This is a small instructional post about magic in Stonekeep. Nothing earth shattering. But it should give folks a leg up that want to do spellcaster runs a better chance, and those of you who just want to make your trip smoother.

From the moment you pick up your first runecaster on floor 3, and add Firebolt and Minor Heal to your journal, you have everything you need to master magic right then and there. Step onto the magic circle, equip the runecaster and scribble your brand new shiny runes onto it. If you're hurt due to the arrow traps you passed on your way in, go ahead and heal up with magic. The circle has unlimited uses to recharge your runecaster

Next, select your firebolt rune and hold down m1. Just let it drain your runecaster. Then move forward and back as needed to recharge. This should take about 5 minutes. But in those five minutes you'll go from slowly and ponderously lobbing a single bolt of flame every 10 seconds or so, to having a veritable flame thrower. By five or so minutes you should have gone from no skill in magic to five dots, the maximum.

It will be a few more floors till you get another runecaster, so make sure you find every mana circle as you descend. And yes. There is one in the sewers. There should be on on every floor till you reach the temple of Throggi. But that's not a problem. That statue with the white orb in it's mouth will helpfully recharge any and all runecasters just by grabbing them with your cursor and clicking on the orb.

Get used to rebuffing any time you return to the circles. Magic buffs save lives. Especially on the later levels when you start encountering enemies that cast spells. This means using spoilspell on yourself before adding other buffs on.

As noted previously, if folks want a more in-depth faq on magic, I probably can provide it. Don't be afraid to try mixing meta runes in. And remember to get comfortable with the translocation runes. Take care and happy casting.


(Some Typo Corrections)

A little while ago, I wrote that primer. But I decided to dive more in depth anyway, instead of waiting for more requests. I figured it would be a fun little exercise for myself, and I want to see how many people this helps. Let me know, I'd love to see comments from the community.

The Runes of Stonekeep
Runes are an integral part of Stonekeep, though many of them can be and are seen as optional. Most folks just collect them and move on with their lives, where as others wonder at their actual uses. Some even use them! Though I doubt there are as many people in that position given the perceived limited availability of mana in the game.

Runes are extremely useful, if you can wrap your head around their unusually deep mechanic for a game of this age. Between the Mannish, Fae, and Throggish runes, there's also the Meta Runes which are auxiliary runes you may use in order to enhance the power and usefulness of the previous schools of magic. In addition there are Mana Circles with are green circles on the ground. The most notable of which is located in the Mage Icarius' study. From here, unless you actually seek them out, many players will not locate any further circles and assume mana is a limited resource. This isn't actually true. Other than the Ice Realm and Faerie Realm, there will be a hidden mana circle on every floor that you should absolutely seek out.

Other sources of mana include the Throg God statue with the orb in it's mouth. Simply drag a runecaster over the orb and click for the runecaster to be fully recharged. Then there's Yoth-Soggoth's god orb that is acquired in the realm of Fae that recharges all runecasters on use. This one is most notable, because you can carry it with yourself and use it as needed.

We'll explore the Mannish runes first, as these will undoubtedly be the ones most players have their first exposure to. As these are the runes developed by Man it makes sense that you would find them in the Citadel of Man, Stonekeep.

We have the following

Mannish Runes

Lesser Healing Rune x10 y18 2
This rune is basically a circle with a notch at the top, bottom, and left and right sides. It heals a moderate amount of health, and is pretty straight forward. I would argue this is probably one of the most useful of runes. But more on that later.

Greater Healing Rune
Basically the same as the previous rune, but it heals more as well as end certain negative spell effects such as poison and weakness.

Spoilspell Rune x27 y26 7
One of my favorites. It's most obvious claim to fame is it can be used to negate existing spells, usually negative ones, that have been cast on Drake and his party. But it can do much more. For example, casting it on yourself or your party when you do not have an existing spell effect on will give you a resistance to negative spells cast at you. Attack spells and curses. Furthermore, it can also be used to dispel certain illusionary walls in the game...

Armor Rune x25 y24 9
Plane and simple, this one just buffs Drakes and his Party's armor stat while it's in place.

Warming Spell
This spell is received from a Sharga shaman in the Ice Realm, but only after you locate his runescroll. Do this as soon as possible, if you want to explore the entirety of the frost realm with as little difficulty as possible. It defends against the realms hostile cold temperature which will periodically damage the party, if you keep your party buffed with this spell that is. I have also noticed that it seems to negate the damage from Frost Spells being cast at the party with a semi-reliable rate of success.

