Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
Our Portal Knights mage build details attributes, skills and equipment to beat the game and hard mode bosses. Specialising in magic this class utilises the elemental weaknesses of enemies to maximise damage output. This spell based playstyle is unique compared to the ranger and warrior although is generally a harder class to play successfully due to the lower health pool. The guide is focused on wand and staff mage builds although also details the unique scythe build that transforms players into a battle mage.
Table of Contents:
– Attributes
– Talents
– Skills
– Equipment
Portal Knights Mage Build Attributes
The mage has the primary attributes of intelligence and wisdom which increase your spell damage and mana pool respectively. When building your mage place all your points into intelligence to maximise damage output while reserving points for constitution to give you a small but important health pool increase. This amount will depend on your playstyle preferences and comfort level but I recommend between 20 or 40 points although every constitution point will lower your damage output. While a larger mana pool sounds like it provides useful utility in practice your mana needs can be easily met by equipment and potions.
For those that want to experiment with a Portal Knights mage scythe build you’ll want to prioritise strength as this improves your melee damage with the scythe weapon archetype instead.
Portal Knights Mage Build Talents
Like other Portal Knights class options the mage has flexibility in their build depending on how far you have progressed to balance damage, survivability and utility. I recommend using the following as a default option and adjusting to your preferences:
Frost Armour > Master of Elements > Spell Crush > Mana Thief > Magic Armour > Blood Magic
For a detailed breakdown of your options and when to select each for your mage refer to the below:
Level 2 Talents
Level 2 talents for the mage are based on your choice of weapon and should be regularly swapped to reflect your currently equipped weapon. Generally this will be wand or staff unless you are using the advanced scythe build.
Level 5 Talents
- Mana Shield: Mana shield can be an okay talent to select early on during your Portal Knights adventure as it reduces the damage you take to health when you have less potions or other methods to restore your health available. Later game though when you need mana to cast spells frost armour is a better option provided you can survive without having mana shield absorb damage. For hard mode bosses in particular this will be based to how much constitution you have decided to invest.
- Frost Armour: A reliable slow on enemies that hit you with melee attacks which can sometimes be unavoidable. As noted above this talent also has the benefit of keeping your mana pool for spell casting rather than absorbing damage.
Level 10 Talents
- Master of Elements: A huge source of damagethat makes this the clear choice within this tier.
- Transcendence: Not a useful talent as there are other ways to restore mana and you are severely hurting your damage if you don’t use Master of Elements.
Level 15 Talents
- Spell Rush: A strong reduction in spell cooldown which can be a good option when you start using spells regularly and don’t have any critical strike modifiers on your gear to help reduce your spell cooldowns through other means.
- Spell Crush: The best option once you acquire critical strike modifiers like mana strike and spell slinger that turn the guaranteed critical hit into mana or allow you to reset spell cooldowns to chain spells together for higher overall damage.
Level 20 Talents
- Meditation: While all of the talents in this tier focus on providing methods to regenerate mana it’s unlikely that you’ll stand still for longer than 5 seconds in most battles that makes this increased regeneration lacking compared to other options. It can be an option when clearing large content like dungeons though which allow you to stop between monster fights though.
- Summoning of the Orbs: This talent relies on having enemies around you to defeat which isn’t always possible depending on the content. If you have the ability to rest between fights Meditation is easier to use.
- Mana Thief: The most reliable source of mana from this tier as its effective against regular monsters and bosses and doesn’t require a playstyle adjustment.
Level 25 Talents
- Magic Armour: Given a mage will always seek to fight from range spell damage will be the bulk of damage that you take to your health pool. Being able to reduce this by 30% is a massive advantage and your best option as it is always active.
- Impact Armour: As noted above a mage should be avoiding melee range at all times so the additional armour is generally not going to be an important factor. This option also has the negative of only activating after defeating an enemy with a short duration.
- Refreshment: Boosts mana received although players have ample other methods to maintain their mana levels that make it not worth giving up the spell damage reduction in this talent tier.
Level 30 Talents
- Arcane Concentration: If you are completing content that lets you easily keep a 10 metre distance at all times then this can be a good investment for damage. This will generally be the case when you are grinding lower level content for resources or events.
- Illusion: Every class has the get out of a jail free card in Portal Knights and this is the mage variant. If you feel more comfortable in a boss fight with this equipped then use it but you’ll likely have better survivability with blood magic below.
- Blood Magic: A great survival and utility talent that makes it the stand out within this tier and provides you a regular source of health gain based on damage.
Portal Knights Mage Build Skills
The mage uses the greatest range of spells in Portal Knights due to their large mana pool and talents that buff spell damage beyond their base values. While there are some clear best skills to equip having a broad range in your inventory to adjust to the element type is also important. This makes practically every spell a viable option against the right enemy and includes heal, lightning, planetary strike, fireball, light bomb and frost storm. The notable skills of the build that are useful against all enemies regardless of element are:
- War Cry: A boost to damage when playing solo that is easy to use and when in a party you should let the person with the highest strength stat cast this as that improves its effectiveness.
- Poison Rain: A reliable spell across all enemy types and particularly electric due to the earth damage. The strength of this skill is that it hits multiple times that adds significant damage and can trigger your talents like mana thief for each poison orb that falls.
- Spell Damage Flask: A consumable item that boosts damage and is best reserved for fighting bosses until you have the necessary resources spare to craft them regularly.
Portal Knights Mage Build Equipment
Just like the other Portal Knights classes building the right set of equipment for the mage takes some time to achieve as you farm the best pieces from bosses and chests. The mage also has to consider swapping weapons to the monsters you are facing for elemental advantages where even lower level weapons of the right element have a use.
Your other mage equipment pieces should focus on the following statistics:
- Multi Strike Chance & Additional Strikes: When combined these two stats on equipment provide a significant damage increase and turn your basic attack into multiple attacks that synergises with your talents.
- Critical Strike Utility: With Spell Crush giving you a guaranteed critical after spell cast as a mage you’ll want to find a piece of gear that gives you critical strike utility such as spell slinger for the reset to your spells on critical strike.
- Critical Strike Chance & Damage: Serves as a secondary damage stat on equipment pieces that aren’t available to spawn with multi strike.
Some potential items in each equipment slot for your mage build are as follows:
Weapon
- Titanium Masterwork Dreadwand: The best default weapon option for your mage given this item has inherent critical strike chance and damage alongside a small mana pool boost.
- Other Elemental Wand: Whichever is the highest damage wand you have available for the element you want to use to counter a specific enemy type.
Head
- Magi General Crown
- Outlaw Hood
Torso
- Elite Eliminator Jerkin
- Primal Unleased Chest Piece
- Magi General Habiliment
Arms
- High Reaper Gloves
Legs
- Gladiator Champion Legbraces
- Avenger Legbraces
Cape
- Cloak of the Eternal Watcher
Ring
- Ring of Divine Protection
- Ring of Fire
