So you want to know more about spellweaving in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, especially from a Demonologist's perspective do you? Well you are in luck my friend, I created a great guide that reviews in detail the intricacies of spellweaving in general as well as the specific aspects of it that a Demonologist would see. I hope you find the guide useful and benefit from it.

Introduction:
The spellweaving system in Age of Conan is one of the main reasons I purchased the game, and I quickly discovered that not only did I have to wait until at least level 50 to try the system, but there was also not a lot of detailed, numerical information on spellweaving and what it can be used for besides a few screenshots/videos on the web. I’m writing this guide to help newcomers to the casting classes make informed decisions on something they won’t be able to see for 50 levels of gameplay.

What it is:
Spellweaving is an ability accessed under your abilities tab when you hit 50 with a caster class. It has a cooldown of about 10 seconds. Clicking it will lock your character in place as they enter Spellweaving Level 1 (hereafter known as SPL1). Clicking it again disables it (very important, but remember the cooldown). Various pretty graphics will fly around you depending on your class, announcing to the world that you are rooted and in spellweaving mode. These graphics get flashier the longer you stay in this mode. This gives you a number of relatively minor bonuses to most of your offensive spells, particularly in the way of splash damage increases and a larger radius for AOEs. In addition, for the first few seconds of each new Spellweaving level (of which there are six), you will have the brief opportunity to select one of five new spells that are only accessible in this mode, and represent the main reason you’d bother at all. They are all instant-cast. These spells are:

Arcane Renewal: For 6.5 seconds this gives you a largish (starts at 117) boost in fatigue once per three seconds. This can be helpful for maintaining the spellweaving state at times, but most of the time you don’t want to go past SPL2 anyway, so there isn’t much point to this.

Arcane Surge: For 10 seconds, all offensive spells you cast do the maximum on their range of damage every time. This is one of the best uses of the spellweaving state, but it has a 20 second cooldown.

Hell’s Garden: For 10.5 seconds, this does relatively minor fire damage (starts at 29-35) to everyone within 10m of you each second. I haven’t found this particularly useful in any situation except maybe de-cloaking assassins. Until Funcom bumps the damage on this or gives it a chance stun effect or something, you’ve generally got better options.

Hands of Doom: For 10 seconds, most offensive spells have their chance to crit raised by 100%, but they also cost +200% mana. This is another fine use of spellweaving, and this can be absolutely devastating during later spellweaving levels when you see large buffs to your critical hit damage for most spells ( up to +60% crit damage at SPL6). On the other hand, you really have to watch your mana use when you hit this, particularly if you don’t have a lot of mana regeneration or get one of the mana-eating debuffs (explained later). This also has a cooldown of 20 seconds.

Howl of Armageddon: Knocks back enemies within a 7m radius of your front arc. This might find use if you find yourself in sticky situations and need to press the panic button. Usually you want to use spellweaving to do more damage, so pressing this button is a wasted opportunity to press Arcane Surge or Hands of Doom. The best way to use this is to hit Howl, immediately disable spellweaving and use the time bought to run like hell and chug potions. Hitting Howl and staying in spellweaving is asking for suicide unless you can somehow blow everyone to pieces before they stand up again. The cooldown is 10 seconds.

Spellweaving Levels:
There are six levels of spellweaving. The first starts as soon as you hit the button and the last begins after 110 seconds (yes, that long) of standing there waving your arms. Each has a successive bonus to a number of your offensive spells, most of which are relatively minor. The more levels you go up, the greater the drain on your stamina. Note that this increases with character level as well. In the future I intend to give a rundown of the character levels and their effects on spellweaving, for now, the values are for level 50 characters when they first acquire the ability. In addition going up one level gives you a random debuff (explained later) and gives you another brief chance at one of the 5 spells listed above. While in any spellweaving level, you are immune to knockback and are unable to make any movement besides turning your facing. Also note that currently, the graphics for each of the spellweaving levels is currently the same as that of the Necromancer. Hopefully Funcom will be giving us our unique graphic sometime soon.


Spellweaving Level 1 (SPL1):
This level supposedly lasts about 12 seconds but it typically seems to be more like 10 seconds. During this level you do not have access to the five spellweaving spells, so you get very little benefit from it and still get a debuff. Also, due to the cooldown on the spellweaving ability button, you will be unable to leave spellweaving until you get to SPL2. Fortunately, this is the shortest level.

