The H key is the default to open up the help menu, which contains the basic controls and some information you will want to know.

Rift Wizard 2 is a turn based game, which takes place on a grid. Your character is the wizard. The area you play is a called a realm. All units, including you, can move in all 8 directions. Each movement, spell, or passing action, takes up 1 turn. At the end of your turn, the rest of the units in the realm take their turn, in a random order. Enemies will try to path towards the wizard, allies will try to path towards a close enemy. Units will attempt to use their spells from the top of their spell list to the bottom, on a hostile target within range. If they have no available options they will pass their turn.

Realm 1


Adjacent in Rift Wizard means any of the 8 tiles beside the unit. You can swap spots with an adjacent allied unit, as long as that unit is not immobile. You do this by attempting to move into its tile.

Some properties of units include:
Their ability to fly over chasms or burrow through walls.
Their resistances, which is the amount of damage a unit will avoid when it takes damage e.g. 100% resistance means immunity, -100% resistance means twice as much damage.
Their shields, which is a defensive layer that blocks 1 single instance of damage, no matter how large. It is associated with the Arcane tag.
Their inability to move, which is shown using the "Immobile" descriptor.
Their passive abilities, which contains many different effects from: transforming into a new unit after a few turns, to randomly teleporting, or exploding / reviving / splitting into new units upon dying.

There are 3 types of terrain: floors, walls, and chasms. Walls block line of sight and cannot be moved through, except by burrowing units. These units will destroy walls when walking on them. Chasms cannot be moved over except by flying units, but they do not block line of sight. All other terrain tiles are floors. Generally walls and chasms can become floors, but only rarely can walls be produced mid-realm.

In every realm there are exit portals, which contains your next rift. A preview of the expected enemies and rewards can be seen by looking at the portal. The exact layout of a rift can be viewed by walking onto it. You will be prompted to select a destination, but you can always back out of a rift for whatever reason e.g. it's too dangerous, you dislike the rewards, you wish to view the other rifts, etc.

From each realm, you can see the overall contents of the new rifts, which will be displayed on the right part of your screen.


The actual realm itself. The wizard is a different colour to indicate this location is not possible to start in.

VERY IMPORTANT CHANGE IN Rift Wizard 2 - Portals can be re-rolled for free once per realm by pressing R. This functions identically to a portal disruptor from Rift Wizard 1, and is a strong tool to increase your odds of finding a suitable realm.

Each realm contains 1 guaranteed reward and some memory orbs to learn new spells and skills. The guaranteed reward is one of: maximum hp or a piece of equipment. The realm may contain consumable items in addition to the other rewards.

Every realm contains spawners, sometimes called 'gates' or 'lairs', which will slowly produce an infinite number of enemies. These spawn an enemy every 5 - 10 turns. The spawner will be named after the enemy it spawns e.g. a Bat spawner will produce Bats. The time remaining is visible in the spawner's spell list. See below, a realm 1 spawner which spawns a unit every 7 turns.



A realm will be cleared when no enemies remain, including spawners. A realm clear is accompanied by: a ping sound, the opening of portals to the next set of realms, and the ability to automatically collect all items by pressing the auto collect hotkey (default a)

Each realm has a set of enemies that can spawn, with the stronger enemies gradually becoming more common and the weaker enemies disappearing. You may find powerful units, such as wizards, as a kind of mini-boss in a realm. Later realms spawn multiple of these units, and units which were once rare on an early realm can be found as regular enemies in the later realms.

Starting from realm 5 you may encounter modified realms. These can contain modified enemies, which have greatly increased health, and either new spells or passive abilities depending on what modification they have been granted. Much later you may encounter spawners who also have this modification and pass it on to the units they spawn. Their naming convention is either [Modification] + [Unit name] such an "Infernal Bat" for the chaos modifier, or more rarely [Unit Name] + [Modification] currently only found on the Lich modifier e.g. "Goblin Lich". Realm 5 may also spawn realms with a variety of other changes, such as greatly increased unit density but low variety, or only 1 or 2 very powerful enemies.

