Dark Side Spell Analysis Part 1: Chaos Magic

Spells work much as they did in Warriors of the North, with the caveat that since crits are 100% damage crits are a lot less significant. ie Intellect is still 5% of base per point, an overall increase of 15% occurs every 7 points, and every 20 points adds a turn of duration on most over-time Spell effects. Unusually, the chance for damage over time effects to be inflicted is not affected by Intellect anymore; you can't get Flaming Arrow to a 100% chance to Burn anymore, among other examples. Also odd is that the mechanics for Spell Level affecting the chance to inflict such effects has been changed, resulting in new chances; mostly, lower chances.

Summons with special Intellect scaling (eg Books of Evil) still work as in Warriors of the North: a flat percentile boost to all of Health, Damage, Attack, and Defense, 5% more of each per point of Intellect. (Puppeteer appears to be factored into this effect's numbers in a manner that can produce percentages that aren't multiples of 5, which can be a bit confusing)

A new effect with summons is that summons like Call of Nature instead have Leadership derived as a percentage of your own Leadership that then scales with Intellect up to 100% of your Leadership. Further Intellect gains past that start to massively boost the actual base stats of summons, including Health and Damage, by a percentage of their base equivalent to what the Leadership scaling would be if allowed to continue. (ie instead of summoning 200% of your Leadership, you'll summon 100% of your Leadership with doubled stats) This is, to be entirely frank, hideously overpowered. Once you get enough Intellect to take advantage of it, of course.

Wanderer Magic hasn't changed any from Warriors of the North. No new Wanderer Scrolls, no Scrolls removed. Weirdly, this includes that the Undead-summoning Scroll remains commented-out, even though that's no longer thematically appropriate. The only change worth noting is that Gift of Stone -the one new Wanderer Scroll in Warriors of the North- is now broken and does nothing, since Runes have been overhauled. So don't buy Gift of Stone in stores, and if you end up with it in your inventory just sell it. More oddly, Dark Side has somehow broken the UI element that displayed what Wanderer Scrolls you have active as well as their current duration, meaning you have to manually track stuff like how many battles are left before Ancient Knowledge runs out.

It's worth mentioning that the Wanderer Scrolls that spawn units are one of the few ways you can potentially construct a Light army in Dark Side; they aren't coded to only spawn Dark versions of units, and so for example you can get Lake Fairies or Forest Fairies from the Wanderer Scroll that spawns an air-themed stack. It's all a matter of luck as far as what region got assigned what units for those Scrolls. This is particularly relevant if you're playing Neoline, since she can just keep generating more members via Recruiter once she has an initial batch, but anyone can potentially leverage Priestesses of Blood to Sacrifice up more copies, it's just clunkier. (Particularly since all your units will have their Morale crash when you're in the middle of the sacrificial process, since Priestesses of Blood are Dark)

A point to note: Dark Side is by far the least generous game in the series with Magic Crystals. The Legend threw tons of them at you in the field, while Armored Princess and Warriors of the North provided Neatness/Artifactor so that you got tons of Magic Crystals from smashing junk Items. Dark Side isn't particularly generous with them in the field, has no Skill for doubling the gains from smashing, has a huge number of Spells, and has a number of Quests that will actively demand you pay Magic Crystals to complete them, all while also making Alchemy's effect class-exclusive again. In prior games you could consistently get away with learning the Level 1 version of every Spell and still have plenty of Magic Crystals to level up the ones you actually planned on using at higher levels. In Dark Side you're probably better off not bothering to learn the Spells you're unlikely to ever use. (eg Death Star is irrelevant if you're not Daert, while various of the unit-bolstering Spells are more or less irrelevant if you are Daert)

Before we start on Chaos Magic proper: Cloud of Poison is gone. More precisely, it's been co-opted by Distortion Magic. Zlogn is also gone outright; it's not missed, between Undead causing Zlogn to spawn naturally quite often and Resurrection being castable on Undead in Dark Side.

Also, interestingly enough, there's an unused Chaos Spell that appears to be for summoning Orc units, presumably to complete the trifecta of Dark summons that Necro Call and Demon Portal already cover. I'm curious as to why it wasn't used in the final product, as it seems unlikely that it proved too buggy to function. (Like yes, the game was rushed, but that doesn't cleanly explain this particular bit)


Flaming Arrow
Crystal Cost: 1 / 3 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 5
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 70; Burning: 20%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 140; Burning: 40%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 210; Burning: 60%

Hits a single enemy for Fire damage with a chance to Burn the target.

Flaming Arrow remains untouched. As with Warriors of the North, it's not your Mage-equivalent's basic attacking Spell, though, and so is much less likely to be a primary Spell. Furthermore, as Intellect no longer affects its Burn chance, it never becomes a fully-reliable way to inflict a damage over time effect, taking away one of its key lategame utilities. Daert also has considerably more generous Mana supplies for various reasons, and so has less cause to use cost-efficient Spells.

You might use it in the early game, but that's assuming you found it in the early game.

Unusually, for Neoline it is a basic Spell she starts out knowing, and so she actually will use it a fair amount simply for lack of competition. Ideally you'll try to arrange to use it to land killing blows on stacks in the early battles where this is particularly easy, getting good progress on a Medal, since it'll rapidly fall behind stack sizes as Leadership rises, and Neoline's Intellect climbs only slowly.


Fireball
Crystal Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Damage Center: 120; Damage Adjacent: 25-50
Level 2 Statistics: Damage Center: 250; Damage Adjacent: 50-100
Level 3 Statistics: Damage Center: 385; Damage Adjacent: 80-160

High Fire damage on one tile, with lesser Fire damage to adjacent tiles. Units in the outer area have a 5% chance to be Burned, while the center target has no chance to be Burned. The Burn units suffer from the outer ring does half normal Burn damage. (ie 2.5%-5% per turn)

Fireball has been hit with bugs, with its central Burn chance having gone away entirely and its Burn chance no longer affected by Spell Level. It's also been hit with an apparently-intentional nerf to the damage Burn it inflicts with the outer ring does. It's still perfectly usable as a way to output damage, mind, but you might as well treat its Burn chance as not really existing.

However, it's liable to fill a role similar to in The Legend; the move Daert uses up until you find Fire Rain. Because...


