Dwarven Magic

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I haven't seen the dwarven favored magic schools posted anywheres and I am about to start the dwarven campaign so I did a quick test with the map editor to determine the magic types favored by the dwarven mage guild.

Light and destruction are the 2 favored schools.

GOW

[Mytical]

Makes sense and runs along with the rune magic also. Probably they will be what the Academy should have been with less mana . Runes replace mini-artifacts (cheaper short term, more expensive long run). Any how, destruction will be a must with Ignite, and Armeggeddon will be highly sought after by them. Light helps their damage, speed, ect so that too will come in very handy. Will take awhile to find the right combo of skills .

[Caradoc]

One of the Dwarf heroes starts with Advanced Light. With all those slow armies, Teleport would be a spell to have.

[ikkiphenix63]

Makes sense and runs along with the rune magic also. Probably they will be what the Academy should have been with less mana . Runes replace mini-artifacts (cheaper short term, more expensive long run). Any how, destruction will be a must with Ignite, and Armeggeddon will be highly sought after by them. Light helps their damage, speed, ect so that too will come in very handy. Will take awhile to find the right combo of skills .

true, in the campaign my hero had expert destructive magic+master of fire+ignite, it was absolute slaughter

if you have lava/magma dragons you can just only use them on the battlefield and spam armageddon (adding 33% of armageddon damage for the 3 next turn is painful for the ennemy and master of fire weakens all of his units too)

Even with a regular army you can do great damage with fire magic. Mark of fire from you dwarven priests+fireball = pain

Ho, and like with the elemental chains, eldritch arrow is indeed considered as a fire spell

[DaemianLucifer]

And what SP do dwarves generally have at higher levels?

[okrane]

It seems to me warlocks are little children compared to dwarves when it comes to destructive magic...

[DaemianLucifer]

Somehow I remember someone saying that dwarven dracogedon was ok and warlocks wasnt because dwarves have much lower SP.Could it really be that unnamed someone was actually wrong?

[Elvin]

He can't have been!

[okrane]

Ignite seems to me an invitation to do dracogeddon... and mark of fire also...
IMO dwarves were never good at magic... in all other games, they were magic resistant not magic users... it would have made more sense them being a might faction...

Anyway mark of fire + ignite = ownage imo... I find it even stronger that Mark of the Wizard since it can potentially do 2 * 3 = 6 times fireball damage on a single cast, same mana cost, but over time... now if this isn't overpowered empowered spells I don't know what is...

Warlocks on the other hand, with their low knowledge can cast a lowsy 1.5*fireball damage at double the cost... I don't know what spell power must dwarves have to balance this... but if it's anywhere higher than rangers' spell power... I guess we have a new DD caster...

[ikkiphenix63]

At level 28 without artifacts my campaign hero was 18/14/24/14.

Of course there were some stats boosters, but since there is roughly as many stat booster of each type, we can say that dwarven heroes have a small preference on spellpower.

Btw, Ignite doesn't do 100% damage on each of the 3 following turns. The description is misleading. It does 100% additional damage DIVIDED on the next 3 turns, so that's 33% damage on the next 3 turns

[Sir_Toejam]

Warlocks on the other hand, with their low knowledge can cast a lowsy 1.5*fireball damage at double the cost

...that doubles again with luck
...that costs the same (eventually) if you are using the hero with reductions to the cost of empower
...that can bypass the dwarve's natural resistance enitrely.
...that theoretically could do 3x damage with every cast

uh, beg to differ with your assessment.

[DaemianLucifer]

At level 28 without artifacts my campaign hero was 18/14/24/14.

Wow!That means that 20 leve dwarf on a large map would have ~15 SP?And they say warlocks are masters of magic.

...that doubles again with luck

Works every other cast with maximum luck,while ignite always works.So while warlocks do 3 times damage every other cast,dwarves do it always.

...that costs the same (eventually) if you are using the hero with reductions to the cost of empower

Ignite works with every hero that gets it.Im guessing that there is also a dwarf that has some neat special tied with this,right?

...that can bypass the dwarve's natural resistance enitrely.

No,only 50% of it,not entirelly.

[Nelgirith]

Ignite works with every hero that gets it.Im guessing that there is also a dwarf that has some neat special tied with this,right?

Nope, the only "magic" specials are Svea who cancels the Lightning Resists, Helvar who can randomly cast Righteous Might for each Light spell he casts.

[Jolly Joker]

Now, before you all go overboard here, you should be aware of the fact that even with the changed resource demands in 2.1 you can't do everything.
On the normal map with one town Destructive Magic will be great only when you have the Fireball in the guild. Sure later on, Armageddon might be a powerful weapon, but you can't do everything at the same time. If you take Destructive Magic you need to take Master of Fire and Ignite - which will basically two wasted skills without Fireball. So you should build up to guild level 3 fast. Now, you do well to build the Rune thing fast as well because those are really good ones no matter what skills you pick. Lastly you want to build your level 5,6,7 creature dwelling and maybe even upgrade one or another which means you have to set priorities.
This is very different from the Dungeon situation where you can pick either MoL or MoI after building the level 2 guild which you will do rather early anyway and you can utilize your Destructive power no matter what.

[Elvin]

At least runic guild 2 gives you up to lvl 4 rune spells and should be enough to keep you for some time.Even so building both mage guild 3 and runic guild 2 requires 6 of each precious resource.And 9000(!).Thane dwelling requires 20 gems and one can only guess what the new requirements will be.
Yep there will be some sacrifices.

[Kilop]

Isn t destructive / light already the sylvan way ?
And it appears that dwarves are sp/atack oriented, as dunjeon. That is good but I would have prefered atack/sp ...

Lastly you want to build your level 5,6,7 creature dwelling and maybe even upgrade one or another which means you have to set priorities.

... yeah because you expect us to use dracogedon at the very beginning of the game ???

[DaemianLucifer]

Isn t destructive / light already the sylvan way ?

Considering that there are 4 magics,that leaves only 6 combinations of 2 of them,so dwarves would mimic one of the previous faction anyway.The only way this couldve been avoided is to completelly replace their guild with runic one,or add a new spell school or make them a full might town.

And it appears that dwarves are sp/atack oriented, as dunjeon. That is good but I would have prefered atack/sp ...

Id prefer if they had defense instead of attack,because thats what they seem to excell at,that is their thing.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I just finished the dwarven campaign. Here is what Wulfstan looked like at the end of the game:

Attributes (without artifacts):
Att: 25
Def: 15
SP: 18
Kn: 11

I chose attack over defense at power up sites that gave a choice.

I did not get all the abilities I wanted, but he still did great.



I finished in 242 days.

GOW

[Sir_Toejam]

No,only 50% of it,not entirelly.

oh, dwarves have 100% magic immunity, do they?

oops, dwarves can cast armageddon all day long on a warlock with some BDs... incinerate don't help none there.

warlock can blast away with whatever spell they wish... and do tremendous damage, even to the dwarves' level 7s.

ignite is 33% of first turn damage for the next 3 turns.

theoretically, warlock with full luck is doing on average 225% damage every turn (assuming 50% luck, that's 150% from empower, plus the difference between that and 300% every other turn, so you with full luck you would add 75% for the average per turn.)

and that's with ANY DD spell, not just fire ones.

nope, dwarves still don't hold a candle to warlocks as casters.

far better than wizards, though.

[Jolly Joker]

I checked what the manual says about Dwarven Hero development:

Runemage is 20/30/30/20 % which means, they have the same spell power than Wizards, but only half as much mana (when reaching level 21) which means that magically they are something like Wizards without the Mark of the Wizard ability and a knack for fire instead.