Mage Tips and Theme Builds

NOTE: While all hard data on spell scaling, damage, and effects will be factual, any thoughts on usefulness, role, and skill order of skill trees will be purely opinion. I heavily encourage people to disagree with me and post their differing opinions in this thread. The more ideas we have the better resource this becomes for new players!

You've delved into the Dungeons of Dredmor and like myself you found the call of abusive, destructive, and downright hilarious magic to be far too strong. You're a Wizard at heart and you love to watch the world burn with a twitch of your fingertips and the cackles rolling off your lips. Welcome to Dungeons of Dredmor. May your spells strike true and your enemies burn with your raw eldritch power. But be careful not to blow your own head off.

Introduction:
In this guide I will give a general outline to making effective Wizard builds in Dungeons of Dredmor. After teaching you what I believe makes a good Wizard build I'll guide you into fine tuning a loose back story for your characters and picking skills to flesh out this ficticious life you've carved out for your pixelated persona. I personally find a "theme" build can make the game slightly more challenging but also attaches me more to my characters leading to a much more fufilling play-through. When they die I don't just mourn the death of all that time I put into that character. I mourn for Rob the Sand Vampire Astrologist, worshipper of the stars and moon. May this guide bring challenge and fufillment to your play-through.

 

Defining spell trees

Spell Trees:
When building my Wizards I section the spell casting trees into 3 brackets: Primary, Development, and Support trees. The best experience with a Wizard I've found is having one of each.

1. Primary trees are your bread and butter damage sources. The trees are not self sustaining and often have large, glaring weaknesses. In a nutshell, while these kill enemies you can't go through your entire Wizard play through with just these trees. You want to base your build around your Primary tree. These trees are the hardest part of being a Wizard. Level too quickly and you won't have the mana to support the tree and you won't have other attributes you need to survive. Level too slowly and you're damage output will suffer and as XP between level ups increases you may find yourself unable to keep up with monsters in the dungeon. Mastery of level up times and usage of these spells is imperative to being successful. All of these trees contain powerful AOE and can kill you easily. Use these spells very carefully. Your bread and butter spell will usually become the final spell in these trees.
2. Development trees are very important to Wizards. They are what you generally want to level first. These trees provide a way to keep you alive early and deal great early game damage at a low mana cost. The damage in these trees have high base damage but don't scale very well with your Magic Power. While these will be good early game you'll need something that scales better into the late game or your damage will fall off and you will be unable to keep up with the denizens of the dungeon. Examples of Development trees are trees that offer pets, spam heals, or early game escape mechanisms. These trees inherently contain some sort of utility as well.
3. Support trees are a way to shore up any weaknesses your build has and add some flavor to your build. These provide mostly utilitarian spells but all of them contain either a heavy damage single target nuke or a good AOE spell to boot. These will be leveled on a per build basis. When your damage output is tolerable, you're heading into mid and late game, and you'd like some of the utility these provide, level them. This is one of the best places to tweak your build to your own flavor.

Other Tree Roles:
It's important to note there are several key things to look for in your spell trees when building a Wizard:

