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Class Showcase: Mage
The Mage is your standard spell casting class. They make use of the elements to attack, meaning that they can handle enemies that physical attackers can’t. They’re also very powerful when it comes to being an offensive class, as they are considered to be one of the strongest classes in the game. For a good portion of the game, a Mage can easily be your best damage dealer when set up correctly, and it doesn’t take much to do so, unlike some other offensive setups. And in most cases, other offensive setups won’t be able to compare to this one class until maybe late-game. However, Mages aren’t exactly a durable class, and you shouldn’t be too reckless with them, so they’re firmly a back line unit. But adding one to your team can make life much easier with the right party.
Interestingly enough, the Mage is the only class in the entire game that does not have access to a react skill. But considering how powerful they are already, they really don’t need one!
Stats
The Mage’s stat spread is one of extremes. They have the best mana and INT stats out of all the classes, which really makes their job of casting spells pretty easy, since they’re not likely to run out of mana that easily. Unfortunately, they have the lowest HP, POW, and SPD stats. Meaning that their defenses are very lackluster, and they’re the slowest and most inaccurate class in the game to boot. (Though with Mages, accuracy is really not a huge issue thanks to EX bypassing accuracy checks.) Though their high INT stat at least means they can shrug off spells far more easily than the other classes can. Not only that, Mages benefit from INT in another way, in that it is the primary stat used in calculating damage for spells.
To expand on that, Mage spells use a different damage formula than the physical attacks the other classes have access to. Physical attackers use this formula for their attacks:
Damage = [((POW + (Weapon Attack * Weapon Mastery)) – Target's DEF) + ATK Bonus] * Damage Multipliers
While Mage spells use this formula instead:
Damage = [(User's INT / 2) * Spell Power + (2.5 + (Mastery Power * 2.5)) – (Target's DEF / 2) – (Target's INT / 2)] * Damage Multipliers
As you can see, INT is a huge factor in determining spell damage, so increasing their INT as much as possible is definitely a priority for them. Mages also don’t benefit from ATK boosts, since that’s not used in their damage calculations, but they definitely benefit from DEF debuffs. However, there aren’t any ways to decrease an enemy’s INT, so damage can’t be boosted from that angle.
Scholar Lore
Skill Type: Passive
Maximum Level: 5
Prerequisites: INT Bonus – Level 5
Increases the rate at which enemies drop items.
Notes:
- Stacks multiplicatively with other instances of Scholar Lore.
Not really a great skill unless you’re using multiple Mages. For one thing, this skill is not an additive boost, so a level 5 version will not increase the drop rate by +25%. Considering the drop rates in this game, a 1.25x multiplier is a considerably smaller boost than just adding on 25%. For example, an item with a 15% drop rate would become 40% in the case of an additive boost, but in the case of a multiplicative boost, it only increases to 18%. Yeah, not that great. Couldn’t hurt to take, but the Mage has far better skills they want before even considering something like this.
Medicine
Skill Type: Passive
Maximum Level: 5
Prerequisites: INT Bonus – Level 3
Increases the power of restorative items the Mage uses during battle.
Notes:
- Only affects life and mana restoration.
If you want to give your Mage some supportive capabilities, it wouldn’t hurt to take this skill. I’d only recommend taking this if your party doesn’t have enough support, or if your Mage already has everything they want in terms of skills. It can be a handy form of backup if your supporting units get disabled through the use of Skill Seal or any other ailment. But typically, you want your Mage to be dealing damage instead of being on support duty, so I wouldn’t consider this skill a must-have.
Fire Mastery/Ice Mastery/Shock Mastery
Skill Type: Passive
Maximum Level: 5
Prerequisites: None
Boosts the damage output of Fire/Ice/Lighting spells and increases the casting speed of said spells.
