So I just started playing the Phantasy mod and I'm not really sure what to do. How do I magic? Is it worth it?
Buy a spell book, put points into magic power. Buy some spells (Book and Spells purchased from the Mage's Guild within custom towns) and write them into your book while camping at some point. Press B in battle to use magic, N to use Cleric spells (Needs faith for those).
Magic Storm is ridiculously worth it. You throw a cloud of magic missiles at the enemy army and it will decimate whatever you hit with it as long as your magic power is 8+.
This, allowing for the fact that you can start out as a mage and not have to buy a spell book unless you want to make companions into mages.
Magic Missile and Missile Storm get more missiles from Magic Power, but are only affected damage wise by the Power Throw skill, if I've read the scripts correctly. Things like Fireball, Lightning Bolt and Flame Arrow get much better returns from high Magic Power. Also, I'm not sure if it's a bug, but Magic Power allows you to go above 10 points, so you can become extremely powerful after a few sieges of spamming Fireball.
As a character, you can basically single handedly decimate entire armies on your lonesome. I accidentally got caught by a Blazing Hand guy with 500 units, when I had 250 (with maybe 150 fodder undead troops risen by Necromancy), which actually managed to whittle them down to around 50 or so troops due to a decent number of high end Shadows and a few captured Demons. I then proceeded to kite the last 50 around with Magic Missile and the occasional Missile Storm, while mounted (and cackling at their inability to catch up on foot), and regenerating any wounds sustained due to the Ring of Healing. The only way it could've been easier is if Magic Power came back quicker, and if I had a unicorn for another regeneration script.
Mage companions and troops are useful for alpha strikes, but their AI is sort of dumb in many cases.
Any idea why Floris 255 would result in all the cities and castles disappearing after I finish the tutorial questline?
Did you accidentally turn on Fog of War?
Nope. It's a texture glitch of some sort. The land is all break-y too.
Odd. The only visual bug I normally get tends to affect the base game and all mods, causing triangular pieces of light to become distinctly visible on the map (both overview and battle) while other areas become darker. It can pop up when I alt tab (assuming the game doesn't crash outright) or even when leaving a town, but it can fix itself afterward. Annoying, but not game breaking.