Overview
A guide to what to make your mages cast to kill people.
Foreword
I recently read the only consolidated guide to magic use for new players, and was horrified by a complete lack of certain staple spells, and advice to use things like Flying Shards. As I haven’t yet completed my Primers to each path of magic, I will make a short list of useful spells for new players to use.
This guide will be generic, and aimed at the lower tiers of research.
Evoking, not purely evocations, this includes any spell you cast on the battlefield that isn’t a buff, including summons.
Summons, any unit you permanently summon via spell.
Buffs, buffs for mages, troops, and thugs.
Spells that are bolded are excellent spells, a cut above. Italics means the spell is of marginal use, or has some effective borderline use. BOLDED AND IN CAPS denotes a gamechanger spell that completely turns the tables in a situation.
IF A SPELL IS NOT MENTIONED IT IS NOT ONE THAT SEES COMMON USE, OR I FORGOT IT. APPROACH WITH CAUTION IF NEW PLAYER.
————-Typical mage in dominions.—————
THIS GUIDE IS FOR NEW PLAYERS TO DECIDE WHICH SPELLS TO CAST AGAINST FOES NEW PLAYERS TYPICALLY FACE. IT IS NOT A DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO SPELL USE.
The Elements
‘Burn them. Burn them all.’
Evoking
Fireball (low prec means it’s all but useless except against massed formations or with prec boosting. With those, it’s good. Without them, it’s not.)
Falling Fires (low damage, poor prec, but hits multiple squares)
SUMMON FIRE ELEMENTAL (250hp ethereal killing machines)
FIRE STORM (unless you have fire immunity, kills your own units, is a battlefield wipe you use against large armies with a single caster tucked away with bodyguards in the back of the field. Abysia, however, uses this with wild abandon.)
Phoenix Power (+1 fire magic, your firstcast in general when using fire)
Heat From Hell (with delaying tactic, when army is resistant to fire)
Will ‘o the Wisp (Delays enemy formations, distracts their troops and mages, very good at that, useless at actual fighting)
Rage (against a small number of sacreds with poor MR you have no other way of hurting)
Incinerate (against single target, but pretty damn good against that target)
Living Fire (fire resistance tends to shrug these guys off, even smallish amounts of it, so these are more edge-use than the other Living spells)
Bonds of Fire (traps things for a round even if they escape, use on elite sacreds)
Prison of Fire (ties someone up in fire ropes, stops them for a turn, burns them, the aoe is pretty okay, but generally fireball is better – the time to use them is to stop sacreds in their paces so you can have your guys cut them to pieces before they burst out of their bonds the next turn)
Pillar of Fire (Super great spell, but super late spell. What fireball should have been. By the time you get it, you often don’t care about it anymore.)
Summons
Fire Snakes (good if you need aoe damage, not so good otherwise)
Kings of Elemental Fire (excellent high-fire mages, decent SCs with the right gear)
Terracotta Warriors (excellent cheap chaff)
Flame Spirits (3F mages, summon for the fire access SUMMOD NOTE: in summod these generate gems, making them more worthwhile but don’t buy them just for that ability)
Fire Ants (super awful stealthy giant ant chaff)
Flame Jellies (if you’re underwater and have the 2f access, they are weird but good – don’t go underwater specifically to get them)
Buffs
Flame Ward (gives FR 5, makes units immune to heat from hell, with armour, to firestorm)
Cold Resistance (ditto, but for Grip of Winter/chill auras)
Phoenix Pyre (use with high-reinvig SC to stop it dying, or with mages who aren’t near other mages)
FLAMING ARROWS (Good vs low-protection HIGH HP enemies. Won’t harm things with 16+ prot and/or shields)
SOLAR ECLIPSE (use if army can see in the dark, and the enemy can’t)
‘Let them break on our might.’
Evoking
Summon Earthpower (gives reinvig AND +1 earth, good on SCs for the reinvig, good on all earth mages for both)
GIFTS OF HEAVEN (buff the prec, and it kills 3 enemy squares per turn. Don’t buff the prec and it misses sometimes and still otherwise is the best thing since sliced bread. Oneshots SCs. Great spell.)
