Basic Strategy 101 Version 1.4

[Galen]

Greetings
I have noted some people wishing for some sort of basic hints/strategy so i decided to compile a small set of ideas which might prove helpful to beginning players.
Please suggest things to be added or improved as I might have missed something which is obvious to me (as someone who has gone through the forums) but may not be to others. Note: I understand that it doesn't look very newbie friendly, any suggestions to make it look better would also be appreciated.

Version Changes
1.0: Colour and quick searches. Added covens and coven duel information and more in-depth information on other sections
1.1: Started adding new update information. Firstly added stat changes and staff changes.
1.2: Slight changes to Coven duel sentences, and modification of stats (in particular to Endurance). Added Unique items. Updated new spellbooks
1.3: Added some Superior information, revised spellbook links. Altered stat information
1.4: Added familiar section, added links to Polgara's familiar info and shop database.

Basic Guide
Table of Contents:
Stats - [FF001]
Duels - [FF002]
Spellbook - [FF003]
Equipment - [FF004]
Spells - [FF005]
Misc: [FF006]
Attitude
Covens - [FF007]
Coven Duels - [F008]
Unique Items - [F009]

To go to a specific section, simply type Ctrl + F to and then type in the code. For example, if you wished to go straight to equipment you press Ctrl + F and type in FF004.

Stats [FF001]
Intelligence: This stat affects the possibility of achieving maximum damage in any given spell. For example, if a spell says "10-20 damage" then the higher your intelligence the greater the chance of hitting that max of 20 damage. This stat does not increase your maximum damage. It also determines the limits of what spells you can learn. To attain the title of Majoris in any element require a base stat of at least 19, so you should aim to reach this as soon as possible. With the last update a new set of spells were introduced to each element, collectively called Superior. To learn these Superior spells requires a total intelligence of at least 40. However you only need approximately 30/31 to learn the first Superior spell, with the other spells unlocking as you get closer to 40.

Endurance: This is related how much you are able to resist being paralysed in battle. The higher this stat the harder it is for you to be affected by mobility status effects. Each point of base Endurance also increases your hp by 4.

Marksmanship: This is a self-explanatory stat, the higher this is the better your chances of hitting your target.

Willpower: One of the most important stats, this determines your max mana and mana regeneration rate. As from the update, willpower is also described as affecting max health and health regeneration. Each point invested into willpower grants an extra 5 mana. (Your mana goes up by 10 every level automatically)

It is advised that most players concentrate on Intelligence first, then Willpower and Endurance as your main stats. You need a minimum of 40 base intelligence to learn all spells in the game so this is a priority. Willpower becomes incredibly important later on as spells require large amounts of mana to cast and the ability to cast more spells in combat and regain this mana quickly is essential. There is plenty of equipment which can boost these stats, but it should be noted that you need at least 40 *base* intelligence to learn all spells, and equipment which boost willpower do *not* boost your max mana. Base Endurance is very useful as it gives you much needed health. Extra health becomes important if you plan on doing many coven duels (as well as high level solo duels) as until you get very high resistances many mages will be knocked out of coven duels prematurely due to low health. Marksmanship may seem important early on, but there are plenty of equipment which boost this and the overall Endurance stat (for resisting accuracy and mobility penalties).

However due to the last update debuffs are supposed to have been greatly strengthend. So a decent amount of endurance and marksmanship (several hundreds) may assist you greatly. However there are certain spells which seem to have effects which are unable to be avoided no matter your stats. Currently they are Glowing Eyeballs, Desert Burial and the Vampire ability Teleportation.

Duels [FF002]
Duels are quite simply, exchanges of magical power through the use of spells. There are a set number of rounds within each duel. This number is dependent upon the level of the lowest-level player. To clarify, if a high level player attacks a low level, and they are used to 11 rounds of attacks, and the low level player is used to 8, the number of rounds in that duel is 8. If that low level player attacks a high level player, the number of rounds will still be 8. The winner of the duel is generally determined by whomever deals the most amount of damage. However if the other player is severely injured before the end the duel will end prematurely and will lose. Experience gained is dependent on relative levels of the players. If you fight someone lower level or equal you will gain 1 experience. If you fight someone 1-5 levels higher you gain 5 exp. If you fight someone 6 levels higher or more you will gain 10 experience. This experience is gained whether you win or lose, so if you wish to level quickly, fighting players who are 6 levels or higher is very effective.

