Armored Princess Spell Analysis Part 2: Order Magic

First note: Gift is gone entirely, as is Last Hero. As I covered in The Legend, I consider both of these removals fully justified, and view the game as all the better for it.


Magic Pole Axe
Crystal Cost: 2 / 4 / 6
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 100; Axes: 1
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 200; Axes: 2
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 300; Axes: 3

Hits a single enemy unit for Physical damage.

Magic Pole Axe has lost 20 damage per level.

This kind of sucks, since Magic Pole Axe was already difficult to justify using, particularly if you were contrasting it against Ghost Blade at higher levels. Now it doesn't even have higher base damage than Ghost Blade!

As such, it's gone from a mediocre Spell you probably only used in the early game to an even more mediocre Spell you probably don't even use in the early game, especially with how eg Flaming Arrow's ability to inflict Burn is way more useful than it used to be.


Lightning
Crystal Cost: 7 / 10 / 20
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Strikes one target; Damage: 100-200; Shock: 15%
Level 2 Statistics: Bounces to additional targets twice; Damage: 170-340; Shock: 30%
Level 3 Statistics: Bounces to additional targets four times; Damage: 240-480; Shock: 45%

Hits a single target for Magic damage, with a chance to Shock. Higher Levels of the spell will also 'bounce' to additional targets.

No changes.

The fact that Shock's mechanics work properly means it's a bit more useful, but Shock chance is too unreliable for this to be a huge deal, and in indirect terms Lightning has been hurt by the introduction of stuff like Death Star. In The Legend Lightning was basically your only decent way of using a Spell to murder a Cyclops. In Armored Princess Death Star and Black Hole fill that role just fine, and hit harder, and have less difficulties avoiding backfire...

... in real terms I've basically never found myself wanting to use Lightning in Armored Princess. You're probably better off not burning Magic Crystals on it.


Healing
Crystal Cost: 1 / 2 / 3
Mana Cost: 3 / 2 / 1
Level 1 Statistics: Healing/Damage: 50
Level 2 Statistics: Healing/Damage: 150
Level 3 Statistics: Healing/Damage: 250; Removes Poison, Weakness, and Plague

Targets a single allied organic unit or enemy Undead unit. Allied organic units are healed, though dead units cannot be recovered this way, while enemy Undead take Magic damage instead. Demons and inorganic units cannot be targeted at all.

No change.

It's worth pointing out that the Level 3 version purging effects matters a bit more. Being able to Heal a Poisoned Level 5 unit in the mid-late game to clear Poisoning while also undoing a decent chunk of damage is actually a nice combination, if a bit narrow in its utility, since Poisoning's damage is now percentile and thus more reliably significant.


Resurrection
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 25
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Recovers Health: 200; Target's Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Recovers Health: 400; Target's Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Recovers Health: 600; Target's Level: 1-4

Targets a single allied organic unit, restoring health to the unit. 'Overflow' healing will resurrect dead members of the unit if it has suffered casualties in the current battle. Can even target corpses, restoring a fallen stack to functionality.

No changes.

Resurrection's utility in real terms has gone down a bit: for a Mage they can't double-cast it at full power, and for everyone in general Turn Back Time frequently fills the same role but even better. There's also more unit-based options for resurrecting units, such as the Rune Mage, making its value less unique, and for the Paladin in particular Resurrection-the-Skill is actually better so long as casualties are stacked onto a single unit. As such, while Resurrection is still useful to have, since at the tail end of a battle you may have nothing better to do with your Mana anyway, it's no longer important the way it was in The Legend.


Dispel
Crystal Cost: 1 / 2 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 5
Level 1 Statistics: Removes all effects on a friendly target.
Level 2 Statistics: Removes all effects on a friendly or enemy target.
Level 3 Statistics: Removes all negative effects on a friendly target or all positive effects on an enemy target.

Targets a single unit, removing some portion of effects on the unit.

No changes.

... directly.

Back in The Legend I talked about how Dispel Level 3 just isn't that important. Well, in Armored Princess it's a lot more relevant. First of all, Burn and Poisoning do damage that actually matters, and they're both sufficiently widespread effects that they'll crop up fairly regularly in combat. Secondly, there's a lot more cases of powerful buffs and debuffs units can apply in Armored Princess, meaning you're far more likely to, for example, have a Royal Griffin throw out Cheer, then find yourself wanting to Dispel the Blind inflicted by enemy Engineers on your Bowmen but also not wanting to lose the Cheer boost. As such, the third Level is a much bigger deal than ever before, and in general Dispel is a lot more relevant: in The Legend, it mostly mattered against Heroes, and only occasionally, because many Heroes didn't have any of the really problematic debuffs or buffs that were worth Dispelling. And a good number of the ones with a buff worth Dispelling you ran into the problem that, for example, Haste Level 3 hits the entire army, and Dispel can only clear out one unit.

Whereas in Armored Princess you'll find yourself breaking out Dispel semi-regularly in a wide variety of fights.

I actually consider Order Magic the only Spell Skill that's important to max out on every class, and Dispel Level 3 is one of the reasons why.


Life Light
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 16
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Damage/Healing: 150
Level 2 Statistics: Damage/Healing: 285
Level 3 Statistics: Damage/Healing: 420

Inflicts Magic damage on Undead in an area, causing them to flee, while healing living units. Demons are entirely unaffected.

The damage/healing on higher levels has been boosted, but otherwise no change has occurred. It hasn't even been brought in line with other holy effects to hurt Demons!

The result is still pretty forgettable and bad. I still don't get why the Scroll is so expensive.



Bless
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 10
Mana Cost: 10 / 10 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Mass; Duration: 3 turns

Affected units always roll for maximum damage on basic attacks. (Melee or ranged) Cannot be applied to Undead or Demons.

No change.


Dragon Slayer
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 25
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 20%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%, Mass; Duration: 4 turns

Affected units gain bonus damage against Dragons.

No change.

Which is to say Dragon Slayer is still pretty eeeeeh. A point in its favor is that the game is a bit more willing to throw dragons at you earlier on, assuming you're lucky enough to get the Scroll in time, but on the other hand the Mage doesn't even care about it against Black Dragons now that they have multiple ways of directly killing Spell-immune units.


Demon Slayer
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 25
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 20%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%, Mass; Duration: 4 turns

Affected units gain bonus damage against Demons.

No change.

Since the Mage's primary damage output in Armored Princess tends to not be Fire damage, it's actually lost utility in real terms. So much so that I tend to forget it's even still in the game.


Divine Armor
Crystal Cost: 8 / 12 / 20
Mana Cost: 15 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: All Resistances: 20%; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: All Resistances: 25%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: All Resistances: 30%; Duration: 4 turns

Sets a single allied unit's non-Astral () resistances to a specific number, except for those resistances higher than that number, which are instead unaffected. Cannot be applied to Undead or Demons.

