The Wizard is a magic class that specializes in destruction. Unlike the Sorceress, who has a good number of spells and abilities that offer support to the party, the Wizard is the black mage of the group, with a slathering of powerful spells that inflict significant damage on unsuspecting foes. If you’re content to sit back and cast damaging spell after damaging spell with occasional breaks to replenish your MP, the Wizard could be just the class you’re looking for.
Read Prima’s Dragon’s Crown Beginner’s Tips for even more strategies.
Class Tips: Fighter, Elf, Sorceress, Dwarf, Wizard, Amazon
STATS BREAKDOWN
Strength: D
As you may have guessed, the Wizard is not a physical combat warrior. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near his opponents as he pummels them with icy magic spells. If you weren’t completely convinced of this by his skills and magic spells, his low strength rank should be more than enough to tell you that a Wizard is not meant to be on the front lines dishing out physical attacks.
Constitution: C
In a party environment, the Wizard should not be taking too many physical attacks. This point is backed up by his moderately low constitution rank. He doesn’t have the worst ranking in the game (that belongs to the Sorceress), but he won’t be able to take many physical attacks before he sacrifices a life. Keep him out of range from physical attacks to make sure he stays in the fight a bit longer.
Intelligence: S
The Wizard’s primary form of attack is magic. Therefore, it only makes sense that he has the highest possible rank when it comes to intelligence. His magic spells are more damaging than those of the Sorceress and Elf. He strikes hard and fast from a distance with a plethora of magic abilities at his command. Just make sure you keep an eye on your MP so you don’t run out.
Magic Resistance: A
It almost goes hand-in-hand with the mage classes having weak physical defense (constitution) and strong magic defense (magic resistance). The Wizard doesn’t have the highest magic resistance rank (the Sorceress strikes again), but he has a very solid A ranking, which means he can take a few magic attacks without worrying about his health.
Dexterity: B
While dexterity isn’t a super important stat for the Wizard, it’s nice to know that he has a relatively high ranking. It means that the damage rating you see on his staves will more often than not end up on the higher end when it translates to damaging an enemy. Again, it’s not the most important stat for a Wizard and certainly shouldn’t change your play style with him, but it’s a nice little bonus.
Luck: D
Much like the dexterity stat, luck doesn’t do a great deal for the Wizard. You should not be concerned with the fact that his luck rating is very low. When it comes to the thick of battle, it won’t really matter how often you’re landing critical hits with the Wizard. You’ll be more focused on your MP and casting the most damaging spells you can muster.
BASIC GAMEPLAY
The Wizard is about as straightforward as it gets for a magic-based damage dealer. He uses a variety of spells to inflict considerable damage to enemies from a distance, and has the ability to turn crates into Wood Golems to aide him in battle. While the Sorceress has quite a few support spells, the Wizard has a heavy offensive focus. However, he does have a few support spells, which can come in handy in certain situations.
First and foremost, you must learn how to manage your MP. Everything a Wizard does, from magic spells to his evade ability (a teleport), requires the use of MP. You can recharge MP at any point by holding Square. This may take some adjustment because if you hold Square while you’re moving, the Wizard will start running instead of charging his MP. You must hold Square before you begin moving if you wish to charge your MP while on the go. This is an important nuance to learn, especially if you need to replenish MP in the heat of battle.
Once you’ve grasped the technique of recharging your MP on the go, you have to learn to keep an eye on how much MP you have remaining. Because the Wizard’s evasion technique requires MP to use, it’s important to make sure you’re never completely out of MP. Pay close attention to how much MP each spell uses and learn when you need to stop casting and start replenishing your MP. The Wizard has a variety of skills that help with this task, but you still need to make sure you’re carefully watching your MP pool.
If you would like to offer assistance to the party in addition to causing a massive amount of damage, there are a few skills that give the Wizard enfeebling spells. For instance, one such skill allows you to slow the movement speed of enemies. If you’re playing with a skilled party, these enfeebling spells help, but in the long run they’re not overly necessary. They’re primarily useful if you do not have any melee classes in your party and need some breathing room between your Wizard and the enemies. If you have a solid party, focus on the Wizard’s more damaging spells and leave the support spells to the Sorceress.