You are able to attack every 10minutes as a non-premium and every 5 minutes as a premium. You have to wait at least 15 minutes before attacking the same player again. There is also no way to personally make yourself 'safe' from duels. The only mechanism in play to stop you from being attacked is either having no mana or you have been attacked within the last 15 mins, so being attacked after you just fought someone is not an uncommon occurrence.

Spellbook [FF003]
This is something which you should familiarise with yourself as it will be an intergral part of your journey. Here you can activate, deactivate and rearrange spells. Remember how there were rounds in a duel? The order of the spells in your spellbook determine what spells you cast in what round. You must have a minimum of 3 spells activated at any one time. In a duel, after the current order of spells have been cast, it then cycles through the order again. For example if you have heat, light healing and cold activated, your first rounds of a duel will look like this:
Heat
Light Healing
Cold
Heat
Light Healing
Cold
etc.

There are some things you should take note of though. You can only cast spells if you have the required mana. If, when the round goes to a spell which you have insufficient mana for, it will skip it and go to the next one in the list. It will keep doing this until it finds an activated spell which you have mana for. If there are no spells which can be cast you will just skip the rest of the rounds. Your opponent however is free to keep attacking until the duel is fully over. Thus later on it becomes very important to balance spell costs against its damage. For example, 1 spell may do 20 damage but cost 100 mana. 2 weaker spells might together do 24 damage and cost 80 mana. These are the sort of things you will have to consider.

You are able to purchase additional spellbooks for 500gems. This can allow for greater versatility as each spellbook has its own order of spells and will only activate in specific circumstances. For example you may have 2 spellbooks and find that you have a set of spells for when your coven fights, and another set for personal duels. You can have it so that one spellbook gets activated for coven fights and the other when you duel other mages.

Equipment [FF004]
Equipment in this game ranges from various elemental defences to stat boosts. The body is divided into several sections;
Weapon:This is obviously the place where you hold magical wands and staves. These weapons raise from stat boosts to element damage boosts. It is highly recommended that you focus on acquiring your +% staff for your element of choice as quickly as possible. Although the stat boosts may look attractive, it is important to keep in mind that there are many many ways to increase your stats, but only one way to increase your max damage. Limit of 1 equipped at a time.
Head: The stuff that goes on your head, hats. The equipment you can wear on your hand can provide an elemental defence boost or a stat boost. Limit of 1 equipped.
Forehead: This set of equipment is things like circlets, headbands etc. These pieces of equipment only increase your elemental defence. Limit of 1 equipped.
Neck: Necklaces and amulets. This is perhaps the area where there is the least amount of choice. They provide stat boosts. Limit of 2 equipped.
Torso: This is robes and armour. They increase your elemental defence. Limit of 1 equipped.
Waist: Currently there are no items for this category.
Arms: Bangles, bracelets and... gauntlets? These pieces of equipment are quite versatile and can offer very decent elemental defence boosts as well as stat boosts at a fairly cheap price. An area I personally find useful to switch in and out of various equipments. Limit of 2 equipped.
Hand: Gloves. It increases your elemental defence, what more needs to be said? Limit 1 equipped.
Fingers: Ah, the typical repository for the mage. Rings can add a lot to your stats and you can wear a lot of them, so keeping up with the latest selection is very important. Limit 4 equipped.
Legs: Currently there are no items for this category.
Feet: The last section, sandals, shoes and boots. They offer various elemental defences but can have a bit of a delay in between each new set so something to keep in mind. Limit 1 equipped.

Note: Be warned that you can only wear 1 unique piece at a time. For example, you cannot wear 2 Refined Ring of Intelligence, but you can wear 1 refined ring and its cousin, the gold-version Simple Ring of Intelligence. Elemental Defence is very important later in the game, however you can be forgiven for not having
any elemental defence at the starting stages of the game.

