I figured that my impressions piece was a bit lacking, so I decided to make a second article focusing on things I’ve picked up in-game and on forums that may be of use to people hoping to beat some goblins into submission.
There’s just one issue I haven’t figured out yet, and that’s figuring out if the game takes screenshots when I press the PrintScreen button.
Anyway, let us move on.
First off, there is no mana to worry about in this game. You can basically fire off spells without worrying about conserving mystical energy, but you have to remember what you’re casting, how you’re casting it, and where you’re pointing that spell at.
The basics:
To cast a spell in the general direction of your mouse, press one of the eight keys that have a spell icon on them: Q for Water, W for Life, E for Shield, R for Cold, A for lightning, S for Arcane, D for Earth, and F for Fire. This will prompt a spell icon below your magician, which can then be cast by right-clicking and will fire where your mouse is positioned.
To cast a spell on yourself, press one of the eight keys to prompt a spell icon, then click your middle mouse button to self-cast. This works best when you cast Life to heal yourself, Fire to remove wet status (WIZARDS DONT SWIM!), and Water to remove flames for your robes.
Instead of firing something in a given direction, you can also create an area of effect (AOE) attack by Shift-Clicking.
Right or Shift clicking without any icons prompted creates a knockback effect (imagine omni-directional farts, basically) that pushes smaller enemies away from you.
Before I forget, if all else fails, you can beat people with melee weapons using Shift+Left Click. 😀
Advanced Knowledge:
You can prompt up to five spell icons in a casting sequence. For instance, you can press A five times for a stronger lightning blast, or use A+S (Lightning plus Arcane) for a lightning laser beam.
There are spell books in game that will teach you special spells to aid you in your journey, but you don’t actually need to get the spell book to cast that spell. If you know the combination of icons that are required to fire off that spell, you can simply press the keys in sequence and activate that spell using the appropriate button, which can be a right or shift click, or the Spacebar. For example (TAKE NOTES!), A+S+F primes the Haste Spell. This spell is actually fired off by pressing Spacebar instead of right-clicking. It’s confusing, I know, but after a couple of minutes of using Haste, you’ll get used to spacebar and right click casting.
Even More Advanced Knowledge:
The people who made this game created a beast of a spellcasting system without explaining that some of the actual spell icons are created by combining OPPOSING elements. Remember what I said above about prompting up to five spell icons? Well, you can press more than five buttons to get five icons.
Take Meteor Shower, for example. Meteor Shower is a special spell that comes with a week-one purchase of Magicka. It is crazy powerful, but casting it is a pain in the butt. This is because to get Meteor Shower to actually get set up, you need to realize that Steam is one of the components of casting the spell. Here’s the secret: Fire and Water create a Steam icon. Meteor Shower is an icon combo of Fire+Earth+Steam+Earth+Fire. Thus, to prompt Meteor Shower, you need to press F+D+F+Q+D+F.
One more special combo from the forums now: Conflagration! Conflagration is composed of Steam+Fire+Steam+Fire+Steam. Imagine Dora the Explorer now, asking you if you know what to press to prompt Conflagration.
THAT’S RIGHT! F+Q+F+F+Q+F+F+Q! You got it right! *hugs you*
Now, take this newfound knowledge and blow some goblin brains out, why don’tcha? Cheers!