First note: Gift is gone entirely, as is Last Hero. As I covered in The Legend, I consider both of these removals fully justified, and view the game as all the better for it.
Magic Pole Axe
Crystal Cost: 2 / 4 / 6
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 100; Axes: 1
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 200; Axes: 2
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 300; Axes: 3
Hits a single enemy unit for Physical
damage.
Magic Pole Axe has lost 20 damage per level.
This kind of sucks, since Magic Pole Axe was already difficult to justify using, particularly if you were contrasting it against Ghost Blade at higher levels. Now it doesn't even have higher base damage than Ghost Blade!
As such, it's gone from a mediocre Spell you probably only used in the early game to an even more mediocre Spell you probably don't even use in the early game, especially with how eg Flaming Arrow's ability to inflict Burn is way more useful than it used to be.
Lightning
Crystal Cost: 7 / 10 / 20
Mana Cost: 15 / 25 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Strikes one target; Damage: 100-200; Shock: 15%
Level 2 Statistics: Bounces to additional targets twice; Damage: 170-340; Shock: 30%
Level 3 Statistics: Bounces to additional targets four times; Damage: 240-480; Shock: 45%
Hits a single target for Magic
damage, with a chance to Shock. Higher Levels of the spell will also 'bounce' to additional targets.
No changes.
The fact that Shock's mechanics work properly means it's a bit more useful, but Shock chance is too unreliable for this to be a huge deal, and in indirect terms Lightning has been hurt by the introduction of stuff like Death Star. In The Legend Lightning was basically your only decent way of using a Spell to murder a Cyclops. In Armored Princess Death Star and Black Hole fill that role just fine, and hit harder, and have less difficulties avoiding backfire...
... in real terms I've basically never found myself wanting to use Lightning in Armored Princess. You're probably better off not burning Magic Crystals on it.
Healing
Crystal Cost: 1 / 2 / 3
Mana Cost: 3 / 2 / 1
Level 1 Statistics: Healing/Damage: 50
Level 2 Statistics: Healing/Damage: 150
Level 3 Statistics: Healing/Damage: 250; Removes Poison, Weakness, and Plague
Targets a single allied organic unit or enemy Undead unit. Allied organic units are healed, though dead units cannot be recovered this way, while enemy Undead take Magic damage instead. Demons and inorganic units cannot be targeted at all.
No change.
It's worth pointing out that the Level 3 version purging effects matters a bit more. Being able to Heal a Poisoned Level 5 unit in the mid-late game to clear Poisoning while also undoing a decent chunk of damage is actually a nice combination, if a bit narrow in its utility, since Poisoning's damage is now percentile and thus more reliably significant.
Resurrection
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 25
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Recovers Health: 200; Target's Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Recovers Health: 400; Target's Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Recovers Health: 600; Target's Level: 1-4
Targets a single allied organic unit, restoring health to the unit. 'Overflow' healing will resurrect dead members of the unit if it has suffered casualties in the current battle. Can even target corpses, restoring a fallen stack to functionality.
No changes.
Resurrection's utility in real terms has gone down a bit: for a Mage they can't double-cast it at full power, and for everyone in general Turn Back Time frequently fills the same role but even better. There's also more unit-based options for resurrecting units, such as the Rune Mage, making its value less unique, and for the Paladin in particular Resurrection-the-Skill is actually better so long as casualties are stacked onto a single unit. As such, while Resurrection is still useful to have, since at the tail end of a battle you may have nothing better to do with your Mana anyway, it's no longer important the way it was in The Legend.
Dispel
Crystal Cost: 1 / 2 / 5
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 5
Level 1 Statistics: Removes all effects on a friendly target.
Level 2 Statistics: Removes all effects on a friendly or enemy target.
Level 3 Statistics: Removes all negative effects on a friendly target or all positive effects on an enemy target.
Targets a single unit, removing some portion of effects on the unit.
No changes.
... directly.
