Guide: Magic Path Booster Guide

[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

[Zeldor]

And items giving more than +1 should have it stated [like treelord's staff].

P.S. Is there any list of tartarians? Can you get any commanders at all from there? I didn't play much with it but I got only units that needed GoR.

[DigitalSin]

The tartarians have a small chance to be commanders, IIRC, as well as a small chance not to be feebleminded.

[Gregstrom]

I think Tartarians have 20% chance to be commanders? They are mentioned in the guide, as are Hidden in Snow mages. They come under the magic path required to summon them, which seems reasonable enough.

Staves of the Elements might deserve a bit more mention, but they are pretty tough to get and there are cheaper ways to boost any single path.

[mathusalem]

the tartarian king is ?7, once I had a 7A tartarian, W00t !

[Micah]

There are 2 cyclops tarts, 2 titans, the snake guy, the chained spirit, and the manticore.

The lightning bolt cyclops has E3A2
The cyclops with the sword is E4
The chained spirit is E3D2
The manticore has 2/2 picks
The male titan has 3/2/2 picks
the female titan has 3/2 picks
the snake has 2/2/1/1 picks

This is just based on a random sampling from a test game I have, but it should be pretty accurate. The picks can double up, and I'm not sure what the distribution restrictions are. The air-clops is the best chassis by far, while the manticore is nearly useless as a commander, being AFAIK the only unit to not get misc. item slots.

Hope that helps.

Tangentially, I don't think level 9 summons are available in time to really help diversify a nation's magic/booster access, you'll want to have it done before then.