Upgrading your wands is a mandatory part of progression for Mind Over Magic, but comes with increased statuses to manage. Failing to meet these advanced needs will make you prone to mental breaks and accumulating traumas that force you to retire your mages early.
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The power they offer makes up for these costs. The stronger wands raise your level cap, allowing you to access new spells and perform tasks faster. Some rituals have stat requirements that make them functionally impossible without first upgrading your wands. This list will go through the different wands, their relative benefits and costs along with the best order to unlock them in.
How Wands Work
You’ll start the game with only access to the level one wands. These have no requirements or restrictions but are rather limited in the growth they’re able to offer. You can expect most students to not grow beyond level three in their primary skill.
The level one wands are never useless. You’ll need a steady supply to take in new students and any students with a poor matchup of traits, trials and quirks is best kept at level one and graduated quickly.
The level two and three wands grant extra power and potential:
- Alongside boosting the skill cap of their primary school, the wand will give a random boost in a secondary school of magic. A third level wand gives two additional random boosts.
- The level cap of the character will increase. This lets you grow them further and increase their attributes for use in combat and is multiplied when promoting to apprentice or staff.
- They’ll gain additional trials, letting you advance their growth faster and get better relics upon completion.
This comes with a pair of downsides:
- The increased skill and level caps mean you will need to train them further before graduating.
- They’ll gain a new status on their Conviction page with a unique need specific to the wand’s school of magic.
The conviction needs are the main source of complexity in how the wands compare to each other. Failing to manage their status can give up to 30 points of conviction loss, driving pretty much any character to the point of breaking.
Wands Tier List
The tiers the wands fall into are largely dependent on how easy they are to manage this conviction requirement, followed by their utility in both basebuilding and combat.
- A-Tier wands fulfill their own condition just by playing the game normally: You’ll not risk anything from giving these out like cheap candy.
- B-Tier wands have social or structural requirements to how you build your base and manage your schedules. Once you’re set up, they don’t require any management but take longer to get there.
- C-Tier wands need constant micromanagement even into the late game. Don’t give these to more than one person.
A-Tier Wands
All three of the conviction requirements in this tier should be self-fulfilling, especially if you use windows for natural lighting as that satisfies both nature and darkness wands.
|
Wand Type |
Conviction Requirement |
Combat Use |
Base Use |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Earth |
Earth mages must spend time on or below the ground floor of your buildings. |
Earth mages are the strongest tanks in the game, especially once they gain their ultimate spell. |
Construction speed is always useful, as your school should always be expanding. |
|
Nature |
Nature mages want to be exposed to sunlight frequently. |
Nature magic gives a strong mix of percentage damage, healing and forced movement. |
You’ll always need more farmers and this also ensures they meet their sunlight needs. |
|
Dark |
Dark mages desire moonlight exposure (this can be fulfilled while they’re sleeping). |
Dark mages hit like a truck but spend HP to cast, forcing them to take downtime without combat healing. |
Quilting allows you to automate simple tasks, letting dark mages cover the work of water, earth, nature and air mages. |
These three schools of magic also have the strongest applications in the early game. This helps your school get established fast and gather the materials needed for the more fussy wand types.
B-Tier Wands
The B tier of wands has more narrow requirements that impede how quickly you can introduce them. Handing them out to all your starting staff to make chores go faster won’t pose an issue but you should be careful about giving them to students.
|
Wand Type |
Conviction Requirement |
Combat Use |
Base Use |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Air |
Air mages get upset if they aren’t able to move vertically, by climbing stairs or ladders. |
Strong damage and powerful buffs but runs out of mana quickly. |
Air is used to assemble furniture, which only becomes relevant when you need to furnish more elaborate chambers. |
|
Lightning |
Lightning mages become introverted and are unhappy to share rooms and workspaces with others. |
Lightning is one of the few reliable ways of hitting enemies in the back row. |
Lightning is needed for research. You’ll want one very good lightning mage rather than several mediocre ones. |
|
Water |
Water wands create extroverts who need to be in groups to stay happy. Communal dorms and eating spaces will satisfy them. |
Water does a bit of everything but doesn’t specialise as hard as other schools. |
You’ll need water mages to clean unless a dark mage is able to quilt cleaning constructs. Water magic is also needed for potion crafting, which becomes relevant in the mid to late game. |
C-Tier Wands
There’s only one wand in the bottom tier and it’s enough of a liability that you might avoid giving any out at all.
|
Wand Type |
Conviction Requirement |
Combat Use |
Base use |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Fire |
Fire wands create a thirst for combat, needing to either hunt or fight at regular intervals. |
Fire offers pure damage with no tools for defence or healing. |
Fire is needed for cooking, but giving your cook a fire wand will turn them stir-crazy. |
Fire wands are especially hazardous to give to students who aren’t able to do hunting work. This means your weak, fragile students are only able to maintain their sanity if thrown into combat. Fire magic offers no tools for mitigating damage or restoring health, so you’ll typically need to babysit them with apprentices or staff.
Allowing the wards in your underschool to fail on purpose is a good way to get low-level encounters for your fire mages.
You can avoid having to micromanage a fire wand by instead training a dual-class student who starts with a different wand. They’ll gain a modest boost to fire magic but can use the conviction bonuses of another wand.
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