While its easy to say "build this to kill the producer", the game itself is not great at explaining some of its mechanics. Some of this could be due to translation issues with similar wording having very different effects. Hopefully with this guide you will have a better understanding on how to setup wands that easily delete every enemy in a matter of frames. Math is mostly derived from just tossing spells in the training ground. Some of this could be incorrect, but everything seems to be consistent to the formulas provided.

Some of these are defined in game, but a few of these are not.

Damage- The spell deals a direct amount of damage when it hits an enemy

Damage per second-The spell deals a specific amount of damage over time. How much damage it deals per hit, and how much damage it inherits from other spells will depend on how fast its hits per second. For example Shadow Serpent gains more damage than Ray of Disintegration per hit since it ticks slower. They all gain damage correctly from modifiers, but it can be hard to tell how big damage increases actually are when using a DPS spell.

Cast interval-How long it takes to cast different spell groups. If looking at your wand you will see spells highlighted while casting, each spell being highlighted is a different spell group

Simultaneous Casts-How many spells are cast in each spell group. This affects all spell groups including those after a payload spell.

CD-How long it takes your wand to cast again after casting all spells on it. This over rides Cast interval when the wand resets

Spell Boosts-Only affect spells to the left and/or right of them.

Spell Passive-Affects all spells in the wand no matter where they are placed. Any modifiers on a wand can be considered a spell passive.

Payload spells-While not a term in the game itself, this refers to specific spells and passives that let you stack spells to extend your Simultaneous Cast limit for Volley. These are generally how you craft spells to kill the producer. They are separated into two groups, fixed cost and recurring cost.

Fixed Cost payloads-These spells and passive only have a singular cost modifier when being used as a payload no matter how many copies of the spell the payload casts. These are Fuse, Arcane Nova, Duet, Dazzling Fireworks, and Twine. So even though Arcane Nova would cast a magic bullet 20 times, you only pay the 500% mana cost of 15 mana for the magic bullet.

Recurring Cost payloads-These repeatedly cast the spells to the right of the passive until it either no longer meets the requirement to cast or you are out of mana. This only applies to Serial and Echo

The damage formula for the game is roughly the following
Total Damage = Spell Damage*Spell Boosts*Spell Passives*Crit Modifier
Default Crit modifier is 200%

If a spell has its own modifier for damage (Thunderstorm and Shining Judgement for example, this modifier is applied before any spell boosts.

If a target is affected by a debuff, like higher ranks of Magic Bullet, this modifier is applied after Spell Passives.

Order of operations does matter, so a flat damage spell boost like duet is applied after any multiplicative spell boosts.

The game is somewhat inconsistent with rounding damage. It generally seems to round up if its .5 or higher.

The general trick to maximizing damage is to stack as many damage multipliers as possible while also keeping your mana costs low with Volley. We can maximize Volley's mana reduction by exceeding the simultaneous cast limit with payload spells.

Using Volley 1 as the example, adding this to a wand would let us cast 3 spells at a time.


So if we added a 4th spell, this would make a new spell group which would be getting its own volley discount.


If we change that last spell to be a payload, then we can exceed the 3 spell limit further increasing the volley discount.


At level 1 it only takes 5 spells for level 1 volley to give a larger mana discount than level 3 Energy Saving Mode.



You will need to have some way to get around the absurd amount of scatter volley will end up adding, generally using the Track passive.



Even with no damage passives we can hit 1500-4000 DPS by just filling the wand with low cost spells to make Shining Star as a cheap as a possible

Here is some additional information on some of the more common high tier spells that may have some weird interactions to take advantage of.

Volley only uses the highest level to determine its mana discount. You can stack it for more Simultaneous casting, but multiple passives will not give you more MP discount. The formula for its discount is Default Cost * (Spell Discount^(Casts-1))

These three spells all have CD reduction on them. They may be a better alternative than Forced Cooldown on an already fast casting wand, or to gain more damage/mana reduction in your spell chain.

Giving a slot to an equivalent level Mana Reservoir will give you more Max MP. Tranquil Bloom generally will give you more MP Regen than having the slot taken by Magic Vine. This is because the regen increase from Tranquil Bloom does receive the percentage increase from Magic Vine.

Absorbs 1 point of damage with 15 MP on the wand. Once you run out of mana, the barrier is down until the mana fully recharges. The producer does 6 contact damage, I believe its at a rate of 2 hits per second. If you can break 180 Mp regen, then he can't kill you. The Max MP increase is affected by mana reservoir and Magic Vine

Summons follow pretty much all of the same rules for damage as any other spell. If you want to make them work in later stages and higher difficulty, then you need to use the Indominability passive. Summons take an absurd amount of damage in the later stages, and basically die in one hit no matter the amount of health you give them. This lets you get around this somewhat, as well as break their summon limit.

Poison stacks linearly for infinite damage scaling. The faster you can hit the enemy, the higher it stacks. Poison duration is based on the highest level of poison passive on the wand. If trying to build poison, then you just want to hit the enemy as fast as possible for the most amount of stacks. The damage of the spell itself does not matter. Keep in mind game lag, as casting too many spells will cause them to end early. If building for poison, Also remember that you apply less poison when combining spells. Since you only care about attack rate and mana cost, this leaves a lot of extra wand space to stack lower ranks of poison for more stacks.

