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[Wolf Tengu]

Hmm. I never had that problem at that point.

AoE Water gets really good knockback if you're surrounded. Or try casting rain then freeze em with a cold beam. Or AoE Arcane + Lightning for damage. Arcane for range, lightning (or any other element) for damage.

As you may have guessed, I like beams. They don't help if the enemy spans behind you and sets you on fire though.

[mross]

my strategy for basically every level so far has been to run in with haste, then alternate wet flash and cold flash as fast as possible. if you're in single player, i would run to one side of the bridge, kill everything, run to the other, repeat as necessary. goblins move slow and attack slow; most of their swings and arrows will miss, so you'll steamroll them as long as you don't use a shield.

alternatively, try using cold lightning flash after the wet flash against armored goblins. the cold will do increased damage and freeze, and lightning should have its damage boosted twice from wet + armored. on the other hand, goblins have so little health that just wet + cold is enough to gib them in one cycle, so it's optional.

speaking of personal shield, i almost never use it, except when fighting enemy casters (or teammates). i have an easier time using heals and elemental protection auras whenever i get wet or cold or set on fire - since there's no knockback except for certain sources, it's much easier to execute my cheap bs.

i always crash after beating grimnir though, so i've only played the later levels in games hosted by others.

random tip: healing boulders are a great way to deliver large burst heals on to yourself without using mines that have the liability of healing enemies or launching other players, usually directly into a group of armored orcs; they're also useful to heal players out of the range of a nova without needing to commit several seconds to aiming and maintaining a beam, especially if the target is being chased by a dozen orcs and will die instantly if they stop moving to heal, or to let you heal them. also, it doesn't appear to have knockback or knockdown if you only queue one rock (which is all you need); at least in the games i've played so far.

unrelated: really wish they'd put some options in the menu to disable all the superfluous garbage like lighting and pixel shaders that serve no purpose except to melt electronics. and it'd be nice if the devs could do something about the near-one-second input delay in menus.

[nenjin]

Self-shield also prevents you from getting wet, getting set on fire, poisoned, getting colded, or getting frozen.

About the only thing it won't let you do is cast lightning during a rain spell or thunderstorm. (You still take lightning damage even though you're not wet.)

The only time I don't keep shield up is when there are archers involved. My strategy with the knockdown from melee is just to cast a haste while I'm flying back; I'm on my feet and moving away by the time they attack again.

[Neonivek]

Self-shield also prevents you from getting wet, getting set on fire, poisoned, getting colded, or getting frozen.

About the only thing it won't let you do is cast lightning during a rain spell or thunderstorm. (You still take lightning damage even though you're not wet.)

The only time I don't keep shield up is when there are archers involved. My strategy with the knockdown from melee is just to cast a haste while I'm flying back; I'm on my feet and moving away by the time they attack again.

I didn't know shield causes knockdown for Archers in so long I have developed strategies to combat them

Unfortunately I have this weird concentration thing where I play MUCH worse the more players that are in.

Now I know that is with everyone as well... but honestly the amount of skill I lose is almost night and day. I could easily solo most levels. When with 4 other people I am the worst player alive.

[cerapa]

Self-shield also prevents you from getting wet, getting set on fire, poisoned, getting colded, or getting frozen.

About the only thing it won't let you do is cast lightning during a rain spell or thunderstorm. (You still take lightning damage even though you're not wet.)

The only time I don't keep shield up is when there are archers involved. My strategy with the knockdown from melee is just to cast a haste while I'm flying back; I'm on my feet and moving away by the time they attack again.

I didn't know shield causes knockdown for Archers in so long I have developed strategies to combat them

Unfortunately I have this weird concentration thing where I play MUCH worse the more players that are in.

Now I know that is with everyone as well... but honestly the amount of skill I lose is almost night and day. I could easily solo most levels. When with 4 other people I am the worst player alive.

I easily soloed the entire game. Most of my deaths were from death.

But I still qfasss aoe and kill my entire team and then get eaten by yetis.

[Silfurdreki]

For the bridge (or any large outdoor fight, really) blizzard and rain works wonders, just remember to use frost shield on yourself so you don't get frozen from the blizzard yourself. For general armoured-goblin stomping I use the usual steam-lightning beam.

[Jay]

But I still qfasss aoe and kill my entire team

To be fair, that thing is 2007 damage with no way of protecting yourself (it eats through a personal shield and still kills you unless you're carrying the staff of war) AND it deals damage further out than its visual effect.

and then get eaten by yetis.

Charm them.  WED is quick to cast, and an easy solution to that problem.

[Wolf Tengu]

I'll try a steam lightning beam instead- mind you, it's not the ones in front of me that are a problem.

Is self frost shield is re self ?

