I think the respec feature should be accessible earlier in the game to encourage experimentation with different builds. I’m currently around level 15 and have picked up several interesting weapons that I’d like to try, but I feel locked into my Strength investment because I committed early after finding a claymore. At this point, experimenting with other playstyles feels unnecessarily restricted.
Additionally, I’m unclear on how mage gameplay is intended to work early on. Most spells rely on Focus, but I haven’t found reliable ways to regenerate it fast enough to cast spells consistently. This makes it difficult to evaluate or enjoy a mage build at this stage of the game.
Allowing earlier respecs and improving early Focus sustain (or better explaining how to manage it) would make build experimentation feel much better.
Focus can be accumulated early in 2 ways outside of combat. You gain focus for gathering - mining, chopping, and fishing. You can also use the utility spell channel, which will drain hp for focus.
For in combat, use stamina cost abilities or attacks to gain focus. You can also utilize parrying with a shield, wand + shield us very strong early on. On a fresh character lv1-6 can feel restricting as a rune focus, but even 2 items with increased focus gain can significantly change your build.
This also depends on what spells you’re using, many of the 50 cost abilities are sometimes the most efficient. While the numbers will be hard to estimate, you can still rest new items on dummies.
The reason Moon will likely not make respeccing early is because if the class system coming.
If you could just mage-blast your way to success early game, you would never bother to actually learn or get better at the encounter or skirmish mechanics.
It should absolutely NOT be easy for mages in the start of the game.
You get better and more efficient as you increase your offensive stats and focus. Start finding a balance between some offensive timing with attacks and choosing when and how to use your rune spells.
And toward mid-game you start feeling the power as you now can nuke enemies in 1-2 hits. And at end game, if managed right you can delete most things on sight.
I agree that playing a mage shouldn’t make it easy to breeze through the early game, but I should at least feel like I’m actually playing a mage. Being forced to rely on melee attacks or parries to generate focus doesn’t feel very mage-like. Perhaps wands and staves could provide some innate focus regeneration during combat. I don’t want playing a mage to be easier—I just want it to be more fun.
The mage fantasy in this game is nonexistent. Don’t let anyone gaslight you on this.
People who say focus is fine only say so because they’re abusing battlecry ring to cast with health instead of focus or sitting on builds with ring of calmness for +30% focus gen plus an endgame build flush with focus gain affixes. The early game experience of mage is abysmal.
And even if you get a stamina rune spell option, that’s one of your 4 rune slots wasted just to have a ranged stamina attack, something bows are not punished with, and unlike bows that stamina spell rune is just a repurposed focus rune attack that was changed to stamina and made dreadfully weak without an actual proper ranged weapon attack sequence.
The mage fantasy is also really bad because the designers design with a plate knight and ranger bow fantasies first in mind. Parry, block, dodges, none of these are magically infused or magically themed for mage players. You roll like a regular foot soldier, and you parry instead of using a magic shield deflect.
People are not asking for more focus rune attack accessibility. They’re asking for an actual gameplay comparable to bow for mages.
Cloth armor also just sucks. Most mage builds just sit on leather+ mesh and use wand+shield for the extra poise, more enchants from shield, and the extra safety from blocks, more poise, and slightly longer parry window with shields.
Nobody uses staves because they’re just worse wands. They don’t provide enough offensive or defensive edge to justify how much slower than wands they attack, or how defensively weaker they make you.
If you didn’t find a wand on the beach, you can get one once you get to town; or even before that when you rescue Filmore. You do not have to melee. Magic weapons have a ranged stamina projectile. Some of them like Molten Clutch even have a projectile attack as part of their combo, so you can pull it off without acting being close to or hitting the enemy.
And you can also buy the channel spell, which basically turns your source of Focus into HP food. Blast stuff with Rune attacks, especially cheap ones like Fire Blast which only costs 50 Focus, and then use Channel, and use more Rune spells. Give yourself some life-steal and it sustains that loop for itself.
You can also craft some Focus food from fish for a pinch moment.
You’re expecting to be easy-mage, but it only takes a small amount of creative effort to solve the problems you seemingly see as obstacles.
