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'''The Dark Mage ''' or "Book Mages" (to some of the community) is a ranged support [[Enemies|enemy]] type. First encountered in Campaign, they spend They are mainly known for spending most of their time summoning [[Skeletons|skeletons]] from fallen allies, healing its casting dark spells to support and help their enemy allies, and occasionally shooting magic bolts at [[Heroes|heroes]] or [[Defense|crumble defenses]].

[[File:Dark_Mage%27s_Spellbooks.png|300px|thumb]]When spawned, Dark Mages will slowly float towards the core, potentially attacking [[Heroes|heroes ]] and [[Defense|defenses ]] that aggroes them. Their primary attack only consists of firing magic bolts that damages at their targets. Aside from Alongside that, Dark Mages also possesses three different abilities, which are casted from one of three spellbooks floating by the Dark Mage. Its Those abilities consists of -

* '''Healing spell (Yellow Book) -''' Whenever a Dark Mage or any nearby enemies are damaged, they will occasionally casts a heal spell that'll restore health to itself or any nearby enemies in a small radius. The amount of health restored is not much.

* '''Cursing spell (Purple Book) -''' Whenever a Dark Mage targets a tower or blockade, alongside firing magic bolts, they will also occasionally periodically cast a curse bolt that will damage and debuff any tower/blockade the projectile hitas well, making the defense take 100% more damage for a short duration. Curse Bolts ''will'' pass through Reflect Beams.

* '''Summoning Spell (Brown Book) -'''Summoning [[Skeletons|skeletons]] from fallen allies: if there is any nearby spots where enemies has been defeated, a Dark Mage will be able to summon Goblin and Orc Skeletons from those very spots. === Tiers ===Unlike certain enemies who had tiers, Dark Mages has notable differences.  * '''Tier 1 -''' Will only have access to Healing Spell * '''Tier 2 -''' Has access to Healing and Cursing Spells * '''Tier 3 -''' Can access all three spells (Healing, Cursing and Summoning Spells)

| [[File:Dark_Mage_Healing_Animation.gif|250px270px]]

[[File:Dark_Mage_Cursing_Animation.gif|250px270px]]

'''Casting a Curse BoltSpell'''

[[File:Dark_Mage_Summoning_Animation.gif|250px270px]]

[[File:Dark_Mage_Attack_Animation.gif|250px270px]]

== Schedule Icon Strategy ==Like other ranged [[Enemies|enemies]], placing [[Defense|defenses]] that have long range or placing [[Defense#Types|traps]] and [[Defense#Types|auras]] in the lane will kill them before they get into range to attack (As their abilities can sometimes be a doozy in certain situations such as summoning skeletons within auras which can eat up the defense's attack limit). If you have [[Series_EV2#Defenses|Series Ev2]] you can use her Reflect Beam defense in front of a [[Defense#Types|blockade]] to bounce the projectiles away (With the exception of curse bolts which can wreck blockades if curse spells are consistently used). They die relatively easy to any damage done to them. === M.O.D.S. related with Dark Mages === If one happens to struggle to deal with Dark Mages, they can take more damage from defenses equipped with [[Mods|M.O.D.S.]] such as Anti-Ranged Servo or Anti-Support Servo. Heroes can have an easier time deal with them if their weapons are equipped with M.O.D.S. such as Ranged Chip or Support Chip. The extra damages from each mods are additive with each other. Furthermore, there are also M.O.D.S. such as Range-Boom/Support-Boom Servos and Rangesplosion/Suppslosion Chips that have Dark Mages detonate on death, damaging other enemies. However, while they might be a little useful early game, they are completely useless in late-game. == Appearances ==Dark Mages will first appear in Liferoot Forest Campaign and will be almost guaranteed to spawn in levels and gamemodes beyond. In '''Onslaught,''' Dark Mages starts appearing from floor 2 onwards as part of schedules with "Healing" prefix or "Healers" suffix. Though for some reason, Dark Mages, Witherbeasts and Kobolds will always appear in almost every schedules too (including the ones introduced in floor 1 when appearing in later floors), regardless of their related prefix and suffix.  == Variants ==[[File:Jester%27s-Revenge---Elemental-Mages.png|thumb|300px|The Elemental Mages]]=== Malthius ===''Main Article - [[Malthius]]'' Malthius is the special enemy/miniboss version of the Dark Mage iconthat has a chance to spawn in most gamemodes except campaign.  === Maldonis the Dark ===''Main Article - [[Maldonis the Dark]]'' Maldonis is another special enemy/miniboss version of the Dark Mage that appears in Return of Maldonis Incursion. Aside from the incursion's gimmick, he is mostly similar to Malthius in general with a different visual. === Ice Mage ===''Main Article - [[Frost Enemies]]'' The Ice Mage is the frosty variant of the Dark Mage, there is not much difference between both versions except the Ice Mage having an attack that chills their targets and being vulnerable to fire damage. === Elemental Mages ===''Main Article - [[Carnival Enemies]]'' These Dark Mage variants originate from the Dragonfall Carnival event (Reintroduced as the Jester's Revenge Incursion). Their main gimmick is that their primary attacks are charged with elemental damage with crowd-controlling properties. Though bizarrely, the Elemental Mages can sometimes end up crowd-controlling themselves and nearby enemy allies, to their own detriment. == Notes and Trivia ==* The Dark Mage has an interesting alternate death animation where the mage gets ''crushed'' by the book he's sitting on. ==== Dungeon Defenders II meets Terraria Crossover ====''Main Article in Terraria's Official Wiki - [https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Dark_Mage Dark Mage]'' In Terraria, the Dark Mage appears as a minor boss in the Old One's Army event. They are mostly similar to their DD2 counterpart except they do not possess the cursing ability. Their sprite is based on a tier 3 Dark Mage. == Gallery == {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"|-| [[File:Dark_Mage_Concept_Art.jpg|250px]] ''Concept art by Sebastian Cevallos''||[[File:Terraria_Dark_Mage.png|100px]] ''Terraria sprite''|}