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I've had great success with 1h maging in tower this season (2022 Season 1), and I want to share what I learned. Further successes in 2022 season 2. And another!


Summary

Use 5 phase and nimble wakizashi of the same element (excluding dark/holy) with a buckler of the barrier/nimble. Put Silence, Slow, and Blind together on one keybind and spam that after weakening the monsters. Sleep also helps to survive until monsters are sufficiently debuffed.


Pros and Cons

Pros:
-1H mage in tower is fast. I managed most floors in less than 2 hours. The relevant day of the week bonus is a big boost to speed.
-It's fairly safe, too. Most floors I cleared with less than 15 spirit elixirs, with health elixirs being unnecessary.
-You get to share some equipment and proficiencies with an arena staff mage set.

Cons:
-Uses a lot of consumables, especially scrolls, mana potions, and mana elixirs. Aether shards are a huge help too, but expensive. Then again, going high in tower is always going to require a lot of consumables.
-Other styles get to focus fire, killing some monsters first and increasing safety for the rest of the round. 1H mage has difficulty doing this. This means that although 1H mage is usually safe, there's a narrow margin between "this is fine" and "oh shit I'm dying."
-If you don't like casting deprecating spells, this style is not for you.


Proficiency Factor

I recommend ignoring proficiency factor in favor of 5 phase. The reasoning is that proficiency factor depends on the monsters' level instead of the player's level. Thus, as you ascend the tower, you'll need more and more proficiency to keep up. It quickly becomes not worth it.

The maximum monster mitigation against your element's damage is 75. Imperil reduces this by 40 for elemental damage types, but only 25 for holy/dark. (Holy/dark compensate for weaker imperil with slightly stronger spells and a DoT, plus holy debuff reduces magic mitigation.) Day of the week bonus cuts off another 10. (By the way, if you start tower just before dawn for your day of the week, you can do two tower floors with day of the week bonus, though the first one you'll have only one attempt.) There's one more way aside from proficiency factor to reduce the remaining 25 mitigation, but it requires even more mana expenditure:

Dual Element Mage

I played cold mage, and fire spells have a chance to apply a status effect that reduces cold mitigation by 25. This is most effectively applied by the tier 3 (T3) fire spell. Casting T3 fire just before T3 cold increased my damage, but this effect diminished as my EDB went up. With high EDB, a T1 cold spell is very nearly as good. Is the extra mana expenditure worth a bit more speed? For me, I switched back to only casting cold spells and preferred the mana efficiency. Plus, T3 spells have longer cast time, which means more damage taken, so it's a little bit more dangerous to use dual element T3 spells.

This variation was inspired by Noni's zebra mage, which uses a T3 holy spell to boost your T3 dark spell.

Equipment and Items

As explained, 5 phase is best when the monster levels go above the player level. Until then you can use cotton. Aside from prof factor, elementalist armor also reduces mana cost and cast speed of your elemental spells, so it's not completely useless. I prefer the extra damage to kill monsters faster. The charged prefix is very helpful defensively. I got by with just two charged pieces and all magnificent armor, but with a very good legendary buckler of the barrier and a legendary wakizashi.

Nezu adds that cold and wind stand the best chance of survival. They inflict the most effective status effects for defense. How much of a difference does this make compared to fire and elec? I reached tower floor 100 quite comfortably using fire the next season, but maybe cold/wind would allow you to use more radiants (if you can find them) to clear faster. Holy and dark are dangerous choices due to higher mana costs, and slower cast times (so you take more damage), though still possible. Holy and dark also have weaker imperil, but that's more or less evened out by their increased damage.

For the weapon, a wakizashi of the nimble is best because it provides the most parry of any weapon. For the shield, buckler of the barrier provides the best mix of high block and low burden/interference. Buckler of the nimble is very nearly as good because your resist chance will be high enough that you're mostly worried about physical damage. A force shield with feather, aether, and lots of mana elixirs could work too, or a high block kite shield of protection.

