f13.net

It's coming out tomorrow on the 25th! That's what Steam says anyway.

For those who don't know, it's a diablo-esque co-op action rpg but instead of button mashing you have combo mashing. The catch is, it's very very dangerous and finicky and you'll end up killing your friends just as often as the mobs. RPS has a nice article up: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/24/spell-check-5-mistakes-to-avoid-in-magicka/

I'm totally going to buy it and force all my friends to buy it too.

This has totally not been on my radar, and it's out tomorrow, and it's reasonably priced.  This will not end well for me in what  I suspect will be a mixture of burns and electrocution.

I really wish I could play multiplayer games.

I just played through the demo 3 times in order to see how far I could get. I can't wait to play online with some friends because it looks like a blast.

I was supposed to get a beta invite that never materialized, but I've been keeping track of this for a few months now. I recommend you grab the Steam demo and give it a shot

This looks like it's going to be immense amounts of fun multiplayer. I had enough reward points on Gamersgate saved up, so I preordered this for "free".

Definitely something to play while drunk, I think.

Multiplayer is buggy as hell.  :heartbreak:

I'd wait for a patch if you havent bought it already.

Is there a lobby for MP play?  That's really what is stalling my purchase.
Dont have enough PC grognards in my life to find a nice group.

I want to go to this game. <3

At least the basic idea seems hilariously fun.

How is the multiplayer buggy? Latency related, the usual NAT issues, or just something new and creative?

Steam download finished. Playing it now. I love Vlad who is not a vampire, and the pseudo-Swedish everyone is talking in.

I've heard a lot about buggy multiplayer, but apparently some patch is being made, or is already out? I can't wait to get home from work!

Once the bugs are ironed out of multiplayer, I look forward to "accidentally" killing you all.

It's downloading!

Steam News puts "release!" "RPS article!" "patch!"

So some things may have changed already today. Downloading now to try this out though.

How is the multiplayer buggy you ask? I was trying to play with two friends and none of us were able to connect to a game or host a game. We did the usual router/firewall checks but to no avail. What's more, the server browser is plain broken. I can't scroll down the list of servers, the scroll bar disappears (!) so you only see the top ten listed. I couldn't find any games hosted by my friends even though that is one of the options in the browser. Pressing "quick play" to join a random lobby will return you to the same lobby if you try to exit the lobby. Backing out to the main menu I'd find myself back in the same lobby within seconds.

The people who have actually managed to connect to eachother have reported numerous glitches and loockups in play as well. So, yeah, it's a ton of bugs.

Singleplayer works fine as far as I can tell but I'd really like to play this game co-op and there's just no way to do that.

And yes, I've tried the most recent patch. It didn't help.

Thanks for the info.   I'll wait to buy.
Kinda of a shame really, these types of games only have the half-life of a single weekend.  If they release buggy they're essentially DOA.

Hold mouse to move without click to move as an option is some backwards designed bullshit. Besides that, game seems stellar.

I played the demo, it seems like tons of fun.

There's a few teething gripes (no autosave after you leave the tutorial, no explanation of how some elements combine). Will pick this up full later in the week.

How do you make wind by the way? I couldn't for the life of me seem to make the rain spell.

it's water water fire.

water+fire = steam, the spell is water+steam.

It's slow to cast for some reason, you can't just quickly mash the water button twice.

I bought this as it simply looks to fun to pass up, although I know of no IRL friends who have grabbed it as of now.  So feel free to invite me to play if I'm around.

Sadly, non-lan multiplayer is still unplayable until a patch comes out. And the game is pretty much made for multiplayer.

Tips:
Hit left ctrl to block.
Middle mouse without a spell queued activates the active ability on staves.
Always keep haste up
Always go into battle with a powerful spell on your sword
If shielded, when hit by arrows, it causes you to fall down. Only shield for melee guys.
Beastmen shamans all run around with lightning immunity (purple) aura so don't even bother with lightning combinations.
Things that are wet (hit with water or steam) will take double damage from lighting. You can't combine lightning directly with water, but you can combine it with steam.
Things that are wet that are hit with cold will freeze. This wears off really quickly but they'll take triple damage while frozen, and can't move or attack. Smack them with melee!