If you’re familiar with the Alchemists in the first Etrian Odyssey game, you might know that their mastery skills for their spells... well quite frankly, they sucked and had very little effect on their damage output. Unfortunately, that’s also the case here. To delve into mechanics chat for a bit, the mastery skills apply a 1x to a 3x multiplier to a value of 2.5, depending on the skill’s level. After that, another value of 2.5 is added onto the result, which is then added onto other values in the damage formula. From there, spells can apply a 1.5x to a 2x multiplier to the Mage’s damage output in the formula. This means that at most, they will boost the damage output of spells by only 20 points at the maximum. 
Yeah, these skills are pretty terrible at increasing your Mage’s damage. If you want to increase your Mage’s damage output, it’s far more effective to increase their intelligence. However, the skills aren’t complete point dumps, as they do have one useful function. They increase the casting speed of your Mage’s spells, allowing them to work a bit faster in battles. Not really worth maxing out right away, but after you get all the skills you want, it can’t hurt to spend some SP here for that little boost. But until then, just invest points in this to unlock the skills you want.
Flame/Freeze/Shock
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 5
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 80%
Prerequisites: Fire Mastery – Level 1/Ice Mastery – Level 1/Shock Mastery – Level 1
Deals Fire/Ice/Lightning damage to one enemy.
The Mage’s main form of offense. These skills are what you want your Mage to be casting most of the time in the big fights. Though I wouldn’t recommend taking all of them, as that would spread your Mage’s SP a bit thin. So which elements are the best ones to go with? Generally, Fire is seen as the worst element to make use of. Past a certain point in the game, dragons and bosses will start resisting Fire attacks heavily. And the main upside to Fire attacks is that not a lot of random encounters resist it. But at the same time, random encounters don’t tend to be weak to it either, so there’s not much benefit there. Ice is great for dragon and boss slaying, as it’s one of the most common weaknesses they have. And it can be decent for encounter clearing, though some enemies resist it. Lightning isn’t an element that dragons and bosses really resist, and encounters tend to be fairly weak to it. For these reasons, Ice and Lightning spells are the popular choices for a Mage, as they pretty much provide the Mage with near perfect coverage for dealing with various enemies throughout the game.
Volcano/Blizzard/Boltstorm
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 5
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 70%
Prerequisites: Fire Mastery – Level 3, Flame – Level 3/Ice Mastery – Level 3, Freeze – Level 3/Shock Mastery – Level 3, Shock – Level 3
Deals Fire/Ice/Lightning damage to all enemies.
The damage is quite lower than the single target versions, so these are basically your encounter clearers. You shouldn’t be using these in the big fights, since nearly every boss in the game fights alone. Granted Dragons can join in on fights, but even these skills are fairly situational. It doesn’t really matter which element you pick here, but Boltstorm is generally the most popular choice as Lighting is the element random encounters tend to resist the least. It and Blizzard tend to be the popular choices as people already invest a lot into Ice skills, and they have the SP to spare for Blizzard. I would advise maxing out 2 of these spells at the most. Anymore is just a waste of SP.
Fire Veil/Ice Veil/Shock Veil
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 5
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 80%
Prerequisites: Fire Mastery – Level 3/Ice Mastery – Level 3/Shock Mastery – Level 3
Places a buff on an ally for 10 turns. When the ally is attacked with physical damage from a melee attack, the attacker will be counterattacked for Fire/Ice/Lightning damage.
Notes:
- The INT stat of the Mage that casted these skills is used to calculate damage for counterattacks.
- The incoming attack must connect and must be a physical melee-ranged attack. Spells and ranged attacks will not trigger counterattacks.
- If an incoming attack hits multiple times, the counterattack will activate for each hit. There is no limit on how often a counterattack can be triggered.
- Counterattacks cannot miss under any circumstances.
- Ignores counter skills.
- Damage output cannot be boosted by Concentrate or EX.
- Will not trigger follow-ups from Element Link.
- Overwrites another Veil buff if one is in place.