I have mostly played mage just fine, and I do not use the unique rings. Matter of fact, I used it twice to try when I got it and then put it in storage because it was cheap as hell. I played fine before it dropped, and did so after it dropped without it.
Hell you can even build an INT mage with Ice Breaker GS and weapon/fire/ice throw.
Inferno and Frost Stream can self-sustain for a long time with focus cost reduction and focus on status etc.
Some people keep blaming the game for being bad at it.
And you are going on block, because I’d rather not waste my time on someone this purposefully obnoxious and self-absorbed.
You just told the guy to use food as a battery with channel, which isn’t even a starter rune, and channel for 50 focus requires an entire food use, so one food per spell early game. Incredibly tortured logic. Icebreaker throw builds require guess what, optimized builds with the appropriate affix rolls, so your reading comprehension didn’t even let you stay on topic of someone who made a thread about the early mage experience.
By all means go gloat about being good at the game compared to strangers. It just won’t be on my time. Somebody else can read your dismissive crap if they can stomach it.
He said he is L15, that’s not early game. Just because I MENTION you can use food to fuel focus doesn’t mean it’s your only source of focus. The rest of the game’s mechanics for focus gain didn’t just disappear. It means you can make it EASIER to regain focus. Reading comprehension indeed.
Thanks for the explanation — that does help put the Focus systems and early mage flow into perspective.
My main concern isn’t so much about not knowing the mechanics, but about how early stat commitments interact with randomized loot. Early on, the drops I got pushed me toward Strength-based weapons, and the claymore I found had good enchantments with no downsides, so investing into Strength felt like the natural choice at the time.
Now that I’m a bit further in, I’m starting to see weapons like daggers that I’d genuinely like to try, but by that point I’ve already committed enough points that switching feels inefficient rather than experimental. That’s where the lack of early respec feels limiting for me personally.
On the mage side, I also haven’t actually found the Channel utility spell yet, so I’m not sure how accessible it is early on in a normal playthrough. That uncertainty made it harder for me to evaluate mage gameplay when I first tried engaging with it.
If a clearer class system is coming and players are meant to knowingly lock into an archetype early, then I think that’s totally fair. My concern is mostly in the current state, where loot variety shows up before you really know what you’ll want to play long-term.
You do not have to clear the Crucible to utilize the Senechal NPC that allows you to unlock respec. You can simply just repeat the earlier floors, collect the gloam seeds, and then unlock respec in Room 5.
I’ve leveled 2 characters as a mage and this might answer some questions:
there’s blue gems that give focus regen, use these as much as you can. With that, nearly every battle starts with full focus
Low level Wands always have 1 skill that uses stamina instead of focus, such as lightning bolt, frost bolt or fire bolt. These generate focus
The skills that use 50-100 focus are amazing, and you can definitely clear the game with them
Stack the damage type of your main focus costing spell so you get maximum damage per focus point
Get 1 or 2 items with the mystic facet, gives ~40% extra focus gain and you won’t need that much stamina
Drink focus gain potions before big boss fights
Invest 3-6 points into focus stat, it gives A LOT per point at the start.
Every item that doesn’t have a gem yet, add focus gain gems
For item enchantments, heavily favor items with focus gain
Staves are a trap, they don’t have skills that cost stamina. It seems much better to me to use wand+shield. If you really want to use a staff, you could extract a stamina spell like lightning bolt from a wand and add it to a staff.
I’m aware it’s a long list, but it’s all extremely basic, and you should have no focus problems when doing the above. I’ve never used the channel rune btw.
And like I said, you don’t have to clear the boss. There are two currencies you will get there. Gloam seeds and something else. One is used for the BUffs, and the other can be spent at the NPC; and these carry over across runs.
But they don’t just come from enemies, they come from objects too. So break EVERYTHING. Vases, stones, columns, everything you can smash, smash it. This will make sure you maximize how many you collect each time you go through it.
You can also buy a teleporter whisper from the NPC as well for your house; restocks once a day. He can have gems and other equipment too (regular currency costs), good place to get extras.