SORCERY:

Literally just Carian Slicer or Piercer....and night comet.

You can add in things like Spiral Shard or Ranni's Dark Moon for specific fights, but it's not required. It's VERY easy to make things much more complex than they really need to be. And make a problem for yourself by having to cycle through 6+ spells in the middle of combat. It's completely unnecessary.

INCANTATIONS:

More of a toolbox. I find that it's difficult to limit myself to only two spells(one melee and one ranged), because you often will need more than that for any given area of the game. Early game you can get away with Catch Flame for damn near everything. Blacklame fireball for ranged.

Mid game is almost exclusively Lightning Spear and Catch Flame.

Late game you can swap between Lightning Spear and Stone of Gurranq.

At any point you may find it fun and useful to experiment with the various dragon spells. Dragonmaw will do LARGE chunks of any lifebar on a boss. Breath spells can also shut down several multi-target fights. Pest Threads can potentially hit multiple times. Same with Ancient Dragon Lightning.

You really just have to play around with all the incantations to see which ones work best for your playstyle. It's like unlocking an entirely new set of weapons.

I don't know about spells but my fav incants are bloodflame blade, flame grant me strenght and the one where u throw lightning. The buffs really add a lot of damage to melee weapons and the lightning one helped me thru a lot of situations where I didn't want to fight like 5 enemies at one so I picked them off at range as melee build

Try them all out so you can learn what they all do, what they're like. Knowing what your spells do and how to make use of them is part of "gitting gud", for mages.

Then filter for the following situations:

• close range, pref. fast
• long range, high damage for high burst damage, but often is very taxing on FP
• long range, low damage for FP efficiency, mainly for dealing with normal enemies and/or not wanting to spend excessive amounts of FP while whittling down tougher enemies
• ranged area of effect, for dealing with groups of enemies from a distance
• area denial, something that lingers if possible

Try to figure out what kind situation your spells are suited for. Not everything needs or should be a "boss melter", you need things for all kinds of situations or you'll end up having a more difficult time than a varied loadout.

Night Comet is really nice. It’s considered “invisible” so enemies don’t try to dodge or block it.

Carian slicer

Night comet

Ranni's dark moon

Shard Spiral(amazing for big targets)

Blades of stone

Knights Lightning Spear

Black Blade

Giantsflame Take Thee

Multilayered Ring of Light

Rings of spectral light

Radagon's Rings of Light

Pest Thread spears

Get the intelligence tear and glint stone crown

Get more memory slots and please get vigor to 60. I have my mind at 50. I know it's kinda of high but it got me through the base game and the dlc.

Go to the twin maidens and buy the 4th pouch would be a good start

Magic scorpion charm

Put the staff of loss in your off hand to get 30% damage bonus to night comet

Everyone is assuming Sorcery when you say "Mage" but I'm going to be the odd ball out and say that if by "mage" you mean using magic, then there are different types of "Mages." There are 2 main types of "mage." Intelligence mage and the Faith Mage.

INT Mages use primarily Glintstone and Gravity magics. So the pew pew magic missile type of magic. There's also sword sorceries for melee combat.

Faith Mages have access to fireballs, lightning, and healing. More elemental spell casting. You also have the Dragon Communion spells if you put in a little Arcane.

There are some spell types that require more hybrid builds such as INT/FAI, FAI/ARC, INT/ARC, but focusing on just INT or just FAI will get you most spells available.

You're obviously going to need FP to cast spells. I wouldn't go any higher than 38 Mind because fully upgraded Cerulean Tears will fully replenish exactly 38 Mind worth of FP.

One last thing. I would go ahead and get yourself a weapon that scales with your main stat. I know the point is to use cool spells but you can't always rely on magic to do the job and if you completely run out of FP you will need a back up plan.

So your build should look something like this:

VIGOR 50-60 MIND 25-38 END 25 INT/FAI 80

Rock Sling, Glintstone Pebble, and Night Comet are solid enough to carry you through on their own. Mix and match other options. Loretta’s Greatbow and Ancient Death Rancor were also in my lineup.

Dual staffs of loss.. night comet… terra magica. Easy mode enabled.

Just get the dark moon greatsword and pump intelligence to 80 and anything and everything will die in 2-3 hits

A mage that never uses magic because he found a katana that shoots quickdraw swordbeams

A build revolving around that spell makes you a stationary turret with an almost certainty that you will miss more than is worth it.

