Rift Wizard – How to Bring an Endless Winter

A guide on how to bring an endless winter to the Rift.

The Path to Ice Wizardry

All credit goes to Ping Crimson!

Introduction

If you are like me and thought that the total amount of spells and skills were too overwhelming or just want an objectively easy time to dealing with the game, then I have bad news for you. The path to master the power of ice is a cold and rocky road, but as your guide, I will try my best to lead you through the rifts and to hopefully put Mordred into his place.

Spells and Skills

This section will show you the core spells and skills that will carry through the rifts.

Spells

Your main spell book will look small compared to most, but fear not Wizard, we under the school of Ice only need what is necessary. The general order should be as followed, but change it up if you are in need of a spell. Remember, it is your run Wizard, you are in control of your spell book.

• Icicle – This is your primary ammo throughout the rifts and will be the first spell you should get. All upgrades and skills revolves around the Icicle.
• Magic Missile – A classic in ttrpgs, the Magic Missile is great secondary spell. Most foes that resist your ice damage can only be slain by the arcane might that is Magic Missile.
• Iceball – Not only does it have excellent base damage, the Iceball will freeze waves of foes. The only downside of it is that the Iceball has a very low base max charge and cannot be upgraded normally.
• Word of Ice – At first, Word of Ice seems like a waste, low charges, only damage to Fire enemies, and worst of all, it can only freeze foes who hp is 50 or less. Fret not wizard, the Word of Ice can be used to clear entire stages within a turn or two, even on higher rifts. Word of Ice synergizes well with the ice based skills that will be seen later in this guide.
• Eye of Ice – Eye of Ice, like many of the Eye spells, has nice passive damage, especially on rifts without walls. I would not recommend relying on this spell to carry you though, as it both randomly targets single foes and it doesn’t freeze them, which is the main strat for a true Ice Wizard.
• Mega Annihilate – When in doubt, cast this spell. As you progress towards Mordred, you will find more and more bullet sponges and enemies that resist almost everything. Mega Annihilate will clear those rough spots for you. Also, id upgraded correctly, you can melt one life of Mordred in three turns using a barrage of Magic Missile and Mega Annihilate.
• Blink – Having a translocation spell in your book is always a must if you intend to survive. Most of them are great, but I always prefer Blink. It can be upgraded to have more range, caste through walls, and has more charges then teleport. Against Mordred, Blink can be used to quickly close the gap and safely position yourself in a turn or two.

Skills

As you have probably guessed it, you will have Ice Skills. These 4 skills work perfectly with most of your spells and can cause massive damage to the rift.

• Radiant Chill – The first skill an Ice Wizard will get, very underwhelming at first, but it will become the catalyst of your destruction. Radiant Chill freezes the closest enemy to your cursor after you cast an ice spell, so if a spell freezes an enemy, this skill freezes another, yay!
• Shatter Shards – This skill is the reason to why you want to freeze as much as possible. Once an enemy unfreezes or dies while frozen, 3 enemies 6 titles away will take 9 ice and 9 physical damage. Word of Ice gets so much out of this skill. In theory, the more you freeze the more everyone else is suffering.
• Ice Lord – The “Lord” skills are a must for specialized builds, so its a no brainier that you should get Ice Lord as an Ice Wizard. The added charges, damage, and freeze time is a blessing.
• Frostbite – A nice passive damage boost to freezing spells. Its nice to note that gates can be frozen and can take dark damage.
• Frozen Fragility – This skill is nice to have but it is not that necessary throughout most of the run. The added damage can save you against spongy enemies and can make rifts with enemies with 75% ice res more manageable.

Sp and When to Spend

Every level holds 3 blue orbs, which acts this games experience points. Each orbs grants the wizard 1 Sp. Including the one the wizard starts with and assuming that you don’t get any bonus ones, you can only get 76 points to spend on skills and spells. This will be used up quickly if you are not careful with your spending, especially on a gimmick run like this. This order should be followed, but if you need a certain spell before another, or is in need of an upgrade, then divert as need be.

The Order

• Rift 1 -> Icicle | Magic Missile
• Rift 2 -> Radiant Chill
• Rift 3 -> Shatter Shard
• Rift 4-7 -> Icicle – Freeze | Icicle – Harvest | Iceball
• Rift 8-10 -> Eye of Ice | Word of Ice
• Rift 11-15 -> Frostbite | Icicle – Damage | Magic Missile – Shield Burn | Iceball – Radius
• Rift 16-20 -> Mega Annihilate | Blink | Frozen Fragility
• Rift 20-24 -> Blink – Blindcasting | Bling – Range | Mega Annihilate – Damage

Rift 25 has 3 sp but the actual fight against Mordred should be more important then getting a few extra upgrade points.

If you are able to obtain more points early or are having good luck with ice circles, try to get Word of Ice right after Shatter Shard, getting it any of the main freezing spells and upgrades before Shatter Shard is almost pointless.

Surviving the Rifts

The strategy of survival between the rifts varies drastically depending on which ones are available to you, but this guide will try its best to be able to assist you as much as possible. This section will consist of general situations that you might face in your travels.

Rifts To Avoid

Ice Enemies – Ice enemies with 100% resistance will never take damage or be frozen, so avoid these types of enemies. This is especially for ones that have gates. If a few enemies, like 4-6, are immune to your icicle, pray you are able to kill them with Shatter Shards, if not, a few rounds magic missile is capably to take out most enemies. You are better off avoiding these types of rifts if possible, but its almost a given since that many enemies are ice immune.

