Rift Wizard Become a Rift Master

Start With The End

It doesn't matter what happens unless you beat the final boss. Getting to level 25 isn't good enough. The problem is that the last boss of this game is really nasty. You need to build a strategy that will kill him safely.

So now we need some spoilers. Stop reading if you don't want to ruin things. You might just want to find this information out on your own - painfully.

1. He has shields

2. He has very high hp

3. He has to be killed about 5 times

4. He rearranges the levels (and your minions may or may not follow)

5. He swaps places with you

6. He has a pretty strong ranged attack

So you need to have a method to overcome each of these.

Most likely you need teleport because not only does he teleport you but he will change the level multiple times. When the level changes more gates and enemies will spawn. So you can not "clear out" everything else safely the enemies will just keep coming. The alternative is to bang out the walls to get in range to kill him - but this will very likely waste some valuable spells.

His health pool is like 660 so you can't just cast something in the 200 range and hope he dies. And you have to kil him several times.

How did I kill him? I rely heavily on toxic burst considering dark can get its spells back for an infinite loop late game. There are a ton of things that could work but you need to find an angle that works based on what you like and the options you are given

Combo & Effeciency

You have the opportunity to get enough mana potions to reset your spells about every other level or maybe a bit more. In other words you don't have to be super efficient with your spells. But as I have said for other games : Get what you need not what you want. The problem is that it can be difficult waiting for the opportunity to buy the things you need without hoarding points.

There are a number of ways you could win - and if you want you can find some cookie cutter guides. Running someone else's cookie cutter build might work but what if you get bad match ups? What if you dont get discount shrines when you need them?I'm not going to do that here because you are smart. Maybe you need a slight nudge and you can find the combo on your own.

You get 3 skill points per level and you have 24 levels before you face the final boss. That means you'll have ~72 points to win the game. Good use of circle discounts can massively increase this count. If possible I never buy higher level spells without a discount but sometimes the game forces your hand. Skills are expensive and you will likely not be buying very many so don't feel bad about buying them off discount.

While you can have only 10 items you can buy up to 20 spells. You can "stall" with some one point spells to expand your build before you really get rolling. Or you could save for a really strong spell upgrade that will carry you a long way. There is a conjuration skill called houndlord that lets you start each level with 8 hellhounds around you. It's an amazing ability for giving you breathing room and the dogs actually do really well on their own - but shine if you invest into more pet buffs.

At the same time you could buy most of the level 1 spells to carry you through the early game. Those hounds are great if you get 8 but sometimes you only get 3-4 for optimal placement.

Take a peek at the soul harvest skill. This can let you use your dark skills over and over as "free clears". If you buy and upgrade toxic burst with either a nature or dark circle (because it is dark and nature) you can get the spell and many upgrades for very cheap. It's a spell that has value all through the game. It's only downside is that there are poison immune enemies (but there is a fix for that with poison sting).

What is the value in spells you can use over and over? It means you can cast them "at no cost". This can save tremendously with mana potions. Another example is if you buy the word skill that gives you one cast of each word you know when you clear a level. Word of Chaos, Beauty and Ice are all extremely powerful but expensive. If you could cram them into your build they would give you a lot of room to "stretch" while you wait for the things you really want to upgrade to win. I wouldn't go for that strategy normally because that's a lot of cost but it gives you almost golden stopwatch levels of power every time once per floor.

My favorite school of magic has to be Dark. I prefer dark is because Death Bolt can reach over 100 damage per cast if you keep leveling it up (with a 7 point upgrade). If you combine this with the enchantment Death Cleave you can clear out a level very quickly. That being said Death Cleave is just an amazing spell and I kinda feel like the game is intended for you to use it to win. It also gets very broken with the Dark skill that gives you a 30% chance to get dark spells back when dark magic kills something.

Should you use Death Bolt every time and keep trying until it works? No. It just happens to be my favorite because you can get 100 hp minion tanks to help you clear levels.

Should you go dark every game then? No that would get boring. The idea here is to get you to read through all the skills and pick some synergy with your build. Yes that's a lot of reading because there are a ton of spells and skills. If the opportunity presents itself when you have points available and a good shine then don't feel bad about investing heavily in one direction or another.

