A powergamers guide to Magi

[Horus]

After finishing the game with 4 different characters (of which 3 were mages) on hard I thought I'd contribute to the information on gamebanshee by writing this guide. Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with roleplaying, just creating a mage that can hold it's own on the higher difficulties. Please add anything I missed or point out things you disagree with as this guide is by no means extensive. (At this point ) Let's get to it!

1.0 At the start of the game:

1.1 Race
Elf offers the best racial boni so go with that. Races are very marginally implemented in Dragon Age so there's not much else to say about it.

1.2 Abilities
Simply put all points into magic. Magic enhances the potency of all your spells and it also the only way to make them harder to resist. Yes, you could build a character with more mana or health and be able to cast more spells without quaffing a potion but you will have your spells resisted more often.
Besides, health and mana are gained for free everytime you level up, this is not true for spellpower.

The exception to this rule is possibly arcane warrior on nightmare where you might have to put some points into dexterity to be able to hit the bosses and such. Never ever put any points in strength though because with combat magic active your magic score determines your melee damage and while dex and str both contribute to your hit rate, dex also gives 1 defence per point.

1.3 Skills
You start with 1 rank in herbalism which is all you're ever going to need for the rest of the game. As your first skill I recommend picking either coercion or combat training. Coercion will give you better dialogue options that often result in more money and experience. It also provides a small bonus during your origin story, allowing you to keep a slightly better staff. Combat Tactics helps by reducing the chance to have your spells disrupted when taking damage and providing some mana regeneration. However, spells aren't as easily disrupted in this game as in say BG2 or IWD2 so you can postpone taking combat training somewhat. If you plan on becoming an arcane warrior I would advise maxing this skill by the time you start to actually fight.

After you have maxed both skills I'd go with survival because it allows you to see enemies on the map before they spot you which is very handy with area of effect spells. Survival also offers a small bonus to nature resistance. The other skills are kinda pointless.

1.4 Spells/Talents
You'll get Arcane Bolt for free plus two other picks at your leisure.
I recommend taking flame blast and Winter's Grasp. After that work towards Fireball and Cone of Cold in that order. I'll explain my reasoning for this in the Spell review section below.

2.0 A short walkthrough for quests that are important for mages:

2.1 Origin Story
In the Fade make sure to duel the Valor spirit and attack it afterwards for more xp. After you talk to the Sloth demon backtrack to the beginning to kill the wisps that respawn and during the fight with the final demon kill the wisps before killing him.

2.2 Ostagar
Killing the prisoner for his key and using coercion to get the elf messenger to give you the sword yields extra xp. You can buy a backpack both before and after leaving for the wilds.

2.3 Camp
The first time you go to camp make sure you bring 22,5 sovereigns and buy the tome of Arcane Technique from the dwarven merchant. After you leave and return, the tome (and anything else you bought) will respawn.

2.4 Circle Tower
I recommend going here straight away after leaving Lothering if you've got the nerve, otherwise do a couple of side-quests first to get better equipment. A big reason for doing the Tower asap are the 21 ability points you get for free. This is particularly handy for the +5 cunning you'll receive on top of the 11 you started with, for a total of 16 which is exactly enough to unlock tier 4 skills. You'll also find the best mage hat and trigger a random encounter that drops the best mage boots if you do the 'summoning sciences' quest.

2.5 The fade at Redcliffe Castle
Make sure to go into the fade yourself and negotiate with the demon. If you ask for arcane knowledge you'll unlock the bloodmage specialization for all playtroughs and once you have that unlocked you can reload and ask her for an upgrade to your talents, she'll give you a tome that you can use to get a spell.

[Horus]

3.0 SPELL REVIEW
I will provide a score of x out of 5 for each spell and a short explanation to go with it.

3.1 Mage spells

Arcane bolt 2/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:Yes
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: Yes
This does moderate single target damage which is somewhat useful during the early parts of the game or if you have nothing else off cooldown. At higher levels it gets resisted ALOT. The good news is that you get it for free and the rest of this line is actually quite good.

