Yeah i love getting Malleus, flame strike is sooooo OP. This build just lets me play the game in such a different way, im taking out nodes and dungeons and not worrying about the enemy wizards, well i did banish Oberic cus he was being a douche, but im not wiping him out yet....

I recently realized another possible thing todo with the other 3 picks.

ARCHMAGE Requires 4 picks in 1 realm. This lets you ramp up your casting skill insanely fast as well as giving you +10 right at the outset.

For instance you could do the 2 Life, 2 Chaos and 4 Sorcery Book along with the rest. This would still allow you to get Flight on your artifacts and you need only find 1 more Blue Book to get Magic Immune + Invisible.


You see ArchMage also helps you build up your casting skill faster by increasing the mana you spend by +50%. This allows your skill to go up 50% faster.

This lets you crank out the arti's faster thus gearing up your Heroes faster for conquest.

I really love to use Life Books and Choosing Heroism. This way if you get any caster Heroes you cast it on them asap and keep them at home to help casting/creating your arti's.

Chaos Books are super good for Flaming which gives your weapons +3 Atk more than they normally could have. Also if you start on Arcanus Hell Hounds are very useful for taking nodes that have Phantom Warriors as guards and even neutral towns as most overworld troops only have the 1 hp per unit that gets just annihilated blasted by Fire Breath ;)

Archmage is definitely a solid choice for A/R builds. I usually transmute a small amount of gold into mana right at the start -- just enough to get my first artifact going. From that point I dump all my mana production into casting power for the rest of the game (or at least until I get a power level of 500+, at which point it becomes largely pointless), so getting the 50% bonus is a good thing. You can crank out artifacts that much faster. Since you have all the mana you ever need from breaking things, casting power becomes the limiting factor.

The Heroism trick with Caster heroes is a good tip too. Very useful early on for A/R wizards. Many of the Caster heroes are also Sages, (Zaldron the Sage, for example) which is a bonus.

Really the for like the first 2-3 turns it's much better just to set your slider to mana and crank out a +1 Atk or Def sword which costs you 38 mana and gives back 75.

In the first turns of the getting 100 gold, and maintaining at least that much, is very important for the chance to get a Hero. Wasting it on mana only speeds up your start by 1 turn and slows it down in another area more slightly more important.

I really try to max my chances of getting Zaldron early on as much as possible. Also any hero that shows early with Noble (B'Shan) is auto hire as well. Also up for hire as my first choices are Shuri, Gunthar and Bahgtru (I actually hope for Lucky with him or Blade Master).

I understand that thinking, but I trade the chance to get a hero in turns 2-3 for the quick 75 mana. If you take Alchemy you can repay your gold back over 100 with no penalty. Maybe you miss out on a hero, but the chance is fairly small, and unless it's one of the nobles (most of whom are crappy) you'll be wasting gold on upkeep before you can afford it.

Besides, after the first turn of maximum mana production, you only need to transmute a small amount of gold to get to 38.

Of course it all depends on your starting location. If you've got two crysx crystals in your city, or a bunch of gems and gold, it changes things.

Bit of a misconception here. I always play on Impossible where you only get 25 gold to start with so that small extra 12 mana is nothing really. This is maybe enough to get your first artifact 1 turn sooner which is not enough for me to sacrifice chance of Hero sooner.

Also wanted to add the info I had in my other post to this thread.


When adding to-hit % to a WEAPON it does NOT effect a Heroes Thrown or Breath attack. However on JEWELRY it DOES. This is especially helpful for Gunthar, Bahgtru, Fang and Shalla.

That makes sense.

I now have 2 builds that I have a hard time choosing between.

