Welcome to my guide on how to become a wizard. Before we start, I have to specify what I consider to be a mage. A mage is a character that fights with magic only. Their main attributes are stamina (STA) and charisma (CHA). They will be rubbish in any task involving agility (AGI) and strength (STR), a bit like me in real life. There are great builds for STR or AGI melee characters using magic. I will talk about none of that.
To make things more precise, I will use the term wizard for characters that are able to cast all spells, just as the achievement suggests.

Of course, there are a few shortcomings to be expected.

• This is my first guide and I am a non-native english speaker with no disposition for languages whatsoever.
  
• I cannot possibly know everything there is to know. Even after hundreds of hours of playtime of this amazing game I still learn new things. Please use the comment section to add your knowledge to the community. Also, this guide is targeting somewhat advanced players. There exist excellent guides here on steam that help the beginner to get comfortable with the basics of the game
  
• It is in the nature of a guide to contain spoilers. I won't mark passages which could spoil something. Since this guide should put you in the position to kill Gurmur or the King/Queen with ease, you have to decide whether you want to rob yourself of the fun of finding things out the hard but more rewarding way.

I have to thank all the players I interacted with over the in-game chat. They are too numerous to mention individually, but the community is a big reason why this game is so enjoyable. Thank you for that.

Here I will outline the basic weaknesses and strengths of this class. I will go more in detail on how to soften the former and stress the latter in the later sections. But it is good to understand the limitations of magic users.

1. Mages need quite a lot of heritages to be played reliably. They are therefore unsuitable for new players. Sorry! Also their success rate depends more strongly on the randomly attributed starting equipment/spells than other characters.
   
2. They tend do be fairly weak early and middle-game. Quite contrary to AGI or STR based characers, their overall usefulness doesn't necessarily correlate well with their level.
   
3. The beginning can be significantly harder if you do not find a magic altar early on. Other classes have more flexibility.
   
4. Early on, certain enemies can be quite resistant to their 'charms".
   
5. Even though they benefit most from the dog or pets in general, they are not really the best at keeping them alive (imo the STR warrior is). On the other hand though, they are not the worst in this respect either.
   
6. They have more vulnerabilities than other classes that have to be taken care of. Especially traps are handled worse than other characters. Boulders are a real danger, even late game.
   
7. They suck for the most time at opening things. Without the correct spell, they can hardly open a glass of jam.
   
8. Their peak damage output is quite low compared to other classes.
   
9. Refreshing enchantments can be a pain (gotten a lot better with the new update).
   
   The Advantages
   1. Late game they are more flexible than any other character. They can kill Gurmur or the King/Queen effortlessly and I truly believe that they would win in a standoff with any other late-game archetype.
      
   2. They have an unlimited(!) amount of ranged attacks. Their longtime damage output is highest.
      
   3. Mages can adapt very well to their enemies and use their weaknesses more effectively. Especially undead and demons can be demolished easily.
      
   4. Since their skills are naturally capped, they are easiest to fine-tune late game.
      
   5. Their high charisma means more cash, a substantial advantage in all games.
      
   6. The previous two points make the wizard the fastest choice of class to go from level 1 to King.
      
   7. Due to increased sight radius they can explore the fastest.
      
   8. They tend to have more health.
      
   9. Unbreakable equipment, at least weapon wise. No nasty surprises on that front.
      
   10. Area damage for crowd control.
       
   11. Healing works fine for them.
       
   12. They depend least on consummables like scrolls of invisibility and such. In fact, they can replace wands with even stronger effects.
       
   13. Entchantment casts are more likely to succeed and stick longer.
       
   14. They look the coolest. Hammertime!
       

Here lies the biggest drawback of the mage, the essential need for some heritages.

