Dark Mage
Dark Mage
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Information | |
Enemy Types | Ranged, Support |
Lane Type | Ground |
Appearances | All game modes |
Schedule Icon |
The Dark Mage is a ranged support enemy which focuses on casting dark spells to support their allies.
Contents
Behavior
When spawned, Dark Mages will slowly float towards the core, potentially attacking heroes and defenses that aggroes them. Their primary attack consists of firing magic bolts at their targets. Alongside that, Dark Mages also possesses three different abilities, which are casted from one of three spellbooks floating by the Dark Mage. 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 any nearby enemies in a small radius. The amount of health restored is not much to worry for the majority of the game. However, from Onslaught floors 946 onwards this ability becomes dangerously potent as the amount restored is 50 times the number of their enemy level.
- Cursing spell (Purple Book) - Whenever a Dark Mage targets a tower or blockade, alongside firing magic bolts, they will also periodically cast a single-targeted curse bolt that will damage and debuff any tower/blockade the projectile hit as well, making the defense take 100% more damage for a short duration. (Any tower/blockade affected emits a very subtle dark smoke effect.) Curse Bolts will pass through Reflect Beams.
- Summoning Spell (Brown Book) - Summoning 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)
Casting a Heal Spell |
Casting a Curse Spell |
Casting a Summoning Spell |
Primary Attack - Casting a magic bolt |
Strategy
Like other ranged enemies, placing defenses that have long range or placing traps and 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 you can use her Reflect Beam defense in front of a 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.
If one happens to struggle to deal with Dark Mages, they can take more damage from defenses equipped with M.O.D.S. such as Anti-Ranged Servo or Anti-Support Servo. Heroes can have an easier time dealing 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
Malthius is the special enemy/miniboss version of the Dark Mage that has a chance to spawn in most gamemodes except campaign.
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.
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.
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 - 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.