First is:

Artificer & Runemancer
NODE MASTERY
2 Death Books (Life Drain)
2 Chaos (Hell Hounds)
1 Nature
3 Sorcery (Counter Spell and Confusion or PWarriors)

Second is:

Artificer & Runemancer
ARCHMAGE
2 Death Books (Life Drain)
2 Chaos (Hell Hounds)
4 Sorcery (Counter Spell, Confusion and PWarriors)

I prefer the first because Node Mastery is great to have, plus Nature Books allow the possibility of getting Web & Cracks Call for early tough fights. Especially in Nodes. Also doubling ALL nodes is better than the masteries that only give it to 1 type.

Death in either one could be replaced by Life but Mortu/Ravashack are better than Roland/Elana because of the fact that inherent spells are not there for them and Mortu is better the Roland. (Some can debate that but only with all the Life Buffs, which can be easily dispelled even with Magic Immunity, is Roland any match for Mortu).

Early game Magic Immunity/Invisibility is not usually that vital so you have a lot of time usually to earn that 1 book. Meanwhile your skill is going to sky rocket.

It's to bad I cannot combine them but ArchMage needs 4 books in one and Runemancer needs 2 more books in 2 others for a total of 11 picks along with Artifcer this leaves you without the extra pick you would need for Node Mastery.

It's like choosing between diamonds and rubies.

It's too bad A/R requires two books of three different colors, because it would be interesting to try A/Rs with either no books, or books of all the same color. I find the idea of an A/R with no books particularly intriguing.

Well it would be terribly unbalanced to allow A/R without some sacrifice tbh.

Also recently made a change to the first build I posted above by choosing 2 Nature and 1 Death book instead of the other way around.

Artificer & Runemancer
NODE MASTERY
1 Death Book*
2 Chaos (Hell Hounds)
2 Nature (Web)
3 Sorcery (Counter Spell and Confusion or PWarriors)

The real upside to this is you can get access to the Rare Nature Spells over the Rare Death Spells, which are a bit less useful sadly imho. This is especially helpful if you happen to have an opponent who got 11 Nature Books as you can trade them for Gorgons as soon as you meet them.

Also it's sometimes not obvious which spells the computer gets off the bat unless you have experimented with 2-11 book picks to see the progression like I have. For example Chaos wizards get as their starting spells, Fire Bolt @ 2 Books and Fire Elemental @3. Check out my Spell Book discount thread for full info here going to add it there.

Anyway the point of this is to be able to choose spells either higher up in Research costs or usefulness for yourself. You rarely want the ones the computer will pick by default. An example is that for it's last common pick at 10 books the computer in Nature magic chooses Earth to Mud, that only take 20 points to research, over Earth Lore that takes 250.

That is interesting. It would be nice if there were a way to shuffle what the computer picks for itself.

I don't think the AI needs Earth Lore, though, because I believe it can see the whole map at all times, or at least it can detect vacant nodes anywhere. I've used that to dupe it into wasting resources. Crack a node somewhere and the computer wizards will start sending magic spirits toward it. You can kill them as they arrive and it will keep sending more.

This is an old post but I just thought I would mention web works on magic immune ,it's only incorporeal creatures it does not work on.
Sky Drakes can be webbed.
Wraithform is the only spell I know of that can counter web

I actually corrected that point in another thread but forgot to correct it here in this one so sorry about that.
The major problem then using it in Node fights is that it has a really low chance of beating the dispelling aura without Node Mastery. It only has a 16.33% chance to get through, that's basically a 1 in 6 chance to successfully cast.

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Sorcery_Node#Sorcery_Node_Dispelling_Aura

It also led me to making a thread about what spells CAN hit/effect Magic Immunes as well. Check it out let me know what you think.

Magic Immunity Doesn't Stop Everything!!!
http://www.gog.com/forum/master_of_magic/magic_immunity_doesnt_stop_everything

I still love Entangle for large swarms of sky drakes. It makes them much easier to manage.

It's also really good for nasty Nature node guardians like basilisks and leviathans. Slowing them down gives you plenty of time to chip away at them. Also, units with only 1 movement point to start with are immobilized until the end of combat, which often takes care of any supporting monsters.