Fire Rain
Crystal Cost: 7 / 10 / 25
Mana Cost: 7 / 11 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 70-80; Burning: 5%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 220-250; Burning: 5%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 360-420; Burning: 5%

Mixed Fire/Physical damage to all units in a 7-tile-covering circle, with affected units having a chance to be Burned.

... Fire Rain has been overhauled.

Specifically, its upper Levels have had their cost dropped slightly, most critically with Level 3 now being within range to be used as your first Spell in a Higher Magic double-casting, it's switched to mixed Fire/Physical damage, making it far more widely effective, and its base damage has increased noticeably with its damage progression increased slightly too. The damage increase isn't that much in the end, but it's also less randomized, making Fire Rain all-around a much more consistently effective Spell in multiple senses.

Notably, Fire Rain's minimum damage rising means it doesn't necessarily do worse damage against Plants than in previous games, even though only half its damage is now Physical.

As such, Fire Rain has returned to its The Legend position of being the Spellslinger tool for dishing out damage, only even better than it was in The Legend! It's even entirely possible you'll be double-casting it outright much of the time, depending on your luck; if you've not found something like Death Star or Blizzard as yet, it'll be your best choice for first-casting and second-casting.

Once you have found a Spell in that vein, it'll tend to be pushed out for the second-cast in a turn, but it'll remain a staple of Daert's arsenal all the way into the end of the game.

It's pretty nice.

Do note that, interestingly enough, Item effects that specifically boost Fire damage will in fact only boost the Fire portion of Fire Rain's damage. This does mean such effects are effectively halved in their ability to boost Fire Rain relative to prior games, note.


Armageddon
Crystal Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Mana Cost: 30 / 40 / 50
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 200-300; Burning: 30%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 340-510; Burning: 51%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 480-720; Burning: 72%

Astral damage to all units and objects, friend and foe, with a chance to Burn. Friendly units only take 50% damage.

Its Burn chance has gone down thanks to the new calculations for such effects mentioned earlier. It also, unfortunately, doesn't get its Burn damage boosted by the Wight Skill, because the code in question didn't get finished -Dark Side is very much an unfinished game. And, critically, it no longer ignores Spell immunity.

So Armageddon is more abusable with eg Dragon Riders about, and Dark Side giving you greater ability to boost Astral resistance on your units, so it probably comes out ahead overall anyway.


Kamikaze
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 8
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 130-200
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 260-400
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 390-600

Attaches a bomb to a single unit, which detonates after either 3 turns or when the troop is destroyed, causing Physical damage to all adjacent units.

Unchanged from Warriors of the North, meaning the weird timing can be problematic but stacked Kamikaze resolutions should be less buggy.

Kamikaze tends to be found early and is easily within Higher Magic ranges, so it's entirely possible it will spend a bit of time as a staple Spell in your arsenal, particularly when dealing with groups that have highly uneven stack sizes. The level-your-Companion-through-kills Quest-created armies are a great example, as they consistently have extremely small stacks mixed in with much larger, more dangerous stacks, making it trivial to slap Kamikaze on something you can count on effortlessly killing afterward. But even in more ordinary fights, Dark Side is sufficiently fond of massive battlegroups of 10+ stacks that it's not necessarily difficult to arrange for Kamikaze to hit a large number of enemy units for massive damage.


Ice Snake
Crystal Cost: 8 / 14 / 20
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 130; Damage Adjacent: 20-60; Freeze: 10%, Bleed: 20%, Ice Heal: 50
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 275; Damage Adjacent: 40-125; Freeze: 21%, Bleed: 42%, Ice Heal: 100
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 415; Damage Adjacent: 65-190; Freeze: 32%, Bleed: 64%, Ice Heal: 150

Targets an enemy unit, inflicting Ice damage to it and lesser Physical damage to all adjacent units. The central target has a chance to be Frozen, while the units around the target instead have a chance of being afflicted with Bleeding. Friendly Ice Creations can be targeted to be healed, while enemy Ice Creations are un-targetable, but Ice Creations are not protected from the splash damage. Splash damage ignores Spell immunity.

Oh look! Ice Snake is Chaos magic again! (This is because Rune Magic is gone)

Its actual mechanics are mostly unchanged from Warriors of the North. Its Freeze and Bleed chances are lower at higher Levels due to the new calculations, but otherwise it's the same... including that the devs still have the Bleed and Freeze chances swapped. And Items that boost Ice damage will incorrectly boost the outer Physical damage instead of the inner Ice damage. Also, like Armageddon the Wight Skill doesn't boost its Bleed/Freeze damage due to incomplete code. Ouch.

As you'll see, however, Ice Snake is the only direct attacking Spell in Dark Side that can bypass Spell immunity. Trap and Kamikaze's damage don't care about Spell immunity, of course, but you can't use them to instantly deal damage to a specified target then and there. So this makes Ice Snake uniquely important to Daert when it comes to attacking groups containing Spell-immune units. Mind, any situation Ice Snake will let you work around Spell immunity is also a situation you can probably set Kamikaze on a unit and then wipe it out with another Spell to do more damage, but if you can't count on that particular trick than Ice Snake really is your only option. So consider maxing it as Daert!

Poison Skull
Crystal Cost: 2 / 3 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 40-140; Poisoning: 30%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 70-250; Poisoning: 54%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 100-365; Poisoning: 78%

Targets a single enemy unit for Poison damage, with a chance to Poison the target as well.

Its Poison chance scaling with Level has been lowered by the new calculation, but it is unchanged in a more direct sense.

Notably, this is Daert's innate default attacking Spell. Which can be a bit frustrating in the early game -Neoline is actually more reliable than Daert is at wiping out stacks successfully with Spells in the early game!

You'll tend to stop using it as more reliable and powerful options show up, and in particular even the utility of inflicting Poisoning is simply not very valuable in Dark Side. You'll inevitably get access to Dark Shroud, which lets you 100% reliably inflict mass Bleeding. While some units are immune to Bleeding, on most units mass Bleeding is not only good for percentile damage but also immediately lowers max HP and so extends the effectiveness of all non-percentile damage on the target. Furthermore, all the units that are immune to Bleeding (Plants, Bone units) are severely resistant to Poison damage... and most of them are severely weak to Fire damage, so you're liable to use Flaming Arrow in those cases, not Poison Skull.