Starting from realm 10, you may also encounter gigantic enemies, which take up more tiles (from 3x3 all the way to 5x5 on the furthest realms). These have some special properties discussed later.

What is a spell? Open up the spells menu (default hotkey s)


Everything in this menu, and every single unit's active attack is a spell. If you use it on a tile, on a an enemy, or on yourself, it's a spell. Spells are not passives such as the skills from the skills menu, or the passives found on some enemies (e.g. the automatic teleportation found on many arcane enemies). If it's found in the enemy's description, it's either a spell, attribute, or passive ability. Spells are located beneath the unit's tags. Passives are beneath those spells.

A spell's level is always equal to the amount of SP (memory orbs) needed to buy it. Spells which are not found in the spells menu don't have a level or charges. All spells have a range, which is how far they can be cast, in tiles, from the wizard. A spell is self targeted at 0 range, and melee at 1 range.

See below: your spells, filtered by lightning. You can filter spells by pressing the key highlighted in the tag or attribute. While hovering over a spell it fills the right side of your screen with its values. See Lightning Bolt, a Lightning / Sorcery tagged spell (more on that later). Its level is 1, so its SP cost is also 1. Charges are a measure of how many times it can be used per realm. Its description is shown beneath its charge count. It has 3 upgrades, which can be previewed by using the scroll wheel or PgUp or PgDn. (different hotkeys in Rift Wizard 1). Its attributes are hidden, which will be explained later.

Spells upgrades can be accessed by clicking on a spell you have already learned, which will prompt you to select an upgrade. Upgrades cost SP to activate. Spells in Rift Wizard 2 can only be upgraded once, unlike Rift Wizard 1.

Some effects cast spells automatically, in which case the spell being cast is a copy of your spell with all of its attributes, including upgrades. These are sometimes called freecasts, which pay no costs at all, and also ignore the normal range associated with the spell. Though they ignore the normal range of the spell, there may be range restrictions on the activation of the freecast, so keep that in mind.

On cast effects, usually worded as: "Whenever you cast an X spell ... do effect Y" trigger at the time you cast the spell, before your turn ends. Automatic casts will trigger these effects, e.g. the Lifespark Lantern skill will be triggered by an automatically cast lightning bolt.

Minions can be taught spells. This can be done by: upgrades e.g. Fire Drake's "Dragon Mage" upgrade, skills e.g. Hungry Dead and your Undead minions, items e.g. Red Curse Doll teaches dying Demons your annihilate spell, and most rarely by another spell e.g. The Idol of Sorcery (enemy unit) can teach other enemies in the level a fire or lightning spell by using its "Grant Sorcery" spell.

If the spell was taught by you, it inherits an exact copy of your spell except that the caster of the spell is the minion. This is called being the statholder of a spell. The minion does not have your buffs, spells, or equipment, but it will inherit any properties at the time when it is cast such as damage, range, or radius increases caused by said buffs, spells, or equipment. This also means that when your spells are cast by your minions, any bonuses to their stats don't affect those spells (because you are the statholder).

Minions do not trigger your on cast effects which specify you (as in the wizard) because the minion does not have those. For example, your searing heat skill triggers when you cast a Fire spell, but when Blazerip is cast by a Fire Drake, it does not have the trigger. Minions do trigger global cast effects, but these are quite rare, and are normally found on "Spirit" enemies such as Spark spirits which gain hp whenever they see any lightning spell being cast.


What is a skill? Open up the skills menu (default hotkey K)


Skills are passive bonuses which can be learned by spending SP. Once learned they are always ready (though some may have conditions before they do anything). Skills are located in your UI beneath your current spells. All skills are tagged with 1 or more tags and normally they will affect that tag in particular, though some skills, such as the Arcane skill, Master of Space, affect all spells and skills regardless of their tags. You don't need to limit yourself to only 1 tag. Skills have their own set of attributes, like spells, which are discussed later.