For whatever reason, the Crystal cost was upped a little, especially at the final Spell Level.

Divine Armor isn't actually that worthwhile in Armored Princess, at least past the early game, since the very act of casting it is building progress on a Medal that raises your base resistances. Since Divine Armor ignores base resistances, that means it's directly reducing its own utility, especially if you've got gear further boosting resistances. In conjunction with some alternative tools having been added to avoid casualties, Divine Armor is no longer a kingly way to protect your units in certain matchups. The fact that Astral damage exists in forms other than Rage moves also puts a bit of a hole in its protection, with a few units having Astral damage tools and some Heroes actually using Death Star. It's also noticeably hurt by Intellect being slower to scale duration.

It's still a useful Spell to have on hand, but it's much more niche than in The Legend, where it was already niche.


Battle Cry
Crystal Cost: 3 / 12 / 20
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Initiative: +1; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Initiative: +2; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Initiative: +3; Duration: 3 turns

Increases Initiative of all allied units.

Mana cost per level has spiked (Which is understandable), it's become mass by default (Thank goodness), Crystal cost has spiked (I'm not entirely sure why the third Level in particular climbs so high), but the actual Initiative and duration values are unchanged.

The overall result is that Battle Cry is situational, instead of borderline-unusable prior to Level 3. Huzzah!


Peacefulness
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 3
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: -30%; Health: +30%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: -30%; Health: +40%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: -30%; Health: +50%; Duration: 5 turns

A single unit -ally or enemy- has its HP increased while its Damage is decreased.

No change.

Peacefulness gets used much like it did in The Legend, though it's worth noting its protective value has more opportunities to be useful since there's more units like Engineers that don't mind losing damage output.

It's still a Spell whose utility is a bit murky, though.


Dragon Arrows
Crystal Cost: 2 / 3 / 4
Mana Cost: 4 / 4 / 4
Level 1 Statistics: Gives Dragon Arrows: 1
Level 2 Statistics: Gives Dragon Arrows: 2
Level 3 Statistics: Gives Dragon Arrows: 3

Grants a single allied archer-class unit (Bowmen, Elves, Hunters, Skeleton Archers) charge(s) of the Dragon Arrows Talent. This Talent is a ranged attack that entirely ignores the target's Resistance and ignores 30% of the target's Defense, and regardless of the user's own range will never suffer damage penalties from being fired too far. The base damage is derived from the unit's base damage. The damage type is Astral.

No change to the Spellbook end (Including that it still adds charges where other Spells would add duration), but Dragon Arrows no longer simply ignores the target's Defense, making it less ludicrously lethal.

It's still a fantastic Spell if you're using archers anyway, being very cost-efficient and quite lethal, it's just no longer so insanely good even the Mage likes using it. Which is good.

Something worth pointing out is that Dragon Arrows actually has a hard cap of 5 charges it can give per use. This cap exists in The Legend, but you're unlikely to have it matter there, where in Armored Princess it's relatively plausible for an endgame Mage to reach the point of Level 3 Dragon Arrows not being an improvement over Level 2 Dragon Arrows, hence why I didn't bother to mention it in The Legend. As such, if you only hit Order Magic rank 3 fairly late in a Mage run, don't just mindlessly level Dragon Arrows to max, even if you're actually using it aggressively; it might be a waste of Magic Crystals.


Fit of Energy
Crystal Cost: 6 / 6 / 6
Mana Cost: 20 / 20 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Gives Action Points: 1
Level 2 Statistics: Gives Action Points: 2
Level 3 Statistics: Gives Action Points: 3

Grants a single allied unit additional Action Points. If its turn was over, it gets an additional turn to use these Action Points.

No change.

There's more units where getting a second turn can be a big boost, such as letting Engineers spit out two droid stacks to plug gaps in your formation, so Fit of Energy is actually a bit more useful in Armored Princess than in The Legend, but it hasn't fundamentally changed.


Helplesness
Crystal Cost: 1 / 2 / 4
Mana Cost: 2 / 4 / 6
Level 1 Statistics: Defense: -30%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Defense: -45%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Defense: -60%; Duration: 5 turns

Lowers a single enemy's Defense by a percentage.

No change.

Since a lot of upper-tier units had their Defense spike noticeably, Helplessness is de-facto even more useful than in The Legend, at least if you're not a Mage. Due to level-derived Leadership being consistently gained in Armored Princess, the classes are further apart in Leadership and so it's actually true that the Warrior will have meaningfully larger armies to leverage the lowered Defense, too.

It's hurt a little by Rage being actually worthwhile, since only units modify damage based on Defense values, making eg Plague and Pygmy more general tools for improving damage output, but not as much as you might expect, particularly if you're obsessive about using Treasure Searcher as much as possible in each battle. (Because you'll spend less time Raging for damage)


Summon Phoenix
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 25 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Summons: Young Phoenix
Level 2 Statistics: Summons: Mature Phoenix
Level 3 Statistics: Summons: Ancient Phoenix

Summons an allied Phoenix in a chosen tile. The tile must be adjacent to an allied unit. You may only have one Phoenix on the field at a time.

Crystal cost has spiked significantly. Fair enough: Phoenix in Orcs on the March are actually pretty good. Mana cost has been reduced for higher-level versions, adding 5 per level instead of 10. This does a lot to make Summon Phoenix actually useful at higher levels, even before other changes.

Again, let's have some actual stats!


Young Phoenix
Level: 3
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 15 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 5
Health: 200
Damage: 40-60 Fire
Resistances: 80% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: None
Abilities: Flight, Firestorm (Melee attacks and counterattacks not only hit the target but enemies to the side, and have a 70% chance of Burning everyone. No friendly fire), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance, cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance, spells don't effect the unit), Rebirth  (The Phoenix can, once, revive after a delay. Resurrecting is not possible if a unit is occupying their corpse's space, and the act of resurrecting consumes their entire turn)

Not changed... before Intellect modification being a thing. Also, the Summoner Skill being added. Okay and their Burn chance actually went up a lot, but much more significant is that Burn itself became a big deal. Regardless, limited change is fine, since a Young Phoenix was already pretty solid in the early game, so it didn't really need a big boost to stay relevant.

Note that this includes that they -and all higher Phoenix forms- still have their hidden, largely-irrelevant resistance to cold damage effects and immunity to Freeze. As Armored Princess hasn't particularly expanded cold damage as a concept, this still basically just means the Bowman Ice Arrow Talent is ineffectual.