You should figure the fun spells out for yourself, though rock shield variations, cold AoEs, and heal mines are handy. If you're really stuck, feel free to use the murderbeam:

Ice + Ice + Ice + Ice + Rock is the highest single target I've seen. This game is button mashey as fuck, that's a 9 key combo.

We were having trouble connecting as well until a read a post on their forums that said, "have you tried inviting from Steam?".  Tried that, and it worked like a charm.  Didn't have to open any ports, give IPs, nothing.  So, if you bought this via Steam (I think maybe even if you didn't), you shouldn't have any trouble inviting your Steam friends.  After we were able to connect we had zero issues.

Game is hilariously fun with other folks.  Friendly fire is unavoidable, especially in challenger mode (didn't actually get a chance to play adventure mode yet). 

More Tips:

Hokay, this game is hilariously fun and random, but screw the warlock boss when playing solo.

Seriously, healing is Strong in this game, and I can't find some way to stop three mages with a few tens of thousand hp each who like to spam AE heals. ><

nerf locks?  :why_so_serious:

It's more "1 v 3 mage battles are a TAD CRAZY" :D

The prior 1v2 mage battle seemed a lot easier, they had low enough HP that I could just fire huge fucking rocks at them. My go-to method of dealing with anything is really "shoot a giant rock at it", with a side of "shoot a giant arcane infused exploding rock at it"

Is the ice meta-element decent to make? Because infusing things with frost seems like it causes no damage, but slows.

Fully charged combinations of ice and arcane seem quite powerful, but I haven't really played enough to fully test everything.

I'm still a bit lost as to the benefit of adding more copies of the same element into a spell. Sometimes it seems to make the area of effect stronger, or do more damage, other times nada.

rock rock rock rock rock rock makes a BIG rock that hits a lot harder. Charging any rock combo seems to be more about velocity than size.

spamming water just seems to be a longer "wet" effect, I guess? Not sure, water seems useless beyond setting up lightning bolts.

The devs are talking about releasing a patch every 24 hours until the game is running stable. Looks like a big one is coming out tonight

New patch up tonight:


Thanks for playing the game!

Here's the official status of Magicka as of now (26th of Jan).

Short story:
Singleplayer and Multiplayer: Tonights (it's 18:00 in Sweden) patch is going to be fairly big and hopefully it'll adress the majority of the issues you've been experiencing. Right now we've got so many players posting on the steam forums we're having a hard time keeping up answering posts. But we're reading all of them and are adding stuff to our "to-do"-list. This includes fixes and improvements

Here's the changelog

Patch will be delivered to Steam very soon and it's up as soon as Steam pushes the button). We'll monitor your response closely and keep patching the game as often as possible.

Please let us know if the patch helped!

Changelog Patch #26 Jan


Bugs Fixed

* Added keyboard binding for cast self (default middle mouse button)
* Steam usernames longer than 15 characters will now be shortened instead of crashing.
* Fixed a bug when displaying an already disposed server in server listing which caused a crash.
* Multiple move orders with delays will now properly stop during the delay.
* The errorReport in the application directory now also contains a version numbers.
* Server lists can now be properly scrolled.
* Path names are now region safe.
* Chapter 6 Scene 4 (Grimnir mind duel) now spawns the correct amount of spawns.
* Removed VAC option, all online games now use VAC.
* Improved cutscene-skip in Chapter 2 Scene 2.
* Improved cutscene-skip in Chapter 3 Scene 3.
* Checkpoint added in Chapter 6 Scene 5 (Grimnir boss fight).
* Statuseffect desync crash fixed.
* Animation time desync crash fixed.
* Additional small fixes.

Features added

* Cancel button added to gamepad configuration popup.
* Icon added for break free action.
* Icon added for boost action.
* Icon added for magic action.

