Stardander School for Witches – Battle Guide for Starters

This guide provides fundamental insights into combat techniques, an overview of available spells, and their effectiveness in battle.

Battle Basics

• You can use as many spells every turn as your mana supply allows. Drag a learned spell to the target to perform this, or choose a spell from the list of spells or from memory.
• To display a sneak peek of the spell, the life, mana, barriers, and pact bars will all flash. According to the illustration above, the hit will cause the armapod’s health to be reduced by around half, and if it is a critical hit, it will almost certainly result in its death. Missing spells are not taken into consideration in the preview.
• Selecting a spell will reveal many possibilities; hover over them to get tooltips. Most spells allow for multiple casting (based on hits/count). I have chosen to cast 6 fire-element strikes in the screenshot below.

• Characters and foes’ buffs and debuffs are indicated in the boxes adjacent to them. To learn more about what they do, hover your cursor over them. Barriers are represented by the dots above the health bar; each one must be destroyed individually before you can deal any damage.
• Although it’s instinctive to want to use as many spells as you can each turn, there are instances when storing up mana for the following turn is a better course of action. This is so that you can get additional hits in after breaching the enemy’s defenses once rather than having to shatter their defenses each turn, which often requires a lot of mana (for example, barriers or removing illusions with sense).
• Battles will be lot simpler if the three witches you get to send into combat choose complementary spells to balance each other out. The strategy option in the great hall allows you to select the classes that your allies will enroll in.

You can view a brief movie I made demonstrating the fundamentals of combat (in particular the new quickcast feature) here:

Spells

After completing the first, third, fifth, and seventh levels of a class, you acquire access to spells. All of the spells are listed in the encyclopedia, so it’s a good idea to decide which classes to concentrate on to acquire the spells you want. When preparing for classes, you can also check the knowledge tab to see what spell will be unlocked next.

Depending on your personality traits, studying will help you learn more. However, you can frequently learn spells outside of your element by studying with a companion, who will let you utilize their personality points for study purposes.

• Projection and Protection are increased by Fire/Bravery.
• Transmutation and Channeling are increased by Water/Intelligence.
• Telepathy and Spirit are increased by Earth/Kindness.
• Illusion and Summoning are increased by Air/Creativity.

Projection

• Strike – Each hit can clear 1 barrier, or damage fae.
• Elemental Strikes – lets you set the element of strikes – and all fae have elemental strengths and weaknesses.
• Wave – Hits all enemies once, and cannot be dodged. Usually, you want to pick off one enemy at a time with Strike (as it multiple hits to breach defenses), but against multiple enemies relying on Shadows/Decoy, this can be worth it as it cannot miss.
• Strike Mastery – This adds a Type option to Strikes – you can hover over them to read descriptions of them all. I usually do Homing strikes, as like with Wave, they cannot miss.

Protection

• Barrier – You can cast up to 7 barriers per witch (shown as dots above her health), and each barrier completely blocks one attack.
• Elemental Barriers – Lets you set an element for your barriers. If the barrier is broken by an attack by that element (check the enemy’s type), you will recover 7+personality mana, making barriers almost free to cast. By seeing what enemies are targeting you, how many attacks they will do (visible in the encyclopedia if you have sensed them), you can completely block all damage and recover most or all of the mana needed to make the barriers. Keep in mind that enemies can miss, and if the barrier isn’t broken, you recover no mana from it.
• Fortification – Places a buff on any witch that reduces damage taken (including by poison) for the rest of the battle. This can quickly add up with many stacks to an impenetrable defense.
• Barrier Mastery – Lets you cast barriers on allied witches. Useful as only one witch needs to know barrier with barrier mastery, and all witches will get the benefit of elemental barriers.

