Sorcery
Sorcery is one of the wizardry disciplines of spellcasting. Sorcery is probably the most generally useful wizardry skill, as it has the most spells, covering many offensive, defensive, and informational functions. Its early offensive spells generally are weaker than Evocation or Pyromancy, making it trickier to level up Sorcery, but it's not quite as difficult to level as Summoning is early on.
Spells belong to many different paths, so a caster who is repelled or denied a particular path should still find plenty of useful sorcery spells.
The sorcery skill is acquired by learning the skill from a scroll or by having a talisman of sorcery. Spellcasters may also be created with sorcery as part of their initial skill set.
List of Spells
This is a complete list of the sorcery spells1), sorted by level.
Magic Bullet
| Level: | 1 | SP: | 1 | Path: | Missiles |
| Attack Types: | magic | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a magical bullet which travels in a straight line until striking something. Deals a small amount of damage but can be fired very rapidly. |
| Notes: | This should be your primary attack when training in Sorcery early on as the bullets can be fired very rapidly, and will sometimes pierce through targets it kills. |
Slow
| Level: | 1 | SP: | 5 | Path: | Null |
| Attack Types: | magic, slow | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | A cone-shaped spell which slows down the creatures it strikes. |
| Notes: | |
Detect Magic
| Level: | 1 | SP: | 1 | Path: | Information |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, rods, scrolls, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Reveals all magic items in both the player's inventory as well as on the floor in a wide area around the player, even through walls. |
| Notes: | Inexpensive and versatile! Won't find magical items hiding in chests, and knowing if an item is magical doesn't tell you if it's cursed or not, merely that it may or may not be useful. |
Probe
| Level: | 1 | SP: | 3 | Path: | Information |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Gives the caster information about a nearby enemy. Reports the condition of the enemy and the caster's chance of defeating it. |
| Notes: | |
Marking Rune
| Level: | 1 | SP: | 2 | Path: | Null |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Creates a harmless sign on the floor in which the caster can write any words he likes. The sign does not detonate or do any damage, and anyone who applies it can read the words. |
| Notes: | A Marking Rune can be removed/erased/destroyed by using the Disarm spell. |
Spark Shower
| Level: | 1 | SP: | 5 | Path: | Electricity |
| Attack Types: | magic, electricity | Sources: | |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a cone of electrical energy that travels forward slowly, zapping all targets within the sparks. |
| Notes: | Travels much, much more slowly than other cone spells like Icestorm and Burning Hands. It's not terribly powerful, but it can be layered to deal more damage to enemies that wander into it, clearing out rooms of weaker enemies effectively and more efficiently than you can with Magic Bullet. Earlier builds of Crossfire made this book deliberately difficult and rare to locate; a lucky Wizard could start with it, but you usually had to check shops to find it or do a quest early on that would let you obtain it from spellcasters there, an unusual example of a rare but low level spell. Newer releases of Crossfire make it more readily available in stores, so Sorcery is much easier to level early on. |
Magic Missile
| Level: | 1 | SP: | 1 | Path: | Missiles |
| Attack Types: | magic | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a magic missile that tries to home in on the nearest enemy. The automatic homing isn't perfect and may miss. |
| Notes: | The homing property helps for enemies that can move quickly, though the tracking isn't perfect and the spell takes noticeably longer to cast than Magic Bullet does, so it's a tradeoff. It's not quite as good at taking down enemies, so Magic Bullet tends to be more useful early on. |
Strength
| Level: | 2 | SP: | 10 | Path: | Self |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | May increase the caster's Strength stat temporarily. Size of the effect depends on the caster's current Strength stat and sorcery skill level. |
| Notes: | |
Paralyze
| Level: | 2 | SP: | 5 | Path: | Mind |
| Attack Types: | magic, paralyze | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a cone of twinkling stars that dazzle and paralyze all enemies caught within. As with all cone spells, can be fired in a short-ranged circle all around you with the “stay fire” command. Paralyze can be recast before it wears off to keep enemies from moving. |
| Notes: | In the hands of enemies, this spell is incredibly dangerous. You generally want Paralyze immunity active at all times because of how potent it is, and that holds true for when a player gets it. Paralyze can single handedly lock down otherwise lethal enemies, letting you beat up things like Wyverns, Dragons, and Titans so long as you have the Mana to keep them from moving! Even if your focus is on Evocation or Pyromancy, getting a few levels of Sorcery to use this makes certain enemies vastly easier to deal with. Mapping a button to “invoke paralyze” will let you instantly cast it on enemies in the direction you're facing, allowing you to alternate between paralyzing the target, and hitting with melee, arrow shots, or spells, until the enemy finally dies. Extremely effective! |
Confusion
| Level: | 2 | SP: | 10 | Path: | Mind |
| Attack Types: | confusion | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Casting this makes your hands glow red, with your next melee attacks inflicting confusion. You can cast this repeatedly to layer the effect and hit more enemies with confusion before it wears off. |