But if you do go for dark magic then you can use Death Cleave pretty much "at will" and be sure you will get charges back.

Fire is another great investment because you can lower enemy fire resistance with a skill you can invest in later.

What about word combo synergy? If you buy the Word skill that lets you cast each word spell you know once per level "for free" (gain 1 charge per level clear). If you have about 10 points free and and find a word portal you could pickup either word of beauty, ice or chaos. Some rooms are wickedly tough but these can make them super easy clears. These are expensive abilities but these three words can stun or freeze entire rooms full of enemies (including gates). Depending on the spawns you might kill 90% of the enemies except for some really tough bosses. This opens the door for a perfect use of the dice that deal 666 damage to 6 enemies.

As you move to harder content there will be more enemies that have resistances to multiple elements. This makes it hard for you to go all in on one strategy - but that can still work if you do it right. The smarter plan however is to have multiple damage types so you don't have to "skip" rooms that have items, shrines or circles you really want to utilize.

Count Your Points

As we said before you're going to get about 72 points before the big fight. If you can be a little patient here and there you can stretch that total. If for example you buy 5 first level spells those 5 points will get you a high volume of spells. You don't even have to buy 5 spells. One or two can go a long way and you can always get another 1 point one later. Icicle is great for a double hit on an enemy with 1 shield with no investment.

Note too that all those level 1 spells are sorcery spells so Arch Sorcerer makes them way better for a minimal investment. You are guaranteed to eventually get a nature/ice/etc shrine when you have a few points free later. This lets you turn Icicle into an incredibly cheap freeze power.

It makes the game harder but I prefer to try and upgrade when I have lots of points and a circle. Doing so will likely get you killed early some of the time but it has a long term payoff.

Let's take a look at Death Cleave. Assuming you are standing on an enchantment/dark or arcane circle it will cost you 4 points (all accounting here assumes you are on a circle unless it says otherwise). For one more point you can get 4 extra charges. But the cascade range for 2 points really changes the spell as it now works from range 8 instead.

*If* you were off the circle 4 extra charges would cost 2 points and the +3 duration would cost 3 points. Meanwhile you could get the Arch Enchanter skill for 6 points which would get you +2 charges and 3 duration for 7 points (would be 6 if discounted).

Where am I going with this? Say you get to an enchant circle with 5 free points. Buy the skill and the 1 extra charge. It might work out better in the long run to buy Arch Enchanter later if you are planning to get any other enchant spells for your build. Later when you find another appropriate circle you can buy the cascade upgrade on discount.

*random tip* but remember you can for example cast Death cleave before you enter a rift. It will cost you 1 total duration but will help your 'action economy' when loading into the level.

To make a long story short you should make a build for this game with 80-90 points and assume you cant ever buy the things you want on discount.

Breaking Walls

Quite often the monster spawners on a level are all over the place. You either then have to break walls or teleport. Sometimes teleport is the better option (see above) but you will eventually have to get your hands dirty and be able to break walls.

What's the best way to break walls then?

Blazerip is 1 freaking point on an arcane circle. You're crazy not to buy this skill - but the targeting is funky and can often be really annoying. You totally get what you pay for - However this spell is a complete steal on an Arcane Circle. Buy it for one point instead of 2, and get both of the upgrades for 2 points instead of 2 points each. In other words you can get a fully upgraded spell for 3 points. But most of the time I would buy Voidbeam anway.

Voidbeam is way better. It ignores line of sight too and you can get this to deal up to 61 damage for only 3 points on a circle. Have you tried using Voidbeam with deathcleave yet? OMG.

Earthquake can break walls but obeys line of sight and only has a 50% chance to work. But it can apparently also fill in void spaces. I have not used this myself because of the LoS problem.

Meteor Shower is the king of wrecking levels because you can cast it and them let it channel for a while.

Arcane Combustion is a skill that can upgrade your arcane damage spells to break walls with a burst effect on kill. This can be very dangerous but also very fun. It also tremendously increases your damage per cast. And it combos well with Death Cleave.

Void Orb is another spell that can break walls but moves randomly on its own. Do you want to leave things to chance? It does however avoid LoS and creates an effect that lasts for a while to do damage over time. This can be useful but considering how I end up using Voidbeam I would always take that instead.