Provided the boss doesnt move, you can melt any of them.

Comet Azur + Terra Magika + the Infinite FP Tear is a beast ... if your opponent is 100% completely stationary. And most things in this game are not.

Honestly the variations of the glintstone one shots, Rock Sling and Stars of Ruin are all incredible. Meteorites of Astel is another one that if you can pull it off can melt end bosses.

Meteorite staff and rock sling is hands down the best early game build.

I run Glintstone Icecrag, Rannis Dark Moon, Adulas Moonblade, Rock Sling and Comet Azur.

Comet Azur is super situational, and slow to cast. It’s useful for unaware tough enemies in the open world and VERY slow bosses. Everything else is either rock sling or frost. I use Rannis dark moon mainly for the debuff.

Ice spear wa melts everything, and moonlight dark sword for everything else is what I did. occasionnal lorettas bow for sniping anoying high mobs, arc for masses. I found myself being a battle mage more than anything else. Also I used my cold infused grave scythe till rannis quest end.

I personally love using Rennala's Full Moon to blast bosses from long range whenever Comet Azure is impossible to use. Pop in a melee summon that can tank hits and keep your distance using Full Moon and almost every boss thats non comet azurable can be made a cakewalk.

Spells are good, i’d say that the Moon Greatsword is too good to not use it. If you want to change smothing so you can either cast spells or go for melee i suggest you to go grab a certain weapon that stands in the hell.

Also find the other four memory stones, that’ll give you the room you need for more variety

Get gravitational missile or fleeting microcosm, those are both super good. Zamor ice storm is also wonderful, same vein of AOE utility

I would drop Lusat’s staff for one without the FP penalty. Meteorite Staff would be fine but if you have the Academy Glintstone Staff that would be better. You’re only 6 INT points away from using the Carian Regal Scepter too. IMO this is the best staff in the game as it has no penalty for use and is almost the most powerful. You’ll need to hit lvl 80 to see it truly shine but AGS will see you right until then.

You need to get carian piercer

I am running similar build. From a glance, you should remove Carian Greatsword since Adula's performs the same function. You also want one of the moon spells so you can apply magic debuff against boss as your opening move. One big aoe spell like cannon of haima would be useful for mob spam. Night commet is pretty redundant when you already have your darkmoon blade R2. One utility spell like Thop's barrier or unseen form would also make your build more versatile and play different from your average bonk build.

My top 3 are Dark Comet, Rocksling and Loretta's Greatbow, those get me through most situations alongside my trusty blade.

Carian Slicer, Rock Sling, Night Comet, Comet

Comet is too good for 52 INT

Impenetrable Thorns

Anything that makes an enemy wet makes them vulnerable to lightning, but also makes it impossible to apply burning from fire damage.

Nerve damage causes paralysis, and it's very good at doing it too. Poison spells can be applied twice for a "Poisoned" and "Poisoned Bad" stack. Mind damage is excellent for both confusion and sleep. Sound damage causes the dim status, which makes enemies much easier to crit.

Two later spells combined together, Gravity and Earthquake, can do very, very high amounts of damage.

When starting out as a Mage you'll be repeatedly shafted by spell stocks. The absolute first thing that will help with this is the feat to learn magic during sleep.

Spell stocks aren't nearly as much of an issue later on after you level the skill Memorisation, which increases the number of stocks you get from a spellbook when read. You'll want to find the trainer for this skill sharpish. You can also pinch spellbooks from bookcases if you learn how to do it, but it's harder to find a trainer for that.

Shatter Hex is a spell that does Holy damage, but destroys the hexes on a target, making it very hard to argue for. It's also hard to level as none of the auto programs use it. There's a mod on the workshop to make your own auto program which I might try.

Summon Animal and Summon Monster do seem to summon nastier versions as the spell levels. Summon Shadow causes sound damage, which also causes dim.

Using rest will recover your HP and MP, and it levels up. When I used it I kept falling asleep and the sleep you get from it is very poor, but it turned out I wasn't paying enough attention to the tooltip. You'll only fall asleep from rest if you're tired (stamina) or sleepy (awake for too long.) Otherwise you can use it freely.

Using a shield or heavy armour will reduce your spell cast chance. The Heavy Cast feat will reduce this but it has a limit. You're qualified as using heavy armour if the combined weight of your armour is over 30s.

