The Stack

Since my last post, I’ve got both the Berserker and the Ninja up to the same level as the rest of the party and completed the Berserker’s special quest. It turns out that power-levelling characters gets easier as you go along, because there’s a positive feedback loop: the more advanced the charcter is, the more often he succeeds in hurting things and getting XP. The Wizard is still lagging, though, because he’s spending half his time dead. Resurrection is essentially free in this game, but there’s a limit to how frequently you can do it.

Fortunately, the Wizard is the one character that can be effectively twinked at low levels. To explain why, I’ll have to describe the magic system.

Every character class, even the Brick, has its own set of forty magical abilities that can be purchased and enhanced with “spell points”. These abilities are divided into four groups, corresponding to the four elements but with “lightning” substituted for air; spell points are specific to an element. Some of these abilities are spells that have to be cast and last a short time, some are continuous status effects that last as long as they’re selected, some are permanent enhancements that are always active. The list varies from character to character. Obviously the Wizard has access to the most powerful spells, but they’re only powerful if they’ve been enhanced with spell points. For example, there’s a basic missile spell for each element that starts out doing 1-5 points of damage. After you invest a maximum of 10 spell points in it, it does 5-55 points.

Clearly, spell points make a big difference. Assuming that you don’t try to make him use a sword or something, the Wizard’s capacity for dealing damage is limited mainly by the number of spell points he has to spend, rather than by his experience level, stats, or equipment. So, how do you get spell points? Ordinarily, you get a spell point for each of the elements when you gain a level, but you can get bonus spell points by sacrificing magic items. Each item is worth a fraction of a spell point, and they build up.

At the point I’m at in the game, there is an abundance of magic items that I don’t want to keep, mainly armor and weapons that are too heavy for the Wizard and too wimpy for everyone else. This is how I know that the Wizard’s missile spell caps out at 10, even though I’ve only levelled him five times.