Mages suck without luck?
 

Im level 21 soothsayer, and my spells blow...ive got ice ball, call of nature, winter dance, and stone skin. No other aoe, summons, rez or useful buffs, so i stack leadership items instead of intel (7200 leadership). Is this just bad luck, or am I missing something? (Currently in wasteland).

You know you can go in your spell book and flip to the end and learn spells from scrolls. If you know that already you know you can also buy scrolls from pretty much anyone you can talk to and learn them that way too.

Of course. However, if no summons or AoE spells drop or are for sale in shop, what then? Ive hit greenwort, wastelands, the attached area (starts with an 'A'). Ive even cleared the dragons nest in wastelands. Same crappy scrolls ive been getting since the first 3 islands...

Some of the betters spells can be purchased on both Freedom Isles, you just need the map from Kitano or whatever his name is (beach in Greenwort).
If you still dont have luck on some decent spells, you will need to stick to units that can summon like royal griffs, rune mages, etc. accompanied by some archers and spam frozen spikes until you find phoenix or a decent aoe (like fireball).
I'm in similiar situation, the luck factor is greatest for Soothsayer, but I like when its challenging and finding a new spell is like a christmas :)

Thats pretty much what im running. 2 stacks rune mages, pallys, red dragons. Only use spells for heal and buffs. Cant wait to actually start casting something lol

Short answer : yes. (Yes to the thread title)

Im a lvl 17 or so mage and i have like NO good spells and im at the spider and i have no idea how to kill it.

I dont even have call of nature, i have only one summon and that one is spawning units i cant control so its pretty bad, especially vs the spider boss.

I can only do a few k dmg to the spider, i have no idea how to kill it.

Im playing on hard and have been playing all the KB games so im far from a noob.

Seems i just put all my skills in magic and really cant do anything with it. Rest of my point went into rage and that's also useless vs the boss. Seems the balance is a bit fucked here imo.

Jarls, Royal and Swamp Snakes, Trolls and Polar Bears.

Yea i have been thinking about snakes, they can attack without being countered.

I used jarls, they are good.

I have no trolls, i use the new lvl5 creature instead.

also have polar bears + soothsayers + axe throwers.

But i noticed that soothsayers suck in this battle, axe throwers are kinda bad also, only good is that they can dodge but 20% chance is not good enough.

Royal Snakes can attack the spider stacks without being countered. If they attack the boss, even with their special ability, they will be counter-attacked.

The mage gameplay in the very first game was about the destruction. Which made the gameplay kinda boring - blast, blast, blast... end of the battle. Then the devs nerfed the AOE destruction spells and thus changed the mage style of play - it became about summoning and buffing. The trap spell also helps.

Drop Soothsayers, Yotuns and Axethrowers. If you want no loss battle, check other topics for strategies. I did the spider on impossible with many loses without trolls, just using Jarls, Bears and snake's special attack on boss, while cleaning spiders. I also recommend getting frenzy skill, as it helps in longer battle.

Lol i don't understand why the boss needs all this stuff, counter ranged, counter several times per turn etc. The only thing this design does is making players use some abusive tactic.

Also no rage in the boss battles means people who spend all point in rage are pretty fucked. Or as me semi mage/rage, with no good spells its really lol.

But with skills like frenzy im guessing the battle is very easy. Bad design imo.

Make the "normal" battles harder and the bosses hard but not like this.

I wouldn't say mages suck without luck. They'll have a hard time no-lossing impossible if they get no good spells at all, but they can certainly beat the game. Once you get off the first 4 islands you'll have the majority of spells in the game at your fingertips.

And I take it by "check other topics for strategies" you want to say "just use trolls". :D Because there is no other strategy vs the spider.

I beat the spider without trolls on normal as a mage, although I did have loses.... yeah... I hadn't realized trolls were in the game because the store that sells trolls didn't appear on my map and I wasn't away kb games could have hidden stores and I hadn't been to the forums yet....


Jarls are really good at clearing away spiders, royal snakes and berzerkers are both quite good in the fight I found too, at least if you're willing to have loses, if you wanna go no loss then warrior maidens would be good (except my game spawned no warrior maidens, literally 1 and no sacrifice scroll so yeah 1 was unusable)

Call of nature in this game is utter garbage check out the tread on how to best spider. Ice spikes if you got em to cover the whole screen makes it so spiders cant fall pretty easy that way. No loss impossible feels not so impressive after doing it need mod to make game harder

Neat trick with the ice spikes. Post heavies at either edge of the screen and block off the middle with spikes. Nice. That being said, Im up to level 28 now, still no AoE or summon spells. Wish i would have made a skald at this point...

After beating no loss impossible with soothsayer then playing a skald all I can say is appreciate the somewhat difficult challenges the soothsayer gives you. There skald is fall asleep joke to play :]