Guide: Magic Path Booster Guide

[Baalz]

One thing which is kinda tangential but good to know nonetheless, it's easier to get into astral or death with a level one mage because the site searching spells only require a level one mage. You can use your level one mage to site search until you have 30 gems then empower them. With the exception of blood (for a different reason) every other path requires at least a level two mage to boostrap into at any reasonable cost.

-edit-
You can also manage that with a water mage once you get to con-6, though that's often getting a bit later in the game to be starting to try and bootstrap in.

[DonCorazon]

Awesome! Speaking for the noobs, this is very helpful. Wish I had it before I got into several MP games with no magic strategy on my part.

[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.

[sector24]

That's a very good point, Micah. Before I go editing the guide though, what do you do if your nation has no access to astral? I can think of several nations that don't even have an astral random.

[Endoperez]

Robe of the Sea; Water 3 (not 2) required

Army of Lead: Earth 4
Army of Gold: Earth 5


Treelords aren't good at boosting. N5, N4B1 and N4E1 with just misc slots (can only use Moonvine Bracelet and Brazen Vessel or Blood Stone), so their max levels are N6, N5B2 and N5E2.

Jade Mask can only be used by cold-blooded creatures. If it's for newbs, you should mention everything.

[Micah]

Well, put some on your pretender, empower, or search for indies with astral. Also, remember you can trade in MP games. A lot of nations would probably be fairly interested in taking F/A boosters in return for a RoW, and you're likely to have one of those paths if you're not strong in S. Oh, and grab Dagan and have him probe his little sagely heart out if you can.

By the time you hit turn 30ish you should have enough gems stockpiled to take the hit and burn some empowering someone if you haven't found any indy mages, and if you don't have S you'll probably at least have E, so you can make a crystal coin instead of having to empower all the way up to S4.

Basically you'll have to get S access in a MP game somehow. If you don't have at least minimal astral access by the time you get into the end-game you're really going to be hurting, since you're going to have serious issues with mobility (teleport, astral travel, gateway) and power projection (MIND HUNT, both casting and being beaten down by it, along with the previously mentioned mobility spells) and obviously path diversification via boosters.

And for Endo: I assume your reference to the path reqs of the Army spells is intended to show that my earlier statement of only needing a base E3 to cast them was in error. It is not.

I'll spell it out though, E3 + summon earth power = E4. E4 plus a gem boost = E5 for army of lead.

You cannot cast Army of Gold the same way from E2, however, since it requires 3 gems to cast, meaning at E3 you cannot burn an extra gem to boost your path. Thus, both spells require E3 base, with AoLead requiring an extra gem and resulting in more fatigue.

[Tichy]

Forbidden light is F4S4, and boosts both fire and astral by 2.

Great resource, thanks!

[K]

Its a good guide. I'm short on time so here are some abbreviated suggestions:

A few missing summons
-Ethergate gets you powerful Astral/Death Mages for boosting.
-Tartarian Gate: the Tartarians come in a variety of types, one of which gets Fire(as far as I know, the only way to "break into" Fire if you have none and don't want to Empower)
-Demon Lords: costs and requires only Blood and they get can open up almost any Path except Astral and Water depending on the one you get
-Heliopaghus costs and requires only Blood and most of them have Death
-Summon Archdevil and Bind Ice Devil has one Astral guy each
-Bind Icedevil can get you a bunch of Water mages.
-Randoms on Spectres and Hidden in Snow guys can get you into a variety of paths (you do mention Spectres though in Death).
-Wish: can get you into anything

A few missing items:

-Staff of the Elements,+1 Elemental, both the Earth/Air and Fire/Water

-Robe of the Archmagi/Ring of Sorcery/Wizardy +1 All or +1 Sorcery, are only briefly mentioned but are very useful for boosting and need their own section maybe