4Game

Most other weapons have a strong/special attack, and this is a pretty important aspect of keeping weapons fun and versatile to use. It opens up a lot more opportunities and often fixes other problems with this game's combat.

Personally, the magic system in this game is exactly what I wanted. All of the magical weapons look and feel great to use and make it more than worth investing into a magic build. They're also not broken or overpowered, meaning using normal weapons is still a great option. The game's food system cleverly makes you sacrifice health and stamina to use magic, as well as forcing you to use inferior (but really cool looking) armour + a boss ability if you want to spam these weapons. However, it costs 0 stamina to cast magic, as well as giving you a staff that allows you to tank some hits + minions to distract enemies, meaning the cost can be negated somewhat if you play smart and use ALL of your magic weapons in a tactical way. It's excellent game balancing.

However, if Iron gate really wants to expand their uses, they should give elemental staves a strong attack at tier 3, once magic users have already gotten more than familiar with their weapons. We already see that the dvergr mages have a wide variety of amazing attacks, yet when we use magic ourselves we only have one. I'm excluding blood magic because I personally don't feel they need an alternate attack, as neither do damage when initially cast and more skeletons/longer bubble are already great upgrades.

Here are my personal ideas for alternate magic attacks:

Staff of Embers: Flamethrower/Meteor shower/Field of fire (I'm torn between 3 options)

• One possible alternate attack for the staff of embers would be a "Flamethrower" type of attack. This attack is identical to the flamethrower attacks of the Cultist wolves. The player would thrust their staff forward as if trying to poke the enemy, before releasing the flame blast. It would deal similar damage to the default attack (but blunt is converted into more heat), except it would tick for damage twice instead of once over the course of 1 second. However, all damage would be fire. This would mean it deals no initial damage and has low range, but the resulting fire status would be devastating if an enemy takes both ticks and doesn't kill the player.
• Another could be "Meteor shower". This attack would be identical to the attack of the dvergr mages, where they thrust their staff into the air and send small fireballs falling down around them.
• Another could be "Field of fire" which is again the same as the dvergr fire mage. It would create a large burning area around the player for a while, setting any close enemies on fire.

Staff of Frost: Blizzard

• The player would energise the crystal in the staff before smashing the base of the staff on the ground. This would create a blizzard lasting half a second that deals a moderate tick of frost damage, as well as high knockback. This is inspired by a similar attack that the dvergr frost mages have, except this one has a much higher radius and knockback.