Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

The amulet of the wolf has a small chance of transforming your super combatant into a werewolf. That's bad. Not because it gets big and hairy, bu because it gets so small and hairy.

As for this set-up:
I think that's a bit counter-synnergystic, although it does have some nice properties (decent MR, for instance).

Immediately obvious problems are:
No elemental resistances.
Very Crappy Protection.
No Haste Effects.

Those are big deals. It's got a lot of things covered, the small amount of reinvig on the rainbow armor really cuts down on the amount of death you can expect from Elf Shot, for instance. But the boots of flight don't benefit much from the low-encumberance armor you invested in, because you would be running around at full speed anyhow.

But if you have access to level 6 construction (which in your example, it seems you do, try some of these:

Bloodthorn
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Chainmail of Displacement
Boots of Quickness
Bracers of Defense
Ring of Regeneration
---
Look at that Defense! You've got a +12 Defense Mod and a +22 Protection before we even get to the Haste and natural protection (which you also have).

Bloodthorn
Crystal Shield
Flame Helm
Elemental Armor
Boots of Flight
Heart of Life
Ring of Regeneration

A nice protection value, it adds in 28 proection while still managing to ge in Regeneration, Reinvigoration, and the all-important Lightning and Cold Resistance (which will otherwise bypass your mighty armor without issue). Low MR, but a very high potential for magic adding on a spell-using combatant. If your Cyclops is willing to wear this get-up, expect to see a protection value in the mid-forties (which in turn will bounce Giant blows).

Or:
Faithful
Lead Shield
Starshine Skullcap
Hydra Skin Armor
Boots of Quickness
Heart of Life
Amulet of Antimagic

A massive MR value (+10!) and some good Reinvig. That and the quickness makes this a very good outfit for a rear-caster summoner. A Ghost King dressed up like this is dressed to kill.

Or:
Bloodthorn
Charcoal Shield
Starshine Skullcap
Rhyme Hauberk
Boots of Flight
Ring of Tamed Lightning
Ring of Regeneration

This is all about fighting big groups, resistance or immunity to all four elements, a chill aura and a fire shield make this a build to get-in and then hack a large army to pieces without death. Put this in and wait for the enemy army to die. They are going to do that.

Hellsword
Starshine Skullcap
Copper Plate
Boots of Flight
Ring of Regeneration
Lifelong Prtoection

A simple all-around set-up for an undead hero such as a Bane Lord. Resistance or Immunity to every element, flight, regen, berserking, a pile of imps every battle, it's good. You fly around the hinterland stabbing things in the face.

-Frank

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

En Forcer - you want either jade armor or boots of quickness, but not both (doesn't stack, iirc).

Frank - thanks for the cool item configs! Some stuff I hadn't considered. However, Hydra Skin Armor wouldn't be that useful on Ghost King, would it? Or does gk not have lifeless tag? Or is it no regen for undead? I always have to look it up...

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

Regen works for the ghost king, as he is not lifeless.

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

Hmmm....then Elemental armor instead of Jade or rainbow. Along with boots of quickness. Just put the thugs or SCs up front so they don't have far to go.

BUT the Hydra Skin armor would be good in that it also addresses reinvigoration issues...

OKAY here is another question. How much reinvigoration do you actually need on your guy?

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

None, most of the time, assuming you have a lifestealing weapon. It really only comes into play if you have to fight lifeless enemies.

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

What about substitutions based on gem availability? For example, with Abysia, I'll make red dragon scale mail. It is not the best by any means, but it fits with the abundance of fire gems. For anything other than astral pearls, the conversion rate is terrible.

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

Instead of bloodthorn/shield combinations, you can use bloodthorn/faitful and a burning pearl (depending on enemies) instead of a ring of regen.

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

Abyssia usually has a biig pile of Fire Gems, and access to sufficient Blood Slaves and Astral Pearls for whatever it wants to do. You might see a get-up like this:

Bloodthorn
Lucky Coin
Starshine Skullcap
Red Dragon Scalemail
(No Boots)
Amulet of Antimagic
Lifelong Protection (Heart of Life on Caster, Ring of the Warrior on low Attack Skill SC)

If you can afford it, consider swapping the RDS for an Armor of Souls. That thing is awesometastic, although the price (40 Blood Slaves) is off the charts nuts. You can't easily build any boots, so this will want to go on a mounted or elemental king chasis. This can make a pretty decent Pyrflagos.

Atlantis usually has a virtually limitless pile of Astral Pearls and an overwhelming pile of Water Gems as well. And that's... all you can count on. You can't even Blood Hunt in most of your empire. Still, you can make:

Sword of Swiftness
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Blue Dragon Scalemail
Boots of Quickness
Amulet of Antimagic
Amulet of Luck

That's a build that has no life stealing and no reinvig, which hurts. But it gets four attacks a turn, and has a very decent defense and protection values. The Encumberence on the whole thing is only 2, so you should be able to rack up a lot of kills anyways.

Pythium has a very large gem income, and has it split between Air, Astral, and Water. Often you'll have more coming besides, but at the least you should be able to choke out this:

Sword of Swiftness
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Chainmail of Displacement
Boots of Quickness
Dancing Trident
Amulet of Luck

This build maximizes Defense, while staying within the alotment of the basic Pythium Gem resource types. You're walking in with a Defense of +15 plus Quickness (so call it 18). That plus Luck and a huge pile of attacks should keep you in the game long enough to kill most enemies.

