Welcome! In this guide I will show you another approach to the Thaumaturge class, unlike the regular ways of playing it.

In this guide, I present you a Thaumaturge that does not really have to kill his enemies. You read that correctly, you will not be killing, because others will kill for you. This build is also different from most characters, because you are independent from items with Critical Hit and Critical Damage.

Allow me to demonstrate:

 
 

The most important skills in this build are:
- Ghostly Mirage
- Phantasmal Aide
- Mirror Image

All these skills work as your offense as well as your defense. The first one is available from the beginning of the game. And the last two are powered solely by your spellpower.

Summons two illusionary copies of Katarina. They fight just like her, but they disappear if reduced to 0 HP or when their duration is over. They use Katarina's current fighting form.
Note: cannot be used with Katarina in Ghost Form

This is your first summoning skill you will be using and it will help you tremendously in the first parts of the game. Simply said, your meatshields with low damage.

When you start, Katarina has the same damage as you do, but in addition to that, she has more HP (Note: this is based on the difficulty you play!) and regenerates health. You can switch her between melee or ranged modes, both work well. Max the skill along with your Energy Bolts at first levels, so that you can use it as often as possible.

The illusions gain a portion of Katarina's HP, so they can die off too, but you will be happy to use them as meat shields - better if an illusion gets hit instead of yourself, right?

Forget about her being a tank tho! She only moves close to you, so most targets will go after you because you have to walk forward. And if by some chance she actually runs into enemies first, the moment you start attacking, you will take their aggro (read: attention), because you will deal more damage or AoE damage on enemies that Katarina did not attack yet. There's no way to avoid that.

Cooldown cap is 12.8s (at 65% CDR and 6/5 Quick Response aura) while max duration is 46s (with Mastery). You can summon multiple copies of Katarina, so this way you can have up to 6 copies at once. I will talk about her equipment in a later section.

Mastery:
Persistent Mirage: The duration is increased by 10 seconds. Requires Rank 5.
- Take it. Longer duration = more copies.

Some observed facts about the Mirages:
- Their attacks CANNOT crit, while Katarina's attacks can.
- They deal the same base amount of damage as Katarina. Sadly, Katarina's Mirages don't get the Attack Speed bonus or Damage bonus from Blue Blood DLC skill tree.
- Katarina's special skills also DO NOT WORK with Mirages. So Mirages will never steal life/mana for you, they won't Curse or Slow enemies, they won't explode on death, they won't avoid huge damage attacks. The only things your Mirages will get are the Resistances, HP and Base damage as those are based on real Katarina's values.


Summons an illusionary ally who fights at your side for 20s. Its statistics are based on your own, and damage in particular is based on your spellpower. If the ally dies before disappearing, it creates an explosion causing physical damage in a 4m radius. This damage is based on your Body statistic.

This skill is very interesting. It summons a single wolf that runs off to fight nearby enemies, dealing damage based on your spellpower. With good spellpower gear, this means 1000+ per hit, which is very nice. This wolf also behaves differently from Katarina - he does not stay by your side and it CAN wander off your screen, possibly attacking other enemies you didn't meet yet. This is actually very useful, since the enemies will go after the wolf, plus it also saves time.

If you cannot handle the monsters, the wolf will die, and the wolf WILL EXPLODE ON DEATH and probably kill your enemies. The game says this damage is based on your Body, so I did a simple test, I took my mage from my previous guide (The Thunderguy) and I went to summon the wolf and let him die. I had 44 Body (with items), all stats in Willpower and 998 Spellpower. The wolf died and exploded for over 1200 damage. Then I swapped all my stats to Body, so I had like 230 Body and 80 Willpower, my spelldamage dropped to ~500. The new wolf had much more HP and exploded for over 1600 on death. It would seem the formula is something like
Dmg on Death = (Body * 5) + Spellpower
and the fact that it actually uses Spellpower in the explosion makes Spellpower your main stat. Wolf's HP = Your HP * 2
Don't put points into Body, because it doesn't improve damage and if the wolf has more HP, he won't die and thus he won't explode...

Mastery:
Faithful Aide: The duration is increased by 10 seconds. Requires Rank 5.
- Take it. Longer duration = more wolves.