Arcane Shield 4/5 (For Arcane Warriors 5/5)
This spell has a small upkeep and fatigue cost and provides defense based on spellpower, meaning that it scales as you and your enemies get more powerful. At level 23 it gave my mage 20 defense, not too shabby eh?

Staff Mastery 4/5 (For Arcane Warriors 0/5)
This easily adds 15 points of damage to each staff attack making it a worthwhile investment as you wont be flinging spells all the time. Arcane warriors use swords so this is quite useless for them.

Arcane Mastery 4/5 (For Arcane Warriors 2/5)
This gives a passive +5 bonus to spellpower. There are two spells that can give a higher bonus to spellpower but these are sustained and will tax your mana. Arcane Warriors shouldn't bother because of Staff Mastery and because for them Magic is more important than spellpower.

3.2 Primal spells

Flameblast 3/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:No
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: No
This spell does reasonable damage to multiple foes over a good amount of time and gets better as you become more skilled in aiming it.

Flaming Weapons 4/5
Not many foes are (highly) resistant to fire and at higher levels the added damage becomes quite big.

Fireball 5/5 (Arcane Warrior 3/5)
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:No
Sheathe Weapons:Yes
Projectile: Yes
Ah.. I love this one, the perfect opener to a fight and great to disrupt archers and mages. It has a big blast radius and will knock anyone caught within to their feet for about 5 seconds, while they continue to burn for a while after that. Usually takes white level enemies to half health. The knockdown is sometimes resisted by bosses but not often.

Inferno 5/5
Casting Time: Yes
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted:No
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: No
Big damage in a big radius. What makes this one better than most comparable ones is that fire damage is not often resisted, that folks that manage to escape the burn radius continue to fry for some time and that you don't need line of sight to fire it off. The only downside I can think of is that is often burns longer than the enemies last. (It burns for exactly as long as it takes the cooldown timer to get halfway.)

Rock Armor 2/5 (Arcane Warrior 5/5)
For most mages not getting hit at all is better than getting hit for less because they tend to be, you know, squishy. For Arcane warriors this is a must have to really get that armor rating up there.

Stonefist 2/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:Yes
Sheathe Weapons:Yes
Projectile: Yes
Great to knock the occasional enemy away from you or to shatter the ocassional white level frozen enemy if that's your kinda thing but mostly useless in a useless line.

Earthquake 2/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: ?
Often Resisted:Yes
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: No
Hard to use effectively and often resisted. Also does no damage. Basically a worse blizzard.

Petrify 3/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: ?
Often Resisted:No
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: ?
It will turn most things to stone for a while and is hard to resist but you have to pick 3 semi-useless spells to get it and there are better and more readily available stuns.

Winter's Grasp 5/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted:Yes
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
During the first parts of the game this spell is absolute gold, freezing enemies for several seconds and doing a good amount of damage. Even later on it's not useless as you'll encounter some nasty fire based creatures that are easy to kill if you're packing some ice.

Frost Weapons 2/5
Don't bother with this unless you don't have access to any other spells of this kind or if you're up against the fire based critters I mentioned.

Cone of Cold 5/5 (Arcane Warrior 3/5)
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:No
Sheathe Weapons:Yes
Projectile: No
This damages multiple enemies when skillfully aimed and freezes them for nearly 10 seconds. Bosses will very rarely resist this so it's a great way to disrupt spells and special attacks, also has a short countdown.

Blizzard 4/5
Casting Time: Yes
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted:No
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: No
Low area of effect damage but made better because it will knock enemies down when cast, then slow them and eventually freeze them solid if they don't manage to get out of the radius. Also involved in the somewhat useful storm of the century combo. I prefer using inferno in combination with some crowd control to do more damage in a shorter time.

Lightning 2/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:Yes
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: Yes
Much worse than Winter's Grasp because of the lack of a crowd control element and the higher mana cost.

Shock 2/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:?
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: No
Reasonable lightning damage in a cone shape, again no crowd control element like cone of cold.

Tempest 4/5
Casting Time: Yes
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted:No
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: No
Good lightning damage over a large area with a relatively short cooldown timer, this spell is also involved in the storm of the century combo.