• Pet: These trees contain summonable pets. These are INCREDIBLE for getting you through the first couple dungeon levels as they charge forward and absorb hits. You can hurt them with your AOE spells however and anything killed by a pet doesn't trigger your on kill effects in blood magic, fungal arts, etc. Most builds will want a pet.
• Heal: These trees contain a way to heal yourself. As simple as it sounds the heals differ incredibly wildly. I'll note the differences in the notes on the tree itself. Not necessary but INCREDIBLY helpful for new players.
• Buff: These trees contain buff spells. Buff spells are spells you cast once and they give you a passive benefit. These can come in multiple flavors. Some cost you 1 mana every few turns, some degrade each time your hit until they expire, some are used up based on how many times you hit an enemy, and some are simply timed. I'll note the details in the spell tree. I love buff, but they are not necessary.
• CC: Crowd Control spells. These trees contain spells that help you dictate the flow of combat by negatively affecting your enemies. These skills stun, sleep, pacify, teleport, or remove enemies from combat in some other way. These are often hard for newer players to know when to cast without sucking their mana dry. Not necessary, but useful.
• Utility: These trees provide some effect beyond anything described above. This includes self teleports. You will need a self teleport in your build so keep an eye out for them.
• AOE: Area of Effect spells. These trees have one or more spells that deal damage over a large area often lingering for a few turns. These are the cornerstone of Wizard builds. You will want at least one of these spells in your build.
• ST: Single Target spells. These trees contain one or more spells that deal immense damage to a single enemy. These are generally cheaper than AOE spells to cast and can sometimes outright kill an enemy in one casting. You will probably want a ST spell in your build.
• DOT: Damage over time spells. These trees contain spells that deal damage over a period of time. I will only use DOT notation for spells that stick to your target, not AOE's that leave lingering effects. These are often cheap and do high damage at the cost of never really killing enemies outright. Incredibly useful.
• Damage Types: The damage types the tree contains. You will need more than one damage type to progress through the game. For example, Promethean Magic is useless on any floors that contain only fire type enemies. If you only do fire damage you will have to skip the entire floor!

 

Breaking down the spell trees

Primary
There are 4 Primary trees: Viking Wizardry, Promethean Magic, Egyptian Magic, and Necronomiconomics.

Viking Wizardry: CC, Utility, AOE, ST, DOT
Damage Types:
A more single target oriented tree. The two points in melee buffs are wasted as you should never be in melee. Use them only for resistance. The final spell does HUGE single target voltaic and blasting damage instantly but rather poor scaling AOE damage that paralyzes. The AOE scream is also decent for CC.

Promethean Magic: AOE, Pet
Damage Types:
This tree has some glaring weaknesses. It contains no early-mid game single target spell. You'll have no way to pick off single enemies for low mana. It also only does one damage type. You will need to pick other trees with relatively reliable sources of other damage types. Third, the AOE's it deals are large and dangerous. You can very easily kill yourself with this tree. It does give passive resistance to fire when leveling but you will want to build fire resist. The third spell is a very solid pet which can be used for quite a while. He's resistant to fire so feel free to send him into the burning mess you create.

Egyptian Magic: Buff, CC, Heal, Utility, AOE
Damage Types:
This tree is a tree you must build around. This tree works through stacking glyphs. Each one costs mana every few turns. With each glyph you have on you they get stronger. This tree contains one damage spell that's an AOE but it gets stonger the more glyphs you have! As you can see you want to keep up these buffs! This costs TONS of mana and you will need to keep this in mind. There's also some health regen in there and all the glyphs give you a chance to do an AOE effect when you're hit / you hit an enemy in melee.

Necronomiconomics: Buff, Utility, AOE, ST, DOT
Damage Types:
This tree is the most powerful Wizard tree in existence but it comes at a terrible, terrible cost. Each spell has it's own set of debuffs it does to you whenever you cast a spell. It also puts a pretty hard hitting DOT on you that scales with your magic power! This means the stronger you get the more you'll hurt yourself. I haven't ran into anything with much necro resistance in DoD so this thing while primarily Necro damage destroys things. Don't even bother leveling this tree until mid-late game when you've stacked some heavy necro resists. The only useful spells in my opinion is the Mark of Chthon and the final spell, Tenebrous Rift. NEVER cast Tenebrous Rift closer than 4 squares away from you or you'll basically one shot yourself. I'll leave the spoilers of how it works for you to find as that first cast is scary and magnificent at the same time.

Development:
There are 3 Development trees: Golemancy, Fleshsmithing, and Emomancy.