Back in The Legend I talked about how Dispel Level 3 just isn't that important. Well, in Armored Princess it's a lot more relevant. First of all, Burn and Poisoning do damage that actually matters, and they're both sufficiently widespread effects that they'll crop up fairly regularly in combat. Secondly, there's a lot more cases of powerful buffs and debuffs units can apply in Armored Princess, meaning you're far more likely to, for example, have a Royal Griffin throw out Cheer, then find yourself wanting to Dispel the Blind inflicted by enemy Engineers on your Bowmen but also not wanting to lose the Cheer boost. As such, the third Level is a much bigger deal than ever before, and in general Dispel is a lot more relevant: in The Legend, it mostly mattered against Heroes, and only occasionally, because many Heroes didn't have any of the really problematic debuffs or buffs that were worth Dispelling. And a good number of the ones with a buff worth Dispelling you ran into the problem that, for example, Haste Level 3 hits the entire army, and Dispel can only clear out one unit.
Whereas in Armored Princess you'll find yourself breaking out Dispel semi-regularly in a wide variety of fights.
I actually consider Order Magic the only Spell Skill that's important to max out on every class, and Dispel Level 3 is one of the reasons why.
Life Light
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 16
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Damage/Healing: 150
Level 2 Statistics: Damage/Healing: 285
Level 3 Statistics: Damage/Healing: 420
Inflicts Magic damage on Undead in an area, causing them to flee, while healing living units. Demons are entirely unaffected.
The damage/healing on higher levels has been boosted, but otherwise no change has occurred. It hasn't even been brought in line with other holy effects to hurt Demons!
The result is still pretty forgettable and bad. I still don't get why the Scroll is so expensive.
Bless
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 10
Mana Cost: 10 / 10 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Mass; Duration: 3 turns
Affected units always roll for maximum damage on basic attacks. (Melee or ranged) Cannot be applied to Undead or Demons.
No change.
Dragon Slayer
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 25
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 20%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%, Mass; Duration: 4 turns
Affected units gain bonus damage against Dragons.
No change.
Which is to say Dragon Slayer is still pretty eeeeeh. A point in its favor is that the game is a bit more willing to throw dragons at you earlier on, assuming you're lucky enough to get the Scroll in time, but on the other hand the Mage doesn't even care about it against Black Dragons now that they have multiple ways of directly killing Spell-immune units.
Demon Slayer
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 25
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 20%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Bonus Damage: 30%, Mass; Duration: 4 turns
Affected units gain bonus damage against Demons.
No change.
Since the Mage's primary damage output in Armored Princess tends to not be Fire damage, it's actually lost utility in real terms. So much so that I tend to forget it's even still in the game.
Divine Armor
Crystal Cost: 8 / 12 / 20
Mana Cost: 15 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: All Resistances: 20%; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: All Resistances: 25%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: All Resistances: 30%; Duration: 4 turns
Raises a single allied unit's non-Astral (
) resistances, subtracting the unit's innate resistances from this effect. (This cannot result in Divine Armor's modification being negative) Cannot be applied to Undead or Demons.
For whatever reason, the Crystal cost was upped a little, especially at the final Spell Level.
Divine Armor is hurt in a few ways by Armored Princess. The sudden existence of enemy sources of Astral damage means it can be wholly inapplicable against some foes in a way that couldn't happen in The Legend, there's new defensive tools that can cover some of the niches it previously excelled in, and for the Mage it cannot be cast first in a double-cast at full value, which mostly isn't important but can cause you to pass over it. (eg you do want to cast a defensive Spell, but you also desperately need to cast a specific expensive Spell: you might turn to Stone Skin even if it's not strongly relevant simply because it's possible to do so)
That said, its peak potential is actually noticeably higher, as it does in fact stack with Guardian Angel's boosts (Conveniently, Divine Armor advances Guardian Angel's progress), and Armored Princess is noticeably more generous with Item-based resistance boosts than The Legend. Between these two points, it's much easier to produce nearly-invincible tanks, and in particular it's much more plausible to do so at a relatively early point in the game. It also benefits from Armored Princess being much less prone to enemy formations that are 100% Physical damage, making it much less prone to being out-prioritized by Stone Skin.