Man is sitting on piles of Air and Nature Gems taht a tremendous. They can count on nothing else.

Lightning Spear
Vine Shield
Spirit Helmet
Chainmail of Displacement
Winged Shoes
Ring of Regeneration
Dancing Trident

I'm not very happy with this build, but I normally don't ever consider making a Man god that doesn't have a strong Earth suit for that reason. Also, you'll be putting this (minus the Winged Shoes) on a Queen of Air, so to a certain extent it really doesn't matter what your equipment is. Some people prefer the Weightless Kite Shield to the Vine Shield. I regard that as a matter of preference.

Ulm has access to huge piles of Blood Slaves, and enough Astral Pearls, Death Gems, and Nature Gems to get by:

Blood Thorn
Lucky Coin
Starshine Skullcap
Hydraskin Armor*
Boots of the Messenger
Amulet of Antimagic
Lifelong Protection*

*If you have a really big pile to spend, consider upgrading the armor to the Armor of Souls or the Bone Armor. Those are expensive, but awesometastic in the extreme. If so, you'll want to swap out the Lifelong Protection for a Ring of Regeneration. You don't have Quickness and you don't have flight, but that's what you get for having no elementalists in your empire.

Ctis has Death, Nature, and Water coming out of the woodwork. And that's again all they can count on.

Wraithsword
Jade Mask*
Blue Dragon Scalemail
Boots of Quickness
Cat Charm
Bottle of Living Water

* Note that since only you can build the Jade Mask, you actually can guaranty getting it for your use.

Caelumhas Air and Water Gems to spare, and can at the very least make this:

Sword of Swiftness
Weightless Shield*
Spirit Helm
Chainmail of Displacement
Boots of Quickness
Dancing Trident
Bottle of Living Water*

*Actually, you should be able to Clam enough to have one of your High Seraphs make an Amulet of Antimagic and a Lucky Coin. That's not guaranteed, but it's pretty close.

Ermor Can only necessarily pick up Death Gems. Only Death Gems. Everything else belongs in the realm of "maybe" and "perhaps". But that still means that you can make a good scaffold of:

Wraithsword
Wraithcrown
Bone Armor
(No Boots)
Champion's Skull
(empty slot)

Ouch. Ermor really desperately needs to find something out of distant magic sites. It's almost not important what even.

Jotunheim has access to Astral, Nature, Death, Blood, and Water, making for a nice diverse pile of whupass.

Blood Thorn
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Blue Dragon Scalemail*
Boots of Quickness
Amulet of Antimagic
Amulet of Luck

*Again, this should be the Armor of Souls if for some reason you can actually afford it. You can consider swapping the Shield of the Accursed for a Lucky Coin and thence trading the Amulet of Luck for Lifelong Protection. YMMV.

-Frank

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

I hate to burst your bubble, but all of the builds without lifedraining are not near the power of those that do have it. And it is not hard for any nation to get lifedraing weapon. Put some death on your pretender, search until you find at least one death site, and then use mages with a death random to find more. By the time you are outfitting SCs, your pretender can whip up a skull staff any mage with a death random can start making wraith swords.

Alterenatively, about 2 mages with blood randoms can do enough hunting in 10 turns to empower themselves 1 level and make hellswords and eventually blood thorns.

Now, admittedly there is some chance you will find no death sites and/or get no death or blood randoms. However, I have yet to play a game with any nation where I did not have access to life draining by turn 30 (unless my research was so bad I did not have tech to).

Re: Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn
 

That's a needlessly confrontational way to state that opinion.

First of all, the question wasn't "what's the most awesome build", it was "what can you make on an extremely limited budget of gems". Some games are played with a site frequency of 25, getting even a single death site ever just because you invested in Death magic on your god is by no means a sure thing.

Secondly, even your opinion that lifestealing weapons are necessarily more powerful than the alternative is subject to debate. Remember that while Regeneration works on any living or undead characters, and while life stealing will grant life to a living, undead, or lifeless Super Combatant; nonetheless Lifesteaing only gives benefits when you damage living opponents. There are entire groups of enemies against which lifestealing is a waste of time, and there are entire national armies composed exclusively of those groups!

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk. You'd way rather have a charcoal shield and a herald lance. A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

And even more tellingly so, Quickness makes a bigger difference against an enemy SC than does Lifestealing. And not by a little bit either, the difference is ginormous.

Lifestealing gives you back half as many hit points as you inflict on your enemy. This means that in an otherwise even competition, you'd expect to have regained about half your hit points when you killed the enemy SC (assuming for the moment that your enemy is a living enemy, which is often not the case when it comes to SCs). On the other hand, adding Quickness doubles your number of attacks, so it also would expect to leave you with half your hit points left when you triumph over an otherwise equal opponent. But Wait! The Quickness also comes with an Attack and Defense bonus, and the Lifestealing doesn't.

There are lots of abilities that you want on your Super Combatants:

Quickness
Life Stealing
Regeneration
Elemental Immunities
Flight
Fire/Astral Shield
Luck
Etherealness

But if you have to purge one, Lifestealing isn't even the best, it's just really good. Really really good, yes. But not indespensible. Nor is it *always* available.

-Frank