Underrated spells

[Nephil Thief]

Now that I'm revisiting BoE because lockdown yay.

IMO...

Sanctuary. And Mass Sanctuary, but especially the level 1 version if you habitually play singletons.
- It's pretty useless against casters, but prevents a lot of melee and archery attacks from hitting at all
- IDK about original BoE, but in CBoE spellcasting only breaks it for attack spells
- With a few levels and a little spending on INT, it can last several turns...
- Allowing your fighters (or singleton) to close the distance to enemy spellcasters more easily
- Also allows singletons a bit of extra time to buff in surprise combat situations

So overall it's actually a really impressive asset, esp. at low levels.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Yeah, Mass Sanctuary has saved me a few times. Irritatingly, in legacy BoE, the Dust of Hiding does not work. The Sanctuary item ability does nothing. But BoE spells are fun, because you can usually find a use for any spell at some point or another on your adventures.

 

EDIT: Looking over the spell lists, the mage spell Spray Fields looks like an interesting one. I might try to use that at some point and see if it's useful for anything.

Edited February 7, 2021 by The Almighty Doer of Stuff

[Fireball Fodder]

Sleep Cloud. Extremely good vs. non-magic resistant monsters. Often much more useful than Fireball when you're low level.

 

Web. Thick webs (I think they need to be two tiles, maybe three) actually block line-of-sight. This can be a life saver before you get anti-magic fields, as it allows you to block enemy spellcasters.

[Thaluikhain]

Oh, Web is nice, yes, especially when you know that a bunch of monsters are about to emerge from a certain area (normally by playing the thing more than once, though, which is a bit cheaty) and you can prepare the area first.

[Nephil Thief]

This might be an unpopular opinion but I'm finding summon and charm spells also underrated.

 

Summon: if they're attacking your summons they're not attacking you. Also free debuff spells from e.g. Demon can be handy against mobs, though by the time you get Demon anything more powerful is going to resist them.

 

Charm: nasty stuff, but charming enemy spellcasters at low levels is *powerful*.

[Fireball Fodder]

I remember the only summon spells I regularly used were Weak Summon, Summon Shade (for PCs without Mage skill) and Simulacrum. The higher level summons are too expensive and random IMO, while Weak Summon is sufficient if you just need a bunch of bodies. I've always preferred to use Simulacrum on higher levels.

 

I admit I didn't use Charm often, though Mass Charm was sometimes useful against beefy but non-magic-resistant monsters like Giants.

 

Another spell I'd mention is the Mage spell Strength - the one that blesses your character. It's interesting because the effect is not dependent on the caster's Intelligence, making it very useful for certain builds in the early game, especially singletons.

[Thaluikhain]

Summon Host was pretty decent for filling space with 4 cheap bodies and 1 spellcasting monster that usually summons another cheap body anyway.  As an aside, isn't "Summon Shade" called "Summon Spirit", but confusingly summons a shade, not a spirit.   Both monsters use the same graphics, but spirits are way more powerful, which is a thing that can be annoying.

 

I like flame cloud when you are defending a doorway or something against a tough monster that will stick around for a few turns and you can do a bit of damage over time that way.  Or goo, for much the same.

[Nephil Thief]

Sanctuary is actually more powerful than I realized too, because it won't dissipate if you cast buff spells, and there seems to be some kind of check for visibility to spellcasters too (though hard to tell on that). You can Sanctuary -> bless/haste -> rush spellcasters at medium levels.

[Mea Tulpa]

I think, in the original game code, sanctuary only affects melee and missile attacks.  I don't think that missile routine is used by spellcasters (except possibly for missile-based spells like Flame Arrows?) but boy it's been a long time.