Golemancy: Pet, CC, Utility, ST, DOT
Damage Types:

• If you take this tree your first skill point should go into Animate Mustache.
• You can use Unliving Wall to keep enemies away while you pound them and use Digging Ray to help you navigate the dungeon.
• Thaumite Swarm will do damage to an enemy and then if it kills them or after a set amount of turns it will drop to the ground where it can reattach to reset the cycle. Be careful as they can kill you easy but if you get enemies into a choke point (or make one with unliving wall) you can shred them.
• Head up to The Mortal Machine as quickly as possible. Spend the first 3-4 dungeon levels of the game watching him chew everything up for breakfast and occasionally cast Invive Thaumite Swarm on enemies. The high cost won't matter as he'll almost never die.
• Pairs well with: Viking Wizardry, Promethean Magic, Egyptian Magic

Fleshsmithing:Pet, Heal, Buff, Utility, ST, DOT
Damage Types:

• Zombyfycation is one of the best early game pet spells as you can literally make a cheap wall of zombies for one cast. This is useful even if they are getting one shotted as an enemy will have to spend several turns getting through each one before they can get to you. Requires bodies to use though so not good for other things that use bodies.
• The level two is the best heal in the game. It heals instantly then heals you for a good amount each turn for a few turns. Late game you can literally tank enemies by casting AOE's all around you and then casting this spell every turn letting them die to your spells while you absorb hit after hit.
• Fleshbore is a good spell to use as soon as you can get it. Once you level up to Fleshbore pour points into Leywalker until you get it maxed then level Fleshsmithing up to Miasmatic Putrefaction.
• I only use Meat Shield between fights for the regen and to absorb a few hits during a fight. Don't bother trying to keep it up.
• Miasma is the strongest AOE in the game aside from Tenebrous Rift and it lasts the longest. Miasma does crappy damage types and the damage starts to fall off late game due to enemy resists so that's really the only thing keeping it from being your bread and butter spell. As long as you grab Miasma before level 5 Zoo you'll be fine.
• You will want to take this as your Development tree when using Necronomiconomics. This tree makes you incredibly survivable for a mage and is HIGHLY recommended for beginners. The hardest part is getting that first kill so you can start your Zomby army.
• Pairs well with: Viking Wizardry, Promethean Magic, Egyptian Magic, ESPECIALLY Necronomiconomics

Psionics: Pet, Heal, CC, ST
Damage Types:

• Psionics has low casting costs and lots of CC allowing you to survive incredible odds even at low levels.
• Narcosomatic Induction is a good CC for dirt cheap. The only problem is that if you're fighting more than one enemy the sounds of battle can wake up your sleeping targets.
• Psychokinetic Shove is an incredible tree. Not only can you move grates and tear down walls to get around but you can shove enemies away to put some space between you and them. You can even chain cast it to make sure they can't get to you. The best part? It only costs between 1-5 mana.
• Crystal Healing is an OK heal for after combat. It puts a 3x3 grid of mines on the ground that heal when you step on them. I don't believe it scales so usefulness is limited. Still, 36 HP is 36 HP.
• Nerve Staple is an INCREDIBLE ST spell. It does high base damage with good scaling and paralyzes. Don't cast it multiple times on one target though as it puts a buff of 20 on them every time you cast it.
• Pyrokinesis does stupid, stupid damage and is the best scaling spell in the game. It hits a target for large damage then leaves a fire patch on the ground. It costs pennies to cast to boot.
• Unconditional Love turns any enemy in the dungeon into your personal slave for a limited time. It is always a decent spell and since it converts an enemy it scales with... well, your enemies!
• Pairs well with: Viking Wizardry, Egyptian Magic, Necronomiconomics

 

Support:
There are 4 Support trees: Astrology, Mathemagic, Psionics, and Magical Law.
Astrology: Buff, CC, AOE
Damage Types:

• Radiant Aura is one of the best buffs in the game. The Sight Radius helps you cast spells further, and when you're hit it can cause AOE Paralyze. The rest is just gravy. Keep this up at all times. Degrades on being hit.
• Solar Inscription is an OK spell mine that does damage and has a chance to paralyze. Decent early game.
• Blinding Flash is a self-centered AOE that does great damage and has a chance to paralyze. Not a bread and butter spell by any means and it's often not a good idea to stay in melee, but it can be useful.
• Syzygy is a well rounded buff. When you get it it's worth keeping up.
• Celestial Aegis is a better version of Mark of the Black Eyeliner, but it degrades on hit. Helps stop magical attacks and gives armor. Keep it up.
• The Stars Aligned is a good AOE with CC, incredible damage, great scaling, and bleeding in one. Very useful, but very costly.
• As you can see this tree really is buff centric. Works well with a buffing strategy to make a super tanky character. Not to mention the capstone is incredible. Did I mention I like the capstone?

Mathemagic: Buff, Utility, ST, DOT
Damage Types:

• Froda's Jump Discontinuity is a random teleport. Not a reliable get out of jail free card, but good when you have nothing else.
• Beklam's Diminishing Calculus is a decent single target spell. It hits them with a solid stackable debuff as well as having decent damage and scaling.
• Curse of the Golden Ratio is a single target DOT. It's very costly and doesn't scale well but gives Zorkmids. Would work well with Bankster I guess, but for the most part I don't use it much.
• Zenzizenzizenzic is a stacking offensive buff that is absolutely incredible. It chews through your mana and lasts a limited time, but man does it increase your damage. Not useful with Necronomiconomics as that kind of scaling can cause your debuffs to kill you.
• Xeuclid's Translation is a perfect teleport. The single best escape method of the game. No cooldown and a cheap mana cost? You can't beat that!
• The Recursive Curse is a solid ST DOT that applies it's own stacking debuff every turn. This thing CHEWS through monsters. Great for other trees that lack ST.
• This is mostly a single target tree as you can get a teleport from Ley Walker. However, when you do take it the Utility and Buff spells are VERY handy.

Emomancy: Heal, Buff, CC, Utility, AOE
Damage Types:

• Love Will Teleport Us Apart is a solid skill for keeping hard hitting enemies away from you. Keep those unique monsters away with a good old teleport!
• The Cure is a decent heal but it debuffs you with a stacking debuff. Don't spam it at early levels. It doesn't heal much, but you don't have much HP. Not like it matters at all, you're just going to die anyways...
• My Chemical Explosion is a decent AOE skill. It leaves a burning cloud of acid to hurt your enemies. It doesn't scale the best so don't expect to use it into late game.
• Dampening Field of Angst is an AOE silence. What's not to love?
• I haven't found much use for Sigil of Whatever. It's a mine that Paralyzes and Pacifies. Your mileage may vary.
• Mark of the Black Eyeliner is an incredible defensive buff. Just set it and forget it!
• Depressing Elemental Blast is an expensive, low damage, poor scaling AOE with a buggy CC (pacify). The bugs might have been worked out of it with CotW but I haven't used it recently. I haven't found much use for it.
• This is a rather poor tree. You'll mostly take it for the heal and the defensive buff. I'm hoping for a re-balancing soon.

Magical Law: Buff, CC, Utility, ST
Damage Types:

• Confiscate Evidence allows you to pick up items. Useful for grabbing remote artifacts in early levels.
• Polymorphic Injuction damages and polymorphs a creature into another from the same floor. Useful if one enemy is resistant to your damage type.
• Gag Order is damage and a silence that can't be resisted. Useful for stopping spell casters in their tracks, but you can get something similar from Magic Training.
• Rune of Objection cures you of a debuff and puts it on a monster.
• Writ of Counterspelling is a great buff that gives you magic resists and spell reflect. Show Dredmor who's boss!
• Wright's Irrefutable Argument resets the cooldown of a random ability. Can be very useful or almost useless.
• Overall this is a good utility tree. Should work well with most builds.

