Magicka Tactics

[Mecha]

The game has so many cool combos, that I kinda get a bit lost in how much more potential there is within the spells than what I've already discovered.

Is there anything particularly brilliant any of you would want to share in terms of sweet tactics? I mean i've done hte adventure so i'm just doing challenge mode most of the time now. I find slamming down arcande bombs and telporting out of it can be quite fun. I haven't got any good tactics though, it is kinda just makeshift spell throwing for me to get out of tight spots. I found thunderstorm to be insanely desctructive but i can't stop it from killing me lol. sheild or no sheild. Thing is powerful!

Do many of you use the powers you can place on your sword much? Am I assuming that more people play magicka than originally anticipated? help me out here, let's shareeeeeee

[Dateranoth]

I'm pretty much a random spell slinger myself. I think there is a way to protect yourself from the thunderstorm. Kevin should come across this thread and tell you more. He usually has some pretty good tactivs.

[Kevnvek]

I'm pretty much a random spell slinger myself. I think there is a way to protect yourself from the thunderstorm. Kevin should come across this thread and tell you more. He usually has some pretty good tactivs.

Haha yep, prepare for a wall of tactical text.

Left click, middle click, and right click are referred to as LC, MC, and RC respectively in the following spell combos

Basics

Heal a lot by spamming W MC. Always have a personal shield up with E MC. When you have the shield, W MC heals it instead of your main health. Be very careful to insure that you don't have a healing element in your queue when you put a shield on yourself, or you will put a heal shield on yourself that prevents you from healing. When on fire or wet QE to put yourself out or FE to dry yourself are more effective than QW and FW for fire/water heal, as they can't light you on fire or make you wet if you do it when you don't need it. You can make a shield against most elements, which is more powerful based on how many elements you put in it. So FFFFE MC is the ultimate fire shield

Useful Spell Combos

Ultimate beam: QFSAAA RC. It shoots out a steam/lighting/arcane beam that gets the enemies wet, increasing the damage done by the lightning. It is the most powerful beam, unless a new one is found which is unlikely

Ice Shotgun: SQRQRQRQR RC (hold to charge for more focused spread). My personal favorite. Can shred large enemies and mow down hordes of incoming smaller enemies. The closer you are the more damage it does. That being said it's not as useful in Vietnam where all the enemies stay at long range.

Ice Cannon: DQRQRQRQR RC (chargeable). Shoots out a very sharp rock that does massive damage. Useful for doing heavy, quick damage to a single enemy, especially larger ones. More effective when combined with haste and slow time so you can charge it fully, allowing you to take out the largest enemies in one or two shots. Or you can use it on smaller enemies. Though it's less effective on groups than the shotgun, it's fun to watch goblins explode into gibs.

Rock Shield: DDDDE Shift RC (circle around you), RC (half circle in front of you), Shift LC -> LC (enchant your sword with it and shoot a line of rocks that can help you gain ground). In the main game I didn't use this all that often unless I got overwhelmed or wanted to wall off a dangerous ledge behind me. But in Vietnam it is essential to protect you from gunfire. An effective strategy is to make a pillox out of a rock shield and shoot a powerful beam out of it like QFSAAA

Some Tips for Some Spellbook Spells

Thunderstorm: QFQFASA Space. This will hit whatever is tallest within a certain radius around the player. It is much better than the (essentially useless) Meteor Storm as it actually targets things. The key is to put up a water resistance shield to protect you from the rain with QQQQE MC, and a strong rock shield around you to protect you from the lightning strikes, as the rocks are taller than you. You'll basically be hiding in the shield and putting it up again every couple seconds. The lightning will take care of most larger enemies.

Lightning: QFASA Space. Probably more effective than Thunderstorm (though less showy) as you can somewhat target it and don't need a water shield. If a large enemy is after you, particularly a yeti (which will instantly kill you if they touch you), put up a rock shield around you and spam Lightning. It will take out anything in 2 or 3 hits. This strategy can be used effectively against the final boss if you keep reapplying the rock shield.

Summon Elemental: SEDQFS Space. Arguably the most overpowered spell in the game. There doesn't seem to be a limit to how many you can summon, or if they patched one in it's still pretty high. You can summon an entire army of these guys to fight all of your enemies and draw their aggro. They are statues at first, but come to life when attacked and take on the element that hit them. They do damage of that element, and that element heals them. Their sword swings have a slight AoE effect, so they basically heal eachother when clustered up and attacking the same enemy. And if you want to attack the enemies with them in the way, just use the same element as them so you hurt the enemies and heal the elementals. To summon a large group of them in an Arena or anywhere where you are under attack, make a rock shield around yourself and summon them in a circle around you. Then use a radial spell to activate them (anything combined with S and shift right clicked, such as AS Shift RC).

Other Somewhat Useful Tips

If you hear a scream in multiplayer, do not hesitate to use WA Space to revive them. Put a shield around yourself if you must first, but if you're the last one standing and don't revive your allies, you will take all the aggro and probably die.

Crossing lakes/lava. RRRRD RC (chargeable; for water) and QQQQD (chargeable; for lava) are faster at making larger areas of land that you can cross than just shooting the element out after every few steps you move.

The spell SAFE is not as safe as it sounds! If you right click it, it makes some balls of unsafe, exploding death. That being said, many elements combined with S and E and right clicked make land mines of different elements. Balls of exploding health with WE RC are the fastest way to heal. You can also make your rock shields have heal elements in them (DDDWE RC) so they heal you when they break, but they might knock you over when they do, so it's usefulness is questionable when you can just heal yourself.

That's it for now. I could probably write a whole strategy guide on this game, but those are the main things I used in the game. I'm partial to the water/ice and lightning elements in most games with magic, and they are very effective in this game. Fire honestly isn't that great at all in this game. Lol I'm glad someone made a thread like this, I've been wanting to share some of my techniques.

[Dateranoth]

Told you so.