As such, while Poison Skull's core numbers are unaltered the context has radically shifted, relegating it to being an early-game tool for Daert in particular.


Chaos Weapon
Crystal Cost: 2 / 5 / 10
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Random Damage: +20%; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Random Damage: +30%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Random Damage: +40%; Duration: 4 turns

A single allied unit does additional damage with its basic melee attack, with this additional damage being random per attack in type regardless of what their own base damage is. It can be Fire, Ice, or Poison. Cannot be cast on Demons or Ice Creations.

It's Hell Breath, but now it's randomized. Okay.

The really strange thing is this:

That's a graphic in the code labeled '18_Weapon of chaos', which inexplicably isn't actually used by the game. Maybe they didn't finish the Scroll icon, or something? There's so much unfinished, buggy content in Dark Side it seems plausible. It's too bad, because it's a pretty cool graphic!

In any event, while Chaos Weapon isn't nearly so obviously terrible as Hell Breath was, it's still not very good, and in some ways the randomness really hurts it. Hell Breath might've been appreciated by Neoline when facing Plants. Chaos Weapon might hit on a weakness, or hit on a resistance, it's all up to chance. So... you can't really count on it except against type-neutral enemies, at which point it's indistinguishable from Hell Breath. Arguably worse when you consider stuff like Flammable Oil existing...

I'd recommend skipping learning it, personally.

If you do go for it, note that Items that boost Fire damage in Spells fully apply to it at all times. Also note that the Warlock Skill benefits it, at Rank 3 bringing Level 3 Chaos Weapon to +52% damage.


Plague
Crystal Cost: 5 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 5 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Characteristics Decreased: -15%; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Characteristics Decreased: -20%; Duration: 2 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Characteristics Decreased: -25%; Duration: 2 turns

Infects a single target with Plague, which lowers Attack, Defense, and HP by a percentage. The Plague is infectious, spreading to friend and foe alike, though Demons, Plants, and inorganic units are immune to the Plague. Undead can carry the Plague, but will not suffer the stat penalties. Ignores Spell Immunity.

The one change is now Plague only has a 10% chance of spreading each time it has an opportunity. This applies to any 'natural' Plague spreading, regardless of whether the Spell produced the Plague or a Necromancer of Decaying Zombie did, so Plague is far less virulent than it used to be. It's a bit of an odd change, and it's one more strike against a Spell that was never very good in the first place.

The biggest strike against it is that this is Dark Side and so you're guaranteed fairly early access to Necromancers. It's entirely possible you'll be fielding Necromancers before you've even seen the Spell!

At least it still ignores Spell immunity.

The Defiler and Warlock Skills make it slightly better; Level 3 Plague backed by Rank 3 Warlock results in it applying a -33% stat penalty and having a 13% chance to spread, while Rank 3 Defiler results in the Plague actually lasting 3 turns instead of 2. (Dark Side has strange rounding...)


Fear
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 3
Mana Cost: 10 / 10 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Duration: 4 turns

Inflicts Fear on a single target, which prevents the unit from attacking units of a higher Level than itself.

Untouched.

One of the main strikes against Fear is that Imps and Scoffer Imps are some of your best units from start to finish, and they're only Level 2. The other main strike is that you've got much better tools for preventing an enemy from taking hostile action against you, such as Jealousy. I'm not sure I've ever cast Fear in Dark Side, though I generally learn it to the first Level just in case anyway.

Do note that Rank 3 Defiler will result in Fear at Level 3 lasting 5 turns instead of 4.


Doom
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 12
Mana Cost: 20 / 20 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 4 turns

Afflicts a single enemy unit with Doom, which causes all attacks against them to be critical hits.

Doom as a Spell is unchanged, but compared to Warriors of the North it's... not absolutely worse, but certainly worse in an immediate sense, as crits are no different than a high roll in Dark Side in terms of damage. Since crits have a chance of inflicting Bleeding it's not a clear downgrade, but the problem with that is that there's a Spell for inflicting mass Bleeding. Once you've got Bless at Level 3, Doom is almost impossible to justify casting, particularly since the Dark version of Bless absolutely works on eg Undead. Doom is so bad in Dark Side I'm genuinely surprised they didn't remove it, or rework it into something different, especially given how ambitious Dark Side obviously is.

Probably best to skip learning it at all.

If you do bother, note that Rank 3 Defiler adds another turn of duration to Level 3 Doom.


Weakness
Crystal Cost: 5 / 5 / 20
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Mass; Duration: 3 turns

Affected units always roll minimum damage. Weakness cannot affect inorganic units.

Weakness can affect Undead and Plants now! This was never its actual issue, mind, and you don't fight Dark units very often in Dark Side either, so this is probably the least useful game for such a change to be occurring in, but it's a change. And hey, Plants make up a decent portion of the problematic threats in the late game.

Still, I don't bother personally. There's so many more effective options for preventing/minimizing damage available.


Sheep
Crystal Cost: 8 / 16 / 24
Mana Cost: 30 / 35 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4

Converts a single target enemy into a sheep for 2 turns, preventing it from attacking, counter-attacking, or using Talents, and forcing Speed to be 2 and movement to be grounded. Additionally, a Sheep-ed unit is not under player control.

No change. Oddly, the .txt file now has a Speed parameter that seems to suggest that Sheep are supposed to be uniformly 4 Speed, but it doesn't do anything. There's also .txt file stuff indicating Metamorphs are supposed to be immune to Sheep, but no such thing is actually implemented.

Surprisingly, I'm not sure I've ever cast Sheep in Dark Side. Jealousy tends to be superior in most fights, and most of the targets Jealousy won't work on are also immune to Sheep, or at least to low-Level Sheep. I won't suggest you should skip it, but don't be surprised if you never find a moment that justifies using it.

Do note that Rank 3 Defiler will result in Sheep lasting 3 turns, so that's something to bolster it.


Sacrifice
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 20 / 30 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 250; Efficiency: 40%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 500; Efficiency: 50%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 750; Efficiency: 60%

Inflicts Astral damage on one allied unit to add health to a different one. The added health can increase a stack's size.

