Boosting Fire.

[Saxon]

Boosting fire magic is tougher than other paths. I am curious, what is the design reason for that? Preventing mass spamming of fire spells in combat? I am curious what people think on this.

[JimMorrison]

Air isn't very easy either, really. 8(

[Darkstone]

Fire is also a lot less flexible than air (which has offense, defense, and mobility).

Anyway, boosting fire is certainly unpleasant.

[MaxWilson]

Fire magic has Phoenix Power, though, which is one of the two easiest battlefield magic boosts. Skull of Death is cheap. It's just Flame Helmets that are expensive and draining. I'm not convinced that fire is harder to boost than Air is, and it's a bit easier to boost than Nature.

All depending upon what paths your national mages have, of course.

-Max

[thejeff]

Flaming Skulls are cheap, but there are a lot of nations with Fire, but no F/D mages, so they aren't easy to get.

I'd agree that Air is harder.
Not nature though. Thistle Maces are 2N which gets you one boost easier than any fire. And there are summons with nature magic. Fire mages are harder to summon.

[MaxWilson]

Thistle maces get you from N2->N3, but the battlefield boost +1 (Strength of Gaia?) takes N3E1 and Conj-5 IIRC. F2 can boost just by casting Phoenix Power. The next Nature boost takes either N4 for Treelord's staff (not usable with Thistle Mace) or Astral magic for the Moonvine Bracelect. Depending on your nation that can be harder than F/D for Flaming Skulls.

My real point is that there's little point in talking about how hard it is to boost a certain path except in the context of a particular nation. Some paths (water and Earth) are usually easy to boost once you have a little (W1 -> W3 is easy, E2 -> E4 on the battlefield is easy) but it's difficult to say which are "hard". For astral nations *nothing* is hard to boost.

-Max

[Saxon]

Well, let me re-phrase the question. I am having a hard time boosting fire, particularly outside of battle. I also have a hard time with air. I can see the design reason for air, it is a strong path, particularly in battle and boosting it easily could make air too strong.

Is fire seen as being equally powerful, so that it needs some tempering? Astral is very strong, but certainly has weaknesses. Nature is, in my opinion, easy to boost, but not as strong as some others. Is limiting boosting the way fire is kept under control? Or is there something else?

[Lingchih]

You will just have to empower to boost Fire. Air boost is virtually unimportant.

[Endoperez]

In multiplayer, you can always trade for Flaming Skulls. They're cheap to make, if you have the mages for them, and with luck a single Flaming Skull is enough to get you up to the Flaming Helmets.

[Agema]

My general experience is that fire gems are relatively less used.

On the battlefield, most fire spells to rain damage down are fairly low fatigue and low-middle level in skill required. The summons are unspectacular, until maybe Conj 8 and the elemental lords. There aren't more magic fire items to make than other paths.

Consequently, I usually assume it's not tough building up a pile of fire gems that can be used for empowerment.