Wizardry 6: The Best/Worst Spells to Learn

The other day I ran into a list of spells for Wizardry 6 discussing which ones were the top and which ones were useless. I differed slightly but thought it would be a good spot to address my experiences with the best/worst spells in this game. Some spells might appear as a kind of red herring while others are completely worthless. Also, a few spells did not make the list that I found which is why I wanted to offer my take.

The Best Spells

• Heal Wounds – Absolute must have for every party. In fact, multiple characters should take this when they have the chance. If you start off with a Priest, this spell should be chosen as part of your core pool. If you create a hybrid like a Valkyrie, then this should be the first spell once you start gaining spells.
• Fireball – Since I recommend having a pure mage at the start of the game, the thing you should aim for is Fireball. One of the best early mass damage types, it works well because you should be building up your Fire pool up from the start especially since Fire is one of the best damage types in the game.
• Silence – Spell casters are some of the most feared foes in the game. The best offense generally is Silence which nullifies their abilities altogether. It’s a reasonably cheap ability that you can get at a lower level and it helps build up your Air spell pool which is pretty useful for a variety of reasons. This also works against creatures that can emit damaging abilities like the worms under the castle which do high pitch moans that damage your party.
• Cure Poison – Oddly, Cure Poison didn’t make the other person’s list. However, poison is one of the worst debilitating effects in the game and can quickly kill your characters depending on the power level and your resistance. While there are potions to mitigate poison, they either are expensive early on or may not completely remove the effects. And some poisons are so deadly that you may require multiple applications to get rid of the debuff. Lastly, you may not want to fill up your inventory with excess potions so having at least one character have this ability is critical. For myself, I try to race at least one character to obtain this ability as traps and monster debuffs can be really annoying when you get poisoned.
• Anti-Magic – Pretty much a must have in high level fights against any spell casters. Very useful against demons and liches.
• Purify Air – Cloud effects that show up in later stages of the game can be very annoying and pernicious. This spell is great for preventing lingering damaging effects.
• Missile Shield – Some mid game monsters like the Bridge Trolls have some high damaging missile abilities. This spell will help nullify those problems. Same with Drow Elves with their arrows.
• Dispel Undead – Can make a huge difference in some of the worst fights in the game. The Enchanted Forest has numerous skeleton types especially the Skeleton Lords. Dispel Undead, when it works, is an instant death against these legions and you can rack up a lot of experience.
• Astral Gate – Similar to Dispel Undead, this is highly useful against demonic creatures. The only problem is that there’s a good chance of failure especially when you cast this at max level. Nothing hurts worse when a high cost spell goes wrong. But in those scenarios where it works, it’s a life saver. You won’t need this early on but you should be building up your Magic pool to cast higher level versions of these.
• Magic Missile – Massively underrated spell. It’s probably the first modestly damaging group attack spell your spell casters can pick up. For a pure mage, you might even be able to get it by level 2 or 3 which is great to start building up your Magic pool. It won’t do great damage at higher levels but it does have niche uses and is good early on.
• Cure Lesser Cnd – There are a variety of debuffs in the game. You can probably get away with simply using a potion to handle various conditions early on but traps and some monsters will apply these debuffs. Eventually, you’ll want a few people to have this spell.
• Sleep – This is what your Bard will be doing to groups of foes for a while using his or her Lute every round. You can give it to your Mage too to help in cases where there’s multiple packs.
• Divine Trap – Traps are one of the worst things early on in dealing with all the chests. Whichever class you decide to pick as the main lock picker with Skulduggery, you should compliment their ability by having a Priest type of character use one of these especially in the starting zone where there’s a lot of trapped chest. In the mid game once you arrive at the River Styx, there’s more chests but this still is a great spell to keep around.
• Sane Mind – The last thing you want is a party with insanity because they’ll do random things and most likely will try to kill each other. The River Styx has groups of Sirens that can put your entire party into jeopardy unless you’re prepared with combinations of Silence and Sane Mind spells.
• Energy Blast – Not the best spell but it’s a must have for any Mage or Hybrid character at the start of the game. You really want this spell not only to do damage against foes but to build up your Fire pool.
• Direction – Even with various maps online, hint books, etc., you will get lost and lose your direction. Hence, you want this spell especially if you’re grinding areas where you need to go back and forth between areas and use things like Fountains.
• Knock-Knock – I personally think it’s better to use Skulduggery because traps and locks in this game are utter bullshit. But if you want to do things the “honest” way (i.e. not giving yourself a major boost at the beginning with Skulduggery), then Knock-Knock is something you want to pick up as soon as you can to handle pesky doors and chests. Doors in particular in the starting zone are obnoxious and I think you can even get to the point where you simply get locked out permanently if you can’t pick a lock. From what I’ve read though, you can buy the spellbook from Queequeg.
• Blades – To me this is another underrated spell like Magic Missile. For Priest and Psionic spell casters, Blades offers their first group wide damaging spell (Dispel Undead doesn’t count because it only affects undead). Also, you really want to have a variety of elemental damage type of spells since monsters have a different resistances. Lastly, this isn’t a bad spell to pick off any remaining packs of mobs.
• Iceball – Slightly more powerful than Fireball in terms of raw damage, having both is good for times when you encounter packs with an immunity to the other elemental type of damage. Also, in all likelihood, your Fire pool will end up getting depleted frequently so Iceball is a good secondary option while you wait for your Fire pool to regenerate.
• Magic Screen – Even with Silence and Anti-Magic, you probably want this up as much as you can to avoid situations when your spellcasters are depleted.