Skills are precise in their wording (excepting bugs). If a skill says "When a unit is killed by arcane damage ... " it does not care whose team the unit was on, or who did the killing, it only cares about a unit which died to arcane damage. More explanation will be needed to understand damage sources but the simplest rule explaining the origin of damage is: if it was sourced in the combat log (default hotkey M) to something e.g. some Ice damage from your blizzard cloud being sourced to the stormcaller skill, it was dealt by the skill, not the cloud. This is important for some spells, skills, and equipment.

Skills are now displayed as Icons instead of names, since the full release patch. You may see older screenshots where skills appeared with their full name.

What are tags exactly?

Tags, often highlighted in the colour of their tag, are what the game uses to categorize things according to themes. Your spells normally tagged as: Sorcery, Conjuration, or Enchantment along with additional thematic tags.

Sorceries - the spells which target something and normally do damage to it, units around it, or units around the map. Sorceries also include some utility spells many of which teleport units.

Conjurations - the spells which summon allies and includes some spells that buff allies e.g. ironize. Rarely they deal damage e.g. ghostball but they will also include a minion summoning portion.

Enchantments - the spells which add debuffs to enemies, buffs to yourself or allies, or spells which have persistant effects that last over time on yourself. If its effects happen over a period of time, and you aren't channeling it, it's probably an enchantment.

The other tags are categories such as Fire, Holy, Orb, or Chaos, which have broad themes tying these things together. The fire tag is used to describe: a spell associated with fire e.g. Boiling Blood, an enemy which is related to fire e.g. a Fire Imp, a skill which summons fiery allies e.g. Houndlord, and the actual damage type of Fire.

Boiling Blood has 4 tags, Fire, Nature, Enchantment, and Blood, highlighted in different colours.


Tags are also used to categorize damage types, even if there is no corresponding spell school e.g. Physical damage can come from Nature spells, Ice spells, and spells with no tags at all. Poison damage can come from Nature spells, the poison debuff, Dark spells, etc.

Some spell schools, such as Metallic and Chaos, have no corresponding damage tag, but do have themes which are associated with them e.g. Chaos spells, skills, and enemies are associated with Fire, Lightning, and Physical damage. Metallic spells are associated with physical damage, and Metallic Units with resisting many common damage types. Word spells affect the entire realm.

There are also tags used solely to describe units e.g. Demon, Undead, and Living. Your spells may summon minions of these types, your skills may care about them, and your items may have interactions with them, but they have no corresponding tag in your spell or skill menu. There is no Undead tag for spells or skills, It is always from another tag, such as how Hungry Dead grants Undead minions a Dark damage dealing spell.

Items are not tagged, but do interact with the tag system. For example an item may activate when: enemies take Ice damage, Lightning spells are cast, or a Dragon ally dies. Because Items are not tagged it means they do not ever scale with bonuses to spells or skills, such as Arch Conjurer which affects Conjuration spells and skills. Because no item is tagged, no minion summoned through an item will be affected by Arch Conjurer.

The wizard is tagged as a Living unit for the purposes of skills and items, and therefore skills such as Toadblood transformation will function for the wizard like any ally unit.

Spell tags can change as of the patch 25 beta, where upgrades may add relevant tags. Besides this, there are no ways to modify tags.

When upgrades add damage types, e.g. Lightning Bolt and its upgrade Energy Bolt adding arcane, the new damage does work with effects that care about dealing that damage type e.g. Arcane damage dealt by Lightning bolt will trigger some Arcane skills, and because Lightning Bolt is a lightning spell, it will count as damage dealt by lightning spells (not lightning damage). Energy Bolt's arcane damage will scale with increases to Lightning Spell damage, because it has the damage attribute, more on that now.


How do attributes work?

IMPORTANT NOTE: Spell attributes are not shown by default on all resolutions, and those playing on small or medium sizes will not see spell or skill attributes.

