Across The Obelisk: 6 Best Mage Cards For The Early Game (2024)

Across the Obelisk is another fantastic entry into the long line of roguelike deckbuilders, and is a game with an absurd amount of content to unlock, builds to try, and playable characters to master. The playable cast of Heroes, in particular, includes 16 different adventurers of all different types of races, backgrounds, and Classes. There are Elves, Lizardmen, Frogmen, and even a Mindflayer. And, for Classes, there are Warriors, Scouts, Healers, and Mages. For today, let's focus primarily on the Mage class, with Evelyn being the default, usually followed by players unlocking Cornelius, Wilbur, and then Zek.

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Now, each of these Mages has different Innate Traits, Level-Up Traits, Damage Specializations, and optimal builds, but there are still cards in Across the Obelisk that generally works best between all of them that players should absolutely add to their Decks, at least for the early parts of a run.

6 Defense Skill: Elemental Ward

• Recommended Upgrade: Gold Variant

First up is Elemental Ward, a card that beginners in the game might not have expected to be on here. Granted, the card is primarily at its peak usefulness when used by Evelyn, the Mage that works best as a Support. But, Elemental Ward is good on just about any of the Mages, simply because the Insulate Buff is useful in any situation. Insulate reduces the Fire, Cold, and Lightning damage taken by 30%, and it's basically the elemental version of Reinforce, a buff that reduces the physical damage of Slash, Blunt, and Piercing by 30%.

Elemental Ward, by default, grants 3 Stacks of Insulate, which is usually enough to last through most combat encounters, not including anything past Act 2 or the boss fights at the end of each map.

5 Low-Cost Damage Spells: Ice Lance, Emberstorm, Zap & Malicious Eye

Moving onto early game damage spells, each of the four Mages has their own specific option since they all have damage types they excel in. Now, while this game doesn't have anything crazy like Elemental Reactions, the Element type used by each Mage does matter, and these are their best options:

• Evelyn has Ice Lance's Gold Variant: The Chill Stacks synergize with her Elemental Proliferation Level 1 Trait, and with the right Perk Point build Evelyn can apply 1-2 Stacks of Slow with a single Ice Lance.
• Cornelius has Emberstorm's Gold Variant: Cornelius' Traits, especially Hell Flame and Incendiary, work amazingly well with Spells that hit All Monsters. And, Emberstorm is one of the cheapest All Monster target Spells that also applies a good amount of Burn stacks. Players may want to use the Blue Variant of this Spell for Act 1 and then Transform it to the Gold Variant for the rest of the run.
• Wilbur has Zap's Gold Variant: Simply because Wilbur is the Lighting-Mage and Zap is the best early-game tool for applying Stacks of Spark. Plus, with his Level 3 Trait, Voltaic Arc, enemies with Spark now take damage from their own Stacks, making the Gold Variant of Zap even more useful.
• Zek has Malicious Eye's Blue Variant: Because, while it only applies a single stack of Darkness by default, Zek will almost always have Perk Points invested in applying additional Dark Stacks, so as long as a card is applying at least 1 Stack then Zek is usually applying +3 or +4.

The first Act or so of Across the Obelisk really has the player struggling with their Party's Energy, which is why it's great that these Mages all have 0-Cost options that deal decent damage but also apply their primary Elemental Debuffs.

4 Skill: Transmission

• Recommended Upgrade: Blue Variant

Transmission is another deceptively incredible Spell, and for one primary reason: it gives a Stack of Inspire. For those who don't know, Inspire basically lets whoever got it to draw an extra card on their next turn. Not only that, but Transmission also gives the chosen Hero 2 Stacks of Energize, meaning they'll gain an additional 2 Energy on their next turn to potential users to play their additional card.

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Typically, this Skill is used by Evelyn to set up the Healer so they can cast a bunch of Holy Damage or Heals. But, on the other Mages, they can either use this card on themselves to get set up for the next turn if they drew unlucky cards or to give their Scout Energize and Inspire so they can be the main damage dealer for a turn.

• Recommended Upgrade: Blue Variant

No joke, Scroll of Intellect is probably the best card in the entire game, from an objective standpoint. For 0 Energy, this Card gives whoever it's applied to 1 Stack of Inspire and 1 Stack of Energize. So, for absolutely no cost, this card gives two of the best beneficial Buffs in the game. Not many card games have cards like this that provide massive benefits for 0-cost. That said, both of these benefits do need a turn to bear fruit.

But, thankfully, the Blue Variant Upgrade makes the Card Innate. So, if the Mage is one of the faster characters in the party (usually the Scout is faster), they can use this Scroll to give the other DPS that goes after them a much stronger first turn. The only downside is that Innate does count towards the character's first draw, meaning it takes up a spot in the starting hand that could have been used for another damage-type card.

2 Mid-Cost Damage Spells: Elemental Bolt, Scorching Ray, Shock Nova & Pestilence

Similar to the low-cost individual Spells mentioned earlier here, these are the mid-cost Spells that are the best options for each Mage and are typically picked up in the hub area of wherever the player picked for Act 2, be it Aquarfall Marsh, Velkarath, or Faeborg. The best choice for each Mage tends to be:

• Evelyn using either Elemental Bolt Variant: This Spell seems almost tailor-made for both her "Jack-of-all-trades" magic specialization and especially so for her Elemental Proliferation Level 2 Trait. The only difference between the Spell's Upgrades is what Element Types the card prefers, meaning players with an Evelyn more specced toward Fire Damage should use the Gold Variant while Ice-type Evelyn's should use the Blue Variant.
• Cornelius using the Blue Variant of Scorching Ray: A bit more costly at 3 Energy, but in exchange for the additional cost, Cornelius gets to use the most efficient single-target Spell for applying Burn Stacks, since each individual "hit" of this Spell applies additional Burn stacks based on Cornelius' Perks and Equipment.
• Wilbur has the Gold Variant of Shock Nova: Honestly, this pick is here mostly because there aren't any better options. Still, this 3-Cost Spell has decent damage, applies 1 Spark Stack so that Wilbur's Perks and Equipment can apply more, and even inflicts two Stacks of Slow.
• Zek has the Blue Variant of Pestilence: People forget that the (Jump) percentage on certain cards doesn't mean that the card only has a certain percentage to "jump" from enemy to enemy. No, the Jump always happens, but the amount of damage done (or amount healed) by the Spell increases by that percentage with every Jump. So, with Pestilence, Zek has a 2-Cost that deals okay damage but Applies Dark 4 separate times to enemies, which almost always results in an Explosion of Dark or two.

These will typically be the Spells that players will have in their Deck for the rest of the run.

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They aren't the Core damage dealing cards in late Act 3 or Act 4, but every game has a small group of "best Spells" like these that are the perfect blend of Energy Cost, Damage done, and Debuffs applies.

1 Skill: Unstable Power

• Recommended Upgrade: Blue Variant

And finally, there's Unstable Power. While Buffs in any game can be confusing, in AtO Buff like Sharp are best used by Scouts and Debuffs like Vulnerable are typically used by Warriors, Powerful tends to work best overall for Mages.

When used in combination with whatever Elemental Debuff the Mage specializes in, whether it's Chill, Burn, Spark, or even Dark, a few Stacks of the Powerful Buff can make a massive impact on how much damage they'll do. And, Unstable Power is a great card for building these Stacks with almost zero downsides.

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