Mature Phoenix
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 40 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 6
Health: 400
Damage: 70-100 Fire
Resistances: 80% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: None
Abilities: Flight, Firestorm (Melee attacks and counterattacks not only hit the target but enemies to the side, and have a 85% chance of Burning everyone. No friendly fire), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance, cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance, spells don't effect the unit), Rebirth  (The Phoenix can, once, revive after a delay. Resurrecting is not possible if a unit is occupying their corpse's space, and the act of resurrecting consumes their entire turn)

Attack and Defense have doubled since the last game and their Burn chance went up, but they're not significantly changed. Before Intellect scaling and the Summoner Skill being added, of course.


Ancient Phoenix
Level: 5
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 60 / 50
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 7
Health: 800
Damage: 140-240 Fire
Resistances: 80% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: Tears of the Phoenix (Charge: 1. Heals a single adjacent organic ally for 33% of the Ancient Phoenix's Health, potentially resurrecting the dead)
Abilities: Flight, Firestorm (Melee attacks and counterattacks not only hit the target but enemies to the side, and have a 100% chance of Burning everyone. No friendly fire), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance, cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance, Spells don't effect the unit), Rebirth  (The Phoenix can, once, revive after a delay. Resurrecting is not possible if a unit is occupying their corpse's space, and the act of resurrecting consumes their entire turn)

Massively spiked its innate Attack and Defense (Attack doubled, Defense more than doubled), maxed out its Burn chance, picked up Tears of the Phoenix (This is specifically an Orcs on the March addition, actually), but otherwise unchanged before Intellect scaling kicks in.

Note that Tears of the Phoenix can't be used on the Undead, Plants, Demons, units that are immune to magic, or inorganic units like Cyclops. It can be used on a corpse, though, just like Resurrection.


Regardless, the Phoenix line is... actually pushed aside by the Chaos Dragon series. If you're a Mage, you're going to be maxing Chaos Magic anyway and Chaos Dragons do basically everything the Phoenix does and more (Aside the resurrection on the Ancient Phoenix), and if you're not a Mage you won't be pushing Intellect as much and probably care more about some of the other summons, such as Call of Nature.

Speaking of...


Call of Nature
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 12
Mana Cost: 20 / 30 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Level up to 2; Troop Leadership: 300
Level 2 Statistics: Level up to 3; Troop Leadership: 700
Level 3 Statistics: Level up to 4; Troop Leadership: 1500

Summons a random animal stack into a chosen tile adjacent to an existing friendly unit. The stack can act on that turn.

The first of the new Order Spells in Armored Princess.

Can summon:

bear,bear2,bear_white,wolf,graywolf,unicorn,unicorn2,snake,snake_green,snake_royal,griffin,griffin2,dragonfly_fire,dragonfly_lake,hyena

(Straight from the .txt)

That's Bears, Ancient Bears, Polar Bears, Wolves, Werewolf Elves in wolf form, Unicorns, Black Unicorns, Snakes, Swamp Snakes, Royal Snakes, Griffins, Royal Griffins, Fire Dragonflies, Lake Dragonflies, and Hyenas.

If you compare Call of Nature to Demon Portal, you're basically paying more Mana (Fewer Crystals, admittedly, though only by a little) to get less Leadership of generally less useful units. The main appeal of Call of Nature is that the unit is summoned now, no delay.

On the other hand, you've got control over not only where the unit arrives but what it does once it gets its turn, which among other points makes it one of the better summoning Spells for nicking a Chest before any enemies do. Only Phoenix and Chaos Dragon are arguably better at that task, and you won't necessarily have either one in the early-to-midgame.

The control and lack of a delay actually does a lot to make Call of Nature appealing as a summon in more general terms, though. Being able to spawn a troop and immediately do something with it, where it then lasts long enough to do other things, actually has a surprising amount of utility in and of itself. Being able to finish off a target, or immediately drop something next to an enemy ranged unit, or block off a gap in terrain to control enemy movement, or distract/delay an enemy melee unit... the list is pretty endless, and it's surprisingly unimportant what you specifically get. Only Snakes and Swamp Snakes, out of this list, have less than 3 Speed and no Speed enhancer, so the resulting summon's ability to range out to where you need it is almost always pretty solid.

The fact that the Leadership scales to Intellect does put it in a slightly awkward position as you get deeper into the game, where the Mage would probably rather just nuke things with Spells directly while the other classes don't really find it keeps up with their needs, but in the early-to-midgame Call of Nature can be amazingly useful.


Anger Management Calm Rage
Crystal Cost: 15 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 1 / 1 / 1
Level 1 Statistics: Converts up to 35 Rage into up to 15 Mana
Level 2 Statistics: Converts up to 45 Rage into up to 20 Mana
Level 3 Statistics: Converts up to 55 Rage into up to 25 Mana

Drains a portion of the player's Rage, and based on that value gives them a lesser amount of Mana. The Mana output scales with Intellect.

Yes, every piece of the code refers to it as Anger Management. It's awesome, and I'm sad it didn't make it into the English version.

Anyway, you're basically spending your Rage at a 2-to-1 ratio for Mana, except there's also a 5 Rage surcharge no matter what. This means it actually gets more efficient at higher Spell levels and higher Rage levels, though not by a ton. It also gets more efficient as your Intellect rises, though pretty slowly.

For the Mage, Calm Rage is an incredibly useful Spell for keeping your rampage going, which is especially important as you get Higher Magic leveled and so can get up to 6 turns of double-casting going. Calm Rage is also huge in Boss fights, as they're frequently tuned so that hitting the Boss gives utterly ridiculous amounts of Rage and meanwhile you can't actually spend your Rage normally, with the most obvious manifestation of this being that Champion of the Arena doesn't bother to give you access to Rage and makes sure you have Calm Rage right out of the gate.

For the Warrior, Calm Rage is useful from a different angle: you'll rapidly get Anger maxed out and tend to build more for Rage, and meanwhile a lot of useful Spells that don't demand high Intellect to be good are fairly Mana-intensive (eg Sheep), so you're both better able to shoulder the Rage draining and can still benefit from drastically extending your Mana supplies, even though your overall Mana burden is usually less than the Mage's.

For the Paladin it's a nice option, but not nearly so notable: you're probably not burning through Rage like crazy, but you're also not generating it like crazy, and eg Resurrection-the-Skill makes it less important to burn Mana on preventing/undoing casualties.


Avenging Angel
Crystal Cost: 7 / 10 / 15
Mana Cost: 15 / 20 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 80-120, Duration: 4
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 160-200, Duration: 5
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 240-280, Duration: 6

A single target ally is granted a buff which decrements by one turn each time the unit takes damage from any enemy unit via any means. (Except for over time effects like Burning) The injuring unit is retaliated against by Magic damage.

