Magiclysm : How to be a great magus
Knowledge is power
The first thing for wizards is to get their hands on a spell. There are few locations where you can find them in the game.
- Cabin (green, brown are vanilla without magic item)
- House (with magic Basement)
- House (Technomancer's house)
The Cabin, Used Bookstore, Magic Academy, Wizard Tower and Magic Shop are the more direct ones, just go on your map and "/" search them.
There are also houses with a magic basement, at first it might seem hard to find one, since you need to explore all those houses for nothing... Well don't worry there is a trick. All wizards somehow have the same house. As soon you see a house with stones walls and wooden fence in the backyard then it's highly likely to be a wizard house.
The Technomancer's house is also easy to spot since it's a two tile house, protected by a stone wall everywhere except for the entrance which can be open with a mechanical winch.
There is also some secret cave, like the necromancer one where you can find a spellbook, and the dump where you can find some funny spells.
The church is a good location to find a few "holy" spells, so if you need something of that kind, go to church!
Patience and practice will give you strength
Experience
Congratulations, you now have a spell to cast! But suddenly you realize something... Either your spell does no damage, or you can't cast it... Of you course what do you expect? It's not a gun it's magic! And now you need to start to train.
There are three ways to train a spell:
| Action | Experience Gained |
|---|---|
| Reading your scroll/spellbook | ~350 Exp. for 30 minutes |
| Casting a spell |
Success: ~100 Exp. |
| NPC training | Variable |
These actions are affected by your morale, the higher the better. The current exp value is based on experience and with 100 morale. You might gain a little more depending on your Intelligence but the difference is not that much.
So which one is better? Casting of course, a spell casting time is usually between a few seconds to several minutes, so casting is more time efficient but it's dependent on your mana pool. And since your mana is limited early you want to focus on a low mana spell (Magic Missile, Rockbolt, Lightning Blast, Point Flare, Wooden Shaft...)
About spell failure
Sometimes it's beneficial to have a high failure chance. It will allow you to gain exp through failure. So with 100% failure chance you can just spam your spell until it levels up.
If you want to decrease your failure chance, you need to :
- Level up your spell
- Level up your Spellcraft skill
- Increase your Intelligence
If you want to increase your failure chance, you should check the "Know your spells" part.
Mana is like ammo, and you never have enough
Mana 101
First you need to understand the basics, how your mana works:
Mana is dependent on your intelligence stats. Each point in intelligence will increase your mana by 100. You also have a natural mana ability of 200. Which means an average man (8 stats) will have 1000 maximum mana.
Your mana regeneration depends on your maximum mana, but the formula is designed in a way that your total pool of mana should replenish itself in 8 hours (More or less depending on certains mutations). For 1000 max mana that means that you will gain 6-7 mana every tick (~3 minutes).
Here is a table with examples of regeneration depending on your maximum mana:
| Intelligence | Maximum Mana | Experience gained every tick (~3 minutes) |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 800 | 5 |
| 7 | 900 | ~5.6 |
| 8 | 1000 | 6.25 |
| 9 | 1100 | ~6.8 |
| 10 | 1200 | 7.5 |
| 11 | 1300 | ~8.1 |
| 12 | 1400 | 8.75 |
| 20 | 2200 | 13.75 |
So if you want to spam your spells, you need to increase your mana which will in turn increase the mana you regenerate every tick.
Ways of the world
There are two ways to increase your maximum mana and/or your mana regeneration.
| Items | Mutations |
|---|---|
|
|
You can find some of the items above in the Forge of Wonders location. But currently the price of most items there is quite low so you could end completely geared too fast. Useful but don't abuse it too much.
For maximum available mana, Slime and Manatouched are the best mutation categories.
Regarding mana regeneration speed
Your normal regeneration of mana will always be 8 hours for a complete refill, but with certain mutations/objects you can increase your regeneration every tick, taking less time to regenerate your mana, for example:
- Lesser Mana Regeneration multiplies your mana regeneration speed in 1.1, so your character would refill its mana pool in a little more than 7 hours!
- Mana Regeneration multiplies the regeneration in 1.25, so your mana pool would be back to full in nearly 6 and a half hours!
- And finally, Greater Mana Regeneration multiplies the regeneration in 1.5, so you will only have to wait 5 hours and 20 minutes!
- This also means that the Abysmal Mana Regeneration is one of the worst things that can happen to any mage, since it multiplies your regeneration in 0.5, so you should see your mana back in 16 hours!!
Bionics and Magic
Do you want to be a powerful, inhuman magic cyborg? Well, bad luck! Kinda, because for every point of bionic power (every kilojoule) you lose the same amount of maximum mana! What? You have 500 kilojoules stored for your bionics? Well, deliver 500 mana, right now.
The industrial world was never kind to the magical world, but there are some good upsides, you only lose mana from your current amount of bionic power, so if you don't need any of your appliances or gadgets right now, you can always remain low in energy to give more space to the mana in your body, and if you really need to maintain continuous use of your bionics, you can always become a Biotek, the special attunement born from the combination of the Biomancer and Technomancer, the marriage of technology and flesh, which reduces in half the mana penalty for bionic power, and more.
The importance of the body
The body of a wizard is of the most importance for the use of magic, some are born with greater affinity to mana, some are born lacking any magical sensation, some rare mages are even born with greater regeneration of mana, with the end of the industrial world and the death of all magical enforcers, do you have what is required to write a new chapter of magic history?
