Spellcasting

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This article is an in-depth look at how Spellcasting functions. For a breakdown of all spells and their effects, please visit Spells. For an explanation of how magic functions in the world of Jadame, visit Magic.

Spellcasting overview

Spellcasting in HoMM: Olden Era is a major part of the game, and can be critical in turning the tides of battle (and the game) in your favor.

Every hero is capable of casting spells, although many will not begin with any in their spellbook. Heroes learn spells mainly by visiting Mage Guilds inside of cities they control. By doing this they will automatically learn all spells they are capable of understanding.

Spellcasting is heavily influenced by a hero's Spellpower & Knowledge attributes. Spellpower determines how long a buff or debuff spell will last on a creature, and how much damage their spells will do to enemy creatures. Knowledge determines the maximum amount of mana a hero has, and thus how many spells they can cast during combat & globally before having to replenish their supply.

In most cases you will be limited to casting one spell during each round of combat. However, heroes who have learned the Thaumaturgy skill can cast an extra spell each round from a separate school of magic, at the cost of an increased expenditure of Mana.

Mana

Spellcasting requires a resource known as Mana, or spell points. The more potent and effective spells will cost increasingly higher amounts of mana as the tier of spell increases. Depending on your hero's Knowledge attribute, they may only be able to cast one or two high tier spells, or a higher number of lower tier spells.

All heroes start with at least 1 Knowledge, and gain 10 to their maximum mana with each point of Knowledge that they earn on level up. By default heroes will regenerate 10% of their maximum mana each day while out in the global map. This can be increased by certain Faction Laws, Artifacts, and other factors. Ending your turn with your hero in a town with a mage guild will also restore all of their mana at the beginning of the following day.

Cooldowns

By default, every spell has a default cooldown period equal to (the spell's tier + 1) turns, which includes the turn when it was cast. This means that, for example, Lightning Bolt, a tier-1 spell, has a default cooldown of 2 turns (which means the rest of the turn when it was cast, and the next turn).

Various effects, skills and artifacts can lower or increase spell cooldowns, to a minimum of 1 (can't be cast again in the same turn).

Masterful versions of spells always have a cooldown of 1, meaning that they can be freely cast turn after turn, no matter their tier.

Schools of Magic

Spells are divided up into 4 schools of magic, founded by legendary Scholars who used to roam the land of Jadame. While there is some overlap between them, they generally focus on specific categories of magic.

Daylight Magic, founded by the scholar Arina, focuses on bestowing positive effects on allied creatures and punishing enemies for attacking them.

Nightshade Magic, founded by the scholar Naira, concentrates on weakening enemy forces, and turning them against one another.

Arcane Magic, founded by the scholar Doreath, specializes in utility spells and indirect ways of solving problems on the battlefield.

Primal Magic, founded by Hksmilla, gathers elemental forces together under one school for unleashing devastating magical attacks against enemy creatures.

Certain heroes in each faction specialize in specific schools of magic. This specialization makes them more effective at casting spells from that school of magic, and if they have the Thaumaturgy skill, can cast two spells per round from the same school of magic. Additionally, these heroes also prevent other heroes from casting any spells from their Magic specialization.

Spell categories

While there isn't much of an official grouping of different types of spells, most combat spells in HoMM: Olden Era can be put into a couple of broad categories of spells: Buffing spells, Debuffing spells, Indirect / Control spells, and Direct Damage spells. Each school of magic in the game will have at least one spell that applies to each of these categories, but will mostly focus on just one of these types of magic.

Buffs

These are spells that confer positive effects on friendly creatures. They can range from simple effects like increasing a creature's speed across the battlefield, enhancing their damage output, or even preventing them from dying until the spell expires.

Daylight Magic focuses heavily on empowering or buffing friendly units.

Examples:

• Inner Light ( Daylight Magic, reduces duration of negative effects)
• Radiant Armor ( Daylight Magic, decreases damage taken)
• Early Start ( Arcane Magic, increases Initiative)
• Enlarge Shadow ( Nightshade Magic, increases Attack and Defense)
• Anti-Magic ( Primal Magic, grants magic immunity)

Debuffs

Contrary to Buff spells, this category of magic reduces the effectiveness of enemy units in combat. One of the most common examples of this is Web, which greatly reduces an enemy unit's capacity to advance across the battlefield, allowing your ranged units to whittle their numbers down before they can close ranks with you.

Nightshade Magic specializes in cursing & debuffing enemy units.

Examples:

• Twilight ( Nightshade Magic, prevents Ranged attacks)
• Unnatural Calm ( Nightshade Magic, decreases damage dealt)
• Shackles ( Arcane Magic, prevents counterattacks)
• Shorten Shadow ( Daylight Magic, decreases Attack and Defense)
• Wean ( Primal Magic, reduces duration of positive effects)

Control Spells

Control spells tend to have effects that manipulate the battlefield itself. While some of their spells may come close to being creature buffs / debuffs, they tend to have specific, discrete impacts on the battlefield rather than long lasting enchantments or curses. Some of these spells place traps onto the battlefield, teleport friendly units to different locations, place physical obstacles to block enemy units, or even bring units back from the dead.

Arcane Magic has many spells that fall into this category.

Examples:

• Blink ( Arcane Magic, moves target)
• Spatial Snare ( Arcane Magic, sets traps that stop targets that step through them)
• Song of Power ( Daylight Magic, resets cooldowns)
• Berserk ( Nightshade Magic, makes the target attack the closest stack, be it friend or foe)
• Crystal Crown ( Primal Magic, sets breakable obstacles)

Damage Spells

These are your basic direct damage-dealing spells. Ice Bolts, Fireballs, Chain Lightning, etc. Damage spells mostly focus on dealing damage and killing enemy units, and don't get very complicated for the most part. Direct damage spells can be characterized by their ability to scale damage with the hero's Spellpower.