I honestly never use Avenging Angel. It's hampered by the fact that it's a Spell that relies on scaling with Intellect and so on, making it very much a Mage Spell, but then its mechanic is focused on getting armies stuck in with other armies to dish out solid damage to the enemy, when the Mage would generally rather use high-Initiative units that avoid getting stuck in so they're free to spray indiscriminate death Spells like Fireball or Death Star into the enemy. About the only time Avenging Angel is vaguely worth considering is if you're planning on using summon spam to stall enemies, and even then there's usually better ways of dishing out damage than using Avenging Angel on the summons.

I sort of like the idea of Avenging Angel, but it doesn't really feel like it has a place in the actual game. I dunno, maybe I'm underestimating how well it combines with a Paladin taking advantage of Resurrection 3?

If you want to give it a try, note that there's some Items in the series that boost 'lightning' damage; this does not actually mean specifically the Lightning Spell! It includes Avenging Angel, so equipping an Archmage's Staff is a way to make it more effective.


Earth Blades
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 25 / 35 / 50
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 50-150
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 125-375
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 200-600

Hits all enemies for Physical damage. Ignores Spell immunity.

The first of the new Rage-skill-from-The-Legend Spells added to Order Magic by Orcs on the March.

It's Zerock's Underground Blades, but as a Spell!... well, other than having lost the anti-mage damage bonus. Drat.

And unlike Stone Rain, it's actually worth considering. Its damage range is annoyingly large, but its peak damage is actually really darn good, and its strike behavior is unmatched when enemies are spread all over the place with no convenient formations that will let you eg Death Star everyone at once. Since it also ignores Spell immunity, this gives it a further leg up when dealing with Black Dragons.

I have no idea why it's under Order Magic, honestly. Maybe to try to make it compete less with Stone Rain? It's not like Physical damage is proprietary to Order Magic.

Unfortunately, it tends to be overshadowed by Black Hole, which only costs 10 more Mana at Level 3, has more than twice the minimum damage, more max damage, and will hit even harder than that against high Level units, with resistance essentially not being a consideration, while still ignoring Spell immunity. Indeed, Level 2 Black Hole is actually competitive with Level 3 Earth Blades! Against battlegroups that are heavy on low-Level units, Earth Blades tends to win out, but outside that it's difficult to justify. The main thing it has going for it is being Order's only mass-damage option that can't hurt your forces and works on anything, not just Undead. As such, it's notably useful if for whatever reason you max out Order Magic before your other Spell skills. -which is absolutely a reasonable thing to do if you're not a Mage.

A bit of a far fall from its status in The Legend, though.


Ice Thorns
Crystal Cost: 10 / 8 / 6
Mana Cost: 20 / 15 / 10

Spawns a series of 1-HP Ice Thorn objects around a 3-tile region. Can be placed anywhere, with invalid tiles for spawning simply skipped.

I've taken the liberty of excluding the per-level effect section for Ice Thorns because literally the only change as you level it is that it gets cheaper.

Ice Thorns is notable for being a Spell option for stalling multiple units by potentially multiple turns, depending on placement, more consistently than eg Trap. If you're running a ranged-heavy force in particular, it's a good stalling tool with no real disadvantage, aside its initially-unwieldy cost. You do have to be careful with splash damage, though.


Gizmo
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 20 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 100-150, Healing: 100
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 250-375, Healing: 200, Steals enemy AP: Yes.
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 400-550, Healing: 300, Steals enemy AP: Yes, gives allies AP: Yes.

Summons an airborne Gizmo which is not otherwise under the player's control to an arbitrary battlefield location. Once per turn with an Initiative of 1 up to three times, the Gizmo will pick to heal an allied unit and remove negative effects from that unit or harm an enemy unit. Depending on Spell Level, it can potentially grant Action Points to the ally it's healing or steal Action Points from the enemy it's harming. Its damage is Astral damage. It cannot resurrect fallen units. Gizmos will compete for space with each other and with Balls of Lightning, but not with regular units.

Gizmo works pretty much exactly like it did with Lina, except it no longer gets the ability to purge beneficial effects from enemies. Given enemies don't get anywhere near as much opportunity to apply positive effects as the player does, this isn't much of a loss. This includes that its healing works on anything.

That said, its damage scales with Intellect, and it actually has really good damage per hit, so Gizmo is actually a shockingly efficient damage dealer so long as it doesn't randomly decide to waste time healing one of your units. (I have literally seen a Gizmo 'heal' an allied unit that was completely uninjured and had no negative effects to purge) And honestly it's actually so efficient at higher levels that it's potentially worth considering as a damage dealer anyway. Per-hit Gizmo at Level 3 punches stronger than all but the hardest-hitting of damage Spells, and it gets to strike three times, meaning the only reason it has actual competition is that most of the best nuke spells are splash damage. And since it does Astral damage, it works on everything. Even, it should be explicitly stated, units that are immune to Spells!

I mentioned with Stone Rain that I'm pretty sure Gizmo's numbers are what Spellbook-Stone-Rain is calling. By a similar token, the Spellbook lies to you about Gizmo's numbers, only the numbers it cites look really disappointing, when it's actually really good. Just as I'm fairly sure Stone Rain in the Spellbook is calling Gizmo's numbers, I'm pretty sure Gizmo in the Spellbook is calling Stone Rain's numbers.

Gizmo isn't perfect, of course. There's the randomly choosing to heal problem I mentioned of course, the Gizmo actually does have a limited number of tiles it can travel per turn (Just like in The Legend), it apparently has godawful Initiative because there's very little in the game it will go before (Which makes its ability to steal enemy Action Points practically a technicality unless an enemy chooses to Wait, but also means that anytime you need damage urgently it's not the thing to look at), and at Level 1 it's honestly just overpriced, but once you're getting to Level 2 and especially Level 3 it's a terrifyingly effective damage-dealing Spell that's surprisingly economical. Up through Level 2 you can even slip it into Higher Magic 3, and it's powerful enough at Level 2 that it's worth considering using it as your initial Higher Magic cast.

Also, a curious interface quirk is that when you hover the cursor over a unit while prepping to summon, it will give you a damage preview as if Gizmo were a Spell that did immediate damage. This includes that it will inform you of how much it would heal if targeting one of your units -but it still labels this prediction as a damage prediction!

It's also interesting to note that with its Initiative having dropped, the AP modification effects have flipped compared to when this was Lina's Rage effect, in terms of utility: now AP-stealing is borderline-worthless, while second turns are reasonably reliable.

Overall Gizmo is actually really useful, so long as you're willing to accept it periodically doing something not-actually-helpful through no fault of your own. Or are more willing than I am to try to work out what its AI priorities are.

-------------------------

Next time, we wrap up magic with Distortion.

