Hi guys, I’ve just recently reached lvl 200 (right before the x2 exp event T T) with the ranking around 60 in Gabija with my wizard (mostly solo all the way through) so I just want to share my experience + information + tips that I found during the beta. By the way, in the past I did some calculations on pyromancer’s skill damage, [Calculations] Pyromancer's skill damage. It’s a bit outdated but I will update this calculations soon!
Considering I have work from 9 am to 7-8 pm everyday and a girlfriend who doesn’t like me playing video game, I think my rate is not too bad. My laptop cannot handle demon prison 2 very well so I didn’t farm there “AT ALL”, so people who said that there is the only place to farm should reconsider!
As a prove that I soloed all the way from 150 to 165 without needing to go to Demon Prison 2 
Here is my solo wizard build centred around pyromancer : Wiz (c1) - Pyro (c1) - Pyro (c2) - Linker (c1) - Thauma (c1) - Necro (c1). The build is best for solo grinding and bossing, quite good for small group party but quite underperformed in a big party.
Since the guide is going to be quite long, please find what you want to read by this index :
1. Pros & Cons
2. Stats
3. Classes & Skills
3.1 Wizard c1
3.2 Pyromancer c1
3.3 Pyromancer c2
3.4 Linker c1
3.5 Thaumaturge c1
3.6 Necromancer c1
4. Play style & Combos
5. Equipments
By the way, please understand that these guild is purely my objective so it is completely fine if you disagree at some point. Anyway, let’s start!
.
1) Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Super easy for solo levelling : high damage, sustainable, good cc, doubling exp.
- You will be very rich with this build; 1 M is so easy to obtain
- Boss killer!
- AFK farm possible
- Quite strong in PvP
Cons:
- Significantly weaker with fire resistant mobs.
- Weak against archer/mage elites (non elites are fine).
- You will wish hangman last a bit longer.
- Quite weak in big party, your fire ball get pushed around. Also with linker c1 your link is not quite big enough.
.
2) Stats
I went with Con : Int = 1 : 4 ; You can have more Con if you want but I do not recommend anymore Int. I’m actually experimenting on full Con + shield for a tanky mage, will see how it goes.
Con is good for max HP. HP regen is negligible and you will need to constantly drink HP potions with this build (they are so cheap and you are sooo rich anyway). If you never put any point in Cons before, you should. The difference between 4k HP and 10k HP is massive!
Int is only good for early game auto attacks and very very late game (c6++) where the 10% bonus starts to kick in. Anyone who says no Int = no damage probably never played a high level wizard before. Due to additive damage formula, it is much better to get Matk from equipments + buffs rather than Int.
In my opinion, they should make skill damage increase “MORE” with Int, for example:
Earthquake lvl 1 skill damage = Matk + 112 change to Matk + 100 + (0.2 x Int)
Earthquake lvl 2 skill damage = Matk + 139 change to Matk + 130 + (0.4 x Int)
Earthquake lvl 15 skill damage = Matk + 501 change to Matk + 370 + (3 x Int)
Spr is good for max SP and SP regen, this build requires at least 200 SP regen to be effective. It also give a nice synergy with reflect shield, a very underrated skill. Extra magic defence is also nice too!! However, at lvl 200 you have access to many +SP recovery items and super OP lvl 5 SP potions and your SP problem is gone from that moment.
When you start with wizard, go for Int since we don’t have any spamable skills and going to rely on auto attacks a lot. Once you have a good staff, bonus Matk from Int becomes negligible so you should start on Spr for skill spamming. You can add Cons whenever you feel like you are too squishy. Once you think you have enough survivability and good SP sustainability then just put the rest of points into Int. Make sure you get a bonus point before stop increasing each stats!!
.
3. Skills
I will use some scales 1 to 5
Damage means overall maximum damage the skill can be done (5 = Frost cloud, 1 = Flare)
Burst means how fast damage it can be done (5 = Seism, 1 = Death sentence)
AoE means how wide the skill is (5 = Frost pillar, 1 = Poison needle)
Cast time means cast time including animation time as well. (5 = Oblique shot, 1 = Meteor)
Utility means how useful the skill is excluding it’s damage (5 = Heal, 1 = Ice blast)
Scaling means how much the skill’s effective scales when you level them (5 = Fireball, 1 = Flare)
.
