Outward – Beginner Mage Guide (Definitive Edition)

This is a guide I’ve been wanting to make for awhile, a guide on becoming a mage from the start of the game. Containing everything you could possibly need for your adventure and a few honorable mentions.

Guide to Newbie Mage

The Beginning

I’m just going to keep this short, if you’re new, or your a veteran who might think they can learn something here or there I highly recommend you watch this man’s playlist of a beginner’s guide to Outward. While dated somewhat for Definitive Edition, it still covers everything you should do, with some exceptions, to help make your beginning on basically any character an easy path.

The Adventurer Before the Mage

Alright! Now that you’re in town and making your armor and weapon there’s something I feel to let you know, like you see in the video. You don’t need your character to know the in-game recipe for any item to make it. If you know how to craft it or want to try guessing it, you just can and upon success you’ll gain the recipe for future use. This is very convenient at the start because being able to just make the items without using the recipes lets you sell the recipes for a bit of extra silver. Whether you want to do this all the time, sometimes, or never is up to you, and I will share a list of all the recipes you will use for the start of your character. But with that, let’s get into the main difference you’re going to change from the video.

Your weapons

  • Don’t mistake me, starting with an axe isn’t the worst pick for our mage because the skill Burac will teach us allows us a skill that inflicts pain and cripple, basically reducing their physical resistance and slowing their movement speed. However what we want is to start with is a Mace, so either buy a mace from the blacksmith, or just harvest two wood from a tree and make a club in your crafting table.
  • If you only have 2 hide at this point despite looting the whole town, take the primitive satchel and scrap it for 2 more hide, 4 is all you need to make the full set of Makeshift leather armor.
  • Maces are really nice one handed weapons. Yes they are often the slowest one handed weapon you can bring, and you could even be tempted to choose a sword to get in quick attacks before rolling away but trust me. Maces bringing the highest physical and impact damage in each swing (and a great starting weapon skill for anyone, but especially mages).
  • If you bought, or somewhere found, an Iron Mace, I can’t recommend enough to make it a Fang Club as soon as you can. If you were lucky you can make one before ever leaving town. The weapon will lighter, has higher damage, higher impact, faster attack speed, and the ability to bleed, all at the cost of slightly less durability and slightly more stamina cost to swing compared to the Iron Mace.
  • Getting a lot of damage and faster swing on a mace is great, but keep in mind imbues base their damage off your weapons base damage, the harder the weapon hits, the harder the elements hit. You literally won’t go wrong making this awesome weapon.
  • You’re almost ready to make your first trek out into the wild just as the videos will guide you to do but there may be one more weapon you want just in case: A shield. The most basic shield in the game is The Plank Shield, which can be found at the far north end of the docks in town, near Roland on the map. We’re not going to be getting magic immediately, What we need first is to survive our first days, and make some money.
  • With all that said and done away with you may now go out on your first treks and adventures. In the next section we’re going to discuss how much money you’ll want to save up, before going to Conflux Mountain so you can then immediately get into your true starting mage attire!

The Path of The Arcane Truly Begins with a Choice!

I should mention here that while you can certainly sell a lot at the start of the game to make some money, i would recommend keeping as many alchemy ingredients as you can, especially Blue Sand, Mana Stones, and Azure Shrimp. And before you make the journey to Conflux mountain, bring 1 gold bar, if you want to buy the scholar set at the mountain, being two gold bars and at least 87 silver. Personally I recommend buying the set from the alchemist in Cierzo when you get back, because you’ll probably have attained plenty of spoils in the dungeon that you’ll have a hard time carrying and extra set of armor. But hey, to each their own!

After you make your way through Conflux Mountain, any path is fine just be careful, and reach the center the first all encompassing question hits your mind: how much mana do you want? Well, there’s not really a wrong answer, but taking 3 mana points (so you should get 60 mana) at least at first. This will allow you to cast spells plenty, and still have a good amount of stamina and health to run around and take a hit here or there.

And now the second question of a beginning mage hits the mind, Sigil of Fire or Reveal Soul. Talking to The First Watcher, As a gift, will teach you either Sigil of Fire or Reveal Soul for free to work in tandem with the spell you got from gaining mana, Spark. While both can be found later from this point and for the same price, getting them for free here is amazing and only a shame you have to pick one. I’ll explain both and give my opinion of which you should grab first.

Reveal Soul and Sigil of Fire

Reveal Soul. Reveal Soul is a spell that costs 5 mana, and has a 5 second cooldown. Reveal soul does as the title says, reveals the Soul Spots on fallen human enemies, and corpses. You may also find orbs on certain grave stones, as well as random skeleton corpses that cannot be interacted with.

