Your main objective is to scale magic damage as much as humanly possible. That can be accomplished by leveling up and putting skill points in talents and stats, by grinding for appropriate equipment and buying powerful spells.

As a secondary objective you might wish to buy spells relating to utility

Every time you level up you get 2 (two) skill points that you can either put on talents or stats depending on what the game allows you to do at that moment. For this build you want to put ALL your skill points on the "Intellect" statistic. At the end of the game your character stat tree must look something like this:



Intellect is extremely important. It is your primary source of damage and scaling. High intellect also allows you to buy more powerful spells for both offensive and utility purposes

School of Arcane

Before you start your magical journey I would highly recommend choosing 2 schools of Magical damage to level up. For me it was "Poison Mastery" and "Necromancy Mastery" (Primarily for RP purposes). The reason you need 2 is so you can constantly dish out damage in the late game without being forced to wait for your spells to recharge or use weaker spells while waiting.

Besides that you should consider leveling up Magicka Regeneration, Arcane Lore and Essence in order to never run out of mana.



As far as the order is concerned this is how I went about it. 1) I upgraded Magicka Regeneration (red) because in the early game it is extremely essential due to how anemic you are as far as casting spells goes. 2) I went straight for Poison Mastery (green) due to the high capacity for damage the early-middle game requires. After that I went for 3) Arcane Lore so I can optimize my mana management even further. After that I went for 4) Necromancy Mastery (black) and 5) Essence as the cherry on top regarding the Arcane tree. Necromancy Mastery allows you to have a completely new viable set of spells you can cast alongside poison and Essence makes mana management irrelevant, you will never run out of it.

Other Schools

After you are done with the School of Arcane you are basically set talent wise, however you will keep getting talent points on occasion that the game will require you to spent. In my view the best places to look at are the School of Survival and School of Theatrics



As far as the School of Survival goes adding points the best places to add skills would be on dodge mastery (dark red) and elemental resistance (grey). Both are EXTREMELY useful for many bosses and especially the final boss.



The school of theatrics is very useful when it comes to scaling up your character between fights. I would heavily recommend investing either on Mercantile (purple) or Archaeology (pink). Both will allow you to get high end equipment reliably. The former in respect to money and the latter in respect to good shop RNG.

Both school of Survival and Theatrics are useful in their own way. Whichever you choose (or both for that matter) depends on your own judgement and patience regarding the grind.

What is a wizard without spells? Not a good one, that's for sure.

Get some as early as you can! With your first 1000 gold you should invest in a level 1 damage spell (I got poison but you can get whatever you fancy). I would recommend having at least 4 damage spells (2 poison and 2 necromancy for example) and 4 utility spells for the better or worst. This is how your spell casting screen should look at the end of the game.



Starting off you might want to have a lot of damage spells regardless of level so you can cut down opponents quickly before they get to you. However later on I would recommend having 2 for each of the 2 categories you have invested talent points in. The highest level damage spell you can get + the one right before it. So i will have poison 5 and 4 and necromancy 5 and 4 at the late game but in the early game that will be poison 2 and 1 and necromancy 2 and 1. The point is that you need a constant stream of damage.

Hint: You can not buy the same spell twice sadly, the spell shop works with different rules compared to the other shops, perhaps an attempt to balance the absolutely insane magic damage one could unleash in S&S 2 in which you could buy the same spell as many times as you wanted.

Utility spells are there to help you in harder battles. The Magic Orb is perhaps one of the most useful ones around since it will allow you to negate 1-2 attacks depending on the damage. Gale I found extremely useful in the early game. Many maps allow you to send your enemies crushing to their doom and Gale pretty much allows that to happen. Ironically making gale the most deadly spell in the game depending on your RNG. Despite that however gale is very useful in order to get strong melee enemies away from you. For the final boss you might want to consider "Repair Armor", "Hex" and especially "Lighting Resist" due to the absolute tons of damage Ultratus Omega will dish out at you even from far away (Consider switching off Gale for that fight).

As you could see in my first attached image of my character stat sheet the majority of my Intellect came from equipment and not levels (from 108 intellect, 44 came from levels and 64 from equipment). This is very important to consider. Your armor now IS your weapon pretty much.

My character's armor consists of:

Chestplate:
555 armor + 8 intellect

Shoulders:
155 armor + 10 intellect

Gloves:
68 armor + 5 intellect

Boots:
225 armor + 10 intellect

Thighs:
155 armor + 8 intellect

Helmet :
165 armor + 8 intellect

Shield:
445 armor + 5 intellect

Sword:
15-55 damage + 10 intellect

Angel Wings:
26 armor + 2 vitality

I am not naming every piece of armor individually since the RNG shop system renders this useless. You will certainly slowly but surely find items that fit this certain play style. The mid game is perhaps the best time to start fishing for them.

Always prioritize stats over armor and damage. A pajama with 30 armor and 10 intellect is inherently more useful to you than a 100 armor chestplate with 2 intellect. However in the late game, especially when you start facing the final bosses, it is good to keep the armor ratings in mind.

Early Game:

Just like in many other fantasy games early game is gonna be the hardest for a wizard. Most of your losses will be observed here. Blast your opponent with whatever spell you got and go backwards as much as possible. Try shoving them if possible (The AI has this weird tendency to strike the air after being shoved, thus wasting its turn). You might struggle with more armored enemies but don't give up just yet, loss in this game is not nearly as hurtful as in S&S 2.

Mid Game:

The mid game is slowly but surely gonna become a breeze. You might have some difficulty with more well armored folks but 90% of the fights are decided from the first turn. Unleash all your damage spells in the first 4 turns and then sleep to gain mana. Always shove and walk backwards when in trouble.

Late Game

Congratulations. You have unlocked the "victory button". 95% of your fights end before the enemy even has a chance to react. The ones that don't end on turns 2 and at most 3. The only way you can lose now is if the enemy does some absurdly damaging taunt that pierces your armor, however that is highly unlikely and not deserving of a workaround

You broke the game. You got the capacity to kill the final boss even if he is 20 levels above you. You skipped the entire late game grind and can dispatch of multiple gladiators within seconds. Enjoy your 100% achievement completion (if indeed you were scoping for such a thing) and the dozens of hours you saved from the grind.