Cj Starting Book Progression?

[MainiacJoe]

I've played a lot of Conjurers over the past few months,mostly poorly, and I've yet to settle on a progression through the starting book.

Searing Ray is first, obviously. It is so efficient. Then what do you do next: rush Battlesphere, get one or both Hex spells online, stay pure Coj with IMB? I've tried all of these. I tend to feel that Battlesphere is too advanced for a third spell unless I'm DE or Dg and have enough spellpower in Searing Ray to tide me over. I have phases where I don't use the Hex spells at all, and phases where I use them a lot. Same with IMB, sometimes it feels overpowered, sometimes it feels expensive.

The consensus I gather from the Tavern is that Battlesphere is very, very good--but how to get there, I'm not so sure.

[KoboldLord]

Dazzling Spray is really good. It applies a very large accuracy penalty to affected monsters and deals significant damage. Don't skip it.

Unless you get lucky with spell access, you'll probably want to prepare everything in your starting book eventually. They're all reasonably good at some subset of situations that you're likely to run into before finishing Lair.

[TonberryJam]

This is what I find effective:

Train spell casting and raise Int for hunger free magic dart.
Learn searing ray.
Train only Conjurations.
Learn IMB.
Train Spell Casting and Conjurations.
Learn Spray and Prism.
Stop training Spell Casting when level 1-3 spells are hunger free.
Learn IB.
Train Charms and Conjurations.

The idea is to control hunger so you may properly spam spells. Learning a hard hitting spell earlier gives you a nice panic button, and all your low level spells you depend on will quickly become hunger free.

And the hex spells keep you alive since it's hard to run away. After that I train stealth if I haven't found a book to branch into by then. Stealth + Conjurations.

[Arrhythmia]

Alternatively, ignore half of the above advice because hunger doesn't matter.

[Siegurt]

There's no situation in which hunger should matter, unless you have a source of channeling and are channeling a lot of MP, or you use overpowered spells to kill wimpy critters (No, there's no reason to spend 5 MP on a fireball to kill a rat) use the spells corresponding to the threat level and you'll encounter no hunger issues at all.

Training spellcasting should be done primarily for spell slots, and secondarily for MP, and finally, if it should end up being the case that your spellcasting is roughly 6 points or more lower than your spell schools (depending on aptitiude), you should train spellcasting for spell success over the spell schools (That's not exact by any stretch, but spellcasting provides the equivalent of 1/4 of a point to all spell schools, and costs double (very) approximately every 6 levels, and a lot of conjurations take two schools)

Seriously, don't pay *any* attention to your spellcasting hunger, train spellcasting when it will help you, not when it will make you press 'e' less often.

That being said, I always train spellcasting *first* when one of the above applies, because it provides secondary benefits in addition to the one you're looking for immediately. I often train spellcasting to 3 right out of the gate, which is enough spell slots for the first part of the game, and provides some more MP at the start (and 4 magic missiles is a significant improvement over 3, and being able to spend 5 MP on searing ray when you get it helps a lot too.)

Also, generally speaking a higher level spell will do more damage than a lower level one (and/or do damage at longer range, or to more creatures) however squeezing a little extra damage from a given spell by overtraining spell schools to get a little more power isn't very productive, generally you want to get the spells you're using to a good success rate, and spend your XP on defenses otherwise.

Dazzling spray is excellent for it's spell level, don't skip it. IMB is decent, but if you take it over dazzling spray, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle, it's very costly at that stage of the game, and you can use dazzling spray and a weapon to wipe things out cheaply, plus it's "spread" is more often able to hit multiple creatures than IMB will when you first get it, also a couple points of hexes to get it online is super cheap and very worthwhile (since it and prism make use of it, and both are good spells.)

Battlesphere is the pinnicale of efficient MP usage, it in combination with your low level conjurations will kill everything through the bottom of the lair, and will do so without chewing through your MP.

I always go in the same order the spells appear in the book searing ray->dazzling spray->IMB->prism->battlesphere Although I feel like switching the last two is just as effective

[TonberryJam]

2.5-3.5 spell casting is enough to make magic dart hunger less. It saves some hassles when you get a lot of monsters spawns on D1-D2.

Only way I can think to improve on my own method is to only train conjuration after learning IMB until:
A: Searing Ray is maxed power or one pip short. B: Until you gain 3 spell levels to learn Spray.

After that you would need 4 spell levels to learn prism, and 5 spell levels to learn IB. So at that point it's good to learn spell casting as you get both the spells sooner. Don't really need hexes trained soon, unless u find a nice hex book.

I use hunger and spell power as a gauge, not to reduce hunger. But, reducing hunger on level 1 is useful since I spam it a lot and costs nothing. And no hunger on level 2 and 3 makes spamming 4 and 5 easier.

Sure, u don't need spell casting. I've done it before as well, a real pain until staff of energy spawn. But, I think this is efficient for me.

[Sandman25]

Reducing spell hunger for level 1 spell is useless unless you are Spriggan, it costs 50 satiation points with 0 spellcasting. Even as TrWz you start with spellcasting 2 and Int 14 so Magic Dart costs 22 satiation points. D1 always has monsters with edible chunks and a single chunk will allow you to cast Magic Dart 1000/22=45 times.
SpCj starts with 2.6 spellcasting and 16 Int so it is a good idea to get spellcasting 3.2 indeed provided Sp has +2 aptitude.

[ydeve]

(No, there's no reason to spend 5 MP on a fireball to kill a rat) use the spells corresponding to the threat level and you'll encounter no hunger issues at all.

Wimpy critters call for "lvl0" spells (untrained weapon).

[Hellmonk]

+1 for just learning every spell in order. I tend to train some hexes fairly early for dazzling spray as well. Also, spell hunger usually doesn't matter even if you are channeling (as in, you can channel 2000+ times in a game and still end with a stack of 15 rations).

[MainiacJoe]

Thanks everyone!