[Shadowlord]

I mainly used three spells there, besides the standard shield and healing spells:

A water AOE: QQQQQ shift-right click, to throw the enemies back and stun them
A very powerful lightning beam boosted with steam, twice: QFQFASA right click (same key combo as thunderstorm) (I was using QFAS at first, and then switched to QFASA when I learned thunderbolt, and then added the extra steam when I noticed it doing damage faster.
(It looks like having three steam instead makes it deal damage even faster (QFQFQFAS), for some reason. I usually don't bother since the two-steam version is already ridiculously powerful.)
An electric exploding icewall: QERRAS shift right click, or shift left click to put on the sword and then use the sword again to throw the icewall in a straight line. You can cast this (with shift right click) whenever enemies are starting to get close to blast them, and then recast it while the icewall is exploding to whack them again when they start coming at your again (or even before). I discovered this one while experimenting with five-element spell combinations to see which ones were most useful.

Those last two/three are on the Magickapedia's spell combinations list, it turns out, although they have the keypresses in a different order (it shouldn't matter, elements appear to be commutative except for casting Magicka), as the most damaging spell combinations known currently. Magickapedia refers to them as: Super Steam Lightning Beam, and the version with three steam as Ultra Steam Lightning Beam (it lists a lower damage, but doesn't list DPS), and the last spell as Exploding Electric Icewall. Apparently my name for the icewall was almost the same as theirs, except it was more of a description than a name.

On the bridge, I used the super steam lightning beam to zap the enemies while they were far away, killing many of them, and then switched to using the exploding electric icewall when they got close, killing most of them without risk to myself (as long as I kept my shield up and stayed healed). It IS possible (but rare) to get knocked into the icewall or field left by it, and can be fatal if your shield is low and you don't have any kind of element resistance to, well, it does do four damage types, and I'm not clear on whether a cold shield protects against ice damage. The odds of that happening are extremely low, however.

[nenjin]

I usually have the best Kill:Death score on the team, with the people I play with.

I attribute it to a couple things:

1. I play my immediate surroundings, not the whole field. That doesn't make me a top notch team-mate...but it means I'm always available to rez. I deal with what is within AOE range...if there's nothing within range, I pay attention to the other action until something gets close again...and then I'm back to focusing on a very narrow part of the screen.

2. I aoe my ass off. Cold/Cold/Lightning/Lightning/Arcane 5 times kills most stuff, and just one aoe gets me time to move away. It's short range, shorter than most aoes, but that's why I like it. I don't do a lot of friendly fire with it compared to other AOEs. I never use ball AOEs. They're too damn big in 4 player games. I also use a TON of pure cold aoe. I'll do that before hurting guys, actually.

When games are really falling apart and everyone is running for their lives, I usually throw myself into the horde and just spam that AOE. It buys my team the time they need to get healed and repositioned, and usually ends the wave too.

However, that makes my nemesis people who sit at the edges and beam into packs or into areas where they can't even see what they're hitting.

3. A perfectly fine tactic for me is Cold/Lightning/Arcane mines dropped behind me as I run. I'll do that even just running away from guys to get space to AoE. I wouldn't say I run a mine-based strategy...but in arenas I'll drop them to order on guys as I run around thinking about what to do next. I'll usually lay mines in the entrances to the Havindir arena too, right before the wave starts.

Part of magicka I think is learning how to cram as many useful spells into as small a time frame as possible, without just being a button mashing psycho.

I really love it when games live up to "Easy to Learn, Hard to Master" goal. I think the biggest thing I've yet to do is memorize all the great spells in a way that I see them all as tactical options while I'm playing. Lots of times I'll do something, notice a spell and go "fuck, why didn't I do that instead of just beaming?!"

Although in the case of Lightning Bolt, I try not to use it because it's just so OP, and I think I'd start to get bored.

[NewsMuffin]

Damnit, I crashed right after we beat Grimnir.
Also, we were fighting stuff I hadn't seen before, is that normal, or did I miss a few chapters?

[Moghjubar]

Finally finished uploading my solo playthru:
(Relink of playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0B7A3A1F9296BFED  )

[Wolf Tengu]

You crashed too Muffin? For me it seems obligatory to crash at least once at the end of each chapter.

And no, you've missed nothing. You'll encounter those guys eventually.

[kuro_suna]

I'm still stuck, mainly I'm having trouble entering the more complex spells while keeping enemies off my back.

The unfortunate thing is that I would find magicka very fun if I could save after every encounter but its difficult to manage the frustration if I can't even take a break with having to restart the entire chapter.

[Wolf Tengu]

Which bit exactly are you stuck on? I could probably give you some advice, or at least tell you what I did - I've done up to chapter 8 solo, so my advice for exact situations may be better.Probably not though.

Guess where i'm still stuck. Yes, the goddamn goblin bridge. I have a tactic now, of making clusters of stone walls so the enemy can't pass from one side. However, both sides must be beaten to go further, which means the walls have to come down. I can survive until the troll (first troll?) and I can't kill it and the goblins fast enough before they tear me in half. I  know how the rest of the level goes, and I should be Ok, but i've been stuck here for ages.

Can't wait to get to Ch9. that place has Undeads. And necromancers. And what I swear is a CSI reference (YEAAAAAH!)