Language Rune x4 y27 5
This spell is handy for those who like lore and enjoy listening to Drake say more than "I can't read it". It becomes less useful after reaching the Ancient Ruins however.

Silence Rune x31 y16 4
This is the rune of stealth. Stealth not being one of the stronger skills in the game, potentially allows the party to ambush an enemy. Since this doesn't happen often, this rune isn't generally that useful. However I have used it to walk in and break all the barrels around the Ettin and be a general pest in his vicinity without being caught.

Scare Rune x27 y27 8
Need a chance to recover? Is the enemy too strong? Are you about to die? This is the rune for you my dude. Cast this on an enemy and send them running for the hills. Leave the area yourself, stand there and heal, the options are many but remember. This is a temporary effect, and they will return with murder on their mind.

Circle Rune
The circle rune allows you to create a blue ring on the ground in front of you at the cost of a pretty good amount of mana, so make sure to recharge your runecaster after. After you create the circle you can use another rune to teleport back to that circle any time. This lets you get tactical with your movements. I usually set this up near a mana circle and return to this location to recharge my runecasters as needed. (Not affected by meta runes)

Homing Rune x25 y19 8
The sister rune to the Circle Rune. When you cast the Homing Rune, you teleport back to the blue circle created by the Circle Rune. But you don't have to walk back, once you've done what you needed to do when you teleported to the circle, just go back to the circle and recast this spell to return you from where you originally teleported from. (Not affected by meta runes)

Vampire Rune
This dark depraved evil... Handy rune puts a buff on you and makes your attacks leach health off of your enemies as you fight.

Firebolt Rune x10 y18 2
One of the two basic spells you will learn first since they can be found with the basic runecaster. Incidentally, while Lesser Healing Rune is going to be extremely useful, this is the most important rune you could learn. Not only does it deal a respectable amount of damage, but there's a secret to this rune. If you stand around near a mana circle and just hold down the cast button, you can max out your spell skill in under fifteen minutes and have a veritable flame thrower on hand for very little effort.

Icebolt Rune
Like Firebolt, this is a damaging spell. Unlike firebolt, if you enhance this spell before use it has the chance to turn your enemy into a block of ice and render them helpless to your assault.

Circleward Rune
Do you like traps? I like traps. This spell creates a trap for your enemy to amble into. This spell wont be the most useful on your first playthrough of the game unless you're heavily into spoilers and decide you want to know everything before it happens. But subsequent playthroughs, you'll have an idea when enemies will show up and you can put this rune down to soften them up for your party.

Wind Rune
Originally created to clean a sorcerers tower, this rune has since been repurposed to be used in combat. However, there's still uses... like blowing harmful dust off of the walls/tablets on said walls.

Sphere Rune
A rune that heaves orbs at your enemies. The weaker they are, the more damage this spell does.

(typo correction)

The Runes of the Fae

Shrink Rune x27 y26 3
This rune initially thought to just shrink your enemy, also actually diminishes their strength and defenses based on the strength of the rune and their resistance to magic. Keep that in mind.

Float Rune x26 y24 4
This bubbly + sign shaped rune has it's uses. Those being keeping you from taking damage when descending through a pit/pit trap.

Murphs Rune x9 y1 11
A rune given to you by a very Murphy Faerie. He's slow, he's not too bright, but he is quite the Faerie. Especially when you realize this spell inflicts your victim with slow. The stronger the spell, the slower they become.

Invisibility Rune
Remember how I said Stealth isn't very big in this game, and it's hard to ambush enemies? Yeah, that wasn't exactly true, this spell makes it so enemies (unless scripted) can't see you. And if you have high stealth, or you use the silence rune, they wont even know you're there. Helplessly they will stand around while you slaughter them with impunity.

Quickness Rune
This spell casts haste on you and your party. The benefits are pretty obvious. The faster you attack, the faster you kill. There's an orb that can put the spell on Drake, but I've discovered that orb has a limited number of charges, and then takes time to recharge. With this spell, you're not at the mercy of a gods mana pool and can renew your haste as often as you like.

Duck Rune
I'll be honest. I'm not quite certain what this spell is for, since the Duck Statue doesn't react to it in my experience. But the Duck Statue does respond to one of the heal spells.

