Gloomhaven Spellweaver Guide and Item Recommendations

the spell weaver is so underrated i see all these people talking about how she doesn't scale well she doesn't do this she doesn't do that the spell weaver is one of the most powerful characters in the game and the most powerful starting character and so in this guide i'm going to give you some recommendations on how to play her and how you can really turn her into a monstrous damage dealer and a great character and it's really not that hard it doesn't take a ton of specific builds or anything like that she's generally just really really good so there are going to be some items i'm going to talk through items later in the video and there will be some spoilers so what i've done is i've arranged the item recommendations by prosperity level and so just watch up until whatever prosperity you are none of the items will you know make or break the build it's just going to be some general recommendations all right let's start off with the essential cards the most essential card is reviving ether you cannot go without it do not leave home do not pass go you must take reviving ether 100 of the time spellweaver has a small hand size and because of that reviving ether is a necessity so don't leave that at home thinking that you can take an extra card and and leave that you won't have enough longevity the next essential cards are impaling eruption fire orbs mana bolt and flame strike so those are going to be tier one at level one um impaling eruption can do a lot of damage um and it can hit a lot of targets same with fire orbs they're losses there's not a lot to explain there especially early on they're going to be that's essential to you should never go without them the next one is mana bolt and mandible we're mainly taking for two reasons one it's actually going to get you a decent amount of xp because it's repeatable with an xp it's got decent range you can do three damage and really the most important reason is its initiative seven initiative is the fastest initiative in the game for the class it's going to help you go first when you need to go first so it's essential as well next is flame strike flame strike has a bottom attack and that's why it's one of my picks it's nice to be able to sit there and it doesn't have quite enough range but still quite useful and even the top is pretty good when you have fire kicking around tier two aid from the ether aid from the ether is a decent summon it's got two range so it's actually going to be able to survive for a little while and early on three damage at two ranges is quite powerful it's i think it's an underutilized card but it's actually pretty good next would be frost armor and we're taking that because of initiative as well it's one of the faster initiative cards at 20 for the class and you're gonna need some fast initiative the top is not bad as well it's a repeatable you know three damage if you consume an element and then the bottom is going to give you a little bit of tankiness i don't think it gets used that often at least not early on uh to tank but it can help you as well and it's one of those cards you can use right before you use reviving ether to get it back right away the next and this one may be a little controversial but it's hardened spikes and and only well for two reasons one initiative 26 is not bad for the spell we were kind of sad but true so 26 is not bad and then move three shield two self if you consume ice is pretty good that can be handy so mostly it's for the move and the initiative and the potential shield the other three cards we're not going to take are crackling air ride the wind and freezing nova none of these cards are really very good crackling air it would be better if it was on the bottom of a card having it on the top means you can't set it up very early and you've got to have wind and it's just not that great um i hate delaying damage anything that delays damage it would need to be a plus three per attack to be worth it to me ride the wind loot one top great but you're not doing any damage looting for the spell weaver isn't as necessary as it is for some other classes and i also don't like that the bottom is a throwaway move um so yeah for that reasons i'd leave it home and then freezing nova it's awful never take it unless you have some sort of specific crazy build that it fits into um heel four range four throw away bottom stinks and then the top you're gonna have to be in melee range unless you're building a specific way it's no good level two i'm going with flashing burst two reasons it's got moved one it's got move four which is good for the spell weaver it's got a repeatable move for it's going to give you a little bit of mobility and again 26 for the spell weaver is a decent initiative and that's going to help a lot icy blast is okay but it's got two throwaways on it and so like your first run through you're almost never going to be able to use those or if you do you're going to be too low because usually you're going to do better with impaling eruption or fire orbs i mean they're they're less situational and they take a little bit less work to actually execute so for this reason i'm taking flashing burst at level two the next i'm taking cold fire for sure cold fire is a great card it's a really really good card and when you produce elements like later on um if you take living torch you're producing fire every round it attacks and so cold fire becomes a repeatable three attack three hex three range with stun it's great it's a great card it's better than elemental aid although in the right build elemental aid can actually be picked because if you can make wind and you can shield two allies and it's repeatable that's actually quite powerful but in a standard guide you know going through without getting into any crazy specific builds um there's a retaliate build there is a melee