Intense Focus Solo Wizard Build

Introduction

Welcome to our Intense Focus Wizard Solo build guide! In this build, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to utilize the Intense Focus Wizard. This includes Skills, Perks, Stat Priority and more!

This Wizard build focuses on the ability to trigger instant cast abilities, getting you out of a tough situation or surprising enemies. The Wizard is a very powerful class capable of multiple playstyles. However, the standard Wizard build relies on the “Meditation” skill to replenish spell charges. For the Intense Focus Wizard, however, we discard Meditation and instead pick up the “Intense Focus” skill. Once the role of this build is understood, any player can cause devastation versus any threat.

This build in particular is focused on the Goblin Caves solo map. However, with some tuning, you can probably use it in other maps too!

Skills

Spell Memory and Intense Focus are the recommended skills required to run the Intense Focus Solo Wizard build. Spell Memory allows the player to equip up to 5 spells – based on your allotted spell memory stat points. This is because each spell requires spell memory stat points to use in battle. Intense Focus is crucial to the success of this Goblin Cave-focused build. Intense Focus is a fast-activating Skill that makes the Wizard’s next spell a 0.1-second cast.

Recommended Intense Focus Solo Wizard Build Spells

As seen further above, the spell set-up for the Intense Focus Wizard is simple. Having access to a PvE clearing spell, a hard-hitter and utility spells such as Light Orb, Invisibility and Ice Bolt is crucial to success.

Solo and Group

Ice Bolt
Magic Missile
Light Orb
Invisibility
Fireball

Zap is a spell that could easily become recommended in place of Ice Bolt with enough gear. Due to Zap scaling incredibly hard while also being a fast-casted spell. Light Orb is important in the Goblin Cave due to the high amount of Rogues in the lobby. Light Orb allows you to reveal invisible players. The rest of the spells in the kit are commonly used among Wizards and need no introduction.

Perks

For this Wizard build, we recommend the following perks:

Mana Surge
Arcane Mastery
Quick Chant
Ice Shield

Typically, in a Wizard build you’d most likely find perks such as Sage. However, this build plays in a way that does not require an over-stacking of cast speed. Ice Shield is a fantastic meta-perk currently to deal with the melee-heavy metagame. Mana Surge and Arcane Master are no-brainer perks for optimal damage.

Intense Focus Solo Build Guide skill menu

Stat Priority

Additional Magic Damage
+All Attributes
Will
Strength or Agility
Any other Magic Damage modifier

Within the stat priority, it should be a no-brainer that +All Attributes is a great all-rounder stat to obtain. Will is the primary stat that scales the Wizard’s Magical Power, however, in a melee-focused build – Strength & Agility share the spotlight as viable stat choices. Strength allows for more HP while dealing more physical damage. On the other hand, Agility provides movement speed and faster attacks, both approaches to stat priority add value to the build. Finally, Additional Magic Damage is a must-have for any Wizard build. This includes the Intense Focus Solo Wizard Build, as a result of raw numbers being added to the damage formula scales your damage dramatically.

Gear

Weapons

For this build, the Wizard only needs a Spellbook and either a Crystal Sword or Rondel Dagger as a melee backup weapon. Intense Focus is a caster-heavy solo build option for the Wizard, as a result, the Spellbook is a must-have.

Armor

For the Intense Focus Wizard Build, we recommend using a decent combination of cloth and leather where appropriate to get the best protection-to-movement speed ratio. This can be the following:

Wizard Hat or Leather Cap
Oracle Robe
Wizard Shoes or other cloth shoes
Rawhide Gloves
Loose Trouser

The above loadout provides the best possible resistances without compromising your movement speed. Oracle Robe, in particular, provides a great amount of armor, while being cloth and lightweight! Try to build your loadout with the above in mind to yield the most optimal results. Finally, do not forget to find the associated stat priorities required for the build!

How to Play the Intense Focus Solo Wizard Build

The Intense Focus Solo Wizard build is a simple yet deadly approach to the Wizard. The Goblin Caves is filled with Rogues, Barbarians, Rangers and occasionally – teamers. Due to the 1-on-1 nature of the map and how close-quartered it is, we rely on Intense Focus as an immediate way to respond or initiate a fight.

One of the key elements of the Intense Focus Wizard Solo Build is the ability to cause complete chaos and panic in the cave. This chaos comes in the form of weaving Invisibility into your strategy. This style of gameplay can be very confusing for even good opponents to track and allows a lot of creative decision-making.

Intense Focus

Intense Focus can be used in multiple ways to assist you in the caves, some of the common ways are the following:

Instantly casting a Fireball to destroy a door, to either chase or escape players or monsters.
Instantly casting Invisibility to play mind-games on your opponent or reset monster aggro (Invisibility has a short cast time, however slows you down while casting it without Intense Focus – leaving you vulnerable to melee players in range).
Casting a Fireball immediately in response to a player engage to catch them off guard
Quick-casting something such as Magic Missiles to deal with an immediate monster problem
Chaining two Fireballs together in quick succession (Normal cast the first Fireball, immediately Intense Focus the second)

A final note to remember, as a result of not playing Meditation, we have a heavier reliance on the following:

Resting by pressing G to recharge spells.
Using Clarity Potions to recharge spells.
Using Campfires to recover health and recharge spells.

Intense Focus Solo Wizard Gameplay

As a Solo in the Goblin Cave, the playstyle of the Wizard becomes slightly different. Due to the map being smaller and closed-in, a Wizard is far more vulnerable to the many melee classes of Dark and Darker. Consistent use of Light Orb is key in the Intense Focus gameplay loop. Light Orbing an area you believe to potentially have a Rogue in allows you to confirm the suspicion. This is important due to Rogues are an incredible hidden threat in the Goblin Cave. The map has multiple layers of verticality involved, which we can use to our advantage. This is done by using Invisibility and dropping or climbing levels to outplay opponents or escape a tricky situation with monsters.

Intense Focus Tips

Fighting players is largely the same as any Wizard build, using our spells and/or melee weapons to defeat them. However, with Intense Focus we can chain-cast spells we otherwise could not before. One of our bread-and-butter damage combinations is to pre-cast a normal Fireball, and then Intense Focus a second Fireball immediately. The damage of two Fireballs is usually enough to kill a player. Another cool play you can make with double Fireball is using the first Fireball to destroy a door, which allows the second Fireball to fly through the doorframe freely. This is especially helpful in killing or surprising players behind doors.

The other spells are fairly known in their uses already. Magic Missiles is largely used to clear monsters while Invisibility is used as an engage or disengage tool. Ice Bolt is a fast-traveling projectile that slows opponents down. In the Goblin Cave, this can come in handy to keep good spacing between you and your opponent – or quickly pick a player off.

Multiclassing Options

Multiclassing is a very experimental feature in Dark and Darker. As a result, there is going to be a ton of possibilities and build tweaks. As we and the many players of the game push further into the wipe to test Multiclassing, we’ll update this build with our recommendations! To see more on Multiclassing and what it means for the future of Dark and Darker – check out the 2024 Roadmap.