Duration: 12 seconds
Begins: 0 seconds
Stamina Drain: 67 per 3 seconds
Bonuses:
+1% Magic Damage Modifier
+10% to critical spell damage for FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+0.5% chance to crit with FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1m column radius for FoG, hellfire
+1.5 to area of effect splash for shockstrike
+2 to area of effect splash for shock
+15% splash damage for shock, shockstrike
+1 maximum targets for splash damage of shock, shockstrike


Spellweaving Level 2 (SPL2):
Since you have to stay rooted for 8-12 seconds to reach this level, anything above SPL2 is essentially useless in most PvP situations (sieges remain to be seen I suppose). You just won’t survive that long most of the time without being able to kite. Graphically, at this stage, a stone platform raises you up a few feet from the ground (not high enough unfortunately, lol). Once SPL2 begins, the five spellweaving spells will pop up as a hotbar on your screen for a few seconds. Don't miss your opportunity to click them when this happens or you'll have to wait for SPL3, which is not usually possible.

Duration: 17 seconds
Begins: 12 seconds
Stamina Drain: 89 per 3 seconds
Bonuses:
+2% Magic Damage Modifier
+20% to critical spell damage for FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1% chance to crit with FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1m column radius for shock, shockstrike
+1.3m column radius for FoG, hellfire
+1.5 to area of effect splash for FoG
+2 to area of effect splash for hellfire, shockstrike
+2.5 to area of effect splash for shock
+15% splash damage for FoG, hellfire
+20% splash damage for shock, shockstrike
+1 maximum targets for splash damage of hellfire
+2 maximum targets for splash damage of shock, shockstrike
+33% Increase to damage or healing spellweaving cost (unsure what this means, but it seems to be an increase in the mana cost of damaging/healing spells)

Spellweaving Level 3 (SPL3):
Not much to say about SPL3, except that it starts to get more difficult to keep your stamina up without some kind of regeneration, and that if you are here you are not in PvP. Even if you are attacking boss mobs using this strategy, SPL3 means they would have to stay still for some time without walking out of your firing range, so this is only able to be used on stationary mobs or those with a tight wandering radius.

Duration: 22 seconds
Begins: 29 seconds
Stamina Drain: 111 per 3 seconds
Bonuses:
+3% Magic Damage Modifier
+10% to critical spell damage for Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+30% to critical spell damage for FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+0.5% chance to crit with Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+1.5% chance to crit with FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1.3m column radius for shock, shockstrike
+1.5m column radius for FoG, hellfire
+2 to area of effect splash for FoG
+2.5 to area of effect splash for hellfire, shockstrike
+3 to area of effect splash for shock
+20% splash damage for FoG, hellfire
+25% splash damage for shock, shockstrike
+2 maximum targets for splash damage of hellfire
+3 maximum targets for splash damage of shock, shockstrike
+66% Increase to damage or healing spellweaving cost

Spellweaving Level 4 (SPL4):
Graphically, this gets more impressive, as four stone monoliths rise from the ground around you. At this point it is blatantly obvious to nearby players what you are doing, if it wasn’t before, and it gets impossible to hide behind things. But then, if you were attacking hostile players with spellweaving, you’d never make it to SPL4.

Duration: 27 seconds
Begins: 51 seconds
Stamina Drain: 133 per 3 seconds
Bonuses:
+4% Magic Damage Modifier
+10% to critical spell damage for waves of flame
+20% to critical spell damage for Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+40% to critical spell damage for FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+0.5% chance to crit with waves of flame
+1% chance to crit with Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+2% chance to crit with FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1.5m column radius for shock, shockstrike
+1.8m column radius for FoG, hellfire
+2.5 to area of effect splash for FoG
+3 to area of effect splash for hellfire, shockstrike
+3.5 to area of effect splash for shock
+25% splash damage for FoG, hellfire
+30% splash damage for shock, shockstrike
+3 maximum targets for splash damage of hellfire
+4 maximum targets for splash damage of shock, shockstrike
+100% Increase to damage or healing spellweaving cost

Spellweaving Level 5 (SPL5):
No change graphically, this takes forever to get to, minor increases to spell bonuses, enough said. At this point the list of minor spell bonuses runs off the screen, so I’m not certain of the completeness of the list. Unknown bonuses are labeled “presumed”.