- Since Shieldcraft counts as a Veil buff, these skills will overwrite that buff as well.
These skills are kind of weird. The counterattacks can be nice, and if you placed veils on everyone in the party, and an enemy uses an AOE attack, that’s 4 counterattacks right there. Except that would take 4 turns of setup if you only had one Mage. Ultimately, I don’t really like these skills all that much. The main reason I’m not a fan? Concentrated single target spells will give you bigger and more reliable and immediate results. Also those can actually be boosted by EX and these skills can’t. I mean if you have a Knight or a Princess with Provoke, you could try comboing these skills with that. I would say these skills may be worth considering if you have more than one Mage in the party, since it would be easier to set up veils on everyone that way. Otherwise, you’re better off with using Concentrate with a single target spell.
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Mana Mastery
Skill Type: Passive
Maximum Level: 5
Prerequisites: None
Boosts the damage output of Mana spells and allows the Mage to cast those spells faster.
Everything I said about Fire, Ice, and Shock Mastery also applies to this skill right here. So instead, I’ll talk more about Mana spells in general. Mana spells grant access to non-elemental attacks, which no enemy in the entire game (aside from Bloom Seeds) resist. Essentially, you can make your Mage even more versatile by investing in these skills, which allows the Mage to deal guaranteed damage to pretty much anything in the game. With these skills in their kit, no pesky resistances will be able stop the Mage in their tracks. Sounds like a great deal, right?
Mana Bullet
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 5
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 80%
Prerequisites: Mana Mastery – Level 1
Deals Non-elemental damage to one enemy.
However, to compensate for the fact that the Mage can attack any enemy in the game without worry, the Mana spells had their damage outputs slightly lowered compared to the elemental spells. As such, they should only be broken out if your current arsenal of spells won’t cut it for the fight you’re in. A small price to pay for versatility. Despite the lower damage output, taking these spells will at least guarantee that there’s no fight that they can’t contribute to. A Mage that cannot fight is pretty much a waste of a party slot. So they’re worth it just to stop those situations from ever happening.
Skyfall
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 5
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 70%
Prerequisites: Mana Mastery – Level 3, Mana Bullet – Level 3
Deals Non-elemental damage to all enemies.
I would argue that Skyfall is less situational than Mana Bullet, since Skyfall guarantees that you can hit every single enemy in a random encounter for a high amount of damage, where it may be possible that different enemies in an encounter happens to resist your Mage’s arsenal of attacks. Definitely a nice backup plan skill to invest in after you finished leveling up your main skills.
Healing Mana
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 1
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 75%
Prerequisites: Mana Mastery – Level 4
Restores the Mage’s mana when cast.
Restores 3 Mana. When the Mage’s base mana pool can go up to 100. I think that speaks for itself. Oh, but not only that, the Healer has access to the Craft Mana skill, which restore 7 mana to everyone instead of just themselves, (at the cost of the Healer’s turn) and the Princess has the Moonlit Song skill, which restores 5 mana to everyone at the end of each turn indefinitely. So if you have access to either of those skills, you don’t need this skill at all! And if you need mana that badly, just buy some Mana Water instead of wasting SP on this poor excuse for a skill! Oh wait, it goes up to 6 mana when boosted with EX. Yeah, that’s much better and totally justifies burning 3 SP.
Concentrate
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 1
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 75%
Prerequisites: Mana Mastery – Level 5
Increases the damage output of a spell cast on the next turn.
Notes:
- Only works on spells. Does not work with regular attacks that had their damage type forcibly changed to an element.
Bugs:
- If [REDACTED] or [REDACTED] are active while Concentrate is in effect, EX will not boost the damage output of the Mage’s spells.
- [REDACTED]’s infliction rate will still get boosted.
- Damaging skills will still bypass accuracy checks as well.
