This guide focuses on quickly building an attack magic character with socketed gear that can stomp masses of enemies quickly and easily. Once this build is up and running, you can put attribute points into useless stats without ruining your long term potential. This will make earning the Steam achievements much easier.

This build does have a drawback: Some monsters are completely magic immune; you'll be unable to kill them and have to run past some fights. These include magic elementals, cursed swords, and mimics.

Pick "Legend" for your difficulty. You'll advance in levels much faster. Even more importantly you'll get much better loot which you can in turn sell for the items you'll want. A few of the dungeon levels early on might be a bit hard, but by getting the stats and gear you need faster you'll find most of the game quite easy.

I didn't pay much attention to the pet when playing this build. On legendary pets get beat up too much to be much help past level 3. My main use for it was to stick a book of town portals in its inventory in case I ran out on my character. That being said, there is a way to keep your pet somewhat useful as you progress into the dungeon.

Three superior amethyst in socketed jewelrey will make it stop fleeing MUCH faster when it gets beaten up. It'll also level up faster, since it doesn't earn experience when fleeing. A drawback of this is you'll constantly be hearing "Your pet is fleeing!" as its 2 hps gets knocked off.

Get 3 quests for dungeon level one from the npcs. You may need to save and reload to get three for level one. In general, try to get 3 quests for every dungeon level before you descend, at least early on. This will make advancing in power a whole lot faster and give extra cash and skill points.

Early on you'll just fight with your starting axe or something found on the ground. That'll be fine till you get a few levels and the fireball spell. Just keep stocked up on the 25/100 gp healing potions and you'll be fine.

For now, as you level up, put all stat points into magic, and all skill points into attack magic. Never put skill points into anything except attack magic.

Grab all the magical loot you can to sell. Remember you can keep a quest item if you abandon the quest, so don't hesitate to do so if the item has a great sell value. Teal and yellow tinted items are the most valuable. One yellow item will by itself give most of the cash you need for this build. On level one, you'll probably just want to grab everything that's not nailed down and sell it.

As soon as you can, buy and learn the fireball spell, that'll be your workhorse for a while, occasionally falling back on your melee weapon. At this time, grab a crimson or other +attack magic staff if you see one drop and start using that for your weapon.

These will probably be the grindiest levels. There will be a certain amount of "run and regen" that you'll have to put up with. Just keep questing and getting cash.

As you earn cash, start buying superior sapphire gems from Jan the enchantress. These give +10 to your mana regeneration and are what make this build possible. Just stick them into whatever cheap socketed items you use. Either find them, or more likely buy them from the smith. Grab the frost spell as soon as is convienent, but not before getting a little mana regen.

As you earn more cash, you'll want to get superior lapis gems as well. This will increase your spellcasting speed enough to deal with hit and run situations.

Hopefully by around dungeon level 10 you'll be close to finishing the basics of this build. You're aiming to have 5-6 superior lapis gems and around 11-12 other sockets occupied with superior sapphire gems. As you advance your magic stat, you'll have less and less need of resting periods.

If you're having trouble getting socketed items, you can either quit and continue at the smith to recheck his inventory, or give items to the item enchanter, as he can add sockets sometimes.

Use meteor for most fights, and frost/lightning for monsters that resist fire or bosses. As you grow in power, meteor will be more and more able to clear out entire rooms of monsters. Once you have fully socketed gear, don't hesitate to dump excess gold into fame for the extra skill points, as well as trying to get better gear enchanted and socketed.

If you are trying to earn the Steam Achievements, you can probably stop advancing your magic stat at around 100 or so, depending on gear and personal prefrence. The achievements need 45 strength, 40 dexterity, and 45 vitality. If you're not trying for the achievements, then more magic will always be better for spamming meteor.

Once you have basic gear with socketed gems, do make sure to start using the town's enchanter. As you level up, he can give increasingly good boosts to items and socket good items that don't have them, at the cost of occasionally cursing or ruining the item. In any case, you'll definitely want % damage reduction and +% magic stat items as you delve deeper.

There isn't much point ever putting a skill point in anything but attack magic. If you get so high in level you happen to max that skill, then spellcasting or shield use or defense magic would be the next logical things to dump points into.

Problem: Not getting enough cash early on.
Solution: Legend difficulty gives TONS of valuable loot to sell, but you can get unlucky. Making sure to get 3 quests per dungeon level helps a lot. If a quest item has a really high sell price, abandon the quest and grab the cash. The game will forget earlier levels after a while, so you can try to re-run them for more cash.


Problem: Game too hard before getting first spell.
Solution: Fish up a good flawless fish for your pet to improve its tanking ability. Be persistent, you're so close to the surface that dying isn't a big deal.


Problem: Running out of mana early on.
Solution: Don't swap over to meteor too soon, frost/fireball/lightning are perfectly fine spells for general use. Aside from that, the sooner you get your socketed mana regen, the better, so keep earning cash.

Problem: Taking too much damage.
Solution: Dump 3 health regen items on your pet. Make sure you zoom out fully while playing so you can take full advantage of your ranged attacks. Use the enchanter to try for good items with sockets. It's not uncommon to get socketed items with good damage reduction on them.


Problem: Killing things too fast and running out of stamina moving around.
Solution: This is a problem you might start hitting later on. Ideally you'll get enchanted gear with +stamina regen and +movement speed, but there is another way to fix this. If you bump your strength a little bit you can use a "mage mace" staff which will give enough +defensive magic to use the haste spell to move around more quickly at the cost of some damage.

I find the aoe and distance damage of meteor makes this build superior to most others, particularly on legend difficulty, but there are other ways of killing monsters.

2 weapons or weapon + shield: Socket all the superior jades you can for the +attack speed. Word is there's no attack speed cap. So jade, jade, and more jade. Your character's favorite movie? Jade. The weapon you choose doesn't matter all that much as long as it's a 1 handed weapon. Just make sure to only use one weapon type, you'll get higher bonuses from focusing on one skill compared to splitting them up to pick and choose different weapon types. Make sure to learn enough defense magic to keep haste/dervish and battle fog running constantly.

The problem with melee on legendary is that you tend to get swarmed by mobs. Two boss vampires summoning rat swarms is something that's happened to me on level 4 or so. Not fun.

Two handed weapons: No.

Charm: Charm for summoning monsters works pretty well, since you can easily get a cluster of level 80+ pets, but I find that the following AI is imperfect and can leave you without your pets pretty easily.

Ringing blast: Defensive magic gives a damaging+knockback spell called ringing blast. It looks good on paper, but I've never tried it. I figure the knockback would make it hard to spam and it only gives magic for a damage type. On the plus side, you get fantastic duration on the haste spell.

Archery: The bows were historically very bad when the game was first released.

Legendary difficulty. Save/reload so you get 3 quests per dungeon level early on. All stats into magic till magic is around 80. After that it won't matter. All skill points into attack magic. Use socketed items with 5-6 superiour lapis and all the rest superior sapphire. Spam meteor and frost/lightning on bosses/resistors.