Known issues:

* No private game/password game option (coming soon)
* Game stutters slightly on some systems despite good performance
* Steam attempts to install XNA framework every time game is launched
* Inexplicable poor performance on some high end machines
* Sometimes campaign progress is wiped due to network disconnect (yeah this one is annoying)

Okay, purchasing.
On Steam as "Ghambit"

Purchased as well, but it'll be a few hours before I'm home and playing it.

Steam user: kubodhi

I happen to have a 10 dollar amazon gift card lying around, so I could get this on amazon for free, are the steam items really useful or should I just not pay anything for it and go amazon?

Is it on amazon? I thought they were doing a steam release only now, with a non steam version to come in the future?

But the pre-orderish items are pretty useless.

I'm having fun playing through this, the spell combos do vary wildly in usefulness and power, but there is definitely a button-mashing, running around spammy fun to be had.

Observations so far:

 - Cold+Arcane beam is nice on big slow guys since you can snare them and damage them at the same time.
 - You can actually CC mobs fairly well. 5xRock -> AoE will knock everything down on about 2/3 of your screen, 5xcold -> AoE has the the same effect snaring.
 - An easy way to set up dampness for lightning combos is to enchant your sword with 5xwater and then hit something. As far as I can tell, the more charges you enchant your sword with, the bigger the splash effect of the attack. Water does knockbacks and dampness. Gather mobs, splash them with your watery sword, then charge up 5xlightning and AoE.
 - Sword enchants (spell+sword attack) are fun and can help in clutch situations. Being able to throw down heal mines on the move is cool.
 - Don't underestimate melee, it's not going to get you through everything, but it's not bad
 - Randomly mashing stuff and accidentally making a spell which heals half the enemies you are fighting is a lot less frustrating and a lot more amusing than you think.
 - The game is amusing, and has a running thread of subtle (and not so subtle) jokes
 - There is a staff you can get on the first level, just after you exit the castle which has fear as an on-use. This seems so powerful it's almost broken, as it will get you out of pretty much tight situation, allowing you to heal yourself
 - Screw druids

I haven't figured out auras yet

The auras are immunities. So anyone in the radius is immune to *color* spell type.

The only "crap, not what I meant" is when I try and heal then shield myself. Life + Shield = Healing Immunity D:

Rock or ice + shield = oh crap, I can't move.

Anybody want to try to do some multiplayer? I'm thinking the game gains a lot of depth when you can't just AoE freeze everything and I'm dying to see it firsthand.

Steam+Steam+Lightning+Lighting+Arcane as a weapon imbue seems to 1-shot most things and 3-shot post other things.

It's quite easy to die in this game, and playing solo actually feels challenging. I keep discovering more creative uses for spell combos too. Rock+Water+Shield as a weapon imbue shoots out a line of water volcanoes that keep soaking anything that passes them, which sets up nicely for lightning bolt spam.

Those shields are actually pretty useful. They put you in a ice/rock block and you can freely charge spells while baddies chip through it.

In theory also useful in multiplayer if you see your friend charging something dangerous and you need a quick OHGODNO

I had a go on challenge mode, success seems somewhat dependant on how lucky you are with drops.

i.e. if you get an item like the Staff of War or the Dagger of Counter Striking you have a massive edge (these are the two best weapons by a long margin that I have seen so far). Spellwise, spells like grease and summon death are pretty useless, whereas Time Warp, Rain, Invisibility and such are much more useful. Also vortex is fun, but has an annoying tendency to suck your spellbooks and dropped weapons away...

Dagger of Counter Striking (move speed) and Goblin Staff (physical resistance) are my favorites so far. I stay the fuck away from rain and just use arcane+water when I want to follow up with lightning. Otherwise I always always always fuck up the water shield somehow and kill myself when I mash the lightning button.

On the forest challenge map rain is really good on the goblin waves since there there are tons of them. You pop rain before they spawn, then kite around with haste, clear the damp off yourself and set up some crazy lightning combos.

The aura immunities, like everything else, ignore any notion of enemy or friend. Shield + 4x Life will make anything near you also immune to healing: really helps against multiple healing mages. The alternative is to slow their cast rate.

Also, arcane + lightning + cold is the best single target combo I've found, because it slows and stuns whatever you're hitting. They will pop before they reach you.