Cooldown Cap on this trick is 14s (65% CDR + Quick Response 6/5), max duration is 30s, thus you will mostly only have 2 wolves at a time.


Creates an illusionary copy of yourself that fights on your side. The defense, dodge and resistance statistics of the copy are based on your own statistics. The spell lasts for 20s.

The bread and butter of your endgame. The images look exactly like you, they have their own health just like Katarina's Mirages and they share your Defense, Dodge and Resistances. They behave exactly like the Phantasmal Aide wolf = they run away from the screen to kill them all. Unlike the wolf, they are ranged attackers. When I first saw this skill, I thought I'll put this skill on my right mouse button and I will select an attack on my left mouse button for my images and myself to use. I was like COME COME THUNDERBOLTS! But no magic happened :-( The images will attack forever with Energy Bolts.

However this works quite well. Your default Energy Bolts appear to have some sort of "range limit" and you cannot cast them over inaccesible areas like the rivers and chasms. This restriction does not apply to your images, thus they will snipe enemies that cannot even attack you back. Since they attack enemies on their own, they are much more valuable than Katarina in her ranged form.

And the best thing of it all, at 6/5 they deal 160% of your Spellpower, so at 1000 Spellpower, you get 1600 per Energy Bolt. Default Energy Bolt is shot two times, so you get 3200 per attack.

Mastery:
Simulacrum Affinity: The cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds. Requires Rank 5.
- Take it until you have enough cooldown reduction %.

Cooldown Cap for this one is at 4 seconds, while duration lasts 20 seconds, so 5 images is your regular count. With Powerups you can extend the duration up to 35 seconds, thus 8 images is your absolute maximum. But you don't gain rage from minion kills, so you might run out of rage quickly.

Powerups:
Deadly Illusion: The copy gains +30% damage.
- If you play Neverending Story, otherwise not needed.
Lasting Illusion: The copy lasts for an additional 5 seconds.
- Take it and use frequently.
Fortified Illusion: The copy has +50% HP.
- Forget it, your copies will have enough HP.

Observed facts:
- Mirror Images do not gain bonuses from Energy Bolts. There's no point in speccing points into it then.
- Mirror Images also do not gain extra damage from Thaumaturge skills Mastery %, thus speccing into 1-point abilities is also pointless.
- Mirror Images' attacks CANNOT crit. Thus no need for criticals.

Even with that said, let's do some quick math. Let's say you fight Fulmigati with this build with 1000 Spellpower. 5 images shooting 2 Energy bolts at 1600 damage each. 5 * 2 * 1600 = 16000 damage per shot. Combine that with your melee wolves hitting for 1000 per hit, with Katarina dealing some minor damage and don't forget that you can attack too!

Tricks:
Arcane Healing is your friend, healing up your Zoo is very useful. Even at level 1 you get 260% AoE healing done, so you will most likely fully heal yourself and your allies (and other players too).

You can take one panic! button, I prefer Invulnerability, because Sluggish Time slows down your Zoo too.

Everything else is not worth it. Skyblast caps at 48 seconds, which makes it kinda useless, Fear and Slow for enemies is not required since most enemies will die from your Zoo. You don't need to create fire in your path, since there will be just corpses behind you. Resistances is nice, but you would need to keep recasting it every 15 secs, and you are already recasting three summoning spells. And those are elemental resistances only, poison will still own you. And Destructive Mana will lower your mana to 0, not worth that either. Ghastly Shape is useful for long distance travelling.


Auras:
Quick Response MAX because it lowers the cooldown of your tricks and you can cast your wolf and Mirages more often. Besides, you won't have much of a choice, Rampage does not work on summons, Fire/Ice/Lightning bonuses are the same. Mana regen aura is the worst skill in the game. For 16 skillpoints spent in the manaregen aura, you gain +6 mana regen per sec. WOW SUCH BONUS! Power for Blood can help with mana regen in the early levels, but it won't be required later. Telekinetic Aura helps for extra protection in Neverending Story.

I would suggest taking the Aura of Counterbalance with both Masteries. If you use melee Katarina, she will get damaged, thus healing will be useful. If she dies, she might respawn instantly and everytime you use up Rage, you boost her damage. Again, this does not work on Mirages, so don't be too focused on it. You can spend your points in 1-point Thaumaturge skills and increase your Mirror Images' damage that way.


