Just got to Black Root and I'm playing a pure mage with some persuasion (at 2), focusing on getting spells (STarted with harm, working trough Fireflash and Force) and got Virgil and Sogg. What kind of gear should I go for? Are there any staves or other enchanted stuff? What kind of weapons should I go for the companions?

The higher one's mechanical or magical aptitude will determine how powerful the buff of the gear they use will be, so you generally want to use the type of gear that fits their aptitude, but neutral gear exists.

For a mage, Harm can be your main damage dealing trick. at 100% aptitude, you'll burn through all trash encounters, which paves the way for Quench Life and Disintegrate, which can be your boss killers. the type of magical gear you use will be dependant on size. I prefer the heavier armor the better, if strength and dex allow, but encounters don't last very long at high level. staves exist, but they're more useful in the inventories of your companions (bug, glitch, exploit, working as intended with the Unofficial Patch? idk), since it'll in effect give them spells to use without mana. healing staves in particular can be life savers. for weapons, you can try for ones that give a secondary buff to things you'll find more useful as a caster, since you can forego using melee or ranged physical attacks all together.

for Sogg, there's large magical leather armor that has a 1% chance of showing up at wise women at high level, which you can kind of scum for, or hope you get lucky in a chest. this is also what I used on my half-ogre mage-y type. in general Sogg will use leather armor. there's a handful of suits of armor for size large characters, but they're ridiculously rare and marginally better, so I would not hold my breath. you can give him a healing staff too. he has very high strength, so you can give him the heavy hitter swords. at max level, Sogg has completely neutral aptitude.

for Virgil, I used neutral plate and a high speed sword and a magical shield. with the before mentioned healing staves. his strength doesn't go very high, so pay attention to if he can weild thigns or not. there's an easily but randomly obtained magical axe that gives a bonus to strength, which I found useful early one. at high level, Virgil has magical aptitude, but I don't remember if it's 100% or lower than that or what

you want the dog. he requires no gear and does not count towards your follower limit, tho there are a few rare instances/quirks where people don't like that you have a mutt with you

Sogg, Virgil, and the dog, are my main dudes in any playthrough of mine. I find the rest of the companions pale in comparison. and they're very easily obtained, except for the dog, which starts an unseen time limit once you enter the map he's on.

that's all I can think of. this is NOT OPTIMAL by any means, and the staves trick maaaaay be an exploit, but this is just what has gotten me through the game multiple times, so I can attest it "works" maybe somebody who is more familiar with the inner workings of the gear can chime in

Not much to add to slamdunk's response, except to say that there's plenty of enchanted gear which will work great for your magic-using character. Basically your character will get a percentage of the benefit of the enchantment based on your magical aptitude. If e.g. a sword has enchanted fire damage, with zero or negative aptitude, you won't get any fire damage at all, with a middling aptitude you might get half of the fire damage, and with high aptitude you'll get all of it. If I remember correctly, the percentage of the benefit will be explicitly listed in the item's description in the bottom center panel on the UI. So you'll know how much of the benefit you're getting. The amount of magical aptitude you need to "max out" an enchanted item varies, some can be maxed with a marginal aptitude while others will need you to get all the way to 100 aptitude to get the full benefit.

So there's lots of gear your character can use, which will get better the more magical you get. It's all types of gear too... melee weapons, thrown weapons, bows, robes, armor, etc. So you can pick what fits your playstyle and still have lots of good gear to use. I tend to play tech characters so I kept finding items whose magical properties don't work for me at all, which means I don't remember well enough to suggest specific items to look for. But I hear mages are generally on the easy side to play so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Play the way you want!

Magical staves exist, including ones that will add to your mana pool. This is important if you plan to spam the Harm spell. Bear in mind that staves are two-handed, which means no lantern or shield in your off hand. Of course, the Illuminate and Shield of Force spells exist; so strictly speaking, neither of those items are essential anyway.

Also, stock up on Fatigue potions. Magic burns a lot of mana — and while you can always recuperate it slowly by simply waiting around (or all of it at once by sleeping, if you're outdoors), there are dungeons and other places where doing so is impossible or impractical. Followers can carry your overstock, but you have to trade the items back to yourself to use them.

oh yeah WRT Fatigue: as a mage, Morgana's Tears potions are your BEST FRIEND in a jam. (it's a big fat pink potion) always be on the look out for them in shops. mainly mystics that hang out on the edges of settlements carry them but they have a not very high chance of appearing in stock. you can leave visual range of the mystic, sleep for a day, and see their new stock, but that depends how scummy you want to get

If you want to be really scummy, and if you're playing vanilla Arcanum, max out Meta and Mental colleges.

