Part 128: Divine Skills

The Path of the Divine




All the Divine skills have no level requirements, and they all cost 20/21/22/23/24 mana at Ranks 1 through 5.


Heaven's Blessing
- This skill is the only self-buff in the Divine skill set, and it's probably the best Divine skill of them all. At Rank 1, it boosts all your attributes and resistances by 20% for 30 seconds. At Rank 5, it boosts all your attributes and resistances by 40% for 150 seconds.


Divine Death
- Kill your target, no questions asked. This instantly kills anything with a spiritual resistance below 10/20/30/40/50. Unfortunately, despite the damage it says it does (100-210 at rank 1, 100-250 at Rank 5), it doesn't do any damage if the enemy has a high enough resistance. That's probably because the damage it would do is the highest in the game and would be tremendously overpowered if it hurt enemies who resisted the instant death effect..

It's got an average mana cost for a Rank 5 skill, which makes sense because it's got a limited utility: only a couple of enemy types are affected by this by default.

However, there are plenty of mini-bosses with 2000+ health, and this is the fastest way to take them down. Hit them 3 times with Rank 5 Curse, and that lowers the enemies resistance to below 50, then this skill will finish them in one shot for a grand total of about 84 mana or so, which is much cheaper than trying to whittle their health down with spells that do damage.

This is one of the most worthwhile Divine skills, so go ahead and max this after Heaven's Blessing. This doesn't work on the bosses, even once you take their spiritual resistance below the line.


Temporal Storm
- This skill is basically an area-effect Limbs of Lead spell. It automatically hits all the enemies on screen, slowing them tremendously for 6/8/10/12/14 seconds, which makes Limbs of Lead worthless to use after this. If you're having trouble this might be helpful, but if you're not, then it's not that useful. It can affect enemies through walls.


Lightning Cascade
- An area-effect spray of lightning. It does 20-50 damage at Rank 1, and 40-130 damage at Rank 5. This is a bit less than Lightning, but the advantages are that it can cast through walls and automatically hits all the targets. There are floating/flying enemies which tend to avoid Burning Wall. When you're facing a single lightning-weak target, use Lightning, but if you're facing a group of lightning-weak targets, then spamming this spell can clear them out fast.


Scorch
- The area-effect fire spell. It creates a patch of fire on the ground that does 20-80 damage at Rank 1, and 44-144 damage at Rank 5. It's finicky about how it hits, and it's not generally effective unless you spam it. The fact that there are a lot of Fire immune enemies in the last part of the game means that you need to have the right kind of crowd for this to be useful at all, and that's rare. It's probably better to use Rank 5 Meteorstrike instead, although you could combine this with Temporal Storm to increase its effectiveness.


Spirit Form
- This is similar to Necroshift and the spider/beetle statuettes. It switches your alignment to enemy, you appear as a ghost which floats around. Don't put any points into this, it's not worth it. This skill falls under "Awesome Divine Power with little gameplay utility."


Translocate
- Teleport anywhere within line of sight. This skill is pretty pointless, although you can go a long way with just one point by using the technique of scrolling the screen. If there's a wall in the way, though, you can't go any further. This skill is not useful at all, don't waste a point into this. If Divine Eye worked, this might possibly be useful for safely crossing long distances and bypassing the hordes of enemies. Maybe. This skill falls under "Awesome Divine Power with little gameplay utility."


Divine Eye
- Send a magical eye scouting ahead to see hidden areas. In the CD-version of the game, this skill is actually broken and beyond worthless. The eye does not remove the fog of war, so you cannot actually see anything unless you have already been there. That is the ONE PURPOSE OF THE SKILL and it was never fixed until the GoG version re-release (1.40). But it's still a worthless waste of skill points, because at this point you should be able to handle everything you'll face, and it's not like you have a choice anyway. This skill falls under "Awesome Divine Power with little gameplay utility."