Fire is primarily applied by Coreflame, but also some wands or relics that apply random elemental modifiers. On its own it does 5% of the target’s max hp (.3% per bosses) per second for 3 seconds. Fire does not stack in the same way as poison. Hitting the enemy multiple times will not increase the amount of fire damage done per tick. Fire damage is increased by the number of sources for the fire debuff. If you have 2 Coreflames on your wand, then the debuff will do double the amount of damage.


If used with a random source of fire, such as the colorful cloak relic, once you have applied fire with the relic the increased damage will remain until the debuff drops from the enemy even if you never proc'd fire from the cloak again.

Increases the number of projectiles when shooting a spell. This does not chain infinitely when combined with some sort of payload. Multi-Shot>Fuse>Magic Bullet and Fuse>Multi-shot>Magic Bullet results in the same amount of Magic Bullets. They will multiply if multi shots are placed into each part of the sequence. Multi-Shot>Multi-Shot>Fuse>Magic Bullet results in 3 magic bullets, but Multi-Shot>Fuse>Multi-Shot>Magic Bullet results in 4 magic bullets.

You will only ever launch one sword when casting a spell. Multi shot will multiplicative increase your sword limit by the number of increased spells. So Multi-shot level 1 doubles your swords. Using Mimic will also multiply your sword limit.

The formula is Base sword limit*Spell cast*(Mimic+1)

Area Boost is probably the most powerful passive in the game as it makes the slots on all your wands count towards the primary wand. It has 2 interesting properties. The first is the most obvious one which is moving spells with multi slot requirements onto a different wand.




The second is how it works with Mimic.


When Area boost adds a passives to a wand it goes in the order of the highest wand, then from left to right. When you area boost a mimic, it adds a mimic to all wands, not whatever the mimic may be copying. Using these two facts we can copy one spell multiple times, by placing it on the bottom wand, and any mimics we want to boost on other wands or to the left of it.


When trying to add multiple area boosts to a wand, and using mimics, you may need to add a buffer spell between the mimic and the next area boost. If there are under 6 spaces remaining, then the mimic will not change its size. If you have 6 or more then it will change size possibly preventing you from adding a spell to the next area boost.

If you stack a payload passive/boost, it will cast the spells to the right multiple times. Magic Bullet>Twine>Twine>Magic Bullet would orbit with 6 magic bullets. This is an easy way to get multiple copies of a high damage spell at the end of a spell chain. This does not count as casting additional spells for the purpose of Volley.

This applies to the spells Rainbow and Butterfly. Adding Multi shot to these spells is multiplicative to their number of casts. Butterfly goes from 3 to 6 butterflies for example with Multi shot 1. When used with a payload, each cast of the spell will chain separately. For example, adding a duet after rainbow results in the duet being done 7 times. This can be another way to get multiple copies of a high damage spell on your wand.

You can increase Dimension Walker's potential damage, but casting multiple at the same time. This is best done with either Multi Shot, or a payload spell that casts them all simultaneously. Using the number of cast method, or a payload spell like Arcane Nova, results in only the first Dimension Walker cast to have the maximum damage, and the rest limited to however fast your mana regens. Even though Arcane Nova usually has a fixed casting amount, Dimension Walker removes your remaining mana when it is cast to increase its damage.

I assume these are hold overs from previous versions. The encyclopedia entries for Fireworks, Serial, and Echo contradict what I've written in this guide. Cost something with fireworks and your cost is not quadrupled. Cast something with Echo or Serial and watch your mana bar drain.

Once you have purchased enough unlocks, you can ban 14 spells for free every run, and up to another 30 by paying resources. Realistically you'll be able to ban 35 spells on average after getting all the meta progression. The majority of truly broken spells are in the normal tier, and even with the max increase to rare spells from meta-progression they will still be the most common ones you see in shops and spell rooms. Even with just free unlocks, you can ban around a quarter of them every run. Magic Bullet, Laser, Shadow Serpent, Shining Star, Volley, Poison, Damage boost, Precise Shot, Indominability, Overload, Duet, and Runic Hammer are all normal spells. While higher rank rare spells are nice, the majority of your raw stat increases are going to be in normal spells. Alternatively you can ban the higher ranked spells to save reroll time since there are very few epic and rare spells that you want in a strong build.

For room to room priority, its best to focus on health and relic rooms early. Getting a gold generating relic, or healing gives you a lot more options later, and you'll need the health to buy scarlet relics. You don't really need to go to a workshop unless you are getting full on spells or have something really powerful to craft. You can also avoid shops until Abyss of Antiquity unless you are desperate for a wand upgrade, healing, or got the relic that makes it so they always have a potion room. Abyss is the point where shops will sell the end game wands which can have Epic spells on them. You'll want at least 200 gold on hand, but a single epic can drastically change a run. Core of Flame and Arcane Barrier can win runs on their own, but even an Arcane Nova or Magic upgrade is a serious force multiplier to your damage.

The Shortcuts are probably worth disabling unless you are going for speed. Same with the Secret pathway unless you really feel like you need the healing. This gives you more options to get the upgrades you want. To be entirely honest, the game is rough until you get a good chunk through the meta-progression of talents. Trying to get scarlet relics before increased max HP and HP rooms will have you 2 hits from death after buying some of the bigger relics.