Lifedrain has 4 attributes here, damage, duration, radius and num targets. Some of these require upgrades to be active.


Attributes are the traits of units, spells, skills, items, buffs, and debuffs. They include: the health and resistances found on units, the damage and range found on spells, and also more obscure values like the num summons trait for spells and skills.

If an attribute is described in game using the exact text [Tag] spells and skills gain [attribute] it will scale exactly those spells and skills by that attribute, and only if that attribute can be scaled. There are also global attributes, such as 'Damage' granted by buffs such as Mystic Power. All spells and skills with the damage attribute will be affected, but there are spells which deal unscalable damage, such as Nightmare Aura whose damage is a constant 2. The Nightmare Aura spell lacks the corresponding damage attribute. Spells which lack minion attributes but summon minions after an upgrade, normally scale with bonuses to the spell's tags.

Examine the Dark Lord skill as an example. It will grant Dark spells and skills max charges, damage, and minion damage. These values will affect any Dark spell which has the corresponding attributes. The attributes are located beneath the spell on the UI, but on some resolution settings (i.e. below large) they may be hidden. Note that Dark Lord has no attributes itself, this means that the skill itself cannot be scaled, not that the skill does not scale other things. Other skills have attributes because they can be increased or decreased.



A spell such as Ghostball has all the attributes Dark Lord will affect: it has max charges, damage, and minion damage. The damage attribute is the amount of damage Ghostball will do when cast, the minion damage attribute is how much damage the resulting ghosts will deal. Most spells only have one of these attributes, and so won't be affected by both damage and minion damage.

Here we see Devour Mind, which deals Arcane and Dark damage. Devour Mind has a damage attribute but both of the damages are scaled when you learn Dark Lord. This is because devour mind is tagged as Dark and Dark Lord affects the damage attribute, it does not 'know' that Devour Mind primarily deals Arcane damage.


The num summons attribute affects spells which summon multiple units. Some spells must be upgraded to have this effect e.g. Wolf gains it with the Wolf Pack upgrade. All spells with this attribute will have the number of minions summoned displayed in a different colour of text. Upgrades will also follow this, see below for Goatia Offering's upgrade Maggot Host. This upgrade summons 2 mind maggots, and has the '2' highlighted. It can be scaled by num summons. Spells without this attribute gain no effect from any num summons bonuses e.g. your Void Drake spell isn't going to summon 2 void drakes if you get an Arcane Flag.



A similar attribute, num targets, does the exact same thing but for spells which have multiple targets per cast. For example the spell Heaven's Wrath normally affects 3 units, shown in its num targets attribute of 3, but with a Finger6 item the number of targets will be increased by 1. Upgrades which have a number of targets will normally have the same coloured text as a num summons upgrade. Unfortunately some do not e.g. the Life Drain spell seen earlier which requires an upgrade for num targets to have an effect, does not have this colour, but it does have this attribute.

What are props?

Props are the things found on tiles such as: rifts, chests, items, scrolls, or hearts. Rifts cannot be used until the realm is cleared, but other props are immediately available. Props can grant you: equipment, consumables, spell, or max hp in the case of a heart. Using one does not take your turn, but it will normally take a turn to move into the tile. You may choose to start a realm by landing on a prop, in which case you immediately activate it. If you refuse to pick it up, for example because you don't know what equipment you want from a chest, you can always return before you go to the next realm.

You can preview the contents of a chest by mousing over it, and using either the PgUp and PgDn keys or the scroll wheel to see the various rewards and related objects.


How does equipment work?

Equipment refers to the passive items you pick up over the course of your run, and are found beneath your skill list. They are categorized into 5 categories: Staves, Robes / Armour, Caps, Boots, and Trinkets. You can have any number of trinkets (and the same trinkets will stack), but you can only have 1 item from each of the other 4 categories. Picking up an equipment that occupies a slot you have already filled, results in the old equipment being deleted and the new equipment taking up the spot. You cannot pick it back up.

