Part 3: Fluid Dynamics

Apparently I run on Valve time.

Magical Theory: Fluids and Status Effects

At the bottom of the totem pole, Fluids don't appear to have a lot of effects on the spell, yet are invaluable because you can directly apply their effects to a larger spell. Beams in particular benefit from Fluids since extra Beams only increase the duration and not the damage.

Also because Fluids are at the bottom of the totem pole, I'm not going to get too much into how they combine with other elements, because they simply get absorbed. So I'm going to go a lot deeper into the status effects, how enemies behave with them...and how you can trick the game into combining Lightning and Water together.

In the mono-elemental post, I went over how the Fluids behave on their own. Combining fluids just makes a fancier spray, but does not change the mechanics.

Water

In my opinion, Water is least useful of the fluids on it's own merits. It does not cause any damage. Now, water can cause knockback which can be helpful if you are near a pit or need some extra space between enemies, but since this game gives you so many destruction options you're better off killing them outright rather than use the knockback.
Water opposes Lightning. When mixed with Fire it creates Steam, and when mixed with Cold it creates Ice. Water also creates walkable terrain on Lava.


The real reason we use Water is because of it's status effect, Wet. Wet creatures take twice as much damage, and any spellcasting creature (including wizards) will take Lightning damage each time they try to add a Lightning element to a spell. This is typically fatal, but if you're wearing a Lightning-Absorbing robe, it's actually free healing.
Wet and Burning cancel each other out.

Cold

In my opinion, Cold is seriously underused because everyone wants to play with Lightning and Steam, but Cold has it's merits. It will deal a little damage but it's the Chilled status effect that is awesome. The damage from Cold is rather low, but seems to do a little extra damage to fire-based enemies such as the Salamanders we encountered in the dwarf fortress. That said, it's still not very much.
Cold opposes Fire. When mixed with Water it creates Ice, and when mixed with Steam it creates Water. Cold also creates walkable terrain on Water and Lava.


Chill. How wonderfully annoying. This is second to Confused in pure frustrating power. Chilled slows down all animations, meaning it takes longer to move, to cast spells, and to really do anything. This is amazingly useful and I'm surprised I don't see more players use it. When I'm struggling in an area, I'll tend to switch over to Cold for a while and I'm always impressed how useful it is.
Chilled will cancel Burning, and upgrade Wet to Frozen.


Trying to put Chill on a Wet enemy will make them Frozen. Frozen creatures cannot move at all. They are locked in place, but Wizards can still self-cast spells. It wears off (as you can tell by the ice melting) but applying extra cold will restore the Frozen timer. Also while frozen, you will take TRIPLE damage from all attacks. Tough boss in front of you? Freeze them and throw a steam-electric laser at their face or get an ally to freeze them while you charge up a nice big ol' rock. Frozen is awesome. Except when on you.
Being Frozen will remove Wet and Chill. You can remove Frozen by taking fire damage or waiting a few seconds.

Lightning

Lightning isn't technically a Fluid but it behaves so oddly I can't figure out where else to put it. If Cold is undeservedly underused, Lightning is undeservedly overused. Why? Crowd Control. Lightning has a short range on it's own, but when it hits someone it'll arc forward and try to hit another target and refresh the range. It doesn't seem to hit the same target more than once, and I'm not fully sure you can shock yourself with your own Lightning spell. But it's powerful and damn useful, but it's also the first element enemies will start being immune to.
Lightning opposes Water and Earth.


Shocked isn't really much of a status effect, but it's worth mentioning. You can see the skeleton of the creature, which I believe is actually the modeling bones but I'm not 100% sure on that. Shocked wears off very quickly and gets inflicted every time Lightning deals damage. While Shocked, you can't move or do anything, but since it's so short it's really just like a hiccup.
Shocked does not affect the other status effects, but because it comes from Lightning, it synergizes will with Wet. Shocked also activates machinery.

Fire

My favorite. This is also the first element most fledgling wizards flock to, and it's one I don't want to give up. Fire deals decent damage on it's own, and of course, leaves behind the Burning status effect. Like Lightning, enemies tend to resist this as well, but not to the degree that Lightning gets resisted.
Fire opposes Cold. When mixed with Water, it creates Steam, and when mixed with Ice it creates Water. It also reverts walkable terrain on Water and Lava back to their respective source...jerk.


Despite how much I like Fire, I'm not that great at understanding it's mechanics, other than it's awesome. Burning seems to have a number attached to it, and will gradually increase the longer a creature remains in contact with a fire damage source. When removed from the source of fire damage, it will quickly start fading away on it's own. Or sometimes increase for a while before suddenly disappearing. Like I said, it's weird, and the FireMan robes only screw with this even more.
Burning cancels Wet and Chilled. After Burning gets powerful enough, it will upgrade to Panic for some enemies.


