Dawn of Magic is a russian ARPG initially released in Russia in 2005 as Blood Magic. It eventually made it to Europe and North America in 2007. Nowadays the game is unfortunately not available on the digital platforms. Dawn of Magic 2 (Blood Magic - Time of Shadows), which is available on Steam is a mere stand-alone expansion that is basically the same in regards to most game mechanics, but is clearly inferior in many other ways.

Looking around for information on the game, I haven't found much. There is one ok walkthrough and guide on gamefaqs and some footage on youtube, but in comparison to most games and even in comparison to many obscure games, there is barely any information or any other kind of content to be found on the Internet. And the old Deep Silver-forums have long since been shut down. There might be more in Russian, but that's unfortunately not an option for me.

Let's see if I can recruit some converts to the cause. Below I have listed a number of the accomplishments as well as of the shortcomings of the game, which should give you a good overview of why some people did enjoy Dawn of Magic and justification for why those people aren't just a bunch of weirdos who like "bad" games. ;-)

Good:

- 12 schools of magic with eight spells each, which can be combined in a variety of ways.
- Mostly good, informative tooltips.
- Spells change the appearance of the player character. How these changes look, varies from character to character.
- Amount of skill points and spell points is limited and the cost increases with every level, forcing choices.
- Great art, especially in regards to the varied architecture of the different cities.
- Many great tracks of music, creating varied moods for the different environments.
- Storyline changes dependent on the alignment that the player picks at the start.
- City guards fight the monsters and also the player when he attacks them or simply has messed up somehow.
- Potions are not potions in the traditional sense, but rather are a single pool of which each heal will subtract exactly as much as used. 500 life equals 500 potions used for instance. Furter potions can be stored in a chest, but not in the inventory. As a result the number of uses is limited.
- Dark Path is a teleport-skill, which makes navigation much less of a hassle and it is a good escape-mechanism as well.
- Stable and not buggy. In about 200 hours of playtime I can easily count the crashes on one hand.

Bad:

- Attribute requirements for items are often too high.
- Totems which can be found and given to Alchemist to make unique items are too hard to find.
- The four different characters are only different in minor ways, such as having a different size of their potion-pools.
- A number of spells that can technically be combined simply do not work together.
- The exact rules for which spells do work together and how, are often unclear.
- Most spells only fit in the primary slot, that is, they cannot be combined with other primaries.
- Some information isn't included in the tutorial or only mentioned in passing.
- Repeatable mini-quests that get more challenging with each try and have the reward (skill-points and such) locked behind 5+ tries. The worst imaginable way to do it in my opinion.
- The spell Earth Golem is bugged. It's supposed to use the Rock-spell, but it never goes beyond using the Level 1-version of it.
- Navigation can a times be difficult, especially since the Teleport is somewhat picky about where it will let the player go.

Neutral:
- On the first difficulty the game is generally not hard, but most builds require a lot of kiting.
- Some builds are not viable, i.e. the player can mess up, which is as it should be, but can lead to frustration.
- The towns are quite big, which I personally like, but it leads to a lot of running around. Some of them have little meaningful content.
- Big maps combined with monsters that take time to kill. The good thing about this is that it gives the player leeway for grinding, but doesn't force it.
- Story is nothing much to write home about, but is somewhat dynamic because of alignment-choice.
- Characters of note all have some voiced dialogue, even if they have no importance for the plot. Alchemists, which speak differently depending on which Act one is in, are a standout.

The only around 100 votes for the game on the community wishlist are another clear indication of how Dawn of Magic has - in my opinon unjustly - been forgotten. I therefore encourage the gog-community to add more votes here:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games#search=dawn%20of%20magic
Who knows: You might even be inclined to get one of the used copies that are still around on Amazon.

No screen shots or videos? you make me have to be unlazy and GOOGLE?!

what has the world come to?!

(voted)

I have original discs of this game and remember a buggy inventory, was very difficult to complete the game when you can't scroll items. Anyway this game was very popular on release.

Thanks Lord_Kane.

https://forum.rockpapershotgun.com/t/the-screenshot-thread/28505/508

There are some down at 493 and 505.

@NickZah:

I had the impression that it got a good amount of attention back when it was released, but in terms of walkthroughs, guides, LPs and such - at least in German and English, there really isn't much to be found nowadays.

And yes, the way the inventory works is really not comfortable at all. It is especially annoying since there are no quality of life-options for checking on Runewords or Totems.

Voted.

I have this on CD I brought 1 & 2 last year as they looked good. I've yet to really get into it, but the small part i've played so far it seems good.

Also the CD versions of 1 & 2 work fine under Windows 10, however I was unable to find a no CD patch for DOM1 which worked, and that does need the CD and it has a CD compliance check each time you want to launch the game. (It runs a third party program which it scans your CD drive for the CD.)

I'd get them if they came to GOG. If only so it saves me dealing with the CD for DOM1.