In combination with Spark being casted on the soul, you will consume the soul and regenerate 50% of your maximum mana, not burnt mana, maximum mana.

If you don’t choose Reveal Soul from The First Watcher, you can buy it for 50 silver from Adalbert The Hermit, in the north of Chersonese, past The Ghost Fort, inside the Cabal Tower.

Sigil of Fire. Sigil of Fire is a spell that costs 7 mana, one Fire Stone, and has no cooldown. Sigil of Fire doesn’t do anything on it’s own, it only makes you raise a fire stone into the air above you and conjure a circle of runes around you, but this circle is your bunker in many regards. At the start of your arcane studies, it gives you your first sight of the power that magic has in this game to balance it’s ritualistic system.

In combination with Spark cast in the circle, you will instead throw a powerful fireball straight in front of you, dealing high fire damage and high impact, while also inflicting burning overtime.

If you use your Flint and Steel inside the circle, you create a ring of fire. Enemies that touch the flames will take minor fire damage at a fast rate, a trick you’d want to use on large enemies you can constantly kite or keep in the flames. The damage can quickly ramp up if constantly applied, if anything it will at still afflict burning and reset it’s duration.

Sigil of Fire can also warm your character while you stand inside of it, so in an emergency it can save you from cold weather.

If you don’t choose Sigil of Fire from The First Watcher, you can buy it for 50 silver from Alemmon in Monsoon, the city inside The Hallowed Marsh.

Personally, I suggest you grab Sigil of Fire for free. It allows you to produce great damage at the start of the game! Sure you’ll need Fire Stones, but those are super easy to find, buy, and especially make. Don’t get me wrong Reveal Soul is amazing, especially because The Watchers offer you two other spells soon that you can use so it can actually get use. Regenerating Mana isn’t a chore, Astral Potions are easy and cheap to make, and there’s plenty of starting food you can find and especially cook that will help regenerate your mana.

Another note is location of the spells, traveling the Hallowed Marsh can be a pain if ill prepared, meanwhile the path to Reveal Soul is just a walk north of the mountain and past The Ghost Fort. While I would suggest caution when going through that dungeon, having Fire Sigil and Mace Infusion will help you clean out any problems that stand in your way and also make you some extra coin that can even help pay for it. If you still think you want to take Reveal Soul right here and now? I can’t blame you because it will help you as you use what will be your most often used spells which I explain in the next section

Final Teachings Before Your Trip Home

Okay! Apologies for the long winded explanation in the previous section, but now that we got our Spark and Sigil of Fire/Reveal Soul, quickly stop by The Fourth Watcher next to the boat and sell your gold bars for silver. When you at least have your 100 silver, now talk to The First Watcher again and ask him to train you and he will teach you Flamethrower. Then go down the earth path to the small camp, and meet The Second Watcher, ask him to train you, and learn Cool for another 50 silver.

Cool and Flamethrower

Cool. Cool is a spell that costs 8 mana, lasts 240 seconds, has a 120 second cooldown and gives you The Cool Boon. Cool allows you to deal more frost damage, gain more frost resistance, and just for fun, give you some hot weather defense. Cool is amazing to start the game with because of how common you will have Ice Rags in your inventory and for our next skill to talk about, Flamethrower!

Flamethrower. Flamethrower is a spell that costs 15 mana, lasts 2.5 seconds, and has a 5 second cooldown. Flamethrower requires a Lantern or a Torch to be casted, but the damage entirely depends on the lantern or torch in question. If you used a regular lantern, say The Old Lantern, or a Makeshift Torch, you’ll be dealing fire damage and inflicting passive burning. but if you got your hands on a Ice-Flame Torch, you’ll instead deal cold damage and inflict slow down! I won’t get into all the different Flamethrower types now, what’s important is we can make flamethrower do ice damage at this point in the game already, and with Cool, we can make it hit even harder.

Congratulations! You have the mana, and the skills, to be a wizard! in the next section we will go into your new gear to help in your magical pursuits when you make your return to your stash in Cierzo.

The Wizard Needs to Look the Part After All!

Now that we’re back in Cierzo, we can finally assemble everything we’ll bring to further dabble in our magics!

The Gear

First and foremost, The armor. Obviously we want to wear the full Scholar set minus the staff from our alchemist, this is going to run us 187 silver to get. The Armor protects us well enough for the start of the game but it’s obvious we want the all together 30% mana cost and 10% cooldown reduction on the circlet, so we can sling more spells.

