Learning spells

[rhugga]

Can you learn spells bought thru vendors and/or scrolls in PoE 2? Haven't figured out how.

[Koth]

nope. No learning of spells, the only way to gain spells is to acquire them on level up or to switch grimoires. I think the idea is to have a set of grimoires in your player's quickslot so that you can switch between them if needed. That said, I've only ever equipped the one on aloth and never change it during combat. Actually, I've just sacked aloth in favour of tekahu. He does far better Foe Only AOE than aloth anyway.

[LordBlade]

Yeah, they kind of ruined mages with the new system. Now you have to pick your spells as you level, and that's basically what you're stuck with. You can switch grimoires, but it's nowhere near as useful as in the first game (where you could set up a couple of grims with different spell setups and switch as needed).

[Kragtor]

I have zero problem with how they did spell learning in this. It's not like mages have tons of passives worth picking up....so you get the core 2-3 spells you want, then find a decent Grimoire.

 

There's even one Grim that gives you more casts, but makes you get interrupted much easier.

[wanderon]

I don't really have any issue with this either especially not with spells being per encounter - my mages typically spend half their time using a weapon anyway (so as not to waste spells)

[Witness41920]

Mages are hardly ruined. The spells you "learn" should be clutch spells, spells you want to always have available. If you find yourself using a spell a lot, that should be a spell you learn. If you have a specific type of spell/style that you're looking for, those should be the spells you learn. 

 

For example, if you're a Spellblade and you rely a lot on Illusion spells for debuffs and Enchantment spells for buffs then make those your learning priority. 

 

if you're an Evoker and you want to make things explode, make sure you take your favorite, most reliable attack spells as your learning spells. 

 

After that, you just keep your grimoires and switch through them as needed, it's really not a bad system at all. 

[ericdy]

I like this new system better than PoE1, where I just had one grimoire and filled it will all spells I could find/bought. The idea of having different grimoires appeals to me in a role playing way..

[Shatterstar]

idk, it just feels weird....lore-wise? Roleplaying? I don't have a personal grimoire that I've filled with the spells I've spent months studying and perfecting, an ever growing receptacle of my knowledge and power. I learned a couple spells, and otherwise I just carry around six textbook-sized cheat sheets, except the people who wrote those cheat sheets were taking a different test than I was so it's pretty random and i've got to flip through all of them to get through a fight. And why are grimoires I got from a curio shop or off a street thug holding information for spells of the same level (if not as unique) as the spells I find in an archmage's grimoire? And if you only "memorize" your best and most important spells, why are an archmage's spells in a grimoire at all? If you try and rationalize "well he had to write it down so it doesn't get lost!!" then there shouldn't be level one spells in that book along with it unless it really is a collection of the majority of his spells, and then it shouldn't have so few spells in it.

 

Plus, at a certain point after you've learned the core spells as suggested, you're probably only going to be carrying grimoires that have unique spells in them, and then what makes them essential to being a wizard? At that point you might as well just make archmage grimoires a class-locked magical item

 

I think a better idea would have been to:

• Have an editable grimoire for yourself. It is equipped in your offhand, and there are unique wizard quickslot(s) that allows you to hold one (MAYBE two, but again I don't like the idea of juggling half a dozen textbooks every battle) backups for switching in combat.
• Allow fewer spells per book than in POE 1 so switching grimoires becomes more necessary.
• Your starting grimoire can only hold spells up to a certain level.
• You CAN swap what spells are in your book, but it takes time. You can't just change spells in your grimoire on the fly in the middle of a mission, and trying to do so will penalize you since you don't have either the old spell or the knew spell memorized. Being on your ship or resting in town makes the necessary time pass at full speed, while resting in a dungeon or waiting makes your memorization rate ~15-25% slower, and walking around is half speed. A rest may not cover a high level spell completely.
• To get another personal (editable) grimoire, you HAVE to commission one, and that's not something you're going to be able to do at your small town grocery store. Increasing the highest spell level it can hold or the amount of spells-per-level increases the price. And it's possibly a trade off between the two. you can have grimoire full of a bunch of your low level spells or you can have a grimoire that allows you to use a couple of your high level ones. Essentially it's a page limit, your grimoire can only be so big if you're going to carry it into battle, no matter how well it's made
• You can't edit other people's grimoires, but they function as wizard-only equipable items. Each one has some tips and tricks which give you bonus casts depending on the owner's practitioner level (ie a wizard in a street gang gives you +1 level one casts, while a powerful mage might give you multiple extra casts on several levels). If it has a unique spell, THEN it can be added to your spell list like they are now, disappearing if you put another grimoire in that slot.
• On top of just being a different (and hopefully better) system, it'd let you see a description for all of the grimoires. I always hated that you could get a grimoire called "The Winter's Woes" or "The Leaves of Essence" and get no info on it. In a world that's absolutely STUFFED with magical items with unique stories, you're really telling me that a BOOK has no story behind it? But that's just me

But that's just my two cents. I don't really enjoy the new system, but I'd rather have them working on fixing bugs then work a new system at this point.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Shatterstar