Mage Starter Build

We will be using Clones of Arcane Missile to clear the entire campaign story.

Slorm Allocation Sequence

Slorm is the green currency shown on the bottom right of your screen. It is used for upgrading the skill upgrades and ancestral legacy nodes. You can gain slorm by killing enemies.

• Remnant Copycat (Arcane Missile) 1/1
• Remnants Wingman (Arcane Missile) 10/10
• Arcanic Delegation (Arcane Missile) 1/1
• Arcane Funding (Arcane Missile) 1/10 + Refund Remnant Copycat (Arcane Missile)
• Mana Protection (Arcane Commander) 1/10
• Air Conditioner (Ancestral Legacy) 1/10
• Arcane Chieftain (Arcane Commander) 1/1
• Arcane King (Arcane Commander) 1/1
• Raw Boost (Ancestral Legacy) 10/10
• Pain Weaver (Ancestral Legacy) 10/10
• Raw Lock (Ancestral Legacy) 10/10 + Refund Raw Boost (Ancestral Legacy) + Refund Pain Weaver (Ancestral Legacy)
• Remnant Lock (Arcane Missile) 10/10
• Not So Lost (Arcane Missile) 1/1
• Mana Protection (Arcane Commander) 10/10
• Shaman’s Herald (Ancestral Legacy) 10/10

Primary Skill

Use Arcane Missile.

Upgrade Remnant Copycat to Rank 1 and equip it. Arcane Missile will now fire a remnant (copy) that deals 50% damage.

Upgrade Conflux to Max Rank and equip it. This increases the damage of our Arcane Missile. Unlocking and equipping this more than doubles our damage. Don’t forget to upgrade Conflux whenever you have enough Slorm.

Upgrade Arcanic Delegation to Max Rank and equip it. This turns our Arcane Missile into a Clone skill. We can now place a clone near enemies and the clone will automatically cast Arcane Missiles at the nearest enemy. You can now focus on positioning, dodging or looting without having to stop to cast skills for dps. If you do not have enough Slorm, rank down Conflux to refund some Slorm and upgrade this first.
Downgrade Remnant Copycat to Rank 0. Upgrade Arcane Funding to Rank 1 only and equip it. After this, we can cast our Arcane Missiles even at low mana. This means that we do not have to care about mana sustain! You can re-summon your clone whenever you like for better positioning as we do not have to care about mana cost anymore.
Downgrade Conflux to Rank 0. Upgrade Remnants Wingmen to Max Rank and equip it. This gives us better clear. This is in preparation for the second chapter which will have more monsters. Feel free to swap between Conflux and Remnants Wingmen for Bosses and Breaches.

Do not upgrade or equip any Tier 4 (Fourth Row) upgrade. Remnant Lock is good but we do not have the spare Slorm for it. Follow the Slorm Priority Section and upgrade this accordingly.

Upgrade Not So Lost to Rank 1 only and equip it. Some aoe damage.

Secondary Skill

At level 3, we unlock Ray of Obliteration. It is automatically equipped in the secondary skill slot.
The secondary skill slot is free, you can use it to level the mastery of the skill of the end game build you will be using after you have finished the campaign. We will not be casting the secondary skill.

Support Skill

At level 10, we unlock Specialisations.
Equip Arcane Commander (Arcane Barrier). We won’t be casting the support skill. We only want the passives granted by this specialisation.

Do not upgrade or equip any Tier 1 (First Row) upgrade.

Do not upgrade or equip any Tier 2 (Second Row) upgrade.

Do not upgrade or equip any Tier 3 (Third Row) upgrade.

Do not upgrade or equip any Tier 4 (Fourth Row) upgrade.

Upgrade Mana Protection to Rank 1 only and equip it. Together with Toughness 15, this means that Max Mana will give additional Armour, which in turn gives additional Elemental Resistance. Only upgrade this when you have spare Slorm.

Upgrade Arcane Chieftain to Max Rank and equip it. We can now place 2 clones! Double the damage!

Do not upgrade or equip any Tier 7 (Seventh Row) upgrade.

Upgrade Arcane King to Max Rank and equip it. We can now place 3 clones! Triple the damage!