Chain Lightning 1/5
Casting Time: Yes
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted:Yes
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: Yes
I hear this doesn't scale with level or is absorbed by armor or something and thus does next to nothing at higher levels.

Other spell trees and item guide coming soon!

[Horus]

3.3 Creation Spells

Heal 4/5 (If no-one in the party is a Spirit Healer 5/5)
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted: NA
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
This is a great spell that you should learn early. The only downside is that it is so badly outclassed by the Spirit Healer's Group Heal that heals more damage and more people. Unlocking this will also not open up any long term improvement because the rest of this line is not that useful.

Rejuvenate 2/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted: NA
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
Sometimes handy to regenerate a warrior's stamina but for mages useless as you can buy 99 mana potions for just over 2 sovereigns.

Regeneration 4/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted: NA
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
This heals more damage than heal but over a longer period of time. Very useful in fights, but if you want this I recommend Wynne.

Mass rejuvenate 3/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted: NA
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
More useful then Rejuvenate because the mage that casts this gets their mana back over time but still nowhere near as powerful as some of the other tier 4 spells.

Heroic Offense 2/5
Can be used to boost a party member's attack in difficult fights but for me the duration of all these things was too short to be of any real use.

Heroic Aura 2/5
Again, not that useful as there are better (more offensive) ways to deal with archers.

Heroic Defense 2/5
Same same but different.

Haste 4/5 (5/5 if party has an arcane warrior or two-hander and no dual weapon users.)
A godsend really, if just for the increased movement speed when exploring. Also the best way to get the most out of warriors that have no way of speeding up their own attacks. Is reported to not work with Momentum.

Glyph of Paralysis 5/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted: No
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
For a tier 1 spell this is incredibly powerful. It even has an area of effect as opposed to the tier 2 spell paralyze! Bosses will sometimes resist this but otherwise it works everytime. Most importantly it is part of the 2 spell combo 'Paralysis Explosion' which is the best combo out there.

Glyph of Warding 2/5
Same as with the auras, I prefer offense to mediocre buffs.

Glyph of Repulsion 5/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted: No
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
Once you cast this you'll never go back. Drop one in a door opening and an inferno on the other side and 20 seconds later everyone will be dead. Combine with Glyph of Paralysis to get an impossible to resist Mass Paralysis without the casting time, projectile and need for line of sight, need I say more?

Glyph of Neutralization 3/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: No
Often Resisted: No
Sheathe Weapons:No
Projectile: No
Very useful Glyph to save an ally or neuter an enemy mage to hack it to pieces, sadly though Mana Clash is much better than this so only choose it it you can't afford the Clash.

Spell Wisp 4/5
For sorcerer types this can be very handy to boost spellpower by as much as 10 at the higher levels. If you got spells to spare this is one of those always nice to have things.

Grease 2/5
Casting Time: No
Line of Sight: Yes
Often Resisted: Yes
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: ?
Mostly useless semi-crowd control, part of a weak combo with fire spells, don't bother.

Spellbloom 2/5
I haven't tried this myself but I hear the regeneration is nothing special and so I would skip this one.

Stinging Swarm 3/5
Casting Time: ?
Line of Sight: ?
Often Resisted: No
Sheathe Weapons:?
Projectile: ?
I hear it does decent damage and is not often resisted but the damage is nature damage to which certain monsters are immune and you have to pick two crappy spells to get this.

[thantor3]

Great post - thanks!

I agree with much of your assessment, but I did not feel the Rock Armor chain was useless. Stonefist is an effective panic button and works very well in combination with Petrify or Cone of Cold to shatter enemies. Earthquake can be cast with a drawn weapon and combines well with other AoE spells like Blizzard and Infero or even Grease. I particularly like it, after I have set traps, as a long-range way to initiate combat and lure the enemy toward me without having to use one of my party to do that. It was quite useful in the early game, although I agree that it is less useful as you progress. Petrify, as you noted, is difficult to resist and saved my bacon on many occasions. It isn't on the level of Crushing Prison or Mana Clash, but I do use it frequently and it is effective.