Also, dungeons like the BMC and the Dredge bcome incredibly easy if you know the full college of Force. I usually Disintegrate golems since they damage my followers weapons.

One final tip: pick up haggle. Its tied to willpower, which make sit a great synergy, and you can make a bit of bank with the loot you get.

FYI, weapons which do not get damaged against golems: metal thrown weapons (chakrams and the like) and all Arcane weapons. Additional protip: Haggle expertise allows you to sell anything to anyone. Not only do you average more gold per haul — although by midgame, you should already have enough to carry you through — but you don't have to run all over town, trying to figure out who will buy what.

Harm is strong (not resisted, only 5 energy) but depends on your MA. Maxing your MA will max the damages of your Harm.
The 2nd college you should consider is Temporal : Hasten will triple your attack speed to cast more Harm per turn.
The 3rd college to consider is Conveyance : Disarm will help you against ranged ennemeies but also help your companions against melee ennemies with weapons. And of course, there's Teleportation.
Force is mainly useful if you build melee+spells (such as Dante, for example).

Use a potion of Fatigue Slower before engaging a combat, this will prevent you from wasting your turn points into drinking morgana's tears.

For the gears, wear whatever you can and help you until you reach lvl 30+.
After lvl 30, squat a wise woman outside of a town (Shrouded Hills, Tarant, Ashbury, Caladon) and buy your Arcane gears : save, advance 1 day, reload until she sells an arcane item.

Sogg has a neutral M/TA, he can be equipped with either tech or magic equipment. As you go pure mage, I recommend you equip him with a Dark Helm to boost his MA and to get a better bonus from magic equipments.

I can not tell for Virgil, I grew tired he could only hit himself so I stuck with Raven and Dante.

Yes, there are many ways to gear a mage so here's my experience :
- the best lategame mage gear are the arcane items (hemlet, weapon, rings, gloves).
The bonus on Arcane gears scale linearly : +1 MA = +1% magick power available. From my experience, 95 MA is enough to get the best out of the arcane items.
- as a pure mage, I would suggest to go for the Arcane Robe (not the traveler one) + 1 arcane ring + dorian amulet. This will give 95% magic resistance (max).
Combo with WP 20 (immune to spells resisted with Willpower) you're now safe from any spell.
- as a pure mage, you shouldn't worry for weapon damages as you've different ways to avoid them : disarm, stun, stasis, flesh to stone or even invisibility so maxing your AC shouldn't be your priority.
You can even avoid to get hit by Stringy Pete's crew with just Dodge 1 (Apprentice) + Shield of Protection + Blur Sight.
- the Staff of Restoration can be a good option to consider : +1 ST, +1 CN, +50% heal rate. The bonus on heal rate allows you to spend less time to wait for your health to recover.
- the dagger of speed is cheap and a good starting choice. Virgil is not the best mage companion. He's human (+0 MA) and learn only 2 colleges (10 spells) for a total of 50 MA max.
Dante is human too but he'll learn only 2 full colleges + necrogood 4 (14 spells) for a total of 70 MA.
Perriman Smythe or Raven are even better mage support companions with 75 MA for Perriman and 65 for Raven at level 50.
A Dark Helm will boost Perriman's MA to 95, meaning he'll get at least 95% bonus from any magic gear you wear him with. I like Sogg too but his neutral aptitude becomes more and more problematic as he levels up, compared to a tech or mage companion.
Lategame, Dante with his 70 MA and st 20 will become a much more efficient tank-porter than Sogg. Dante synergizes also very well with the dog as he'll cast Vitality of Air on him when it's a tough fight.
Raven remains the best mage support by far with dx 21, cn 18, expert bow 5, heal 5, necrogood 5, and 65 MA at level 50. The only issue is that she'll cast Body of Water on herself in any tough fight, rendering her totally useless for this combat. Pyrotechnic axe doesn't get damaged by golems too.

^ some great insights! ^


and I'll be honest: in my most recent playthrough, my main dude was so OP that even having party members at all just marginally slowed down combat a little before I could take care of things myself. maybe I just gravitate to that kind of build.

I know the feeling, I have companions mainly to carry stuff I find in dungeons.
The exception is Sebastian, a tech picklocker with prowling so I can ask him to unlock chests and he doesn't get spotted.

My favorite character is a mage-master throwing with IN 20 (+10% TH), a fated ring (+5% crit), the Azram's Star (+30% TH) and Master of Mental (to spam stun). I start a combat with Hasten and Illuminate (it cancels the low-light penalties) then I stun my ennemy (+XX% TH).
If the opponent has a strong resistance (golems, elementals), I cast Weaken on him.
If it doesn't die (rarely...), dog will finish it.