Here is a link to Polgara's item database: Item database

Staves can also be extended or improved for gems or gold. Extend means to empower a staff with an additional element. This means you can have a staff which boosts both Fire and Water spells. You can also improve the % damage increase with gold or gems for a specific element. The difference between spending gold or gems for both extending and improving is the effectiveness of the staff. Spending gems will give you stronger % increases, and when extending will give the extra element the same base damage % as the original element. To clarify, if you have a Staff which has +85% water damage, spending gems to extend fire will give it +85% fire damage. But spending gold will give a much lower amount of % damage (half in fact).

Spells [FF005]
There are 6 elements in this game. Shadow, Healing, Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Each element has 2 separate progressions of spells. Each elements spell progression can be view in the following discussion pages; When I speak of Majoris, I mean the collection of spells from 1-15 in the book. Minoris is spells 1-10.
Water
Air
Earth
Fire
Shadow
Healing

To learn a new spell, you must have mastered (3/3 levels of that spell) the spell directly before it. For example, let us say you are a water mage. You have just mastered coldness and frost and when you level you learn you now you have two water spells to choose from; Snow attack and Hail. These 2 spells both lead onto their respective paths. If you wish to learn the spell after Snow Attack, you must master Snow attack and then the next spell (Ice ball) will be unlocked. Mastering Hail on the other hand will not unlock Ice Ball or any other spell which comes after snow attack, but instead has its own list of spells (Flood would be the spell after Hail). These 2 branches are generally the same, with some small differences. The left branch (Snow attack Route) has spells which deal less damage than the right branch, but is more mp efficient (more damage for mana spent). The right branch (The path of hail) deals slightly more damage at the cost of more mana. It should also be noted that for Majoris, the Left branch is 1 spell longer than the right branch, and will lead to a more powerful multi-hit spell than the right branch. So going the left branch will mean lower damage spells until the end where it balances out, while the right branch is more powerful spells early on.

To learn the spells in the Superior set, you need to have acquired Majoris which is Mastery of spells number 1-15.
Although you may wish to learn various elements at once, it is highly advised that you concentrate on one element, then one branch until you have mastered it. This is because if you choose to diversify into more than 1 element you will learn strong spells at a much slower pace.

Here is the link to information about being a Master of an Element: Mastery
Note that in reference to spell numbers, its not simply the number of spells you have learned but the position it has in the spell chart. For example Snow attack is spell no. 3, and Hail is spell no. 4. The order or timing of when you learn the spells is irrelevant to its number.

Misc [FF006]
Attitude: Attitude has practically no impact on gameplay whatsoever. It is a mere indication of the type of spell you have learned or the type of enemies you fight. Learning a healing spell makes you 'Good', while learning a shadow spell makes you 'Evil'. You can also become more evil by fighting lower level players, and become more good by fighting higher level players. It is also suggested that the more you use those healing/shadow spells the more good/evil you become.
Here is a link to the discussion on it: Alignment

Covens[F007]
A coven is a gathering of mages under a single banner. A coven may be deemed Premium or Non-Premium. It is unclear still how many Premium members there must be for a coven to be considered premium but it is highly likely it is at least 4 or equal to or greater than 50%. There are various privileges a member can attain. There is coven elder, which apart from 1 thing allows them to do as much as any leader such as edit the coven page, accept or reject applicants and dismiss or promote/demote members. The 1 privilege that must also be given on top of coven elder is the ability to launch duels on other covens.. A normal member has access to the membership list and nothing else. The most important reason you would join a coven would most likely be to participate in Coven duels and Coven Adventures. Covens can range in size from 1 to 1 million, however most highly ranked and skilled covens keep approximately 10-15 members. There are a number of reasons for this, but an important one would be for co-ordination and advantage in battle. This will be explained below under coven duels.