| Notes: | It's not particularly useful for actually meleeing enemies as they'll run around aimlessly and be more difficult to hit, but it's a potential option to distract them if other options like Paralyze aren't working. The higher level version, Mass Confusion, fires a cone shaped confusion spell at enemies and tends to be easier to use, especially since you don't need to be physically next to enemies to inflict it. |
Poison Cloud
| Level: | 2 | SP: | 5 | Path: | Missiles |
| Attack Types: | magic, poison | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a ball which explodes into a poisonous cloud. Creatures affected may be slowed, weakened, or killed. Unlike diseases like Cold or Flu, enemies will not become immune to Poison after the effect wears off, and Poison can be freely reapplied to them. |
| Notes: | Does not appear to be stack with other poison effects like Poison Fog or weapons that inflict poison (or maybe the strongest effect takes place? could use clarification/testing). At low Sorcery levels this deals fairly low damage and tends not to be worth the Mana, but may potentially scale very powerfully at high Sorcery levels. |
Wonder
| Level: | 3 | SP: | 10 | Path: | Transmutation |
| Attack Types: | paralyze | Sources: | rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Casts a randomly selected wizardy spell; or, about 1/3 of the time, creates harmless flowers. The spell is randomly selected in the same way as randomly created spellbooks, so low-level spells will appear much more often than high-level ones. |
| Notes: | |
Dexterity
| Level: | 3 | SP: | 12 | Path: | Self |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | May increase the caster's Dexterity stat temporarily. Size of the effect depends on the caster's current Dexterity stat and sorcery skill level. |
| Notes: | |
Charisma
| Level: | 3 | SP: | 12 | Path: | Self |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | May increase the caster's Charisma stat temporarily. Size of the effect depends on the caster's current Charisma stat and sorcery skill level. |
| Notes: | |
Fear
| Level: | 4 | SP: | 6 | Path: | Mind |
| Attack Types: | magic, fear | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a cone of fear, possibly causing enemies within the cone to flee in fear. |
| Notes: | |
Disarm
| Level: | 4 | SP: | 7 | Path: | Abjuration |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Attempts to disarm a trap with no risk of triggering it, with a chance of success ranging from about 1/2 to about 1/20. This chance is dependent on the casting level, the trap's level, and also somewhat on the user's dexterity stat. It can also be used to remove marking runes. |
| Notes: | This spell is the only safe way of disarming traps on chests without exposing the user to risk of triggering the trap by manually disarming it. Otherwise, floor traps and door traps can be dealt with in other creative ways without spending nearly as much Mana such as sending a golem or elemental that doesn't fly over the floor trap to trigger it. Doors can be checked by throwing objects such as coins at the door, which will cause some magical traps to explode immediately (but won't trigger many physical traps like needles, spikes, or blades) or shooting the door repeatedly with a bow and arrow which will simply destroy the door and any traps on it. Note that if the map has something especially evil like a floor trap beneath a door, destroying the door will not destroy the floor trap, but this setup tends to be very rare. The disarm spell can also remove/destroy a Marking Rune. |
Constitution
| Level: | 4 | SP: | 15 | Path: | Self |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | May increase the caster's Constitution stat temporarily. Size of the effect depends on the caster's current Constitution stat and sorcery skill level. |
| Notes: | |
Dark Vision
| Level: | 5 | SP: | 10 | Path: | Information |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Allows the caster to see in the dark without a light source. |
| Notes: | |
Transference
| Level: | 5 | SP: | 10 | Path: | Transferrence |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Transfers mana points to another player. If used on a normal creature, the magical energy may cause the creature to explode in a ball of fire. |
| Notes: | |
Magic Mapping
| Level: | 5 | SP: | 15 | Path: | Information |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, rods, scrolls, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Shows an overhead map of the caster's location. Very useful in unknown areas. |
| Notes: | |
Steambolt
| Level: | 5 | SP: | 10 | Path: | Fire |
| Attack Types: | physical, magic | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a bolt of hot steam, dealing damage to all targets in a line and leaving behind fog that impairs the vision of enemies as well as the sorcerer. |
| Notes: | The bolts can destroy items. Useful for piercing multiple enemies in a crowd, but against single targets it's not as efficient as simply firing a lot of Magic Bullets into them. |
Levitate
| Level: | 6 | SP: | 10 | Path: | Null |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Levitates the caster above the ground. The caster cannot fall into holes or traps while levitating, but also cannot pick things up off the ground. |
| Notes: | Unlike with Boots of Levitation, or with races that can levitate by naturally flying (Dragons, Quetzals, Fireborn), you'll need to wait for the spell to wear off to be able to reach the ground. |
Rune of Transference
| Level: | 6 | SP: | 12 | Path: | Transferrence |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Creates a rune which, when stepped on by a creature, will transfer mana from the creature to the creator of the rune. |
| Notes: | |
Invisible
| Level: | 6 | SP: | 15 | Path: | Null |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Makes the caster invisible. Attacking other creatures or using spells will cause the invisibility to wear off more quickly. |