build that you can do with the spell weaver but for these purposes level three cold fire level four we're going with fork beam and again it's because it has move four and a good initiative at 20. and that's going to allow you a lot of utility it's also going to let you hit you know two targets at range three it's not super powerful but utility wise it's just good spirit of doom is not a great card because it has two throwaways again i'm not a card has to have a really good throwaway probably on the bottom and the top for me to take a card that has two throwaways because usually you don't want to use them as early um and you can't have too many losses otherwise you're not gonna be able to do anything effective in the early turns you need some repeatable some loss so for this for this you know standard build spirit of doom is not going to be good curse 4 range 4 kill one with dark is not bad but it's just not worth it versus fork beam and the move utility and the initiative and that sort of stuff um at five i'm taking chromatic explosion because you can create a ton of elements and the move to create an element is really the main reason it's great utility and it's going to help you get a lot of other things done and then when you need to you can pull it out and make every element and if you're with another class that uses elements you can help them out a lot um at level six i'm gonna go with living torch i think the spell weaver summons are a little bit underrated living torch is a really really good summon it has three move three range two attack and two fight and makes fire it only has two health but that doesn't matter you're mostly gonna have a character in front and the burning avatar is gonna sit back and it's gonna keep sniping i played this a few times quite a bit actually and i played it pretty early because of reviving ether and i would sometimes get 15 20 even more damage throughout an entire scenario because this thing would just last forever because of three range range for summons is king um so frozen knight is actually a pretty decent card but it's just not as good as living torch and on the top of living torch the attack for range three immobilize and then all enemies adjacent to the target suffer two damage if you consume a light it's really good you can use that too early on and then you know maybe your second time through you can use living torch i like to use living torch a lot of the time on the first turn because the longer you have the summon out uh the more damage it can do and it like i said it's got good longevity because of the range all right before we get to the good stuff card level seven through nine go ahead and check out another video i've made i've gone ahead and ranked all the characters in gloomhaven forgotten circles and jaws of the lion all 22 of them so go ahead and check that out go see where your favorite characters lie and what the rankings are within the gloomhaven world also i would ask that you hit that like button and that you subscribe to my channel and turn notifications on so that when i put out new content you're notified okay moving on to card level seven through nine at level seven i'm taking twin restoration um because you can recover up to two of your lost cards this means that you use this card to get back two of your lost cards so some cards you can use three times total between that and reviving ether so you go out you know you go ham you summon a living torch you you know lose another card then you get it back then you summon another living torch then you use reviving ether later on yeah using a card three times using the lost card three times is really powerful and then until you want to do that it's got a pretty good heel on the bottom three heel three range target two is is pretty good stone fist is actually really good too though even though i'm not taking it it's really good in the right build in a retaliate melee build it wrecks it's really really powerful and because you can get it back so many times you know hitting for 12 damage and then pushing and immobilizing at the end that's awesome that you bur you consume an earth and you can completely nullify melee enemies melee monsters okay level eight we're gonna go with cold front cold front is an attack five range two but it hits five targets in a row after that and then on the bottom it's got you know uh suffer no damage the next three times and retaliate three at range three fantastic both are good depending on the situation doesn't matter you can use either it's really good zephyr wings is a loot too but the spell weaver lots of times is slow and so you know some of the loot's going to get you know snapped up by a scoundrel or another class and looting i don't love looting a top loot is better than a bottom lid without a move but still you've got to spend you know a turn not doing hardly any damage because you don't have a ton of burn uh bottom attacks and then the move eight jump add three move it can be handy in some situations but overall the utility is just not there cold front is better and that's why i'm going with it okay level nine inferno all the way inferno is one of the most powerful cards in the game roll in just hit everybody and if you add you know a couple items to it you're doing a lot of damage and it's repeatable it's not even a loss you hit every single thing in the room and you just get it back again time after time after time you can you should be getting it back every room you you do it once in a room you get it back if anyone's left you can do it again if you thinned out it out you just wait till the next room you go in and you just soften everybody up right away it's not game breaking but it is game changing at prosperity level one there's a bunch of good items for the spell weaver generally when picking items for the spell weaver i'm mostly going for more damage for