Throggish Runes

Flame Rune x10 y15 7
Not to be misconstrued with Firebolt Rune of the Mannish school of magic. No, this spell creates a flame in front of the user that engulfs the enemy. Pour more mana in for a more dramatic flame.

Energybolt Rune x30 y5 7
A ranged spell that fires bolts of pure mana at your enemy. Boosting it with meta runes will add a debuff to the strength of the victim.

Strength Rune x27 y26 7
Wanna look like you spend every day of the week at the gym with muscles carved of the purest of divine Greek marble? This is the spell for you... But it has a very short duration. The more powerful the spell is when cast the more strength you will receive. It'll modify your damage accordingly.

Shield Rune x28 y10 7
This rune stacks very well with the Armor Rune, and covers the holes in the defenses provided. Creating a magical barier around those it's cast upon, it blocks incoming ranged attacks regardless of the direction. There's still a chance to receive damage, but the chance diminishes the more powerful the spell is when cast.

Stoptrack Rune
A superficially this appears to be a variation of the Fae Float rune. This is likely stolen from the fae and corrupted by the Throggs before put into use. When cast on an unlucky victim, they are frozen in time and at your mercy. Attack with impunity. They can't fight back.

Meta Runes

Power 2 Meta Rune
Fairly descriptive in the name, it doubles the power of a spell that it's added to. This could be boosting the damage of say, Firebolt Rune. Or it could be making the Lesser Heal Rune restore more health. Or one of the buff spells this is added to could provide a greater benefit.

Power 3 Meta Rune
Ready for some real power? Add this to any and all runes that you want to see the big daddy end all version of the spell you're about to cast.

Ball Meta Rune
An incredibly useful spell. I usually add this to buff spells like Spoilspell or Armor or Haste, just for example. When added to spells, they'll affect everything in the general radius of the spell. You can hit your whole party with a heal, or with a buff. Or all the enemies before you can suddenly be frozen in time and unable to act. Again, just an example.

Duration Meta Rune
This rune increases the duration of any spell that it's added to. Did you add it to the Throggish Energybolt Rune? It wont make the enemy take more damage, but they will stay weaker longer. Or you could remain invisible longer. Note that this doesn't add a duration to heal spells. They're a one and done spell with no duration to take note of.

Potency Meta Rune x20 y15 5
This is purely for your attack runes. Enemies have a resistance trait to spells and can sometimes resist the damage or negative effects of your spells. Adding this will further diminish their ability to resist. So don't add this to your beneficial spells before casting them on yourself. You're only making them more expensive and gaining nothing for it.

Note 1: Meta Runes significantly increase the cost of any spell they're added to. You may also add multiple runes to one spell. As an example, you could add Power 3, Ball, and Potency to Firebolt. This would make it inflict maximum damage, explode on impact, and be difficult to resist. But it's going to consume a much greater volume of mana in the process.

Note 2: Any rune that comes with a circle added to it already cannot have the ball meta rune added.

The Care and Use of Beneficial Magic
Magic is a very very useful resource for players to take advantage of should they choose to do so. And as you expand your magical library, the options grow greater. As any one who's dabbled with the helpful spells will no doubt know that they only work on one character at a time. This is perfectly manageable, and is fine for early to mid game. But adding the ball meta rune to Lesser Heal, or Float will allow it to affect your entire party. If you want to be able to heal your members faster, you can add on the Power 2 or Power 3 meta runes to make sure they receive that much more healing. Or the buff effect is that much stronger. Feel free to mix and match and explore the options available to you.

Often by mid game, those who are comfortable with using magic will often be walking around with Spoilspell, Haste, Armor, Shield, Strength, Warmth, Language, Float, Vampire, Silence, and Invisibility up at all times rendering even the Shadowkings Palace childs play. You can pick and choose to use more specific ones and tailor your buffs to to the area you're at, or you can just keep them up at all times, walking around akin to unseen gods. Your enemies nothing but mere playthings that have earned your ire and wrath.

Often I add duration, circle, and meta 3 to these spells and just keep them all up at all times. Sure, the challenge utterly vanishes from the game, the enemies in the Shadowkings realms little more than punching bags that topple over without so much as raising a hand to defend themselves, but at this point, you've become a wrathful god and vengeance is the only thing that will quench your thirst for retribution.

I plan on including the level and x/y coordinates later for where these scrolls are picked up at so that it's easier to tell which scroll is which since some of them don't tell you what the spell is or does.