Ancestral Legacy

After The Graveyard 9, you will unlock Adam Nostrus. Speak to Adam Nostrus to receive your First Ancestral Stone.
Allocate Air Conditioner and upgrade it to Rank 1 only. Turn it on for bonus defence. We are not using air conditioner for the defence it provides, we are using it to lock our mana for more raw damage with our fourth ancestral stone.

After The Graveyard 14, you will receive your Second Ancestral Stone.
Allocate Raw Boost and upgrade it to Max Rank. This is temporary, spend your extra Slorm here. Refund Slorm from it to upgrade skill upgrades if you have to.

After The Prison 12, you will receive your Third Ancestral Stone.
Allocate Pain Weaver and upgrade it to Max Rank. This is also temporary, after fully upgrading Raw Boost, spend your extra Slorm here. Refund Slorm from it to upgrade skill upgrades if you have to. If you have extra Slorm after fully upgrading Pain Weaver, go upgrade Mana Protection.

After The Mage Academy 9, you will receive your Fourth Ancestral Stone.
Unallocate Raw Boost and Pain Weaver.
Downgrade Raw Boost and Pain Weaver to Rank 0.
Allocate Neriya’s Shield and do not upgrade it.
Allocate Cold Snap and do not upgrade it.
Allocate Raw Lock and upgrade it to Max Rank. If you do not have enough slorm, refund some from Mana Protection. We are now a mana stacker. Mana gives us additional raw damage, armour and elemental resistance.

After The Luxurious Gardens 9, you will receive your Fifth Ancestral Stone.
Allocate Shaman’s Herald and upgrade it to Max Rank. This increases the damage of our clones (they are considered totems and benefit from totem increased effect) and elemental resistance.

Attributes

First, remove the point from Willpower and add it to Toughness.

Add points to Toughness until it is Rank 15. This provides us with a decent amount of life and defences.

Add all points to Zeal. This provides us with more mana for more damage and defence.

Gear

We are looking for the following mods, in order of priority

• Wear 1 piece of gear with Life Leech. 1 mod is enough.
• Raw Damage & Max Mana. Wear the one with more raw damage.
• Raw Damage
• Max Mana
• % Max Mana
• Armour
• Elemental Resistance

Open your inventory, on the left you will find the character stats. Click on Max Mana, Mana on Hit, Mana Leech and Life Leech to highlight them. Go to the second tab and click on Raw Damage to highlight it.

Keep gear with good Max Mana. Our gear mod priority changes after we get our fourth Ancestral Stone.

Keep the excess gear you find in your inventory, do not throw them. After mission 5, you will unlock Jemma the Storekeeper. From this point on, you can sell your excess gear to Jemma.

You will receive a free legendary ring, Signet Ring of the Mcrippeds, from the Gravekeeper after the third mission. Use it for recovering life until you are able to find a piece of gear with life leech. Once you have life leech, if the legendary ring has trash stats compared to your other rings, salvage the legendary ring at the Blacksmith.

You will receive a free legendary amulet, Pr. Geranium’s Amulet of Stimulation, from Pr. Geranium after you find the first reaper. If it has trash stats compared to your other amulets, just use your other amulets instead and salvage the legendary amulet at the Blacksmith.

After saving Rick, ignore him. We will not reinforce any of our gear for the campaign story chapters. It is not required.

After saving Joana, buy Stash 1 that costs 1000 gold. It is worth it, we can store all the legendary gear in there until we unlock the Blacksmith to salvage them.

After saving Friedrich the Blacksmith, set your filter.
Open your inventory, click on Filter-o-tron at the bottom right. Set Normal, Magic, Rare and Epic items to the following:

With this completed, we no longer need to manually check every gear that drops. It will now only show gear with a highlighted or pure stat, as well as any legendary gear.
From now on, do not sell your excess gear to Jemma. Salvage your excess gear at Friedrich.

Reaper

We are given Adam Nostrus’ Staff at the beginning of the game. For the purpose of this guide, I will be using the default Adam Nostrus’ Staff all the way. As you play through the game, you will find other reapers. You may swap to those or try them out if you prefer. Most of them will likely be better than the default Reaper.

After the campaign

After finishing the campaign, check out the recommended progression path to the end game. This is a good time to start browsing the builds compendium section on discord to look for an end game build to transition into.