Equipment can provide many different effects, some are always active and sometimes they triggered by some sort of condition e.g. Every 3 turns, every 30 damage dealt to enemies with Ice spells, or every time an allied Living unit dies.

Important note: Equipment is not a spell or skill, and anything that says "Your X spells and skills gain Y property" will not affect them because they are in their own category. There are items whose effects work with minions, and skills whose effects work with items, but these are usually worded as "Your summoned X minions gain Y property" such as venom spit granting your spriggans from the Treelord Staff the Venom spit spell. But Nature Lord will not affect these spriggans because the Treelord Staff is not a Nature spell or skill. Some items only work with other sources of minions, such as Jar of Embers granting the burning modifier to 1 out of 3 non-fire minions, and these items do not care about the source at all.


How do consumables work?

Consumables are found in the UI beneath your spells. They spawn in some levels, which will be indicated in the rift preview. You also start with 3: a health potion, a mana potion, and a teleporter. They can be carried across levels, but are permanently consumed upon use.

All consumables are spells, which means they can be affected by some debuffs e.g. blind and silence, which interact with spells. They have no corresponding tags or charges, but they may summon allies which have tags e.g. a Bag of Spikes summoning Metallic Rolling Spikeballs. They may also deal damage with a damage tag e.g. Death Dice which deals 666 Dark damage.

You can only hold 10 consumables at a time. Any future consumables can't be picked up, but will stay on the tile for you to pick up if you can make space for them.


How do scrolls work?

Scrolls teach you one of the listed spells (or in later realms skills). If you already have the spell, it will open the spell's upgrade menu but it will not grant you an upgrade. Besides that, they are identical to learning the spell or skill with SP.

Special Properties of 3x3 (and 5x5) units.

These units take up 9, or 25 tiles respectively. Each tile is an acceptable target for multi-tile effects e.g. Icicle will strike 5 tiles of a 3x3 unit at once, causing the exact same effect as striking 5 separate units, in one single cast. These units are one single unit for the purposes of targeting e.g. Heaven's Wrath cannot target a 3x3 unit more than once, it still exists as a single unit. There are a few edge cases where spells do treat each tile individually as a unit, but for the most part a multi-tile unit is exactly 1 unit, with many tiles to hit.

These units always gain clarity after being stunned or otherwise incapacitated, a property also found on the final boss.

Gigantic units require more space to move than single tile units, and will only path towards a location if all tiles it is moving into are empty. They do not swap with allies. Realms which spawn 3x3 units always provide a large amount of open space for them to move.


Sources

Sources are a confusing part of RW2, especially when quite a few things care about them. The source of something is necessary to know when an effect is triggered by some condition. Always check the combat log (default key M) or the end of realm log, to see where damage is getting sourced from.

Skills like Melting Armour, completely ignore source and only care about whether or not the damage dealt was fire damage.
Skills like Disintegrator care about whether or not the damage source was a spell, and whether the spell had the sorcery tag. It does not care about the type of damage dealt.
Skills like Purestrike care about whether or not the unit which caused the damage was shielded, and if that damage type was physical. It does not care about the tags of the damage source.
Skills like Scent of Blood work if the damage came from many different sources: a nature tagged unit, a blood tagged skill, a nature tagged spell, or a minion summoned by a blood spell (even one lacking nature or blood tags).

In most cases, when you use a spell, the resulting damage, buffs, and debuffs are sourced to that spell.
Fireball's damage is sourced to the Fireball spell, so it is tagged as Fire and Sorcery. The damage type is Fire.
Eye of Fire's damage is from a buff, but the source of that buff is Eye of Fire, so it is tagged as Fire and Enchantment. The damage type is fire.
Immolate's damage is from a debuff, but the source of that debuff is the Immolate spell, so here the damage source is tagged as Fire and Enchantment. The damage type is Fire.
Conjuration spells produce units, who are themselves the source of the damage. Fire Drake summons a Fire Drake, but the source of its Fire Breath is not the spell it is the Fire Drake. The damage type is Fire for Fire Breath, and Physical for its melee attack. Serpents of Chaos would not trigger from damage caused by your Fire Drake, because it cares about damage caused by you, even though Fire and Physical are both compatible types.
Spells and skills which produce clouds, source said cloud's damage to the spell or skill. Blizzard clouds belong to the blizzard spell.