attack actions because the spell weaver has such good aoe and hit so many targets so anything that applies to attack action is going to make more of a difference and that difference is going to be magnified so because of that i'm starting off with eagle eye goggles every time first eagle eye goggles you're not going to miss and it's going to increase your damage next you're going to go with piercing bow piercing bow helps the spell weaver with one of her weaknesses which is shielded enemies and it's an essential second pick next i normally go with a power potion a minor power potion or a minor stem kind of up to you depending i like to go power potion first and if you can only have one small item at this time go power potion over stamina potion pick up that stamina potion later on at prosperity level 2 some more good items to pick from i always like to start off with the cloak of pockets if i'm at prosperity level 2 because it's going to allow you to carry some more small items and it's going to give you some more flexibility next is empowering talisman i wouldn't take this until later on this allows you to refresh a consumed item but i would stick with goggles at this point and maybe later on once you're a little higher prosperity you can come back and pick up the empowering talisman depending on how you build out the spell weaver and then also there's a minor mana potion at prosperity too this is good for flexibility and utility so you know if it makes sense for your build go ahead and take it at prosperity level 3 we've got moon earrings and they're not going to be that good at this point if you're higher prosperity we'll talk about them later but at this point if you're only at three don't take the moon earrings and there's nothing else here for you at level three little limited choices here at prosperity level four as well we've got a major stem potion and no matter what build you're in a stand potion is always good so if you've got room you've got the gold go ahead and take it if not not the end of the world at level five we've got robes of evocation which at this point i would replace cloaca pockets with them um you want you want that damage and it's going to be more useful overall especially once you're higher level and you can carry four or five small items you're going to want to go robes of evocation and this is where the moon earring can start to be become good because robs of evocation are a spend item so you can use the moon earring to get it back so if it makes sense you can also take the earring at this point and then the other item we've got is the major power potion major power potion is an absolute must have you've got to take it no matter what when you're the spell weaver it's going to increase your damage output substantially level six gets good again first we've got the boots of quickness and i almost always take these because the spell weaver doesn't have great initiative and it helps her you know overcome that hurdle of of slow initiative and it helps you go really late too if you need to so you know great item for her definitely take them the next is pendant of dark packs if you're going with a consume build like items that are consumed this is a great card if not you're going to want to go with earrings and refresh things like your robes of evocation and your goggles i usually go the spend route next is going to be the major mana potion a major amount of potion gives you tons of utility you know creating two elements is very handy can help you cold fire can help you do a bunch of different things so i recommend having a major mana potion and then the last is the sun hearing you can either replace the moon earring or you can have this in addition and you can get back you know your goggles twice with both of those items or you can get back your robes of evocation twice at level seven we've got the staff of eminence and generally i replace the piercing bow with the staff of eminence because it's less situational and you know if you're going with earrings if you've got a couple sets of earrings then you can keep bringing it back and using it and it's actually going to be more damage overall and also it doesn't have to be used all in one attack action so you a little bit more flexibility and utility there great item and you might want to take both earrings if you've got the staff of eminence the robes of evocation and the eye goggles because you're going to be able to get back three items multiple times and it's going to be a lot of damage output from all those level eight insert gif of tumbleweed rolling through nothing here for you the only thing you could potentially do is throw a telescopic lens on if you want to get rid of goggles or you want to get rid of you know pendant of dirt packs but don't do it there's nothing here for you move on to the next level at level 9 we've got the star earring and it's the third set of earrings it's going to be great for getting those robes of evocation back the staff of eminence the eagle-eye goggles so i mean i like to take it i like a bunch of earrings when i'm using a spend build makes it super powerful and then after that we've got the second chance ring you're gonna take a second turn it's gonna make you quite a bit more powerful it's a definite take no matter what i hope my guide helped you to utilize the spell weaver to the best of her abilities and you know be a really powerful character again if you could please like and please subscribe really helps me a lot and also again if you want to go check out the rankings video where i rank all the gloomhaven jawsalion and forgotten circles characters please check it out

Channel: Neural Net Games

Views: 3,442

Rating: 4.9658117 out of 5

Keywords: board games, table top games, spellweaver guide, gloomhaven, starting class

Id: F1886MNquxg

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020