Alternate Paradox Mage Insane difficulty guide

[bpat]

PES is good as a second prodigy since it helps your statuses stick and also gives various other benefits like a bigger paradox buffer. Looks like I forgot to mention it, I'll edit it in.

[Hatome]

Nice guide. One point which might be worth mentioning to new players is that you can literally die trying to cast at super high paradox levels. I managed to do that pretty quickly after taking hidden resources and getting into a prolonged fight. I'm not sure how anomalies actually work but I am now scared to keep casting once the failure rate is 40% +

[ster]

Nice guide. One point which might be worth mentioning to new players is that you can literally die trying to cast at super high paradox levels. I managed to do that pretty quickly after taking hidden resources and getting into a prolonged fight. I'm not sure how anomalies actually work but I am now scared to keep casting once the failure rate is 40% +

Anomalies become dangerous after 600 modified paradox.

[Hatome]

Just got my first Nightmare win mostly following this guide. Thanks for the assistance and now onto insane I go

[ghostbuster]

At level 42, take either Cauterize, Eye of the Tiger, Spine of the World, or Pain Enhancement System. I don't think anything else is a good choice.

I only recently discovered how powerful the arcane amplification drone prodigy can be for PM. IMHO, the braid system of timeline threading is one of the most powerful PM mechanism, and combined with the AAD, it can deal insane damage.

Assume you have a powerful foe.
1/ create an AAD between you and him.
2/ cast rethread to braid your AAD and the foe
3/ cast a beam that will damage the AAD and your foe. Assume you spell deals 1000 damage and that the braid redistributes 50% of the damage.
Your foe will take:
- 1000 damage from the beam
- 1000*160%=1600 arcane damage from the AAD
- 1000*50% = 500 braided (irresistible) damage
Hence ~3k damage vs 1k normally.

Note that if there is another braided foe in the vicinity he will take 1600 damage from the AAD and will rebraid 800 out of it (reduced by his arcane resistance) to the initial foe (plus another eventual normal braided damage from the beam).

The AAD has 0% resistance and *all* damage it take from your spell is rebraided, which makes the braid mechanism extremely powerful when used with it.
More, the AAD is also extremely powerful in terms of defence and can, for instance, completely block access to a corridor to protect you. This saved my life a couple of time.

Only drawback. The amplified arcane damage can hit you. Be careful to be at at least 5 tiles from the AAD.

[ster]

it's PM and it has attenuate. nothing else damaging compares.

[ghostbuster]

You can also deal damage with attenuate to the AAD+braid. And it will also multiply your damage by 3...

[edit] I carefully experimented and actually, this is wrong. Attenuate is an effect and only damage from direct spells is amplified by the drone : blast, dust to dust, temporal bolt, etc.

[ster]

AAD also only lasts 3 turns which isn't really enough to do anything with Attenuate anyway.

[bpat]

I never use Arcane Amplification Drone since it can damage the user. If you get Bone Grabbed into it then you're probably dead.

[GlassGo]

Now AAD doesn't damage PC.

[ster]

Now AAD doesn't damage PC.

Still sucks unless you're Aether AM.

[GlassGo]

Rougly 50% of my char deaths happened from selfowning as Archmage...

[St_ranger_er]

Now AAD doesn't damage PC.

Still sucks unless you're Aether AM.

I have a thoughts about new AAD and it is potentially madness viable prodigy. It's not like it wasn't before, but before you have to think how to survive while using it.

[Snarvid]

Repulsion blast and Gravity Spike can also hit twice, so I think they'd also hit seals of fate twice potentially

Oh that's pretty neat, I didn't know that. They could be much more useful than I thought then.

In my general reworking my way through the game wondering "what about class X would be better with Tinkers?" I was thinking that dropping Stasis for Tinkers would let you use Mana Coil. This would free up a bunch of class skill points to run Gravity. Then you'd potentially get x2 Mana Coil procs from Repulsion Blast and Gravity Spike, and Gravity Locus + Disintegration would mean that those Lightning Bolts would potentially both be additional Seal Fate procs themselves and also strip away beneficial physical or magical effects on the target.

I'm also partial to Toxic Canister, which should synergize relatively well with the Gravity Tree (another target to bonk into your enemies with Blast and Spike while keeping enemies in the zone with Gravity Well), and Grounding Strap, Mental Stimulator, Rocket Boots, and Crystal Plating are as solid as always. You could even, if you like, run Thunder Grenade in place of Stop, although if you're not running PES (and I don't see where the stat points come from if you do, unless you're shorting Willpower and then timing Hidden Resources to pick up where your PES-enhanced willpower fades) you probably won't have the Steampower to make it stick.

E: Nvm, I'm dumb. Tinkers build stat points off their 3D printers, you can short Cun 20 and Will 10 and still come out with the same final stats as a non-Tinker. Dropping something (likely Stasis or Timeline Threading, but I love Cease to Exist too much to drop it) for Tinkers might actually be the optimal loadout for a PES Paradox Mage.

[jenx]

Repulsion blast and Gravity Spike can also hit twice, so I think they'd also hit seals of fate twice potentially

Oh that's pretty neat, I didn't know that. They could be much more useful than I thought then.

In my general reworking my way through the game wondering "what about class X would be better with Tinkers?" I was thinking that dropping Stasis for Tinkers would let you use Mana Coil. This would free up a bunch of class skill points to run Gravity. Then you'd potentially get x2 Mana Coil procs from Repulsion Blast and Gravity Spike, and Gravity Locus + Disintegration would mean that those Lightning Bolts would potentially both be additional Seal Fate procs themselves and also strip away beneficial physical or magical effects on the target.

I'm also partial to Toxic Canister, which should synergize relatively well with the Gravity Tree (another target to bonk into your enemies with Blast and Spike while keeping enemies in the zone with Gravity Well), and Grounding Strap, Mental Stimulator, Rocket Boots, and Crystal Plating are as solid as always. You could even, if you like, run Thunder Grenade in place of Stop, although if you're not running PES (and I don't see where the stat points come from if you do, unless you're shorting Willpower and then timing Hidden Resources to pick up where your PES-enhanced willpower fades) you probably won't have the Steampower to make it stick.

E: Nvm, I'm dumb. Tinkers build stat points off their 3D printers, you can short Cun 20 and Will 10 and still come out with the same final stats as a non-Tinker. Dropping something (likely Stasis or Timeline Threading, but I love Cease to Exist too much to drop it) for Tinkers might actually be the optimal loadout for a PES Paradox Mage.

BIG problem exists with gravity, especially on Insane and definitely on Madness. The third talent stops it damaging yourself, but quite a few npcs disable your talents and wham, you've gravity spiked yourself into pulp.