What Spells do people use?

[Terraziel]

Whilst I realise at this stage of the beta there isn't a huge selection of spells, I am still interested in seeing whether people are actually using the variety of spells.

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4436

This is inspired by that brief discussion, because whilst I'm not going to argue for homogeneity, having spells that are different that nobody uses (because they either hard to use, inefficient or just unnecessary) seems pointless.

So to start with my personal selection of spells (as in the ones I actually use) is limited to Ball Lightning, Energy Pulse, Ride the Lightning and Ice Cross.

To use the Circle of Fire as an example of a spell I discarded as useless, it's harder to aim than Ice Cross, shorter range than either of Ball lightning or Energy Pulse, and generally has insufficient damage to cover the odds of missing.
For a more direct attack example there is Launch Meteor, fun sounding but the same criticisms can be levelled, it has a poor damage-mana ratio anyway but even if it's increased it won't be as useful as Ball lightning or Energy Pulse, due to both range and trajectory.

The low mana-low damage spells are more interesting one, because whilst on the surface useful for destroying small or nearly dead enemies, they do so little damage that the majority of it comes from your character making it a better idea to simply use lower levels of Ball Lightning or Energy Pulse.

[Toll]

The spells I use is Ball Lightning, Ball Lightning, Ball Lightning and Ball Lightning. Except for cutting down trees, when I use Energy Pulse. Odds are Ball Lightning will get nerfed a bit when it comes time for balancing though; right now it's 30 power per magic, which is rather insane. Death Touch has 50 power per magic, as comparison, and Energy Pulse has 16, I think.

[nat_401]

I'm always using Energy Pulse and Ball Lightning for combat, Ball Ligntning for resource gathering, and Ride the Lightning for mobility. I have every spell unlocked and many spells have no use for me, obviously the day/night spells will become useful once the game has grown a bit fatter but I never seem to teleport, all the lighting spells I ignore because they are not emit light scrolls, which make every other source of light obselete, I havent really wanted to pick up scenery yet but I might do once there is more variety out there and using the scenery for defence never seems worth the effort.
I ignore the low mama attack spells for the same reasons as above, low level Energy Pulse and Ball Lighning do the job better, and Death Creep and Launch Meteor cost too much mana for what you get.
Douse Spawn might get used in a boss fight but I havnent needed to use it in one yet, and I just run past the one's outside, I dont use Death Touch to kill spawn points for the same reason.
And lastly I dont use Fire Touch or Death Touch for mining because Energy pulse is already avalible and works from a distance, and I often run through whole wooded area's firing Energy Pulse and single handedly harvesting entire forests to use in my settlements, without once considering stopping and doing it one tree at a time for the hell of it.

Well thats my use of the spells so far, I regularly use 3 spells out of all of them and thats it, if there was element resistance based on what gem the spellgem is made out of that could add to the combat spells a lot and put them all on the table as options and make me prepare more before heading out to fight.

[@B0FH]

I use Death Touch, Ball lightning, Energy Pulse (EXCELLENT for grinding Cedar logs etc), then have a Heal (spell or potion) and platforms linked to 4th and 5th mouse buttons respectively.  After that I don't use a lot due to other spells in the other trays being inaccessable during crunch time.

Though ice Cross and Ring of fire are crafted and used occasionally (mainly for crate destroying when hunkering down to hide in a commodity tower boss room)

[Dizzard]

At the moment I regularly use Energy Pulse and Ice Cross as my main attacks. While I use ride the lightning and occasionally death touch to destroy gem veins.

[KDR_11k]

Ball lightning and death touch as my main combat spells (yes, I'm crazy enough to fight enemies with DT all the time) with energy pulse on a third button when I'm going for maximum firepower against a boss (holding down all three).

[OobleckTheGreen]

Energy Pulse and Creeping Death. I know it's a slow spell, but because of its speed, it's possible for a boss to run thru it a couple times if you fire it at the right angle. What I'm having the most trouble with is UNDERSTANDING how to get new spells. I recently came across two new spell books and acquired fireball and death touch, but I'm guessing I must have to have a gem or something to actually make the spell, and at this point, I don't know which elements are needed, so I'm searching rather blindly.

[zebramatt]

If you go into the crafting interface, you can click each gem - even if you don't have any - to see the available combinations and their results.

Once you've ascertained which gems or ingredients you need, the last sentence in their tooltips in that same interface will tell you where to find them.

[FallingStar]

I use a lot of spells, though my civ level hasn't gotten too high, and I haven't unlocked all the spells . . only about level 13? now on my main world I think.  Ride the lightning is pretty standard.  No ball lightning unlocked, so been using a lot of tidal pulse on bats, a bit of creeping death (a wave of TP and CD melted the old shadow bats and was even pretty good at amoebas or certain ground setups) or ice cross, which was my early mining spell.  Energy pulse replaced fireball as my normal ranged attack recently, though fireball was used for a good bit as I had higher level fire gems so it made it a bit better DPS - I didn't care as much about mana efficiency as I had a lot of mana scrolls early on.  Death touch is my new mining spell that unlocked.  I'll very rarely use a sieze spell to make some marauders a lot easier or a shrink.  The ones I really never use are the light spells, since the scrolls seem universally better (or moon lamps for decor), but I want to try them out to see if there is more of a point in later areas before I call them useless.

