Research Cost - Free
Mana Cost - 100 mana
Research Time - None
Death coil is the spell that does not have to be researched. Your death knights automatically have this
spell when they are first built. For the cost of 100 mana,
your death knight can shoot a coil to a distance of almost 1 full game screen. This spell has an are effect, meaning
that you can cast it close to an enemy and it will still do damage. However, if you cast the spell too far away from any enemy unit,
you will lose the 100 mana and nothing will happen. You can tell if you did any damage by simply seeing if the spell showed up on the screen.
If you see the deathcoil graphic, then you know the spell hit a target. When you misfire the spell, nothing happens. Death Coil does 50 damage
per cast, and will either hit 1 unit directly for 50 damage, or divide the 50 damage among multiple enemy units.
Any hit points taken off the enemy is transferred back to your death knight.
Haste can be cast on any unit, and gives a speed increase to most of the units in the game. This spell works differently,
with different units, only increasing the movement speed of some, while increasing the movement and attack speed of others. For example,
haste greatly improves the attack and movement speed of dragons, but it has no effect to either attribute when cast on ogres. The important uses
of haste will be covered later on.
Raise dead uses the decaying bodies of any organic unit and creates a skeleton at the cost of 50 mana per shot.
If there are 5 decaying bodies close together, and you have 250 mana, you will raise 5 skeletons at the same time. This spell
doesn't have much use simply because skeletons are too weak, being just a touch stronger than peons. The only time you MIGHT be able
to make a real use out of skeletons is if you can raise a couple inside an enemies wallin, where you just recently killed the peon line. The skeletons will
prevent any peons from being rebuilt as well as preventing the enemy to get any defenses up.
Whirlwind causes a tornado at the spot you cast it on. This tornado is uncontrollable and unpredictable. It does damage
to both enemies and allies. Again, this spell has limited use within Warcraft 2. This spell is useful on small maps like Nowhere to
Run, and on huge maps with loads of resources like Big Game Hunters. It does not deal out heavy amounts of damage but it's lasting power
makes it incredibly annoying for the enemy.
Unholy Armor temporarily gives a unit invincibility from all types of damage (except polymorph!). This spell takes
half of the remaining life away from any unit it is cast on. So if you cast it on an ogre with 90 hp, you will now have a
temporarily invincible ogre with 45 hp. The only problem with this spell is that it does not last very long. In fact, on the faster
game speeds (fastest, even faster), it is almost impossible to use this spell. On the speed setting 'faster' (ladder game speed),
you can make decent use of this spell when you need to get a death knight deep into enemy territory.
Death and Decay creates a blanket of destruction randomly placed in a 5x5 area. For 25 mana a cast, this is
the most used death knight spell in the game, and the one that can cause the most damage. This spell is useful
for destroying peon lines, enemy units, or buildings. When combined with haste, you can turn a death knight into
one of the most elite killing machines in the game. This spell will be talked about more later on.
Eye of Kilrogg is the spell that ogre-mages have immediately after the ogre-mage upgrade is completed at the Alter of Storms.
This is a pretty good scouting spell. One cast summons 1 eye for 70 mana. The eye doesn't have a large seeing range, but it
moves incredibly fast. Very useful for scouting out different locations on the map. An eye has a limited life span and will
quickly die off and disappear. So you have to be sure to use your eyes quickly.
This is Bloodlust. It is the most used spell in the entire game. It multiplies the damage of a unit anywhere from 1.8 to 4.0x as much.
See 
Runes are very useful. One of the most under used (useful) spells in the game. An ogre-mage can cast up to 5 runes at once,
at the cost of 40 mana each. Runes appear in a cross shape around the are that you cast it on (like a + symbol)
If some of the positions where you try to cast this spell are blocked,
runes will only appear in the unoccupied positions, at the cost of 40 mana per rune. This means that although you need at LEAST 200 mana
to cast this spell, you will use anywhere from 0 mana (all positions blocked) to 200 mana (no positions blocked). Runes do 50 points of damage, and
are best used in front of attack armies or in enemy peon lines.