The Sorceress has two main duties when it comes to Dragon’s Crown. She deals magic damage to enemies, and assists the party with various buffs and helpful spells. She isn’t as offense-heavy as the Wizard, but what she loses in magic attack power, she makes up for with support spells. She’s a class that has a moderate learning curve, mainly surrounding the fact that she has to charge her MP to cast spells. Once you have that down and learn to manage your MP properly, she becomes a great asset to any party.
Read Prima’s Dragon’s Crown Beginner’s Tips for even more strategies.
Class Tips: Fighter, Elf, Sorceress, Dwarf, Wizard, Amazon
STATS BREAKDOWN
Strength: E
As you might imagine, the Sorceress does not have great physical attack abilities. This becomes clear when you realize her strength rank is as bad as it gets. If you were planning to rush into a bevy of enemies and start swinging your staff around, this probably isn’t the job for you. Luckily, her magical abilities far outweigh any potential negatives that would come from her lack of physical attack power.
Constitution: D
If her strength ranking wasn’t enough of a red flag, take a look at the constitution ranking for the Sorceress and you’ll quickly realize you should not be anywhere near an enemy. It does not take many hits for her to go down, so make sure you’re keeping your distance, especially against more powerful enemies and bosses. She has plenty of abilities and skills that work from across the screen, and that’s exactly where you should attack from.
Intelligence: A
Where the Sorceress shines is in her magical capabilities. She has a very high intelligence ranking, surpassed only by the Wizard. This means that her magic spells inflict a significant amount of damage, but aren’t quite as powerful as the Wizard’s spells. If you’re looking for a purely offensive character, the Sorceress can be played that way, but the Wizard is better suited for that style. The Sorceress is best used as an offensive character that offers great support for the party as well.
Magic Resistance: S
In most cases, any magic attacks from an enemy can reach across the screen. If you’re keeping your distance, as you should be, you may still get hit with a few magic attacks. Luckily, the Sorceress has the best magic resistance rank in the game. She can take more magic-based attacks than any other character (HP aside), continue attacking from a distance and support her party.
Dexterity: B
The Sorceress has a moderate dexterity rank. It means that more often than not she’ll inflict damage on the higher end of her staff’s damage rating. This isn’t as important a stat for the Sorceress as it would be for the Fighter or Dwarf, but it’s still nice to have a decent rank.
Luck: A
While a high luck rank is good for landing more critical attacks, it’s not an important stat for the Sorceress. She has great magic attack power, but her role is not that of a damage dealer. She can certainly dish out the damage when she needs to and you’ll certainly take out your fair share of bad guys, but she’s a multifaceted class that needs to be able to support her party as well as inflict damage.
BASIC GAMEPLAY
When you play as the Sorceress, you should never be close to enemies. She has enough magic attack and support spells that she has no reason to engage in close combat. Early on, you’re going to have to adjust to charging her MP. All of her spells, and even her evade ability (which teleports) use up MP. The bigger the spell, the more MP she uses. While there are skills that help her regain MP and also increase her total MP pool, it will be some time before you can level those skills up to be truly helpful.
One of the main things that may throw you off at first is the fact that you’ll want to charge MP as you run to the next area. To charge MP you hold Square. However, if you hold Square after you’ve started moving, you’ll begin to run instead of charge your MP. This is especially frustrating if you’ve played other classes and are accustomed to simply running to the next area. Once you get the hang of holding Square before you move, it won’t be a problem, but it does take some getting used to.
When you’ve mastered how to charge your MP, it’s time to learn how to manage it. Keep an eye on how much MP each of your spells use, and always pay close attention to how much MP you currently have. While you’re doing this, you’ll also need to keep a close eye on where the enemies are. When you get low on MP, you’ll need to start charging it while avoiding enemies. You can’t charge MP and attack at the same time. Since it costs MP to evade, it’s important to always have at least enough MP to use the evade ability, just in case you get into trouble.
Once you have the basics down for playing as a Sorceress, you’ll need to determine what kind of play style you’re going to use. You can play offensively and that will work, but it’s not really what a Sorceress was designed to do. If you wish to play a purely offensive mage, the Wizard is better suited for the job. If you want to use everything the Sorceress has to offer, you’ll need to alternate between offensive magic and support magic.
