You can get spells either by trade or as treasures that go beyond what you have in your spell books, but these new spells are limited in rarity to the top rank in your spell books, right?

For example, I have one white spell book. That entitles me to 3 common and 1 uncommon spell. I could research and learn all those and then keep acquiring more common and uncommon spells, but I could never learn a rare white spell. Is that the way it works?

I also posted this over at the wiki, and I got the answer. I understood correctly. If you have 1 spell book, you can acquire all the common and uncommon spells in that field. If you have two, you can add the rare spells. If you have three, you can add the very rare spells.

Interesting. I am about to start a new game and was thinking of a specialized wizard. 10 spellbooks in one realm. However, judging by what you wrote, if you give 3 spellbooks to 3 different realms, you can end up with all the spells of 3 different realms (plus all common and uncommon of a 4th realms if you spend the 10th spellbook there).

Are the non-research spells easy to aquire?

You can only acquire them in one of three ways: finding them (by conquering a tower of wizardry, for example), trading for them, or by banishing a wizard.

If you trade with and/or banish a wizard enough times, you will eventually get every spell they know. So if they know all the given spells of a college, at some point so will you.

But if you defeat* them before they've had a chance to finish their own research, or if turns out that they don't learn every spell after all (because they have five spell books in two different colleges, for instance), or if you don't have any spell books in common: well, that's another story.


*To clarify: the difference between banishment and defeat is whether the wizard has enough mana points to cast the Spell of Return, and at least one town left to return to. Every banishment nets you one or two more spells, but a permanent defeat cuts off that gravy train.

It is technically possible to get all of the spells from 3 realms this way, but you'd pretty much have to play with that goal in mind (even above winning, though you'll certainly be in a position to win by the time you get there). You would need to farm enemy wizards in order to accomplish this, and the enemy wizards would need to have the right mix of spell books.

It is pretty easy to acquire more spells via means other than research (each Tower of Wizardry you clear is guaranteed to give you a spell), but it is entirely possible that clearing a dungeon/node will give you a spell you could research (or even give you the spell you are currently researching, regardless of whether you'd have gotten it next turn anyway (ARGH!)); unless you Save/Load until you get what you want, there is no way to control what you'll be given. There is also nothing restricting you from trading to learn a spell you could have researched, but at least you choose what you get and what you give.

Thanks TwoHandedSword and Bookwyrm. I'll play 10 books in chaos as planned on my first game then and try a mixture of realms another time.