Much appreciated RoboPond!

Have you tried the patch from gamecopyworld.com? It worked fine for me. I have a used copy from amazon, but I think I ran into some trouble with StarForce, so I had little choice. Would really be nice to have an "unf****d" version on gog, so to speak.

Well i have some good news for you Dawn of Magic lovers, i found out modding is possible! (since many years ago aparently but it was hidden really good on the internet..)

Here's my post about finding it out (replace DOT with . and remove spaces)
steamcommunity DOT com/app/33540/discussions/0/2763442118823816589/

And my guide i made to help you get started.
steamcommunity DOT com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1845783384

I also have a mod in-dev currently but didn't release it yet as no1 even said they want it.

Dawn of Magic was quite a popular game, hopefully we see a GOG release at some point :)!

What's the mod?

Edit: Yes I did. Last time I looked there it was for a different regional version than mine and just crashed the game. I did look for a English one but had no luck.

Well i basically added/changed a bunch of unique items to be useful (like adding spell dmg to staffs and increasing 2h staff rune slot amount) then made variations of them (like 2 star lvl 50 staff), balanced some spells and removed all traders except the genie you summon.

I could most easily release the files i modify, then you can just build the mod yourself. Otherwise you need to download a 1-2 gb file.

Here's the link to the modified files that needs to be built with the mod tool
drive.google DOT com/open?id=1j7DX8LcYUkoc4FVdySG0rwK5pHmYi2-w


Edit, i'll just post my whole changelog

v1.1
* Traders no longer sell anything! You can only buy potions from the merchant you summon with the spell. This means no more reloading areas to hunt for unique items in shops!
..But it also means you can't buy spell scrolls so alchemy is actually useful now! This is subjective though, some will like, some won't, but it's needed.
* Epic uniques are now worth less. This is to combat gold inflation after removing traders. As now gold is only used to buy pots. (before it was mostly used to buy unique items and scrolls, runes, materials)
* I'll probably have to reduce gold income even more.
* epic uniques now go from 25% less base stats to 25% more base stats (from 0% to 50% more, it's a nerf, many are still stronger though even at their most common weakest version)
v1.0
{
ITEMS:
Added a few unique items
All unique items got a many variations now! There are lvl and star rank variations. Each lvl gives +1 per their rank to all the stats of the item. Each rank is rarer than the last.
Most of the uniques with the variations are reworked. OP stuff like rainbow set was nerfed, everything else was buffed! Added + spell dmg to many staffs, earrings etc.
Replaced a lot of on bash 1% chance for x with actually useful stats.
Most uniques now have max possible rune slots or close
All epic versions of uniques are now always shown on map!
Epic unique versions have more durability the higher their lvl and star amount

SPELLS:

Buffed:
* boulder (secondary spell dmg +50%, now can be a good spell!)
* ice blast
* water mastery freeze slow scales more but starts at less
* geyser
* wave more dmg on secondary spell but less radius
* bones
* bone spear
* bone skull (less secondary spell dmg but more base dmg)
* earth shield
* stone shield? (less speed reduction at high lvls, more duration, less knockback, more resist, now actually better than goliath shield for defense)
* earth elemental (max 1, now useful for non summoners and earth users :D)
* quake
* bone shield
* buffed light elemental duration
* radiation (tiny bit less dmg, much longer duration, 50% more hits per second at max lvl)
* stun (buffed dmg, shorted duration(faster dmg))
* bone mastery
* bone rainbow
* bone spirit (faster casts bones and spear, more dmg, faster cast speed, less mana cost but shorter duration)
* lightning ball (larger shock radius, secondary spell dmg +25% instead of -50%, higher mana cost) - possibly too buffed?
* air shield (more twisters)
* darkness (faster cast speed, bit more radiation res, smaller mana cost)
* ray of light (less burn chance, more glow in the dark chance, bit more mana cost)
* hercules (buffed str)
* infidel
* poison duration now shorter the higher the lvl (means dmg is faster, huge buff)
* intoxication chance increased

Nerfed:
* circle of light
* shock (much less stun chance cus i buffed stun, but more shock dmg)
* mirror of venus

Characters:
buffed earth elemental (more hp, more spell points)
buffed carry weight per strength for each character by more than double!

Rune Slot amounts:
+ 2h weapons and staff got a LOT more rune slots!( max 8, i think that's max before screen overflows)
+ boots have more slots too!

Materials:
+ added rarity variations of nearly all existing materials. They can spawn on new items but aren't found as items. (means BIS items must spawn with the material on them :))
}

@treborx555:

I can't really comment on a lot of your changes because I have only been playing on the first difficulty. I have never really liked the weird linear difficulty system as used in ARPGs. Why play through it again with the same character instead of starting a new one. It always seemed like artifically increased play-time.

I generally haven't run into trouble with gold, except with one character. I later realized that it's far better to just regularly sell some potions to the Djinni as opposed to paying the fee and storing them. The latter really adds up over time.

