Update on Feb. 2
-Big expansion of the build section in general, I also made some changes to the Templar build.
-Added a 'Missing Info' section.
-Minor layout improvements (hopefully anyway)
There is a lot of conflicting information and advice out there about how to get the most out of your Arcane Warrior. After having finished the game with 2 different Arcane Warriors, 2 different mages, a two-handed warrior and a dual wielding rogue I’d like to add my own 2 cents.
(Yes, I have way too much free time on my hands currently.)
This guide will cover everything you need to know, what spells to pick, which quests not to miss, which equipment you should consider and more! This guide assumes you do not use mods which let you use all your spells without sheathing your weapons, nor do you use the weapon set swap exploit to get around this. The reasoning behind this is that Bioware did make two kinds of spells for a reason, playing around that is lame. I also assume that you play on Hard or Nightmare for a challenge.
1.0 Why Arcane Warrior?
For me, the Mage class is by far the most fun class in the game. You have the widest variety of talents to choose from, far more than the Rogue or Warrior classes. Arcane Warrior adds to this flexibility by also giving you the option of becoming a tank or negating the squishiness of your caster. The downside is that you really need to think about your character beforehand and if you build it well the game becomes much easier, taking away some of the challenge.
2.0 Plan ahead
There are two different styles of Arcane Warriors. The first is a tanking mage, sort of like the Kensai/Mage from BG2, the second is a mage that can equip a much wider variety of items but still uses spells for damage. The first one is often talked about while the second one is relatively obscure. Choosing between these two styles should be your first step as everything else will depend on it.
2.1 The Arcane Warrior tank
This character uses a sword and shield setup with mana regeneration gear to get the most out of sustainable spells that augment his combat prowess. This character will need roughly thirty natural dexterity to get a good hit rate, but more on that later. Casting regular spells is not your main forte because you’ll suffer roughly 90% fatigue with your sustained spells up and these also reduce your available mana and some will even drain mana. This means that casting is usually limited to no more than 1-3 spells per fight. A way around this is to opt for Blood Mage as your second specialization but even then you’ll find that the best non-sustainables are mostly sheathe weapon spells which aren’t practical during combat.
2.2 The Arcane Warrior caster
Another approach is to keep using a staff to boost your spellpower and for auto attacks but at the same time equip some items with a high strength requirement to gain their unique bonuses or become sturdier. To do this you don’t need to have combat magic active and so you won’t suffer the 50% fatigue a tanking AW will. In my opinion, every regular mage should choose Arcane Warrior as their second specialization because most of the Mage-only gear in this game is sub-par.
3.0 Starting the Game
So by now you’ve roughly decided what you want to become and it’s time to start a character.
A. Gender
This is mostly aesthetic but has some ramifications in the romance department. If you want to romance a specific NPC choose the gender you need. If not, I recommend going with a female PC because mage robes look much better on them and IMO the best chest piece in the game is a robe. Another thing to note is that you will probably be an elf and thus have a smaller body than most others; this fits females better as well.
B. Race
From a role-playing as well as a power gaming perspective elf is obviously the best choice because Arcane Warriors were elves and both racial bonuses are to important mage stats. If you do not want to be an elf the only other option is human which is not bad for a tank AW because humans are larger and the +1 Dex and +1 Str are useful.
C. Ability point allocation
In general all mages need maxed magic and nothing else. The exception is an AW tank which will need some dexterity and possibly willpower as well. However, as you only need dexterity when you start swinging a sword you should wait putting points into it until then. I know some people disagree with the statement that you should go with an all magic build and say that you should put points in willpower and/or constitution too but except in some specific cases this is misguided advice. Why?
*You get extra health and mana every time you level up, meaning that each time you level you get a hidden +1 boost to willpower and constitution. (Approximately)
*Willpower and constitution can both be boosted tremendously with the right gear, magic on the other hand cannot.
*Every offensive spell you cast is harder to resist and does more damage based on your magic score. (Actually it is spellpower but the only stat that boosts this is magic.)
*For AW tanks more magic means more damage and a slight bonus to attack.
D. Skills
Starting the game you get the first rank of Herbalism for free which is all you’ll ever need if you have an NPC get 4 ranks. At level 1 I would go with either stealing or coercion as money is sparse in the beginning. You’ll eventually want to aim for 4 ranks of Coercion, 4 ranks of Combat Training and 1 rank of stealing, the rest is optional. Now, why these skills?