Most important are the different spell masteries. You want at least two of them, so you can start with reasonable spells. What are the criteria for a good set of starting spells? This varies with experience, but there are rules of thumb. First of all, you always want to start with at least one orb spell (the update replaces the staff with a wizards staff which has already some orb spell on it. Given you have the heritage, this is quite nice). In terms of damage, fire is the best because of the afterburn and no enemy has true resistances towards fire (except for the whelp, but who cares?). Follow-ups are frost and shock, because they can stun. Not so great are poison and virulent orb, because some enemies are quite resistant to those (especially undead). Don't think you can survive on summon demon alone, you won't.
Other spells to look out for are divine might, divine grace, divine reach, mage armor, amplify magic, banish demon, turn undead, plane shift or any of the healing spells.
If you don't have the spells you want, just kill yourself by either directly damaging yourself with orbs or using spells without energy (no blue balls).

The next useful thing is common literacy, but it is not as essential as the spell masteries. All other knowledges are certainly great, but the mage is quite handy at unlocking knowledge since he will have more money than your average hero.

The wizards staff is nice to start with, but not essential since your first magic attacks are limit to nearest squares. Of course, if you start with a blessed enchanted weapon use the sword. The reason is simple. Most weapon enchants are useless for the mage, but the blessed enchanted sword sells for a much higher price than the dagger. So unless your sword has a charisma enchant and you put it in your second weapon slot for trading, sell it. Together with your heightened charisma and the proceeds of selling your first food rations you should have enough money to enchant your equipment (so no loss here) or maybe even buy something useful in the shop, like a ring of fortitude or amulet of protection (or have at least enough money to get it after the first floor). Starting out with such an item is a great advantage.

Another rather essential starter is your dog, preferably upgraded with as many heritages as possible. Since some of your orb spells are quite ineffective for certain enemies, it is good to have the dog as a cleaner. Also you level slower, thereby making accumulation of reasonable equipment more likely before the enemy has advanced in level (lvl 12-14 is the peak in difficulty). Remember to use divine might/grace and mage armor on him at all times, if you have it that it. This improves his chances for survival enormously. Also healing helps, even though your ability to heal early on is limited. Don't expect your dog to survive to level 20. But if he carries you to level 12 or more it is already really great.

For starting ability points, I would recommend putting all available points into STA or CHA. The only other reasonable choice would be to start with 7 on all stats instead.

So you started with a reasonable set of spells. First, check out the shop for items you would like (I talk about it in the item section) and you equip your staff. Now what happens next?

From here the game happens in steps or breaks. Each step means a significant improvement of your mage, but the order of steps can vary.

1. Your first ability point should always be invested in STA for the increase in spell effectiveness and extra health.
   
2. Find a (preferably plate) cap. You'll notice, your starting helmet has a higher cast restriction than your armor, so this is one of the easiest yet most effective ways of making your mage stronger early on.
   
3. Find a magic altar asap and get focused cast. This is really important because it allows you to cast at a distance and significantly improves your extra damage from 1 to D3 per cast bonus. Not getting this talent early is troublesome, but ideally your dog should help you out. Sometimes I get it as late as level 9 or so, but it is luck based to survive that long without.
   
4. Enchant your equipment. See the equipment sections which enchants to keep. Also get the recommended rings and amulets, preferably blessed. Most importantly, get your staff enchanted with extra spell damage. Remember that enchantments are the fastest way of improving your mage early on and his extra CHA comes in really handy to generate the extra money.
   
5. The next ability point is preferably spent on STR, because if you do fall into a pit, this helps getting out before you die.
   
6. Unless you find books with good spells (see spell section) early on, use your second talent point on keen eyes. This does not only prevent you to step into traps that are possibly deadly, it also will help for the rest of the game up to the king fight to see hidden enemies before they attack you. Priceless.
   
7. Typically your third talent point should be invested in the most useful school of magic to you. This of course depends on the books you already own. It will be most likely draconic.
   
8. From here things are less linear. So far we are always at a maximum cast level of three due to armor restrictions which you should respect for survivability. If however you find either the mage armor spell, or a blessed amulet of protection or blessed amulet of ghost form, you may take the armor off completely and increase your maximum cast bonus, provided you have four or more stamina. This is slightly risky, but can give you a big edge. Also you should have blessed shirt and hoodie which don't break.
   