3.1 Wizard (c1)
The most horrible class in the entire game (probably except wizard c2)!! Seriously, I played every other basic classes, even archer with oblique shot spamming is much MUCH better. The skills has no significant scaling. 1 cast of fireball deals way more damage than 3 x energy bolt + earthquake combined with one fifth of the SP cost!! That’s ridiculous!!
Here is my skill choices (in order of leveling)
Energy bolt 1
Earthquake 1
Reflect Shield 5
Lethargy 3
Sleep 5
.
.
Energy Bolt : overall 2/10
Damage : * (at least it has 150% matk scaling)
Burst : ** (no damage = no burst)
AoE : ** (grant a small splash)
Cast time : *** (very fast cast and you are moblie during cast animation, jumping when releasing the bolt cancel the animation as well)
Utility : ** (knock back sometimes useful when kiting)
Scaling : * (Scaling is horrible : the damage increase doesn’t worth SP increase)
Comment : A mediocre at early game (lvl 1 - 10) and “trash” at late game. Doesn’t even worth as a filler skill since auto attack + enchant fire deals about the same damage but no cast time.
.
.
Earthquake : overall 2/10
Damage : *
Burst : **
AoE : ***
Cast time : *** (no cast time but quite long animation delay)
Utility : ** (send enemies flying which sometimes a bad idea. Also BREAK Joint penalty!!)
Scaling : * (Scaling is horrible : the damage increase doesn’t worth SP increase)
Comment : A nice levelling skill at early game (lvl 1 - 20) but “trash” at late game. Probably slightly useful for PvP as a cc.
.
.
Reflect Shield : overall 4/10
Damage : * (reflected damage is actually noticeable especially in PvP)
Burst : *
AoE : **** (About half a screen to hit party member)
Cast time : **** (slight animation delay)
Utility : *** (The shield is very useful for solo, for example, skill lvl 5 with 100 Spr “heal” you 600 HP every cast, that’s nearly 10% of your HP which is significant. Also affects party member is a medium AoE around yourself)
Scaling : ****
.
.
Lethargy : overall 2/10
Damage : -
Burst : -
AoE : **
Cast time : **
Utility : ** (The Atk reduction from skill itself is negligible. The “Hit” damage increase from attribute is not bad but very situational)
Scaling : *
Comment : They need to make it has % reduction otherwise it is going to be useless both early game and late game. May be at max lvl 60% Atk reduction on normal monsters and 15% Atk reduction on bosses.
.
.
Sleep : overall 4/10
Damage : -
Burst : -
AoE : **
Cast time : **
Utility : ***
Scaling : ***
Comment : Mainly a PvP skill. The boost on damage for energy bolt is not going to make a terrible skill becomes not terrible. It also can be used after hangman’s knot to prolong the cc effect and let your summon take care the job.
.
3.2 Pyromancer (c1)
One of the strongest DPS in game on stationery targets (ie. good for theorycrafting but the actual damage is usually only half since things keep moving around). Pyromancer’s skill do not have cast time but usually have a considerable cast delay.
Here is my skill choices (in order of leveling)
Flame ground 1
Fire ball 5
Enchant Fire 5
Flame ground 5 (for Spr focused build) or save skill points (for Int focused build)
.
.
Flame ground : overall 8/10
Damage : *****
Burst : **
AoE : ****
Cast time : *** (no cast time but quite slow animation)
Utility : *
Scaling : ***
Comment : From my experience, flame ground does damage in about 2/3 second interval, for example 25 sec flame ground does 25/0.666 = 37 hits, each hit does about 2k damage for me so roughly 75k damage per cast (150k with joint penalty!!!).
-
The good thing about flame ground is there is no AoE limit, so you can pull the whole area of monster and jump around flame ground to let them slowly get burnt to death.
-
It doesn’t hit flying monsters which are actually a large portion of them.
-
It has a very nice (I would say highest in the game) Damage/SP ratio at lvl 1, so if you have sp problem, just get it to lvl 1 and save points for later level.
-
Make sure that you learn the enhance attribute AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE (I have attribute lvl 75).
.
.