For consumables, draughts, potions, elixirs, and scrolls should always be brought along to the tower battle. Aether shards are very good for 1H mage because it's mana hungry, and the magic accuracy is a big help both for debuffing and for dealing damage. Having a spare flower vase is great in case you get in over your head, since it increases evade and resist. Infusions are helpful, but not cost-effective. They don't last long enough to be worth buying, but if you have some that you can't sell go ahead and use them.


Deprecating Spells



I used 8 out of the 9 deprecating spells. Slotting the abilities can be tricky. If need be, you can skip Better Haste, Better Protection, Spike Shield, and Better Shadow Veil in favor of using scrolls. I'll list the deprecating spells in order of importance.

Weaken and Imperil are very important for any fighting style in tower. They have fast cast times and are spammable when fully upgraded. Apply weaken first. Imperil only helps when you're dealing damage.

Silence, Slow, and Blind are very helpful when used together. I put them on the same monsterbation keybind. If you use just one of them, the cooldown is so long that you're hoping not to die until you cast it again on the next monsters. But combining all three means you have very few turns where you're not debuffing monsters. On those turns I cast imperil, or heal, or use another deprecating spell listed below.

Sleep is very good for all fighting styles, but mage uses it least well. It's still helpful for surviving long enough to cast all your debuffs. Plus, it's easier to land spells on sleeping enemies. Usually, you'll be fine waking up the sleeping monsters after you're done debuffing them. If not, remove your T3 spell (maybe T2 also) from your rotation, cast sleep on the top enemies, and target the bottom monsters. For example, the fully upgraded T2 spell hits 7 targets. If there are 7 or fewer monsters, it will hit all the monsters. If there are 8+ monsters, targeting the bottom-most monster will hit 4 monsters. Targeting the next bottom monster will hit the bottom 5, and the one above that 6. This way you can keep some monsters asleep while killing their friends and taking less damage. This strategy loses a lot of speed, so only use it when you need it to survive. Edit: Noni suggests another good use of sleep to recover mana safely, reducing the need for mana elixirs. When you're down to one monster left, sleep it and use focus to turn overcharge into mana. Focus makes you very weak defensively, so make sure the focusing debuff is gone by the time that last monster dies. This strategy is for elemental mages; holy/dark gets a DoT that wakes sleeping monsters and can accidentally kill them before you're ready for the next round.

MagNet is helpful for landing other spells, but it takes until level 400 to fully upgrade it, so it's a low priority until then. It's good in conjunction with drain. Edit thanks to LogJammin: It's also a big help offensively, since it prevents resists against your damage spells too. Particularly with 2-target MagNet, I recommend casting it on the monsters that usually take longest to die. For me, I cast MagNet on the bottom and top monsters while targeting the middle monsters with my damage spells.

Drain can save you some heals maybe, but I often forget to cast it and don't notice. I cast MagNet first so I can be sure drain lands. The ability upgrades are very low priority, since the spell is already good without them. Edit: Taking the abilities Ether Theft and Soulfire is a good way to reduce consumption of mana elixirs. After using all the other debuffs (also giving the monsters a chance to fill their mana bars), cast Paradise Lost (holy T3 spell) and the drain a monster with the soulfire status effect and hopefully MagNet or Sleep. At high tower floors, this gives a decent amount of mana. You could do something similar for stealing spirit, but I consume a lot more mana restoratives than spirit restoratives so mana steal is my preferred option.

Confuse is the one deprecating spell I didn't use. Maybe you can find a use?


Conculsion

My goal with this guide is to promote interest in isekai. I might hurt my chances for cheap materials next season, but more people playing isekai would only be a good thing.

If you have any questions, please ask.

LogJammin reached floor 100 in Season 2 of 2022 with some speedy clears, and has some further tips.

Noni reached floor 100 in Season 2 of 2024 and has some tips on using Merciful Blow to finish off that pesky last monster.

This post has been edited by mathl33t: Feb 3 2025, 20:31

Objective and well written. Thanks for your contribution. I can confirm all the information stated to be accurate and your conclusions align with my own.

