One school(Either Air or Fire) + 18 in Spellcraft for 50% faster cast rate gives the highest dps for a mage. Two schools let's you have better utility and avoid elemental resistances but at a cost to damage output.

It would probably depend on your party composition as to what would be better to go with.

Spellcraft to 18 is a very solid choice. Personally, I'd go with just one element type.

If you put the rest of your points into Fire, for instance, there is one type of late game enemy who is immune. However, that enemy also only attacks with fire damage. Investing all of your non-Spellcraft points into Fire gets you access to Circle of Protection: Fire, so even though your mage won't be able to hurt that enemy, they will still contribute a ton to your party's survival against them, making a Fire Mage more useful than any other caster against that specific enemy type, and do higher damage against other enemy types as well.

If you get 18 in Spellcraft (which I do recommend) you only have enough points left to reach the improved bolt ability in a single element. It makes a big difference, so pick one school (Earth kind of sucks, but the others are all good) and stick with it.

Air Magic gives you Invisibility. None of the other elements have a utility spell like that, so it's a big deal. Ice Magic lets you freeze enemies occasionally, which can make a big difference, although the damage is lower.

The difference between 25% and 50% bonus to spell casting cooldown is minimal, my first time through I went with 50% but not on my second.

There is a creature type that's immune to fire which shows up a lot, and a creature type that's immune to ice which shows up in the last three levels... a lot.

There are 3 tomes of wisdom (+5 skill points) and one tome of fire (+3 fire magic, +10 fire resist) so its easy enough to nurse two magic schools to 24 (bonus damage to their biggest damage spells).

There are two items in the game worth mentioning, mid-game you can find a staff that boosts all poison damage making that school suck less. Towards the end, you get your second Orb which also boosts fire magic damage (yet again) making it potentially the greatest damage spell.

Ice magic has the bonus chance of freezing all enemy types solid for a time, letting you wail on them risk free... nearly. NB: If you freeze a charging ogre, don't wail on him from the front... because when he thaws out, he's still charging.

Air magic has invisibility added to its spell list, letting you walk through dangerous areas with ease. I don't think I ever met a single lightning immune creature.

TLDR;

Pick any school other than frost if you want to specialise in one. Nurse fire as a second school if you want to study two. Don't waste too many points in spellcraft.

The difference in cost between 25% faster casting and 50% faster casting is only eight points. It's not a big investment to get the bigger bonus. If you want two schools of magic and dump all of your tomes of wisdom into one character then you can't get the bigger caster bonus and the bolt damage bonus for two different elements, but honestly getting 24 points in two different schools isn't going to help you much anyway.

I didn't have any problem with the ice immune enemies even though my mage was specialized in Ice Magic, simply because they attack in melee and your front lines can soak that pretty easily. Protection from ice magic was very useful against late game casters, whose ice spell is the hardest to dodge.

Minor spoiler: lightning magic works wonders on the final boss.

Focus on a single element + spellcraft. If you're *REALLY* worried about the occasional beastie resisting your attacks, go with air magic - either nothing or almost nothing resists lightning.

FIRE:50%
SPELLCRAFT:40%
ICE:10%

:)

This is just bad.

While it isn't immediately obvious from the game text, having a higher skill level in an elemental skill - much like a weapon skill - increases the damage output of those spells above and beyond the specific perks that you get at points throughout it. A 24/24 split, while doable, will result in significantly lower damage output on both sides.

If you're REALLY concerned about potential immunities, go with air (nothing is immune), or ice; with ice, you'll have a chance to acquire the +3 fire/+2 spellcraft book before you run into the ice-immune creatures, and 3 points in fire is enough to allow the use of the basic fire blast spell - it won't do much damage, but it'll still be better than no damage. An air or ice mage also provides utility effects that the other two elements lack (the former granting invisibility and the latter granting the potential to freeze opponents for a short time).

The 'optimal' approach seems to be to rush for 18 spellcraft ASAP, simply because doing so gives you Willpower increases as quickly as possible, which increases your energy gain on level-up. After that, focus on one element.


While earth magic is often seen as weakest due to the number of immune creatures, the flip side of this is that the defensive spells/perks are useful against the widest range of enemies, and against a non-immune creature, the poison blast actually creates a DoT cloud (unlike the others), which has the highest mana efficiency and damage output if you can keep something in it. (Door open-cast-close hijinks are one way to exploit this.)