I still am not a huge fan of it, but I think it sits in a decent enough place.
Battle Cry
Crystal Cost: 3 / 12 / 20
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Initiative: +1; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Initiative: +2; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Initiative: +3; Duration: 3 turns
Increases Initiative of all allied units.
Mana cost per level has spiked (Which is understandable), it's become mass by default (Thank goodness), Crystal cost has spiked (I'm not entirely sure why the third Level in particular climbs so high), but the actual Initiative and duration values are unchanged.
The overall result is that Battle Cry is situational, instead of borderline-unusable prior to Level 3. Huzzah!
Peacefulness
Crystal Cost: 3 / 3 / 3
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: -30%; Health: +30%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: -30%; Health: +40%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: -30%; Health: +50%; Duration: 5 turns
A single unit -ally or enemy- has its Health increased while its Damage is decreased.
No change.
Peacefulness gets used much like it did in The Legend, though it's worth noting its protective value has more opportunities to be useful since there's more units like Engineers that don't mind losing damage output.
It's still a Spell whose 'design goal' is a bit murky, though.
Dragon Arrows
Crystal Cost: 2 / 3 / 4
Mana Cost: 4 / 4 / 4
Level 1 Statistics: Gives Dragon Arrows: 1
Level 2 Statistics: Gives Dragon Arrows: 2
Level 3 Statistics: Gives Dragon Arrows: 3
Grants a single allied archer-class unit (Bowmen, Elves, Hunters, Skeleton Archers) charge(s) of the Dragon Arrows Talent. This Talent is a ranged attack that entirely ignores the target's Resistance and ignores 30% of the target's Defense, and regardless of the user's own range will never suffer damage penalties from being fired too far. The base damage is derived from the unit's base damage. The damage type is Astral
.
No change to the Spellbook end (Including that it still adds charges where other Spells would add duration), but the Dragon Arrows Talent no longer simply ignores the target's Defense, making it less ludicrously lethal.
It's still a fantastic Spell if you're using archers anyway, being very cost-efficient and quite lethal, it's just no longer so insanely good even the Mage likes using it. Which is good.
Something worth pointing out is that Dragon Arrows actually has a hard cap of 5 charges it can give per use. This cap exists in The Legend, but you're unlikely to have it matter there, where in Armored Princess it's relatively plausible for an endgame Mage to reach the point of Level 3 Dragon Arrows not being an improvement over Level 2 Dragon Arrows, hence why I didn't bother to mention it in The Legend. As such, if you only hit Order Magic rank 3 fairly late in a Mage run, don't just mindlessly level Dragon Arrows to max, even if you're actually using it aggressively; it might be a waste of Magic Crystals.
Fit of Energy
Crystal Cost: 6 / 6 / 6
Mana Cost: 20 / 20 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Gives Action Points: 1
Level 2 Statistics: Gives Action Points: 2
Level 3 Statistics: Gives Action Points: 3
Grants a single allied unit additional Action Points. If its turn was over, it gets an additional turn to use these Action Points.
No change.
There's more units where getting a second turn can be a disproportionately big boost, such as letting Engineers spit out two droid stacks to plug gaps in your formation, so Fit of Energy is actually a bit more useful in Armored Princess than in The Legend, but it hasn't fundamentally changed.
Helplesness
Crystal Cost: 1 / 2 / 4
Mana Cost: 2 / 4 / 6
Level 1 Statistics: Defense: -30%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Defense: -45%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Defense: -60%; Duration: 5 turns
Lowers a single enemy's Defense by a percentage.
No change.
Since a lot of upper-tier units had their Defense spike noticeably, Helplessness is de-facto even more useful than in The Legend, at least if you're not a Mage. Due to level-derived Leadership being consistently gained in Armored Princess, the classes are further apart in Leadership and so it's actually true that the Warrior will have meaningfully larger armies to leverage the lowered Defense, too.
