-_-/ , /\ (_ / || || (_ --_ _-_ _-_ ,._-_ _-_ =||= /'\\ =||= --_ ) || \\ || || || \\ || || || || _/ )) ||/ || || ||/ || || || || (_-_- \\,/ \\,/ \\, \\,/ \\, \\,/ \\, /\\,/\\, /| || || _ _ || || || < \, \\/\\ < \, ||=|= || /-|| || || /-|| ~|| || || (( || || || (( || |, \\,\\, \/\\ \\ \\ \/\\ _- Secret of Mana Magic and Spell Guide Version 1.2 Serenitys_Cat, Resident Feline on the Firefly-Class Transport Serenity First Posted 09/07/2009 Table of Contents 1.0 Version History 2.0 Introduction 3.0 Terms and Formats 4.0 The Elemental Spirits 4.1 Undine 4.2 Gnome 4.3 Sylphid 4.4 Salamando 4.5 Shade 4.6 Lumina 4.7 Luna 4.8 Dryad 5.0 Frequently Asked Questions 6.0 Credits and Disclaimers ************************ 1.0 Version History ************************ Version History: - Version 1.3 Corrected several damage inconsistencies and updated my opinions of some spells and their usefulness. - Version 1.2 Smoothed out some wording and fixed the effect of Evil Gate, which I apparently had wrong all this time! Who knew? - Version 1.1 Fixed some inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the document. - Version 1.0 Initial release. ********************* 2.0 Introduction ********************* Greetings and salutations to you all. I am Serenitys_Cat, follower of fantasy and fiction, and this is my first FAQ on GameFAQs. Yay! This is a guide written to describe the various effects and usages of the many fantastic spells in that marvelous game, Secret of Mana. I have played this game many a time, and I have noticed in myself that in a typical playthrough, I never used anything other than the offensive elemental spells of the Sprite and the Cure Water spell of the Girl to get me through. Now this can win you the game perfectly adequately, without any trouble or fuss. However, there are forty-eight spells in this game, each with a unique and bedazzling effect, and to only go through the game using seven of them is a terrible shame. In order to help other players not make this same saddening mistake that I have made so many times, I have here compiled the effects and various uses of all forty-eight spells in the game. How many MP does Dark Force cost? Can you multitarget Moon Energy? What is the only spell that can be cast on treasure chests? The answers to all these questions and more can be found in this document. I sincerely hope it will prove of use to you on your journey to save Mana. -Serenitys_Cat ************************** 3.0 Terms and Formats ************************** I have this guide set up as follows. Under the heading of each elemental spirit, I address the Sprite and the Girl's spells separately. Each spell also has its own separate section. NAME OF SPELL (MP Cost) Purpose: What effect the spell has. Offensive spells cause damage. Statistics spells affect parameters such as ATK and DEF. Healing spells restore HP or MP. Curative spells remove status ailments from your allies. Saber magic enchants the target's weapons. Status effects place various conditions upon the targets. Multitarget: Whether the spell can target multiple targets with one casting. Note that damage dealt by spells is split between all targets, so a spell that does 100 damage to one target will do 50 each to two targets or 25 each to four targets. Stackable: This refers to a phenomenon where a spell has such a long animation time that the caster can cast the same spell again before damage is actually dealt. This "stacks" the damage, preventing the enemy from moving and forcing it to cumulatively absorb the damage of every spell cast, up to a maximum of 999. This means you can force a 20- HP Rabite to take 999 damage from a series of seven stacked Lava Wave spells. Stackable spells generally make leveling up a spirit substantially easier, because you can find one enemy and cast spells until your MP runs out instead of finding a new enemy for each cast. Added Effects: Clarification of the spell's effect, i.e. "Lowers DEF" or "Revives fallen ally." I will then finish the spell off with a full description of its effects and several occasions where it might prove useful. Enough talk. On with the show! ****************************** 4.0 The Elemental Spirits ****************************** ############# 4.1 UNDINE ############# Undine is the first spirit you receive power from. The Sprite will usually stop using Undine magic against anything except ice-vulnerable bosses once it receives the power of Gnome, but the Girl will be using Undine magic until the final boss battle, owing to the restorative powers of Cure Water. Essentially, Undine is a primarily curative spirit, so don't expect much offensive punch out of her. