Need Hard mode mage tips, Never played other KB's.

[Zephiroth]

I'm playing as a mage now on hard mode, but still can't get it right, how do I pick what armies to fight and leave alone? Should I be looking for int. booster for my equipment over attack and defense? And what about skill tree, should I focus only on magic and not might and mind, or mix it up some?

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by Zephiroth

I'm playing as a mage now on hard mode, but still can't get it right, how do I pick what armies to fight and leave alone? Should I be looking for int. booster for my equipment over attack and defense? And what about skill tree, should I focus only on magic and not might and mind, or mix it up some?

The "Difficulty" of a non-hero army is based on its leadership total. So ones with 'strong' have more troops than you do, and 'weak' have less. Since you are a mage, your leadership is the lowest of the three classes, so you will often see troops as a little bit harder than the others.

I would focus equipment on intelligence, mana, and rage. Definitely invest in all three skill trees, but try to find a good mix of spell effects to use. Some control spells from distortion, some damage spells from chaos, defense from order. Do not try to upgrade ALL your spells. Even a mage will run out of crystals that way.

In Mind tree, pick up some leadership boosts, and diversions.

In Might Tree, grab the basic Rage bumps on the right side. +24 rage is very important. You gain rage at a rate based on your total rage, so 24 more rage means generating that much more per hit! ALl three of the rage skills on the right side of that area are totally worth it, even for a mage.

[Zephiroth]

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

The "Difficulty" of a non-hero army is based on its leadership total. So ones with 'strong' have more troops than you do, and 'weak' have less. Since you are a mage, your leadership is the lowest of the three classes, so you will often see troops as a little bit harder than the others.

I would focus equipment on intelligence, mana, and rage. Definitely invest in all three skill trees, but try to find a good mix of spell effects to use. Some control spells from distortion, some damage spells from chaos, defense from order. Do not try to upgrade ALL your spells. Even a mage will run out of crystals that way.

In Mind tree, pick up some leadership boosts, and diversions.

In Might Tree, grab the basic Rage bumps on the right side. +24 rage is very important. You gain rage at a rate based on your total rage, so 24 more rage means generating that much more per hit! ALl three of the rage skills on the right side of that area are totally worth it, even for a mage.

I have a Paladin too, what tips can you give me with him? Same question's as my other post. Should I focus him on some attack spells or just some debuffs and buffs, stuff like that?

[cbone]

playing hard/mage, lvl 27 in greenwort area. i would say focus on CC and buffs. damage spells dont seem to scale enough to justify investing heavily into them. or maybe i just have not found any good AoE damage spells yet.

just use rage for your AoE damage and use magic mostly for disabling/debuffing the enemy and buffing your troops. definitely try to pick up the rage increasing skills in the might tree when you can otherwise as you level your rage abilities you will find that you cant cast them at all because your max rage is too low.

focus on leveling up the distortion line first, then chaos, then order. distortion and chaos have really good debuff/buff spells. rune magic is really gimmicky.

[marc]

I found that damage spell scale just as well as in the previous games. For example, at lvl 27, a single blizzard spell will hit practically every enemy unit for around 6500 dmg. That's assuming you have around 45-50 int, which would be normal for a mage of that level. Two blizzards will destroy stacks of 1500 skellie archers.

If you didn't find geyser or blizzard, then you'll have to make do with Rain of Fire. Greasy Mist lvl 3 + Rain of Fire lvl 3 is an excellent opener if you don't have the other spells. It'll easily do in the 6000s, but won't hit as many as the other spells. It has the advantage of crippling their ranged though, and the mist will stay, allowing you do to a double rain whammy on the next turn if anything's still alive. If you only found ice snake / fireball, then you might want to concentrate on control spells such as Phantom / Trap to do damage until you find something better.

Traps aren't something to neglect either. They'll hit just about anything's that no hovering, will do damage scaling to your int, and more importantly, they'll make whatever steps on them lose their turn. In the late game, a single trap and one-shot a stack of 15 black dragons. Pure joy when that happens!

[Nevar]

Having the same problem. Damage spells aren't scaling enough. They'll destroy the level 4 and 5 stacks, but they don't do enough versus swarms of Imps. Also, despite the fact that I have the items for it, I don't have good Summon spells. Damn randomness sometimes.