How To Prevent Monster Spawns?

The most simple way that comes to mind for me is Void Beam. High damage, good range, ignores LoS and can combo with Death Cleave.

Obviously if you can safely spawn next to them and kill them then you should do that.

Teleporting is another really good way to get around to the monster spawners that otherwise might overwhelm you.

Blazerip can open a path or maybe even target the gate directly.

But what if you don't want the level to end?

Once you get Soul Harvest, Death bolt and Soul Battery you can farm some levels a bit. Don't be afraid to "waste" a few mana potions to add 20-30 points of damage on your Death Bolt per level. Once you get it to around 90 damage it gains a critical point where it will pretty much kill anything until you get to the 200 hp monster range.

A perfect example on how to farm is if you have a living enemy you can kill with Death Bolt next to an exploding enemy spawner. The minion keeps going for the exploder and keeps dying. Meanwhile Death bolt is "leveling up".

If you're willing to waste some potions and take the time to farm it is most definitely worth it. If you can kill a titan (225 hp monster) with a single cast then you get a free 225 hp minion.

Dark Example Combo

Ok so we said we weren't going to do a cookie cutter build - but that might be why you came to this guide in the first place. I didn't flesh out all the upgrades you will need to get some of the synergy going because what you buy and when is something that will change with every game. If you can save points then you can plan to get way more than what I have here.

My favorite plan is invest heavily in Dark magics because I can get them back pretty much indefinitely. How does the build work? You cast Death Cleave before going into a level and then you cast whatever spell you need to chain kill. If there are lots of walls cast Voidbeam (this gets even better at blowing walls apart if you get the.

Dark is supremely powerful for being spell efficient and good at killing everything pretty much except:

Constructs

Demons

Undead

Shielded enemies

Poison immune enemies (see acidity upgrade on poison sting)

So then the question becomes how do we kill everything else? Let's look at a 72 point build with things I want.

Early Stuff

1 - Death Bolt

1- Icicle

1- Poison Sting

1- Magic Missile

1- Icicle freeze upgrade (on a circle)

7- Soul Battery (death bolt upgrade)

2- Toxin Burst

3- Toxin Burst Damage upgrade

2- Poison Sting acidity upgrade

3- Combust Poison

*notes*: you don't need everything here but these are some key things to getting you early kill power without chugging tons of mana potions. Try to buy Toxin Burst and poison sting upgrades very early with a shrine discount. It can give a lot of long lasting punch to what you already have. Once you have some meaningful poison buildup get combust poison.

Skills that you want later

7 - Void Lord : charges, damage and range for Arcance skills.

4- Cracklevoid: deal arcane damage and then deal that much lightning damage to up to 2 enemies in a 6 tile burst.

*note* : cracklevoid's value is that it will deal lightning damage and basically double our arcane output.

What happens with Glittering Dance and Death Cleave? Will that trigger a 3 spell aarcane combo if the cleave casts an arcane 3 times in sequence? Absolutely!

Critical purchases that you need whenever you can get them in the build

5- Death Cleave

3- Cascade Range for Death Cleave

7- Dark Lord

7- Soul Harvest

5- Collected Agony OR Horror (your choice)

*note*: this is the critical portion of the build that makes it viable. You could actually skip Dark lord and get something way more "fun". Hungry Dead+ Horror is probably a better long term investment for more difficult levels.

Utility spells

2- Blazerip (try to buy this for one point on a circle for emergency wall breaks/gate kills)

4- Void Beam - upgrade this heavily and you will not regret it.

5- Teleport

*note*: everything above this line in total costs 71 points. It's enough to klll the final boss and will overall be very health/mana efficient.

Summons / minion upgrades

4- Blue Lion

4- Natural vigor

4- Holy bolt upgrade for Blue Lion

4 - Minion regeneration - this one is totally optional

*note*: The lion can be upgraded with a holy bolt that will help you tremendously against dark targets but that costs an extra 4 points. It has 50% physical and arcane resist without any cost and shields you and allies. This guy is very good for fixing one of holes in your powerset.

You could instead go for the Houndlord skill or Bone Guard.

You don't even need a summon but it can help tremendously.

Final thoughts :

There are a ton of different directions you could go with.