4 ice + stone, hold right click down for the full charge up is the most single target damage that I've been able to do.  Got an achievement for it (sorry I don't remember the number).

I agree that arcane + lightning + cold is the best beam, as much for the slow as the massive damage.

It's even better in multiplayer when you can get one dude doing 4x Cold + Arcane, the other dude doing 4x Lightning + Arcane and merging the beams into a gigantic doomray of murdersauce. It seems that merged cold beams don't even need the target to be wet to perma-freeze them, and frozen targets take 3x damage. Add that to the already-ridiculous damage of lightning/arcane PLUS the damage-multiplier from merging beams and you pretty much instantly destroy anything the merged beam touches.

For extra fun, have the other players toss in 5x arcane or more arcane/cold or arcane/lightning beams, but it really just seems like overkill at that point.

Edit: Spelng.

10 hours playing this already. Holy fuck this is good.

Didn't see it mentioned, but when you cast your shield as a barrier instead of a self shield, spam heal mines near the barrier to increase it's toughness. I'll barrier myself in a corner sometimes while I cast more complicated spells like vortex.

It's not that good. 

Can anyone say how difficulty scales from 1-4 players, more mobs, more mob HP, more special mobs?

Opinion noted? I don't see a point to your post.

I don't think difficulty actually scales at all. But from the progress I've made in single payer the mobs are getting alot more annoying and there are getting to be more and more armored mobs and larger high HP mobs. I'm constantly spamming slowing spells then the OMGWTF Beam in order to get anywhere. I've even resorted to storing a line of freezing volcanos in my melee weapons instead of the light/steam/arcane, as the quick utility of freezing has become more useful.

Speaking of which, while messing around in arena I found a neat combo that can be spammed out fairly quick to deal with large groups. Water volcanoes in AoE followed right away with Freeze volcanos in AoE, has to be cast when your shield is up or you freeze yourself as well. Basically permafreezes everything around you giving you time to figure out how to deal with things. The freeze volcanoes continuously put everything in a block of ice.

I think the difficulty scaling in MP is the addition of other players.

/agree
Or rather, it's good when it WORKS.  I still have yet to even play Ch. 4 MP 'cause chapter 3 hangs.

Just got it and its pretty damn fun so far.  Game mechanics are really neat.  Single player is worth it for the humor alone. 

Definately on my Steam Sale list for 4 copies.

I definitely am interested in this, but am holding off until they fix all the bugs. 

Finished the adventure mode. For someone who liked the demo, I'd say it was probably worth the 10 bucks, and a definite purchase if it drops to 5, though I still haven't tried multiplayer (not near my computer on weekends though). Not many bugs in SP, though there's one that auto-kills you on the approach to the last boss. Staying to the left of the screen when you walk up to him seems to avoid it. Checkpoint is right beforehand, thankfully.

This is a bit embarrassing, but I finally started playing in earnest, and now after two hours of single player I'm stuck. I'm in the courtyard of castle Aaargh or something, right after a checkpoint. A horde of beastmen arrive, and after that a druid. I can't beat them, they just eventually surround me and stab me to death. I start off with lightning to pick off the first couple of dudes, then I shield up and meteor rain and do volcano walls, but die anyway. I tried AOE freezes but the damn things jump around the screen so much I never get all of them. I even experimented with arcane mines, but they just chain reacted and ended up killing me.



 

Beastmen says to me that there are no archers, so make sure that you keep your shield up.

Also, the beastmen (all AI) is pretty stupid, and it will attack your walls even if there are ways around.  Lay down some granite half-circles (i.e. don't enclose yourself in stone).

Focus the druid with a lightning + arcane + cold beam.  This will slow him a bit.  If it's raining, leave out the lightening (unless your shield was up and you aren't wet - then definitely do include the lightening).

If they are on top of you spam QR*3 R*2 and do an AoE.  If you have range do DRDRD and build it up to full power and blast them with it - hurts the pack and keeps them cold.  Don't do this if they are getting close because it will hurt you as well.