To add some information to your chart, the following can be cast with a weapon drawn (not a complete list):
Flaming Weapons, Inferno
Rock Armor, Earthquake, Petrify
Frost Weapons
Tempest, Chain Lightning

Heal, Regeneration, Mass Rejuvenation
Heroic Aura
Glyphs (all of them)
Spell Wisp, Grease, Spellbloom, Stinging Swarm

Combat Magic, Shimmering Shield (Aura of Might and Fade Shroud are passive)

All the Spirit Healer spells (Group Heal, Revival, Lilfeward, Cleansing Aura)

Force Field, Telekinetic Weapons, Crushing Prison

Arcane Bolt, Arcane Shield (Staff Focus and Arcane Mastery are passive)

[Mister Bean]

Crushing Prison is probably the most powerful spell line in the game. It gives you two spells (CP and Force Field) that remove an elite or regular enemy from the battle for a while, leaving you free to deal with a smaller portion of the enemy force at a time. They work against bosses, too, just not as well.

Crushing Prision and Walking Bomb deal a large amount of damage over time. It takes a while for one of these spells to deal lethal damage, but they are extremely helpful against elite and boss enemies.

Inferno and Storm of the Century (Spell Might + Blizzard + Tempest) are very large, deadly, AoE spells. Too bad they leave enemies free to leave the area of effect.

There are two good options here. One, you could use an AoE immobilization spell, such as Paralysis Explosion. Two, you could retreat to a corner of the room and cast the spell such that it hits people who are engaging you in melee, but misses you.

You can cast a Glyph of Paralysis and a Blizzard on the ground before the battle begins, engage Spell Might, then initiate the battle. Hit your glyph with a Glyph of Repulsion to paralyze everone in a large radius, then Tempest within your Blizzard will spawn a Storm of the Century. This, plus a few Walking Bombs and Cones of Cold is how I took down Ser Cauthrien's entourage as a solo arcane warrior.

An entire unit of men, all slain by one creature. I didn't believe it at first, but we appear to be facing an Arcane Warrior.

[Horus]

Thanks for the feedback guys! I have since moved on to the Bioware forums after I got no replies here and found the quality of most topics/comments here lacking when compared to the awesome forums on the infinity games. Another thing, it seems the activity isn't that high here either, but perhaps I was wrong and I just need to give it some time.

Yesterday I have posted a very extensive guide on Arcane Warriors on the bioware forum that has gotten a few positive replies so far, check it out if you're interested: Choose Language | BioWare Social Network

I've also discovered the Dragon Age Wiki page that lists all spells and if they can be casted with draw weapons or not and use that as a referral. I still don't think going beyond Rock Armor is worth it and I also do not share the high opinion of Crushing Prison, although Force Field is very good.

[GoldDragon]

WHen I played as a Primal mage, I thoroughly enjoyed Earthquake. With High Magic (50+) and High Willpower (nearly 50, IIRC, but this was my first mage, and I have had 5 characters since), I found it kept most people off their feet, including Ser Cauthrine, actually.

[Thing]

Earthquake can be pretty useful whe combined with Fireball, then Tempest. Enemies are largely immobilised and subjected to the on-off hit of Fireball then the continuous damage of tempest - with a high level mage and the rest of your party using ranged attacks you can often eliminate a large proportion of a distant group.

[Scottg]

I found that Earthquake wasn't worth the talent expenditure, nor are any but Rock Armor in the Earth line.

On the other hand Earthquake does 5 physical resistance checks in it's 20 second duration. This is often enough to disable opponents, particularly archers and mages.

Fireball, Earthquake, Fireball, Fireball - can usually take out a group of opponents while keeping them pretty much disabled (..provided they aren't "blown" out of the Earthquake's radius).

I'd also note that Rock Armor is NOT a waste even if you aren't an Arcane Warrior. At lower levels (because of the way the game scales difficulty), it can provide substantial damage reduction. At higher levels and with the Reaper's Vestment it's ='s 24 in armor. You may not be hit often, but when you are hit - it's rather nice. An exception here is against high-threat two-handed weapon warriors. Their ability to "sunder" armor pretty much makes it worthless.