Earth Meld (Excellent early anti-sacred spell. Even if units can remove themselves from the earth the next turn, they are def-0 for a turn and therefore dead if in contact with friendly units. Extra prec helps. Short range can be ameliorated by running forward. Absolutely key early anti-rush spell.)
Destruction (Extremely excellent spell against high-prot armoured units. Destroys armour entirely, unlike rust mist or ironbane. Turns sacreds that rely on armour into swiss cheese. Range issues worth running forwards for.)
MAGMA ERUPTION (Hits an area with super death magma attack. A big area. Very hard. Very good spell. This is one of the two keys to MA Ulm’s ultimate tactic.)
SUMMON EARTH ELEMENTAL (Super size 6 trampling ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spell. Even against size-6 enemies or high def ones, earth elementals are hard to kill. Better with Iron Warriors cast on the earth elementals. You need a lot of elementals for this spell to be CAPS, with only a few cast, it’s only bold.)
Earth Grip (Earlier earth meld that only hits one guy. Very situational but can be worth using if very early or spammed against one unkillable SC.)
Petrify (single-target anti-thug/SC, very rarely castable in a way you care about)
Maws of the Earth (Like earth meld, but also does some damage. It’s a good spell, but often not worth a gem.)
EARTHQUAKE (hits the whole battlefield – high def units dodge, high prot units soak. It’s mostly good with tough or armoured mages (on your side) + blockers, to spam a few times to wipe out the enemy mages in a doomstack. Weaker than Rain of Stones.)
RAIN OF STONES (hit everyone on the battlefield – makes armies with lots of weak mages or troops explode in huge quantities of blood. Very scary spell as it can be used without triggering gem usage (1 gem on a mage with 2e1a or 3e1a), and can also be relatively easily ‘first-turned’ defensively by some nations, meaning defensive buffs won’t be cast yet.)
Living Earth (Many smaller tramplers. Can still trample humans. The ‘all at once’ effect often outweighs their lack of size.)
Summons
Enliven Statues (Tough, but not really that exciting. Can be worth it against sleep vines or other things that target non-lifeless units. Can be worth it against units with lots of weak attacks. Often is not worth it against other things.)
Gargoyles (They fly, they’re made of stone.. and they cost the entire earth. They are worth buying, but only sometimes.)
Buffs
Summon Earthpower (Gives +reinvig and +E for further E buffs, nearly always worth it on E mages, nearly always worth it on thugs/SCs)
Temper Flesh (halves the damage dealt after prot. Worth it on something tanky enough to live through a hit, and ideally with regen.)
Ironskin (The king of E thug buffs, this gives base protection that stacks with worn protection (albeit not entirely), and is worth using on mages too to protect against spells like RoS/EQ if you expect them)
Iron Will (Adds MR. Not as well as antimagic, but works on a thug or SC.
Legions of Steel (Each piece of worn armour in a huge AoE, including shields, gets +3 prot)
Strength of Giants (Each unit in a huge AoE gets +4 Str, well worth casting nearly always)
MARBLE WARRIORS (Each unit in a huge AoE gets base protection 15. That’s amazing. Turns troops unkillable. Always worth casting when you have it. Weakness to cold, likely will not matter.)
Lightning Resistance (against thunderstrike, removes the aoe effect and a large portion of the effectiveness)
Weapons of Sharpness (Hugely increases damage especially in lategame when everything has prot buffs, nearly always worth casting if you have mages who can cast it)
The Elements, Cont.
‘To struggle is only natural. You are within the grip of the riptide, after all.’