It's hurt a little by Rage being actually worthwhile, since only units modify damage based on Defense values, making eg Plague and Pygmy more general tools for improving damage output, but not as much as you might expect, particularly if you're obsessive about using Treasure Searcher as much as possible in each battle. (Because you'll spend less time Raging for damage)
Summon Phoenix
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 25 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Summons: Young Phoenix
Level 2 Statistics: Summons: Mature Phoenix
Level 3 Statistics: Summons: Ancient Phoenix
Summons an allied Phoenix in a chosen tile. The tile must be adjacent to an allied unit. You may only have one Phoenix on the field at a time.
Crystal cost has spiked significantly. Fair enough: Phoenix in Orcs on the March are actually pretty good. Mana cost has been reduced for higher-level versions, adding 5 per level instead of 10. This does a lot to make Summon Phoenix actually useful at higher levels, even before other changes.
Again, let's have some actual stats!
Young Phoenix
Level: 3
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 15 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 5
Health: 200
Damage: 40-60 Fire
Resistances: 80% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: None
Abilities: Flight, Firestorm (Melee attacks and counterattacks not only hit the target but enemies to the side, and have a 70% chance of Burning everyone. No friendly fire), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance, cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance, spells don't effect the unit), Rebirth (The Phoenix can, once, revive after a delay. Resurrecting is not possible if a unit is occupying their corpse's space, and the act of resurrecting consumes their entire turn)
Not changed... before Intellect modification being a thing. Also, the Summoner Skill being added. Okay and their Burn chance actually went up a lot, but much more significant is that Burn itself became a big deal. Regardless, limited change is fine, since a Young Phoenix was already pretty solid in the early game, so it didn't really need a big boost to stay relevant.
Note that this includes that they -and all higher Phoenix forms- still have their hidden, largely-irrelevant resistance to cold damage effects and immunity to Freeze. As Armored Princess hasn't particularly expanded cold damage as a concept, this still basically just means the Bowman Ice Arrow Talent is ineffectual.
Mature Phoenix
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 40 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 6
Health: 400
Damage: 70-100 Fire
Resistances: 80% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: None
Abilities: Flight, Firestorm (Melee attacks and counterattacks not only hit the target but enemies to the side, and have a 85% chance of Burning everyone. No friendly fire), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance, cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance, spells don't effect the unit), Rebirth (The Phoenix can, once, revive after a delay. Resurrecting is not possible if a unit is occupying their corpse's space, and the act of resurrecting consumes their entire turn)
Attack and Defense have doubled since the last game and their Burn chance went up, but they're not significantly changed. Before Intellect scaling and the Summoner Skill being added, of course.
Ancient Phoenix
Level: 5
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 60 / 50
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 7
Health: 800
Damage: 140-240 Fire
Resistances: 80% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: Tears of the Phoenix (Charge: 1. Heals a single adjacent organic ally for 33% of the Ancient Phoenix's Health, potentially resurrecting the dead)
Abilities: Flight, Firestorm (Melee attacks and counterattacks not only hit the target but enemies to the side, and have a 100% chance of Burning everyone. No friendly fire), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance, cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance, Spells don't effect the unit), Rebirth (The Phoenix can, once, revive after a delay. Resurrecting is not possible if a unit is occupying their corpse's space, and the act of resurrecting consumes their entire turn)
Massively spiked its innate Attack and Defense (Attack doubled, Defense more than doubled), maxed out its Burn chance, picked up Tears of the Phoenix (This is specifically an Orcs on the March addition, actually), but otherwise unchanged before Intellect scaling kicks in.
Note that Tears of the Phoenix can't be used on the Undead, Plants, Demons, units that are immune to magic, or inorganic units like Cyclops. It can be used on a corpse, though, just like Resurrection.