Coercion will allow you to get more gold (I’m talking well over a 100 sovereigns here) and more Xp so it is a no-brainer. Combat Training will let you hit more often, regenerate more mana and make it less likely for hits to disrupt your casting. One rank of stealing will spawn Slim Couldry when you go to Denerim; he has 8 very profitable and fun sidequest that will also yield a lot of Xp. Make sure to tell him you are interested in both stealing and sneaking the first time you talk to him though!
E. Spells (Talents)
This is where it gets tough and controversial as there are so many different spells and sheathing becomes a factor. (Meaning you have to first put your sword away which takes about 2 seconds before your begin casting the spell, this may not sound terrible but it sure is.) You’ll get the first spell in the mage tree, arcane bolt, for free plus 2 other picks of your choice. If you reach level 25 and get all possible tomes in the game you can have a maximum of 35 spell picks, 1 of which must be Arcane Bolt, so plan ahead! For mages that plan to become caster Arcane Warriors I recommend picking Winter’s Grasp and Flame Blast and working towards Fireball and Cone of Cold as soon as possible. (In that order.) For those who plan on becoming a tank mage this isn’t such a good plan because all of these spells require you to sheathe your sword. I would surely pick Glyph of Paralysis but pick no.2 depends on what tree you aim to develop first. (There are multiple options that are all useful.)
4.0 Extensive Spell Guide
There are 86 talents associated with spellcasting; the sheer number of them makes it clear that this will be the main part of this guide as well as your character. To make this section more readable and somewhat manageable I will first comment on each group of spells as a whole, (tree) then break it down into the respective talent branches as well as point out the best and worst spells per branch.
A. The Mage Tree
Rating: 5.0
If you plan on using a staff for attacks get all four spells in this branch. Staff Focus adds roughly 15-20 damage per shot which is great and Arcane Mastery gives a passive +5 bonus to spellpower which is close to two level ups worth of points spend on magic. For close combat Arcane Warriors I would go no further then Arcane Shield.
B. The Arcane Warrior Tree
Rating: 5.0
If you only use a staff and cast spells, one rank is enough to be able to equip the good loot. (Sort of like Use Any Item from Throne of Bhaal) Otherwise, get all 4 ranks.
The only spell that needs some special attention here is Shimmering Shield. As long as you keep this on you are close to invincible, however there are still some attacks that will hurt you badly, such as special attacks by ogres. Also watch out for archers and especially their special shots. The shield also only blocks the damage component of most spells, not their possible other (disabling) effects. And even though your Mental and Physical resistances are set to 100 I found that the special attacks by Sword&Shield warriors will still stun you. A huge blessing is that overwhelm no longer damages you at all. Most important of note is that Shimmering Shield will drain your mana and do so quite fast. Example: my last Arcane Warrior tank had +4 mana regeneration from items and after maybe 30 seconds of fighting her mana was down to next to zero. However, SS never switches off for her because once your mana pool gets very low your mana regeneration rate increases a lot so she was able to keep the shield up at all times. If she wanted to cast a spell in the later stages of a fight she had to quaff a potion or turn on Blood Magic though, so keep that in mind.
C. The Primal Tree
This is where it’s at if you do not need to be concerned about casting with your sword drawn. Otherwise, stay away. This tree has the best damage dealing spells as well as some of the best crowd control. Best of all, and rather uniquely, it has spells that are both at the same time.
The Fire Branch
Rating: 5.0
Sadly, we start of with one of the best branches in the game. (The rest will have a hard time keeping up.) Here we find the most damaging area of effect spell (AoE) in Inferno, the most damaging weapon boost in Flaming Weapons and the tremendously useful Fireball which can be seen as a poor man’s Blood Wound. You might look at the ice or lightning trees and not see much difference at first glance but what makes fire that much more powerful is that the base damage is much higher and the enemies continue to burn after they leave the AoE. Even Flame Blast is occasionally handy, especially after you’ve got the targeting of Cone shaped spells down.
The Earth Branch
Rating 2.0
This one is at best mediocre. Stonefist shattering and Petrify don’t work on most bosses and even though neither of them is bad you have to get Earthquake before Petrify and let me tell you; bad spell is bad. It deals no damage and enemies will often resist the knockdown while your own party won’t. Rock Armor is a must have for Arcane Warriors with a sword though!
