Mind Over Magic – Things You Wish You’d Known Sooner

Useful Tips

So I’m loving the game, but of course there’s a learning curve and I know I felt a tad silly after learning things that could have made my life easier.

• Get quilting as soon as you can. Haulers were a game changer for me. No more stuff got left to be destroyed in the rain. No more staff/students wasting their time carrying stuff around. I need to pause sweepers when a student wants to clean, and that’s the only micromanaging I needed to do.
• Check the room requirements BEFORE you start building. Particularly if you’re playing relentless as the requirements change. It’s possible to demolish/rebuild, but that’s a pain and life is so much easier if you planned ahead (if the devs give us a ‘plan build’ option I would be happy!)
• Even when you unlock higher tier wands, do routinely summon lower level students. You need adept scrolls for hiring new staff, so if you stop summoning tier one students, you stop being able to get new staff.
• Medals are great, but don’t sweat it. If you’re not hiring a student it kinda doesn’t matter if they’re missing a difficult medal. You’ll miss out on a scroll or two, but you’ll easily make that back with the next student.
• Slower learning (lower level classroom, lower level teacher etc…) can be an advantage. It means students have time to get their medals before maxing their magic skills. (Particularly important on relentless).
• Don’t hang onto your staff/students. Retire/graduate/hire them regularly. Once you get staff good enough to retire emeritus then it’s worth waiting a bit longer. But otherwise once you get a better candidate, replace the old one.
• Croa corpses spawn spectral croa. So use or destroy them AT ONCE.
• Staggered schedules are your friend. Having multiple staff schedules means you always have someone on hand to deal with emergencies.
• Plant your sporeshrooms (and any plant that has negative effects) in a different room to the rest, and set that room to only be accessed by people who won’t be affected (the ghost headmaster, quilted servants and I think shattered).
• Prioritise getting decent sleeping, eating and recreation rooms. It can be worth having multiples so that staff and students get their own (as they get separate bonuses). Maintaining conviction, particularly for staff (raven cult members, I’m looking at you…) can be a pain, so this really helps.
• Prioritise getting a decent kitchen. Anything that speeds up cooking is a bonus. Higher tier foods give conviction bonuses instead of taking conviction away, and that’s SO HELPFUL in keeping staff happy.
• Workshops then later mages study/tower are so useful for speeding up research (the specialised workshops are also helpful, but aside from the kitchen I haven’t found the speed bonus super useful yet). This makes life a lot easier for higher tier research.
• Certain rare ingredients can either only be got via combat or combat is the most reliable means to obtain them. Once you’ve got some decent staff/students, progressively clear the underschool. One area will regress if not warded so you can farm it for battles. There is also a repeatable battle with the burrower larva which is farmable. This means you don’t need to worry about running out of fights.
• Get familiar with the schedule and priority systems. They’re the best way to ensure that tasks get done, and medal criteria is reached. The consume system can be essential if your student needs to eat a rare foodstuff, just set it as not allowed for everyone else so that it’s available to them.