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UNDINE - SPRITE VERSION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FREEZE (2 MP) Purpose: Offensive Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: None Ah, Freeze. The first spell in the game, and usually the only one people use until they free Gnome. Freeze is the first of what I call the "cheap spells": the stackable elemental spells with high damage output and a nice, cheap, 2-MP casting cost. Much to my surprise, however, it is also the strongest of said "cheap spells," dishing out the most damage of all the 2-MP spells - almost as much as the 3-MP Earth Slide! There aren't really that many enemies weak to Undine throughout the game, but a lot of the ones that are (Red Drop, Emberman) are pretty damn annoying, so one cheap blast of Freeze in such situations can go an awfully long way, probably further than you were expecting. I think most people forget about Freeze as soon as they get Gnome - an error I am certainly guilty of myself - but in actuality, you should be using it throughout the entire game as one of your cheapest and most reliable damaging spells. ACID STORM (3 MP) Purpose: Offensive/ Statistics Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Lowers DEF This is one of those spells that’s good in theory, but not so good in practice. Acid Storm does water-based damage - slightly less than Freeze - and lowers the defense of everything it hits. This sounds like it would be great on bosses, but in truth magic is so much more powerful than physical attacks in this game that the extra damage added by the defense-down status is not going to surpass the damage of simply casting two Freeze spells. And let's not even go into the uselessness of using Acid Storm on non-boss enemies. If you're going to use Acid Storm at all, it'll be early in the game, when the Sprite doesn't have enough MP to chain-cast bosses to death; bosses like Kilroy and Jabberwocky may outlast the Sprite's MP pool, so using Acid Storm to increase the physical damage you'll do after the Sprite is done casting isn't a bad idea. However, from around the Great Viper onward, you'll probably never cast this spell again. HP ABSORB (2 MP) Purpose: Offensive/ Healing Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Drains HP equal to damage done; never deals more damage than the target's current HP Freeze may be the most-used Undine spell, but to be perfectly honest, HP Absorb is probably the best. As you probably could have guessed, HP Absorb drains HP from its target and heals the Sprite for an equal amount. However, since HP Absorb can actually be MULTITARGETED, you can sap HP from multiple enemies at the same time, easily fully healing the Sprite. Although this spell doesn't do as much damage as Freeze (and, for the record, will NEVER do more damage than an enemy has HP remaining,) the added healing effect is well worth it. Just be sure you never cast this spell on an undead enemy such as a Zombie, however, or else the absorption will be reversed and the Sprite will actually LOSE HP. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ UNDINE - GIRL VERSION ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ CURE WATER (2 MP) Purpose: Healing Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Restores HP Here we have the best spell in the game, no competition. Cure Water simply restores HP to your allies. It is cheap, it is multitargetable, and it is ridiculously effective. Always make leveling Undine for the Girl your first priority, simply to max out the recovery powers of Cure Water; no player should go without it. REMEDY (1 MP) Purpose: Curative Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Removes all status effects except Dead Remedy is always comforting to have around, but in reality, you'll probably be using it to get rid of status effects from trapped treasure boxes more often than from enemies. There really aren't many enemies that cause status effects, and by far the most common one - Moogle - can be cured with the Moogle Belt instead of Remedy anyway. This does not mean that Remedy is useless, however. Remedy has a power you might not expect; during its (LONG) spell animation, the targets are immune to damage. If you can tell that your enemy is charging up a powerful spell or attack, cast Remedy on your party; as long as the attack completes while your characters are surrounded in Remedy’s blue shimmer, you will take no damage. ICE SABER (2 MP) Purpose: Saber magic Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Adds “Frosty” property to weapons Ice Saber enchants your weapons with ice magic, adding the Water property to your physical attacks and causing them to sometimes Snowman their targets. Ice Saber is handy because Snowman enemies cannot move or attack, which means if you can Snowman all enemies on screen, you can run away from them all without fear of reprisal, allowing you to swiftly travel through long dungeons such as the Earth Palace. Snowmen are sadly invulnerable to all attacks made on them, so you can’t sneak some damage on them the way you can with Balloon, but Ice Saber can still be a lifesaver if you really need to get back to town and there is a horde of enemies in your way (Earth Palace, I'm looking at you!) ############ 4.2 GNOME ############ Gnome is notable for giving the Sprite its first power spell (Earth Slide,) but really offers little else. Although Defender is often lauded as a must-use spell, I find it quite pointless in comparison to Speed Up, let alone Lucid Barrier. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GNOME - SPRITE VERSION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GEM MISSILE (2 MP) Purpose: Offensive Multitarget: Yes Stackable: Yes Added Effects: None Gem Missile is slightly weaker than Freeze, but is otherwise identical, being a 2-MP spell that can target all enemies and be stacked on bosses. There are very few enemies weak to Earth to take advantage of it with, but most of those enemies are bosses and therefore important targets to use magic against, and conversely there are also very few enemies strong against Earth to resist this spell either, whereas many enemies resist Undine. If you don't know/ have the elemental weakness of an enemy, the 2-MP spells are usually the spells you'll want to default to, and Gem Missile is usually a safe bet due to the rarity of earth-resistant enemies, so I'm pretty fond of it. (It also has one of my favorite level-8.99 spell animations.) EARTH SLIDE (3 MP) Purpose: Offensive Multitarget: Yes Stackable: Yes Added Effects: None Earth Slide gets a lot of hype because, as a 3-MP spell, you'd expect it to be stronger than Freeze or Gem Missile, and you get it right before you fight several Earth-weak bosses in a row, making it a seemingly attractive option. In reality, however, Gem Missile is FAR more cost effective and Freeze is actually almost as powerful, making this poor spell nigh-obsolete in any real practical sense. You should never actually have to cast Earth Slide except to fulfill the needs of those annoying Crystal Orbs that require it. (It IS worth casting at least once at level 8.99 just to see the boosted animation, though, this I will admit!) SLOW DOWN (1 MP) Purpose: Statistics Multitarget: Yes Stackable: Yes Added Effects: Lowers SPD, HIT, EVD Slow Down is pretty worthless for the most part. It lowers three statistics, but unfortunately, none of those statistics are that useful. Most enemies’ evasion is far too low already for you to need to lower it further. However, there are a few enemies Slow Down is quite useful against, among them Chess Knights and all of the Drop enemies, and of course, its low MP cost and lack of damage makes it the ideal Gnome-leveling spell. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ GNOME - GIRL VERSION ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ DEFENDER (2 MP) Purpose: Statistics Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Raises DEF Like Acid Storm, Defender is a spell that is better on paper than in practice. Defender raises your defensive powers, meaning you take less damage from enemy physical attacks; however, it doesn’t last too long, meaning that you’ll have to be casting it constantly for it to be of much use. You would expect Defender to be useful during boss battles, but by the time the Girl’s Gnome magic is on a level that makes Defender last long enough to be efficient, most bosses will ignore physical attacks in favor of magical ones. To make things even worse, Lumina's Lucid Barrier will simply block all physical attacks, period, making Defender completely useless right at the point where it might have otherwise started lasting long enough to consider. SPEED UP (3 MP) Purpose: Statistics Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Raises HIT, EVD Speed Up grants a boost to HIT - although I've heard this aspect of the spell is bugged - and EVD. A high-leveled Speed Up spell will allow you to evade just about any physical attack thrown your way without problem. Unfortunately, Speed Up is limited early on by its short period of duration; although this will change as Gnome grows in experience, by that point Speed Up will be outshone (somewhat literally) by Lumina's Lucid Barrier, which just blocks all physical attacks outright. Speed Up is thus a good spell without the room to perform as it deserves. I often feel rather sorry for it. STONE SABER (4 MP) Purpose: Saber magic Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Adds “Petrify” property to weapons To enemies, Petrify equals instant death. That’s right: Stone Saber enables you to one-hit kill everything you poke. Granted, the rate of petrification isn’t nearly as good as Ice Saber’s rate of frostification, but instant death is quite a bit more powerful than frostification anyways, so I’d say that it evens out. This is unequivocally the best Saber to be using when you’re fighting your way through a long, difficult dungeon (coughcough-Pandora Ruins-coughcough). However, since bosses cannot be petrified, switch this Saber for another when entering the boss' chamber - unless the boss is weak to earth, of course. ############## 4.3 SYLPHID ############## Sylphid is the first spirit who gives the Girl a seriously dangerous spell, in — of all things — Balloon. To the Sprite, Sylphid doesn’t offer nearly as much; only the prosaic Air Blast and the overpriced Thunderbolt. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SYLPHID - SPRITE VERSION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AIR BLAST (2 MP) Purpose: Offensive Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: None Although Air Blast is kind of cool to watch, it is unfortunately not stackable, which puts it at a disadvantage in comparison to the other "cheap spells." In spite of this, however, if you're smart, you'll find yourself using Air Blast a lot. A surprising amount of bosses are weak to Sylphid’s magic, and since Air Blast is half as expensive as Thunderbolt and about 0.80% as powerful, it is by far the more cost-efficient way to eliminate such bosses. Otherwise, put this spell on the shelf in favor of Freeze or Gem Missile. THUNDERBOLT (4 MP) Purpose: Offensive Multitarget: Yes Stackable: Yes Added Effects: None Thunderbolt is supposed to be some sort of power-nuke spell, but it utterly fails at this. It does about the same damage as Earth Slide