Slimes – Rifts with ice slimes will end a run early, the screen will quickly fill up and there will nothing for a poor ice wizard to do. Early game slime rifts can also end horrifically, just be careful.

Metallic Rifts – Rifts that contain metallic enemies are gonna be a hard time. They are almost impossible given your only damage type to them are a 11 dmg of arcane. I avoid these like the plague, even without a ice based run. Most Metals only take arcane and holy damage, so physical and elemental attacks are wasted on them. Especially avoid rifts with copper and iron fiends, they will call down 3 metallic imps every 7 turns, which will cause the screen to quickly fill up with unkill-able enemies.

Glass – Most of the glass enemies are similar to the metallic ones, not fun to deal with. Luckily they don’t show up until the later rifts, so you should have mega annihilate to deal with a few of them, but avoiding them is the best way to beat them.

Too Many Lamasu – Lamasus, these green dudes have 200 hp, 3 shields, and will charge up to you, they mean business. Unfortunately for the wizard, many 20+ rifts carry rifts full of them. These rifts are no means impossible, but you will be surrounded quickly, so its best to find an objectively easier rift to deal with.

The Dream Hag – Dream Hags alone are easy to deal, but a rift full of them is a nightmare. Getting teleported all around the map stunned and taking hits from every other enemy for turns on end is never a fun way to die.

What To Aim For

Circles – Finding Ice Circle Rifts is nice, but if the rift is full of metals or ice bros, its not worth it.

Heart Crystals – This is the best option, getting 25 more hp is never a bad thing, especially since it add the health to you, so going from 2/25 to 27/50 saves you a potion in the early rifts!

Potions – Many rifts carry one or more potions and having a stock pile of these is almost required for getting to the end. If you are using these liberally in the first few rifts, you should aim for resupplying these than to going for other items. Ideally, I like to have 7ish of each by the final rift, as Mordred will hurt you for 200 hp in one attack and zap you for 30 each turn you look at him. Also, mass Word of Ice blasts can kill off entire screens of enemies, but also use up a lot of mana potions.

Items – Other usable items are generally a plus, but remember that you only can carry up to 10 of them, so don’t be afraid to use them early if you need to.

Helpful Shrines – Not all shrines are going help you, even the ice specific ones. Sometimes its not worth getting them if it means going into a difficult rift, or avoiding a rift will loot when you are low on mana and health potions. See the Shrines section on more about them.

Helpful Shrines

For those who don’t know, Shrines add bonus stats to your spells, but only on certain ones. Luckily the info text of each shrine will tell you which spells they affect, i.e. “For Nature or Lightning, Conjuration Spells” means that only if a spell has the conjuration tag and either nature or lightning tags, be careful of the reading.

Now due to the nature of this type of run, the vast majority of the shrines that you come across in your run will be useless. Finding a shrine that is beneficial to you is going to be rare and find one that is going to work with the spells you currently have is worse. But neverless, getting a good run happens often enough, so have patience!

If you find a Shrine that you think will be beneficial to you but is not on this list, try it out, maybe I did’t find use for it, but it might help you out!

Here is a list of Shrines to keep an eye on and to what spells they will be best on.

Icicle

• Frozen Skull – adds 20% damage and freezes 4 enemies on kill for 2 turns
• Icy – adds 40% damage and +3 frozen duration (if you have freeze)
• Frost Faery – for every 33 damage, summon an Ice Faery near the a target, lasts only 11 turns
• Deathchill Chimera – for every 70 damage, summon a Deathchill Chimera near the target, last until it dies
• Dagger – adds 7 damage
• Sword – adds 75% more damage

Magic Missile

• Otherworldy – redeals 50% of damage as Holy
• Nightmare – redeals 50% of damage as Dark
• Disintegration – for every 30 damage, deal 1 arcane or physical damage to every enemy
• Dagger – adds 7 damage
• Sword – adds 75% more damage
• Energy – gians 1 SH on kill, stacks indefinitely try to aim for this one, as you can tank hits if you keep a decent amount of SH

Iceball

• Frozen Skull – adds 20% damage and freezes 4 enemies on kill for 2 turns
• Icy – adds 40% damage and +3 frozen duration (if you have freeze)
• Dagger – adds 7 damage
• Sword – adds 75% more damage
• Enveloping – adds 2 radius

Eye of Ice

• Frozen Skull – adds 20% damage and freezes 4 enemies on kill for 2 turns
• Dagger – adds 7 damage
• Sword – adds 75% more damage

Word of Ice

• Elemental Harvest – 10% chance to gives back 1 charge if the enemy is fire, ice, or lightning, 30% chance if it died to fire, ice, or lightning damage. This is a must on this spell. As it allows you to spam Word of Ice on maps with a lot of elemental type enemies
• Alchemist – gains 1 charge when you use an item

Blink

• Warped – deal 11 Arcane damage to targets in 4 radius on jump and arrival of teleports
• Troubler – summon troublers equal to spell’s level in the initial location on casting a teleport

Tips, Tricks, and Things to Look out For

Icicle also deals physical damage on the main target, so this can be a boon as well as a curse. If upgraded with damage boosts, you can kill ice immune enemies! However, the physical damage will unfreeze enemies, especially boss type enemies and Mordred.

Eye of Ice persists between rifts, so you are able to use one right before going into the next level.

Its cool to immediately use Word of Ice from the get go, but sometimes its best wait for enemies to spawn out of gates and from certain mobs! Patience allows you to freeze more enemies and maximize you Shatter Shards skill, as the frozen dudes will damage the gates and tougher enemies.

Take your time when picking the next level and try to have a plan before hopping in.