After the damage over time portion of Burning gets powerful enough some creatures (including Wizards) will enter Panic mode. This means they will run around and not attack. Wizards can self-cast spells while in this state, but that's it. Other than the fact that they aren't obeying “Stop Drop and Roll” it seems to behave like a combination of Fear and Burning. It's tough to observe enemies in this state because they're typically going to die soon.
Panic can be removed with Wet, Chilled, or Death, whichever comes first. The threshold for Burning to upgrade to Panic seems to vary based on the creature.

Steam

Valve's favorite element. Steam is a lot like water except it doesn't deal knockback, and is better in pretty much every way except one which I'll get to in a bit. Steam is the only Fluid type that overrides Lightning. All other elements when mixed with Lightning will simply join the lightning arcs.
Steam is created by mixing Water and Fire together. When mixed with Cold it creates Steam.

Steam also inflicts Wet, and since it can be mixed with Lightning, it is awesome together and once most players learn this combo, they truly learn the power of Lightning. However, although Steam inflicts Wet, it cannot protect against it. When Steam is mixed with Shield, it will not prevent or remove Wet. Only Water can do that.

Water + Lightning

Here's how you do it. First thing you need to know, is that the game seems to follow a pattern, and this will dip into a bit of my programming knowledge to attempt to explain this peculiar phenomenon.
Step 1: If a spell has less than five elements, adding a new element will add it to the list. If a spell has six slots, it temporarily creates a sixth slot to check for Combinations and Negations.
Step 2: Starting with the sixth slot, it check to see if this element can Combine with another element to create a new one, or Negate an element to remove it from the spell. This is where it gets weird because I can't figure out the order here. Negations seem to favor elements on the right and favors Negations over Combinations. Combinations seem to favor the Priority.
Step 3: Still with me? Good. Once an element has been checked, it won't get rechecked if there is a Negation or a Combination that disrupts the order of stored elements in the spell. There are two ways to abuse this. First, add Lightning to a spell with Steam, then add Cold. Or add Lightning to a spell with Ice, then add Fire. The end result will be turning the Steam/Ice to Water, and it won't remove Lightning.
Step 4: Adding new elements to the list will recheck for Lightning and Water Negations, so once you abuse this to add Lightning and Water together, it's best to stop screwing around and cast your spell.
Step 5?: There is an exception to Step 4. Trying to add a sixth element will cause the game to only check if that sixth element can Combine or Negate, and won't check the rest of the elements. So if you have Water and Lightning together in a 5-element spell, you can possibly Combine a few more Steams or Ices to Waters if for some godforsaken reason you want to do that.

Water and Lightning is rather silly and in my opinion not very good, but some devoted players will try to give it a shot. Fundamentally what this does it add Wet to a Lightning spell (same as Steam) but instead of adding Steam's damage, it adds Water's knockback. Since I like killing things faster than shoving them away, I don't think it's very useful. Plus it can mess up your chain lightning while you're casting it.

So what is it good for? Shields, baby, Shields. Want to use lightning spells in the middle of Rain or Thunderstorm and not get hit by your friends? Just cast Shield + Ice/Steam + Lightning + Fire/Cold to get Shield + Water + Lightning. This is by far the best use of this exploit that I can think of.

By the way, apparently the developers ARE aware of this exploit, and like the ARSE Mines sequence break, decided not to remove it. Probably because it doesn't crash the game, or cause any gamebreaking combinations, and let's be honest, the Shield use for it is pretty damn sweet.

Krysmphoenix's Rote Spells...?
Truth be told...I don't have that many good Rotes for the Fluid types. They are at the bottom of the food chain so they typically get mixed into higher level spells. There's really only four combinations I can think of that's any good, mainly because they will actually mix with Lightning.

Hypothermic Shock

--It's best if you mix this to a total of five elements, but whether it's four Lightnings and a Cold or four Colds and a Lightning is up to you, but spells seem to adjust range based on the highest number of repeating elements. Cold is nice but it's a little tricky to weird clusters of enemies. With this you combine the range of lightning and the chill of cold to put your enemies in place, and slow them afterwards. Not a bad combo, I'd say.

Hypothermic Shock, shield style

--Same as above and again max out either Lightning or Cold, but I like this combo better for one reason. You see that little wall there? Enemies will just walk right through it and get shocked and chilled at the same time. And they'll get stuck there, so they'll literally kill themselves trying to get through. It's a shockingly effective combo.

Hyperthermic Shock

--Max out one of the two elements. Basically the same as the first but with Fire instead of Cold. The power of Fire and the range of Electricity, and maybe lock them in place for a moment so they can burn for a bit. Not that great, but it's good against swarms of tiny things like goblins. Then again any lightning spell is.

Hydrolic Shock

--Let's face it, mixing Lightning and Water is terrible. But mixing Lightning and Steam works nice...except you lose the benefits of lightning other than double damage against wet enemies. Fortunately the game seems to place Wet before calculating damage. For this combo to get the best range possible, you should use lots of Steam. You might get more damage with more Lightning, but then you get the crappy range of 1 fluid.