 

Other Skills

Ley Walker and Magic Training:
There's a lot of debate on these two skills on various forums I've seen. I personally use both, and occasionally even throw in blood magic. Why?

Ley Walker increases sustainability and also gives a very good teleport. What this means that if you have to chain cast (like on a zoo) your mana will stretch much further. With Ley Walker maxed and a few pieces of Wizard gear you can easily gain 1 mana a turn. This can substantially stretch your casting. Even if you go dry a high mana regeneration means you will recover much quicker. Invisible Geometries is an incredible teleport as it means you don't have to take Mathemagic, Artful Dodger, Burglary, or anything else. It substantially frees up your build while adding much needed boost to sustainability. Thaumaturgic Tap is a good way to keep up your mana during combat or between fights. The low cooldown makes it an exceptional skill.

Magic Training has a much different use. Throughout the tree you gain Savvy and two utility spells. Savvy reduces the cost of your spells down to a cap, depending on the spell. This allows you to cast more spells before having to pop a potion, booze, or cooldown. The capstone of the tree gives Magic Resistance which is great for fighting Dredmor and other spell casters. License to Cast also gives you some defense against casters stifling them for a few turns. Channeling works great with Thaumaturgic Tap to boost your mana up to full after using Invisible Geometries or casting yourself dry. Just try not to use it during combat as it lowers your sight radius making you much less effective as a caster.

Putting the two together almost assures your mana will last well through any fight. Most spells have a reduction cap of around 2-5. With Magic Training you can easily get the cap maxed on even the most expensive spells. With 1 mana regeneration per turn this means your spells are costing 1-4 mana a turn. With over a hundred mana you can cast until your heart's content. If your mana magically disappears (or you have to teleport away) you can easily cast your two cooldowns, chug a potion, or drink booze to get your mana up to a sustainable level.

The Rest Of Your Skills:
So now that you have your three spell skills, Ley Walker, and Magic Training, what else do you take? Several other skills compliment a Wizard build. These skills allow you to differentiate your build, tailor it to your playstyle, add flavor to a themed character, and fill any roles in your build you're lacking. Don't take too many non-Wizard skills as due to level up mechanics you will become a weaker and weaker Wizard. I never take more than 2 Warrior or Rogue skills in my builds. As a general rule of thumb, you should also try to level them sparingly until the lower levels of the dungeon.

Warrior Skills:
Staves: If you need some survivability but still want buffs to Wizard stats Staves is the way to go. It gives a good chunk of block, and leveling it will increase your HP. Max level gives you a good bit of Wizard stats. It's probably better for hybrids, but you could take worse options for a full Wizard build. Not to mention, it's flavorful.

Shield Bearer: If you're willing to sacrifice a good chunk of damage gained from Orbs to gain survivability you can pick up Shield Bearer. It gives a HUGE amount of block along with some armor on top of whatever shields you find give you. Better for hybrid builds.

Master of Arms: Master of Arms fits a similar role to Shield Bearer. You have to sacrifice Wizard stats as well (often taking negatives on some of the better armor) but the defense you gain is incredible. Again, this is probably better left for hybrids.

Big Game Hunter: This tree gives mostly melee benefits but there are a few reasons to take it. First of all is the extra XP. Any way to gain extra experience is great in Dredmor. This allows you to out-level the enemies giving you a substantial advantage. That said, Release The Hounds is pretty good too as it puts a good barrier between you and your enemies.

Killer Vegan: This tree gives survivability in spades. It increases your HP, HP regen, gives you a pet, gives you extra XP, and prevents animals from attacking you. I'm not sure if it was patched or not, but you used to be able to kill animals from afar without getting the Vegan debuffs. Overall, a very good tree and easy to theme.

Communist: Communist is a hilarious tree. It focuses on defense and healing but gives some interesting options. Besides, who doesn't like building the A-Bomb? Good for flavor and OK for survivability options.