9. Getting amplify magic. This is really a spell that improves your fighting abilities a lot. But do not panic if this comes late (possible after level 20). Your carefully increased max cast bonus and enchanted staff should carry you there anyways.
   
10. Another big break is obtaining divine reach.You might wonder why this is useful, since you should have ranged spells anyways. The trick here is that your range modifier for casting gets cut in half. Now in the same way as a good ranger doesn't need a ring of accuracy to hit targets, a caster with divine reach doesn't need a staff anymore. Now you can replace your one staff with two blessed small or medium weapons. Since you cast, the choice of weapon is yours. I prefer two hammers just for the sheer awesomeness, but that is just me. Why are we doing this? First of all this gives us more slots for enchants. More importantly we have now two slots we can enchant with extra spell damage. This relieves us from getting amplify magic early on.
    
11. Your final goal will be to have (without equipment) 7 STR, 7 AGI, 11 STA and 10 CHA. Why 11 STA and not 11 CHA? Simple, natural STA is different from STA from equipment. The extra health equals your health modifier rather than 1 and you get one extra unit of energy. There is no difference between natural and equipment CHA however.
    
12. Maybe the most important spell to get will be renewing touch. How to use this spell for its maximum potential will be explained in the spell section.
    
13. As soon as you have 11 CHA, which can come in the form of a second enchanted weapon and rings/amulets you don't use for fighting, switch to a different mode of exploration. Instead of going down and finishing dungeons, just use the first and second floor. Collect studded armor (and above, even worn chain and plate mail/helmets) and rings and amulets. If you have a ring of scholars use it to identify valuable scrolls and spell books. Sell everything you don't need. I recommend leaving two scrolls of polymorph and invisibility as a reserve and sell the rest. As long as you end up with a plus of 50 gold pieces you did your job well. Feast at the inn and reset the dungeon. Now check the shops for new spells and equipment. Typically you will have enough money to buy them. Afterwards, rinse and repeat. Because you only explore two floors you won't run into a special encounter and you will get awesome equipment and spells very fast. I used this technique succesfully as early as level 9, but there is no reason to wait once you have 11 CHA.
    
14. Getting banish demon and turn undead. This makes your life just so much easier.
    
15. Getting divine might/grace. Sometimes getting these early on from a holy warrior can win the game for you.

These are your main breaks to look out for. If you keep an eye on those things and don't forget to adjust your equipment you will reach level 20 more often than not.
Don't forget to level your dog with you. A good indicator of how well you are doing is when your dog dies and you will find the increased pace refreshing rather than suffocating.

A few more comments on talents. As mentionend, your most important talents are focused cast, keen eyes and probably draconic magic. This is followed by celestial magic and infernal. It is of course up to you whether you want to take infernal or not, but some of the spells are pretty useful.
My other favorite talent is dark vision. Mages are probably the class that benefits most from increased sight. It helps them to see beasts early and casters are most vulnerable to melee attacks due to their lack of blocking and dodging. Also an increased sight radius is great when you have plane shift and can be a true life saver at times. It is also really fun for exploration when you have +2 or more light. You will eventually have illumination and it synergises with both, keen eyes and dark vision. Also because of geometrical reasons (A~r^2), your light effects are superadditive.
The other talents are really lackluster. A huge disappointment is silent cast. Of course, silence effects are deadly for a mage, but a ring of clarity or a single of your 10 or more armor enchant slots used for protection from silence makes this talent redundant. I tried combining it with silent move (a talent which you should consider to take), but they don't stack. Another halfway useful talent might be strong will. But you will have high stamina and a fear protection anyways, so this is definitely not a high priority option.

Challenge : Try getting wizard status without using talent points on any of the magic schools. You will need a little luck and patience, but it is possible by using many scrolls of knowledge. I call this build the Hedge Wizard.

Here I will point out and clarify some of the uses of the spells I find most helpful. Other players might think different about the subject and I am happy for usefull input.

