You spawn in with a couple of random wands, a couple of random components, and a random perk. From there you will progress through castles full of enemies that are trying to kill you.
Enemies drop their wand on death. Pick them up, grab the components you want and move them to your current wand. Or, if the enemy's wand is better, use it as your new main one.
At the end of each level you'll face a boss- they're bigger, stronger, and they have a staff. Good luck.
Once you defeat the boss, you get a perk and get to go to the next level. Enemies will get more health, different kinds of wands with better stats and components will spawn.
How do wands work?
Your wand is made up of several different factors that all decide what kind of projectile you will cast.
Wand material: Projectile type, number of component slots, mana pool and recharge rate
Hilt: Status effect, colour and base projectile stats
Components: Modifies the projectile, including cast delay, damage, mana consumption, size, and more.
Want a rapid-fire wand for mowing down hordes? Reduce the wand's cast delay and watch the enemies get torn apart. Just make sure your wand has enough mana to handle it.
Want a powerful blast that brings bosses to their knees? Add damage and fire away. Be careful though, you might end up taking more recoil than you expected.
What kind of spells can I cast?
Currently there are four projectile types:
Orb (single shot, standard projectile)
Scattershot (many smaller orbs with a wide spread)
Laser (melee, attached to your wand)
Shield (protective barrier in front of your wand)
Three status effects:
Fire (damage over time)
Condensed Health (take more damage, and drop a health pickup on death)
Condensed Mana (spells cost more mana, and drop a mana pickup on death)
Components are divided into two groups:
Tiered modifiers (these have multiple tiers, each tier provides a better modifier bonus but also a negative effect)
Unique modifiers (these have a great effect and usually a really negative one too. The modifiers you want will depend on your run and your playstyle)
5 identical tiered components can be combined to get one from the next tier. This gives you an edge over the enemies in the current level.
And there are 36 different base wands, each with a different combination of projectile type, mana pool and number of component slots.
How does mana work?
The higher the amount of mana that's remaining in the wand's mana pool, the better. If you cast a wand with 50% mana left, it's going to consume slightly more mana than when it's at 100%. If you cast a wand with not enough mana remaining, your projectiles will have massively reduced stats, including size and speed. You'll need to balance your loadout effectively to make sure you have the wands needed to take on a group of enemies.
What's a staff?
Staffs are made up of multiple wands, each firing in order when you cast.
The staff has a mana pool equal to the total max mana of all equipped wands. Staffs don't regenerate mana- you'll need to find your own to refill it. It's a powerful weapon that lets you fire a wide variety of spells in quick order, including different status effects and projectile types.