Thaumaturge:
Now all the leftover skillpoints you have can be thrown into Bodybuilding, Full Resistance, Rage, Max Mana, Ink Jump (5.4s cooldown cap :-) ) or damage skill(s) of your choice. I recommend maxing Rage with masteries for extra Rage supply to get longer duration on Mirror Images and Bodybuilding for extra HP on yourself and your Images.

Max Willpower, duh!

Forget Body, you can get HP from essences. Forget Luck, same with Magic Find %.

This is where this build really shines.
You have two stats you focus: Spellpower and Cooldown Reduction %. That makes Willpower your 3rd stat to go, and everything else is up to your liking.

This build can carry loads of Magic Find and Gold Find, you can make yourself bulky with tons of HP, you can use Furious essences (yes, those that are never used) to gain huge Rage bar that can store tons of powerup uses, you can max your Resistances and Defense on items, or you can max your Dodge to avoid every hit in addition to your damage superiority.

Even if you choose not to focus entirely on Spellpower, just by upgrading your gear and putting points into Willpower, you will be strong enough to take on the Heroic difficulty, while still getting the benefits of your chosen path. All with a decent amount of safety.

Choose your perks wisely, since you can never reset them!

This build leaves you with lots of free choices here aswell.

The most benefical perks are:
Bull's Eye (+10% ranged dmg & +10% Spellpower)
Magical Hunter (+10% melee dmg & +10% Spellpower)
Focused (-10% cooldown, +20% Mana Regen)
Inventive (-5% cooldown)

The rest is free for your choice.
You probably don't need Second Chance since you have meatshields around you, you probably don't need damage perks either, because they do not count for summons.
Your mana should be fine with essences and willpower, so no need to go for manacost reduction. You can experiment :-)
If you don't have an Alchemist yet, this might be your character to do it.

I recommend learning Master, Mentor, Veteran Hunter and Teacher, because skill points are probably the most valuable options.


For Neverending Story, going for Resistances is a good alternative, so Resistive, Drinker and Scavenger perks are also an option.

Items:
Items with + arcane damage / elemental damage, try to get them on every slot and in every essence capacity, these translate into Katarina's base damage, which also works on the Mirages.
Get a weapon with + Increased Attack Speed % modifier, and ideally also with + Weapon Damage and +% Weapon Damage. Try to get the missing enchantment from Saffi. Your other weapon should have Increased Attack Speed % and as much + flat ice (or other element) damage as possible. So if your Katarina is RANGED, find a gun with Weapon Damage, and a sword can with + ice damage and other bonuses. Attack Speed bonus is the best modifier you can find for Kat.

If you spec into Blue Blood DLC skills, the Power of Vengeance skill is based on the abovementioned stats. If your Katarina has 50 base damage, you equip her with rings, amulets, armor, etc. that gives another +50 ice/fire/lightning/arcane, her skill maxed will give her another +100 damage.

Skills:
Don't forget to put skillpoints into the Arcane Awakening. You don't need the damage aura, it doesn't affect summons, so you get free choices again. I recommend taking the Spirit Guardian, 35% damage transferred to Katarina is a big boost.

Other good skills are Katarina's Attack Speed and Resistances (from the Blue Blood DLC), because those cost only 1 skill point per skill level.

Note: If you put any points into the Wail of Vengeance (explosion on death), it will incorrectly show up in her DPS numbers. In my case, putting just one point increases her screen DPS from 1k to around 4k, so don't trust Katarina's character screen DPS, it's shows FAKE INFORMATION! Her damage obviously does not change after putting points to the explosion skill.

It's the year 2021 and I decided to finish some of the games I didn't finish properly back then. That includes the Neverending Story of Van Helsing 1. After a day of testing, I decided that the Zookeeper is the best build to tackle the Neverending Story. Here I will tackle some of the difficulties and present a complete skill and gear build.


Neverending Story is the New Game+ of Van Helsing. However, the developers intentionally left this game mode unbalanced. They thought it would be impossible to finish, but apparently some players still managed to do so. Yet when you look on youtube, you won't find a single playthrough. That is probably due to your difficulty transferring over to the NG+ game.