Thanks for the guide, what kind of forging would recommend? I am debating how much is needed and if pmit should be forged.

First priority is forging block and parry as far as you can. After that for the armor, edb, evade, and agility are what I prioritized, with int, pmit, and wis lagging behind but still getting some forging. Here's what I forged on my pants:

Magical Hit Chance Lv.16 Physical Defense Lv.25 Magical Defense Lv.12 Evade Chance Lv.39 Resist Chance Lv.12 Cold Spell Damage Lv.44 Crushing Mitigation Lv.21 Agility Bonus Lv.37 Intelligence Bonus Lv.30 Wisdom Bonus Lv.21

Also throw some forging into end (if applicable), agi, and dex on the shield and wakizashi if you have spare mats. Upgrading edb on the wakizashi was not cost-effective this season, with metal much more expensive than cloth.

You explain all the Things both simple and clear, I quite enjoy reading your Text here.
And thanks to the new Tower, for the old Tower in the first Season, 1H Mage can't go further.

I posted this in another thread, but it's relevant to this so I'll post it here (with some amendments):

Random notes on 1H mage in tower (from 2022 season 2, HV version 90):

The only real dangers with this squishy build comes from not paying enough attention to your item cooldowns or having your max health end in 1 or 6 (insta death spark bug). Maximize your physical defense (Phy. Mit., END), avoidance (BLK, Evade, Parry), and damage (EDB, MDB, INT, WIS) through forging. Magical defense doesn't matter nearly as much, since you'll end up using silence a lot and the few magical hits that you do take won't kill you. When you find yourself in the unfortunate situation of spirit pot/elixir on cooldown when you need to use them, it's time to forge or adapt to a more defensive strategy. Juggernaut is very helpful, but IW in isekai is expensive (stamina) and annoying. Maybe this will change with the new update, but who knows. Radiant and Mystic phase give you a pretty decent boost to damage, Charged is good for survival. If you want to be as fast as possible, aim for Radiant or Mystic. Don't be too picky though, it's a lot more difficult to get specific pieces in Isekai. I spent months shrining for radiant/charged boots with no success. Stat distrution probably doesn't matter too much, but I kept DEX = END = AGI = INT = WIS, STR at <1% the cost of the others. 1H mage does 99% of its damage as magical (at least in Isekai), so physical damage is the lowest priority.

Always use featherweight shards on your waki and buckler, and try to use Aether shards on the waki since it's difficult to reach 195% magic accuracy without them. Infusions applied to all armor pieces and buckler can give you an extra ~25% mitigation for elemental/dark/holy for 1 hour, but this costs 6 infusions per piece per hour, so it's sort of expensive and probably not that useful if you're silencing everything. For more risky strategies (i.e. minimizing debuffs, gum/vase) they're probably worth using.

A good time to forge is when you notice your debuffs expiring before the monsters die. Increase your damage by either soulfusing, forging, or taking a break from tower to level up a few times (or all of the above).

I highly recommend stocking up on way more consumables than you need, so that you don't run out in the middle of a floor. Make sure to have at least 250 mana potions, 100 spirit potions, and 50 of each elixir before starting each floor (or pay attention to your usage and stock up accordingly). If you want to reduce the number of elixirs you need, you can tick the item cooldown timer by using other items, such as draughts and scrolls of absorption (all very cheap) as soon as you use a mana/spirit potion or as soon as they are available.

Debuffs other than weaken are essential to surviving when you are low-ish level and/or barely forged. You can cast Silence, Slow, Blind on every monster if you have to. A typical round when I was around level 350 was this: weaken all -> silence top 3 -> slow middle 3 -> blind bottom 3 -> imperil all -> silence middle 3 -> slow bottom 3 -> blind top 3 -> spell rotation, or some variation of that, possibly with magnet and sleep mixed in there somewhere, and another round of silence/slow/blind if I needed to. If you find that you need to heal/use spirit elixirs a lot, then stack more silence/slow/blind.