Pretty sure you have haste at this point, make sure you use that liberally to keep range (or run in an do a cold AoE bomb run)

I found with any beastmen just spamming arcane AoE kills them all extremely quickly. You'll get an achievement from it as well. It's raining beastmen, kill 5 beastmen in 5 seconds.

Keep your Haste up at all times so you can move freely. Zap them, maybe starting with the druid first, with a QFASSS beam. Use it as an AOE and it'll kill them in 1 or 2 hits. Leave off the lightning if one of the druids makes it rain (also, give yourself a QE water shield or dry yourself as needed before/after it rains). 

I find rock walls don't help against beastmen because they just jump over it and knock me down. They are wonderful against orcs though.

Otherwise, just alternate these AoEs:
4 arc + 1 water (SSSSQ) for knockback and dampness - it will KB beastmen even in the air.
4 arc + 1 cold (SSSSR) for freezing and damage.

That is my strategy for basically any swarm of melee. On big things substitute rock for arcane occasionally, which will do less damage and KB but is more likely to knock down heavies.

At range I use water + arcane to dampen and 3 lightning + arc + cold for damage. Better damage beams are possible but I'm too lazy to make them.

Lightning Bolt - one-shots just about anything.

Game is pretty damn hilarious in multiplayer, especially when lightning bolt doesn't hit your intended target... :why_so_serious:

I have found that lightening storm is a really good way to kill yourself.  I'm sure there is some trick to using it successfully, but I haven't found it.

Lightning aura selfcast.

 :uhrr:

Thank you (sincerely).  I fear the auras because the only aura I seem capable of casting is the one that gets me killed - life aura.  (I'm trying to heal, then shield myself and it's gets combined - I blame lag! my clicky is flawless! FLAWLESS!!!)

I find its best to stack auras of the elements in one of the major spells. so, lightning, stone, and fire (?) auras are your friends in that case. Also stacking the same aura over and over on yourself makes a AOE area around you.

Also, friends don't let friends cast Magicka with out letting others know your about to do that. <-- Pro-Mp-Tip of the day.

Yay, New patch knocks out some of the more annoying issues.

Today's fixes


The fire fix (increasing damage) might be enough.  I know that the little I've used fire, I have been less than impressed with the damage.

a+s+r is a nice combo and all, but it'd be nice to be able to mix things up a bit.

On second thought, the main attraction lightning has, other than higher damage (I think) than fire, is you can combine cold with lightning.  Being able to chill mobs and do higher damage is probably still going to be better than do less damage and add a minor DoT.

Just plain ol' lighting with fire feels like a valid option now at least.

I'm a big fan of the chill effect.  Except for where it doesn't work, of course.


I hope at some point they also do a pass on balancing projectile vs beam.  I know I tried one particular projectile, and did over 10k damage... (QRQRQRQRD, I think) when I aim it correctly.  Pre-patch (and I suspect post-patch as well, but I'd have to try it) a fully charged fireball could not kill a goblin.  Many projectiles I've tried hit for under 500 damage.  It just feels so underwhelming, particularly when I can, in three keystrokes, produce a beam or PBAE that will chill and murderize stuff.  Or I could fall back on the steam beam, which is only a couple more keystrokes, and will murder stuff even faster, albeit without the chill effect.

Tonight's patchnotes are up


Source (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1739852)

edit: Wow, it runs so much better now. I can finish games! I CAN FINISH GAAAAMES!

Buddies and I seemingly 2-shotted Khan...

He agro'ed me and tossed me in a corner. I had shield on, and when buddies shot their beams to hit Khan...I think I was caught in the crossfire - shield exploded for massive damage, I was blasted to the other side of the corner and died.

Yeah, I need to know how the beam thing works.  I was fighting a goblin shaman boss guy, and I shot a beam of some sort at him, at the same time he shot a beam at me.  They met a bit closer to him, there was an explosion, and the boss died instantly.  And I got the achievement "Never cross the beams".  Hmm.

If beams have elements that are opposite eachother, they cause an explosion when combining.  Fire and cold definitely do.  I believe lightening and water, arcane and life will also cause an explosion (no first hand knowledge though).