The Sorceress has a bevy of spells that assist and protect her fellow party members. Some of these spells are more effective than others, and some won’t be needed at all if you have a solid party. Many of her spells also take up item slots, which means you’ll need to manage your inventory as well as your MP. Playing as a Sorceress is not an easy task, but once you’ve mastered her many abilities, it’s a very rewarding class.
When it comes to the ideal party for a Sorceress, she fits well with almost any combination of classes. It’s a good idea to have at least one melee class in the party to ensure that the Sorceress can easily keep her distance from enemies. If your entire party is made up of ranged attackers (Sorceress, Wizard and Elf), you may have a hard time keeping your distance from enemies. Beyond one or two melee classes, if you like using her Animate Skeleton skill, the more mage classes that are in your party, the fewer skeleton familiars you’ll be able to have at your command. A party can only have a maximum of four total skeleton familiars.
SKILL FOCUS
Mental Absorb
The Mental Absorb skill becomes more and more useful as you level up your offensive spells. It replenishes a small amount of MP every time the Sorceress defeats an enemy. If you have a good melee class in your party, they’ll be getting most of the kills at lower levels, but as you strengthen your offensive magic, you’ll be able to steal a few kills as well. This is a good skill to have, but not a priority until you reach higher levels.
Extract
Extract allows the Sorceress to attack with magic shots that replenish her MP with every hit. This skill should take priority over the Mental Absorb skill because it’s far easier to hit enemies with the magic shot than it is to kill them when you’re partied with several melee classes. Use this skill often because you’ll need as much MP as you can get, especially early on when it’s much easier to run out of MP in a short time.
Concentrate
Concentrate is one of the more important skills for the Sorceress. Each time you level up concentrate it allows her to charge her MP at a faster rate. At the maximum level, the charge rate is much better than when you first begin the game. While still not the most important skill a Sorceress can have (that falls to Spirit Up), it’s very important to level this up as quickly as possible.
Spirit Up
Almost everything you do as a Sorceress requires MP. Therefore, the Spirit Up skill is her most important because it increases her total MP reserve. The more MP you have, the longer it takes to run out and have to recharge again. Make this skill a priority and get it to the maximum level as quickly as possible.
Protection
As a support class, the Sorceress gets many spells that allow her to help the rest of the party. Protection is one such skill. It shields her allies from enemy attacks. This comes in handy against large groups of enemies and during boss battles. It requires an item slot, so this skill may take a back seat depending on how you wish to play the Sorceress. If your focus is on offensive skills, you may want to hold off on Protection until you have more inventory space.
Thunderhead, Rock Press, Blizzard
These three skills make up a bulk of the magic attack spells for the Sorceress. They each work well to inflict damage to enemies, especially once you’ve leveled them up a bit. However, they all require an item slot in your inventory. This makes it a bit harder to have all three readily available early in the game, so focus on leveling up one or two of these skills at a time. Blizzard is recommended because it’s generally more effective than the others based on its MP cost. However, all three spells work well once they’re leveled up.
Animate Skeleton
As you progress through the various dungeons, you’ll come across fallen warriors that are now just piles of bones. This happens at least once per dungeon, and more so as you move on to the harder dungeons. The Animate Skeleton skill allows the Sorceress to use these piles of bones to create a skeleton familiar. As you increase the level of this skill, your familiar becomes more powerful. A party can only have four skeleton familiars at any given time, so if there’s more than one Sorceress in your party, you may not be able to use this skill to its full potential.
Levitation
The Levitation skill has two primary functions. It helps to keep the Sorceress out of harm’s way by floating above most of the action, and it increases her magic attack power while she’s floating. Obtain this skill so that you have the ability to float, but don’t worry about leveling it up until you’ve maxed out some of her other more important skills.
Create Food
Later in the game when you start chaining dungeons, the Create Food skill becomes a valuable asset. It’s fairly self-explanatory; it creates food so you don’t have to wait until you come across a crate. Food replenishes HP and you can have up to 150 percent of your HP in food bonuses. Just remember to stop moving so you can eat the food. If you stay on the move or are charging your MP, you won’t eat any food until you stop. Don’t worry too much about this skill until you’ve obtained almost every other skill.
