Guide for Starting the Wizard
Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:08 am
The wizard is arguably the most powerful character in Dungeon Lords. While he cannot wear heavy armour, this is rather superficial compared to the raw killing power of his spells which will destroy vast fields of enemies before they can harm you. While the war witch uses more types of magic better and has access to heavy weaponry and heavy armour, she lacks mightily in the spell power deparment. understanding the wizard amounts to understanding how to fight with her and how to use the basic mechanics of dungeon lords to your advantage.
To begin with, in order to maximize you advancement points you should not invest in things unless they are a prerequisite for a class, until you have attained the maximum class learning bonuses. This requires you to play the character with a minimum number of skills while you advance you class. It is important to try and attain your advanced classes as soon as possible in order to start advancing skills. Since Intelligence is like a learning bonus for all skills, one should also raise their intelligence before raising skills. By doing these two things, we maximize our advancement point usage and will end up far more powerful than a character that simply advances skills haphazardly. If you are familiar with the RPG pretext that by hampering yourself of power early, you enhance your power later, this is true of dungeon lords.
We will be perusing the following line of class advancement in this order.
Mage, Adept, Enchantress, Sorcerer, Wizard
By choosing mage early, we gain access to a few low level offensive spells. Even without points in Arcane magic these spells will work. We will be able to enchant our weapon with ice in order to freeze enemies which is very helpful and we will be able to shoot a low damage ranged attack. Also adept is easily attained and does not force us to trade in a staff we will receive for a mage's guild quest in order to get mage status. He also has a bonus to learning Arcane magic. We will need to learn three ranks in order to achieve Enchantress class.
By taking Adept next, we receive a bonus to Celestial magic. This is will help us to more cheaply attain the three ranks needed for Enchantress. Adpet also will help us raise our armor and shield skills eventually although we are not interested in doing so until we have maintained master class.
Once we have the necessary requirements to achieve enchantress, we will get another bonus to Arcane Magic. This is very helpful for attaining the sorcerer class which requires 7 arcane magic. We will also receive another bonus to Celestial magic which we can use once we have attained master class to flesh out our character. This class also gives us a bonus to thief skills which will let us advance our thief skills much cheaper.
Sorcerer grants us bonuses to Arcane Magic, Nether Magic, and Magic Weapons. This will be very helpful to cheaply advance to Wizard.
Finally Wizard offers us bonuses to Arcane Magic, Nether Magic, MAgic Weaponry, Scribe, and Alchemy.
Race:
The female elf is the superior character for this build. She has an amazingly low cost to advance her intellience skill and DEX and AGI can be advanced in small amounts early very cheaply to help us fight in teh early dungeons. Primarily we will want to dump all our points in Intelligence early before even beginning on our skills as this will net far better returns over the course of the game. She also has good inate resists. While her STR and VIT are expensive to advance, we will only be advancing these skills to teh minimum nescessary for wizard class.
Early Heraldry:
Select the Astrologer Heraldry. The MAgician heraldry is better for our character but we can select this heraldry once we complete the initiation quest for the mage guild and there are no other good choices, while when we complete our initiation in the Temple guild, we will have the hieruphant as an option and will want to pick that.
Early Weaponry and arms:
Since the Fargrove dealers don't offerbasic clothing, if your clothes are about to be destroyed remove them, that way we can repair them once we get to fargrove. We do not want to put points in armor until much later.
You can reload the first chest that you come to to get a good weapon. I suggest the Elven Spear. It has a long range and once we have a good strength, the bonus to strike will cancel out the penalties for being unskilled. It also has a much higher damage than the goblin staff, and we will not be putting points into magic weapons to activate the sleep ability of teh goblin staff.
Use the goblin staff early though until you get your strength up. It can always be found on the goblin wizard in the shacks due east of your starting point.
We will also want a bow, a short bow will do fine. Typically a goblin will dorp oen of these for you.
Finally we will want a fast shortrange weapon for when we get swarmed and the enemies get in to close for out spear to be of much use. A shortsword dropped by a thief on switch will do.
You should reload the chest in the first shack in order to get a second cure poison potion. Being poisoned early is equal to death.
EArly:
Put all your starting points into INT.
Level up to lvl 5 or six if you can stomach it at one of the shacks. Put the difficulty on hard and encounters on frequent once you get to teh shacks and let them come to you. This is an excellent tplace to elarn how to fight. The length of your weapon will allow you to keep mobs at bay as long as you hold the door. You can strike through the walls of the shcak without getting hit, by using the superior length of a polearm or staff. Notice that when you move forawrd or backwards slightly your weapon has more range. The other strikes where you swing the staff sideways have less range. Practice using the long range poke strikes. You should be able to get allot of health potions and fill up your bag with good gear for sale here. Identifying your goods takes a few reloads but is worth it to make sure everything you picks up is ID'ed. You'll also be able to collect many nether kataals here, which can be mixed to make nether spells for use or in order to make money.