The following table shows the initial traits available at character creation and their effects in your mana reserves:
| Type | Mutations | Effects |
|---|---|---|
| Sensitivity |
You have a better/worse sense of the mana in your body, causing a multiplication of your natural mana (the max mana based around your intelligence*100 + 200), these two specific traits do so by 0.85 and 1.25 respectively, and all of them do so before counting the minus from bionic power and the efficiency mutations. | |
| Efficiency |
You can store more mana in your body than usual, causing a flat increase in mana, these three traits add 500, 1000 and 2000 respectively, but these numbers have no effect in the multiplication of the sensitivity branch. | |
| Regeneration |
Your natural mana regeneration is slightly better/worse, which affects the time spend recovering your mana, the speed at which you regenerate your mana is multiplied by 0.9 and 1.1 respectively. |
If you make great changes to your body, your natural affinity with mana could be changed as well:
From greater to less:
Affinity to mana regeneration
- Manatouched (Best)
- Plant
- Elf-A
- Fish
- Cephalopod
Negative affinity
Afinity to mana Sensitivity
Negative affinity
The mana efficiency mutations are only available on character generation, using Manatouched Mutagen, or as random mutations.
Know your spells
Each spell has a different way of casting, some need you to say a certain word, others to move your hands. etc...
This actions are described with some flags on a spell, which are:
- Somatic: You need to wave your arms around to cast the spell. Encumbrance on your arms reduces your casting speed, and increases your failure chance.
- Verbal: You need to speak to cast the spell. Encumbrance on your mouth increases your failure chance.
- Impended by gloves: You need to use your hands to cast the spell. Encumbrance on your hands increases your casting (mana) cost.
- Requires Mobility: You need a bit of legwork to cast this spell. Encumbrance on your legs will increase your casting time.
- Requires Concentration: You need to focus when casting this spell. Your focus pool affects your failure chance.
Here is a small table to give you information about the effect of each flag, excluding concentration.
|
Spell/Flag |
0 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Impaired by gloves (hands) | Mana cost +0(0) | Mana cost +100(100) | Mana cost +200(300) | Mana cost +200(500) | Mana cost +200(700) |
| Verbal (mouth) | Failure chance +0(0)points | Failure chance +5(5)points | Failure chance +10(15)points | Failure chance +10(25)points | Failure chance +10(35)points |
| Somatic (arms) | Failure chance +0(0) points / Casting time +0(0) moves |
Failure chance +5(5) points / Casting time +20(20) moves |
Failure chance +10(15) points / Casting time +20(40) moves |
Failure chance +10(25) points / Casting time +20(60) moves |
Failure chance +10(35) points / Casting time +20(80) moves |
| Mobility (legs) | Casting time +0(0) moves | Casting time +0(0) moves | Casting time +60(60) moves | ? | ? |
100 moves = 1 second = 1 turn*
The Manatouched tree provides mutations which remove the encumbrance malus for certain types of magic:
- "Subtle Spell" for somatic penalties
- "Silent Spell" for verbal ones
Law of Aethereum : Domination & Harmony
Classes
Magic in Magiclysm is divided in 4 great principles: Life, Earth, Energy and Laws of universe. There are two approaches for each principle Domination and Harmony.
| Harmony | Great Principle | Domination |
|---|---|---|
| Animist | Laws of universe | Magus |
| Stormshaper | Energy | Kelvinist |
| Earthshaper | Earth | Technomancer |
| Druid | Life | Biomancer |
What does it mean for you? Well, it means you can only learn 4 classes from the 8 possible, one for each great principle. But you have to choose if you want to be in harmony with the principle or to dominate it.
Which mean :
- You can't be both a magus and an Animist (both are from the same principle).
- You can be both a Magus and a Druid (different principle).
Attunements
Later in game you might find and Altar to go through an Attunement. Attunements are special magic evolution. It's the fusion of two classes. You can only fuse a class once, so you are limited to 2 attunements. This also requires you to level up two spells to at least level 15 in each one of the classes you want to fuse.
Generally an attunement will provide you at least 2 passive buffs and 2 new spells.
If you want to learn more about attunements please go here. Under the Magiclysm node click Classes->Attunements. You will find there the whole list. If you click on a specific attunement, you can see on the left the list of attunements you can combine it with and on the right all the ones that are excluded once you obtain the one selected. You can also check the current progress of implementation in the game since it's a feature currently (As of 0.F (Frank)) in developement.
Some tips & other information
- Spells being at 100% failure rate is better then them being castable for training purposes, because a failed spell consumes no mana. Set your cast button to a letter, for example 'z', set your spell to z and hold it down.
- Current bionic power will decrease your maximum mana. (Biotek attunement will reduce the decrease in mana)
- Spellcasting needs to be assigned to a letter to use it.
- Spellcraft increases when reading spellbooks, reading a spell with difficulty 2 will allow you to train your spellcraft to 3. So the higher difficulty the better. "Geospatial System : The Lie of Linearity" is good since it contains a difficulty 15 spell.
- Magic Missile goes through walls and ignores armor so it is acclaimed as one of the best offensive spells in the game.
- You can disable combat skill experience gain to save focus for concentration spells.
- Many summoned weapons count as Unarmed weapons, allowing the use of certain Martial Arts.
- Most weapons can't be wielded if you want to cast an spell, exceptions to this are the special weapons from each class and certain other magical objects.
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