First of all..Sorry, I can't speak english, very well...


Personally, My current spells are..

Enchant Fire Arrow
Fireball
Fireburst
Fireshield

Iceshards
EnchantFrostArrow

Spellcraft...The remaining points.

I did not feel the need for Circle of Protection: Fire..

This is good for me at least. :)

Don't worry about your English; it's fine.

We all know it's possible to get through the game with hilariously bad party setups or skill allocations. It's important to recognize that just because you can get through the game with something doesn't make it good. If 40% (really anything over 18) of your points in your final build are in Spellcraft, you've made an unquestionably bad decision. Players who don't know any better who come into a thread like this looking for suggestions are not going to be better off reading about bad setups like this. Some people suck at combat in these sorts of games, and just because I could probably make it through most of the game using nothing but spears or you can make through putting 40% of your points into Spellcraft, doesn't mean it's a good idea for new players to try it.

Posting criticism of bad builds is important so that new players who don't know any better can know which builds are good and which ones aren't, and why.

LOL. More than 18 pts in Spellcraft is not an "unquestionably bad decision." Really, you need to come to grips with the fact that you don't know everything.

Gotta stock up on willpower for those scarce handful of levels you've got left, huh? If your energy pool is a little bit bigger but your spells don't do nearly as much damage, your DPS is lower and your total damage potential before running out (which is the whole point of pumping Spellcraft) is lower. You get absolutely no benefit from doing it that way.

It's a bad move. It's stupid. You get diminishing returns on Will increases as you gain levels because energy bonuses are not applied retroactively. You're well into the game by the time you pass 18 points in Spellcraft and you're adding to stats that matter less and less as the game goes on.

Unfortunately spell damage isn't listed anywhere on the stats screen so this is down to pure testing.

I made a save game at level 24 in a spell school, then proceeded to keep dumping in it and I gotta say, there was no increase in damage with my bolt spell even at 36 points invested. I was still doing 53-55 points of damage.

The biggest boosts to spell damage after reaching 24 (23 in earth) in a spell school are the staff for poison damage and the orb for fire, which add ~20 points of damage.
You gain an average of 4 points in a stat (from each skill) over the period of the game right? I didn't really notice that much different between 10 and 14 points of vitality chosen at character generation. Something like 13 hit points.

Its probably why most build guides suggest you pick Aura (+15 mana) over Strong Mind (+2 will) if you're not taking both at character generation.

My thinking at this moment is, as someone else has already posted, that additional points in a spell school do not increase spell damage, except in that they take you to the point where the "advanced" damage spell is available. The tooltip when you hover over a spell school is ambiguous, in that "efficiency" could be increased either by more damage caused or less energy used per cast.

As an Ice Mage (insect), I will get 51 - 69 skill points by end of game, depending on whether or not I take the "skilled" trait and on how many of the "tomes of wisdom" I give the mage. I really only need 24 pts in Ice, as the elemental resistances further down that tree are not needed. It could be argued, too, that I only "need" 18 pts in Spellcraft, as additional points are energy related, and not damage. So that leaves 9 - 27 points to put elsewhere. 9 pts would not buy much, but 27 pts is enough to get to the advanced damage spell of a 2nd school.

Taking "skilled" as a trait is good, but giving all three skill books to the mage character might not be what you want. For my own part, it was not what I wanted, so I have not tried the two school approach. If I did, I would go Ice first, and Air second. But I'm into rogues at the moment, so it will have to wait. :)

Finally, if it turns out that additional points in a school DO increase the spell damage, then I'd stick with just one damage school. I'll test this when I get back to mages.

EDIT: OK, I had some time today to test, and I'll have to recant my previous assumptions. It was difficult to get good data (fireballs in the face, dino chewing on me, etc)., but the trend seemed clear: lightning bolt increased from avg 77 to avg 98 damage as air magic skill increased from 16 - 24. Greater lightning bolt increased from avg 117 when I first got it at character level 9 (27 skill) to avg 170 on character level 13 (32 skill). I don't trust my data, as I"m sure I misread many samples; and then there were many that I didn't capture at all. Nevertheless, each nuke got progressively better as I leveled up and put more points in the skill. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.