When it comes to creating a solid party with the Wizard in mind, you want to make sure you have one or two melee damage dealers. A Fighter helps a Wizard quite a bit because he can call attention away from the Wizard, shield you from attacks and boost your magic attack damage while shielded. If you’re looking to focus exclusively on offensive magic, a Sorceress can also be a good addition to your party. However, if you’re planning to use some of the Wizard’s support and enfeebling magic, you can skip the Sorceress and go for more melee damage dealers or even an Elf.
SKILL FOCUS
Concentrate
Concentrate is one of the Wizard’s most important skills early in the game. The higher you level up this skill, the faster you’re able to charge your MP. At the maximum level, your MP will charge considerably faster than it does at the beginning of the game. Combine this with the Spirit Up skill to maximize your MP as early as possible.
Extract
The Extract skill grants the Wizard the ability to fire a magic shot that replenishes his MP if it hits an enemy. This is a great way to help replenish your MP at lower levels, but it’s not quite as important as the Spirit Up and Concentrate skills. Once the other two skills have seen some attention, then you can focus on leveling this up.
Mental Absorb
Mental Absorb is somewhat similar to Extract. However, instead of regaining MP every time a special attack hits an enemy, you replenish MP with every kill that you make. The importance of this skill depends greatly on your party configuration. If you have strong melee classes in your party around the level of your Wizard, it can be more difficult to score kills. If you’re the primary damage dealer in the party, then this skill becomes more useful. Either way, this is a good skill to have, but only after you’ve maxed out many of the other MP-related skills.
Spirit Up
Spirit Up is arguably the most important skill for a Wizard. As you level up this skill, your Wizard’s MP pool grows. Once it reaches the maximum level you will have a substantially higher MP pool than at the beginning of the game. This is extremely important because as you gain more and more spells, you’ll be using more and more MP. The more MP you have, the less you’ll have to stop to recharge it.
Fire Ward
The Fire Ward skill is one of the Wizard’s few support spells that actually comes in handy more often than not. While it’s feasible to focus exclusively on offensive spells, Fire Ward offers the entire party protection from fire. This comes in handy when you’re playing through dungeons with oil barrels and fire. The damage from fire can add up quickly, so casting this spell can help prevent such damage. However, if you have a skilled party, they should be able to avoid fire in most cases. If you choose to acquire this skill, don’t level it up until you’ve already maxed out your MP-based skills and probably one or two offensive spells as well. Keep in mind, this is also an item that will take up room in your inventory.
Blaze, Storm, Flame Burst, Thunderbolt and Meteor Swarm
The Wizard has many offensive spell skills. All of these inflict good damage as you level them up. However, they all take up inventory space as well. Early in the game, choose one or two of these spells and level them up as quickly as possible. Once you can purchase more bags, pick up the rest of these skills and level them up as well. You won’t need more than a few of these spells early on, and for the most part it won’t matter which spells you choose. You have plenty of time to max out all of these spells before things start to get rough later on in the game.
Create Wood Golem
As you progress through dungeons, you’ll come across crates that carry items, food, trinkets and weapons. If you have the Create Wood Golem skill, you can turn these crates into Golem familiars that will fight alongside you. The higher this skill, the more powerful the Golems will be and the more wood you can add to it. If you have this skill, make sure you get to the crates before another party member destroys it. Even if you turn a crate into a Golem, the items inside will still be left on the ground for everyone to collect.
Levitation
Levitation is as fairly good skill for a Wizard to learn. It allows the Wizard to float out of harm’s reach. In addition, while the Wizard is floating, his magic attacks receive a damage boost. Pick this up early on to give your Wizard better mobility, but don’t worry about leveling it up too much until you’ve taken care of all the MP-related skills, as well as a few offensive magic skills.