A few things:
* Ancient Phoenix is an amazing summon and is probably worth getting Order Magic 3 if you already have Summon Phoenix.
* High initiative is a must. You want those big spells out before the opponent can do something nasty.
* Bring units with crowd control abilities: Dryad lullaby, Engineer Flashbomb, Soothsayer Loki's Touch (although maybe not all together as elves are racist in this game).
* Because your army is smaller, your rage skills will level up more quickly.
* Never use Call of Nature. That spell is probably the worst summon in the game right now (since Book of Evil, which is normally THE worst summon, is bugged and overpowered right now)
* Always try to get your intellect to at least be a multiple of 7 (i.e. 14, 21, 49, 63) as this gives an extra 10% to your spells.
* Last piece of advice: Try to make your equips specialize in doing something. If you have different items that do similar things (like boosting intelligence, boosting the power of certain spells, or increasing physical resistance), then wear those together and build a strategy around that.

[MoonLite22]

Originally Posted by marc

I found that damage spell scale just as well as in the previous games. For example, at lvl 27, a single blizzard spell will hit practically every enemy unit for around 6500 dmg. That's assuming you have around 45-50 int, which would be normal for a mage of that level. Two blizzards will destroy stacks of 1500 skellie archers.

Wait... what ? I'm a lvl29 Soothsayer and my int is 24... am I missing something ? How the hell did you get it this high ? I want this much int too...

[DeepSoul]

Originally Posted by cbone

playing hard/mage, lvl 27 in greenwort area. i would say focus on CC and buffs. damage spells dont seem to scale enough to justify investing heavily into them. or maybe i just have not found any good AoE damage spells yet.

just use rage for your AoE damage and use magic mostly for disabling/debuffing the enemy and buffing your troops. definitely try to pick up the rage increasing skills in the might tree when you can otherwise as you level your rage abilities you will find that you cant cast them at all because your max rage is too low.

focus on leveling up the distortion line first, then chaos, then order. distortion and chaos have really good debuff/buff spells. rune magic is really gimmicky.

Damage spells doesn't scale enough? Personally I find they are among the few spells that are actually useful except maybe stoneskin and trap. I have Rune Magic lvl 3 and maxed Sonic Boom. It does tons of damage to the whole army, around 3000 with an int of 42. Also, try to get Trapper III as soon as possible. I start with three traps at 3000-4000 damage every fight and it also stops the enemy from advancing. I didn't bother leveling up Chaos magic because you don't need to since Fear works at lvl 1 and Fireball isn't that good. In AP there was a godly spell called Geyser but I don't know which school it belongs to. You could kill half the opponents army with it. If it's Chaos Magic then I suppose it would be worth investing in after you get that spell. For me it's this order: Rune > Distortion > Order > Chaos.

My tips is to get Higher Magic as soon as possible, cast a small spell first and then a big nuke. General tips are always keep your distance to strong units until you have weakened them enough. CC archers or attack them first with ranged attacks, since you can't control what they will attack. You can also use a spell called Target on a tank if the enemy isn't undead. Get some dragons, paladins and a unit that can summon a tanking troop. Ice Dragons are exceptional but Dryads or Engineers are good too.

I am a mage lvl 28 on hard btw.

[Sirron]

I beat it on Hard as a chaos magic user without too much difficulty. Mostly using the grease mist + fire rain combo for some decent damage. Later when I got a scroll of blizzard I maxed rune magic and started using that as an opener since you can usually hit every enemy if you get the first move.

Geyser would've been nice for dragons but I didn't get a scroll of that until very late in the game.

You can easily max every talent in the magic tree so do whatever you want, really.

[tiberiu]

Originally Posted by Zephiroth

I'm playing as a mage now on hard mode, but still can't get it right, how do I pick what armies to fight and leave alone? Should I be looking for int. booster for my equipment over attack and defense? And what about skill tree, should I focus only on magic and not might and mind, or mix it up some?

Attack anything that is AT MOST slightly stronger. You should be able to win the fight.

Choose attack and defense over intelect only if you do not cast damage spells. If you use damage spells, you need to have high intelect.

In the Might tree put nothing until lvl 15 or so, a mage doesn't really need what's there.

In the Mind tree take Learning if you can to maximize you XP intake and level up faster.

In the Magic tree focus on 1 Magic School. Distortion is the best one overall but you should pick what school to specialize in depending on what scrolls you find. If you find Healing and/or Ressurection it is worthwhile to maximize Order Magic. Rune Magic is good if you want to have access to infinite money later on, but costs you more runes then Distortion.