This is probably one of my favorite mods that uses magic reorginization of the specializations. Thank you for this!

REQUEST: Anyway you can rerelease this mod that does away with the requirement that the spheres of specialization require the Wizard class? There's SO much more replayability that this mod can offer when I can combine some Spheres with other classes. Please consider!

Did you fix the earth mastery starting in your first spells bug?

Yes, it would be interesting to share your ideas about a Shadow Lord class.
Do you have any 3D modelling skills?

Great! I'll keep an eye on those discussions, and help out with what I can.

I'm not sure how balanced the final version of the Wizard class is going to be, but as it stands, the class is probably over-powered even with the balance changes I'm making.

I don't remember where it was discussed, but I was toying around with a Shadow Lord class idea that came up at some point on the forums I think. I'll see if I can find my notes on that and see how much I had. Some of it might be worthwhile for a possible class or additions to a shadow realm specialization.

@Dr_K: Shadow Realm expansion discussions are starting again http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/shadow-realm-brainstorm/page/4/#post-244780 . I think people agreed not to add a new class to the expansion but who knows? So your mod might be integrated into the expansion. And in any cases, your skills are welcome to contribute to the expansion.

All spheres are here! Next up is completing the documentation and implementing some obvious balance fixes.

I tried to create a cosmos sphere similar to the one in AoW2 (practically every skill could be researched), but there were just too many skills to research which aren't as random as AoW2 which caused pacing problems. So now the sphere has spells which are groups of spells (about 3) that are unlocked at the same time. The downside is the group costs more to research in general. We'll see how this plays and I'll adjust the tree accordingly.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Earth sphere is here, in all its blandness. Since most of the spells are duplicates of the AoW3 versions, and the Terraforming spells didn't work as intended, I think that I might have 'cut' too many spells from the sphere, and it ended up with less spells overall.

There isn't anything exceptionally awe inspiring about the spells available, and in my opinion, they currently lack some of the flair that the other spheres. I have ideas for more interesting spells, but I will wait until I have them fleshed out before implementation.

Now to cobble together a Cosmos sphere from the various spheres.

@Flakmagnet
There aren't any other generic summons, but there is a Parasite unit that shows up when you use the Parasitic Infection spell. It only behaves as a combat summon though.

I might be able to recreate some older units, but they aren't nearly as interesting as completely new units. Unfortunately, I am not adept enough to efficiently create new units.

@buzzshiza
I haven't tried actually adding a Terraformer like ability for it yet. I know it doesn't work when implemented like Blight Empire, since I tried that already.It's probably similar to the issue I've been having with making terraforming spells for the earth sphere.

As for the class building, the obvious choice is the wizard's tower. The first time I saw that mod, it looked like that structure might have been left over in the game's assets since it fits in so well. If not, then he did a fantastic job on it, and I'd probably see if he'd let me use that model for the class building.

Would there be a way to give the Water Sphere a water tile terraforming spell to create or fill in water?

What is your model idea for the Class building? Perhaps a pristine version of the Wizard Tower ruins? The Tower of Magi mod has that model I think.

Really enjoying this mod, thanks again.

what new units have you added besides the magic servant for the Wizard Class? I have not played AOW2/SM in a good while, so I don't remember everything from there.

I'm trying to keep the class as close to the wizards from the last installation of the game. So unless I missed a unit from AoW2/SM, I'm not planning on adding any more new units in.

I am planning on possibly adding in some class buildings, but I'd like to get the spheres sorted out first. Earth's been giving me issues with the terraforming abilities/spells.

Are there plans to add more "Wizard class" specific units to the mod in addition to the magic servant? A sage, alchemist or a familiar might be a nice unit to include.

Oh okay i see thanks ^^

It should say in the description, unless I missed that again. It's not a very interesting one, but it gives your units +2 frost and +2 shock damage, while weakening all enemy units 40% for both frost and shock.

Oh okay thanks ^^ also what happens if i cast it then?

The current version should fix it, although I can't roll back the research in your game. It turns out that Water Mastery could be picked as a starting spell. That has been fixed.

Once you research it, you should get the swimming effect without casting. In your case, it was chosen as a starting skill so you didn't even have to research the spell to get the bonus.

Yeah water mastery, all my units had swimming at the start of the game but my mana wasn't getting drained and when i checked water mastery in the research book it said your units get swimming but like, it was like a permanent no need to cast or even research effect.

@Nickookcin
Do you mean Water Mastery? I think the version that is uploaded is one where the descriptions aren't complete for the Water Sphere.

That spell works as a combination of an Empire Upgrade and Strategic spell. After researching it, all of your units receive swimming (to avoid the Wild Hunt-like drowning issue if it was in the spell effects). The spell grants a damage bonus to your units and a corresponding weakness penalty to enemy units. So hopefully this is what you are experiencing, which is intended.

