights.




Much depends on what nation is being played and which are your current enemies.

[Windreaper]

Yup, sorcery rules. Astral is still the king in my book with death coming close second. Nature got its key spells nerfed and isn't really essential now, imo (also, it's easy to recruit an indep 1N mage and forge a wineskin or two).

I'd rank earth the 3rd strongest path overall and by far the best elemental path - no weak areas, really. Air is also good but Fire/Water I can easily live without.

These things are nation and player dependant, but generally I'd say:

1. Astral
2. Death
3. Earth
4. Air
5. Nature
6. Blood (I don't use it much, but it can be a game winner)
7. Fire
8. Water

[Zebion]

Why does water have virtually no spells underwater (Not counting summons) Anyways? I can only find one or two battlemagics underwater,and the closest one for research is Level 4!

[Corwin]

NTJedi said:
Yes nature works more in combination with other paths to be effective. A few examples would be gift of reason on the tartarians, swarm spell with undead archers, and gandalfs tornado with charm.

What do you mean by "swarm spell with undead archers"?

[Shovah32]

casting the spell swarm, a level 1 nature spell requiring 1 gem that, iirc produces 20 weak dragonflys or something like that. Using it with undead archers you can get some (practically free) chaff that it dosnt matter if your archers hit or not (since they die after battle)