Guides · The world

Magic: the Focus, the four spells and Ether

The Crystal held all four elements. Its light, hardened in the deepest stone, can still wake one of them in a Dawnstone Focus. Four spells, one for each element; anyone can cast them, as anyone can draw a bow. Damage below is before armour, in points: two points are one heart.

A player casts Stonewake: a ridge of stone tears up along the ground towards a creature, its edges glowing green.

The Dawnstone Focus

Hold the Focus to cast. Right click casts the spell it holds where you aim, and holding the button keeps casting as fast as the spell allows. C turns the Focus to your next ready spell (the slot line names it and its cost), and B opens the spell book. With the Focus in hand you can't swing a sword or draw a bow at the same moment: switching costs a hotbar press, as with the bow. The Focus never wears out.

Dawnstone FocusDawnstone over a Gold Ingot over a Haft

The four spells

Spell	Ether	Cooldown	On a creature	On a player	How it flies
Rimeshard (Water)	4	0.8 s	5 and Chill 2 s	3 and Chill 1 s	A shard of ice, straight and fast, up to 32 blocks
Cinderbolt (Fire)	6	1.2 s	6 and Burning 3 s; half to those within 2 blocks	4 and Burning 1.5 s	A ball of fire with a slight drop, up to 28 blocks; it bursts where it lands
Stonewake (Earth)	8	4 s	6 and Rooted 1.5 s, thrown up, every creature on the ridge	3 and Rooted 0.5 s	A ridge of stone along the ground, 8 blocks in 0.6 s; it climbs a block, never a wall
Squall (Wind)	10	8 s	2, held in the wind 1 s, then flung 4 blocks	2, blown 3 back and 1.5 up	A small whirlwind walking 10 blocks over 3 s; it catches each target once

Spells never break blocks or set them alight.
A Keeper shrugs off its own element: the Frost Wraith takes no Chill, the Magma Colossus doesn't burn, the Thorn Guardian isn't rooted, the Tempest isn't blown. The damage still lands. Against bosses the effects are shorter.
Spells hit creatures and players, never a teammate and never you.
You can't cast while you are down.
On Easy, effects on you last half as long.

ChillMove slowerRimeshard
BurningLose half a heart a second; water or rain puts it outCinderbolt
RootedHeld in place by roots; you can still swingStonewake
WindboundCaught in the wind, then thrownSquall, on creatures

Ether

Ether is what spells cost: 20 of it, shown as a slim bar of ten segments across the top of the hotbar once you know a spell. It comes back on its own, 1.5 a second, starting a second after your last cast: empty to full in about 14 seconds. A cast you can't afford flashes the bar red and spends nothing. Ether starts full after you respawn.

A full bar does less to another player than a bow does in the same time: magic trades raw damage for reach without arrows, effects and hitting groups. Against creatures and Keepers the spells hit harder.

Learning spells

With the Focus: hold it and use a piece of the rarest ore in the stone, the one that lies below the moonstone. A window lists the spells you don't know; pick one. Each piece wakes one spell.
From a Keeper: beating a Keeper teaches its element's spell to everyone at the fight: the Frost Wraith teaches Rimeshard, the Magma Colossus Cinderbolt, the Thorn Guardian Stonewake and the Tempest Squall.
The Journal's Spells tab lists the four, the ones you know and how you learned them. The Torn Pages tell the story; they never teach spells.

The spell book

You know up to four spells; three are ready at a time, and the Focus casts only those. Open the spell book with B (on a phone, the Spells button in the bag, or hold the Cast button still for a second). Pick a spell, then a ready slot; on a computer you can drag it there. The book won't change for 5 seconds after you take damage: no swapping spells in the middle of a fight. Casting still works.

Spell levels

Each spell has three levels, raised at the Vael Lens Lectern, in its Spells tab, for a fixed price that always works. The gains are small and mostly against creatures, so a fight between players barely changes.

Level	Price	Gain
I	Learned	The numbers above
II	3 Moonstone and 3 of the spell's elemental ore	1 less Ether, a cooldown 10% shorter
III	Two pieces of the rarest ore and 6 of the spell's elemental ore	1 more damage and effects 25% longer, against creatures and bosses only

The elemental ores: Water Ore for Rimeshard, Fire Ore for Cinderbolt, Earth Ore for Stonewake, Wind Ore for Squall. Each Keeper drops its own: see the Keepers.

On touch screens

With the Focus in hand, the Cast button takes the Draw button's place above the camera button. Tap it to cast at the middle of the screen; hold it, slide the same thumb to aim, and lift to cast. The gold square round it drains as the spell cools down. The small socket on its corner switches to the next ready spell. Arrange controls (Settings > Controls) moves it with the Draw button: one place for both.

Spell trails

A trail is a look, not a power: it recolours the core and the trail of all your spells. Size, speed and damage stay the same, and the rim keeps the element's colour, so everyone can still tell which spell is coming. Choose one in Looks (Body › Spell trail). Two are earned and never sold: Chainbreaker, gold links in the trail, for beating all four Keepers, and Scribe's Ink, a black core with gold letters, for finding all sixteen Torn Pages.

Next: The Songstone. All sections: the guides.