The Worst Spells

• Resurrection – The penalty for death is pretty high so even if a single character gets killed, you’re better off reloading the game. Only take this spell when there’s almost nothing else to bolster your Magic pool.
• Cure Stone – Like Resurrection except I believe there’s a chance your character might be revived as dead. So if you get turned to stone, you should just restart the game. Again, only take this spell to bolster your spell pool.
• Prismic Missile – On paper, this spell seems cool because of the random effects. In practice, unless you’re just “having fun”, you don’t want to leave your party’s fate to chance. Only pick this spell up when there’s nothing else.
• Ice Shield – I read this spell has very niche cases and is almost completely useless
• Mindread – Really unnecessary. You’re better off using a cluebook than wasting a space for this spell
• Death Wish – Sounds great on paper but it doesn’t really do much when it counts and most times just gets resisted or flat out fails
• Word of Death – Another spell that looks like it should be good but either fizzles or gets resisted often
• Death – Similar situation to the previous two spells.
• Remove Curse – Cursed items are apparently bugged so this spell is moot
• Blink – By the time you are ready to use this spell, you probably should have Ninjitsu for all your characters. Being able to Hide in Shadows is the most powerful ability in the game so Blink is worthless
• Locate Object – You can use a clue book to find anything you want. There’s no need to use this just like Scouting.
• Lightning – I believe this is the only Fire based Priest spell. If you have access to Fireball, that’s a better equivalent spell. The only reason to pick up Lightning is to build up your Fire pool or give your Priest something to do rather than twiddling their thumbs.
• Conjuration – While other creatures may use this ability, I never found it to be worth much except for novelty. I’d prefer to just stomp my foes down rather than waste spells for something like this.
• Illusion – Same category as Conjuration.
• Create Life – See above.
• Mind Flay – A lot of creatures resist mental spells in later stages. Also, I read there’s a bug in that enemies won’t go insane. I can’t remember specifically but this spell is only worth anything in very niche cases later on.
• Whirlwind – I don’t think I use this spell much because there’s better group damaging spells. Also, the cost and damage are not worth it. I only pick this up to help bolster my Air pool for things like Cure Poison. There’s far better damaging Air spells that do decent damage and add debuffs

The other spells mostly are middle of the road for me. Some are fun when used in certain scenarios like multiple DoTs applied to groups of monsters while you’re hiding in the shadows. Others like Nuclear Blast are decent but have the high penalties of failure and costing a lot of spell points. The typical buffs like Enchanted Blade are great later on once you start min/maxing and face high level foes but early on you probably want to conserve spell points for random encounters.