If you never heard about this game I invite you to look over my old overview of Nine Chronicles. The game evolved but the basics are the same.

The spells from swords and rings have always been desired by the players, but since the blacksmith rework we can have spells on all slots without having the stat penalty, so let’s see how you can use them in your build.

We can divide the spells into 2 categories 

Damage or offensive spells: 

They are on rings and weapons and come in two variants: single target (double attacks and elemental blow) and AoE - area of effect - that hit all the enemies from the wave. 

The double attack spells from the sword appear like two critical strikes in a row. The damage written on the spell represents the total of the two back-to-back attacks, divided into x0.35 and x0.65. 

The spells on the rings have their total damage divided into even more tiny hits.
※ Magma Tsunami = Damage total will be divided into 0.185 0.185 0.185 0.185 0.26.

The elemental blows and the ring spells have their own special animations. 

Buffs 

There is one for every attribute: 

• Non-elemental rings and swords give an attack buff of 50%
• Neck improve the hit by 75%
• Belts increase the speed by 75%
• And chest the defense by 50%

Leveling up the item doesn’t improve the spell power. 

Some important aspects:

• You can only cast one spell per round.
• In the round you cast a spell you don’t do your normal attack. So if you cast a buff you do zero damage.
• The buffs last for a number of rounds - those are counted based on the attacks your character does.
• As far as I can tell, the buffs can’t refresh themselves while they are active. So you will always have some rounds without them
• The damage spells do not benefit from the combo system (no increased damage and crit chance)
• Some spells have a cooldown - so they can’t proc multiple times in a row. The damaging spells from the rings have a cooldown but the swords do not. 

The enemy defense actually influences the damage done.

Damage dealt = ( Skill dmg - Defender's def ) * ( Element correction) * ( if critical|Critical correction )

Spells and hit

Spells cannot miss and the choice of your character action is made before the hit roll.

So, in principle that means that if your character relies heavily on offensive spells, you can get away with less hit that one based on attack. 

How is the chance to proc actually calculated

In case you expected it to be straightforward, I'm sorry, it’s not. That percentage you see on your spell is quite far from the actual chance of casting it.

You can think of what action your character will do in a round as a lottery, let’s say a wheel of fortune. Each single spell you equip gets added to the pool of possible results. Your basic, normal attack is there to start with, with a huge chance to happen - 100 

So each and every chance to proc gets added to the pool and one number is extracted - and whatever action is tied to that number happens. So they don’t add up to 100, the pool just keeps on growing, and the real percentage is the amount that proc fills the pool.

The actual formula is:
Stated proc chance / (100+each spell proc chance) * 100 = the real chance

Let’s see how this works

If the player has no spells he has 100 out of 100 chances to do a normal attack.

Once he adds a sword, with let’s say 50 chance, he will have 50 out of 150 so 33 % chance to cast that spell, and 100 out of 150 = 66% - for a normal attack.

If that sword would have a 100 stated chance to cast, it would actually only happen 50% of the time. Even an item with 200 chance to cast, would in practice only happen 200 out of 300 so 66% of the time. 

Another practical example. 

An old +10 magma ring has a stated proc chance of 18%. But in reality, if it's the only spell equipped it has

18/(100+18)=15.2 chance

If the player is also using a spell sword with 46% chance, the magma ring now has

18/(100+18+46)=10.9 chance

So if you care about doing one specific effect, having a ton of other spells is not helping much. But the more spells you add, the bigger the change of doing something special instead of a normal attack.

This is how having spells upgraded at +7 on all the slots would look like. As you can see, you would still do normal attacks half of the time

What spells should you use?

As long as you have an item with all the attributes and the spell, it’s probably ok to use it.

But I’d say there is a big exception: if you are using one of the OLD spellswords. Those do a ton of damage so I'd personally not wear too many other spells around them so that they can proc more often. The big exception would be a nice speed belt with a speed buff. And I'd also add in an AoE spell on the ring for some campaign stages.

I’d also avoid having too many spells in the arena. As I said at the start, each round you cast a buff means you do zero dmg - and the battles are too short to count on the buffs to proc and be around enough to matter. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, the spells are very strong, worth using - and most likely will be needed in order to beat the new stages. 

On my zero NCG project the new spells made a huge difference - I got from 157 to 177 and I’m still going, just waiting for some craft to finish. But I must confess that the battles are quite random: if the defense and speed buff happen early - I might get 3 stars. If not, I might die at only 1 star.

Just take into consideration that in the arena having too many might not work that great.

Thanks for grinding with me, and see you next time!