Regardless, the Phoenix line is... actually pushed aside by the Chaos Dragon series. If you're a Mage, you're going to be maxing Chaos Magic anyway and Chaos Dragons do basically everything the Phoenix does and more (Aside the resurrection on the Ancient Phoenix), and if you're not a Mage you won't be pushing Intellect as much and probably care more about some of the other summons, such as Call of Nature.
Speaking of...
Call of Nature
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 12
Mana Cost: 20 / 30 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Level up to 2; Troop Leadership: 300
Level 2 Statistics: Level up to 3; Troop Leadership: 700
Level 3 Statistics: Level up to 4; Troop Leadership: 1500
Summons a random animal stack into a chosen tile adjacent to an existing friendly unit. The stack can act on that turn.
The first of the new Order Spells in Armored Princess.
Can summon:
bear,bear2,bear_white,wolf,graywolf,unicorn,unicorn2,snake,snake_green,snake_royal,griffin,griffin2,dragonfly_fire,dragonfly_lake,hyena
(Straight from the .txt)
That's Bears, Ancient Bears, Polar Bears, Wolves, Werewolf Elves in wolf form, Unicorns, Black Unicorns, Snakes, Swamp Snakes, Royal Snakes, Griffins, Royal Griffins, Fire Dragonflies, Lake Dragonflies, and Hyenas.
If you compare Call of Nature to Demon Portal, you're basically paying more Mana (Fewer Crystals, admittedly, though only by a little) to get less Leadership of generally less useful units. The main appeal of Call of Nature is that the unit is summoned now, no delay.
On the other hand, you've got control over not only where the unit arrives but what it does once it gets its turn, which among other points makes it one of the better summoning Spells for nicking a Chest before any enemies do. Only Phoenix and Chaos Dragon are arguably better at that task, and you won't necessarily have either one in the early-to-midgame.
The control and lack of a delay actually does a lot to make Call of Nature appealing as a summon in more general terms, though. Being able to spawn a troop and immediately do something with it, where it then lasts long enough to do other things, actually has a surprising amount of utility in and of itself. Being able to finish off a target, or immediately drop something next to an enemy ranged unit, or block off a gap in terrain to control enemy movement, or distract/delay an enemy melee unit... the list is pretty endless, and it's surprisingly unimportant what you specifically get. Only Snakes and Swamp Snakes, out of this list, have less than 3 Speed and no Speed enhancer, so the resulting summon's ability to range out to where you need it is almost always pretty solid.
The fact that the Leadership scales to Intellect does put it in a slightly awkward position as you get deeper into the game, where the Mage would probably rather just nuke things with Spells directly while the other classes don't really find it keeps up with their needs, but in the early-to-midgame Call of Nature can be amazingly useful.
Anger Management Calm Rage
Crystal Cost: 15 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 1 / 1 / 1
Level 1 Statistics: Converts up to 35 Rage into up to 15 Mana
Level 2 Statistics: Converts up to 45 Rage into up to 20 Mana
Level 3 Statistics: Converts up to 55 Rage into up to 25 Mana
Drains a portion of the player's Rage, and based on that value gives them a lesser amount of Mana. The Mana output scales with Intellect.
Yes, every piece of the code refers to it as Anger Management. It's awesome, and I'm sad it didn't make it into the English version.
Anyway, you're basically spending your Rage at a 2-to-1 ratio for Mana, except there's also a 5 Rage surcharge no matter what. This means it actually gets more efficient at higher Spell levels and higher Rage levels, though not by a ton. It also gets more efficient as your Intellect rises, though pretty slowly.
For the Mage, Calm Rage is an incredibly useful Spell for keeping your rampage going, which is especially important as you get Higher Magic leveled and so can get up to 6 turns of double-casting going. Calm Rage is also huge in Boss fights, as they're frequently tuned so that hitting the Boss gives utterly ridiculous amounts of Rage and meanwhile you can't actually spend your Rage normally, with the most obvious manifestation of this being that Champion of the Arena doesn't bother to give you access to Rage and makes sure you have Calm Rage right out of the gate.