Rogue Skills:
Archeology: Archeology gives a host of great benefits. Trap sight and affinity helps you avoid and remove traps for XP. It Belongs In A Museum can give TONS of XP throughout a playthrough. This Translation Is All Wrong! and Ancient Kronian Ritual allow you to really pile on the enchantments onto your gear. Overall, an INCREDIBLE tree for beginners. Also, you can play a magical Indiana Jones!

Burglary: Burglary is another very, very strong tree. Again, you get Trap sight and affinity allowing you to overcome a common killer of Wizards. Lucky Pick gives you a pocket dimension full of lockpicks. Ninja Vanish allows you to disappear which is never a bad option to have and it's on a short cooldown. Move In Mysterious Ways gives a perfect teleport within eyesight on a cooldown, but costs no mana. As if all that wasn't good enough Five-finger Discount gives you free loot! Good luck fitting this into a theme though...

Fungal Arts: This is quite possibly my favorite tree in the game. If you take this, you have a very interesting option of using it as your Development skill. Burn all your points into it until it is maxed. This gives you a pet that will last into mid game but also gives you a TON of mushrooms throughout the game. Just know the spores don't trigger on a pet's kill so try to sneak in last hits. Use Mushroom Transmutation to take piles of mushrooms and turn them into Fairywodger, Night Cap, The Prince, Inky Hoglantern, and Azure Mob-Bonnet. Not hard to push into any theme build as Wizards love magic mushrooms!

Artful Dodger: If you take this tree it's mostly for the short range teleport. The dodge is ok, but it doesn't offer much besides the teleport. Who made Wizards dodgey?

Perception: Perception is another great general skill. Trap sight and affinity are great stats. It also gives sight radius allowing you to cast your spells at monsters from incredible distances. The capstone is a good single target nuke that scales with how far you can see. Top that off with extra loot to sell / craft with and you've got a well rounded tree.

Demonologist: This tree is nuts. You take this tree for Celestial Circle. Celestial Circle makes you INCREDIBLY tanky and works well with a buff based build. Don't level this too much as it starts to hinder your casting ability. Easy to theme into an evil build.

Bankster: Bankster is an interesting tree for a Wizard. It's fairly self contained and works quite well as a Development skill. It's getting some massive tweaking / nerfing so we'll see what that does to it's self sustainability. Interesting to try to fit into theme builds.

Paranormal Investigator: I haven't used this tree much but I've seen people rave about it. On paper it looks decent for use with Alchemy and looks like a solid utility tree. Try it and let me know what you think.

Wizard Skills:
Blood Magic: If you're playing a mana gobbling build this skill is for you. It gives you incredible sustainability through Sanguinista, a very good potion through Hematic Phylactery, and more damage through Spirit Stealer and Soul Collector. Very good tree even if you use both Ley Walker and Magic Training. Themes well with evil themed builds.

Wand Lore: A very Wizard themey skill tree. One of the best things about this tree is the wands you start out with. Builds featuring Necronomiconomics, Egyptian Magic, Viking Magic, and Development and Support trees with no level 1 damage skill benefit greatly from this. It's also a great way to shore up any damage types, ST, AOE, healing, and utility you may need. Themes well with any Wizard.

Alchemy: Some people love this tree, but I can't stand the inventory management game. Still, it works well for making potions up to your eyeballs. A bit tedious, but worth it if you can stomach it. Themes well with any Wizard.

Warlockery: This is more for melee hybrid builds and requires some building around. Take skill trees like Necronomiconomics, Astrology, and Viking Wizardry and stack buffs and swing sticks! A much different style of play from your typical Wizard.

Tourist: I've come to have an unhealthy love of Tourism. See the Sights is amazing giving you an AOE stun / heal wand. The regen is just gravy. Sample the Local Cuisine is decent for keeping up your HP if you don't have a heal. Food can be scarce down in the dungeons sometimes. Get Away From It All is a bustedly good escape mechanism with a very tiny downside. It really benefits careful game play and enhances it as well. Themes well with Egyptian Magic.