Fire Ball : overall 8/10
Damage : ****
Burst : ***
AoE : **
Cast time : ****
Utility : **
Scaling : ***** (The scale of this skill is insane, maxing it is the only way to go)
Comment : Fire ball has a very interesting mechanic in this game. It creates a ball next to your character and if any monster get close to it, it will explode and deal damage to 2-3 enemies next to it depending on size of monster. The contact range is quite close (nearly on top of the ball) but explosion range is a bit further. The rate of explosion is about 2 times per second.
-
Fire ball can be moved by melee attack, which is really really bad in a party, especially field bosses. There were countless of times that I JP then Hangman a group of mobs then a swordsman came in, pushed my fireball away and kill steal the whole group with me cannot do anything but watch.
-
It is bugged at the moment that when monster is dead, fire ball will continue exploding on for 2 more times on the corpse eating away hit count of the fire ball.
-
Fire ball can be linked by joint penalty making it quite useful for many situations for example, hangman knot a single monster (or a player in PvP).
-
For me it does about 2k per hit which is 20k damage per cast (40k with Joint Penalty)
-
Make sure that you learn the enhance attribute AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE (I have attribute lvl 75)
-
The burn attribute is a pitfall!! Do not learn it, if you already learnt it, switch it off!! It makes CD goes up from 15 sec to 23 sec with additional SP cost. The damage from burn is negligible even with full Int.
.
.
Enchant Fire : overall 5/10
Damage : *
Burst : *
AoE : **
Cast time : ****
Utility : ***
Scaling : **
Comment : I got this to lvl 5 to have duration = cooldown. The mechanic of enchant fire is quite interesting. There are 2 parts of the skill, the 1st part is giving a fire elemental attack which is the same principle as arde dagger ie. +fire damage on every hit of damage (auto attacks, skills, extra hit etc.) you do on the enemy. The amount is very low but if you think of it as +15 fire damage = +15 Int it’s not that bad.
-
The second part is for additional damage on auto attack which seems quite small but can be boosted by +elemental damage. Before casting enchant fire, my auto attack does about 800 damage on lvl 200 mobs. With enchant fire is on, it deals about 820 + 220 damage which is significant boost. It is more useful for buffing party members who rely on auto attack a lot and it becomes crazy with priest’s blessing + sacrament.
-
The -fire resist attribute is quite nice for boss fight. The debuff only last 5 sec so the trick is to cast flame ground + fire pillar + a fire ball first then enchant fire then another fire ball at the end to maximise the boost in damage.
.
.
Fire Wall : overall 4/10
Damage : ***
Burst : ****
AoE : ***
Cast time : **
Utility : *
Scaling : *****
Comment : I am very disappointed with fire wall. The animation and effect is so cool but the damage is quite underwhelming and the casting is too risky. The description of fire wall is quite misleading: many people think that it creates X tiles of walls and each tile deals Y hits of damage but actually the maximum hit is spread through the whole wall so each tile will do about 1-3 hits only.
-
In order to get maximum hit on bosses, you need to manually cast it which requires you to stand near boss for a while which is quite risky.
-
There is no + damage on the skill so each hit deals damage roughly equal to your MAtk (can be boosted by attribute), so it is only useful for high Int build.
.
.
Flare : overall 0/10
Damage : *
Burst : *
AoE : **
Cast time : ****
Utility : *
Scaling : *
Comment : The worst skill ever, like, EVER. I mean, it hit once like energy bolt but no 1.5x scaling so the damage is horrible. The monster needs to be burned (which last 5 sec) and burning attribute on fire ball makes it weaker with +8 sec on CD. Moreover, you need to face the monster to get the damage. OMG! so many conditions but terrible outcome.
.
3.3 Pyromancer (c2) With this choice, your fire ball will becomes more that 2 times stronger. Your flame ground duration will be the same as CD. In addition, you will have one additional boss nuking spell.
Here is my skill choices (in order of leveling)
Fire pillar 1
Fire ball 10
Flame ground 10
Fire pillar 5
.
.
Fire Pillar : overall 6/10
Damage : *****
Burst : ***
AoE : **
Cast time : ***
Utility : *** (for the ridiculously long stun)
Scaling : ***
Comment : Nice damage, nice CC, but with 2 min + 15 sec CD omg!! I know it’s quite OP with the stun but this is slightly too long. May be increase SP cost significantly like 3-5 times but 1 min CD seems more reasonable?
.
