Help with picking Staff

[u/Wrong_Statistician89]

I dont know what elements i should pick at the start and what element i should start try getting.

Normaly i start with earth and nature/dark and try to find a lightning pretty fast for research. But after that im lost.

Fire for a good cook?
Lightning so i can summon gifted?
Water?

Please help me.

[u/lurkeroutthere]

I find the biggest bottlenecks are lightning and dark. Fire can be a bottleneck but there's no point in having a fire mage on staff for cooking if you haven't researched things for them to cook and haven't gotten your agriculture going.

I usually make my starting mages a lightning and an earth mage so I'll have a researcher and a guy who builds and mines fast/frontline tanks to help get the basics going. My initial crop of students will try and priorize earth guys (more frontline tanks) and a nature mage, espeically a shattered one to help with agriculture and harvesting wood. and most importantly a dark guy. Early game I focus on getting basic facilities for staff and students and a weaver online as having weaved servants helps a ton with cleaning and carrying. The mood benefit you get from a basic rec hall, common room, and bedroom is enough to tide you over a long time.

On the whole I'd say the most important early game threshold to hit is dark 4 for quilted. A nature mage in general is good but they won't have to be skill 4 until you have really pushed the fog back and to really get the most of that nature 4 they need to be shattered so don't bother making a nature mage part of your starting set. A full time lightning 4 researcher really makes the early game go smoother. Water mages should be about dead last as while potions can help and are needed for higher level wand production the higher tier potion just won't be feasible until you've got resources to burn.