I think a part of it is that there are few spells to get ATM, so its easy to roll the more powerful spells easily, and it might be that a few of them are designed to be a more "late game" spell.  So people might tend to use certain things much more than later in the beta/ when the game launches.

Probably more interesting is why people don't use certain things.  Is it all efficiency of damage per mana, or is it DPS?  Utility?  I know I stopped using tidal pulse and Creeping Death a bit in newer builds when speed multipliers increased and the spells couldn't catch the enemies I was attacking.  Death touch stopped being my giant skelebot killer when it started kicking me 50 yards back.

I just wish that if I really loved the look of a certain spell I could get a great gem to craft a high level version of it to make it "better" than the other spells, but realistically you can't get the gem without the higher level, by which time grabbing components for all spells is just as easy . .so the scaling ends up more uniform than being able to focus in one spell like a RPG and putting points down one skill tree - which I normally love doing.   I'm hoping that there's some mechanic later on to do this, but for now its all good.   

[mithrandi]

In terms of "attack" spells, I mostly use Fireball and Energy Pulse for fighting "normal" enemies; for bosses I mostly use Launch Meteor, Energy Pulse, and Fireball, but I'll throw in Creeping Death as well if I have a good chance of connecting with the boss. In general, I find Energy Pulse has the highest utility; the fact that it goes through everything and moves really quickly makes it great for throwing out in a hurry to kill off dragon breath, or take out something nasty that is hard to hit with a slower moving spell.

Other than those, I use Ride the Lightning (obviously) and Death Touch. I don't use Fire Touch anymore, and I have Douse Monster Nest / Ice Cross / Light Snake / Tidal Pulse but don't find them useful at all.

Douse Monster Nest seems particularly useless with the new changes to allow destroying monster nests. Killing a monster nest with Death Touch uses far less mana than Douse Monster Nest unless it's a much higher level nest, and it doesn't have any level cap either (unlike Douse Monster Nest). It's also permanent.

[KDR_11k]

Douse is something you'd likely use more in boss rooms but with the level cap that may not be feasible.

Energy pulse is nice but eats a ton of mana so I reserve it for situations that deserve it (bosses or multiple enemies). Fireball is cheap but underwhelming compared to other spells. Of course ball lightning is way too cheap for its damage output but the launch rock spell is also much better than the FB. Forest rage seems really crappy, single target and bad DPS/DPM.

Best part about Launch Rock is that it's a freebie, you can craft it right from the start.

[Baleyg]

I use Poke of God (er, Death Touch) and Ride the Lightning almost exclusively.  There is no problem that using Death Touch will not solve.

Dragon?  Jump in front of him and poke his eyes.  Death Touch will even clear out the fire breath.
Giant Skelebot?  Poke his knees as he's chasing you.  So long as you don't get whacked too often he probably can't outdamage your potions.
Amoeba?  Wait until it's sitting on the ground and then jump inside!  Poke it from inside until it dies.  (May or may not rely on a bug.)
Bad at using Death Touch?  Using Death Touch exclusively will solve that because you'll get better!

[Professor Paul1290]

I use Ball Lightning and Energy Pulse as well.

I find Ring of Fire useful for catching enemies at odd angles and around corners, which is nice against projectile throwing enemies indoors.

I keep Douse Monster Nest around for boss fights since boss rooms still have monster spawners.

Amoeba?  Wait until it's sitting on the ground and then jump inside!  Poke it from inside until it dies.  (May or may not rely on a bug.)

Has anyone else tried this and does this actually work?

If it does and if it is a bug then I think it should be kept that way. If you can get close enough to the boss amoebas to jump inside them then it would be nice to be rewarded by being able to do a lot of damage.

[Yuugi]

Ring of Fire is amazing for giant skelebots. Each of the little explosions does damage seperately, and you can get a lot of them to hit the skelebot at the same time.

Even a rank I ring of fire can take more than 3k hp off of them in one hit. That is enormous for the amount of MP it takes to cast.

[Misery]

Energy Pulse, Ice Cross, and Creeping Death.

Energy Pulse almost seems TOO useful.  There's other "direct" ranged spells like rock throw or meteor or whatever else, but it's like... why use them when this one is available?
 
Ice Cross is great for when I've got monsters on all sides,

and Creeping Death is something I use against most bosses;  it does monstrous damage and I can keep throwing Pulses behind it for even more.   It's not nearly as hard to hit with as I'd originally thought it was.