For the Warrior, Calm Rage is useful from a different angle: you'll rapidly get Anger maxed out and tend to build more for Rage, and meanwhile a lot of useful Spells that don't demand high Intellect to be good are fairly Mana-intensive (eg Sheep), so you're both better able to shoulder the Rage draining and can still benefit from drastically extending your Mana supplies, even though your overall Mana burden is usually less than the Mage's.
For the Paladin it's a nice option, but not nearly so notable: you're probably not burning through Rage like crazy, but you're also not generating it like crazy, and eg Resurrection-the-Skill makes it less important to burn Mana on preventing/undoing casualties.
Avenging Angel
Crystal Cost: 7 / 10 / 15
Mana Cost: 15 / 20 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 80-120, Duration: 4
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 160-200, Duration: 5
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 240-280, Duration: 6
A single target ally is granted a buff which decrements by one turn each time the unit takes damage from any enemy unit via any means. (Except for over time effects like Burning) The injuring unit is retaliated against by Magic damage.
I honestly never use Avenging Angel. It's hampered by the fact that it's a Spell that relies on scaling with Intellect and so on, making it very much a Mage Spell, but then its mechanic is focused on getting armies stuck in with other armies to dish out solid damage to the enemy, when the Mage would generally rather use high-Initiative units that avoid getting stuck in so they're free to spray indiscriminate death Spells like Fireball or Death Star into the enemy. About the only time Avenging Angel is vaguely worth considering is if you're planning on using summon spam to stall enemies, and even then there's usually better ways of dishing out damage than using Avenging Angel on the summons.
I sort of like the idea of Avenging Angel, but it doesn't really feel like it has a place in the actual game. I dunno, maybe I'm underestimating how well it combines with a Paladin taking advantage of Resurrection 3?
If you want to give it a try, note that there's some Items in the series that boost 'lightning' damage; this does not actually mean specifically the Lightning Spell! It includes Avenging Angel, so equipping an Archmage's Staff is a way to make it more effective.
Earth Blades
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 25 / 35 / 50
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 50-150
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 125-375
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 200-600
Hits all enemies for Physical damage. Ignores Spell immunity.
The first of the new Rage-skill-from-The-Legend Spells added to Order Magic by Orcs on the March.
It's Zerock's Underground Blades, but as a Spell!... well, other than having lost the anti-mage damage bonus. Drat.
And unlike Stone Rain, it's actually worth considering. Its damage range is annoyingly large, but its peak damage is actually really darn good, and its strike behavior is unmatched when enemies are spread all over the place with no convenient formations that will let you eg Death Star everyone at once. Since it also ignores Spell immunity, this gives it a further leg up when dealing with Black Dragons.
I have no idea why it's under Order Magic, honestly. Maybe to try to make it compete less with Stone Rain? It's not like Physical damage is proprietary to Order Magic.
Unfortunately, it tends to be overshadowed by Black Hole, which only costs 10 more Mana at Level 3, has more than twice the minimum damage, more max damage, and will hit even harder than that against high Level units, with resistance essentially not being a consideration, while still ignoring Spell immunity. Indeed, Level 2 Black Hole is actually competitive with Level 3 Earth Blades! Against battlegroups that are heavy on low-Level units, Earth Blades tends to win out, but outside that it's difficult to justify. The main thing it has going for it is being Order's only mass-damage option that can't hurt your forces and works on anything, not just Undead. As such, it's notably useful if for whatever reason you max out Order Magic before your other Spell skills. -which is absolutely a reasonable thing to do if you're not a Mage.
A bit of a far fall from its status in The Legend, though.
Ice Thorns
Crystal Cost: 10 / 8 / 6
Mana Cost: 20 / 15 / 10
Spawns a series of 1-HP Ice Thorn objects around a 3-tile region. Can be placed anywhere, with invalid tiles for spawning simply skipped.
I've taken the liberty of excluding the per-level effect section for Ice Thorns because literally the only change as you level it is that it gets cheaper.