Coven Duels [F008]
This is arguably an integral part of a coven. Covens have the ability to launch attacks against other covens, thus utilising the combined strength of your coven and testing your skill against another. Only members who have been given the ability to start duels are able to initiate a coven duel. Covens are allowed to attack every 2 minutes, with a 15 minute retimer between attacking a coven that has been attacked and a 30 minute retimer between attacking the same coven. When you launch a coven attack, it looks at the total number of 'ready' members within both covens and sends the maximum number that can participate from the defending coven. This means that while you may have 100 members ready to fight, if the opposing coven only has 5, only your top 5 'ready' members will take part. On that note, in a coven's membership list there is an order of members. This order is decided by any coven elder. Members who are at the top are highly likely to take part in coven events, while those at the bottom are least likely. This is not to say that those at the bottom won't, it just means that it is entirely dependent on the number of enemy mages whether they take part, and the lower the number of enemy mages in a coven the less chance they have of participating. There can be a number of reasons as to the selection of the list. Some do it by level, others may do it by length of time in the coven, or perhaps just who you like/friends. I recommend you sort the coven list by strength and durability. Coven duels give 3 experience to both winners and losers. They also give a large amount of gold. High level covens can gain as much as 30000+ gold per coven duel (dependent on number of mages)

Unique Items[F009]
Unique items are rare items gained from doing Extreme Adventures. The possibility of gaining one is quite low, however if you are able to acquire one it can provide quite a boon. There are several categories of Unique items which range from hats to bracers to ring. Currently they tend to give either a high stat boost or a high damage boost to a particular element. The level at which you gain the item has an effect of the strength of the Unique item you get. So a level 80 mage will get more powerful Unique Items compared to a level 60 mage. Although the stat boosting Unique items (such as Intelligence, endurance etc.,) are not very useful, the ones which give damage bonuses are very powerful and prized. Gaining a Unique item which gives a damage bonus will provide a significant edge in combat.

Keep in mind the chance of getting an item is quite difficult, and many players have been doing adventures for months to no avail.

Familiars[F010]
Familiars are a pet that a mage may have with them. There are many different familiars and all have a different ability of some kind. Apart from the Cat familiar, every familiar costs gems to both purchase and level. The maximum level of a Familiar is level 3 and each level-up will give your familiar an extra 10% bonus to its stats as well as +1 ability use and makes the effect of the ability stronger. The stats of a familiar are the same as a Mage, Intelligence, Willpower, Endurance and Marksmanship. Whatever stats the familiar has will be added onto the mage. It requires gold to upgrade a familiars stats and rises significantly the higher the level. As noted above in the stats section, the familiar is an excellent way to give your mage much needed stat boosts in endurance and marksmanship. However, the familiar in terms of stats acts like equipment. It does not add base and just gives extra points on the top.

Here is a link to Polgara's section on the various familiars: Familiars

[krobelush]

Greetings Galen,

I hope you don't mind if I'll pin this topic as a sticky and make a copy for it to the FAQ thread, if you do just tell me and I'll remove them

regards,
krobe

[goarweam]

much informative... but still leaves me wanting for more knowledge. I'm new by the way!

[Galen]

Greetings
If there's anything you feel is missing, feel free to ask questions and I can put it into the Guide.

Galen

[goarweam]

Okay, aren't there any means of getting gold?

[Galen]

Greetings
The best way to get gold is to participate in coven duels. Adventures also gives some gold (a few thousand for the higher level ones). You can also work but that takes a very long time and you only get a few thousand I think. Its good if you're not in a coven and you do it overnight while you are asleep.

Apart from that, you get gold by attacking other mages and stealing it from them. It can be quite profitable as you can steal as much as 500gold from each attack.

Galen

[goarweam]

won't I be able to work if I'm in a coven... anyway, I just started and I'm still at level 2!

[Vawned]

won't I be able to work if I'm in a coven... anyway, I just started and I'm still at level 2!

Yes you'll be able, but it will not worth.
You'll get much more gold in coven duels than working.

[goarweam]

Okay, I was trying to buy a familiar and I thought I had the money to bu one, only to learn that it requires gems, not gold... so where the heck can I find gems?

[Vawned]

You can't find gems. The only way to get them is buying them.