Celestial spells

• Divine Grace/Might are great allrounders. Divine might is slightly more important for you because it increases physical resistance and your own damage output. Divine Grace on the other hand works incredibly well on your dog, turning him in combination with the other heritages into a real killer (I saw him eat a bear like nothing). Keep yourself and your favorite pet always enchanted, there is not much more to be said about them.
  
• Divine Reach lets you replace your staff with two blessed enchanted weapon (extra spell damage!). Also, starting out with it and stumbling into a merchant early is great, because you will always hit with your staff, while the bodyguards will almost exclusively miss. Killing the merchants can give great equipment or at least a financial boost.
  
• Healing Touch /Healing Wave. The first is slightly better, because it heals more points in one go and can sometimes be your last safety option. I would recommend to not rely on it though.
  It is nice to use it instead of healing by waiting because it saves so much time. Healing wave has an area effect which I suppose can be useful if you want to heal yourself and a pet, or several pets in one go. Just be aware not to heal living enemies. As far as I know, they don't work on undead.
  
• Turn undead is great to clear undeads, also banshees and the purple monster ghosts.
  
• Renewing Touch. The most useful spell of all. Not only allows it to heal you fast over several rounds(it returns the most hp per cast of them all), it can also be used offensively. It is basically a turbo ring of regen. At 12 CHA it heals 6-8 hp per round, as much as four blessed rings of regen without the added vulnerability to fire! Since everytime you cast a spell without having the energy for it you lose D3 life points, it heals faster than you lose life. Even with a blessed amu of free action you only have 2D3 damage per round, which leaves you with up to two extra health points per round, as much as a blessed ring of regen. This means you have no restriction to casting whatsoever and you can cast an infinite chain of orbs at your enemy, as long as you dont forget to refresh it every now and then. Also their effects stack, so you can use it many time on you as preparation for a big battle. This makes extra energy enchants redundant and makes this spell the best way of dealing with super strong enemies like Gurmur/ King/Queen or a horde.

Draconic Spells

• Amplify magic. Increase your damage. Enough said.
  
• Electric Orb/Frozen Orb. Can stun the enemy. Slightly less effective against orcs and undead.
  
• Flaming Orb. Pretty useful because it can hurt enemies with burn. Also you can get it sometimes for free from the warlock trainer.
  
• Enlarge Orb. I use it rarely because it takes a turn to cast. It can be useful if you have many enemies standing close together, like in special encounters or king fights. It deals extra damage and hurts surrounding enemies. The effects of the other orbs are preserved as well. Doesn't work on turn undead and banish demon, even though they benefit from amplify magic.
  
• Illumination. Not essential but very convenient. Works very well with keen eyes and dark vision.
  
• Mage Armor: Gives at least one point of resistance, but can give 2 for caster bonus of 4 and higher. Really useful since it allows you to transcend the need for clothes and be a truly powerful caster.
  
• Mirror Image is great when you have focused cast and are weak yourself. You can distract enemies while shooting at them. Also you can use them to extend your field of vision into rooms you cannot look into.
  
• Remove Curse can help you to get rid of those nasty curses of agony and others. Not totally important since you can in principle travel up and pay money to get rid of your curses, but sometimes this is what saves you and your hard earned cash.
  
• Telekinesis. Pretty handy for opening doors from a distance. This can save you from nasty surprises. Also works on locked chests and doors which is great, since you lack the agility or bodystrength to overcome these obstacles otherwise in short time.

Infernal Spells

(Some of these spells I rarely use and hence might not be the best judge of their usefulness)

• Banish Demon: Great because demons are my number one reason to die. Also works on infernals.
  
• Bestow Curse seems pretty useless at first. Sure, you die from curses often enough, but typically after you have killed the enemy, so why should this be different for your enemies? It was Brandy (a player, not the drink) that made me aware to the connection of cursing and black soul gems. If you find one, use it (make sure you have enough health, there is about a third chance that it blows up). This will change its name to soul gem of (insert name of curse here). Next time you will cast curse, it guaranties that this curse will appear. If you have different soul gems, more curses can be cast at once. If you have all ten of them, your bestow curse spell is suddenly op (Hint: Achievement). Especially powerful enemies can be knocked out by casting curse once. There is a good chance they are stunned and might even attack other enemies in a fit of rage or lust while continuing to suffer magic damage. This can be used to weaken groups by using curse of envy, lust and wrath to let enemies run berserk within their group.
  