3.4 Linker (c1)
One of the most OP class in the game, your damage will increase 2 to 10 times!! If you do not have this on your wizard tree then you gimped yourself a lot. I took this after pyro c2 because of the SP issue. JP + hangman every pack of mobs seems unsustainable at low lvl.
Here is my skill choices (in order of leveling)
Joint Penalty 5
Hangman Knot 5
Physical Link 4
Unbind 1
.
.
Joint Penalty : overall 10/10
Damage : -
Burst : -
AoE : ****
Cast time : ****
Utility : *****
Scaling : *****
Comment : The reason you become linker. There are many people who has misconception about this skill mechanic + AoE so I will explain it here.
-
When you have 2 mobs linked together, if you deal damage on one mob, the other will take damage as well, this is simple.
-
When you have 2 mobs linked together, if you deal damage on both of them at the same time, each of them will take damage TWICE, one is the original and the one from the link. So basically, you do double damage on both of them.
-
Here is a tricky part that many don’t understand: When you have 3 mobs linked together, if you deal damage on all 3 of them at the same time, each of them will take damage 2 times not 3 times, one is the original and the one from the link. So again, you do double damage on 3 of them and this is the case for 4 and 5 mobs as well.
-
Special case : You link 5 mobs (A, B, C, D and E) then fire ball hits 3 mobs (A, B and C), you will do 200% damage on A, B and C, and do 100% damage on D and E. This becomes ridiculous with flame ground and fire pillar where there is no AoE limit.
-
The mechanic of casting the link : it will start the link at the one you selected then spread AROUND THAN MONSTER not the next one it jumps. From my experience, it usually jumps to the one closer to you and that target, so with some practice, you can kind of chose which 5 monsters you want to link by adjust your position and chose the right target to cast.
.
.
Hangman Knot : overall 9/10
Damage : -
Burst : -
AoE : ****
Cast time : ****
Utility : *****
Scaling : *****
Comment : The second reason you become linker.
-
It will pull all linked monsters to the one you are facing and closest to you. The skill fails if you have no monster in front of you.
-
It is treated as a debuff, sometimes monster resisted the pull and 1-2 mobs will run towards you while others rooted together.
-
This is useful for many combos for example with fire ball / fire pillar / swell body.
.
.
Physical Link : overall ?/10 (not enough testing to conclude)
Comment : It could be useful after using transpose for protecting a squishy DPS from getting 1-shotted from bosses, BUT YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE A SUPER GOOD DODGING SKILL YOURSELF otherwise you will be the one killing your friend. Anyway, I haven’t got a chance to use this skill much coz I mostly solo.
Unbind : overall ?/10 (not enough testing to conclude)
.
3.5 Thaumaturge (c1)
After Pyro c2 -> Linker c1, you will be one of the most damaging class during that level and monsters seem to have not enough HP to survive your fireball anymore, so why not double their HP for our easy 2x EXP and loots! The added damage is also a plus on your already high damage skills. And transpose give you such a huge versatility.
Here is my skill choices (in order of leveling)
Swell Body 2
Transpose 1
Swell Left Arm 5
Swell Body 5
Transpose 5
.
.
Swell Body : overall 7/10
Damage : -
Burst : -
AoE : **
Cast time : ****
Utility : *****
Scaling : *****
Comment : A huge EXP boost as well as drops! Your primary targets are things that drop valuable recipes (for silver) and elites (for EXP). It targets 3 mobs at lvl 1, 4 mobs at lvl 2, and 5 mobs at lvl 4 with duration increase of 1 sec per level. It also has 2 charges before going on CD so plan wisely on which group of monster you want to swell.
-
When you swell large size monster (which are usually elites), the EXP and drops are x2 but the HP STAYS THE SAME !!
-
The HP x2 is not from the current HP but it will double its max HP and add the max HP to the current HP. For example, mobs with HP of 200/1000 when got swelled will have 1200/2000 HP instead of 400/2000.
-
The duration is quite short so the key is time your skills well for high HP monsters.
-
The x2 drops are useful for finding materials as well. It is not going to double the drop rate but you will get twice as much of everything that drops from that monster ie. instead of you getting a coin, 1 material and 1 recipe on that monster, you will get 2 coins, 2 materials and 2 recipes instead.
.
.