 

Theme Building

Theme building is one of the reasons I enjoy Dungeons of Dredmor. The ridiculous skill tree themes, the goofy atmosphere, and the degree of customization allow for a fun back story to be built with just a few clicks of the mouse. Theme building is simple: think up a rough back story for your character and pick skills to enforce that back story. You can have challenging, fun builds as well as feel more connected to each death on your high score list.

Sample Theme Builds:

The Evil Wizard: Magic Training, Ley Walker, Blood Magic, Necronomiconomics, Fleshsmithing, Emomancy, Demonologist.

You've sold your soul to beings from every imaginable hell. You bathe in the blood of your enemies, raise the dead, mend your body with unnatural speed, detonate corpses, use the power of depression to suppress your enemies, and tear rifts to the realms of demons (for a price, of course). The only thing keeping the demons from taking you completely is your dedication to fighting the very beings you owe. Your Demonologist powers keep them at bay... for now.

The Tourist: Magic Training, Ley Walker, Egyptian Magic, Golemancy, Mathemagic, Tourist, +1 Other

You were headed to the great Empire of Egypt on a much needed vacation. Upon delving into their culture you've uncovered innumerable secrets. They've taught you their magic, their math, and how to construct pyramids. Silly westerners think they used slaves, but you know better. They simply raised their monuments from the sands!

The Archmage: Magic Training, Ley Walker, Promethean Magic, Fungal Arts, Magic Law, (Choose 2: Alchemy, Wand Lore, Staves)

You've trained under the Wizards of old. You've poured over dusty tomes, grown magical fungus, and slaved over a hot alchemy table. You're a picture perfect Wizard combining earth scorching power with intellectual prowess. There's not a thing you can't kill, a potion you can't brew, or a wand you can't enchant. Your parents would be proud if they hadn't been killed by He Who Should Not Be Named.

Just have fun with your builds and feel free to post them in this thread for people to try. I'd love to try some theme builds from others!

 

Tips For Spell Slinging

1. Stay out of melee at all costs. Due to counter chance enemies can one shot you very easily.
2. Be very, very careful for traps. Since they scale with your spell power it's easy to kill yourself if you're not careful.
3. Have an escape plan when opening doors. If something nasty is on the other side you need to be able to get away quick.
4. Build to your play style. Everyone plays the game different so play how you want.
5. Feel free to experiment. While this guide contains good general information feel free to try new and crazy things.
6. Never give up! I've died hundreds of times on floor 1 and still do but each death should teach you something. Keep playing, keep learning, and keep heading down!

 

IT IS FINISHED! It took me long enough, but the guide is done. Please comment with any differing opinions, tips, and theme builds you have. I'll try to keep this updated and I'll add good suggestions to the guide as well. Enjoy!

 

I haven't read everything yet, but your damage types are a bit off
Necronomics does only , no
Egyptian does and an incredibly small amount of
Also, The Cure does not scale well, The Cure scales horribly, it's just the mages don't have that much health. Literally each individual tick of Knit Flesh scales better than the Cure in its entirety.

 

Sorry but, umm, why in the name of heck are you recommending Magic Training and Leywalker? I thought everyody agreed that they've been obsolete since Blood Mage started scaling. Also I don't really see the "TAKE WAND LORE IF YOU'RE A NOCRONOCONOMIST!!!" sign anywhere, why is that? Merely curious, interesting read though.

 

The thermite center of Tenticular Infestation begs to differ with you.
I just saw the damage types up on Dredmorpedia for Egyptian Magic. Thank you for reminding me to change it!
And yes, The Cure scales horribly but like you said, relative to your HP pool it's not bad. I'll adjust the description a bit I think. Thanks for the input.

