Spellbooks

**Spellbooks** are a subset of items found throughout the dungeon of *Barony*, where players can utilize them to learn spells given enough INT and Magic skill.

## Description

Like all other books, spellbooks are often found scattered through the dungeon unidentified. Their covers can vary, but their effect is independent on the color of these covers, making picking up a book from the dungeon equally likely to yield a normal book instead of a spellbook.

### Memorizing Spells

The primary use of spellbooks is to read their contents and to memorize the spells inside, accomplished by using the book from the inventory and selecting the "Read" option. Blessed spellbooks are similar to non-cursed ones, being easier to read and learn higher tiered spells outside of the player's current proficiency.

Cursed spellbooks will cause the player to forget a spell if read, permanantly removing one of their previously learned spells from their memory, and instantly destroying the spellbook itself. This includes spells learned by reading, class innate spells, and race innate spells. If the player does not have any spells to forget, the spellbook is still destroyed and the chat states the player feeling scatterbrained for a moment.

Due to their nature, Succubi and Incubi can learn spells from any kind of spellbook without fear of curse penalties. Automatons do become scatterbrained when reading a cursed spellbook, but they cannot forget previously learned or innate spells.

Once read, Spellbooks will degrade by one quality level, decreasing their value in gold and often dissipating into ash if its quality is low enough before being read.

### Off-hand Casting

A feature added in the Tinkers and Archers 3.3.0 Update, spellbooks can now be equipped in the shield slot of the character, wielding it offhand. With a spellbook equipped, the player will begin to cast the spell once they press the block/sneak key. Casting in this way will cost the user mana, as well as having a chance to degrade the spellbook. Blessing and curses work like normal equipment, being more durable or inable to remove.

There are several niche benefits to casting in this manner, most notably for Goblin players. Since they cannot memorize spells, equipping the spellbook with their innate ability to grant their armor and tools with extra durability means one spellbook can last much longer, so using magic as a Goblin is much more forgiving.

Having a spellbook while having a memorized spell also allows players to "dual wield" spell types, so the memorized and off-hand spellbooks can dish out several effects at a time without constantly preparing different spells from memory alone.

Finally, the strongest asset of casting in this way is being able to cast spells that are outside the player's normal proficiency. A difficult spell like Magic Mapping can demand quite a lot out of a player's Magic and Intelligence stats, but equipping the spellbook at any level and affording the 40 mana cost is enough to start working.

This is especially helpful for non-magician classes finding helpful but demanding spells later on in their games, so they too can benefit from those spells without having to invest mana into practicing lesser spells and leveling up Magic.

## Obtaining Spellbooks

Besides finding the odd spellbook in the dungeon, there are two notable sources of these books: shops and the Mystic Library. Shops can come in several varietied, one of which is the bookstore, which often sell books and spellbooks. General stores can also be found selling spellbooks, but much less likely due to their larger pool of items that are not spellbooks.

The Mystic Library can be found late into the game at the first floor of the Ruins, requiring caution around traps and levitation to access. Once inside, the many chests there can provide a vast increase in spellbooks, as well as Magic Staffs to increase Magic and Casting to make learning easier.

## Magic Tiers

Spells are segmented into escalating tiers, where lower tier spells are easier to learn, requiring lower levels of the associated skills. If the spell is too difficult for a player, they cannot learn anything from the book. Spellbooks are fairly time consuming to appraise, as their gold value increase in proportion to the higher tier of the spell.

#### Learning Spells

To learn a spell from a spellbook, a character needs to have a high enough *magic stat*. A player's magic stat is comprised of their intelligence and their magic skill.

* If a spell requires a magic stat of 20:
	+ The player has an INT of 4
	+ A Magic skill of 16
	+ = a total of 20 magic stat;
* The player will be able to learn the spell.

## Trivia

* When playing as an Accursed, the Mystic Library will have a spellbook of Vampiric Aura to reverse the curse. This is the only way to obtain this type of spell without cheats.