Remains unchanged. In direct terms.

In more indirect terms, Sacrifice has been made far less relevant, because Blood Priestess have their Sacrifice Talent, which reloads, effectively automatically scales to your Leadership (Where the Spell can fall behind if your Intellect isn't keeping up with your Leadership. Let's be blunt: it will if you're not Daert), works off even summons, and Blood Priestesses are 100% guaranteed to be accessible from fairly early in the game, where you have to luck into the Scroll to have a shot at Sacrificing via Spell. So it generally makes more sense to just use Blood Priestesses, with the only complication being they can't directly Sacrifice more numbers for themselves -and you can fix this by splitting them into two stacks and going into an easy fight, or if you've lucked into the Phantom Spell you can generate a Phantom Priestess of Blood to then Sacrifice up more of the real stack.

If you're playing Daert, Sacrifice may be worth considering, but for Bagyr and especially Neoline Blood Priestesses are just plain the better way to go, and you don't have enough Magic Crystals to really justify learning it 'just in case'.

Note that there's a late-game Quest that calls for giving up a Sacrifice Scroll, among others. The rewards are pretty meh, but if you care it's still better to hold onto a Sacrifice Scroll for that Quest than to sell them all off and then go running around later trying to find where you put them. Less wasted money, for one.

Also note that if you insist on using the Spell itself, the Warlock Skill affects its efficiency; Rank 3/Level 3 is 78% efficient.


Necro Call
Crystal Cost: 5 / 10 / 20
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Total Leadership: 700
Level 2 Statistics: Total Leadership: 1400
Level 3 Statistics: Total Leadership: 2100

Animates a single friendly corpse as a friendly Undead unit. In addition to Necro Call's health limit, the actual headcount caps the production in an intuitive way: a stack that began life as 5 units cannot generate 500 units just because your Mage's Necro Call can theoretically do so, it can only generate 5.

It's switched to being Leadership-based, and the Leadership limit is higher than the Health limit used to be. Since most units have less Health than Leadership, this mostly serves to somewhat offset the reduction in expected unit generation, though for units like Zombies whose Health is close to or identical to their Leadership this actually is a buff in quantity generated. More critically, you can only animate your own troops, which makes it borderline-useless if you aren't abusing other summons, specifically summons that produce usable corpses. Amusingly, this makes it synergize with Necromancers, since they aren't held to a similar limit, letting you convert an enemy corpse into a friendly corpse Necro Call will work on.

Also, Necro Call actually gets called Call of Death by Dark Side, but I'd rather retain continuity in this case, as it's easier to confuse Call of Death with other Spells than to confuse Necro Call with other Spells.

For the final time, here's the txt file dump:

skeleton=,sprite,dryad,werewolf,druid,sprite_lake,robber,peasant,footman,goblin2,goblin,robber2,pirat,pirat2,skeleton,satyr,slinger_man,
    archer=,elf,elf2,bowman,archer,
    pirat_ghost=,pirat,pirat2,
    spider_undead=,spider,spider_venom,spider_fire,spider_undead,spider_ice,
    zombie=,werewolf,druid,wolf,robber,footman,zombie,miner,orc2,orc,satyr,barbarian,skald,viking,
    zombie2=,footman2,zombie2,dwarf,cannoner,alchemist,catapult,ogre,orc2,miner2,troll,gorguana,gorguana2,ingeneer,witch_hunter,goblin_shaman,orc_hunter,barbarian2,viking,
    ghost=,druid,griffin,ghost,alchemist,giant,hyena,catapult,bear,graywolf,brontor,gorguana,gorguana2,berserk2,
    ghost2=,ghost2,bear_white,bear2,ogre,shaman,unicorn2,unicorn,troll,giant,griffin2,ingeneer,ogre_chieftain,shaman_blood,gorguana,gorguana2,axthrower,
    vampire=,bat,werewolf,horseman,knight,vampire,footman2,pirat2,priest,priest2,assassin,witch_hunter,axthrower,
    vampire2=,bat2,archmage,vampire2,assassin,horsevalkyrie,
    blackknight=,horseman,knight,blackknight,paladin,yarl,horsevalkyrie,
    necromant=,druid,archmage,necromant,demonologist,runemage,soothsayer,
    bonedragon=,bonedragon,greendragon,blackdragon,reddragon,tirex,highterrant,dragon_ice

With the loss of Dread Eyes, Beholders have returned to being impossible to target. Being able to animate Ice Spiders into Undead Spiders is... inexplicably still irrelevant, because even though Ice Spiders leave a corpse behind now you can't target it! Honestly, though, the main point of interest to me is that the .txt file doesn't explicitly list out the Dark versions of units, indicating that on some level the game is treating the Dark and Light versions of eg Humans as the same unit. (Though it's also interesting to note that Lizardmen are in the list, as one more piece of evidence that they were intended to be in the game)

Ultimately, though, it's difficult to justify spending Magic Crystals on even learning Necro Call in Dark Side, thanks to its new limitations, which is a bit of a strangely-timed thing given this is the first game necromancy is a thing your character does in the actual plot of Dark Side. It's especially odd since Necromancers aren't bound by similar limitations, and they've always been the overall superior way of utilizing the dead anyway.

This is all before some bugs/janky design messiness; firstly, the game claims there's a Level limit component, and no, there's not. Secondly, the Spell is supposed to benefit from the mechanic of granting stat boosts for generation going over the caster's Leadership, but it actually doesn't. Thirdly, Level 3 is supposed to have a passive +10% to this stat boost component, and once again it does not.

Ouch.


Demon Portal
Crystal Cost: 6 / 16 / 26
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Level 2-3; Troop Leadership: 700
Level 2 Statistics: Level 2-4; Troop Leadership: 1400
Level 3 Statistics: Level 3-5; Troop Leadership: 2100

Generates a portal at an arbitrary location of the caster's choice, which occupies the tile, blocking other units from entering. The following turn, the portal is replaced by a stack of Demon units, randomly selected from the types within the level range given.

No change. Naturally this means the level limit still works out to:

Spell Level 1: Imps, Scoffer Imps, and Cerberi.

Spell Level 2: As above, but gain all Demon units aside from Archdemons and Executioners.