Regarding spell balance:

- Skull is easily the best single target spell, as far as I can tell. Well, the most efficient at least. Especially because of the +50 % damage. Pumping spellpoints into Fireball, Explosion and Burn is a bit expensive in comparison.

- Twister is simply inferior. Very similar to Skull, but less damage and no 50 % bonus.

- Rock doesn't seem much better, but at least it's used by something that would theoretically be useful. The Rock Golem (Earth Elemental) seems to be bugged though, as mentioned before. It never goes beyond using te first level of Rock.

- Bones are a bit odd. It can only make use of its 50 %-damage bonus when used as a primary, but actually hitting anything is kind of difficult. Sure, if one aims below their feet one can occasionally get a hit for a lot of damage with some damage mastery added on, but it's too unreliable. Similar issues when trying to use it as a secondary with Aoe-spells. Tornado seems to work ok, but most bones will still just bounce around in the environment.

- Bone Spirit has similar problems.

- Bone Mastery scales awfully. I haven't bee able to look at higher levels, but for quite a few levels it only adds one bone. Useless I'd say. Especially as opposed to simply using a damage-add-on.

- Earth Shield is fine in my opinion. The rocks that are dropping are a bit random, but their aoe-stun is good, it lasts a good while and one can actually start up ES more than once, in case you didn't know ;-)

- Radiation also proved useful when I was playing through with a melee/aura-build. It doesn't last long, but at short distances it's very reliable and led to basically doubling my melee damage. ES and Radiation together made mincemeat of bigger groups very fast.

- Some spells - like Darkness for instance - seem useless outside of perhaps multiplayer. The resistances are too specific.

- Similarly, it's unclear what exactly the attribute-enhancing spells were supposed to do. I have barely tested them, but they seem to scale badly. Infidel especially is confusing.

- I have done some testing with Circle of Light, but could never really figure out what it was supposed to be for. It seems similar, but weaker than Blizzard and there is no equivalent to Water Mastery which might make CoL usefuly as a utility spell. Many spells seem to not even work with CoL. Why did you nerf it?

Some things I personally would change (perhaps I'll try to mod it at some point):

- Aside from Blood Mastery (since it scales better than other damage masteries) the Blood Magic-spells should be more generally available.

- The skill Repair should probably be replaced with something that isn't completely useless.

- The skill Trade isn't off much better. One would have to change the economy first before it could become useful.

- Perhaps a higher regularity for Totems to drop.

Why did i nerf circle of light? Simple, because it's one of the more OP spells and i hate using it because of the lights hurting my eyes.

Also, you can't really replace any spells or skills i think. You can try tinkering with it tho.

You also need to play the game more to get a bit better sense of balance. First of all, skull is pretty weak, that's why i buffed it. It does similar damage to spells like iceball and fireball even tho these spells have aoe that always neatly hits. Skull's aoe (the bones) rarely ever hits anything, which is why i also buffed the bones amount and stats. Skull is also one of the slowest spells, and in this game you really want your enemies to die fast so they don't dmg you.

Not to mention the rainbow set gives you 0-6 fireballs, so that's 4x the fireballs on average i think? Both the fireball hit and the explosion are increased by spell damage too. These sets are honestly making it super hard to balance things, so i thought of removing or nerfing them. Cus it makes some things useless (boulder has no such set, poison has it but it's kinda useless as it has the same effect as plague)

Just to note,I got Dawn of Magic games from Zoom Platform which is 100% DRM-free, no client needed, no bs. Their site is currently under maintenance but looks like it will be back in a week or so (they also have other DRM-free 1C company games that are worth looking into). I agree with OP that these games have been unjustly forgotten.

I.e. Circle of Light: Sure I understand that you nerfed it because you considered it to be too powerful, I just have never seen any evidence of it. What makes it so powerful? The numbers don't really point to it. Its aoe scales worse than that of Blizzard and it needs a longer time to do its damage.

Regarding Skull: Sure, as a main spell it's not that versatile, missing a proper Aoe, but if you only need some single-taget spell and you already have a good amount of points invested into a damage mastery for some reason, then even a Lvl 1-skull is very good. I guess I should have said "efficient", not necessarily "powerful".

Edit: By the way, what do you think of "Gorgo's Kiss"? The playthrough I have done with it was by far the easiest so far. One point in Slow, one in Curse Mastery and the rest into Kiss itself. On top of everything else it has an area of effect which increases with each level.

Gorgon's kiss DOT dmg doesn't seem to scale with spell damage, making it kinda useless at higher difficulties i think, unless you just use it as a single target dmg spell + aoe slow.

At higher difficulties spell dmg is king, and that's why you want spells that can apply as many spell dmg as possible. Like iceball + iceblast + multiple iceballs set. So compared to a boulder that does 2x spell dmg, an iceball does hm 6 or more times i think. And that's aoe.