You'll want to find the Mage's Guild as a priority, but you'll need a recommendation to get in which can only be purchased, and it's a few thousand orens.

Itzpalt of Element is the Mage God of choice. The ability you get from him is, frankly, incredible, and gets stronger as your piety increases. You can offer him deciphered ancient books, which lets you get literacy skill from the books and piety from the deciphered text afterwards.

You can also level up many spells by just using them without a target or on a training dummy.

Canes are "great" weapons to start out for early mages, but they can be kind of iffy, honestly.

Although I do not (technically) play a mage, I have a few end-game spell recommendations that I use myself as a thief.

Silence - I cannot count the amount of times I was saved by this spell. Imps, Bishops, Liches, Spiral Kings and some other casters have a good chance of one-shotting your allies and nearly killing you with just one spell if you don't have decent resistances. I'd say this spell is a must to level up.

Slow, Gravity - Slow, as far as I understand, cannot be resisted. Gravity also slows the target (and stacks with slow, afaik), but less reliable since it can be resisted. I recommend leveling both.

Bane - decreases Luck and chance to hit. Useful even against spellcasters since negative Luck affects their damage rolls.

All the support spells: Healing spells, Holy Shield, Elemental Shield, Hero, Divine Wisdom, Cat's Eye, Holy light.

Telepathy - very useful if you want to avoid situations where you open a door and see a hot guy or a bomb rock right in front of your face.

(optional)Shadow Arrow - this one is probably will be difficult to find if you don't have Darkness as your domain, but it is very helpful against enemies with high regular attack damage, like varunas. It blinds the target, giving a penalty to hit chance. It is also very helpful if you plan to pickpocket slow enemies like Big Daddies, Cyclops etc. If you try to pickpocket them without blinding, they will just call the guards (lol). They can be freely pickpocketed while blinded, without karma penalty (although sometimes they are immune to blinding for some reason).

I'd also highly recommend never getting rid of Mana Battery ether disease once you get it. Not only it gives you a bit of magic resistance, you also absorb spells from rods into your spell stock.

Hm, in early game you'd want to revisit puppy cave 'cause it resets fast which means more scattered spellbooks to loot and save yourself some money + free stocks for spells you use.

The damage of spells pretty much depends on your level of the spell and magic stat so the more you keep using a spell, the more damage it deals but what you can do is take advantage of some items and do some interesting reactions like any potion when thrown makes an enemy wet which grants them a fire resistance but even worse resistance to ice and lightning.

Debuffs like nightmare will boost your nether and dark damage so you can for example be a debuffer for your elemental dragons and boost their damage even more since they deal 100% elemental damage depending on their type.

If you're a solo mage that doesn't give a sh- about minmaxing, go get an earthquake or meteor spell and just spam those.

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>!If you've progressed far enough in the main story, Demitas the exile will unlock his unique feature where he will sell any spellbooks you reserve to him so if you give and reserve him very rare spells, he will sell spellbooks of that same spell which means you've got a stable source of it. Something like Phoenix / Rebirth and Healing (Eris, Odina etc etc).!<

All starting equipment and spells from starter classes can be found in-game. Stat allocation efficiency only matters if you're a hardcore dedicated PvPer since you can theoretically cap all stats to 99. You can also respec if you change your mind about how you've allocated your stats. The difference between the best and worst choices for any given build is about 5 points which is such a tiny fraction of your overall stats that it's barely worth mentioning.

Starting classes have the biggest impact on the first few hours of play, after which the direction you take them in matters more.

Astrologer and Prophet and Prisoner are the best starting classes for pure casters with Prophet and Prisoner being better at hybrid builds as well.

If you want to go with INT magic, go Astrologer or Prisoner and if you want FTH magic go with Prophet.

What class did you choose? Are you happy with your decision? I’m about to start the game and I want a mostly mage build

Really love the astrologer build currently lvl 44, my first real play at a software game. There is some early gear you can get to make your play through a little more bearable for this class.

Not sure about that but i guess if you want to play a intelligence class i would suggest to take ... the most intelligent class :x

It's not a build when you're like level 500

That's badass but there's only like 2 or 3 scenarios throughout the whole game where you can pull this off.

My man out here like https://youtu.be/9Nqjz5R8LrU

Bro did a whole ass ritual before attacking lmao

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