Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks What are the advantages to leveling elmentals

What exactly does leveling an elemental skill (like pyro) do and is this described anywhere ?

The tool-tip simply states it allows for more spells to be learned but surely it does something else ?

It also effects your ability to use high level elemental skills. Some pyro skills for instance are level 10 and require a lot of action points to use. The higher your pyro skill the less AP it takes to use the spell.

So leveling a skill has to effects; reduce action points and increase number of skills you can learn ? Does it improve the damage of the skills ?

My experience (could be wrong);

* Damage etc. is unaffected
* Going higher level in an ability doesn't lower AP costs. However some higher leveled spells have AP-penalties if your ability is low level, so it does negate those, but that's not really lowering cost, just removing the penalty.
* It allows you to learn more spells of that element at the same time.

I can confirm.

But people should think about that there are some really nice spells on level 13, 16 and 18 for which you have to take severe AP penalties if you only have little knowledge in an elemental school. So specializing in two schools seems to be the "best" way in my experience...

So maybe it is better to leave the elemental 1 and put the points in speed ?

Attributes influence the damage/healing/effect of the skills they govern, and in addition to this Intelligence reduces the cooldown of magic skills. Abilities govern the number of skills and the surcharge paid for using higher level skills.

Generally speaking, for each skill category:

Ability 5 is for the perfectionist that wants to know all skills even if he uses only a small subset of them most of the time, for the player who hates the idea of paying extra AP for any skill, for the player whose character is specced such that he wouldn't have enough AP to cast the highest level skills otherwise, and for the player that wants one of the 5 point talents. (Given how poor most of the magical 5-pointers are, this last one strikes me as a remarkably poor reason where the magical skills are concerned, while, on the other hand, given just how good the non-magical 5-pointers are, going from 4 to 5 is highly desirable for them.)

Ability 4 is for the player that wants to have a great skill selection but is okay with paying a small surcharge of 2AP for the highest level skills (17-20), while paying regular costs for the most frequently used skills. This is an attractive end point for many magical characters due to the lackluster 5-point talents, and you'd need a really good reason to go further with a magic-using glass cannon character, who can always find something to spend attribute points on - survivability (Man-at-arms with picture of health talent) if nothing else.

Ability 3 is for the player that wants to have a good skill selection but is okay with paying a small surcharge of 2AP for skill levels 13-16 and +4 for 17-20, while paying regular costs for the most frequently used skills. A glass cannon mage, for instance, is likely to find this a nice place to stop for all but his most frequently used school of magic.

Ability 2 is for the player that wants just that little bit more than skill 1 provides - lowlevel damagedealing skills a surcharge, for instance, to ensure that elemental damage of all types can be realiably dealt in case of facing enemies with specific vulnerabilities or resists. You'll pay a surcharge of +2 for 9-12, +4 for 13-16, +6 for 17-20.

Ability 1 is for the ability to deploy a few powerful lowlevel buffs at base cost (Oath of Desecration, Wildfire, etc.), for emergency healing, or for seldom used higher level spells at exorbitant costs. You'll pay a surcharge of +2 for 5-8, +4 for 9-12, +6 for 13-16, and +8 for 17-20.

No, absolutely not.

Big difference between ability points (fairly many) and ability points (fewer).

Check the available spells of each school to see if you really want to invest for something worthwile there - as mentioned above, the lvl 5 elemental talents are very weak - and so are most of the spells

In my opinion, it's not worth it to go above 3 in hydrosophist. You have plenty of healing by that time imo and the two damage spells that you get at 5 aren't that stellar.
Witchcraft is good to have on one character to lvl 2 for oath and absorb elements.
Geomancy is awesome until 3, but lvl 4 only gives you 2 more summons and lvl 5 earthquake is really bad.
Pyro is great and is worth it to invest 5 points into it as meteors are the only kinda reliable endgame spell damage. Staying on lvl 3 otherwise is good as well.
Aero, again, 3 is great, 4/5 not so much (chain lighting can be great, but it's targeting is weird most of the time)

So Ideally, you would want:
hydro 3 (6 ability points)
witchcraft 2 (3AP)
geomancy 3 (6AP)
pyro 3 (6AP)
Aero 3 (6AP)

total AP cost: 27 AP. which is a little over half of what you get and it will keep you covered for all fights. you can then invest 9 more into pyro if you want, or a lot of people opt for putting 15 points into man-at-arms because it has the best talents available (50% elemental resists, 25% more hp, 15 armor), and also the selection of support spells isn't that bad.
Also expert marksman is worth putting one point into for Tactical Retreat.

Added to what Kantay says, anybody rational wanting to run a glass cannon mage on hard difficulty that is not a lone wolf will want to spend points on man-at-arms to at least level 2, but preferably further and best of all to 5 for Weather the Storm, since getting 25% hitpoints (the default from hard + GC) is terrible compared to getting 35%-50% (man-at-arms 2-5 + Picture of Health + hard + GC.)

(The modifiers are additive and applied to the total health from all sources, so a hard mode GC man-at-arms 5 with Picture of Health has exactly twice as many hitpoints as he'd have had without the skill and talent.)

And anybody running a hard mode lone wolf glass cannon, while not being in quite as desperate a need of extra hitpoints due to the lone wolf modifier also applying additively, can surely afford to spare the 15 points necessary to get Weather the Storm.