As anyone seen beam paths react to anything besides other beams and shields? I could have sworn my water sprays were bending beams at one points...

The end of chapter six is hard.   :sad:

In Soviet Magicka, elements conjure you!

The goblin shaman makes me mad.

More fixes today.

Updates to Magicka have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted.

Fixed jittering caused by avatar move orders persisting on clients.
Fixed issue where self shields would get desynced.
Fixed so that elementals that weren’t initialized collided with beam spells.
Fixed crash initializing a dialogue chain with a dead actor.
Fixed crash due to navigation desync in chapter 2 secret area.
Fixed “Too fancy for fireballs” achievement sometimes not being awarded.
Fixed crash on Chapter 11 boss confuse ability.
Fixed so that Chapter 12 boss does not start attacking before cutscene is done.
Features
Added Chapter 1 Text in intro.
Known Issues
Network uplink bandwidth, while improved, can be demanding
Steam attempts to install XNA framework every time game is launched on rare occasion
Quitting the game while the credits are rolling will not award a game complete.
Mouse outside screen in full screen with multiple monitors will minimize the game.
Crash due to leaving too many enemies alive in previous scenes (NonPlayerCharacterCache is empty)

I don't know what happened to the goblin shaman, but he definitely died when I hit him in the face with a large boulder.  Also, the J-monster died when he rammed a plain E-shield. :grin:

Stability still seems hit and miss, two friends in a three player game kept crashing at various moments during play.

I haven't tried multiplayer yet, although I think the game would be fun in multi.

I figured out how to trivialize the islands in chapter 6.  Those fights went from impossible to over in less than six seconds.   :oh_i_see:

This game is breaking my mind.  The fights get damned frustrating at times, particularly when the game doesn't seem to recognize you hit 2 elements then a cast.  "Whoops, blew that spell because there was still a life element in it and I healed the fuckers"  :awesome_for_real:

Some of the places so they rez you when you die are also frustrating.  Starting up in the middle of 8 goblins in chapter 3 (The room right before the shaman) over and over again meant several deaths before I finally figured out some good quick spells to drop. (Oh lighting bombs, I love you.)

It's fun, but frustrating solo.  I think it'd be more fun if I had at least one NPC mage or someone else to play with.

Pro Tip: spamming space while inside a shield dome boosts it so it absorbs more damage.

Multiplayer is where its at, but, bugs. Not that there isn't still fun to be had.

Multiplayer isn't something I'll likely engage in a lot of.  It looked like most games were passworded, and I tried to join a game, only to be notified it was in progress.

I guess it's something you need to set up in advance with the people you're going to play with?

Absolutely.

The grief potential for this title is high, I would never, EVER play with pickups.  Can you imagine, this game is 100% friendly fire and insta-zaps!  :grin:


If ever any of you on my steam list see me going in game, i'll give you an invite if I have a free spot.

I recently determined that casting two E on myself, meaning you have to do it before it congeals into one E, is how to activate my staff.  Related: random teleport, lol.

Middle mouse button without any elements queued is how you activate the ability on the staff.

I'm not certain how to activate the ability on your weapon, or if it even needs to be activated.

Don't all weapons have passive abilities?  So you just swing it?

It may be that swinging does trigger the ability.  I haven't messed with weapons much.

Other than to play with the M60 enough to know that thing is stupid overpowered.   :oh_i_see:

I've tried the game a few times, I just can't find the fun.

Yeah shift+click for imbuing a weapon with something.
Make sure you hold the left click until it triggers itself so you get the full effect. Especially with shields. You can slice them out of your sword and create longer more rectangular barrier walls.

Also if you are playing solo and get stuck in a bad spawn the best method I found was to immediately cast the AOE shield and use space to pump it up... then start casting lighting barriers (lightning lightning lightning lightning shield right click) through the bubble and it will land right where they are standing and slowly drain all the guys pounding on your little shell down to nothing. You could probably also use some kind of water wall too to increase damage. They all cast through the AOE shield bubble. It's not what I'd call "fun", but it gets your through bad situations with less headache.