Transpose : overall 5/10
Damage : -
Burst : -
AoE : -
Cast time : ***** (Instant cast)
Utility : ***
Scaling : **
Comment : A nice utility spell, give you so much versatility.
-
As a high Int mage, when you sit down for bonfire, use transpose to get a huge boost in HP recovery then you can cancel the transpose by right clicking at the buff icon. This greatly reduce the downtime of your grinding a lot.
-
When you fight some bosses the love throwing random spells, transpose will save you from getting 2-shotted (need to find a cleric to heal you after using the skill).
-
If you go high Con, use transpose before summon shoggoth and skeletons because they will use your Int stat on the moment you summon them. Also when you are low on HP, you can transpose to deal more damage.
.
.
Swell Left Arm : overall 6/10
Damage : -
Burst : -
AoE : ***
Cast time : ***** (Instant cast)
Utility : ****
Scaling : ****
Comment : A nice Atk buff for you and party members. With skill lvl 5 and max attributes you get +218 to your MAtk, (mind you, this is the same as you add 218 Int. How does it feel?). This spell is perfect for this build that relies on multi hitting skills (+436 damage on every hit of fire ball, flame ground, fire pillar, flesh hoop, flesh cannon!!!)
-
With this buff you can go full Con and do almost the same damage as the full Int build without the buff.
-
At lvl 5, the duration and CD are the same at 50 sec which is rather short. You will run out of buff during fight a lot of times.
.
.
Shrink Body : overall ?/10 (not enough testing to conclude) I assumed that +140 damage from attributes is not significant enough to justify the time to cast this spell.
.
3.6 Necromancer (c1)
After going Thauma c1, you will find yourself dealing slightly less damage to your level, so time to buff the offensive side!! With Necro, you have a wide variety of damages not only from summons but from other skills as well. Decay debuff is actually very useful at high level when you want to swell monsters as well.
Here is my skill choices (in order of leveling)
Shoggoth 1
Raise Skeletons 5
Flesh Hoop 1
Flesh Cannon 1
Corpse Tower 1
? (I only reached this stage but the plan is)
Shoggoth 2 (for the enlarge attribute)
Flesh Hoop 5
Dirty Pole 1
.
.
Shoggoth : overall 7/10
Damage : ***
Burst : *
AoE : **
Cast time : ****
Utility : ****
Scaling : **
Comment : In order to use this skill you need to insert a mutant boss card into the necromicon. It will summon a green tentacle monster no matter which card you put but the stat varies by each card you use. The more star of the card, the stronger the summon.
-
It is a very tanky summon with over 100k HP. The attack is about 2k with slightly slow attack speed. It has 2 types of attack, one with its tentacles (small AoE) and a green breath (straight line AoE with slightly more damage).
-
The attribute allows it to spread decay for 5 minutes after summoning which will reduce max HP of monsters around it, making it useful for swelling (x2 max HP).
-
Shoggoth doesn’t have duration. As long as it is not dead, it will stay there forever. It also doesn’t need SP for the upkeep so you can AFK farm with this guy.
.
.
Raise Skeletons : overall 7/10
Damage : ****
Burst : ***
AoE : *
Cast time : ****
Utility : **
Scaling : *****
Comment : They are very aggressive summons which deals about 1k damage per attack with moderately fast attack speed. They will look for enemies and go whack their faces straight away.
-
Their HP are quite low, I guess about 10k so they die very quickly. So you need some CC (eg. Hangman/Sleep) to protect them from getting damage.
-
Same as Shoggoth, they don’t have duration. As long as they are not dead, they will stay there forever. they also don’t need SP for the upkeep so you can AFK farm with these guys (very very effectively). I can easily get about 500k per day when I go to bed. (I don’t know is this a lot compared to the “money making” class, ie. alchemist or squire or pardoner)
-
There are so many bugs with this skill. Firstly, the skeletons sometimes stuck (especially at stairs) and you cannot resummon them again if they are not dead. The only way is to change channel which is quite annoying.
-
The even more bothersome bug is when you do quests, they sometimes convert into enemy and start whacking your face, and you can’t really run away from them - they never stop hunting you!! Imagine 1k attack x5 at a time, that hurts!!
.
.