Utility. Ley Walker's teleport as well as on demand mana make it a must take for me. Magic Training also gives a silence for certain end game casting liches and more on demand mana! In all reality it's to taste as they all just help sustain you. I highly agree though, Blood Magic is stupid regen on top of everything else it offers with the tiny drawback of -. I used to be a BIG fan of wand lore for Necronomiconomics, but lately I've found fleshsmithing to be sufficient early game to help with everything I need and my theme build including it has tons of resists so I don't really need it.

Overall though while this guide does give tips about how to build a Wizard it's not a min/max guide. It's more about theme building and some general guidelines. I won't say anything is "obsolete" compared to anything else.

 

True that, personally I tend to just go Mathemagics or Burglary for my teleporting needs, either as my third active spell skill in Mathemagics' case or for the utility with Burglary. Ahh, Lucky Pick, we love you . Also both Magical Law and Emomancy strikes me as a much more efficient anti-magic skills but then again they're both active spell skills. It's kinda sad that Magic Training is in such a sad state, I love the favor of it.

Personally I've never liked Wand Lore, at all, but the Encrusts and Zodiac Wand are just too good to pass up on. Really Holy Shield is absolutely, handsdown and riproaringly amazing for the Necroconomist mid- to lategame and the wand let's you spam spells with inpunity at little to no risk. Shame that Wand Lore isn't nearly as much fun as Alchemy though, I want my Magic Sandals damit!

 

Crap, I wanted to quote this under Wand Lore but the post is just under the 10000 character limit.

EVERYBODY, IF YOU WANT SOME ADVICE ON WAND LORE READ THIS QUOTE FROM SHREEPER!

 

True story, at one point I had a Necronocomist with a The Log and an Orb of... something, it was from a mod, both with Really Holy Shield. It was... glorious. Then I accidentially right clicked and threw down a rift right in front of my in a sticky situation and suffered a short, gruesome and tentacleinduced death. Shame really, was hoping to pick up another The Log and maybe a Diggle God of Death blessing in order to achieve godhood.

But yeah, Zodiac Wand and Really Holy Shield is the way to go for Rift Spamming, also makes the skill much less luck bassed as you don't need to get a pair of Dark Orbs or Orbs of Nothing ASAP and the wands, obviously, helps a lot early game untill you get Nightmare Curse/Mark of Chthon/Pact of Fleeting Life so you can gish your way past floor 3. Sure you CAN go for Alchemy but it quickly get's reduced to potion duty once you've got your replaceable Dark Orbs and the Magic Sandals.

 

Of course not, it's inferior to the other wizard skills after all. Seriously, wanting to swing a piece of metal around rather than hurl fireballs, pfft, kids these days and their cries for attention.

 

This is going to seem a bit petty, but you said it around three times in two paragraphs, so I'm going to comment anyway:

You can't cap a reduction, a cap is something that goes on top, it refers to a maximum, not a minimum.
What you mean is a "floor" or "bottoming out" or phrases like that, or simply just call it a minimum, regardless, the minimum spell cost cannot be a cap, precisely because it's a minimum.

 

You can indeed cap a reduction, as you're increasing the reduction. That is an upper cap. The reduction increases until it reaches the cap.

 

To Necro:
The 2 melee buffs are great.
Whenever something tries to walk up to me, and looks like it could succeed, I cast at least the Mark.
Chance to make them sleep on hit, as well as the high damage increase, allows me to melee even mid-lategame monsters without any melee skills.

 

Yes, as a matter of technicality, you can cap the reduction itself, but that is not a cap on thing being reduced.

For example, a hypothetical spell has a standard mana cost of 25, which can be reduced down to a cost of 5.
In that case, the reduction would have a cap of 20, and the mana cost itself would have a floor of 5.

Given the numbers involved in the original guide, it is very clear that what was being talking about was the floor of the mana costs and not the cap of the reduction in mana costs. This is also what would be expected, as it is rare for the value of a reduction to be discussed explicitly, and instead such values are left implicit while the stated values would be the original and the final.