Comments

  1. Not sure where the "3rd turn" stuff regarding revive with Phoenix comes from. It can always be revived the turn after it dies, both for the player and the A.I, unless it's tile is being occupied/blocked by a unit, in which case it can only wait (this has the unfortunate "side effect" that showed up in Dark Side and it might have been in Wotn, i can't recall, where a phoenix projection shows up and it looks like it revived even if a unit /object like a totem is on top of the corpse. The only real ramification of this is a bug where sometimes to defeat the A.I one needs to let the phoenix revive, eventhough all their other units are dead, in order to end the battle..).

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    1. Also the crystal costs look off for it. For me it's 7 crystals for level 2 but that is with Alchemy 3, so i believe the base cost for level 2 is higher than the 7 you have listed. To get to level 3 with Alchemy 3 it's 10 crystals, so it's base cost for level 3 should be 15. Perhaps you are accidentally using Legend values, and if so the cost went up a bit in AP/Crossworlds with the buffs it got. That, or the values are different between AP and Crossworlds which i guess is possible.

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    2. Actually my math is off, for level 3 Phoenix with Alchemy 3 it being 10 crystals should mean the base cost is 20 crystals due to the 50% discount from Alchemy 3, making the 12 number you have listed even divergent. Level 2 at base w/o Alchemy should be 15 crystals if alchemy is rounding favorably which i believe it is (seems odd that its base cost would be 14).

      Also your Chaos Dragon numbers seem to be different as well, since with alchemy 3 i am getting costs of 7/10/13 for each level, so presumably at base it's 15/20/25 (but rounding up this time? or maybe it's 26/27). Maybe the differing numbers is due to versions or something. I am playing on Steam with the most recent version of Crossworlds on Impossible (i don't know anything about lower difficulties, but i don't think it affects crystals, and as far as i know you always play Impossible as well). So I'm unsure where the discrepancy is (weird that i have higher phoenix numbers than you and lower dragon of chaos numbers than you, so something is amiss.

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    3. I've always had inconsistent results with Phoenix revival mechanics, where sometimes they get a turn on the next round and let me revive them and other times it takes two rounds for this to happen. It's only in Dark Side I've never run into this oddness... which I'm not sure how meaningful that is given I don't use it very often in Dark Side. The multiples of 3 for round has lined up correctly anytime I've not gotten to revive it as soon as I should.

      My Crystal numbers were pulled straight from the files, though I did copy-pasting from The Legend for initial formatting so it's possible I incorrectly went 'yep, done' on something I hadn't properly updated for AP. It's also possible some Spells don't actually pull from their section in the config file -for most things I go by in-game, but in this case it was my Mage run that was most advanced and seeing all the Spells, where Alchemy makes it impossible to be 100% sure of the original cost, so... I went by the config file. And I'm already aware of Gizmo and Rockfall pointing to each other's sections at some point for damage or damage prediction, so 'the config file is wrong in some cases' is entirely plausible.

      Difficulty doesn't affect Crystal costs, no. It affects enemy army sizes and reduces how much money and experience you get, and that's it. I actually don't play exclusively on Impossible, and in fact with Armored Princess I've played almost exclusively on Hard, in no small part because it's actually the entry I enjoy least and so have played least -so I've not done the 'I want to play more, but Hard is too easy' progression in it as yet.

      I'm honestly not sure of the exact rules of Alchemy's rounding; at one point I tried tracking its affects carefully and I just plain couldn't make sense of its overall progression, where there were points that cleanly should've shaved off another Crystal but didn't. Ultimately I didn't feel it was important enough to work out, since the player only cares about the final 50% value or cases of it reducing something to 1 earlier than Rank 3, and the final 50% always seemed to produce sensible values.

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  2. You wrote regarding Gizmo "specially Level 3 it's a terrifyingly effective damage-dealing Spell that's surprisingly economical. You can even slip it into Higher Magic Level 3!" however it's mana cost for level 3 is actually 25 mana in my version of CW, so no such luck.

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    1. That's interesting, and suggests there's actual version differences, because Gizmo's numbers here are correct for me.

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    2. Yeh very interesting. Here is my Steam version - i.imgur.com/wL416YK.png and proof that it's 25 mana - i.imgur.com/nea2lR3.png

      So if we now have confirmation that there exist differences between the versions, that could also help explain why some of your crystal numbers were off. Perhaps they weren't (all) off, just mayhap there was some difference balancing between the versions, and we have an example here of where Spells were susceptible to this difference. This also opens up the world where differences in gameplay between versions are possible, which could tie into the Target thing since it is a spell and we have proof that atleast SOME differences between spells exist. It's probably unlikely, but can't rule it out, and it would conveniently explain why you have had Target fail you, whereas most of us don't have sufficient words of praise for it.

      Crystal Cost is the same between versions though.
      As an aside Gizmo is probably more balanced at 25 mana for how strong it is (frequently a level 2 version is worth casting on the steam version to fit into Higher Magic 3, if the final level was 20 mana it would be a bit absurd.). Also the majority of players play the steam version I'm using where it's 25 mana (for better or worse), so worth considering that context if you can make an update in Gizmo's post noting the difference in cost.

      I do like how Gizmo heals Black Dragon, adding another way besides Shaman Dancing Axes to accomplish the heal. I didn't see if Gizmo can patch up the Chaos Dragon, but i presume it can since Rune Mage can heal Chaos Dragon (not usually a worthwhile thing unless it's from a Phantom Rune Mage maybe, as a way to save mana recasting it if it would otherwise die). I'll keep an eye out to see if it can even heal (Ancient) Phoenix which would be nice.

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    3. One more interesting thing i discovered regarding Gizmo- If it's just healing and granting your units actions, it actually doesn't use up it's "charges", and thus doesn't disappear (so when you wrote "Once per turn up to three times, " it's not really accurate). So you basically can get a perma healer that gets rid of debuffs (really relevant for tier 5 units with large hp pools that can appreciate a heal, especially the otherwise difficult to heal Black Dragon and the usually impossible to heal Cyclops, as well as the not that easy to heal Chaos Dragon short of it's hp recuperate ability or Rune Mages), and perhaps more importantly (especially for ranged units or units with abilities) an extra action point at level 3 gizmo. So it effectively acts as a PERMA "Fit of Energy" going on for the entire battle, which is bonkers powerful., especially for the mana cost of 25 (or 20 in GOG version which is crazy broken since it all but guarantees it's an ideal opener to fit into higher magic 3 before a more expensive spell is cast).
      It's not that hard to orchestrate a situation where it's focused on your units (which can frequently be more relevant than even it's respectable damage at level 3 since ones units getting another action point can potentially do more damage than the Gizmo anyways, all without using up a charge), especially since as you noted it has movement and doesn't just waltz across the entire battlefield, so it can sorta be controlled. The "slow" initiative (i believe it acts as lower than even 1 initiative somehow since it acts after shocked units with 1 initiative, it beats nothing short of "Wait") for it doesn't even matter in terms of it's Fit of Energy effect. Basically if one would ever want to cast Fit of Energy (At least the level 1 version that grants 1 action point), they would almost always be better off with Gizmo even in terms of granting a unit a 2nd action that round (they may also appreciate a heal and a dispel of negative effects). The fact that it can stay on the battlefield the entire battle potentially (i gave up after like 9 rounds of chronicling screenshots of it going boosting my units every turn, but if you need proof i can link the full screenshots of the combat log so you can see it constantly out there without needing to cast more/recast it) is a bit absurd.