for an extra magic point, and when you have Air Blast for half the cost, you should never have to use this spell for anything. If you really want to nuke something, go for Burst, not this overpriced livewire. SILENCE (2 MP) Purpose: Status effect Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Prevents magic use, reverses control pad directions Silence is an often-forgotten spell that... kind of deserves to be forgotten. Despite the name, its effect is that it confuses your enemies, causing them to move in the opposite direction as they would normally and forget that they can use spells. In and of itself, this isn’t a bad effect — great for preventing Burst spells from Mad Mallards, for example — except Sylphid grants the Girl the Balloon spell, which is superior to Silence in every way. Let the Sprite stick to killing things; immobilizing them is the Girl’s domain. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SYLPHID - GIRL VERSION ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ANALYZE (1 MP) Purpose: Informative Multitarget: No Stackable: Yes Added Effects: Shows enemy/ Crystal Orb weaknesses, reveal traps Analyze is a useful little spell that will show you an enemies’ stats, a Crystal Orb’s weak element, or whether a treasure chest is trapped or not. Any respectable guide will make Analyze’s first two uses superfluous, but there is no other way to ascertain whether a treasure chest is trapped or not aside from opening it, at which point it’s too late. When you first enter a new area, be sure to Analyze every treasure chest that drops to ensure you don’t end up unconscious or petrified. (Incidentally, Analyze is the ONLY spell in the game that can target treasure chests. Now you know!) BALLOON (2 MP) Purpose: Status effect Multitarget: Yes Stackable: Yes Added Effects: Prevents enemy action and movement Balloon is inarguably one of the game's top five spells. For a measly 2 MP, you can immobilize all enemies on the screen. They can’t move, they can’t attack, and they cannot defend themselves in any way while you whale away at them to your heart’s content. When it wears off, you can recast it again — and again, and again, and again, as many times as it takes. Balloon seems to work on just about any enemy, albeit not on bosses; however, it really doesn’t need to affect bosses to make itself the Girl’s ultimate and often overlooked weapon. It may not do any damage, but then, it doesn’t need to. Give Balloon a try. You will not be disappointed. (Also, its level 8.99 spell animation turns the common red balloon into a GIANT MOOGLE BALLOON. BEST SPELL EVER.) THUNDER SABER (3 MP) Purpose: Saber magic Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: Raises critical hit rate (debatable; see description) If you have no idea what the elemental weakness of your enemy is (or if they just don't have one) but you still really want to apply a Saber effect for some reason, you might as well go with Thunder Saber. It has no added status effect, but it does raise your critical hit rate, and the natural damage boost applied by Saber magic is still in place. It’s good for dealing a lot of damage very quickly, which makes it handy, but difficult to say much else about. I've heard conflicting things about the Thunder Saber spell since writing this guide. User Regrs has informed me that Thunder Saber actually does nothing other than provide the basic Saber attack boost, and I read elsewhere that Thunder Saber can cause Balloon. I've never seen Thunder Saber cause Balloon, and I was quite sure that I deal more critical hits when Thunder Saber on than off, but that could very easily be coincidence. In short, Thunder Saber's real effect is a little up in the air and might be nothing at all. ################ 4.4 SALAMANDO ################ Salamando is notable for striking the weakness of a good fifth of the enemies in the game, and also for actually giving the Girl her first direct offensive spells. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SALAMANDO - SPRITE VERSION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FIREBALL (2 MP) Purpose: Offensive Multitarget: Yes Stackable: No Added Effects: None Salamando is offensive, offensive, offensive! There are very minor differences between the three Salamando spells of the Sprite; Fireball is the cheapest, the middle-most effective in damage, and the only one that does not stack. The inability to stack it makes it pretty useless in the long run for anything other than building Salamando levels for minimum MP. It's strong enough to be worth using on generic enemies you can one-shot with it, but all in all it's pretty meh in comparison to its big brothers. (At least until it hits level 8.99 and gets its incredibly amazing animation upgrade. At that point it is superior in aesthetics if nothing else.) LAVA WAVE (3 MP) Purpose: Offensive Multitarget: Yes Stackable: Yes Added Effects: None As Lava Wave is stackable, it is simultaneously the best boss-killer and the fastest (if not cheapest) leveling spell Salamando has to offer. To make up for this, Lava Wave does less damage than Exploder or Fireball, making it only worth using if you're ready to stack it up to high heaven. However, since that is probably your goal if you're using magic on a target, then this quality makes Lava Wave my fire spell of choice. Learn to "lava" it!