Spell Level 3: Add in Archdemons and Executioners, but remove Imps and Scoffer Imps.

Priestesses of Blood are incorporated into the upper two Levels, while Fire Elementals are too low-Level to be a valid Demon Portal option. That's the only change: Blood Priestesses.

I'm not sure I've ever cast Demon Portal in Dark Side. If I want Demonic summons, Demons-the-unit and Archdemons can fill that just fine while being very useful units in their own right, and their summoning Talents reload. Not to mention their summons are immediately usable.

I'm sure there's some use to be had out of generating an invincible barrier, but I never found myself in a situation where it seemed relevant.

Also, it shares the bug Necro Call has where it's supposed to benefit from the stat boosts to generation rising past your Leadership limit, and actually does not. So it's ability to scale in the late game for Daert is severely hampered.


Book of Evil
Crystal Cost: 3 / 6 / 9
Mana Cost: 15 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Summons: Book of Evil, Level 3
Level 2 Statistics: Summons: Book of Evil, Level 4
Level 3 Statistics: Summons: Book of Evil, Level 5

Generates a friendly Book of Evil adjacent to an allied stack, which has a Talent that allows it to cast random spells. The Book can recharge this Talent by consuming allied stacks or by attacking enemy stacks.

The Spell still remains unchanged in a direct sense.

I'll note that, just like in Warriors of the North, there are some Items that rattle off a list of specific Spells that happen to all be summoning Spells, which in actuality boost all summoning Spells.

Also note that Puppeteer's bonuses to summons are halved for Book of Evil. Just Book of Evil; other summons that previously got halved values out of the summon-boosting Skill of a given game get full values now.


Book of Evil (Level 3)
Level: 3
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 20 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2
Health: 200
Damage: 20-50 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire
Talents: Random Spell (Charge: 1. Casts a random damaging spell or negative effect on a random enemy), Drain (Charge: 1. Only appears when out of charges for Random Spell. Can consume a friendly unit of 200 or less Health that is below Level 5 to add 2 charges to Random Spell. This can go over Random Spell's charge cap)
Abilities: Normal Spells (The Book of Evil casts Level 1 Spells), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resist and immunity to spells), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Vulnerable to Fire (+100% Fire vulnerability), Poison Protection (+50% Poison resistance), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind and Precision. Also can detect invisible creatures)

The unit remains mostly unchanged. Its exact cast list is:

Slow, Helplessness, Magic Pole Axe, Flaming Arrow, Poison Skull, and Corrosion

ie the Warriors of the North list, but minus Magic Missile. (Because Magic Missile is gone)


Book of Evil (Level 4)
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 30 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 400
Damage: 30-75 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire
Talents: Random Spell (Charge: 1. Casts a random damaging spell or negative effect on a random enemy), Drain (Charge: 1. Only appears when out of charges for Random Spell. Can consume a friendly unit of 400 or less Health that is below Level 5 to add 2 charges to Random Spell. This can go over Random Spell's charge cap)
Abilities: Powerful Spells (The Book of Evil casts Level 2 spells), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resist and immunity to spells), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Poison Protection (50% Poison resistance), Vulnerable to Fire (+100% Fire vulnerability), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind and Precision. Also can detect invisible creatures)

Same as back in Armored Princess, just like Warriors of the North. This includes that its exact cast list...

Slow, Helplessness, Magic Pole Axe, Poison Skull, Weakness, Ghost Blade, Fear, Lightning, Doom, Pygmy, and Corrosion

... is unchanged from Warriors of the North. It's not like it could cast Magic Missile in the last game, so that's not a change.


Book of Evil (Level 5)
Level: 5
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 40 / 35
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 600
Damage: 50-120 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire
Talents: Random Spell (Charge: 1. Casts a random damaging spell or negative effect on a random enemy), Drain (Charge: 1. Only appears when out of charges for Random Spell. Can consume a friendly unit of 600 or less Health and below Level 5 to add 2 charges to Random Spell. This can go over Random Spell's charge cap)
Abilities: Strong Spells (The Book of Evil casts Level 3 Spells), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resist and immunity to spells), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Vulnerable to Fire (+100% Fire vulnerability), Poison Protection (+50% Poison resistance), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind and Precision. Also can detect invisible creatures)

Also unchanged. This includes that its list of possible Spells...

Helplessness, Magic Pole Axe, Poison Skull, Weakness, Ghost Blade, Fear, Lightning, Doom, Pygmy, Sheep, Blind, Hypnosis, the Beholder Sleep effect, and Corrosion

... is exactly the same as in Warriors of the North.

Do note that even though Weakness now works on Plants and Undead, Book of Evil still will never cast Weakness on either of those. It similarly still won't call Corrosion against Droids even though they're the best possible target for Corrosion.

For Daert, Books of Evil can get quite hilariously lethal. I've had an endgame max-Level Book of Evil hit a target for just short of 100,000 damage... via Poison Skull, which is far from the most damaging Spell in the game. If you're fine with floundering through RNG, it can be quite fun/funny to watch a Book of Evil obliterate massive stacks. I mostly don't bother, and unlike prior games there's not really any Bosses to justify using them. There's just the one Boss, and it's... not hard. But still; funny factor.


Death Star
Crystal Cost: 20 / 25 / 30
Mana Cost: 30 / 40 / 50
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 180-230
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 325-415
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 465-600

Targets a single empty, normally-traversible tile. All units in a direct line in every direction from the targeted tile take Astral damage.

Death Star's only change is it no longer ignores Spell immunity. Which can really suck when you're playing Daert; Dark Side is almost as bad as The Legend about your Spellslinging class finding Spell-immune targets an enormous pain to deal with, and to an extent it's actually even worse about it since Daert is so much more dramatic in the contrast between how powerful his Spells are vs how powerful his armies are.

It's also a pain that Tactics requires Rank 2 to be able to actually create gaps in your formation pre-battle. This can be worked around by using a high-Initiative and high-mobility unit like Archdemons or a dragon of some kind, which to be fair Daert is going to want to do anyway, but it's still a bit of a nuisance.