Second, we can toss the shield at this point and stick to our mace, because we’re going to buy either keep two Old Lanterns on us, or make regularly have Makeshift Torches. hold these light sources in your offhand so you can use Flamethrower at a moments notice and easily deal either fire or ice damage from a short distance. Speaking of Ice Damage you’ll want to get an Ice-Flame Torch. I recommend getting, or i should say making at this area of the game, two of them.

Thirdly, our weapon is still going to be the mace for this time being, for the reasons I said in “The Adventure before The Mage” section of this guide.

Graduation!

A warm and hearty congratulations to you! You have completed your trials to walk the path of magic! from this point on go out and explore! Teach these uncivilized looters and monsters the true power of the world through ice and fire!

As a going away present I have one last gift for you, as you can see in the contents, I share to you the recipes of everything you’ll need and can make in the starting area of the game relatively guaranteed.

Food

Obviously anyone can just take a campfire and just grill meat or a mushroom or something to make the basic cooked/boiled/grilled foods, but if you really want to move on up get a cooking pot so you can make the more advanced meals. (for reference, cook all of these with either a cooking pot or at a kitchen pot such as the one at your Lighthouse home in Cierzo.).

Note: ingredients that say “Fish/Meat/egg” are not asking for an exactly specific ingredient, so you can use larva eggs for a substitute in “egg” or Gaberries for a “vegetable”:

  • 1x Bitter Spicy Tea: 1 Water, 1 Ochre Spicy Beetle. (i +15 cold weather defense, restores 15 burnt stamina, and cures Infection)
  • 3x Bouillon du Predateur: 3 predator bones, 1 water. (Stamina recover 4 and 20% physical damage increase)
  • 3x Cierzo Ceviche: 1 Raw Rainbow Trout, 1 seaweed, 1 salt. (Health recovery 3, Mana recovery 2, and Elemental Resistance)
  • 5x Dry Mushroom: 4 Common Mushroom. (Restores 5 burnt health)
  • 1x Gaberry Jam: 4 Gaberries. (2 stamina recovery and cold weather defense)
  • 3x Gaberry Tartine: 1 Gaberry Jam, 1 Bread. (2 stamina recovery, cold weather defense)
  • 5x Jerky: 2 meat, 2 Salt. (Health Recovery 2)
  • 3x Luxe Lichette: 1 Larva Egg, 1 Azure Shrimp, 1 Raw Rainbow Trout, 1 Seaweed. (Restors 50 mana, Health recovery 5, and Stamina recovery 3)
  • 3x Meat Stew: 1 meat, 1 vegetable, 1 Salt. (Health recover 3)
  • 3x Miners Omelet: 2 eggs, 1 Common Mushroom. (Health recover 1 and Stamina recovery 3)
  • 1x Mineral tea: 1 Water, 1 Gravel Stone Beetle. (Restores 15 burnt stamina, 25% impact resistance, and removed digestion)
  • 3x Ocean Frecassee: 1 Larva egg, 1 fish, 1 Seaweed. (mana recovery 2, health recovery 2, and stamina recovery 3)
  • 3x Pot-au-Feu-du Pirate: 3 fish, 1 salt. (mana recovery 3 and health recovery 2)
  • 1x Pungent Paste: 1 egg, 1 Ochre Spice Beetle, 1 fish. (restores 20 burnt health, 20 burnt stamina, restores 70 stamina, and cures infection)
  • 1x Soothing Tea: 1 Water, 1 Seaweed. (restores 15 burnt mana and cures common cold)
  • 3x Turmmip Pottage: 3 Turmmip, 1 Salt. (Mana recovery 3, cures common cold)

Potions

Now in order to make potions you need an alchemy set, while everyone will surely be using alchemy to make their own potions from time to time we mages are going to use this so much we may as well give it a smoke or at least marry it.