| Notes: | |
Antimagic Rune
| Level: | 7 | SP: | 5 | Path: | Abjuration |
| Attack Types: | magic, cancellation | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Creates a rune that will cast anti-magic on any creature that steps on it. |
| Notes: | |
Missile Swarm
| Level: | 7 | SP: | 6 | Path: | Missiles |
| Attack Types: | magic | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a swarm of magic missiles. Like the first-level spell, the magic missiles try to track enemies but frequently miss. |
| Notes: | |
Mass Confusion
| Level: | 7 | SP: | 20 | Path: | Mind |
| Attack Types: | magic, confusion | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | A cone spell which inflicts confusion on creatures in its path. |
| Notes: | |
Animate Weapon
| Level: | 7 | SP: | 25 | Path: | Teleportation |
| Attack Types: | weaponmagic | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | The weapon in the caster's hand comes to life and flies around, controlled with the Fire keys like a golem. The caster recieves all XP from creatures killed by the weapon. |
| Notes: | |
Identify
| Level: | 8 | SP: | 60 | Path: | Information |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Attempts to identify some items in the caster's inventory. The higher the caster's sorcery skill level, the more items will be identified. Tends to be extremely demanding on Mana, it's recommended to simply carry scrolls of Identify (a fairly common drop in treasure) instead of expending massive amounts of Mana to cast this. At low sorcery skill levels when you first obtain this, it will only identify a small handful of items, meaning it can take hundreds of Mana to identify all of your unknown items! |
| Notes: | |
Improved Invisibility
| Level: | 8 | SP: | 25 | Path: | Null |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Makes the caster invisible. Unlike the normal invisibility spell, the caster remains invisible even when attacking or casting other spells. |
| Notes: | |
Dimension Door
| Level: | 10 | SP: | 25 | Path: | Teleportation |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, rods, wands |
| In-Game Description: | Teleports the caster a short distance in the direction the spell is cast. It will not cross anti-magic spaces, and the caster will never be teleported to the same space as a monster. If the caster specifies a count, the spell will attempt to teleport him that number of spaces. Without a count, the maximum number will be attempted. |
| Notes: | Required to clear certain quests whose locations are across bodies of water, or that requires passing through locked gates without an apparent key or switch. If you can't cast it due to low levels or worshipping Valkyrie, you can find it on wands and cast it that way. |
Xray
| Level: | 10 | SP: | 20 | Path: | Information |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Allows the caster to see through a single level of wall for a limited time. |
| Notes: | Helpful for scouting ahead and finding hidden passageways or parts of a level you've missed, but casting Detect Magic or Detect Monsters usually is more efficient for doing this. |
Magic Rune
| Level: | 12 | SP: | 5 | Path: | Creation |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Creates a rune on the floor which encapsulates another spell of the caster's choosing. When the rune is stepped on, the encapsulated spell is activated. |
| Notes: | |
Magic Drain
| Level: | 12 | SP: | 20 | Path: | Transferrence |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Drains mana points from the enemy and gives them to the caster. |
| Notes: | |
Color Spray
| Level: | 13 | SP: | 35 | Path: | Null |
| Attack Types: | chaos | Sources: | |
| In-Game Description: | Fires a cone of energy that strikes with many different attack types. It is weaker than most attack spells of a similar level, but the combination of attack types of damage makes it useful against creatures with unknown immunities, or rooms full of monsters with different immunities. |
| Notes: | |
Town Portal
| Level: | 15 | SP: | 50 | Path: | Teleportation |
| Attack Types: | N/A | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Creates a magical portal from one point to another. It must be invoked twice: the first use marks one end of the portal, and the second marks the other location which connects to it. Useful for returning home temporarily from dungeons to drop off treasure or heal, and then return to the same point in the dungeon. It can also be entered by other players, so long as they a member of the same party as the caster (see: “help party” for details). |
| Notes: | |
Create Repulsion Wall
| Level: | 15 | SP: | 30 | Path: | Creation |
| Attack Types: | physical | Sources: | |
| In-Game Description: | Creates a repulsion wall which pushes away any creature next to it, unless the creature is flying. The wall dissipates after a limited time. |
| Notes: | |
Rune of Death
| Level: | 17 | SP: | 20 | Path: | Death |
| Attack Types: | death | Sources: | books |
| In-Game Description: | Creates a rune that, when stepped on, hits the target with a death attack. Depending on the creature's death resistance, it will either be killed or take no damage at all. Make sure not to accidentally step on it yourself after casting it. |
| Notes: | |
Destruction
| Level: | 18 | SP: | 30 | Path: | Null |
| Attack Types: | magic | Sources: | books, scrolls |
| In-Game Description: | Damages all creatures around the caster. Unlike most spells, destruction works through walls and doors. The damage is all magical, and increases as sorcery skill level and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Power stats increase. |
| Notes: | |
Credits
All information retrieved from the archetype files in the
SVN repository, or from the
Spells section of the main Crossfire site.
