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

[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...

[Nevar]

Originally Posted by MoonLite22

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...

- Permanent boosts from altars.
- Equipment (Almost all of my equipment slots have an intellect-boosting item)
- Spirit and Magic Talents
- medals

My Soothsayer has 44 Intellect.

I believe only 16 of my Intellect is from learning talents. I have about 13 from my equipment (which is pretty low). The other 15 are apparently from altars, shrines, and medals.

My Skald has 28 Int at Level 28. It's not that hard if you explore.

[tiberiu]

Originally Posted by MoonLite22

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...

Dont forget to put points into Scouting and Learning from Mind Tree, you get +6 int from there too. Besides that they are useful skills to have anyways. I see Nevar already mentioned Spirit Talents but I wanted to be more specific.

[MoonLite22]

I fully explore everything, I even try to dig in every single pixel of the map, I do have both scouting and learning at max, and I do have most medals maxed. Is it possible I had horrible luck with shrines ? Because I remember only a few granting me int. My def and attack is almost the same as my int (18 and 19 respectively) so... maybe ? I don't know, but if so this is pretty frustrating.

[tiberiu]

Originally Posted by MoonLite22

Is it possible I had horrible luck with shrines ?

It's possible, why not? Some games have more goodies than others. You might have rolled a "lower-intelect" game. But don't be discouraged, I'm pretty sure the game can be won even in the worst bad luck possible situation

[Nevar]

Originally Posted by MoonLite22

I fully explore everything, I even try to dig in every single pixel of the map, I do have both scouting and learning at max, and I do have most medals maxed. Is it possible I had horrible luck with shrines ? Because I remember only a few granting me int. My def and attack is almost the same as my int (18 and 19 respectively) so... maybe ? I don't know, but if so this is pretty frustrating.

Odd. Do you have a lot of attack and defense items? My attack and defense are both at 9, WITH equipment on. With mages, I find that INT is just way better, especially if you start summoning Ancient Phoenixes/Books of Evil.