Go ahead and invest your early ponts into AGI and DEX to get them up to twenty. We will need this as a prerequisite for enchantress class and it will help you fight early on. It will also raise your strike and parry so that the penalties you get from not having skills don't matter much. Next you can raise you strength a bit to get more damage and reduce the penalty for the elven spear so that you can start using it. Do not raise it past 20 as that is a waste. You really don't need to raise it past the elven spear requirement at this point. You can put a few points in VIT as well for more HP. The remainder of your points should all go into INT. Do not put points into Honor. Quests will give you honor and if you need to raise your honor when getting your enchantress class you can do so then with saved points. Do not put any points into skills! Let your stats do the work and keep pumping INT. Once we have 20 STR, 20 AGI, 20 DEX, 20 VIT we have what we need stat wise for enchantress so don't put anymore points in. Just keep pumping INT. You should use this startegy at least until you get to fargorve. I put no points into skills until reaching fargrove. Even then, keep pumping INT. The only skills that are required for Enchantress are 3 Arcane Magic, 3 Celestial MAgic, 3 Nether Magic, and 3 Rune Magic. These are the only skills we will have wanted to purchase when we get enchantress! BE suren ot to purchase Celestial magic until after you have gotten the ADept class. Try to hold off purchasing these skills as long as possible. You want as many points in INT as possible before purchasing these skills. You can save up your points for quite a while with this build to make sure you have enough for the enchantress class.
You should repeat like formulas while advancing to Sorcerer and Wizard class. Buy as few skills as possible while pumping your INT. You will need to do a little hunting to make this build maximize it's effectiveness. When you receive wizard you want a massive INT, and as few skills purchased as possible. Once you have that start working your skills.
Whether to start working on theif skills after getting Enchantress is a question. You will recieve no further learning bonuses so they are as cheap as you will ever get learning bonus wise. However, you are better served spending those points on INT and the prereqs for your classes. While passing up early chests will make you a little poorer, it will not hurt you in the long run. Any items you would find in a chest early can be found just as well later on.
Hope you have enjoyed this guide.
Brian
To begin with, in order to maximize you advancement points you should not invest in things unless they are a prerequisite for a class, until you have attained the maximum class learning bonuses. This requires you to play the character with a minimum number of skills while you advance you class. It is important to try and attain your advanced classes as soon as possible in order to start advancing skills. Since Intelligence is like a learning bonus for all skills, one should also raise their intelligence before raising skills. By doing these two things, we maximize our advancement point usage and will end up far more powerful than a character that simply advances skills haphazardly. If you are familiar with the RPG pretext that by hampering yourself of power early, you enhance your power later, this is true of dungeon lords.
We will be perusing the following line of class advancement in this order.
Mage, Adept, Enchantress, Sorcerer, Wizard
By choosing mage early, we gain access to a few low level offensive spells. Even without points in Arcane magic these spells will work. We will be able to enchant our weapon with ice in order to freeze enemies which is very helpful and we will be able to shoot a low damage ranged attack. Also adept is easily attained and does not force us to trade in a staff we will receive for a mage's guild quest in order to get mage status. He also has a bonus to learning Arcane magic. We will need to learn three ranks in order to achieve Enchantress class.
By taking Adept next, we receive a bonus to Celestial magic. This is will help us to more cheaply attain the three ranks needed for Enchantress. Adpet also will help us raise our armor and shield skills eventually although we are not interested in doing so until we have maintained master class.
Once we have the necessary requirements to achieve enchantress, we will get another bonus to Arcane Magic. This is very helpful for attaining the sorcerer class which requires 7 arcane magic. We will also receive another bonus to Celestial magic which we can use once we have attained master class to flesh out our character. This class also gives us a bonus to thief skills which will let us advance our thief skills much cheaper.
Sorcerer grants us bonuses to Arcane Magic, Nether Magic, and Magic Weapons. This will be very helpful to cheaply advance to Wizard.
Finally Wizard offers us bonuses to Arcane Magic, Nether Magic, MAgic Weaponry, Scribe, and Alchemy.