Some complicated chains can occur. Flame gate has an upgrade which adds the Eye of Fire spell to your Fire Elementals upon spawning them. They cast the spell, and now the Flame Elemental is logged as the source of the damage.

Equipment damage is sourced to the equipment itself. Nothing specifies equipment (as of now) and therefore equipment will trigger effects that care about damage type. Robe of Frostfire will trigger Melting Armour, but not Searing Heat.
Equipment which cares about the damage type does not care about source e.g. Snowy Fursphere will trigger if Ice damage was dealt to enemies from any source at all.
Equipment which cares about tags, cares only about the source e.g. Silvermelt triggers once for every 60 damage, of any type, dealt to enemies from fire tagged spells. It does not care if the damage was Fire, so the Blazerip spell's arcane damage will also contribute. The spell could be yours, a spell you taught your minion. A Fire Drake which casts your Blazerip spell is going to contribute to Silvermelt's 60 damage trigger.

More on the combat log, because it can help clarify some confusing sourcing. For example the spell, Invoke Savagery has its damage coming from the spell itself, not the minion. This will be displayed in the combat log and recorded at the end of the realm as damage dealt by Invoke Savagery. Some skills such as Void Spike might look like it's adding retaliation damage to a unit, but it's actually a skill dealing damage upon damage being dealt. One enemy, Shru the Toad Sorcerer, cares about who dealt damage to them. Shru has a passive effect that will stun the source of any damage dealt to it, and so it's useful to know why you're being stunned every turn when your Void Spikes deal damage to Shru.

The Poison debuff is a unique debuff which is never sourced to what caused it. No source of the Poison debuff is attributed to what caused it. Poison damage, caused by spells such as Drain Pulse, is simply damage and works like all other damage types. Note that not all Poison damage causes the Poison debuff.


Redeals

Redeals are effects worded as "Whenever an enemy takes X damage" or "Redeal X% of all damage dealt by Y units". The source of damage from a redeal is the skill or equipment doing the redeal, not the original damage source. This is important for spells and skills such as disintegrator which care about the source tags.

Some redeals damage units other than the initial target, these can damage units immune to the initial damage, but only if the secondary damage is of the correct type. For example, a Fire immune unit can be damaged by Starfire but it can't be the original unit which was dealt Fire damage.

They work differently in RW2 versus RW1. In RW2 the enemy must take the actual damage in order to be dealt. In RW1 redeals would pierce immunities by applying their effect even if the original damage was entirely resisted. Those were much stronger.

Most redeals do not care about the source, and will work regardless of who does the damage (including enemies causing friendly fire). There are a few redeals which are entirely tag dependent, and require the source to be an enchantment, or even a specific type of unit, such as a demon.

Frequently Asked Questions

I'm trapped on realm 20 after winning the realm, but there's no portal anywhere, what do I do?
- The re-roll portals hotkey still works (although it will likely be covered by your many spells, skills, and equipment by now. Because realm 20 can include tile corruption, the portal can be in locations normally inaccessible by moving, you may want to save enough SP to learn one of: Icicle (which can turn chasms into floors), Bone Spear (which can turn walls into floors), or upgrade one of your teleportation abilities with blind-casting like Blink or Teleport.
As of Beta patch 24, this issue should be resolved.