I can't play with half my friends though because they are getting various "cannot authenticate" bugs and various other CTD issues. We have yet to get through a whole adventure game together... it just keeps dumping us out or trashing our saves the next day.

Too bad. I hope they fix it up a bit and add stuff to it. Perhaps a silly battle royale arena or something... even though it would likely be a ridiculous mess.

My problem with the AOE-Shield & Lightning Field strat was my bad respawn was against goblins.  Those fuckers jump on you and make you step backwards... into your lightning shield.  :awesome_for_real:

Which is why I started dropping the mines. It's a quick 2-button & click combo that blew the assholes back away from me and gave me some breathing room to setup.

Some weapons don't have a passive, most do though. War staff is still the best I have seen so far though.

The invisibility staff is great too. It got me past those damned Yetis and saved my bacon in quite a few trapped-by-a-crowd situations.

Invisibility staff and spamming summons I find to be my prefered way of dealing with just about anything. I like the arcane saber as well. Then I just spam tons of undead and arcane elementals and can go to town without worrying about killing my own guys.

Wait, summoning? I never saw that.

Is there a way to keep from getting knocked down? I spend most of my non-1-on-1 fights on my ass.

Having a personal shield up is what lets you be knocked down, which is why the Staff Of War is the best one in the game

Uh, okay, that's counter-intuitive but thanks.

You're being knocked down by ranged units. It's arrows and whatnot that knock you down while the shield is up.

The jumping beastmen knock me down (and off the cliff) as well.

I think they knock you down shield or not, it's an ability they have. I still say AoE Arcana spam is the best way to handle beastmen.

I throw a water in with the arc, but yeah, best way to not be knocked down by beastmen is to knock them down first. For orcs it's to distract them with rocks. If they're close enough to knock you down at all you've done something wrong, although you can sometimes save yourself from a chain KB-fest by casting shield+earth on yourself and then prepping some sort of plan B - usually an AoE knockback, a freeze, or maybe a teleport if you have that.

The beastmen knock each other down too. Although I agree that getting knocked into a corner is annoying before you have teleport as they can effectively lock you down there. Once you get to level (6?) and get teleport a lot of these issues become less of a hassle.

I would love to play some multiplayer with some people. Anyone interested?

Got maybe halfway through the game with 2 buddies last time I played.

I love lightning bolt.  :evil:

I would just like to post this video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2DsoiA54Y

 :awesome_for_real:

That is brilliant.

That looks like fun. These guys really seem to be enjoying themselves.

Tried 4 player magicka on a lan (plus one off-site) day with some friends. Several game crashes, connecting to a game is a bit wonky, but the gameplay and bad humor just works perfectly to keep a group of people amused. Definitely worth the money.

Looks like the Magicka expansion was announced - they're going to 'Nam (http://bit.ly/f0i5ZU). Seriously.

Hahahha. I'm so happy that's what they decided to do with an "expansion".
Now I hope they just fix the game in general. I have a friend who still can't play it reliably.

I like the fact that these chaps seem to emphasize fun

Watched some of Total Biscuits videos playing this and it spurred me to download the demo.  Ten minutes later and now I'm downloading the full version.  Excellent example of a simple mechanic = great gameplay.

Despite the terrible bugs that can creep up, it's incredibly fun. Once they get everything hammered out it'll be a blast. Either way I'm buying the Vietnam expansion.

The complete pack, including vietnam and the extra spells DLC, is avail for $8 right now (http://store.steampowered.com/app/42910/).


Also, I bought it, so I need someone to play friendly fire games with now.

Ill buy it if someone will play with me. The game is fun, but really seems like it needs multiplayer for the full fun.

*edit*

I bought it. Talked one of my other friends in to buying it too.

I tried it a bit this week. The Vietnam Rescue mission is fun, although a bit short  - it clocks in around 15-20 minutes for my group.

It's a nice variation on the "survive waves of shit!" challenge missions released prior to this. You gain points for various side objectives to complete, as well as one main primary objective. When the mission's over, the points are tallied and you're penalized/rewarded depending on how slowly/quickly you completed the mission - or whether you completed it at all.