Race:
The female elf is the superior character for this build. She has an amazingly low cost to advance her intellience skill and DEX and AGI can be advanced in small amounts early very cheaply to help us fight in teh early dungeons. Primarily we will want to dump all our points in Intelligence early before even beginning on our skills as this will net far better returns over the course of the game. She also has good inate resists. While her STR and VIT are expensive to advance, we will only be advancing these skills to teh minimum nescessary for wizard class.
Early Heraldry:
Select the Astrologer Heraldry. The MAgician heraldry is better for our character but we can select this heraldry once we complete the initiation quest for the mage guild and there are no other good choices, while when we complete our initiation in the Temple guild, we will have the hieruphant as an option and will want to pick that.
Early Weaponry and arms:
Since the Fargrove dealers don't offerbasic clothing, if your clothes are about to be destroyed remove them, that way we can repair them once we get to fargrove. We do not want to put points in armor until much later.
You can reload the first chest that you come to to get a good weapon. I suggest the Elven Spear. It has a long range and once we have a good strength, the bonus to strike will cancel out the penalties for being unskilled. It also has a much higher damage than the goblin staff, and we will not be putting points into magic weapons to activate the sleep ability of teh goblin staff.
Use the goblin staff early though until you get your strength up. It can always be found on the goblin wizard in the shacks due east of your starting point.
We will also want a bow, a short bow will do fine. Typically a goblin will dorp oen of these for you.
Finally we will want a fast shortrange weapon for when we get swarmed and the enemies get in to close for out spear to be of much use. A shortsword dropped by a thief on switch will do.
You should reload the chest in the first shack in order to get a second cure poison potion. Being poisoned early is equal to death.
EArly:
Put all your starting points into INT.
Level up to lvl 5 or six if you can stomach it at one of the shacks. Put the difficulty on hard and encounters on frequent once you get to teh shacks and let them come to you. This is an excellent tplace to elarn how to fight. The length of your weapon will allow you to keep mobs at bay as long as you hold the door. You can strike through the walls of the shcak without getting hit, by using the superior length of a polearm or staff. Notice that when you move forawrd or backwards slightly your weapon has more range. The other strikes where you swing the staff sideways have less range. Practice using the long range poke strikes. You should be able to get allot of health potions and fill up your bag with good gear for sale here. Identifying your goods takes a few reloads but is worth it to make sure everything you picks up is ID'ed. You'll also be able to collect many nether kataals here, which can be mixed to make nether spells for use or in order to make money.
Go ahead and invest your early ponts into AGI and DEX to get them up to twenty. We will need this as a prerequisite for enchantress class and it will help you fight early on. It will also raise your strike and parry so that the penalties you get from not having skills don't matter much. Next you can raise you strength a bit to get more damage and reduce the penalty for the elven spear so that you can start using it. Do not raise it past 20 as that is a waste. You really don't need to raise it past the elven spear requirement at this point. You can put a few points in VIT as well for more HP. The remainder of your points should all go into INT. Do not put points into Honor. Quests will give you honor and if you need to raise your honor when getting your enchantress class you can do so then with saved points. Do not put any points into skills! Let your stats do the work and keep pumping INT. Once we have 20 STR, 20 AGI, 20 DEX, 20 VIT we have what we need stat wise for enchantress so don't put anymore points in. Just keep pumping INT. You should use this startegy at least until you get to fargorve. I put no points into skills until reaching fargrove. Even then, keep pumping INT. The only skills that are required for Enchantress are 3 Arcane Magic, 3 Celestial MAgic, 3 Nether Magic, and 3 Rune Magic. These are the only skills we will have wanted to purchase when we get enchantress! BE suren ot to purchase Celestial magic until after you have gotten the ADept class. Try to hold off purchasing these skills as long as possible. You want as many points in INT as possible before purchasing these skills. You can save up your points for quite a while with this build to make sure you have enough for the enchantress class.
You should repeat like formulas while advancing to Sorcerer and Wizard class. Buy as few skills as possible while pumping your INT. You will need to do a little hunting to make this build maximize it's effectiveness. When you receive wizard you want a massive INT, and as few skills purchased as possible. Once you have that start working your skills.
Whether to start working on theif skills after getting Enchantress is a question. You will recieve no further learning bonuses so they are as cheap as you will ever get learning bonus wise. However, you are better served spending those points on INT and the prereqs for your classes. While passing up early chests will make you a little poorer, it will not hurt you in the long run. Any items you would find in a chest early can be found just as well later on.
Hope you have enjoyed this guide.
Brian
Between the Spear and the Rod, and several sceptres for charges and a few small blades for utility, you could have a nice little armory using only the light weapons. It might even be worth a little extra effort leveling up just to use the spear of teh magus.