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    4. Compared versions and we have the same stated version, so I triple-checked Gizmo, and it's 25 at Level 3 for me too. Not sure if it got patched since I wrote this or if I just got thrown by the unusual quality of only the third level changing the Mana cost, which is weird. Whatever the reason, I'm going to be updating the post.

      My experience is Gizmo is pretty obsessive about targeting enemies and has fairly high Initiative, though.

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    5. *never mind the Initiative thing, I was thinking of some other autonomous widget in this series. The 'overall prefers targeting enemies' thing is absolutely true, though... never been able to figure out what causes it to not do so.

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  3. Good job rechecking and solving the issue! When you wrote "because Gizmo's numbers here are correct for me" does that mean u checked and somehow it showed 20, or do you mean more along the lines of 'i remember it being 20'. Basically what made it "correct"? I ask solely to know if you verified before writing that, because if say you didn't, it might be better in the future to assume if i point out a slight disparity in costs or the like that I'm not making things up. One option is i can just immediately provide the screenshots, but it seems reasonable to just assume that I'm not randomly making up numbers from whole cloth and i shouldn't really need to have to post a screenshot of a spell's mana cost without you taking my word for it (if you had checked your version and it showed 20, then it would make sense for me to share a screenshot showing it at 25).

    Perhaps at some point the mana cost was lower, or more likely as you suggested you just got thrown off by the unusual cost of tier 1 and 2 sharing the same cost and just had it stick internally that tier 3 was the same cost of 20. A totally reasonable minor mishap if so, happens to all of us.

    In the gizmo entry "so long as it doesn't randomly decide to waste time healing one of your units" this doesn't really ring true, atleast for the level 3 version, since it granting an action point means it's rarely every a complete waste (even if one doesn't need a heal+debuff removal), and it should frequently be a second turn (pretty much guaranteed on ranged units, units in melee already or that can generate extra action points from things like Run/Ogre Rage/Potion of Rage etc or even with the help of a mana accelerator or a spell like teleport etc to be able to get into combat, can also leverage the extra action point for an additional relevant action. Casters like Shaman and the like can also make use of the action point).

    "The 'overall prefers targeting enemies' thing is absolutely true" - It's hard to guarantee what it does, but for me overall it's been helpful to manipulate it by placement. Let's say you cast it on your side of the field and the enemy is stuck on their side, it's not gonna just waltz across the entire battlefield (it has a limited "movement" radius which other aerial targetting things also share), and it will very likely hook up with one of your (likely ranged) units atleast initially. Even if it only hits up your units once or twice though before ultimately zapping the enemy 3 times, it's still very worthwhile to mention in the Entry that the 3 charges ONLY get used up when it attacks, and each heal/fit of energy doesn't reduce it's duration (hence it will very often be on the battlefield for longer than 3 rounds, and potentially the entire battle even if it goes long. From my observations that's a pretty common occurrence, and it seems pretty willing to get a big juicy heal on a tier 5 unit and grant it an extra action, which is frequently more relevant than even it's respectable damage on a Mage).

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    1. My experience is Gizmo is perfectly happy to waste multiple turns wandering over to the enemy instead of healing your guys. My original defeat of Baal ended up with me throwing out tons of Gizmos because they're so ludicrously lethal and aren't resisted by him, and I started out actively dropping them atop my units or my buddy's units before giving up on that because they were so consistent about wandering off toward Baal. Even when one was sitting on Baal so the others couldn't get to him, if there were no other enemies to zap they'd often just... move toward Baal and end turn.

      The Baal fight was particularly egregious -I suspect Bosses are internally tagged to be a higher priority than other targets somehow, because a lot of things prioritize them like this- but even in regular fights trying to drop Gizmos on my units normally lead to them wasting turns flying to the enemy. They're so absurdly powerful I still found them worth casting in a lot of fights, but I eventually gave up and just defaulted to dropping them toward the middle of the battlefield so they waste fewer turns whatever they pick... and they still would sometimes do stuff like zap an enemy twice and then spend multiple turns flying to my ranged line to heal them, never mind that none of my ranged units were injured.

      I've also absolutely seen them provide a heal and leave, and in fact my own experience is that if they dropped a heal at all it was usually on the turn they bailed. If they have a bug in regards to using charges on heals, it's not as simple as 'they don't use charges on heals'.

      By 'it was correct', in this case I meant I have a particularly high confidence in the accuracy of what I wrote for Spells that are not repeats from The Legend -my process for getting the info written down has a lot more potential for me to mistakenly think I updated a repeat Spell when I actually didn't than with a novel Spell (As well as to miss new edge-case behavior), and in this case I know for a fact I did spam Gizmo with Higher Magic. (It's the entire basis of my original win against Baal) At this point I'm guessing I didn't notice the higher cost at Level 3 simply because it's such a bizarre pattern-break (Though in the context of 'three Fits of Energy for one cast' it's honestly probably under-priced), but it's been literally years and it's frustratingly difficult to find clear documentation on the patch history of these games so I'm not willing to assume it was always 25.

      (It's also possible I pulled its costs from the config file and then didn't notice the game failing to completely line up; Crossworlds is the game I've run into this kind of inconsistency the most)

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  4. Part 1/2

    I hear you. Haven't fought baal yet in this run, but when using Gizmo against bosses it has been a fit of energy on a stick for me. Here is one example with an Archmage versus Frog, note his second shot with guaranteed crit will get boosted by favorite enemy so it will do over 4500 damage guaranteed, which is a bit more than if gizmo targeted the boss - i.imgur.com/zPHCZkd.png

    It didn't ever target the frog in the ~4 rounds it took for me, just kept on Fit of Energy and healing for me, but perhaps against Baal it's different or its due to army comp or positioning of the Gizmo.

    "lead to them wasting turns flying to the enemy." You mean just traveling (And not reaching the enemy) and having done nothing for the turn? I have never ever seen that in CW, albeit i have only casted gizmo a few dozen times this run and it's only been on the battlefield for a bit over 100 rounds, so perhaps it can do literally nothing (eh seems extremely rare as long as it can reach something, friend or foe. The other KB’s Gizmo i remember wasting its turn though). If by "waste" you just meant that it damages the enemy, well that's not a waste. Regardless of if it focuses on the enemy or your units for its turn, and it's quite powerful and impressive.

