How do I learn new spells?

[Hayashi.226]

I've picked up a couple of other grimoires from foes. What good are they? I can't use them right? Only to see what new spells there are, and to pay copper to learn them.

[Wormerine]

It’s been a while, and I might be getting confused in Deadfire systems, but I am pretty sure it works like that:

you can only cast spells which you currently have in your Grimoires, or you mastered them (per encounter casts on later levels). Each Grimoires can hold up to 4 spells per level. You can remove them and replace them with other “learned” spells whenever you wish. You learn spells by finding new Grimoires and writing the spell down (costs money). Once you learned them, you can put it into any Grimoires you wish. 

You can have more then one Grimoires on you: just add additional Grimoires you want to have at your disposal into quite item slots. Switching between Grimoires takes couple seconds: amount of casts per rest remains the same on each Grimoire. 

[Boeroer]

If you retrain (before that) you can simply write all the spells you currently know into grimoires. Then retrain, but cancel the level-up process and re-learn all the spells you wrote down first. Then level up: you will only be presented spells you don't know yet. That way your spell portfolio grows like crazy. Unique spells will not be forgotten during retraining, so don't worry. Write down a nice collection of grimoires (e.g. one for fire damage, one for CC and so on) and put them into your trinket slot and quick slots. Now you are prepared for everything. Only costs money.

[Hayashi.226]

Quote

You can have more then one Grimoires on you: just add additional Grimoires you want to have at your disposal into quite item slots. Switching between Grimoires takes couple seconds: amount of casts per rest remains the same on each Grimoire.

So to use an analogy it's like swapping magazines on a rifle? When I've exhausted all the spells on one book in an encounter I can swap in another book and continue casting? Or is it more like having different spells in the 2nd book?

[Boeroer]

1 hour ago, Hayashi.226 said:

So to use an analogy it's like swapping magazines on a rifle? When I've exhausted all the spells on one book in an encounter I can swap in another book and continue casting?

No, not at all.

You can only cast the spells that are in the active grimoire you carry. If you have more grimoires in your quick slots you can have a broader portfolio of spells.

Imagine you have a grimoire active with only ice spells - and suddenly you meet an ice troll: oops.

But you have a second grimoire with fire spells in your quick slot: hooray! Swap your grimoires from ice to fire (there's some cooldown which can be shortened with a talent) and you are able to melt the ice troll.

How many spells per rest you can cast doen't change at all. Grimoires "only" give you a bigger selection of spells to choose from during an encounter.

You can write grimoires yourself. So you can taylor yourself the perfect grimoire/spell selection to be prepared for anything.

That - and the retraining/learning "trick" I mentioned above which makes it possible to learn all wizard spells in the game.

The whole grimoire mechanic is very powerful. No other caster class will have that big of a portfolio of effects because of it. And it only costs money (which is plenty after a while). 

Edited September 15, 2019 by Boeroer