The Ice Branch
Rating: 5.0
In the same way as fire this branch has good damage and crowd control combined into its spells, although the crowd control element is much stronger and the damage much weaker then fire's. Basically Winter’s Grasp is single target damage+stun, Cone of Cold is close by group damage+stun and Blizzard is long range group damage+stun. What makes Cone of Cold amazing is that even bosses don’t resist the freeze often and the cool down is quite short. Frost weapons is inferior to Flaming Weapons except when enemies are resistant to fire or if you don’t have Flaming Weapons. (Duh)
The Lightning Branch
Rating: 3.0
Lightning has a few things going for it; the damage drains stamina and not many enemies are resistant to it, sadly though this branch lacks any sort of crowd control, making it inferior to both the fire and ice branches. Chain Lightning is also utter garbage because it has a casting time and the damage doesn’t scale with level and is absorbed by armor. If you want to go with lightning anyway I would only go as far as Tempest and get Spell Might and Blizzard too for the fun overkill Storm of the Century combo.
D. The Creation Tree
This tree has some of the worst and best spells in the game. They are all utility/defensive and there is no damage to be found here. Most of them can be cast with your weapon drawn so it is attractive to tanking Arcane Warriors.
The Heal Branch
Rating: 3.0
All of these spells have their uses and if you want to be a support type character I would recommend them. You won’t really need them for yourself though because with a high magic score pots are more effective. Wynne has this branch mostly maxed out when you meet her, reducing the necessity to get it. Note that Rejuvenate can’t be cast on yourself.
The Haste Branch
Rating: 3.0
Haste itself is very good, the increased movement speed is a godsend to out-maneuver foes and to shorten walk time between fights. The attack speed boost is a double edged sword, for melee fighters it increases the attack rate at the cost of lowering the attack value by 5, for bow and staff attacks haste actually decreases attack rate! As an Arcane Warrior wielding a sword this spell looks appealing but you need +3 stamina/mana regeneration to offset the drain during combat and this only works at next to zero mana. The same is true for Shimmering Shield and therefore keeping both up for entire fights is only possible with a dedicated build such as my Paladin one below. Unfortunately, the 3 Aura spells that come before haste are crap because the duration is terrible and two of them are sheathe weapons. Wynne has this branch pretty far developed so usually it’s best to just have her cast it. However, haste stacks with itself so if both you and Wynne have it up you’ll get double the walking and attack speed which is incredibly good. (And also decreases your attack by -10) Note that double haste doesn’t stack with swift salve.
The Glyph Branch
Rating: 5.0
I was tempted to cheat my own rating system and give a 6.0 so that should tell you something about how nice these spells are. Glyph of Paralysis is a tier 1, no line of sight required, weapons drawn paralyze effect that usually works and is involved in the best spell combo in the game… within its own branch! If you first cast a Glyph of Repulsion and then a Glyph of Paralysis on top of it you get a Paralysis Explosion that is everything Mass Paralysis whishes it could be. The paralysis is impossible to resist, requires no line of sight, has no casting time bar, no projectile and lasts long, even on Hard and Nightmare. Glyph of Repulsion is also super handy to block off doors and corridors to cast AoE damage on the other side. Glyph of Warding is nice if you are being hammered by archers. Glyph of Neutralization is only worth it if you don’t have Mana Clash.
The Spellbloom Branch
Rating: 2.0
Spell Wisp is good for caster Arcane Warriors with maxed magic, and Grease is an option (I wouldn’t suggest) if you want to get even more out of your fire branch. The rest is garbage; Spell Bloom should have been sustained to make it good and Stinging Swarm is a tier 4 spell that requires crappy spells to get and even then it does only moderate damage.
E. The Spirit Tree
Spirit is very hit and miss, although there’s not much you can go wrong with if you ignore the first branch, and there are quite a few notables. I would classify it as a buff/debuff tree that lets you have more control over the way battles evolve. It is also the best place to look for ways to deal with those pesky casters.
The Magic Branch
Rating:1.0
Not a bad branch on paper but completely outclassed by taking the next branch and/or taking a Templar along. If you can’t get either it is probably worth getting, up until Dispel Magic anyway because that’s the most useful one. If you think Spell Shield is a good way to get spell resistance think again, it drains 110% mana where 100% is the cost of the resisted spell and you can get 60-70% spell resistance from items easily anyway.
