I’ve put a lot of hours into Deskrawl: Idle ARPG, and of the classes I ran during the play test, the Mage kept pulling me back. The ranged-plus-area shape is just satisfying — you can speed-farm surprisingly efficiently once the build clicks. The trade-off is real, though: when you hit the late-game floors, the Mage starts to stall hard. If you can’t burst a pack down, you’re basically sitting there waiting to die. Keeping that in mind, here’s how I’d build the Mage, and if you’ve got a sharper setup, I’d genuinely want to hear it.
What Makes the Mage Tick (and Where It Falls Off)
The Mage’s whole identity for me is the combination of range and area coverage. You keep enemies at arm’s length and let splash damage do the heavy lifting, which makes early farming feel great. The catch shows up later — your damage either deletes the screen or it doesn’t, and the Mage has no real middle ground when it can’t one-shot. That’s the honest trade-off I’d weigh before committing to this class long-term.
Pre-Level 45: Stay on Fire
Before you unlock Lightning Storm in your heavy attacks, my advice is to run pure fire the whole way. The base numbers are already good, and the talent tree hands out a lot of flat fire damage plus access to Flame Breath (the fire breath skill) under heavy attacks. That keeps your pre-45 power floor comfortably high.
Ice skills unlock early too, and honestly the numbers aren’t bad and the shape is fine — Ice Meteor has a huge area in the heavy attack tree. The problem is that the talent tree gives ice almost no damage bonuses, so I’d skip it for this stretch.
For skills, just follow the standard path. On talents, notice that I put points into the basic attack as well — early on, both mana and mana regeneration are genuinely painful to come by, so most of your damage actually comes from the basic fireball. It helps that the ring for this stage is easy to grab and massively improves the basic attack’s shape: the Fourth Flame Ring.
Order your talent points with heavy attacks first. Once you land the core talent that gives a chance to Burn, prioritize talents that increase damage against burned enemies right away.
Level 45+: Switch to Lightning
Once Lightning Storm unlocks at level 45, that’s your signal to pivot to the lightning Mage. It’s probably the highest raw damage of any skill in the kit, and its shape guarantees it hits three enemies against packs. On top of that, the talent tree is packed with lightning damage multipliers, so the scaling is there to support the switch.
For the basic attack slot, I’d use Flame Storm because it scales off both fire and lightning bonuses, and its range holds up fine. Why not the lightning basic? The reach is just too short. A Mage survives by keeping things off their face — once the enemy is in your lap, you’re already dead, so trading range for a bit of damage is a bad deal.
On the special slot, I run Frost Nova so I can freeze anything that closes the gap, which is my main self-preservation tool. I then add an aura for extra damage, and pair that with the defensive talent bonuses to build in some error tolerance.
In the talent tree, rush the Lightning Storm-related nodes first. The core talent’s brief stun, combined with granting Static, gives the lightning Mage a genuinely high ceiling — solid survivability and strong damage at the same time. Your Flame Storm basic also picks up plenty of talent damage, and it can benefit from both Static and Burn at once. That said, I’ve never been able to reliably source the Burn side of it, so in practice I’m running it off Static alone — which is still perfectly fine.
After that, mana pool and mana regeneration are where you want your points. Keeping Lightning Storm from dropping out of uptime is a huge part of the build actually functioning, so don’t sleep on those nodes.
Gear, Minion, Runes, Gems, and Potions
Gear has a lot of viable directions, but the through-line is always the same: chase lightning damage, and treat attack speed, crit damage, and crit rate as premium rolls. The same applies to your affix priorities on individual pieces.
For my minion, I’ve stuck with the Black Horse the entire time — efficiency is what matters most to me.
On runes, take Lightning Skill Level. The class-exclusive rune set has its own separate bonuses worth keeping in mind.
Gems: put Lightning Damage in your weapon, Intelligence in your armor, and the accessories are whatever you like.
Potions: movement speed and crit chance.
One thing I’d stress from my own leveling experience — don’t hoard your crafting materials waiting for legendary drops. Efficiency first. If you’re dying often or your kills are dragging, just go ahead and craft some gear; the materials aren’t scarce enough to worry about saving them.
Closing Thoughts
That’s the Mage loop I’d hand to anyone picking the class up — fire until Lightning Storm shows up, then ride lightning for as long as it carries you. The late-game wall is real, but if you like the ranged mage fantasy and want a fast, clean clear through the mid-game, this build delivers.
