True masterworks of supportive magic can quickly turn the tides of a losing battle. Celestial Paean epitomizes the buff-driven power of a Mage in Dragon’s Dogma 2, but it’s not without its downsides. Let’s talk about this Maister Mage scroll in detail.
Celestial Paean is a Maister skill for the Mage Class of Dragon’s Dogma 2. After a relatively long cast time, the user summons a holy circle of light that massively boosts Stamina Regeneration, Movement Speed, and Damage Reduction for any ally who touches the buff. The area of effect for the buff is quite large, though not guaranteed to hit all allies during a fight. The bonuses appear to last around 12 seconds without any bonuses to duration, the same length as the bubble itself. However, after this duration runs out, the caster collapses, completely drained of stamina.
How to unlock the Celestial Paean Maister Scroll
The Celestial Paean Maister Scroll, the Enchanter’s Almanac, is available from Eini after completion of the Spellbound Quest. If Trysha escapes the quest with her life, her elderly grandmother gives you this scroll in gratitude. You can use it from your inventory to permanently unlock this skill for yourself and your pawn, and you can use it at any rank of Mage vocation.
Spellbound is one of the most dedicated quests in the game, requiring you to travel to several locales across Vermund to collect this little girl’s grimoires of choice. However, if you do the quest right—and use the magic of forgery liberally—you can get up to three Maister scrolls for your troubles, including the Sorcerer Maister Skill Maelstrom from Myrddin. That’s quite good value, and you make a decent amount of money in the process.
You won’t get the Enchanter’s Almanac just for completing the quest. You have to talk with Trysha’s grandmother, Eini, after completing the quest. She won’t have you do anything extra for the skill, though—provided Trysha lived through Spellbound.
Is Celestial Paean worth running?
Celestial Paean is a difficult support spell for either you or your Pawns to use, though it is strong enough to fit on any Mage’s tool set. We recommend giving this to a Pawn while you play a class that can guarantee their survival, like from the Fighter or Warrior’s taunt skills or the Mystic Spearhand’s Mirour Vesture. While the cast time is very long and the aftermath devastating, the buffs you receive from it can easily trivialize punish windows and make a lot of fights easier.
In general, Celestial Paean is an incredibly difficult to use but very potent spell in Dragon’s Dogma 2. The best time to use it is right before a fight, letting you rush in with high stamina and lower damage taken for the first 10 seconds of combat. You can also cast it right after dodging an attack, though this means you’re fully reliant on your team to take the heat for you.
As an Arisen, Celestial Paean allows for essentially permanent channeling of spells and abilities while reducing damage taken significantly. It also allows your Pawns to spam abilities more readily, potentially allowing a Sorcerer Pawn to deal massive damage to their targets with otherwise hard-to-cast spells. However, the initial cast time is brutal, and the punishment for collapsing afterwards can be fierce. While a Pawn can pick you off the ground, it usually takes them a second to realize you’re out of stamina in the first place. That can be plenty of time for an enemy to beat the hell out of you. Make sure you’re somewhere safe when the buff runs out, or at least ready to munch on some stamina curatives.
To make the best use of this, consider only equipping your Pawn with an aggressive option, a heal, and Celestial Paean to reduce the chances of them forgetting about their sweat spell. In addition, you want to equip the Mage Augments Perpetuation and Exaltation. This pair keeps the buff active and gets your Mage off the floor a bit sooner.
Giving this to a Pawn is a good play, letting you avoid the awkwardly long cast time and falling flat on your face. It also guarantees that someone protects the caster—that someone being you—so the entire party can reap the rewards. However, the downside is you can’t time the cast as well with a Pawn. They could horde Paean for themselves or focus on healing instead of buffing everyone, wasting it on a fight with a bunch of Goblins instead of during a Drake’s punish window. You have to trust their judgement here, and for a spell like Celestial Paean, that’s a tall ask. A Kindhearted Pawn is the most likely to use this skill effectively—or at all—during combat.
