The Outrageous Icewall Guide

ICEWALL GUIDE BY ZEPHYROTH

Icewall is a weird skill. Not a lot of wizards use it, and it's pretty hard to master. But once you master this skill, it's great for trapping monsters that are too fast for you to cast firewall in time or ones that are immune to firewall. Icewall is excellent for mob control too.

The most important thing you can do with icewall is trap a monster within it with ONLY 2 castings (you'll see what I mean as you read further):

The Basic Icewall: Trapping 1 Monster

1. First, reorient the screen by right-clicking the mouse twice. The positioning of the terrain should match the orientation of the mini-map in the topright. If your wizard is facing south. etc., then the arrow should be facing south, etc. too. This will make casting icewall easier.

UNORIENTED SCREEN:


ORIENTED SCREEN:


2. The icewall trick will ONLY work if the monster is chasing you while you are running towards the right or towards the top. If you are dragging the monster right to left or up to down, the monster will run around the icewall, making it useless.

LEFT to RIGHT; DOWN to UP - OKAY!:



RIGHT TO LEFT, UP to DOWN - NOT OKAY!:



Even if you twist the screen around so up to down looks like left to right or whatever, the icewall trick will still not work. The game still thinks you are running down (as you are when the screen is correctly oriented). So if you find the monster is chasing you in the wrong direction, then you need to loop back and start running right or up.

3. The monster is chasing you. All you need to do now is cast the icewall on the square that is it JUST about to cross. If done correctly, the icewall should come up, the monster continues walking THROUGH the icewall, and then for some bizarre reason, it stops!

Monster is chasing me, the square I have the mouse over is where I want to cast icewall:


I cast the icewall, it's coming up, and the alarm is walking through it:


The alarm is now trapped in front of the icewall:


Note that casting quagmire before you cast the icewall will make things easier (especially when dealing with fast monsters or mobs). Also, an alternative method would be to focus on one square between you and the monster. When the monster is just about to cross that square, you cast icewall. I find this way easier.

4. Finally, you have to seal up the icewall by casting a second icewall behind the first one:


The reason for this is that if someone walks behind the icewall and it is unsealed with an aggro monster in it, then the monster will turn around and come after them. This is not good - you will get people very mad. Also, if you cast spells that cause knock back (like Jupitel Thunder or Storm Gust), then that will knock the monster out of the icewall and it will get you. Sealing the icewall is a critical step.

An unsealed icewall, and what happens when someone walks behind it (this case me):



You can see in the second picture the rideword turned around and it's free of the icewall. If I had taken another picture a second later it would be attacking me right now.

5. Once you have sealed the icewall up, proceed to destroy the monster. It's almost like it's ankle snared (so watch out, some monsters might still be able to attack you if you get too close, but it should render most aggro monsters passive)! Use whatever spells you want (DON'T attempt sight rasher, fireball, or napalm beat or the icewall will disintegrate), but I usually FD + JT the monster until it is dead or SG for big mobs. For some reason, some AoE spells like Heaven's Drive will not harm monsters trapped within icewall. The only AoE spell I've verified that works is SG, but I haven't tried LoV or MS yet. Be aware that monsters that have skills or spells CAN still cast them if you are standing too close (Khalitzburgs can get you with grimtooth, stings with quagmire, rybios with provoke, wraiths with curse attack, etc.) This will not happen often though.

HO getting JTed /gg:


A dead Alarm:


You won't be able to get this on your first try. Practice makes perfect (I looked like a total noob learning icewall, but now people are impressed when I trap abysmal knight and kill it all by myself!). I suggest you try out icewall on easy monsters. After a while it should become instinct.

Advanced Icewalling: Controlling Mobs

This is one of the sweetest parts about icewall. Be sure you can do the basic icewall first. If you cannot trap one monster with icewall, you can't hope to capture a whole mob.

Actually, the concept is exactly the same, except you have to position the mob so they're running after you in a close pack (and not scattered all over the place).

You don't want a scattered mob:


So how do you get the mob into a small area? Cast quagmire and run in circles. Eventually they'll be close together, and treat the mob as you would with one monster.

Me running in circles (dizzying lol):






You can see in the last one that I need to keep on running until the mob is chasing me from the left or from the bottom for icewall to work...

The next step would be to cast icewall on the square they're about to run over (remember to drag the monsters left -> right or down -> up), and it should trap most to all of them.

I casted icewall, and the mob's walking through it...


Once they're trapped, seal it up ASAP:



Many times some monsters will get trapped, and the stragglers will walk around the icewall towards you. Seal the first icewall first, and proceed to run a bit more to the right or up of the initial icewall, and repeat the process on the second set of monsters. If you mess up on this, it's alright. Continue leading the mob around the first icewall and try to trap them again. You want to situate the second icewall so that it's close enough to the first one: you want SG to reach all the monsters. You must make sure to seal the first icewall before tackling the loose monsters or else ALL the monsters will escape and come after you.

All you need to do now is cast SG and slaughter the mob!

SG casting... o.O


Instant kill /gg


Other mob pictures:

A particularly big mob:




You might have noticed in the third picture the zombie prisoner in the middle of the IW was immune to the SG. For some reason, if you trap a monster in 3 layers of icewall, it becomes invulnerable to AoE spells...

High Orcs (one of my favorite screenies):



Icewalling While You're Being Attacked

This is very simple: When the monster is hitting you, cast icewall on it. Walk right or up away from the icewall (only right or up because the restrictions still apply), and the monster will walk through the icewall and be trapped. Seal the icewall and kill!

Hunterfly hitting me:


I cast icewall on the hunterfly, and target where I want to walk:


I walk away, and the hunterfly is trapped. I cast the second icewall.



So, in general, how fast you can cast and how high your level of icewall is determines the benefit you can reap from this method. More DEX = faster cast time = less time needed for icewall to remain. More skill points into icewall = longer duration = more time to deal with the monster(s).

During this guide, I only demonstrated icewall working left to right. That's because screenies of it working down to up are harder to understand, although doing it from that angle will work just as well! Just remember that if you try doing the icewall trick right to left or up to down, the monster WILL NOT walk through the icewall and get trapped. It will simply walk around it.

Well that's it! Hopefully now you can nail those annoying arclouzes or mimics, tackle magma dungeon, and maybe mob better than you can with firewall! (Trapping super fast monsters might be easier than slower monsters, as BAM they run smack into the icewall) Go out and impress some people with your prowess and unorthodoxness! Practice makes perfect...remember that and don't get mad at me if it doesn't work for you the first coupla' times.

NOTE: 90% of this information was taken from Mika's Agility Wizard guide at GameFAQs. I just tried to make this awesome technique more understandable.