The Mana Branch
Rating: 4.0
Mana Clash is uber, it allows you to one-shot kill all mages in the game except for bosses. To reduce the chance of it getting resisted turn Spell Might on beforehand. Speaking of Spell Might, this is also a good spell if you have a high spellpower and it is involved in the Storm of the Century and Advanced Reanimation Combos. Sadly though, the first two spells are nothing special.
The Bomb Branch
Rating: 3.0
Hehehe.. fun! Is it also good? I’d say if you’re a tanking Arcane Warrior then yes, otherwise don’t bother. For Arcane Warriors that tank it can be handy sometimes to turn Death Syphon on when swarmed by weak enemies.
Virulent Walking Bomb is one of the few damaging spells that can be cast with your weapons out and with Shimmering Shield up you are better at taking any collateral damage. It also works well with Glyph of Repulsion or any other CC that you can cast during combat. I’ve never tried the Skeleton but I’m sure it has its uses, especially when soloing.
The Telekinetic Branch
Rating: 5.0
A lot of people consider this the best branch in the game but I don’t agree. It is very strong but it is less strong on high difficulty and for me it also got less vital as I got better at the game. Still, I do recommend it, just don’t expect the miracles some folks preach. Mind Blast is a must-have for caster-type Arcane Warriors to get away from swarming and to lower hostility. If you use a sword then there’s an upside and a downside; you’ll be standing amidst the enemies anyway but have to sheathe weapons first. Forcefield is ace, instant-cast, works on everything and you can even use it defensively if you don’t mind exploiting the AI. Telekinetic Weapons is a niche spell for heavy armor foes. Crushing Prison is vastly overrated. Bosses resist the stun and the damage is only mediocre, it is good to have and can be cast with weapons drawn but don’t expect it to make the game easy. Note that combining Crushing Prison and Forcefield on the same enemy will result in the useless ‘Shockwave’ combo which destroys both spells so try to avoid doing that.
F. The Entropy Tree
There’s a few gems to be found here, especially for Sword wielding folks. The best buffs and debuffs can be found here as well as some strong crowd control and interesting combo’s.
The Paralysis Branch
Rating: 3.0 (For Miasma alone)
The worth of this branch depends solely on Miasma. If you want to go for melee you absolutely have to have it, if not, the whole Branch is garbage. Glyph of Paralysis badly outclasses Paralyze. (Projectile, Line of Sight, Tier2 and no combos) Mass Paralysis is garbage as it also requires line of sight, sheathed weapons, has a projectile and a casting bar, a short duration and no combo potential.
The Hex Branch
Rating: 4.0
This game lacks spells that do massive damage to single targets. However, by combining damaging spells with Hexes it is possible to at least approximate this. Vulnerability, Affliction and Death Hex all fall into this category and for that reason alone are very useful. Misdirection Hex is like a Forcefield that allows you to still damage the enemy afflicted by it, very handy! A warning though; hexes draw a lot of hate to your character and thus are more suitable to Sword&Shield Arcane Warriors. The first and last hex can’t be casted with your sword out though.
The Sleep Branch
Rating: 3.0
Horror and Sleep are decent enough and combine for 200 or so damage on a single target. Disorient is crap and Waking Nightmare comes down to personal preference. All spells require sheathed weapons.
The Death Branch
Rating: 3.0
Drain Life is very good because the damage part is instant-cast and you can combine it with Vulnerability Hex to make the damage reasonable. The downside being that it’s a sheathed weapons spell. Death Magic is like Death Syphon in that it can occasionally be handy for melee oriented Arcane Warriors. Curse of Mortality is jank and Death Cloud is only worth it if you’re going for the Entropic Death combo with Death Hex.
5.0 Your Second Specialization
There are 3 options to choose from of which one isn’t an option, (Shapeshifter) so that leaves either Spirit Healer or Blood Mage as the best choices. I’ll comment on each.
A. Spirit Healer
For a tanking Arcane Warrior this specialization offers the best possible passive bonuses; +2 magic and minor health regeneration. It also has the best healing spell available (Group Heal) as first pick. Sadly the other spells are borderline useless; Revive only works when the fight is going badly anyway, Lifeward is like a worse Regeneration and Cleansing Aura drains mana which is a hefty toll. In short I would only go for Spirit Healer if you want to make a Paladin; a character that can take a huge beating but is also busy buffing, healing and reviving comrades. (More on that below.)