Evoking
Acid Rain
Acid Bolt
Summon Water Elemental
Summon Water Power
School of Sharks
Geyser
Falling Frost
Grip of Winter
Ice Strike
Frozen Heart/Frozen Heart (ice version of incinerate, but easier to cast – only really good option for 1w guys on land, high research)
Cleansing Water (anti-demon/undead evocation)
Quagmire
Rain (doubles fatigue cost of fire spells, stops Heat)
Living Water
Numbness (fatigues out non-ice-resistant tough enemies, and early water battle spell)
Summoning
MANIFEST VITRIOL
Winter Wolves
Sea King’s Court
Claymen
Summon Naiad
Streams of Hades
Call Kydnids
Buffing
Wave Warriors
Quickening
Fire Resistance
Frost Ward
LIQUID BODY (thugs)
Quickness
Quicken Self (for a thug with enough reinvig to not fatigue out from it)
‘Let them do what they will. They have already lost. Such is the power of our magic.‘
Evoking
THUNDERSTRIKE (3A guy with 2 gems casts Storm – rest of aircasters cast stormpower, aim, then thunderstrike – this is so powerful it is considered a national advantage of elf nations, but it can be baited to hit the wrong thing)
STORM (Stops flyers without Stormpower/Stormflying from flying. That’s HUGE. Allows you to cast Summon Storm Power to increase A, which is also fairly huge. Halves prec, of all units, including your own, which messes up tstrike and so on, but could be used with Mist or something against enemy archery.)
Summon Storm Power (Increases air magic one level, enabling many important buffs and spells)
Aim (increases prec by 4, hugely increasing the power of certain damage spells, is in a small aoe so it can be cast on friendly mages who don’t have A)
Lightning Bolt (decent emergency spell, also good against weaker thugs due to it’s high prec esp. when combined with aim)
Orb Lightning (decent when dealing with many tough targets at point blank range, or with units that can’t reach A3 for tstrike/elementals/whatever)
Phantasmal Army (Decent chaff, mage-efficient, but melt against magic anything.)
Phantasmal Warrior (Battlechaff that doesn’t cost gems, and something fairly worthwhile for an a1 to be doing with his or her time.)
WRATHFUL SKIES (if lightning resistant or immune, hits whole battlefield. An army-melter tactic that you deploy with lightning-resistant armies or with a few mages at backfield with guards. Over time kills most everything.)
SUMMON AIR ELEMENTAL (Fragile, fast, stormflying tramplers. Take buffs even better than E elementals. En-masse, they will wreck someone’s day, and they’ll even lightning to death large SCs or thugs with lightning punches.)
Living Air (Many fast tramplers. Needs buffs to really work super well, as they trample less good.)
False Fetters[/b] (use to stop something you can’t kill, so your guys can hack it while it’s fettered – range makes it difficult to use, but en-masse is a good answer to powerful, low-mr sacreds)
Ghost Wolves (another gem-less chaff thing, but hopefully your a3 mages have better things to do with their time)
False Horror (good against low morale enemies without magic attacks, if you can spam it hard enough)
Summons
Air Queens
Call of the Winds
Corpse Man Construction (w/ lightning rod (earth item) and storm spool (air item), gives lots of frankensteins for only one gem)
Great Eagles
Buffing
MASS FLIGHT
FOG WARRIORS
Thunder Ward (against tstrike, this removes the aoe and a large part of the effectiveness)
Gift of flight (on a thug/elephants/vanhere)
Wind Guide
Arrow Fend (air shield on all your guys – works best with line formation, shuts down archery strategies)
Mistform (thug buff, reduces incoming damage to 1, excellent for anything that won’t be nickel and dimed)
The Paths of Sorcery
‘They think us weak, for looking to the stars, to books, to mathematics, to thought. But they are fools – the path of knowledge will grind their bones into dust.‘
Evoking
STELLAR CASCADES
Light of the North Star
Power of the Spheres
Mind Burn
Star Fires
Soul Slay
Enslave Mind
Astral Fires
Solar Brilliance (weak battlefield harm, blinds units or harms undead)
Summons
Ether Lord
Golems (SC chassis that’s hard to kill due to being Lifeless)
Buffing
Antimagic
Will of the Fates
Doom
Body Ethereal (mage defense/thug buff, can put on elephants and things)
Twist Fate (early anti stray arrow defense)
‘Mother Nature is a serial killer. She gives life, and she gives death. To think otherwise is the naivety of those who have not given themselves to the shallow earth and all the life upon it.’