    "dropping them toward the middle of the battlefield so they waste fewer turns whatever they pick" Oh so you literally mean wasting turns. Well i almost always cast it on my side of the battlefield (i don't really care about the damage although its nice, i like the Fit of Energy+Heal more for my army. Getting more rune mage procs at Sheep are nice, archmage doing 5-10k damage in Trance to any non-magic resistant units/prodigal defense units beats the damage of gizmo even on a powerful mage with respectable Int, and keeping dragons healthy is nice as well) and as i said i have literally never seen it miss/waste a turn. Weird how we have different experiences with things.

    "then spend multiple turns flying to my ranged line to heal them, never mind that none of my ranged units were injured." Well if it targetetted your ranged units that would be a great thing at level 3 gizmo due to fit of energy. Not certain why this part of the equation is deemed an issue on your end. I would advocate for stronger praise of the Fit of Energy aspect in the analysis, since for any non-mage class the damage from gizmo will pale in comparison to the 5 digit damage from strong competent ranged units (in particular a Goblin can really get mileage out Zeroing In attack boosts and potential Unstoppable procs from the Fit of Energy aspect). Even as a mage my Archmages outdamage Gizmo when they get a second turn, and Archmages aren't typically known for their damage (unless one knows how to boost them properly). I feel like you aren't giving proper credit to how insanely powerful the extra action point on a "stick" aspect of Gizmo is.

    "I've also absolutely seen them provide a heal and leave" Look i can share screenshots of entire battles (9 rounds) where they are healing and granting action points the entire time without disappearing. I have them saved, but I know evidence won't persuade you. If I had to guess you are conflating the other Gizmo from other KB games which uses a charge even when healing and then disappears. I'm telling you that in CW Gizmo doesn't disappear after Healing/Fit of Energy.

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    1. Having difficulty posting my second part of the comment, perhaps due to imgur links (but they have posted before with no issue).

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    2. Lets try to see if dividing things helps-
      Part 2 of now 3

      I'll showcase one example of this behavior even though it's probably futile-
      Versus the Champion, it used two of its initial charges as attacks on enemy units (so the PERFECT illustration, can't script this evidence better). It then until round 9 (when i grew bored confirming it never leaves since I wasn't gonna wait till round 100 when it likely wont persuade you anyways) constantly was Emergency Resucciating for heal+fit of energy. Here is the combat log from round 2 and on when it was used-
      i.imgur.com/OCAhEYZ.png
      i.imgur.com/vrOaf2R.png
      i.imgur.com/qSjWLwt.png
      i.imgur.com/tmDyS3F.png this one features fit of energy on an archmage that already used its turn
      i.imgur.com/6JLr0nw.png this one also feature fit of energy on an infernal dragon that defended
      i.imgur.com/VYLUxjK.png

      This kept repeating till I was satisfied that it lasted forever and on round 9 ended the battle. If you need more battles as evidence I can, to show it's not a fluke, but i'm not convinced empirical evidence can sway you. Hopefully my fears are unfounded and you will take my proof and testing more seriously though.

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    3. Ok that worked thankfully, now the rest
      Part 3 of 3 now

      "I have a particularly high confidence in the accuracy" perhaps that level of confidence is slightly overblown. This isn't the first time you have been off. I have a perfect track record in regards to testing/making definitive factual statements on objective metrics (i.e mana costs and the like, things that aren't disputable), yet despite that it's as if our positions are reversed. It would be nice if you gave me a tiny bit more credit. I know my KB, and i know how to test/document things.

      "I did spam Gizmo with Higher Magic. (It's the entire basis of my original win against Baal")- One option is it was Gizmo level 2 that fit into Higher Magic. The other is that it was so many years ago that it was an early version where gizmo level 3 was 20 mana (not impossible, but the last patch was well over a decade ago I believe.. So unless your notes were from 2010, AND gizmo level 3 was 20 mana at one point (looking through patch notes I can find i dont see anything about Gizmo cost changing), i'd say it's much more likely that you are misremembering).

      "at this point I'm guessing I didn't notice the higher cost at Level 3" Ok so we are on the same page. I think this is the most likely case. Not a big deal ofcourse, we are all human, but the error was on your end (Even if somehow the cost was at one point 20 mana, the error was still on your end when you gainsaid me reporting to you that it was 25 mana. That was an unforced error that shouldn’t happen again in the future. Worst case scenario say something like “oh i thought it was 20 at one point, i’ll confirm that its 25 as you said. Don’t pull out the “and suggests there's actual version differences, because Gizmo's numbers here are correct for me.” which leads us off of the rails and wastes time).

      "Though in the context of 'three Fits of Energy for one cast' it's honestly probably under-priced" It's not "three", it's infinite (until/unless it uses a total of 3 attack charge on an enemy). If i ever see it not be infinite with it's "emergency resuscitate" i'll update though.

      "but it's been literally years and it's frustratingly difficult to find clear documentation on the patch history of these game" Yeh from the little patch notes i could find i didn't see a mention of gizmo. Wish it was easier to access the full patch notes since release. Can't rule out that its cost was 20 at one point though, but i'm skeptical tbh.

      "It's also possible I pulled its costs from the config file" This is a possibility as well yes.

      Regardless, the takeaway should be that when I comment about the cost of something or other factual, non-debatable things, you should trust me a bit more. I'm not making shit up randomly, and it would save time (by all means do a quick check/test in game of something like the mana cost or that magic armor is working as i said it does, but the assumption should be "Slick is all but surely correct"). If we should have disagreements it should be on the analytic merits of things (i.e initiative importance, unit strength/viability, spell’s usefulness etc), not on factual things that I am extremely rigorous with in my testing and should be trusted on (trust but verify). I respect and appreciate your work. It would be nice if you reciprocated even a tiny bit. I do enjoy messaging with you regarding KB, but let’s not repeat this too much on a basic thing like the mana cost of something which I’ll always be correct on.

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  5. It's probably worth mentioning that Dragon Slayer (and i presume Demon Slayer but have yet to test) actually boost Talent damage as well, despite the game claiming it's just base attacks. This makes them (quite a bit) better at Mass version than one would expect, where against armies of say all Dragons it's an extremely potent spell. Here are screenshots showcasing the (large) damage boost-
    Rune Mage Destruction w/o Dragon Slayer- i.imgur.com/hD1Iyv4.png
    Rune Mage Desrtuction with Dragon Slayer- i.imgur.com/1JnpuZ1.png
    Goblin Shaman Astral Nuke w/o Dragon Slayer- i.imgur.com/l1AdyLr.png
    Goblin Shaman Astral Nukes damage in combat log with Dragon Slayer- i.imgur.com/JtWJwTe.png

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  6. Anger Management is the Russian name of the spell. And yes, it's better than English one.
    Rage-to-mana conversion rate scales with INT. You make it sound as if it's fixed.