Flesh Hoop : overall 6/10
Damage : ****
Burst : **
AoE : *
Cast time : ****
Utility : **
Scaling : **
Comment : A very underrated skill. People tend to prefer flesh cannon but to me this skill is much easier to land since you are going to get in and cast fire ball near monsters anyway. The good thing is it can be pre casted before the combat start so you don’t need to waste time casting it during combat. At lvl 5 it deals about 12 hits, each hit deals about 2.5k damage, so roughly 30k damage per cast but is not doubled by Joint Penalty due to it being single target. It only consumes 5 corpses too!
.
.
Flesh Cannon : overall 5/10
Damage : ****
Burst : ***
AoE : **
Cast time : **
Utility : *
Scaling : **
Comment : Due to cast time and cast animation, it can only be used effectively in boss fight. Normal monsters are usually dead by the time you finish casting. It also consumes 15 corpses for the damage of roughly the same as flesh hoop. I would imagine this being quite useless in PvP as well while flesh hoop is a good deterrent for melee classes.
.
.
Corpse Tower : overall 5/10
Damage : ***
Burst : **
AoE : *
Cast time : ****
Utility : **
Scaling : ***
Comment : Summon a immobilise monster that shoot missiles dealing poison damage. The attack speed is quite fast but it takes time to change target. This skill is very useful for boss fight since other summons are melee and get destroyed easily by boss AoE.
.
.
Dirty Pole : overall ?/10 (not enough testing to conclude but seems quite useless)
Gather Corpse : overall ?/10 (not enough testing to conclude but seems quite useless)
Disinter : overall ?/10 (not enough testing to conclude but seems quite useless)
.
4) Play style & Combos
For solo grinding, always have our 3 buffs on: Reflect Shield, Enchant Fire, Swell Left Arm. For summons, if you are full Con build then use Transpose first before summon them for higher damage.
.
.
Pre-Necro
- Trash Mobs : Joint Penalty -> Hangman -> Swell Body -> Fire Ball
- Elites : Joint Penalty -> Flame Ground -> Hangman (on the mob that is on Flame ground) -> Swell Body -> Fire Ball -> Jump to a side to avoid attacks (usually hangman debuff wear off around this point) -> second Fire Ball [This is the combo I used for leveling from 140 to 180 and I find that this is the most efficient way to farm elites]
-
Super-duper strong elites : Joint Penalty -> Hangman -> Fire Pillar -> Swell Body -> Flame ground -> Fire Ball x2
-
Quest Boss (solo) : Fire Ball x2 -> Flame Ground -> Fire Pillar -> Fire Ball x2 -> (usually boss is dead now)
-
World Boss : Flame Ground + Fire Pillar + auto attacks (Fire Ball is useless due to too many people attacking the boss)
Compared to a party of 5 people doing Demon District 2 which gives 700 exp each mob so with party bonus of 220% and divide by 5 you will get around 300 exp per mob. However if you solo a group of 5 elites which give 3000 exp each and you swell before kill, you will get 30000 exp per group which is equal to 100 monsters in Demon District 2, how does it sound?
.
.
Post-Necro
-
Trash Mobs : Joint Penalty -> Hangman -> Wait for 0.5 sec before they melt (not enough time to swell body)
-
Elites : Flesh Hoop -> Joint Penalty -> Hangman -> Swell Body -> Fire Ball x2
-
Super-duper strong elites : Same sort of combo with Fire Pillar but even easier with summons
-
Quest Boss (solo) : Same but even easier with summons
-
World Boss : Flame Ground + Fire Pillar + Corpse Tower + Flesh Cannon + auto attacks
-
AFK farm with your Skeletons and Shoggoth! Free money and loots!!
.
5) Equipments
Important ones (rough numbers)
lvl 40 : Ludas Staff (+1 to all fire skills)
lvl 75 : Any rod + Awaken Arde dagger (+ 153 Fire damage + 48 MAtk)
lvl 120 : Awaken Grima Pant (+ 45 Poison Damage)
lvl 170 : Roxona Robe (+20 SP regen) + Wizard Bracelet x2 (+32 Matk each) + The Conquerer (HP, HP regen, SP, SP regen)
I’m still not good with Items so need to get more info. Will update later
.
That’s the end of the guide, feel free to ask me anything. If I don’t know I am happy to test that in game with my character 
Thanks for reading!