Evoking
Tangle Vines
Swarm (bold in assassination battles, to enable stealthy raiding as pan, otherwise, simply plain text for battle use)
Foul Vapours (very very very slowly poisons the entire battlefield. Takes literally forever, can’t get through regen. Still, very slowly poisons the entire battlefield.)
Maggots (anti-undead-thugs)
Dragon’s Breath
CREEPING DOOM (drown your enemy in insects, at alt7 which has several great other spells like mass protection)
Gaia’s Blessing
Panic
Sleep Cloud (If you can hold a line at a specific point long enough for it to work)
Howl
Ravenous Swarm (anti-undead-thugs/SCs)
Charm
Storm of Thorns (good spell, but too high in research to matter for most early wars, when it’s most effective)
Summoning
Pack of Wolves
Awaken Vine Ogres (with the ivy crown, gives 1 gem, 1 ogre)
Summon Horned Serpents
Awaken Sleeper (if you have nothing better to thug or need an excellent army leader)
Call Lamia Queen (if you need the D or N magic)
Awaken Ivy King (solid thug, excellent source of more nature magic)
Buffing
Wooden Warriors
Army of Giants
Enlarge
Barkskin
Regeneration
MASS PROTECTION (against fire damage, or Firestorm, this is a debuff)
Serpent’s Blessing (in combination with, or to resist, Foul Vapours, not on it’s own)
Touch of Madness
Berserkers
Relief (restores tiny amounts of fatigue to your entire army every turn)
Mass Regen (good if your units have enough hp for the regen to matter, but very high in the tree – part of the laundry list of lategame mass buffs)
‘That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.’
Evoking
HORDE OF SKELETONS
RAISE DEAD (if unburied corpses present, better than horde of skeletons. Otherwise, has no effect)
Rigor Mortis (fatigues everything not undead, puts your skelly spammers to sleep, use with caution)
Shadow Blast (costs a gem but huge area damage and paralyze)
Terror
Wind of Death (kills everything on the field, slowly, a lot like fire storm)
Wailing Winds (use to demoralize the enemy)
Wither Bones (against tough undead)
Dust to Dust (weaker version of wither bones)
Ghost Grip (fatigues things you can’t otherwise hurt)
Drain Life (something to target tough living enemies with, and regain fatigue from lesser foes)
Disintegrate (a single target kill for thugs/SCs)
Bone Grinding (hurts everyone on the battlefield. Extremely high path requirement means this will likely be cast out of a communion, if at all)
Summons
Bane (undead leader, incredibly light thug)
Bane Lord (a thuggable, cheap, combat chassis)
PALE RIDERS (light lances on hooves, lots of them)
Spirit Mastery (summons about 15 of these guys, ethereal chaff)
Behemoth (buffable undead elephant)
Revive King (cheap leader/undead leader)
GHOSTS (cold aura fear aura ethereal infantry, for hella expensive – if you can place them with other units so their fear auras affect the enemy without them getting stabbed to death, they are CAPS. If not, they are still good, but only bold.)
Buffing
Skeletal Body
Skeletal Army
Life After Death (use if army is alive, chaff, and going to die)
DARKNESS (use if army is undead/demons/can see in the dark, and the enemy can’t)
Soul Vortex (good SC buff if the fatigue doesn’t cause them to get crit and die before it regens, troops on guard commander can be ‘fed’ to a death mage this way to regen it’s fatigue)
Stygian Rain (gives everyone on the battlefield stygian skin, if you have magic weapons or hit super hard, it’s great – doesn’t work on undead, so against undead, also great – against summoners, if you cast it before they summon, again great – otherwise, it can sometimes be detrimental)
Stygian Skin
—-
And that’s all, the end.
I just wrote this mostly on a boat, from memory, so it’s full of glaring errors. Feel free to correct me about any of the following;
names of spells
spells i’ve forgotten
spells i’m vastly underrating/overrating
write up a ‘rituals’ section to cover all the remotes and stuff I left out for ease of use