Duration: 32 seconds
Begins: 78 seconds
Stamina Drain: 167 per 3 seconds
Bonuses:
+5% Magic Damage Modifier
+20% to critical spell damage for waves of flame
+30% to critical spell damage for Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+50% to critical spell damage for FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1% chance to crit with waves of flame
+1.5% chance to crit with Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+2.5% chance to crit with FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1.8m column radius for shock, shockstrike
+2m column radius for FoG, hellfire
+2 to area of effect splash for waves of flame
+3 to area of effect splash for FoG
+3.5 to area of effect splash for hellfire, shockstrike
+4 to area of effect splash for shock
+15% splash damage for waves of flame
+30% splash damage for FoG, hellfire
+35% splash damage for shock, shockstrike
+1 maximum targets for splash damage of waves of fire
+4 maximum targets for splash damage of hellfire
+5 maximum targets for splash damage of shock, shockstrike
+133% Increase to damage or healing spellweaving cost (presumed)

Spellweaving Level 6 (SPL6):
Lightning tendrils shoot into the sky from the tops of the monoliths, a giant skeletal hand reaches into the heavens, and a thick black cloud hangs heavily over you. The whole world knows you are there, that you are paralyzed, soft, chewy and taste good with ketchup. In addition, you are losing a big chunk of stamina every 3 seconds and will likely not last long in this state if you have been in combat with anything or do not have stamina regenerating food/buffs. The ability to use the 5 spellweaving abilities comes few and far between at this point (every 32 seconds), so although this is flashy and pretty, it serves little to no functional purpose to stay here. Since it takes 110 seconds total to reach SPL6, any potion you chugged prior to entering spellweaving is long gone at this point.

Duration: 32 seconds
Begins: 110 seconds
Stamina Drain: 200 per 3 seconds
Bonuses:
+6% Magic Damage Modifier
+30% to critical spell damage for waves of flame
+40% to critical spell damage for Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+60% to critical spell damage for FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+1.5% chance to crit with waves of flame
+2% chance to crit with Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+3% chance to crit with FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+2m column radius for FoG, hellfire, shock, shockstrike
+2 to area of effect splash for Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+2.5 to area of effect splash for waves of flame
+3.5 to area of effect splash for FoG
+4 to area of effect splash for hellfire, shockstrike
+5 to area of effect splash for shock
+15% splash damage for Inferno of Amher, shockblast
+20% splash damage for waves of flame
+35% splash damage for FoG, hellfire
+40% splash damage for shock, shockstrike
+1 maximum targets for splash damage of Inferno of Amher, shockblast (presumed)
+2 maximum targets for splash damage of waves of flame (presumed)
+5 maximum targets for splash damage of hellfire (presumed)
+6 maximum targets for splash damage of shock, shockstrike (presumed)
+166% Increase to damage or healing spellweaving cost (presumed)

After Spellweaving Level 6:
You can continue to spellweave as long as you can stand it, but after SPL6 the only new bonus you will get every 32 seconds is a 1% increase in Magic Damage Modifier, to a final maximum of 25%. Since this takes 718 seconds to reach (about 12 full minutes of standing there enduring stamina drain), this is pretty impractical.

As you can see, Fists of Gehenna, Hellfire Stream, Shockstrike, and Shock get the most love from spellweaving levels, followed by Inferno of Amher and Shockblast, then trailing behind is Waves of Flame. There does seem to be some general bias towards the Havoc tree in terms of bonuses, and the primary things that get buffed are the area of effect and critical strike attributes of spells, rather than their base damage.

Dangers of Spellweaving:
Besides the obvious dangers that are inherent with being rooted and having a huge, glowing, neon sign on you saying “I’m a rooted cloth-wearer, come get me,” there are debuffs which can last even after you leave the spellweaving state. At each successive level, and then every 32 seconds while maintaining SPL6, you get a random debuff (and sometimes two) representing the toll that spellweaving takes on your character. These are:

Ether Drain: You lose a small bit of mana every two seconds for 60 seconds. This is pretty minor (starts at 22 mana), especially if you have good mana regeneration, but it can slow your ability to regenerate mana and will stack with successive levels.

Frailty: A -10% to all your physical invulnerabilites for 60 seconds. This is unpleasant, since it significantly increases the amount of damage you take from that guy smacking you in the face and will stack if you get it more than once, which is bad. On the other hand, if you already have melee on you, you aren’t going to last long anyway.

Arcane Drought: All your spells do the minimum on their damage range for 10 seconds. This is the worst one by far in my opinion because it completely negates the purpose of entering the spellweaving state to begin with. If you get this one, generally it is best to just disable spellweaving state and try again later, since you’ll have all the disadvantages and no advantages otherwise.

Demon’s Payment: This does nothing unless your health dips below 75% (which it will quickly if you are getting hit), at which point it begins to take away 5% of your mana and stamina each second for 30.5 seconds. This is much more noticeable than Ether Drain, and can end your little party pretty quick unless you are using cheaper spells and/or have substantial mana/stamina regeneration going on. In addition, should you run out of mana while Demon's Payment is trying to take it away, it will start to chew at 5% of your health every second instead. This is usually one of the worst debuffs.

Flesh to Dust: This isn’t a debuff but a one-time damage hit. It appears to hit for approximately one-fifth (20.6667%) of your total amount of health at full. Not so bad, just be careful that it doesn’t push your health below 75% when Demon’s Payment is on.