Scrolls are quite cheap compared to the cost of the other consumables, and they're a big boost to survivability and speed, since you might not need as many debuffs while using them. I tended to wait until around 70 or so to start using them, since I was constantly low on credits early/mid season, but they quickly dropped in price to very reasonable levels.

MagNet is incredibly powerful in tower, even when it can only hit 2 targets (<level 400). Normally, you only use MagNet at the final rounds of the last 3 arenas or in RoB, but in tower, everything is a tank and you have zero counter resist as a 1h mage. Monsters affected by magnet can't resist your spells, so as long as you have 195% magic accuracy, your spells will always hit them. These monsters will usually die the fastest, so you'll take less damage for the rest of the round. Under level 400, I used magnet until most of the monsters in a round were affected, and it saved me somewhere between 500-1000 turns. After level 400, it hits 3 targets and cools down faster. The speedup is seriously almost as good as imperil, but unfortunately the cooldown is long. To work around the cooldown, lead a round with magnet, then do your other debuffs, then magnet again. Hover until magnet cools down, then use it again if you feel it will help (you have to practice to find the best time to use it).

If your defense is lacking a lot (as in, both spirit pot/elixir on cooldown a lot), lead the round with sleep, then apply your debuffs normally. You can even continue until all the monsters are asleep if you need some extra time for spirit pot/elixir to cool down. Monsters will usually stay asleep after 1 or 2 hits, sometimes even 5 or more hits, so it's not as useless as you might think.

Level and forging have a massive impact on how well 1H mage does in tower. You gain around 1% damage for each level (if everything is soulbound), and your defensive stats scale better too. Avoidance is by far the most important to defense, and you get a fair bit from level. Mana consumption is a lot more manageable at higher levels too. It may be worth using a high-exp stamina usage strategy, such as only clearing the most exp efficient arenas + tower while remaining above 60 stamina.

Bubble Gum and Flower Vase are hilariously effective. At floor 99, I needed ~8700 turns without gum/vase and at floor 100 I needed ~3200 turns with gum/vase. This is with high forging, with 2 charged, 2 radiant, 1 mystic. An interesting thing with gum/vase is that you only need imperil and sometimes weaken (if you forge enough). I got bored at around floor 80 and decided to blitz the rest of the way to floor 97 with just gum/vase and I needed between 2200 to 3600 turns per floor on average, before a massive round of forging after clearing floor 97. On average, it took ~20 sets of gum/vase per floor (I needed to buy ~350 sets total). Since gum and vase are more scarce in Isekai, prices can be just as high as persistent if there is enough competition for them. I ended up paying ~8500 for most of them, since I didn't care, I just wanted to go fast. If you don't care about the cost and want to clear high floors in under 30 minutes, gum/vase is the way to go.

Clearing floors as fast as possible requires more risky play, such as reducing the number of debuff spells (i.e. 1 round of silence/slow/blind instead of 2 or 3). Keep scrolls up at all times, especially scroll of life since it will reduce spirit consumption when it triggers (and it leaves you at 50% health instead of 1). As soon as both spirit potion and elixir are on cooldown, use items (draughts, scroll of absorption) to advance the item cooldown timer and temporarily use a more defensive strategy. When you have at least one available to use, switch back to the more risky strategy. If you mess up and both spirit pot/elixir are on cooldown when you absolutely need them, use all the items you have that are available to tick the cooldown timer. If you're lucky, that will be enough for spirit pot/elixir to become available. If they're still on cooldown, cast spells/defend, and pray that you survive.

also here's some battlestats data for my tower runs, excluding some deaths due to spark bug (I think). Note how expensive it is to do each floor. This data is for tower, but due to the way that battlestats detects the battle type, it thinks it's an RE and counts it as 1 round. Debuffs category includes all non-imperil deprecating spells, spells includes just damage dealing spells:


This post has been edited by LogJammin: Jan 15 2023, 07:45

fantastic. Thank you for your effort and such a clear walkthrough.

3200 turns to clear floor 100 ???