Do I need to know spells to teach it to minions?
- Only the Familiar skills and Scalefeather Egregore require you to know the spell in question. All other ways to teach minions spells will work if you don't know the spell. If you do know the spell, you can learn its upgrade and these will apply to the minion (though some upgrades make no sense when taught to minions as they lack whatever the upgrade affects).


When upgrades add damage to my spell, does that damage increase with my bonuses?
- Most of the time. If the spell gains one more damage type e.g. Lightning Bolt gaining Arcane damage from Energy Bolt, it will always just do as much as damage as the original damage. These effectively double the damage (assuming no resistances).
If the amount is specified, like Bone Spear's upgrade Toxic Spear, the amount in the UI does not increase but the amount dealt by the spell scales (a few exceptions such as Lightning Form's Crackling aura do exist, which have coloured text as if it scales, but it does not).
Any damage which says it is fixed, normally found on auras or damage which hits everything in line of sight, cannot be increased but you can reduce the resistance of the enemy to deal up to 2x as much damage at -100% resistance. Unfortunately some rare upgrades do fixed damage but do not indicate this, but nearly all of them do scale with your damage increases.


When minions which have a timed life, run out of turns, have they died?
- Yes, they are dying when their timer runs out. This triggers any effects, including reincarnations which will revive them with however many turns they initially had.


When minions reincarnate, does it trigger death effects?
- Yes, when a unit dies and reincarnates it does count as a death for the purposes of spells, skills, and items.

Do transformation effects trigger death effects / Why do my on kill effects not work on that spriggan?
- Sometimes. When a unit transforms by maturing e.g. Spriggan Bush turning into a Spriggan, it is not dying. When a unit dies and respawns as something e.g. a Spriggan becoming a Spriggan Bush, it will not trigger death effects. When a unit splits into multiple units because of damage, it triggers these effects. Bone Shamblers are an example of a unit which splits upon death.
Much of this confusion comes from the fact that the Death Bolt and Restless Dead spells are actually not checking to see if it the unit died, but rather if it the unit's HP is 0 or below. This is why Death Bolt will work on Spriggans and summon a Spriggan Bush alongside a Skeleton. One might notice that Mercurize does not raise a Mercurial Ghost from Spriggans, because it triggers on death not 0 HP. Icy Vengeance also does not trigger when a Spriggan dies but does when the Spriggan Bush dies.

How do bonuses actually work?
- Your bonuses are the combination of your global bonuses, your tag bonuses, and then your spell bonuses (this is true of all attributes but it's easier to forget this with minions). A global bonus is one like the Warlord Helm, which adds 4 minion damage to all spells and skills. A tag bonus is one like Fire Lord which affects all Fire tagged spells and skills with bonus Damage. A spell bonus is one like the Fan of Flames upgrade Wildfire which adds 1 range to it for each stack. This only affects Fan of Flames.

Percentage bonuses apply to the base damage of the spell, so no matter how many Fire Daggers you get, your Fire Orb is applying 10 more (25%) damage to Flameburst.

The vast majority of minions, have your minion bonuses applied to them when they spawn, which function nearly identically to your spell bonuses, except applied to the attributes of your minions. All minions have a max hp, and many have damage, range, or a duration. Most of the time minion spells will scale their damage to the minion damage attribute, but some minions e.g. Plague of Filth's flies, have much lower stats to compensate for the sheer number of flies being summoned.

If the amount is specified but tied to a minion, this sometimes scales with damage bonuses, but not always e.g. Toxin Burst's Toxic Bomber always deals 15, but Toxic Spores' Red Mushboom does 5 damage and scales with minion bonuses.



My Finger6 / Conjuration Flag isn't working with my Drakes/Bears/Wolves:
- The spell or skill in question must have the num summons attribute, or gain it through upgrades e.g. Wolf Pack for Wolf, or Storm Summoning for Storm Drake.


My conjuration spell isn't gaining any damage from conjuration orb:
- Conjuration damage affects only conjuration spells and skills which have a damage stat. Examples include: ghostball, mercurize, and spell that can gain the Conjuration tag through upgrades.