Of course, to an extent this assumes you find Death Star before you find Blizzard, because there's very, very little reason to consider Death Star once you've got Blizzard, since Death Star doesn't even bypass Spell Immunity anymore. One of the only significant threats that's severely Ice-resistant -Ice Dragons- is also immune to Spells, so you're not using Death Star to cover for Blizzard in this game. And for Ice Spiders, why wouldn't you use Fireball or similar instead?

Corrosion
Crystal Cost: 3 / 6 / 9
Mana Cost: 6 / 9 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 80-120, Physical Resistance: -5, Duration: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 160-240, Physical Resistance: -10. Duration: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 240-360, Physical Resistance: -15. Duration: 9

A single Armored target has its Physical resistance reduced. If it's a mechanical unit, it additionally takes Magic damage.

The text that didn't seem to do anything back in Warriors of the North is gone from Dark Side's version of the Spell. The Physical resistance reduction also no longer scales with Intellect, and instead of being boosted by the Destruction-analogue it now gets boosted by Warlock. (Rank 3 Warlock results in -20 for Level 3 Corrosion) Though the damage is boosted by Wight as one would expect.

It's even less useful than in Warriors of the North, as Droids are very rare (They won't show up in Dwarven Keeper fights, for one, because they're not considered to be Dwarves anymore) and in particular only show up in the mid-early game. Which means you may well find the Scroll only after you've killed every Droid in the world, restricting it to lowering the Physical resistance of Armored units. Which are admittedly common enemies... but there's plenty of better options for working around Physical resistance and all, and as noted before not all Armored targets are actually susceptible.

In conjunction with how Magic Crystal costs are so much more burdensome in Dark Side, consider skipping this one.


Heat Focus
Crystal Cost: 8 / 14 / 20
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 90-100, Burn/Freeze Chance: 30%,
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 190-210, Burn/Freeze Chance: 63%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 290-320, Burn/Freeze Chance: 96%

Targets a 7-tile region. The center tile takes Fire damage with a chance to Burn, while the outer tiles take Ice damage with a chance to Freeze.

Heat Focus's damage in the center has had its high roll drop by a third, but its outer hits have drastically spiked to be exactly equal, and by extension the Freeze chance is now identical to the Burn chance. This makes Heat Focus substantially more useful/less gimmicky, as there are genuinely situations where its combination of damage can lead to you doing things like catching Demons in the perimeter while setting the center on a Plant to get maximum damage, unlike in Warriors of the North where it was a bad Fire damage Spell with a secondary Ice gimmick. It's also, oddly, had its odds of side effects improved by the new calculation, giving it the honor of being the closest Spell to a 100%-infliction choice for Burn in Dark Side.

Also, it's gotten a nifty new graphic.

I've personally never used it outside of testing, but that's in part because I tend to forget it exists. And also my luck in my Daert runs has been a factor; I just didn't find it until quite late in the first place.

Something to note is that the Spellbook preview only actually tells you the Fire damage, but the game correctly applies Fire or Ice boosts only to the relevant parts; thus, if you have Items that boost Fire damage the Spellbook will make it seem like a universal boost, while Ice damage boosts won't be reflected at all by the Spellbook preview even though they're the larger portion of the potential damage.


Messenger of Death
Crystal Cost: 9 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 10%, Cap: 30%, Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 20%, Cap: 40%, Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 30%, Cap: 50%, Level: 1-4

A single living organic enemy takes percentage Astral damage. Doesn't work on Plants.

It's Hel the Messenger, but now it's a Chaos Magic Spell. (And has a name that actually makes sense) That's literally it.

Daert has more or less no reason to use it, but for Bagyr or Neoline it may be worth using, ideally having leveled it to max, particularly if you get yourself into an early out-of-depth fight, such as breaking into Helvedia through Inselberg. 

Note that Wight's effect on its damage is much weaker than Destruction's was, so hitting the 50% damage cap requires a minimum of 57 Intellect. Of course, Daert has absurd Intellect growth, so this isn't to suggest it's any harder for him to reach the damage cap; it just means Bagyr and Neoline are going to be behind the Viking and Skald.


Blizzard
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 20 / 30 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 160-180, Freeze: 20%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 320-360, Freeze: 40%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 480-540, Freeze: 60%

Generates a 7-tile circle of a storm, which is spawned from a chosen location anywhere on the battlefield and travels in a straight line, hitting all units along the way for Ice damage with a chance to Freeze.

Another Rune Magic Spell Chaos has co-opted... and for some reason it's been made cheaper and overall more lethal, though its Level 3 high roll is lower at least. It also, for whatever reason, is an exception to Intellect not boosting side effect chances in Dark Side, so it's effortless for Daert to make it a guaranteed mass-Freeze. So it's overall much, much better than in Warriors of the North, where it was already an absurd ultimate damage Spell; I'm not sure why Dark Side felt the need to buff it still higher.

The fact that it's now a Chaos Magic Spell at last returns things to The Legend's status in terms of; your Mage-type class should prioritize Chaos Magic for getting to Rank 3. Period. In Armored Princess, or more precisely Orcs on the March, some of the Rage-derived Spells that were quite good were outside of Chaos, and in Warriors of the North Blizzard was in Rune Magic and was the ultimate in attacking Spells, more or less. Dark Side is thus the first game since The Legend where Chaos Magic has all the most important Spells from the Spellslinger's perspective.

Usage remains straightforward, and overall Ice-resistant enemies are less common than in Warriors of the North, particularly given several units that used to be Ice-resistant (eg Giants) no longer are. Point and click: enemies die en mass. Excellent.

Note that it's bugged and doesn't benefit from Wight at all, so its damage isn't quite as high as it's supposed to be and its Freeze won't be as lethal as Freeze inflicted by other Spells. This doesn't stop it from being the ultimate kill Spell or anything, but I guess if you find it early you should make less of an effort to prioritize Wight ranks?


Frost Grasp
Crystal Cost: 2 / 3 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 80-100, Freeze: 30%
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 145-180, Freeze: 54%
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 210-260, Freeze: 78%

A single chosen enemy takes Ice damage with a chance to be Frozen.

A new Spell, Frost Grasp is single-target Ice damage. Neat?