Primal Magic is home to the majority of damage-dealing spells.

Examples:

• Fireball ( Primal Magic, deals damage in a 1-hex radius)
• Armageddon ( Primal Magic, deals damage to everything on the battlefield)
• Umbral Grip ( Nightshade Magic, deals pure, non-magical damage)
• Black Hole ( Arcane Magic, deals damage on a large area and pulls targets toward its center)
• Judgement ( Daylight Magic, deals very large amounts of damage)

Now may be a good place to note the varying effectiveness of Spellpower during combat. Of the four broad categories of spells, 3 of them (Buffs, Debuffs, & Control spells) largely have 'flat' effects that are dependent on the level of the spell being used. Having a high Spellpower stat will help these effects to last longer in many cases, but the effect itself will not be altered. A hero with 20 Spellpower will cast 'Blessing' with the same level of effectiveness as a hero with only 4 points of Spellpower (with the caveat that the effects will not last as long). This can mean that many Might-Focused heroes can still gain a great deal of benefits from casting spells from the above categories without having to worry about falling behind Magic-oriented heroes.

Direct Damage spells, on the other hand, derive a huge amount of effectiveness from a hero with a high Spellpower attribute. While leveling these spells up will enhance their initial damage, they will scale far better with a Magic-oriented hero.

Neutral magic

Beyond the four schools / categories of magic, there is a fifth grouping of spells known as Neutral Magic. These spells are used on the Global Map and generally focus on movement and utility, enabling you to teleport to different locations, summon creatures directly to you from a distant city, and gain information on the location of enemy heroes & neutral armies.

Mage guilds & the Magic observatory

The usual way a hero learns new spells is by visiting a Mage Guild. These are special buildings inside of a city that allow you to unlock new spells for your heroes to use. Mage guilds & spells are divided up into 5 tiers of increasing complexity & power. When a Mage Guild is first constructed, 7 spells of the first tier are randomly unlocked for a visiting hero to learn. Each rank of mage guild upgrade unlocks fewer spells of that tier. Each turn, an additional spell can be researched and unlocked by paying an additional cost in precious resources. Spells that are native to a mage guild (unlocked randomly during the construction of a given guild tier) are marked with a light blue circle around their borders while in that city's mage guild, and will grow in power if more than one of your cities have mage guilds that natively unlock the same spell.

Lightning Bolt (Native)	Lightning Bolt (Not native to this guild)

Mage Guild Tiers
Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Tier 4	Tier 5
2500   5	2500   2   2   2	2500   5   5   3   3   3	2500   5   5   5	5000   5   5   5   5   5
Research Costs
Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Tier 4	Tier 5
2   2   2	4   4   4	6   6   6	8   8   8	10   10   10

Selecting the Mage Guild in your city, clicking on the Eye icon in the lower right of your city screen, or hitting the 'O' button will open up the Magic Observatory. This is a special hub screen where all of the spells you have unlocked from all of the Mage Guilds in your cities are displayed. Any visiting hero will automatically learn all spells that they are capable of understanding, regardless of whether that particular spell is native to the Mage Guild of the city they are visiting. That is only true up to the highest tier of Mage Guild built in that specific city, however; so a city with Tier IV Guild will teach visitors all unlocked spells of Tier IV or lower, but not any unlocked Tier V spell.

Each of the four schools of magic are displayed grouped together under different "constellations", which change position in each tier of the Magic Observatory.

While any hero can learn spells of the first two tiers, tier 3 spells and higher will require the hero to learn a Skill specific to that school of magic in order to be able to use those spells. Skills specific to a school of magic will unlock additional effectiveness inside that school of magic as well as allowing the hero to use more complex / higher tier spells from that school. Alternatively, a hero may also learn a generalist magic skill called Wisdom that will enable the Hero to learn higher tiers of spells of all schools, but will not make the hero more proficient at casting them.

Spell tiers & Spell levels

In addition to tiers of magic, individual spells also have levels that range from 1-4. Each increased level will give the spell more effectiveness and may also unlock additional effects. Damage spells tend to receive higher initial damage and higher damage multipliers from Spell Power, while Control spells will sometimes gain the ability to affect additional creatures on the battlefield, last longer, or even dispel other spells already on the target.

For example, "Enlarge Shadow" is a Nightshade spell that gives additional attack and defence to a friendly creature for a number of rounds dependent on the hero's spell power. At level 2, the buff to attack and defence is increased each round. At level 3, it dispels a Daylight magic spell called "Shorten Shadow" that reduces attack & defence, and at Level 4 it affects all friendly creatures on the battlefield.

Spells can rise in level due to a number of factors:

• Learn special hero skills & sub-skills.
• Equip artifacts that boost spell levels.
• Capture special map objects that raise spell levels in the Magic Observatory.
• When building Mage Guilds in other cities, if the native spells unlocked in a particular tier match up with naturally unlocked spells in another city, then that spell will be leveled up in both cities.
• Use the Magic Observatory / Mage Guild to manually upgrade any spell by spending 25 Alchemical Dust .
• Note: While you can use this improvement on multiple spells, you may only level up any individual spell once using this method.

Spell Level Indicators
Lightning Bolt Level 2	Lightning Bolt Level 3	Lightning Bolt Level 4

While spells have a maximum effective level of 4, additional sources of increased spell levels are not without purpose. This is because there are a number of effects that reduce the levels of enemy spells in the game. When you engage in battle with another hero, your spell level modifiers are measured against any negative modifiers the opponent may have, and your spells' effective level is determined from that.