B. Blood Mage
The Blood Mage is a natural fit to the Sword&Shield Arcane Warrior’s strengths and weaknesses. You are very hard to damage so casting from health makes sense, furthermore you use sustained spells that lower your available mana, apply penalties to fatigue and even slowly drain mana away. The most important benefit is that casting from health lowers the cost of every spell by 20% and if you have the Blood Ring equipped this becomes 40%, a nice way to offset those fatigue penalties! Oh, and did I mention the spell? You know... Blood Wound! It
is like Crushing Prison, except slightly harder to resist and it effects all enemies in a huge AoE! Blood Sacrifice is occasionally handy but you have to get it for Blood Wound anyway. Blood Control is for those who enjoy charming enemies; I myself don’t so I never get it. All Blood Mage spells can be cast with weapons out btw.
For spell slinging Arcane Warriors the Blood Mage specialization is probably the best too because Blood Wound is very good in conjunction with any massive AoE damage spell like Inferno. If you can keep coming up with fodder to use for Blood Sacrifice you can also eliminate the constant lyrium potion quaffing to spam more spells. The best way to do this is to take a ranger with an upgraded bear pet along. It has 500 hit points so you can pretty much drain it all day long. The life drinker amulet can only be equipped by Blood Mages and is worth considering for a high spellpower build.
6.0 Three Specific Builds
I’m going to provide you with three quite different builds to demonstrate how you can get the most out of the focus you have chosen for your character. I’m also going to assume that you have, or are willing to get, easily accessible downloadable content and play at hard or nightmare difficulty. Both melee builds use a Sword&Shield setup, why sword and shield and not dual weapon or two-handed you might ask? Well, dual wielding without the talents is kind of unimpressive and two-handed weapons are too slow for a character that isn’t guaranteed to hit with them. Luckily, there are some really good shields in the game and the best sword for an Arcane Warrior is one handed anyway. Archers are quite a threat to you so that missile deflection bonus a shield provides is great too!
What I try to accomplish by suggesting these builds is to give a sense of where you can take your Arcane Warrior, how you fill in the details and which spells you choose is up to you, so except for the most important sustained spells I won’t go into that at all.
The equipment I recommend was chosen according to these criteria:
-Items that give +X to all abilities, because all abilities but cunning are very important to you.
-Items that give a dodge bonus and/or a chance to avoid missiles.
-Items that give spell resistance, because you don’t want to have your sustained spells dispelled.
-Items that give a major boost to Magic, Willpower or Constitution because these are your prime stats.
-Items that give a bonus to attack.
A. Spellsword
This is my favorite melee build and is similar to how you play this type of character in D&D games. This character is hard to hit, be it with magic, arrows or melee attacks. However, when hit the damage sustained is relatively high. Equipping a staff in the second slot and opting to go caster only for some fights is perfectly viable for this character, making it the most flexible of the three. (Note that wearing a robe and a helmet looks like crap so get the no helmet hack.)
Female Elven Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage
30 natural dexterity (including Fade and AW bonus)
All other points go into magic.
Often used sustained spells: Arcane Shield, Rock Armor, Combat Magic, Shimmering Shield and Miasma.
Equipment:
*Sword: Spellweaver with Grandmaster paralyze and Grandmaster Dweomer runes.
*Shield: Fade Wall
*Weapon set no.2: Staff of the Magister Lord
*Head: Helm of Honneleath
*Neck: The Spellward
*Chest: Reaper’s Vestments
*Waist: Andruil’s Blessing
*Wrists: Gloves of the Legion
*Hands: Lifegiver with Key to the City (Swap Key to the City with Blood Ring for heavy casting.)
*Feet: Cailan’s Greaves
This setup offers you:
6 Strength = +3 attack
6 Dexterity = +3 attack and +6 defense
11 Willpower + 25 mana = 80 mana
11 Magic = 11 spellpower, more melee damage, minor to hit bonus
22 Constitution = 110 health
+40% chance to dodge attacks
70% magic resistance
24 armor at a very low fatigue cost
+4 Mana Regeneration
Big health regeneration
Tactics:
Grabbing some aggro is uasally fine for the Spellsword but you can still be torn apart by mobs and high damage special attacks so it's not always best to use this character as your main tank or grap a lot of aggro with spells. You are very well suited to starting fights as an offensive caster and switching to melee later on. Enemy mages don't stand a chance against the Spellword, because she can use her high power Mana Clash to deal with non-boss casters and hack the bosses to pieces in Melee because of high alround resistances.
