The Mage: Schools & Gear

Mage School

Arcane Bolt is a basic all-around damage spell with a long range, decent damage, and minor cost. Arcane Shield is a sustained ability that helps divert attacks and bolsters your mage's defense.

Staff Focus increases the power of your basic staff attack, and Arcane Mastery grants a permanent bonus to spellpower, augmenting all your spells.

Almost any mage build wants Arcane Mastery as soon as it becomes available at level 10. On the attack, cast your powerful spells, then follow them up with Arcane Bolt.

When you're being swarmed, use your Arcane Shield, then let your other characters take the threat while you move back and come at your enemies with another wave of spells.

Primal School

Your main offensive spells find their home in the Primal school. Mostly focused on activated abilities, both in direct attacks and AoE attacks, Primal taps fire, earth, cold, and electricity for your staple damage attacks.

The first spell in each chain gives you a decent damage spell (except for the Earth chain, which gives you Stonefist second), and the third spell grants you a powerful AoE blast.

Monsters will be affected differently based on their resistances and vulnerabilities, and each chain has its own special effects: fire causes damage over time; earth gives you defense and one-shot kill with Petrify; cold hampers enemy movement; electricity forks to adjacent targets.

Creation School

Your primary school as a healer, Creation focuses on restoring health, replenishing mana, enhancing the party, and warding an area with glyphs.

The healing chain is the most important; you'll want Heal right out of the gate and Regeneration as soon as you can reach the 23 magic prerequisite.

The Spell Wisp chain can work for any mage as well: Spell Wisp increases spellpower, Grease traps enemies in a flammable AoE, Spellbloom regenerates mana, and Stinging Swarm is like an AoE damage spell as it bounces from target to target, except it doesn't create tons of threat focused on a single creature each time.

The Heroic chain is for mages who want to buff the party, sacrificing offense for utility. The Glyph chain gives the mage some crowd control with paralysis, warding, repulsion, and neutralization effects.

Spirit School

Two of the chains can be unexpected powerhouses if used well. The Walking Bomb chain poisons a single target, or explodes a host of similar monsters with Virulent Walking Bomb, plus the chain provides mana regeneration and additional melee support through Animate Dead.

The Mind Blast chain splits between great defensive and great offensive abilities. Mind Blast stuns all nearby enemies (great for when the mage gets swarmed), Force Field nullifies all damage to a target for a short time (the ultimate threat negation), Telekinetic Weapons beefs up armor penetration for your whole squad, and Crushing Prison completely shuts down a target, rooting the enemy in place and causing enough damage to kill weaker targets.

The Spell Shield chain is a must for defensive mages, especially Dispel Magic to remove devastating hexes and Anti-Magic Ward to cancel enemy spellcasting on one of your allies.

Finally, the Mana chain centers around disrupting enemy spellcasters' mana, and replenishing your own in the process. If your party doesn't have a templar, think about spending a few points in this chain's abilities.

Entropy School

The Entropy chains slide into the dark side of magic. The Drain/Death chain may be the most useful; the first two abilities net you health, while Curse of Mortality is lethal against healing mobs and Death Cloud is lethal to everything.

The Weakness chain strips offense, defense, and movement from enemies, or it outright paralyzes them. The upgrades (Miasma and Mass Paralysis) do it even better, affecting whole groups.

The Fear chain begins with Disorient, which inflicts combat penalties, works toward Horror, which causes the targets to cower in fear, and then knocks out enemies with Sleep.

Combo Sleep with Waking Nightmare and hostile targets become randomly stunned, attack other enemies, or become the caster's ally for the duration of the spell.

The last chain of hexes grants four different effects: vulnerability to resistances, AoE resistance penalties, inaccuracy, and bad luck (all normal hits become critical strikes).

Gear

Mages might not get the pick of the litter for equipment, but the gear they do receive should pump up their main abilities if you shop correctly.

Don't worry about defense too much; concentrate on bumping up your magic and willpower scores, or gaining spellpower points to enhance all spells, or adding mana boosts.

The goal of all mages is to avoid drawing too much threat, and if you're achieving that goal, armor won't be too much of a factor.

If you're worried about taking damage, invest in constitution to increase health and ward you against melee and ranged attacks.

The same goes with weapons: don't pick a staff based on DPS; pick one that increases your main attributes. Also, think about your spell preferences. If you invest in fire spells, for example, a ring that generates extra fire damage is a huge boon.

There's more mage gear than you could ever hope to equip in a single play. The general rule of thumb is to wait for loot that serves as an upgrade and snatch it up.

If you have extra coin to buy a nice gear upgrade, feel free to spend away, though most of the low-level equipment will be easily replaced by future loot, and the high-level equipment is very expensive (generally bought during the Landsmeet for a run at the archdemon).

With so much good gear, here are some beauties to shoot for based on beginning (1–5), intermediate (6–10), advanced (11–15), and expert levels (16–20):

Gear Recommendations