My minions aren't lasting any longer after picking up an hourglass:
- Minion duration and (regular) duration are two different stats. Duration applies to buffs and debuffs. Some spells such as mercurize, contain both of these stats, where duration scales the length of the debuff and minion duration scales the number of turns the minion will last.


My curse doll isn't working:
- Curse dolls grant the spell to the minion, who casts it upon their death. It will show up in the log as minion damage e.g. a summoned Goatia casting annihilate does not show up as an annihilate cast but as damage from Gotia itself.


My Eye spells aren't triggering enchantment effects / My eye spells are triggering sorcery effects:
- Eye spells which cast sorceries are using your sorcery. They still scale with enchantment duration, but they no longer deal any damage from the eye spell itself. Any changes to Fireball / Iceball / Thunderstrike work normally.


Why isn't this 3x3 units aren't being affected by my spells which affect groups:
- These units only check the centre tile when using spells that target groups of units, such as Plague of Undeath, and will not be able to chain to any other units.


My lightning / stampede form ended early, but I didn't cast a spell:
- These forms do end from automatically cast spells, such as those from Wintersting or The Dynamo, as long as the automatic spell did not contain the correct tags. Also, some spells cast other spells after their initial usage, such as Pillar of Fire casting Annihilation with its upgrade, which will end these effects if the most recent spell does not contain the correct tags.


My Orb spells always seem to last a different number of turns:
- Orb duration is set to the number of turns it will take the orb to drift to the location that you targeted when you used the orb spell. Even if the orb cannot reach the location e.g. something moved and is blocking it, it will last for as many turns as it would have taken.


Hemocorruption isn't triggering when I use my healing spell:
- Healing only counts actually health that was healed, it does not include the healing that goes over the units max hp.


I can't cast my blood spell / My blood spell has no charges:
- Nearly all blood spells require HP to cast, and some have no charges at all. Those spells require only HP and can be cast as many times as your hp allows. They will be disabled if your health is too low e.g. you have less than 99 hp and are trying to cast Horde of Halfmen.

Why doesn't my Death Cleave work with Wheel of Death / Heaven's Wrath / Self-targeted spell:
- The primary target of these spells, is the wizard. Because you are not killing the primary target, Death Cleave will never go off.


How did my Goatia / Imp / Dragon / Fae Thorn kill me from so far away? There were no enemies nearby (and thorns don't even have a ranged attack!):
- The curse dolls will trigger on you if you kill your minions. Your fireball can suddenly turn into 5 magic missiles being cast against the wizard, if you kill 5 Fae Thorns. Be warned about any way to kill allies if you have curse dolls and the correct minion tag.


Can you scale the minion stats of minions which come from spells that don't actually have the attributes in question? E.g. can skeletons from Death Chill's Icy Necromancer become stronger?
- Most of the time the upgrades will scale, but not with your conjuration bonuses, because Death Chill is not tagged as a conjuration spell. Death Chill does have the Dark tag, so Dark Lord will apply its minion damage bonus to skeletons, and any related trinkets such as the Dark Scale will apply their bonuses to them as well.


My Seal Fate + Genocide or Suspend Mortality + Mass Immortality isn't applying to all of my units, or enemies, with the same name:
- Have their names been modified by something like a Jar of Trollblood? Because name modifications do matter for the genocide upgrade.


My Psychic Seedlings aren't getting minion bonuses:
- Unfortunately, Psychic seedlings use a different type of transformation process that does not save bonuses, so when they grow up, they lose whatever bonuses you gave them. The very initial seedling will gain a tiny bonus, but none of the later ones will.


My Fan of Flames / Other channeled fire spell isn't triggering Flame Gate:
- Channeled spells only trigger cast effects the first time they are used, but Flame Gate will be maintained by your channeling until the turn you stop, it just won't summon a Fire Elemental. If you cast another Fire Spell while you're channeling, it will continue to summon units.