  • 1x Antidote: 1 Common Mushroom, 1 Thick Oil, and 1 Water. ( Removes all poison effects)
  • 1x Astral Potion: 1 Star Mushroom, 1 Turmmip, and 1 water. ( Restore 50% mana, and 20 burnt mana)
  • 3x Cool Potion: 1 Gravel Beetle and 1 Water. ( Grants The Cool Boon)
  • 1x Great Astral Potion: 1 Astral Potion and 1 Ghost’s Eye. ( Restores 100% mana and 20 burnt mana)
  • 1x Great Life Potion: 1 Life Potion and 1 Greasy Fern. ( Restores 300 health, 20 burnt health, and cures bleeding)
  • 1x Life Potion: 1 Gravel Beetle, 1 Blood Mushroom, and 1 Water. ( Restores 50 health)
  • 3x Mist Potion: 1 Water and 1 Ghost’s Eye. ( Grants The Mist boon)
  • 1x Stoneflesh Elixir: 1 Water, 1 Gravel Beetle, 1 Insect Husk, and 1 Crystal Powder. ( 20% Physical Attack up, 25% Impact Resistance up, and grants The Rage Boon)
  • 1x Warm Potion: 1 Thick Oil, and 1 Water. ( Grants The Warm Boon)

Imbues

Imbues are the items that you can craft, buy, or loot, that are applied to your weapon to give it an elemental buff. As a mage, we’re going to use two of these in particular a lot because we are able to buff them early in the game: Fire Rags with Warm potions and Ice Rags with either Cool potions or the Cool boon spell. these all can be made in your personal crafting tab.

  • 1x Fire Rag: 1 Linen Cloth and 1 Thick Oil. ( Applies fire damage to your melee weapons for 90 seconds)
  • 1x Ice Rag: 1 Linen Cloth and 1 Thick Oil. ( Applies ice damage to your melee weapons for 90 seconds)
  • 1x Bolt Rag: 1 Linen Cloth and 1 Larva Egg. ( Applies lightning damage to your melee weapon for 90 seconds)
  • 1x Poison Rag: 1 Linen Cloth and 1 Grilled Crabeye Seed. ( Applies 40% poison to your weapon for 90 seconds)

Weapons and Armor

Want to know how to make the makeshift leather armor without looking up the wiki or clicking through the video playlist shared in this guide? Well I don’t either. Want to learn starting gear I didn’t even mention in the guide for all of you other players? Well here’s your stop for how to make your basic weapons of choice for the start of the game

Weapons

  • One Handed Fang Weapons: 1 Iron One Handed Weapon of your choice, 1 Predator Bones, and 1 Linen Cloth.
  • Two Handed Fang Weapons: 1 Iron Two Handed Weapon of your choice, 2 Predator Bones and 1 Linen Cloth.
  • Fang Shield: 1 Round Shield, 1 Predator Bones, 1 Linen Cloth.
  • Fang Knuckles: 2 Iron Wristbands, 1 Iron Knuckles, and 1 Predator Bones.
  • One Handed Horror Weapons: 1 Fang One Handed Weapon, 1 Horror Chitin, 1 Palladium Scrap, and 1 Occult Remains.
  • Two Handed Horror Weapons: 1 Fang Two Handed Weapon, 1 Horror Chitin, 1 Palladium Scrap, and 1 Occult Remains.
  • Horror Shield: 1 Fang Shield, 1 Horror Chitin, 1 Palladium Scrap, and 1 Occult Remains.

Armor

Note: “basic” means stuff like tattered/worker/looter, or basically very very weak armor that’s more clothes than armor, the clothes you start the game with count as this for example:

  • Makeshift Leather Hat: 1 basic helm and 1 Hide.
  • Makeshift Leather Attire: 1 Basic armor and 2 Hide.
  • Makeshift Leather Boots: 1 Basic Boots and 1 Hide.
  • Ammolite Helm: 1 Ammolite, 1 Padded Helm, and 1 Palladium Scrap.
  • Ammolite Armor: 1 Ammolite, 1 Padded Armor, and 1 Palladium Scrap.
  • Ammolite Boots: 1 Ammolite, 1 Padded Boots, and 1 Palladium Scrap.

Misc.

Just some random stuff I Couldn’t think of a spot for.

  • 1x Ice-Flame Torch: 1 Makeshift Torch, 1 Cold Stone, and 1 Iron scrap.
  • 3x Cold Stone: 1 Blue Sand and 1 Mana Stone at an alchemy kit. Ingredient.
  • 1x Crystal Powder: 4 Mana stones at a alchemy kit. Ingredient. ( Can be consumed. burns 10 health,restores 20 burnt stamina, restores 50 burnt mana, and restores 25% maximum mana.)
  • Primitive Satchel: 2 Hide and 1 Linen Cloth.
  • 2x Tripwire Traps: 2 Iron Scrap, 1 Wood, and 1 Linen Cloth.
  • 3x Iron Spikes: 4 Iron Scrap.
  • 3x Wood Spikes: 4 wood.
  • 3x Palladium Spikes: 4 Palladium Scrap.
Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 4471 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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