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    1. Checking my files, it seems like it very weakly scales the Mana payout? Like, I've got a Mage with over 40 Intellect who gets 30 Mana instead of 25 out of the Level 3 version. It looks like it's hard-capped to me, too. I'll update the post soon-ish, maybe after doing some more testing, but it doesn't seem terribly important in practice...

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    2. It should be +1% per point of INT. No cap.
      My mage with 63 INT get 41 mana with level 3 spell.

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    4. Your result is strangely low - with 40 int you should get 35 mana.

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  7. Alright, question about Life Light's scroll being very costly is propably rhetorical in your case, but I still write for someone who may not know it:
    Spells have innate!level. This is separate from upgrade levels of 1/2/3. Innate!levels are like spell levels in most Tabletop/Strategy games/RPG - like "Magic Missile is level 1 spell, Fireball is level 3" in D&D or any videogame based on it. Innate!levels go from 1 to 5 with scroll costs raising accordingly. I know that a lot of people had no idea about it and were puzzled, fo example, by a Darkside quest that requires to bring "X scrolls of any level 5 spells".
    Life Light has innate!level of 5, thus it costs so much.

    Summon Phoenix crystal cost is 10/15/20. It was increased in Crossworlds.
    Phoenix' Firestorm Burn chance is now 70%/85%/100% and will remain the same in later games.
    Tears of the Phoenix can be used on damaged stack or dead one (with corpse being present). It won't work on Undead, inorganic, Plants, Demons or Magic Immune creatures. Tears heal/ressurect for one third of Phoenix own hp, rounding down. So 264 for unmodified Ancient Phoenix.

    Avenging Angel is a lightning spell and thus is empowered by items like Archmage Staff or Lightning Axe. This may be obvious to you but I saw people thinking that such items only work of the 'Lightning' spell specifically.

    Earth Blades ignore Magic Immunity.

    Gizmo too ignores Magic Immunity. It has initiative of 1, just like Lina's version in the Legend.
    Gizmo shoudn't try heal if it's completely useless. When you had Gizmo heal a full hp unit - maybe it just wanted to grant and Action Point? It will consider "healing" worthwhile in this case.

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    1. I'd guessed the innate level mechanic (In part because of the Dark Side Quest, in part because The Legend has one of its first shops blatantly pick a Level 5 Scroll at random to include in its stock), but yeah the question is rhetorical in this case -or more precisely would be most accurately formulated as 'why did the devs think Life Light *deserved* to be Level 5?'

      Incorporated almost everything -I want to double-check Earth Blades ignoring Spell Immunity first, and can't get to that just yet.

      I've had Gizmo 'heal' a unit that was Waiting, hadn't moved, had no injuries, and got no action point from the heal. I've also had it fly across the battlefield when my entire force was at full health and everything was Waiting, instead of zapping an enemy. Its behavior is really janky.

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    2. Gizmo does have weirdly behavior, true. In theory it should be only because it uses random to chose it's current target among possible ones. Friendly unit that have full health and won't get any benefit from it's other effects shoudn't be considered a possible target. Again, in theory. Through it being buggy won't surprise me at all. Code for a lot of Crossworlds new stuff is rather sloppy and sometimes murky. The sloppiest in the series IMO.

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    3. Through your words about Gizmo hint showing lower-than-it-is damage are weird. To me it shows correct numbers (unlike Stone Rain).

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    4. It's the Spellbook that mis-predicts in specific. Hovering over a unit will give the correct numbers. Unless you mean the Spellbook also gives the correct numbers for you. And I'm using the GoG version; I dunno if it matters for Armored Princess in specific, but I know for a fact The Legend has some GoG-specific bugs, so I wouldn't be surprised if that carries forward to later games. (Now that I think about it, this might be why you can't confirm the Spikes behavior)

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    5. Yes, for me spellbook numbers and the expected damage when hovering over a unit are same.

      I'm curious - what GoG specific bugs the Legend have?

      It may be interesting to compare some files but you'll need to send them to me first. If you want.

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    6. The big GoG-specific The Legend bug is that some computers will, if using the latest patch, be unable to interact with clickables on Kordar's surface maps (So no buying from shops, no getting Reaper and Lina, no starting/resolving Quests involving Kordar's surface maps, etc), to the point that GoG has an earlier version of the executable available for download. (Because this earlier version of the executable doesn't have this issue) It's a pretty serious bug!

      I'm not sure how we'd go about doing that, but I'd be open to trying.

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    7. For looking into possible Spikes difference I need 'addon_unit_features.lua' .
      For Gizmo - 'new_spells.lua'
      Both are in game directory/sessions/orcs.

      Some random info - in Crossworlds devs tried to make hint on hovering over unit to show damage for secondary target (for Dragons, Gorguls and the like). They failed because the game fails to understand direction of attack before it's made.

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    8. Alright, finally confirmed Earth Blades ignoring Spell immunity, so now I just need to set aside some time to figure out extracting the lua files an uploading them somewhere.

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    9. I haven't gotten to this stuff but I have run into another case of Spikes behaving in a clearly unintended way; a Totem of Death zapping a Brontor from beside it triggers a Spikes retaliation! It's surprisingly easy to test, too, as a Burrowed Brontor is perfectly happy to stay Burrowed with a Totem adjacent to it, where with a proper unit being next to them they more or less always unburrow.

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    10. Well, it may look silly, but it's exactly as it should work code-wise.
      I guess I never properly explained distance check in the Lizardmen comments (I thought the context kinda did it for me) - it just checks if the attacker is on a neighboring tile.
      In totem's case:
      Brontor is attacked - check.
      Brontor can't retaliate - check.
      Is it on a neighboring tile - yes, check.

      So unless Totem attack is specifically tagged for "not trggering spikes", it should trigger them. A vulcano should trigger it too.
      Again, it's pretty silly logic-wise, but it's an example of "devs didn't thought about all possible in-game situations", not a bug in the strict sense.
      Now, Dragon breath or Gorgul spear triggering Spikes at range would be a bug as it would contradict range check. I still can't trigger it through.

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    11. A new impressively weird Spikes jank I just ran into: I had Ball Lightning zap a Burrowed Brontor, vanish, and then the Brontor's Spikes 'retaliated' against an adjacent Gorguana stack -not my stack, but a stack friendly to the Brontor stack! I assume this has something to do with Ball Lightning being an untargetable unit, but yikes.

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    12. Ouch.
      I believe there are (or were in earlier versions) other occasional bugs with untargetable units and retargeting.

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