how does magic work?

can someone explain to me how does magic work in g3? whats needed to cast offensive and defensive spells? it seems a bit messy to me (at least compared to how it worked in oblivion).

thanks in advance.

You need to get your Intelligence or Ancient Knowledge up high, the higher this skill is the more powerful spells you can learn.
The most powerful spell requires 250 points in Ancient Magic, but the higher this skill is the more damage you can do.
(Mine is at 560 now and I can kill a troll with 3 quick fireballs.)
The spells can be learned from any Firemage or Druiid or at shrines.
Once you have learned the spell and can use it just add it to one of your quick slots by draging it from your spell book to the slot.
To cast the spell press the quick slot with the spell and hold down your left mouse button and the spell will cast, make sure you hold down the left mouse button until the spell has benn fully cast.

You can have one active spell at a time, which traditionally is your main low-cost attack spell, FireBall/IceLance/Lightning. I recomend you get one of them to begin with, and later you might want to get another since there are monsters resistant to specific damage types, but your demon can regulary take care of thoose (see later down)

To use your attack spell you simply target a monster and click. If you hold down your mousebutton for awhile instead of just tapping it, your spell will load up and do more damage and alo become homing.

You also want one of the areaattacks, Fire Rain for example. If you manage to position yourself somewhere where you cannot be reached, throwing several areaspells at the same place will very quickly annihilate a whole horde of enemies. There's a few places that becomes very useful.

The best defense you can get is a Demon. Summon Demon that is. Call him before a major battle and he will take the pain for you.

There are no personal defense spells, but I cannot see a mage go without healing. Healing is too slow to be used properly in combat though.

Beyond that you might want Light to lit up dark areas without occupying your hand with a torch. Heal Other is good to keep NPC friends alive.

The rest is up to you. Remember that you can only use one spell at a time, which unfortunally reduces the amount of spells you might want to use.

thank you very much.
few more questions… i guess druids teach you healing and buff spells (like light) meanwhile fire mages teach you offensive spells, or both teach the same kind of stuff?

also, do i need any prereq or ancient knowledge is all i need? talking about the "magic skills". thanks.

Just check the spellbook, spells of Innos are available at shrines of Innos, spells of Beliar are available at shrines of Beliar, and spells of Adanos are available from Druids and Water Mages.

AK is all you need as prerequisite if it's not a higher skill rank of a certain skill, such as Staff Fighting 2 - that needs a certain amount of AK + Staff Fighting 1.

ancient knowledge is all you need, but most mages will require you to do a small quest for them first, (finding plants).
Fire mages teach fire spells
Druids teach healing and summoning animals.
Water mages teach ice spells

thx a lot!

No, fire mages do not teach fire spells - you get them from shrines to Innos. Fire mages only teach you magical abilities like AK and staff fighting.

…er, perhaps it should be mentioned that you also need MANA, which costs LP's and is available from many places, mainly any shrine!!

Keep in mind that area spells can really be a pain to cast succesfully because your casting gets interupted when you are attacked and you loose the mana u used to cast the spell. Casting quick fireball/icelance/lightning however does not easily get interupted as it has very small casttime.

Yes, there are only a few situations where area spells are actually useful. In general, with careful planning you can cast one, maybe two, such spells before the enemies start reaching you. In most cases it's better to just use the smaller versions, or the divine spells meteor/lightning.

How is the spell aimed? I have no guide, just aim in the general direction?

Originally Posted by sealight4
How is the spell aimed? I have no guide, just aim in the general direction?

For something like Fireball, you just activate it by arming it like a weapon, then it will 'lock' on a target. You can change targets or just fire away - it will also just manually change when the target dies or when they are out of your vision cone.