• Capture Soul. Useful to farm soul gems either for the curses as shown above or to be used in release soul.
  
• Demonic Visage: Turns you into a scary creature and enemies have to pass a mental check in order to attack. I haven't used it much, but it can be useful to scare enemiy casters or archers. I am not sure, whether additional strength makes you scarier and this spell more useful.
  
• Enslave Demon: Charms a demon, is quite unreliable though, but can in principle save you in a group of demons.
  
• Plane Shift is one of the best spells in the game. It helps you get over pits in hallways and out of the range of angry orcs. You can heal and shoot at the enemies. This spell really benefits from your increased line of sight.
  
• Release Soul is useful to use up your punk soul gems. It is however for farming. Just enchant armor and weapons you found for free and sell them to make even more money for spell grinding. Be aware, sometimes there is a substantial explosion, so only do this with plenty of health to spare.
  
• Venomous/Virulent Orb. Slightly worse than the other orbs since many enemies have resistances. On the other hand, they are pretty strong for enemies with lots of hp (such as Gurmur), as they can weaken them with diseases and poisons. This is however not reliable. Especially undead seem to be pretty immune to them.

In my second Hotbar I always put the six spells I keep always on: Divine Might/Grace, Mage Armor, Illumination, Divine Reach and Amplify Magic.

Here we talk about the material needs of our mage.

Stats

As explained earlier, your main stats are STA and CHA. The useful thing to keep in mind is, that their use is limited to 12 because of max cast modifier (there are also no merchant bonusses for higher CHA).

Since you will have eventually 11 natural STA plus an additional from Divine Might, you needn't worry too much about extra enchants of that nature. They can however be really handy early on.
You will need at least one extra CHA enchantment to get to 12 to make full use of healing and turn undead. It is also nice that you don't have to change equipment to effectively trade.

Vulnerabilities and Enchants

As you probably know, your mage is a little sissy and needs extra care. First of all he needs some form of immunity from fear. This can happen in the form of a ring of fortitude or the right enchant.
Another immunity to look out for is the protection from silence. This is a must, since you are rubbish at fighting.
The next slightly less important immunity is to curse and confuse.
If you have the four above mentioned immunities you are save with respect to almost all nasty things.

Your staff or two weapons should each have extra spell damage as an enchant.

All other enchants are icing on the top. Most useful is extra sight radius, physical resistance, extra health and increased chance to crit to sometimes hit your enemies extra hard and to prevent misspelling too often. Energy enchants are not really that useful, especially since renewing touch (see spell section) makes it obsolete. Death Protection can on rare occasions be useful, but that is rarely the case and it doesn't protect you from boulders and tentacles. Additional healing spell effectiveness is imo not so useful.

Useful Rings and Amulets to look out for

• Amulet of Abjuration can cast a shield to protect you. Can be good at the earlier levels.
  
• Amulet of Divination. Its blessed form is amazing. You use the amulet to identify things, but the blessed version can actually remove curses and bless! Because you have only a limited amount of uses before it breaks, use it wisely on ring and amulets you want to have a blessed version of.
  
• Amulet of Free Action. This is my favorite amulet and the blessed version gives you a guaranteed second action per turn. This makes you almost invincible. Given your capability of infinite spell casting (renewing touch), you can dish out roughly 50 ranged damage per turn as long as you want. That is maybe not as much as a high end fighter, but it is ranged and you don't need to worry about tiring.
  
• Amulet of Frost Ward. The only ward I tend to keep, mostly because of drakes and the ice queen.
  