Soul Wrack: This also isn’t a debuff. This is a one-time hit for a percent of your total health, stamina, and mana that increases as you go through spellweaving levels (see below). This can be nasty if it catches you off-guard or at a bad time and pushes your stamina to 0, beginning the nasty health drain which basically ends puts an end to your spellweaving.
At SPL1 and 2: Lose 5.6667% of your health, and 5% of stamina and mana.
At SPL3 and 4: Lose 10.6667% of your health, and 10% of stamina and mana.
At SPL5 and 6+: Lose 15.6667% of your health, and 15% of stamina and mana.

Some Tips/Notes:

- Use the Demon Slave if you plan to spellweave. Yes, it does make you a target, but spellweaving is going to make you even more noticeable, and since you are loosing stamina, mana, and probably health at a very fast rate, the regeneration from the Vile Ambrosia ability I found helps a lot.

- Drink any potions you think you that might need before entering spellweaving, as you won’t be able to once you start. Remember, though, that they only last 60 seconds, and getting to SPL6 requires at least 110 seconds, but you shouldn't be staying past SPL2 anyway, right?

- Eat stamina-regenerating foods! I found that with the Demon Slave out and some hearty tucker, I could maintain the spellweaving state out of combat essentially indefinitely.

- If you ever run out of stamina while in spellweaving mode, you will cease to regenerate stamina and will begin losing ridiculous amounts of life. You will probably not last to the count of ten if this starts to happen, even out of combat. Immediately end the spellweaving state at this point, since it is no longer useful to you, and it serves no purpose with your casting concentration at negative numbers.

- Obviously, never start spellweaving after sprinting for a few seconds since you won’t have the stamina to keep it up. This is the kind of common sense thing one might forget while running from enemies, but it’s worth mentioning.

- Spellweaving will enter you into combat mode if you were not before.

- The knockback protection can be helpful in some situations by itself, and you experience this benefit the second you hit the spellweaving button. It may seem like an odd way to use this ability, but if you're expecting knockback, this is an option we have.

- After you pass SPL6, the debuffs come few and far between (only every 32 seconds). Although you will often find yourself saddled with 3-4 or more debuffs while moving up the spellweaving ladder, after SPL6, you'll never have more than one or two at a time, since their durations don't last more than one 32 second interval if that. This means that staying put and getting to a stable place at SPL6 (with stamina regeneration buffs and such) before you start a big pull might be better than pulling while you are still working up the spellweaving levels, but it does take about two minutes to reach this state...

- Notice how spellweaving removes a set amount of stamina every three seconds rather than a percent, like sprinting does? This means that spellweaving is the one, and only, purpose a demonologist might have for having +stamina on their gear. Not that this is a good reason to rush out and find +stamina gear, but it is a point worth noting.

-Some people have reported getting the five spellweaving abilities before SPL2 by casting spells and getting them to trigger. I've seen this personally only once and there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it, but I suspect it is either a bug, or the fact that we can't use the abilities at SPL1 to begin with is a bug. UPDATE: The whole "casting spells to trigger spellweaving abilities" thing is confirmed, though it is unclear if this is a bug or working-as-intended. It does seem that the very act of activating spellweaving can also trigger this, allowing you to get access to the spellweaving abilities the second you hit the button, however, this appears to happen only randomly. Bear in mind that this random spell triggering will also give you a random debuff, so casting lots of spells in spellweaving mode is dangerous.

-By "spakerman", there is a bug that prevents you from spellweaving in a zone that you entered while mounted. Good to know.

My Opinions On Spellweaving:
It is my personal belief that Funcom really ought to make some serious changes to spellweaving in terms of the bonuses it provides and/or the disadvantages it confers before this can be considered an actual benefit of being a caster class. I had looked forward to the much-touted magic system and “soul corruption” and so forth that had been apparently wiped off the drawing board at some point during development, and now spellweaving is the one solitary difference between the magic system of Age of Conan and that of World of Warcraft, which is truly a shame. But what is more of a shame is that spellweaving is so very situational that it is very seldom used for anything more than showing off to new players or changing the pace out of boredom. My suggestions would be the following:

Reduce the length of time between spellweaving stages, such that SPL6 is attainable in 30 seconds or less.

Allow the 5 spellweaving spell options to remain present until used, since they are the primary purpose behind entering the state (given how minor the spell bonuses are). This would allow much more tactical choices while in the spellweaving state.

Provide new spellweaving spell options beyond the first five at each new spellweaving level. This would give players an incentive to hang in there until SPL6, considering how dangerous it is to be rooted for that long.