Looks like we are playing a different HV (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

I updated with a couple tips I learned this season. First, stealing mana with drain is useful for lowering usage of mana elixirs. This requires more abilities (ether theft and soul fire), so second, abilities for shadow veil, protection, and haste can be skipped in favor of using scrolls. Thirdly, this makes dark (and probably holy) playable for me, though it's definitely harder than elemental.

Thanks Mathl33t! I've been following your guide this year as elec 1h mage and it works quite well.
Floor 78 now. I tried the drain with ether theft.

What I see is that I can play (almost) without mana elixirs, if I combine the ether theft (1x per round) with another method that I was already using. Last monster gets 'sleep' and then with mana draught enabled I use 'focus' until my overcharge pips run out. That does cause more turns, but in real time it doesn't cost that much as I can just spam 'f'.

With ether theft and focus combined: ether theft makes sure I don't run out of mana during the round (until only the last monster is alive), and focus makes sure I have (almost) full mana bar at start of next round.

Not sure if I can ask here but where do you find suffused aether? I cant find it on the market.
-edit found it in materials instead of consumables


This post has been edited by oodraloob: Apr 9 2024, 22:51

Not sure if I can ask here but where do you find suffused aether? I cant find it on the market.

it's called aether shard. If you use it on your weapon before battle, it gives the effect of suffused aether

Use Merciful Blow to kill die-hard monsters? Yes you can!

season 2 2024 I played to floor 100 as 1h mage, fire element. However, instead of using the overcharge pips for restoring mana (focus when only one sleeping monster is left), I tried to use Merciul Blow to finish off monsters.
For mana restore, I used drain + ether theft as mathl33t explained. And ADB attack damage doesn't matter, Merciful Blow finishes off the monster as long as it has Bleeding Wound and health < 25% - no ADB needed.

It feels quite satisfying to finish off die-hard monsters

It works. Not really much faster - probably better to use radiants instead of charged (I used charged) if you want speed. But at moments it's really satisfying to kill a monster with Merciful Blow.

Use case 1: last surviving monster. Works to finally be done with that round. For instance, when you need to re-cast imperil, re-cast weaken, re-cast silence.... nope, you die now.
Use case 2: split surviving monsters, one on the top, a group at the bottom. Finish off the top one with Merciful Blow and then hover spell rotation at the bottom group.
Use case 3: if you want to use the 'focus' trick for mana restore, cast 'sleep' on last monster, and it resists the spell. REVENGE! You'll pay for your resistance! Merciful Blow -> dead.

How to use Merciful Blow - it needs some preparations
1. Wait until monster health < 25%
2. Give it Bleeding Wound
3. Use Merciful Blow -> it's dead.

in detail:
1. Wait until monster health < 25%
This is easier said than done. It's very hard to see what percentage of health is left. So I made a slight modification to the Monsterbation script. Monsterbation has a standard option to show the current monster health and the initial health on the right side of the monsters. I modified the code to show it like this:

As you can see, it now shows the percentage of health that's left.
For this you need to change:

CODE

div.innerHTML = 'HP: ' + Math.round(ratio * monsterData.hp[i]).toLocaleString() + ' / ' + monsterData.hp[i].toLocaleString(); }

to

CODE

div.innerHTML = 'HP: ' + Math.round(100*ratio).toLocaleString() + '% / ' + monsterData.hp[i].toLocaleString(); }

2. Give it Bleeding Wound
This is not as hard as I thought it would be. I experimented with 'Vital Strike', but that is only 75% chance of Bleeding Wound and then the monster needs to be stunned and that is hard to get right. Not worth the hassle.
So I just used attack. My magnificent waki had a 22% chance of bleeding wound. Which means that often 1 click is enough, but most case it takes some clicking. But what's 5 clicks late in tower? I ended up just clicking the monsters (MB 'nothing' on left click). And it's quite nice when you get it first click.

3. Use Merciful Blow -> it's dead.
For this, I use Monsterbation key bind, and bind 'Merciful Blow' to key_K (K for KILL). Press 'k', then click monster. It never misses. It takes no Strength. ADB, attack damage is not needed.

This post has been edited by Noni: Feb 3 2025, 20:32