So as to give an actual answer unlike some of the others that have posted here (and like some of the more informed people who have posted), dexterity is how you increase your overall casting time. However, it only seems to noticeably increase in increments of 10, so there will be a noticeable difference between 20-30, 30-40, ect, same goes until it hits the maximum at 70 dexterity. All in all the system is similar to that of DS3, but with a maximum of 70 instead of the previous 40. (once you have access to the interior of the Academy, you can obtain Radagon's Icon, which apparently gives 30 virtual dexterity, only helping for casting times).
As to a good early game spell giver, try clearing out the Waypoint Ruins boss, as it will give access to an NPC who you can give sorcery tomes to, which increases what she has available for sale. (I managed to stumble across the tomes fairly easily, so it shouldn't be too hard to find). Once you get into Liurnia, try following the road that heads directly north, as there is a location known as The Church of Vows, where you can get access to a new NPC with a spell that the previous NPC does not have access to: Carian Greatsword, which is an all around great AOE spell for both PVE and PVP.
One final bit of advice for spellcasting is to head over to the area east of Limgrave, Caelid (aka literal hell) and going to the Streets of Sages area, in which both the most powerful earlygame sorcery and staff reside: rock sling and Meteorite staff, a staff that cannot be upgraded but starts with S tier intelligence scaling while also increasing the damage of the aforementioned spell. Do be warned as most enemies in this area will either take barely any damage, deal insane amounts of damage, or in most cases, some combination of the both.
'Thankfully'? there is a teleporter chest that will send you to the general area where the staff and spell reside, though first you must escape the room, before attempting to get to the site of grace. From there the Streets can be reached by heading south-west from the crystal tunnels. (the streets are in the bog area).
I'm really underwhlemed by magic. If you can get a spell off then great it's powerful. However, in most fights you get swarmed by multiple enemies. Slashing a sword after a block or a dodge is so much more fluid than winding up with the staff or even an incantation. All the animation matters, and cast speed doesn't seem to cut that down.
Yeah. You can increase it by increasing Dex and there are talismans to increase casting speed. Just explore the world
You just have to explore more to find more spells. I would recommend going to Liurnia, skip Godrick if you can’t beat him yet
Investing in dex
Is a waste you can barely
Tell a difference
- Modach
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Well it is only really noticeable in increments of 10. If you level it to 20 from 10 then it is not really worth it alone, but you will notice a big difference between say 10 and 30 and 30 and 50 and 50 to 70. You also gotta keep in mind that you can combine the spell shortening with the radagon talisman so say going for like 50 dex and that talisman would be very noticeable from having no dex and not using the talisman.
If anyone finds their way to this topic, casting speed really only affects the follow-up spells and spells that have a charge up time, not the initial spell cast. RageGamingVideos released a video on the topic. Showed that even with max dex and items, the time to cast the initial spell was the same (when the spell sigil is forming) but the following spells went out much faster (where there's no sigil, and just waving the staff around).
So it appears that cast speed is only beneficial if you're planning on spamming spells or charging spells, but not if it'll just be a single spell every now and then.
But that was before 1.03, so I don't know if anything has changed.
People say Dex barely increases it. Azur staff barely increases it. Radagon talisman barely increase it.
But what if we use all 3?
I don’t know what insane bullshit ramblings these people are talking about. It’s a significant, huge, noticeable difference when using Azur’s staff.
Maybe they’re playing a different game.