I occasionally find myself using it in the early-midgame as Daert if a key target is resistant to everything else in my attacking list. For example, if I'm trying to kill a Thorn Hunter and literally my only other offense is Poison Skull, which will always do worse damage in that situation than Frost Grasp.

However, as your coverage expands, Frost Grasp doesn't really stay relevant. You don't fight very many Ice-vulnerable enemies, it being single-target seriously limits its relevancy, and in the long haul it gets pretty cleanly displaced by the absurdity that is Dark Side Blizzard. Even if you don't actually have Blizzard yet, against Demon groups in the late game you'll probably be better off using Fire Rain or some neutrally-effective nuke Spell like Death Star rather than trying to leverage Frost Grasp's technical ability to hit on a weakness. Or use Chaos Missiles if you do want to make a particular target dead, due to its absurd damage growth.

It's too bad, because I appreciate Frost Grasp in principle, but it doesn't add much to the game.

This isn't even touching on the point that it's not actually coded to heal Ice Creations like it's in-game description claims it does. Not that this would be particularly helpful, mind, given Ice Spiders are the only legal recipient and are both incredibly rare and not great at soaking punishment...


Hex
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 12
Mana Cost: 20 / 20 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Miss chance: 10%, Level: 1-2, Duration: 2
Level 2 Statistics: Miss chance: 20%, Level: 1-3, Duration: 3
Level 3 Statistics: Miss chance: 30%, Level: 1-4, Duration: 4

A single target enemy has a chance to Miss on any of its direct damage attacks for the next few turns.

Absolutely awful. I don't know why Dark Side introduced it.

In particular, I resent how it effectively encourages savescumming. In the same sort of way that Armored Princess enemies who could dodge encouraged reloading to try to arrange to not have that key Miss happen, Hex encourages reloading so that key Miss does happen, if you're going to bother with it at all.

I don't, as the high cost and initially-crippling Level limitation makes it even more dubious and I hate indulging RNG nonsense of that sort in the first place.

But even if you're someone who has patience with that sort of thing, Hex remains a dubious option, especially since Dark Side introduces a much better option for inducing Misses and makes that superior choice one way to grind for a Medal! Why would you bother with Hex at that point?

As a bonus, it's invisibly useless against units whose attacks are forbidden from missing -it can still be applied to eg Guard Droids, but it won't actually add a miss chance.

If you do bother, note that Defiler can add another turn of duration and Warlock actually boosts the miss rate; with Rank 3 Warlock, Level 3 Hex is a 39% chance for the afflicted unit to miss.


Chaos Gifts
Crystal Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Mana Cost: 8 / 14 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Reload: 1, Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Reload: 2, Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Reload: 3, Level: 1-4

A single target ally has all its reloading Talents pushed forward in reload timer.

Note that the in-game description claims that Orcs instead get Adrenaline out of it (15/30/45), but this functionality doesn't actually exist. Even though another Spell that claims the same functionality actually does have it.

Also note that Chaos Gifts attempts to equally distribute the reload advancement among all relevant Talents. So at Level 3, if used on a unit with three reloading Talents that are all on cooldown it will advance each of them by 1 turn. If it ends up unable to evenly distribute its value, it will distribute the remainder truly randomly; if the target instead had 2 Talents on cooldown, Level 3 Chaos Gifts will advance both by 1 turn and then randomly pick one of the two to be advanced by a second turn.

Also note that Warlock actually boosts the reload value, resulting in a true maximum of 4 turns of reload.

I don't actually use Chaos Gifts much, as there's rarely a key Talent I need accelerated right now, but it's a neat idea. I certainly like it more than the old Gift Spell.


Chaos Missiles
Crystal Cost: 2 / 5 / 8
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 25, Hits: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 50, Hits: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 75, Hits: 9

A single target enemy is hit by a series of projectiles, which each do a randomly-chosen damage type.

Notice that since Chaos Missiles scales both damage and the number of projectiles launched, it scales far faster than most damage Spells do: going from Level 1 to Level 2 is actually quadrupling your firepower, instead of the usual doubling, and going from Level 2 to Level 3 is an increase of 125% rather than 50%. It's pretty lackluster at Level 1, but at Level 3 it's the best single-target damage Spell in the game, full stop.

The damage type randomization is more genuinely interesting than it might first sound: it means Chaos Missiles is more concerned with the overall resistances of a target than with how strong any particular resistance is. It's easy to think of Chaos Missiles as just being widely-effective, and this is essentially true, which sounds rather like how Ghost Blade just bypasses Physical resistance, but the difference is that Level 3 Ghost Blade flat-out doesn't care about resistances, where Chaos Missile cares a lot less about strong single resistances than other Spells, but still cares about resistances. It's one of my favorite examples of how Dark Side is prone to gimmicky-sounding ideas that have surprising nuance to them in practice.

Note that it doesn't include Astral damage in its list of possible damage types, but otherwise anything is possible.

Chaos Missiles is, starting from Level 2, my go-to single target damage Spell, and in every run I've done I've gotten a hold of it quite early in the game, which is one more reason why Frost Grasp simply doesn't keep up. Why spend 25 Mana to do 145-180 damage when I could spend 10 Mana to do 300 damage? Even if the target is a Demon, Chaos Missiles will still usually do better damage than Frost Grasp at that point, and at Level 3 it requires extreme RNG shenanigans for Chaos Missiles to not massively outstrip it. And if you're fighting Demons without Chaos 3, you're either not Daert and so don't care that much about damaging Spells past the early game, or you are Daert and have broken into Helvedia/Atrixus well before you're really supposed to. And then picked a fight you're not really intended to win.

Anyway, Chaos Missiles is amazing and even once you have massive area nukes it remains a fantastic Spell, in particular being one of your better options for the first cast of a turn thanks to its low cost and high damage. Hit a key target that's out of your intended splash damage zone, then use your preferred splash damage Spell. Simple.

Do note that Chaos Missiles is not affected by Items that boost specific elemental damage types. That is, if you get a boost to Fire damage, even projectiles that roll Fire damage won't get a boost. Only general Spell damage boosters apply to it. So if you've got a lot of elemental boosters, it will be invisibly less amazingly good. Still absurdly good, mind, but less outstanding.


