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When the “Eldritch Realms” DLC dropped forAge of Wonders 4, the developers also released a free patch called the Mystic Update. This update included a few balancing updates, but the highlight was a retooling of the Mystic culture.
As of the Mystic Update, all Mystic cultures inAge of Wonders 4can belong to one of three “Schools.” Each School has a major impacton how the Mystic culture plays, at least when it comes to spells (both tactical and strategic). Each School comes with a basic description of its abilities, but there’s more to each one than what the tooltips tell you.
The Attunement School
According to the patch notes, the Attunement School is the closest to how the Mystic culture worked before the update. As such, every custom Mystic culture you created before the update will default to the Attunement School. You’ll need to edit the culture if you want to switch to one of the other two schools. On the other hand, you can find at least one of each type of Mystic Schoolamong the default rulers.
The Attunement School also gets access to a unique global resource called Astral Echoes. you’re able to use Astral Echoes to replace World Map Casting Points and Combat Casting Points, allowing you to cast more spells in and out of combat. Each Astral Echo is worth one Casting Point. Sources of Astral Echoes include:
To use Astral Echoes for a strategic spell, start casting a spell that needs more World Map Casting Points than you have available. In the upper-left corner of the spell’s symbol (where the “Favorite” star usually is) you should see a set of green arrows. Click on the arrows to spend your Astral Echoes and complete the spell.
To use Astral Echoes on a combat spell, you’ll need to spend all your Combat Casting Points until you don’t have enough left to cast a spell. If you attempt to cast a spell anyway, the game will ask you if you want to spend Astral Echoes.
The Potential School
This school’s combat effect is based around Dissonance and Overcharge.
Because of the differences between Attunement and Potential, there’s a basic difference in how you should conduct combat each turn:
The second difference is called Arcane Inspiration.
The last major difference is in the school’s Affinity.The Potential School has one Shadow Affinityand one Astral Affinity, while the other two schools are two Astral.
The Summoning School
As the name implies, the Summoning School is all about bringing in Magic Origin units and making them stronger than your home-grown versions. Note that “Magic Origin” includes any unit that costs Mana as upkeep, so a Summoning School culture with mixed Affinities will still work out just fine.
This makes the Summoning School much more straightforward in battle than the other two. After all, the school expects you to spend all your Mana on world-map turns bringing in summoned units, not on Combat Spells.
The Summoning School also gets access to Astral Echoes, just like the Attunement School. The methods you may use to gain them are identical, but the way you spend them is completely different. Instead of spending Astral Echoes to finish casting spells, you can spend them to improve your Magic Origin units.
Something worth pointing out is that the Mystic Update also rebalanced the low-tier units. A tier one or two unit that has reached the Champion or Legend experience rank can hold its ownagainst a tier four or five unit. This means you can get some impressive results fast by spending your Astral Echoes on one or two Magic Origin units, even if they start out as a lowly tier one.
The Mystic Update gives the Mystic culture much more to play with, and as of the “Eldritch Realms” release,it’s the only culture with a subgroup. However, if this change proves popular, it may end up being the first example of a more nuanced system.