As for the double research option. Apparently, I completely forgot to change the details for one of the spells, so there are two spells that refer to Liquid Form unintentionally. I appreciate the catch.

I was hoping to fix the issues with Water Sphere when I finished Earth Sphere, but I've been running into issues with the Earth sphere spells. In this case, I'll probably push out a more polished water sphere fix before Earth gets finished.

Thanks again.

Just adding a comment, water sphere was permanently active for me when i used water wizard, probably a bug, and i had access to a combat spell while also being able to research it, so probably a bug too.

@auboy - Theoretically no. However if a spell was changed by another magic mod, like Suffocate, then that change should be reflected in the spell for the Air Sphere since I have not altered that spell. I only had to create a new entry so that the new spec can research it.

The only thing I know I alter definitions for are all specializations from the base game and GR. I don't know if that will conflict with anything.

If you run into any conflicts, let me know and I'll try to work out what's going on.

Will this conflict with other magic mods or just add to them?

@buzzshiza - there were 7 spheres total: Life, Death, Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Cosmos. The mod has almost all of them at this point. :P

Thanks for taking the time to explain, and for adding the documentation to this page. :D I chose the Air Shpere by the way, so look forward to the Frost Dragon summon!

I haven't played the previous AoW games; how many spheres are there, and do you plan to make them all?

What specialization did you choose when you created your leader? Whatever that choice was determines all of your research and spell options. So you should have access to all of the corresponding spells to that sphere.

Your leader's hero upgrades are what you will be missing. You should only have access to the ones available to all wizards since I haven't implemented any upgrades for Cosmos Wizards.

In the old games, Cosmos was essentially a universal sphere which gave you access to spells from all spheres (not quite all spells though). I'm planning on doing something similar with the sphere for this mod, although I haven't figured out what to do for hero upgrades for the Cosmos sphere yet.

Thanks for all the info, and willingness to transfer the mod details to this page! I guess my current round will be without summoning spells then (other than the Magic Servant), since I chose Cosmos? That's ok, I'll make sure to choose the spec and upgrade together in the future.

Will Earth and Cosmos eventually have their own summons, and what sphere does Cosmos line up with, or is it meant to also have a sphere, like Earth assumably will get?

If so, 7 spheres is VERY impressive. Thanks again for quick reply!

Of course. I was planning on copying it over once I finished the first pass of all the spheres, but I can reformat what is completed so far in the next day or so. I still need to add Life and Water spheres to the documentation too.

I haven't browsed wikia without ad block in a while. Apparently their ads are worse than they used to be.

I added all of the wizard type upgrades, but not all of the upgrades. So Earth and Cosmos should show up in the hero upgrades, but they don't give you access to any sphere-specific upgrades.

Theoretically you should pick the upgrade that corresponds to your chosen sphere, but you can chose a different upgrade path and access that sphere's upgrades for your leader. There is no link between the specialization and your wizard upgrade choice coded into the mod. If there is a way to link them, I haven't figured it out yet.

Would it be possible to copy and paste your MOD documentation to a "Pinned" discussion on this page for quicker reference please? I ask because the wikia has a gajillion ads that make scrolling a lengthy, stuttery process at best, at least for me.

Also, I chose the "Cosmos" hero upgrade at the beginning, and can't seem to locate what is included with that. Do you have to choose the matching upgrade with the specialization for it to work properly?

Thanks so much for making this mod, it's like having a Class Variety pack, taher than just one extra class. Really well done. :D

Thanks for the bug report. It should be fixed now.

I've uploaded the most recent version that include the Water Sphere. I've had some issues with getting my version of Spring Rains and Wetlands to work, so those are currently excluded from the sphere. Other than those two spells (and adding Mud eventually) the sphere is done.

Don't wanna discourage but just saying for a bug, life sphere can't summon stuff near their heroes even if it's not their main hero.

Finally finished the Life Sphere spells and hero upgrades. I didn't rename many of the spells that were duplicated from the Creation and Theocrat classes, but they will be changed and renamed in the future.

I tried to give the leader some more powerful abilities to make up for the lack of offensive spells, but I might have gone a bit over board. Speaking of that, I just realized I forgot to add smite in place of shooting stars for the time being. Should be fixed sometime tomorrow.

Water sphere is up next. Hopefully should go more quickly without the holidays and editor errors.

How did I miss this?
Very Nostalgic =)

@MS
Welcome. Hopefully, they relatively live up to the old ones. I'm a bit disappointed that some of the spells aren't really doable with the system we have, but I'm still looking for alternatives.

@AnybodyWhoActuallyIsPayingAttention
Any large updates to this will likely be delayed until after Christmas due lack of time to work on it. Life Sphere should be the next one to be added at that point.