Say hello to one of the most important skills the Mage can have. Concentrate is pretty much a 25% damage boost to the Mage’s overall damage output. Oh, but not only that, this stacks with EX, turning that 50% damage boost into a whopping 87.5% overall damage boost! And it’s much more cost efficient than casting 2 EX-boosted spells 2 turns in a row. Meaning that there’s little reason to not just be casting this skill every other turn. Not many big enemies can survive 3 Concentrated EX-boosted spells. And if they do, chances are that they’ll be going down pretty soon.
Space Mastery
Skill Type: Passive
Maximum Level: 5
Prerequisites: None
Boosts the damage output of Space spells and allows the Mage to cast those spells faster.
Notes:
- Since [REDACTED] is the only space spell that deals damage, only it has its damage output boosted.
- Does not affect the damage output or casting speed of mana spells.
Apply what I said about the elemental masteries and Mana Mastery here.
Space Mastery is a skill branch that mainly focuses on field skills. Yeah, not too useful, but there are 2 combat skills it unlocks as well. Unfortunately, one of them is an EX skill, and won’t be available until very late in the game. If you plan on getting said EX skill, you’ll need to take this to unlock it, but ultimately, you can probably get away with ignoring this skill branch for the most part, as most of the skills aren’t that useful.
Shieldcraft
Skill Type: Active
Maximum Level: 10
Equipment Needed: N/A
Speed Modifier: 70%
Prerequisites: Space Mastery – Level 4
Conjures a shield that protects the Mage from all damage until it breaks.
Notes:
- Damage calculations take the Mage’s defenses into account.
- The shield takes the damage first, and if the shield breaks, any excess damage will bleed through and be applied to the Mage. If the shield did not break, then the Mage will be shown as taking 0 damage.
- The shield lasts indefinitely until the battle ends, the Mage dies, or until it breaks.
- The shield can only be repaired by recasting Shieldcraft. Doing so will fully heal the shield.
- This skill is considered to be a Veil buff, so it will overwrite the other Veil buffs if one is in place.
- Only affects damage taken. Does not cancel out additional effects, such as ailments.
- Does not actually nullify attacks. The skill is coded to have the Mage take 0 damage if the shield fully blocks the damage.
- This means that any attacks that have additional effects will still have the additional effect go through, as the Mage technically took damage.
Ehhh. I guess this is an okay way to boost your Mage’s durability, if you really need it. I don’t find this skill really that necessary, as you can just place a Mage in the back row to increase their lifespan. If your party has a Knight in it, then you really don’t need this skill.
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Portal Jump
Skill Type: Active Field Skill
Maximum Level: 5
Equipment Needed: None
Prerequisites: Space Mastery – Level 1
Sends the party to the last portal used.
Notes:
- Only usable on the world map.
- Cannot be used until a Portal has been visited at least once.
- The game will remember the last portal visited, even if the game has been turned off.
It’s a Shifter in skill form. Taking this skill does mean that you don’t have to buy Shifters when needed. Whether you take this skill or not is up to you, but even if you do, just leave 1 point in it. The lowered mana cost really isn’t worth the extra SP, and any mana issues that may arise will stop doing so past the early-game.
Exit
Skill Type: Active Field Skill
Maximum Level: 5
Equipment Needed: None
Prerequisites: Space Mastery – Level 3
When used in a dungeon, sends the party to the entrance.
Notes:
- Only usable in dungeons.
- In dungeons with multiple entrances, the one used by the party will be your destination.
An Exporter in skill form. Taking this skill pretty much allows you to not prioritize buying Exporters as much. It’s up to you if you want this skill or not, but like with Portal Jump, this isn’t really a skill you want more than 1 point in, as the Mage really doesn’t need to be spamming this, and their mana pools should be large enough to let you cast this skill whenever you need it.
The Mage is probably one of the most powerful and self-sufficient classes in the game, but they can’t exactly take what they can dish out. Having one on a team is an easy way to heavily increase your party’s offensive potential, but do take care that they don’t get taken out too easily.