You could play around with the Unholy Alliance skill and get free holy casting after casting a higher tier dark skill. Since the dark spells are "free" you could chain them into a free holy spell with a minimal holy investment. Obviously that would be better if you had a holy circle so you could buy the spell and skill on discount. You could take the poison elements out of the build and refit for holy/dark combo.

You can add in Arcane combustion but be careful because adding in chain explosions when you are already chain casting is a great way to kill yourself. I've done it many times.

Don't forget to cast Death Cleave before going into the next room. In case you didn't know be aware you can cast it multiple times to stack the effect. If you cast it 3 times in a row it will also proc Glittering Dance if you have that skill. In other words you can get charges of teleport back for free. For the last battle you can cast it as many times as you want and then mana potion before entering.

If you don't get your death bolt leveled up enough then you might want to consider Soul Tax. Just now I killed myself by accident on rift 23; before that happened however I had my death bolt hitting for over 450 with a bit of help from a shrine that added 50% damage. After a few tests I have found that Soul tax just isnt really helping me much.

You could shift a number of the points into ice if you wanted and skip poison. If you have a powerful aoe spell slotted with Disintegration Attunement from a shrine you can deal damage to a gates without line of sight and without moving. Once they are down to under 50 hp you can hit them with word of Ice.

Twilight Gaze is a very easy fix for dealing with undead if you don't have another solution. I'm probably going to use this from now on with dark as it is an incredibly strong ability.

Here's a summary of the damage when I beat the Menagerie with a similar build (always trying something new).

Apparently I didnt get a picture of the Disintegration Attunement Shrine but that deals 1 physical or arcane damage every time the spell deals 30 damage. If you hit 10 enemies with the spell and it deals 30 damage then you're going to do a ton of damage to everything. By the way this is the easiest way I have found to strip even the strongest shields (letting you skip the strip shield spell or magic missile upgrades).

Note that I used zero mana potions for this fight. I only used the troll crown and the stone shield so I could pick up some other items.

In short my dark bolt+death cleave trivialized everything except level 25 and the poison related skills turned the boss into a complete joke. In case you were wondering you can use the Melting Armor skill to lower fire resists on big targets that like to heal, have a high health pool or are prone to resurrect. Upon resurrection they will keep the fire debuffs you apply.

How did I cast Magic Missile 50 times? It was cast on one of those splitting bone masses repeatedly with Death Cleave.

There must be some kind of bug with the Starfire skill because Combust Poison did over 6,000 damage and Starfire only dealt about 800 damage.

Rift Selection Matters

Which portal you take matters tremendously. When possible clear more difficult rooms to get more items or better shrine/circle access.

But be careful to look at all the enemies because some of them are way more dangerous than you might think because it spawns something that you don't know what it does or what resistances it has.

What are the Long term goals?

Get lots of Ruby Hearts - until we have about 200 hp

Try to hoard mana/hp potions

Get our better spells upgraded with a nice shrine bonus

Use Circles to buy lots of upgrades so we get to increase our total point values.

Get items we can use to make rooms easy

Stay Alive - dont forget this one because dying ends the run

Be aware that it can be totally worth it to spend most of your really powerful items like the stopwatch to get access to a circle you need or a shrine that has game changing potential.

Do not hesitate to waste an item if you have more than 10 types of items. An energy shield for example is way more valuable than an Earth Crown.

Here are some examples of shrines that are absolutely game changing.

The Oaken Shrine is the reason I even bothered trying the Blue Lion spell in the first place; putting that shrine on a summon that already had 50% physical protection made it incredibly hard to kill considering it makes shields.

The Propagation Shrine is amazing on Death Cleave. Even if you have it fully upgraded it only gives you a 50% bonus on the original value instead of the current range. Still having 10 range cascade was very powerful.

Torment Srhine is an almost automatic gg with death bolt and death cleave.

Here are a few more shrines to consider visiting. The Otherworldly shrine is absolutely devastating if you put it on a spell like Void beam. You can make a 60 damage arcane spell suddenly hit for an exta 30 holy and another 30 dark. This can be a complete game changer because suddenly you don't need to buy spells to deal with X category of enemies.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2599285862

Become a Rift Master