Party:
The spellsword is so flexible and versatile that I would highly recommend it for soloing. Still, most people use a party of four so here's some advice on that. Taking a regular tank along such as Alistair would be handy. A two-Hander would also work because you would have less trouble versus special attack bosses such as dragons because of Indomitable. Having Leliana along as an Archer Ranger/Bard build is also recommened for pet sacrificing and ranged spike damage. Morrigan as a true caster would give you a lot of mage power if you'd like to have that.
B. Paladin
An alternative to the Spellsword is this character which focuses more on tanking by using heavier armor and utilizes a larger mana pool for healing and buffing himself and his friends. This character also gets a bigger bonus to mana regeneration from equipment and so can choose to have another sustained spell that drains mana active at all times.
Male Human Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer
30 natural dexterity (including Fade and AW bonus, add 5 points if Haste is frequently used)
35-40 natural willpower (including Fade bonus)
All other points into Magic
Often used sustained spells: Arcane Shield, Rock Armor, Shimmering Shield, Miasma and Haste or Cleansing Aura.
Equipment:
*Sword: Maric's Blade with Grandmaster Paralyze, Grandmaster Lightning and Grandmaster Fire runes.
*Shield: Cailan's Shield
*Weapon set no.2: Spellweaver with Grandmaster Dweomer and Master Dweomer runes and Fade Wall for fighting Casters.
*Head: Bergen’s Honor (Substitute with Helm of Honneleath if not available.)
*Neck: The Spellward
*Chest: Evon the Great’s Mail (this armor counts as Wade’s superior dragonscale armor if equipped with the rest of the set.)
*Waist: Andruil’s Blessing
*Wrists: Wade’s superior dragonscale gloves
*Hands: Lifegiver with Key to the City
*Feet: Wade’s superior dragonscale boots
This setup offers you:
4 Strength = +2 to hit bonus
4 Dexterity = +2 to hit bonus and 4 defense
9 Willpower = 45 mana
4 Magic = 4 spellpower, more melee damage, slight to hit bonus
14 Constitution = 70 health
+20% chance to dodge attacks
+34% magic resistance (62% magic resistance if weapon set no.2 is held)
35 armor at a very low fatigue cost
+9.75 (!) Mana Regeneration
Big health regeneration
Tactics:
The Paladin is a support character but not one that likes to stay back or hide. The support it provides comes from both being a damage soaker and healer/buffer at the same time. What you want to do during battles is grab aggro with spells like Crushing Prison, any Hexes, Cleansing Aura or Virulent Bomb so monsters will mostly ignore your other casters and rogues. Mass rejuvenate and Group Heal are some of your best spells to keep yourself and your friends alive. Keep in mind that a short while after casting Mass Rejuvenate you will actually have more mana than before casting it, this will be very handy to minimize the need for mana potion chaining.
Your sustained spells are your main forte, you can run more than any other build and they improve your own combat prowess as wel as those of your team. A party supported by Miasma, Haste and Cleansing Aura is truly a force to be reckoned with.
Party:
Haste and Cleansing Aura are best suited to support melee attackers and preferably ones with a slow attack. Either Oghren or Sten will get a huge boost out of Haste and your ability to draw aggro off of them. Alistair as a Sword & Shield warrior is a good choice if you want another tank that stays alive, and you can boost his moderate damage output a lot. Leliana as an archer won't work if you go for Haste so have her dual wield or take Zevran, but make sure to have a Bard in your team because their songs can negate the attack penalty from Haste. As for mages, anyone will do fine but it might be fun overkill to build Wynne in much the same way as your own char for double Haste.
C. Nuker
The third path focuses on spellcasting and never wades into melee, opting to use the Arcane Warrior only to equip better gear. You won’t be as flexible as either of the above builds but what you get in return is raw power. You are frail as a puppy so use your spells to keep the bad guys away.
Female Elven Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage
All points into Magic
Often used sustained spells: Arcane Shield and Blood Magic.
Equipment:
*Staff: Staff of the Magister Lords
*Weapon set no.2: Magister's Staff (Does fire damage, for when the enemy is immune to cold damage.)
*Head: Helm of Honneleath
*Neck: The Spellward (or Lifedrinker if you are really spellpower hungry.)