Ice Thorns is notable for being a Spell option for stalling multiple units by potentially multiple turns, depending on placement, more consistently than eg Trap. If you're running a ranged-heavy force in particular, it's a good stalling tool with no real disadvantage, aside its initially-unwieldy cost. You do have to be careful with splash damage, though.
Gizmo
Crystal Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Mana Cost: 20 / 20 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 100-150, Healing: 100
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 250-375, Healing: 200, Steals enemy AP: Yes.
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 400-550, Healing: 300, Steals enemy AP: Yes, gives allies AP: Yes.
Summons an airborne Gizmo which is not otherwise under the player's control to an arbitrary battlefield location. Once per turn with an Initiative of 1 up to three times, the Gizmo will pick to heal an allied unit and remove negative effects from that unit or harm an enemy unit. Depending on Spell Level, it can potentially grant Action Points to the ally it's healing or steal Action Points from the enemy it's harming. Its damage is Astral damage. It cannot resurrect fallen units. Gizmos will compete for space with each other and with Balls of Lightning, but not with regular units.
Gizmo works pretty much exactly like it did with Lina, except it no longer gets the ability to purge beneficial effects from enemies. Given enemies don't get anywhere near as much opportunity to apply positive effects as the player does, this isn't much of a loss. This includes that its healing works on anything.
That said, its damage scales with Intellect, and it actually has really good damage per hit, so unlike Lina's Gizmo, Spell Gizmo is actually a shockingly efficient damage dealer so long as it doesn't randomly decide to waste time healing one of your units. (I have literally seen a Gizmo 'heal' an allied unit that was completely uninjured and had no negative effects to purge) And honestly it's actually so efficient at higher levels that it's potentially worth considering as a damage dealer anyway. Per-hit Gizmo at Level 3 punches stronger than all but the hardest-hitting of damage Spells, and it gets to strike three times, meaning the only reason it has actual competition is that most of the best nuke spells are splash damage. And since it does Astral damage, it works on everything. Even, it should be explicitly stated, units that are immune to Spells!
I mentioned with Stone Rain that I'm pretty sure Gizmo's numbers are what Spellbook-Stone-Rain is calling. By a similar token, the Spellbook lies to you about Gizmo's numbers, only the numbers it cites look really disappointing, when it's actually really good. Just as I'm fairly sure Stone Rain in the Spellbook is calling Gizmo's numbers, I'm pretty sure Gizmo in the Spellbook is calling Stone Rain's numbers.
Gizmo isn't perfect, of course. There's the randomly choosing to heal problem I mentioned of course, the Gizmo actually does have a limited number of tiles it can travel per turn (Just like in The Legend), it apparently has godawful Initiative because there's very little in the game it will go before (Which makes its ability to steal enemy Action Points practically a technicality unless an enemy chooses to Wait, but also means that anytime you need damage urgently it's not the thing to look at), and at Level 1 it's honestly just overpriced, but once you're getting to Level 2 and especially Level 3 it's a terrifyingly effective damage-dealing Spell that's surprisingly economical. Up through Level 2 you can even slip it into Higher Magic 3, and it's powerful enough at Level 2 that it's worth considering using it as your initial Higher Magic cast.
Also, a curious interface quirk is that when you hover the cursor over a unit while prepping to summon, it will give you a damage preview as if Gizmo were a Spell that did immediate damage. This includes that it will inform you of how much it would heal if targeting one of your units -but it still labels this prediction as a damage prediction!
It's also interesting to note that with its Initiative having dropped, the AP modification effects have flipped compared to when this was Lina's Rage effect, in terms of utility: now AP-stealing is borderline-worthless, while second turns are reasonably reliable.
Overall Gizmo is actually really useful, so long as you're willing to accept it periodically doing something not-actually-helpful through no fault of your own. Or are more willing than I am to try to work out what its AI priorities are.
-------------------------
Next time, we wrap up magic with Distortion.
See you then.