Thank you for bringing back my beloved wizard kings.

Air sphere has been completed and uploaded. All spells and upgrades are included. One thing I noticed and will probably tone down is Haste Domain. It's very OP for city defense, which might be ok, but definitely needs testing and probably to be more expensive or split into 2 spells.

A lot of the spells that were included in AoW3 have remained the same since they essentially are close to what I would have done with them anyway. I will probably change some of them in the future.

Thanks for reminding me about that. I had meant to add the in-game descriptions earlier, but it got pushed to the side and basically forgotten as I started working on the mod. I'll get that in for the next version.

As for the 'specialist' vs 'wizard' naming, I was using the naming convention from the previous installments where it was called 'Casting Specialist #'. So it should be correct if it is listed as casting specialist.

If you happen to remember any other polish issues, just let me know. I've been keeping an eye out for them and plan to comb through everything later, but I'm sure a bunch slipped through for now.

Thanks for the feedback!

Loving what this mod adds so far!

A few things (most of which I'm sure you're aware of): I'd love to get full-descriptions in-game about what the new class and its spells and spheres do, both when you're creating a leader and during play -- in similiar layout of the vanilla and other specialization mods (Lunar mod). I did see the documentation wiki (otherwise I'd have very little idea what was going on), but it would just make things far smoother to access right there.

Also while researching new skills, the "specialist" label for getting additional casting points -- is this supposed to say "specialist" or "wizard"?

There were a few other minor issues but now they escape me. But these are all minor polish issues from what I've found, and that's a good thing. Regardless, I look forward to seeing the new spheres, and anything else you decent to add and improve. :)

The first pass on the Air sphere is almost completed, should be up this weekend.

If anyone is interested in creating fancy new particle effects, I will gladly include them. I'd like to add in new ones eventually, but I am not an efficient artist so the mechanics are more important for the time being.

Added in Fire Wizard upgrades, and 1 Wizard Stack Leader upgrade. Wizard's Aura Icon will be changed in the next upload.

Also unlocked all outfits for wizard leaders, so you can make your Death wizard actually look like one.

Air sphere is up next on the hit parade (as well as Fire Mastery).

I've managed to add the Fire Sphere specialization for Wizards. It includes almost all of the spells from the previous installments. The update only includes spells, no new upgrades for your leader yet.

There are probably some changes to the Death Sphere spells that I've made, but I haven't quite documented the changes. Unfortunately, I need find another work around for the Infection spell since removing the assertion error requires a redesign. So, of the changes included, that bug hasn't been fixed.

A new topic has been posted in the discussions for bugs or other anomalies that people seem to find. Any and all feedback is appreciated.

After much trial and error (mostly error), I got an Infection-like spell working and added. It does occasionally fire off a Failed Assertion error, but it doesn't crash the game. It's just irritating.

For the hero development based on your chosen sphere, just choose your sphere of magic as your first hero upgrade (they are mutually exclusive) and the rest of the sphere upgrades will be accessible (based on level).

Most of the changes in the update are description additions/changes, the mechanical changes to hero upgrades and the the Infection spell & parasite unit).

sweet! Can't W8! just subscribed! i think vanilla AoW3 has a serious lack of interesting spells

I'm planning on modelling the spheres after the spells in AoW2 and Shadow Magic. I know AoW2 much better than the elements that were added/changed in Shadow Magic, so I am adding those first and peppering in the SM spells if I can get them working.

So, yes it should include most of those eventually.

does this include shadow magic and its spells?

It was posted back in September on Triumph's forums and kind of got passed over.

http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/modding-tutorial-create-a-new-custom-class/

It gives a list of the necessary rpks to edit to create a class and a bit of a guide too. There is one rpk that isn't listed, unless I forgot. The UnitPioneer.rpk file contains the unit sets for initial army spawns, without adding the ones for the class/race combo you only start with a Leader.

I didn't think I looked into it, but I remember why I didn't get it working with respect to the AD spell. The spell uses overlays which do not include the hazard decorations. I believe that I would need to create an overlay for the desired hazard and then use that. I decided to leave that for a later date after someone else figured out how to make a new overlay. I still don't know if that would work with hazards though.

May I ask, which rpk files did you edit to make your class? and I haven't seen aerlynn's base class, what are the steps you took?

Also, I am looking into spawning structures like dreadnoughts spawn their magic blockers. Unfortunately, the hazard structures are classified as decorations, not structures.

Have you considered editing the druid spell that gives sight to instead cause damage to units sitting in trees?

I appreciate the offer, but I think I'm good for now.

I'll definitely let you know if I there is anything that I need help with.

Currently the only problem that I'm having is spawning hazard structures with a spell, but I don't think that is going to be possible with the given tools.

I would be interested in helping you.