A swarm of basic monsters in Gallowsbog is deadly, they deal up to 150 damage per monster. A single stronger monster (Strongman, Brachiataur, ...) can easily deal up to 1000 damage. Finally, all Champions (purple named enemies) and all Bosses or Special monsters (gold named enemies) can deal between 2000-5000 damage per hit. It's impossible to go face to face with NG+ enemies without focusing on Defense, Dodge, Parry, Resistances and Damage Reduction %.

And as you progress through the chapters, their damage keeps INCREASING. I saw hits dealing over 45000 to Katarina's Mirages.

• It is the only character build where the monsters can focus on your minions instead of you.
  
• Zookeeper will naturally tank enemies all around him with his minions. No sneaky monsters from the sides.
  
• You can deal good damage.

Master, Teacher, Mentor, Veteran Hunter, Bull's-eye, Magical Hunter, Focused, Drinker, Berserker, Inventive.

Alternatives: Artful Dodger, Perfect Aim, Resistive, Ghost Wshiperer, Uncanny Fighter, Enchanted Body, Icicle.

Thaumaturge tab:
Max Mana 10/10 + Cooldown (2nd Mastery)
Elemental Damage 5/8
Blizzard 8/8 + Weather Magic Affinity (1st Mastery)
Full Resistance 1/5
Mirror Image 5/5 + Simulacrum Affinity (1st Mastery)

That includes 1-skill level Prerequisites:
Energy Bolt 1/10
Ice Shards 1/10
Firewall 1/10
Control 1/10
Ink Jump 1/8
Blindness 1/8
Boiling Blood 1/5
Confusion 1/5

Tricks tab:
Ghostly Mirage 5/8 + Persistent Mirage (1st Mastery)
Painlessness 1/10
Ghastly Shape 1/10
Phantasmal Aide 5/8 + Faithful Aide (1st Mastery)

Auras tab:
Rampage 2/10
Quick Response 5/5



Max Willpower.


Starting items:



Mirror Image mastery combined with 43% CDR puts your Mirror Image at 4s CD cap, which was my starting setup. However, as I advanced farther into the Neverending Story, the monsters started being so tanky that I needed to help my minions kill them, otherwise it would take forever.

My spell of choice was Blizzard. It's an AoE that damages an area for 4 seconds, and it slows enemies by 30%. The slow is important in case the enemies decide to chase after us. Blizzard's cooldown cap is 2s, and to reach that, we need at least 60% CDR. Luckily, if we don't take the mastery for Mirror Image, the 60% CDR is enough to reach the 4s CD cap on Mirror Image aswell, so we don't waste skill points on the mastery.

At first, I left my Phantasmal Aide and Ghastly Mirage at 22.9s CD (not capped), however later on when both Mirages and my Mirror Images started getting oneshotted, being able to pump out as many wolves as possible became much more important than keeping high resistances. So I removed Full Resistance and I maxed the Quick Response aura instead. That reduced my CD to 14s, which is the CD cap for Phantasmal Aide.

The updated items focus on getting 60% CDR, exactly 100 resistances to all damage types (important!), as much spellpower as possible, Defense on two highest DEF items available and also some amounts of Dodge.


General Skills:
Incorporeal Defense 1/10
Spirit Guardian 8/8

Blue Blood DLC:
Ethereal Evasion 7/10
Spectral Resilience 5/8



Max Body.





The idea here is that because we're not actively attacking (not always at least), Katarina can actually keep some enemies on herself. Her Mirages scale with HP, Resistances and Base damage, which means that speccing her into Body or Willpower is the best option. Unfortunately, her damage is bugged and she deals next to no damage compared to Mirror Images.

Her sole purpose is to be a meatshield with the Mirages. Conveniently, she stays close to you, so if there's ever a monster coming for you from a different side, she will most likely catch it.


And here's my character that will attempt to clear the Heroic Neverending Story. His Perks are slightly different than what I would ideally want to have, but there's no perk reset so it'll have to do.





(character stats will be updated to reflect changes)

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6 (Final):

Sorry for the wall of text, pics might come later. For now, enjoy your Zoo :-)

This build was not yet perfected, thus I will be doing a playthrough with it and I will try to maximize Katarina's damage potential.

Please rate this guide. Suggestions welcome! Have fun!