Do you wonder if you should get Wisdom or Scholar for your magic hero? Harukaba knows the answers...

This skill allows you to learn spells that the enemy uses in battle. I think that Eagle Eye is one of those skills that looks really good on paper but it fails in actual use. This is because I have faced very few enemy heroes who cast a spell that my hero doesn't already know. If my might hero is facing a magic hero, my hero won't have the Eagle Eye skill and if my magic hero is facing another magic hero, he probably already knows the spell. Even if he doesn't, I don't think that having a maximum chance of 60% to learning a spell like Chain Lightning is worth a skill slot when I might already have a very effective Inferno.

Unless your magic hero is offered a choice between Eagle Eye and something completely useless like Leadership or Luck, pick the other option when you level up.

This skill increases the maximum amount of spell points that your hero has and I give my magic heroes this skill when it's offered. This is because Power increases the effectiveness of magic spells, so it's important to increase Power to make your magic hero strong. However, if you neglect the Knowledge attribute, you'll run out of magic in a long battle. Having the Intelligence skill gives you the freedom to always choose Power over Knowledge when you come across a School of Magic becase your spell points will be doubled by Expert Intelligence, so Knowledge is less important.

Definitely give this to your magic hero unless you're given something better like basic Water Magic. This is also useful for might heroes but it's not as necessary. Only have your might hero learn Intelligence if the other skill is something worthless.

This skill lets you regenerate extra spell points each day and it may sound useful but it really isn't. A magic hero can easily have 80 spell points or more, so I think it's better to rest in a nearby town or visit a magic well to get your spell points back. If your hero is near an enemy's town on day 6 and you just have 2 spell points, having expert Mysticism will only give you back 4 spell points on day 7. That isn't very useful in my opinion.

Unless you are choosing between Mysticism and Luck, Leadership, or Navigation, choose the other skill.

This skill gives you a chance to resist the enemy's magic spells. This is more of an annoyance factor than a serious hamper on a hero's ability to cast spells. If it kicks in at a wrong time, say if you just have one archer left and you wanted to kill their archers with an Ice Bolt, but they resist it and kill your archer on the next round, then it's deadly. However, 20% chance at expert level is too low, and it averages out to only 1 resisted spell every 5 rounds of combat.

Don't bother getting this skill unless you're offered something awful like Luck as the other skill.

This is a skill that makes Navigation look good. Basically, it allows you teach other heroes spells and to learn spells from other heroes even if they don't have the Scholar skill. Scholar can be useful if you have one hero in a different town than your other hero and it would be too difficult to travel to that town yourself. However, it would be more useful to either use the Fly or Town Portal spell to travel there yourself than invest in this skill. Heck, using your horse would be a better idea than getting the Scholar skill.

Avoid unless the other skill you're offered is somehow worse. This does tend to be more useful than Eagle Eye though, especially in multiplayer games with allies.

Increases the effectiveness of your spells by 5%, 10%, or 15%. This sounds like something that will be great, but after running some numbers, I've come to the conclusion that it's better to raise a spell school from advanced to expert than getting basic Sorcery.

If the percentage increase was 25% instead of 15%, then my opinion would be different. As it is now, Sorcery is delegated to something that is nice after you have Wisdom, Intelligence, and all of the magic schools.

A hero with no wisdom can only learn level 1 and 2 spells. Basic Wisdom lets you learn level 3 spells, advanced Wisdom lets you learn level 4 spells, and expert Wisdom lets you learn level 5 spells. This is a powerful skill and almost all magic heroes already have it at the basic level. If your magic hero doesn't have it and is offered it, then get it unless you're at the Fortress or Stronghold, because you can't build a level 4 and level 5 Mage Guild anyway. Wisdom isn't very important for might heroes because having an expert low-level spell is usually more important than a high-level attack spell that won't do very much damage.

Unless you are using a Fortress, get it for all of your magic heroes when it's offered. Wisdom is offered rather frequently so if the other skill being offered is a basic magic school, I would get that instead of Wisdom.

For a magic hero, getting all four magic skills is important. After that, Intelligence and Wisdom should be learned as soon as you can. For every might hero except the Fortress and Stronghold heroes, it is more important to learn Wisdom than Intelligence, but learn a spell school before getting either. The other magic skills are not useful and I'd only get them if the other skill offered is Luck, Leadership, Navigation (if not on a water map), Learning, or Scouting.

Last Update: July 31, 2001

Copyright © 2000 - 2001 Rocco J Carello