*Chest: Reaper’s Vestments
*Waist: Andruil’s Blessing
*Wrists: +20% damage gloves, type of your choice
*Hands: Lifegiver with Blood Ring
*Feet: Warden Commander’s Boots (Get them early and do not upgrade as the extra fatigue isn’t worth it.)
This setup offers you:
4 dexterity = 4 defense
15 willpower + 50 mana = 125 mana
4 magic + 13 spellpower = 17 spellpower
20 constitution = 100 health
20% chance to dodge attacks
+46% magic resistance
22 armor at a very low fatigue cost
+4 mana regeneration
Big health regeneration
Tactics:
Glyphs are your best way to avoid getting hit and making sure the enemy takes big damage from your spells. Make heavy use of Paralysis Explosion and use glyph of Repulsion/Warding on yourself to avoid melee and missile attacks. Make use of the fact that some spells do not require a line of sight to start fights from a safe distance. Optimize use of bloodmagic's short cooldown timer by chaining a series of spells from health, turning of Bloodmagic and drinking a health pot or healing yourself, then start chaining spells from mana and when the timer reloads immidiately turn Bloodmagic on again for another chain.
Party:
You want avoid direct attacks so be careful with using spells that grab aggro and take fighters along to keep aggro off you. If you only want a single fighter take a tank because when your melee fighter goes down, you'll go down too. Caster mages are very micro management heavy so I recommend a rogue archer (instead of a backstabber) to avoid a micro management nightmare. Once again, Leliana as an archer Ranger/Bard is probably best.
6.0 Relevant Quests
Warning: Spoiler Heavy!
A. Ostagar
Buy a backpack from the quartermaster both before and after you head into the wilds, they are dirt cheap and will save you some annoyances.
B. Camp
Be sure to save up all the money you can get before you leave Lothering and go to camp the first time. Thirty sovereigns is what I’d aim for but 22,5 is the minimum. Buy the Tome of Arcane Knowledge and, if you feel like it, backpack from the dwarves at camp. When you return later on, anything that you bought will respawn.
C. Connor’s Fade
Talk to the Demon instead of attacking her, first ask for arcane knowledge to unlock the Blood Mage specialization, after you have it (or on later playtroughs) ask for an increase in talents to get a spell tome.
D. The Circle Tower
We Arcane Warriors need every single ability point we can get because they’re all useful, especially so if you use a sword. So write down your stats before entering the fade and check to see if you got all the upgrades before leaving.
E. Warden’s Keep
This is the only place where you can get a good shield right of the bat. Unfortunately it takes killing Sophia roughly 100 times to get it to drop if you aren’t lucky or unlucky. The armor set she drops is also very handy for the first part of the game and for low strength characters. If you don’t need it for either of that it can even be sold at a merchant and bought back after leaving the area to upgrade the set to a higher tier material. (But the fatigue will increase as well!)
[i]F. Return to Ostagar
I know for sure that Cailan’s Armor set is scalable by selling so it would make sense that if you go here early you get Greaves that have a low fatigue penalty. I haven’t tested this yet though. Note that you can get a very good sword and very good boots here so equipment wise it's probably worth buying.
7.0 Useful links
To see which spells require weapon sheathing to cast go to http://dragonage.wik...or_Spellcasting
To get rid of helmets visit http://www.dragonage...file.php?id=202 and install the mod.
If you want to look at a particular item in the game or maybe even all items Gamebanshee has a very nice database: http://www.gamebansh...s/equipment.php
8.0 Missing Info
Here I will post updated requests for help with completing this guide.
Currently I'd like to know:
-The amount of mana drained per second by Haste, Shimmering Shield and Cleansing Aura.
-Confirmation on which versions of Dragon Age have Duncan's Sword as +4 mana regeneration.
-Why you still get stunned by shield pummels with 100% mental and physical resist.
9.0 Conclusion
This guide was made as an attempt to collect the various data floating around the internet on Arcane Warriors and make it available in one place. It is also heavily influenced by my own experiences while playing Dragon Age. Ofcourse the guide is at this point no way complete but I'm hoping others will fill in the gaps so please comment, disagree, agree and expand on what I have so far. (The name of the topic is rather obnoxious but that's all just marketing. I hope it was at least a somewhat enjoyable or enlightening read.
And remember...
rule
Modifié par Ako80, 02 février 2010 - 08:45 .
Retour en haut
If you have 4 ranks in combat tactics and +4 mana regeneration from gear and your mana is nearly depleted than Shimmering Shield will stay on indefenitely. 