Telepathy

• Sense – Unlocks the encyclopedia and stats of the target enemy. It also clears all illusions on that enemy. If an enemy has Shadows or Decoy, you definitely want to clear it with Sense before striking, as both increase the number of misses you’ll get.
• Farspeak – Lets you talk to enemy fae. Depending on your dialogue choice, this may increase their hearts and make them easier to pact (sometimes with additional effects). Learning what options do what for each fae can make it much easier and more efficient to pact them.
• Rally – Boosts the strength of one witch. This increases their damage, healing and pact strength for the rest of the battle. Like with fortify, this can quickly add up with many stacks.
• Sense Mastery – This upgrades sense to affect all enemies at once, and makes you immune to illusions (without having to cast anything). You’ll never miss because of shadows or get confused again!

Spirit

• Pact – Increases a pact bar – when it hits 100%, pact will make that enemy a familiar. Injured enemies have a lower maximum needed to hit 100%. As a familiar, it will no longer fight you, and instead can be used to perform an ability for the pact holder every turn (the ability varies by fae, but they are all useful). Familiars can be transferred to other witches during navigation for 1 time interval.
• Link – Increases the mana regeneration of a witch by 10 each turn for the rest of the battle. It costs 20 mana, so 2 turns after you cast it you’ve broken even, it’ll keep generating more mana after that – so definitely useful for longer battles.
• Sever – Decreases the mana generation of an enemy by 10 each turn. The value of this depends on the enemy and what it uses its mana for – but it will lower the number of barriers and spells the enemy can cast each turn. Keep in mind that enemies will have at least 7 mana regeneration per turn no matter how many stacks of sever.
• Elemental Pact – Lets you choose the element of each Pact – choosing the element of the enemy will greatly increase its effect.

Transmutation

• Cultivation – Lets you grow plants in the greenhouse. This has no value in combat.
• Potions – Lets you use plants to craft potions, which have a variety of one-time use effects in battle. Potions can often turn the tide of a losing battle.
• Enchantment – Lets you use plants to enchant witches, giving them permanent powerups that can help in every battle.
• Cultivation Mastery – Lets you grow more dangerous plants in the greenhouse. Again, no value in combat, but increases the number of potions and enchantments you can make.

Channeling

• Heal – Heals an ally. While simple, it can save you in a pinch so don’t forget about it.
• Restore – Transfers mana to another witch. It no longer matters if this witch knows no good spells, she can be used as a battery to power her allies.
• Synergy – Adds your personality stats to another witch. This powers up elemental spells, and can be a lot more powerful that it appears at a glance.
• Healing Mastery – Healing now removes all debuffs. Never again will you be scared of enemies who rely on debuffs.

Summoning

• Light – Makes one enemy more likely to miss for one turn (for all its attacks). Useful if you’re feeling lucky, or in a pinch.
• Attract – Makes all enemies target a witch of your choice this turn. This makes it easy to control the battle and make sure the witch getting attacked is the one who has the protection magic to deal with it.
• Summon Fae – Has a chance to summon a random fae from the shadow realm as a familiar. The chance increases the more mana you use to summon. While this relies on chance, it can let you easily fill out your familiars with powerful options.
• Elemental Summon – lets you choose an element when summoning. You will be more likely to summon fae of that element, reducing the randomness.

Illusion

Keep in mind, all illusions have no effect on enemies that can see through illusions (razorbeaks and Apex only).

• Intimidate – This is similar to Attract, except instead of changing enemy targets this turn, it makes it more likely for enemies to target you on all future turns. For longer battles, this can save a lot of mana over Attract, as with 4 or so stacks of Intimidate, enemies will almost always target you. It also makes non-combat spells more likely to target you – allowing you to control who the enemies will put debuffs on.
• Shadows – Similar to Light, except instead of making one enemy more likely to miss, it makes all allies less likely to be hit.
• Confuse – Next turn adds a 40% chance for the enemy to be confused and deal damage to itself equal to its mana (and costing all of its mana). If you’re lucky, this is great, as not only does it take unblockable damage, but with no mana it won’t be able to do much that turn.
• Decoy – The first hit an enemy makes on you will hit an illusory decoy and deal no damage – for every enemy and every turn. This greatly reduces the number of hits you take, and can also evade special attacks like poison sting.