Guide: Magic Path Booster Guide

[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.

[Edratman]

It should also be pointed out that this guide is oriented towards MP. For SP, where you are virtually assured of getting the Forge of Ancients (a global all but the most expert SP player should consider mandatory), the +1 forging ability to magic paths enormously facilitates the forging of all path boosters.

FYI, I consider the Forge mandatory for my games, thus establishing my skill level.

[sector24]

I updated the guide. Thanks for everyone's comments so far! By all means keep them coming.

EDIT 1-17-2008

Added Micah's paragraph about the Ring of Wizardry and made several changes to emphasize its importance
Removed Jade Mask from the Death section (not a general strategy)
Removed "Army of Lead" from the Earth section. Technically everyone is correct, the base path is 5 but it can be cast with E3 mages. It was a poor example.
Fixed Forbidden Light requirements and bonus
Removed "Awaken Treelord" from Relevant Summons due to his lack of item slots to hold boosters
Fixed Robe of the Sea requirement
Added section about Rainbow Pretender
Added Ether Gate where appropriate
General revisions based on feedback

In response to some of the posts:

Bind Ice Devil is B3W3 to get to W3, so Sea King's Court is much more likely.

I've never had a Heliophagus with a Death pick. Does anyone know the chances of this happening and what level of Death Magic?

I've never had an Archdevil or Ice Devil with an Astral pick. Does anyone know the chances of this happening and what level of Astral Magic?

I do not know what the randoms can be on Ether Gate, Summon Spectre, Hidden in Snow and Contact Lamia Queen. I can be more specific if I know what the possibilities are. The manual just has something like ?2 which is very vague.