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In Mind Over Magic, upgrading your wands is essential for making progress, but it also means dealing with more complex requirements. Ignoring these advanced needs can lead to mental breakdowns and traumas that may force you to retire your mages prematurely.
The advantages of stronger wands justify the challenges. Upgraded wands elevate your level cap, enabling you to learn new spells and perform tasks more efficiently. Certain rituals have specific stat requirements, making them nearly impossible to accomplish without upgrading your wands first. This guide explores the various wands, their benefits and costs, and the optimal order for unlocking them.
Understanding Wands
You begin the game with access to only level one wands. These have no prerequisites, but their potential for growth is limited. Most students will likely not exceed level three in their primary skill.
Level one wands are still beneficial. They are essential for enrolling new students, and those with poorly matched traits, quirks, and trials should remain at level one and graduate quickly.
Level two and three wands provide additional power and opportunities:
- In addition to increasing the skill cap of their primary school, these wands also offer a random boost in a secondary school of magic. A level three wand grants two additional random boosts.
- The character’s level cap will rise, allowing for further growth and enhancement of their attributes for combat, especially multiplied when promoted to apprentice or staff.
- They will unlock extra trials, which expedite their progress and yield better relics upon completion.
However, there are a couple of drawbacks:
- With the increased skill and level caps, you’ll need to invest more time in training them before they graduate.
- They will gain a new status on their Conviction page with a unique requirement related to the wand’s magic school.
These conviction requirements add complexity to how the wands compare against each other. Failing to manage these statuses can result in a loss of up to 30 conviction points, pushing almost any character to the brink.
Wand Tier List
The tier classification of wands mainly measures how manageable their conviction requirements are, as well as their effectiveness in base building and combat.
- A-Tier wands fulfill their own conditions simply by engaging in the game normally: You can distribute these freely without concern.
- B-Tier wands come with social or structural requirements that impact your base and schedule management. Once properly established, they require minimal oversight but take longer to set up.
- C-Tier wands demand constant micromanagement even later in the game. Limit their use to only one individual at a time.
A-Tier Wands
All three conviction requirements at this tier should be easily achievable, especially if you incorporate natural lighting through windows, which satisfies both nature and darkness wand needs.
|
Wand Type ADVERTISEMENT |
Conviction Requirement |
Combat Use |
Base Use |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Earth |
Earth mages should spend time on or below the ground floor of your buildings. |
Earth mages are the best tanks in the game, especially once they learn their ultimate spell. |
Construction speed is always valuable, as your school should be expanding continually. |
|
Nature |
Nature mages require frequent exposure to sunlight. |
Nature magic provides a robust mix of percentage damage, healing, and forced movement. |
You’ll always need more farmers, and this setup ensures they receive enough sunlight. |
|
Dark |
Dark mages desire moonlight exposure (this can be achieved even while they sleep). |
Dark mages deal significant damage but spend HP to cast, requiring them to take breaks without combat healing. |
Quilting allows you to automate simple tasks, enabling dark mages to cover for light, earth, nature, and air mages. |
These three magic schools also have the most powerful applications in the early game, helping your school quickly establish itself and gather materials necessary for the more demanding wand types.
B-Tier Wands
B-tier wands have more specific requirements that can slow down their introduction. Giving them to your initial staff won’t cause problems, but you should be cautious when handing them out to students.
|
Wand Type |
Conviction Requirement |
Combat Use |
Base Use |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Air |
Air mages become unhappy if they can’t move vertically, like climbing stairs or ladders. |
High damage and powerful buffs, but mana consumption is rapid. |
Air is essential for assembling furniture, which is important when creating more complex chambers. |
|
Lightning |
Lightning mages prefer solitary spaces and dislike sharing rooms or work areas. |
Lightning is one of the few reliable methods to hit enemies in the back row. |
Lightning is necessary for research. It’s best to have one excellent lightning mage rather than several average ones. |
|
Water |
Water wands foster extroverts who thrive in group settings. Communal living and dining spaces will keep them satisfied. |
Water magic offers versatility but doesn’t specialize as intensely as other schools. |
Water mages are essential for cleaning unless a dark mage can construct cleaning automata. Water magic is also crucial for potion crafting, which becomes increasingly important in the mid to late game. |
C-Tier Wands
Only one wand resides in the lowest tier, and it carries enough risk that you might prefer not to distribute it at all.
|
Wand Type |
Conviction Requirement |
Combat Use |
Base Use |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Fire |
Fire wands instill a constant need for combat, requiring regular hunting or fighting. |
Fire offers high damage output but lacks defensive or healing tools. |
While fire is necessary for cooking, giving a fire wand to your cook can lead to chaotic behavior. |
Fire wands are especially risky to give to students who cannot engage in hunting activities. For those fragile, weaker students, combat is their only means of maintaining sanity. Since fire magic provides no defensive or healing capabilities, you’ll often have to supervise them with apprentices or staff.
Deliberately allowing the wards in your underschool to fail can create low-level encounters for your fire mages.
To avoid micromanaging a fire wand, train a student who is dual-classed and begins with a different wand. They will benefit from a slight boost to fire magic while using the conviction advantages of another wand.
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