• Amulet of Ghost Form. The regular version is too dangerous to be used constantly (and I am to lazy to switch around, especially it removes your mage armor every time), but the blessed version is abolutely amazing to kite you to the late game.
  
• Amulet of Necromancy. Use it wisely on dead mages, and you can build quite a powerful army. They usually behave quite stupid though and slow your game down. I don't really like it. The blessed version regens your undead, yay!
  
• Amulet of Protection. Often neglected but actually one of the best amulets. Basically protects you from anything a little better. Even one point of protection is a lot when the enemy hits you often. Think about it, the blessed form (+2 every protection) is as good as 12 enchants. Also they appear quite frequently.
  
• Amulet of Reflection. Also great and one can argue, whether they are better or worse than amu of protection. I believe they are slightly better since sometimes the damage is completely neglected and the enemy gets hurt, buying you more time. The blessed version is simply more effective.
  
• Amulet of Transformation. Turn items into gold. Not that useful, since your mage has plenty of CHA and can sell it for more.
  
• Ring of Clarity. Important if you don't have another means of protection from silence (which is really really important.) Also the blessed version gives you extra STA. Clearly, you want to use this ring only for earlier levels and upgrade to a silence enchant later on.
  
• Ring of Control. Great, gives you protection from confuse and the blessed version treats you to extra CHA. Keep it for trading in mid game.
  
• Ring of Elements protects you from tfire/frost and shock and their effects. Quite useful, but I prefer other rings to be honest.
  
• Ring of Fortitude. Almost a must for mages. The extra health coupled to the immunity from fear makes the purchase of this ring worthwile. The blessed version gives double the health. Add a health enchant and you get +21 health.
  
• Ring of Haste can be pretty useful, especially the blessed version which keeps your hunger level down. However, it is not as reliable as a blessed amu of free action, so sometimes you don't have the extra turn when you need it most.
  
• Ring of Immunity. Another truly great and often overlooked ring. It raises your resistance to poison and disease, which makes devourers so much easier to deal with. It protects you from curses, which are one of the four big liabilities of the mage. Also you are protected from all poisons and diseases! Because things like charm, paralyse and blind (and not to forget deafening) come almost exclusively from poison effects, this ring protects you from all of those at once.
  
• Ring of Outcasts/ Power. The ring of power can be really useful, but you need a lot of luck to get a decent number of good enchants to make it worthwile. Not my first choice at all.
  
• Ring of Regeneration. A great item until it kills you. Too dangerous in my opinion. Also you will have renewing touch eventually which is so much better.
  
• Ring of Scholars. This one is a keeper, but you shouldn't wear it all the time. Use it to decipher scrolls and books for usage or to sell. The blessed version lets you identify potions and wands, not that much better than the normal version if you ask me.

At this point I should probably mention consumables. I typically don't need many of them. Early on I maybe keep a scroll of banishment or turn undead. I try to stock up on one or two scrolls of polymorph and invisibility, mostly for special encounters. Also wands of extraction can be great on low strength enemies (especially that SOB Ryan the Trickster). But the great advantage of mages is, that they don't really rely on cheap tricks. They outperform wands easily and teleport out of danger. Because of their big health pool, most healing potions are useless and did I mention that renewing touch is the best spell in the game?

At some point you are a wizard and might want to take on the cultists or become a king. Here is the kind of setup I am most comfortable with:

• Two blessed hammers with extra spell damage each
  
• Blessed Amu of Free Action
  
• Blessed Ring of Immunity and Fortitude
  
• Protection from Silence and Confuse Enchant
  
• 12 STA and CHA

If you have these and all the important spells from the spell section, you should be comfortable with dealing with all the obstacles the game throws at you. Remember to have during fights always renewing touch on (multicast it before the fight) and keep a scroll of light and invisibility for the big fights so you can cloak and teleport to safety if things should become really bad (unlikely though).

This is all I could come up with. It is late at night and there must be plenty of spelling and grammar errors and the such. I will probably look over it later and correct those slowly over time. I would be happy about extra input in the comment section that can improve this guide.

Good luck and happy spelunking!