Chaos Breath
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 12
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2, Positive: +25%, Negative: -25%
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3, Positive: +100%, Negative: -50%
Level 3 Statistics: Duration: 4, Positive: +200%, Negative: -75%

A single target unit, enemy or ally, has its parameters temporarily randomly modified relative to their base. When used on allies, the changes will usually be largely positive, while when used on enemies the changes will usually be largely negative. Can affect Attack, Defense, Health, Initiative, and Speed.

I'm not fond of Chaos Breath personally thanks to its fundamentally random nature, but its outcomes can be exceptionally silly and potentially very useful. It can provide drastic modifications to Speed that far outstrip Haste or Slow, where 'drastic' can ultimately mean nonsense like bringing a 2-Speed unit to 42 Speed. (So basically infinite for most purposes) It can devastate an enemy's Health or inflate an ally's Health to absurd values -with an endgame Daert I've seen it give Bone Dragons so much Health the game can't properly display their per-head Health! It can push crit chance to literally 100%, give a unit hundreds of Attack and Defense... crucially, it's perfectly happy to hit multiple stats at the same time, where you boost an ally and end up with thousands of Health, effectively infinite Defense, and enough Speed for your silly super-tank to run right up to the enemy on turn one.

Using it on your own units is straightforward enough, but in some ways more notable is using it on enemies; immunity to Spells is the only protection from Chaos Breath, even when it's Level 1. This gives it unique utility against assorted enemies that are protected against a bunch of other tools; frustrated by the dragon in that enemy battlegroup that you can't Blind, can't stall with Trap, is too fast for Slow to help much, and so on? Tossing Chaos Breath at it might knock it to 1 Speed, or cripple its Health so you can trivially kill it, or both! This can let you get through a fight with no casualties much earlier than you might otherwise be able to manage.

Chaos Breath is another pretty clear example of Dark Side's rushed, incomplete state; I'm quite confident the wild numbers it can output aren't really intentional. Probably some programmer coded up a basic framework, the intent would've been to playtest and refine it to saner values later, and whoops later never happened!

As for what that framework is...

Well, first of all the game rolls randomly per-stat for whether the stat is getting a 'good' modifier or a 'bad' modifier, with equal odds of either happening regardless of whether the target is friendly or hostile. What this actually means then depends on if the target is a friendly unit or a hostile unit, with this being surprisingly complicated to get into as the mechanics here are such that the above numbers are almost impossible to see in-game -for one thing, the game actually uses the Chaos Magic Skill itself as a modifier, where Level 1 Chaos Breath backed by Rank 1 Chaos Magic will apply a 1.1 modifier to the numbers. You'd have to use Chaos Breath from a Scroll while having 0 Intellect and no ranks in the Chaos Magic Skill to see the truly base numbers.

Anyway, in the case of an allied target, the above numbers are baseline multipliers, that are then chain-multiplied by the Chaos Magic Skill multiplier and by Intellect, which adds 4% per point to its own step. That is, with Level 1 Chaos Breath backed by 10 Intellect and Chaos Magic at Rank 1, a positive result gives 1.25, multiplied by 1.1 by Chaos Magic to 1.375, which is then multiplied by 1.4 (10 points of Intellect equals +40% to its multiplier), bringing it to 1.925, which is to say 192.5% of the base stat. (And then the game's hatred of fractions kicks in and it actually rounds that up to 193%) Notably, this means that at Level 1 you're realistically only going to see it raise stats; with our very conservative prior example, a 'negative' result is 0.75 multiplied by 1.1 to 0.825 and then multiplied by 1.4 to 1.155, meaning 115.5% of the base stat! (Again, actually 116% due to hatred of fractions, but shhh)

When cast on an enemy, the game instead uses the Intellect and Chaos Magic Skill rank multipliers as dividers. So a 'positive' result with our prior numbers would be 1.25 divided by 1.1 to 1.136 (The 36 repeats 7 times, but shhh) and then divided by 1.4 to become a messy number the game interprets as 0.81, meaning the 'positive' result actually reduces the target stat by 19%! A negative result will start from 0.75 and then chain-divide it as prior, resulting in 0.681~ and then 0.487~, which the game rounds to 0.49, meaning it shaves off 51% of the stat. So always negative, just a matter of degree.

Now, the higher Levels have wider ranges on their base values, but this just means you need more Intellect/higher ranks in Chaos Magic to push it to always boost allies and always penalize enemies; with Level 3 Chaos Breath backed by Rank 3 Chaos Magic, 33 Intellect is enough to ensure it can't actually boost enemies, while 53 Intellect is enough to ensure it can't truly penalize allies. These are utterly trivial numbers from Daert's perspective, and not unreasonable for Bagyr and Neoline to reach if they care, making this randomness Spell much more reliably beneficial than you might assume.

Oh, and Defiler boosts its duration, resulting in a maximum of 5 turns. Other Skills (eg Warlock) don't affect it.

Volcano
Crystal Cost: 6 / 16 / 26
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35

Level 1 Statistics: Health: 200, Defense: 30

Level 2 Statistics: Health: 400, Defense: 45

Level 3 Statistics: Health: 600, Defense: 60

Generates a volcano in any open tile, which once per turn flings a Fireball or Fire Rain at a target within two tiles of it. Volcanoes have 50% resistance to Poison and Fire damage, and have an Initiative of 2 for casting their Spells.

The game doesn't provide any information on Level scaling itself, unfortunately, but the above is the base effects. It's also supposed to affect the Level of the Spells the Volcanoes cast, but it's bugged so they all cast them at Level 1 -though the higher Level Volcanoes at least do more damage.

Note that Intellect, the Puppeteer Skill, and Items that boost summon effectiveness all affect Volcanoes, but affect the Volcano HP much more strongly than the damage on their Spells.

Volcano is most useful as a hilariously effective distraction. As I noted with Archdemons, the AI is obsessive about targeting your environmental objects, prioritizing meleeing them over many, many other possible actions. As such, Volcano can be used to tie up key targets, with any damage it happens to do being essentially a bonus.

Do note that while Volcanoes can't hurt themselves with their Spells, if you have multiple Volcanoes they can in fact hurt each other. So if you're casting multiple of them, it's preferable to keep them spaced at least three tiles apart.

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Next time, we check out what Dark Side has done with Order Magic.