Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

I wish I were better at Vanheim, because I think it would support at least one form of playing style I like. Be that as it may, my question is:

- What is the deal with blood-1 skills?

I mean this: In the default theme, there are exactly two commanders who have some skill in Blood, and both of these (fairly expensive) commanders have exactly 1 point in it. (In Helhelm, it is 1 commander.) Right. I would like to know your ideas or speculations on how I can use this, or what one is "supposed" to do with this. To be more precise: I need at least Blood 3 in order to be able to forge any items which increase my blood skill (exception: Unique item Book o Secrets, req. 2, and the Ring of Sorcery, Astral 4). Which means if I want to do anything requiring blood 2 or more, I need to get a pretender with blood. All right, I can do that, go on some hunts and make him forge the results.

But I suppose my question is: What can you do with Blood 1? Have my really expensive commander blood hunt? I suppose that could be the answer, but I doubt it, especially after reading Saber Cherry's excellent summary on how inefficient that is. So is the plan: If you want to make use of the blood skill of those commanders, get a blood-3+ pretender, make him forge some brazen vessels etc., and boost those commanders? Or can I use blood-1 for anything interesting that I have (obviously!) overlooked?

Thanks much in advance.

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">When I play Helheim (which is frequently - I don't often play base Vanheim because I enjoy Helheim more for some reason) I almost always take the Allfather pretender and slap some Blood, Death, and Air on him...but always at least 5 Blood. This has the added bonus of making those Valkyries and Vans devastating when blessed.

But I am no expert, and have never tested such a build in multiplayer.

EDIT: Doh. Instead of Air (on the Allfather), I meant to type Water (had your other post on my mind, it seems http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ), so that I can eventually summon up Ice Devils and bust out Illwinter if necessary.

[ March 08, 2004, 16:37: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Also, I wanted to point out that Helheim gets two commanders with Blood - Vanjarls (I believe) and Hangadrotts. Hangadrotts get Blood 2 to start with, also. They are expensive, but really worth it!

You definitely will want to forge up some Blood-boosting items for those commanders, as with only 3 Blood and the natural other skills of Vanheim you can have Storm Demons and such running around all over the place.

[ March 08, 2004, 16:51: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Hey thanks very much.

BTW I like Helheim too. Unless I am totally mistaken, however, Hangadrotts get NO blood. It's Air 2 DEATH 3, but maybe I am wrong.

But other than that: what can you do with Blood 1?

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ack! You are right - I was thinking of Vanlade (one of Van's national heroes) who I always seem to get relatively quickly. Mea culpa. Those Hangadrotts are still beastly, though, after the Behemoths start coming out! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

(I think I need more coffee.)

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Bleed, Blood Burst, Blood Heal, Pain Transfer, Reinvigoration, Sabbath Master/Slave, Summon Imp, Banish Demon, Leeching Touch, Bind Serpent Fiends, Leech, and Blood Vengeance all only require Blood 1 - quite an impressive list, actually, for a commander with all the other great skills possessed by Vanheim! Just one forged +Blood item gives them access to Spine Devils, Fiends, Agony, Hellbind Heart, and Harm.

There are some really good combat spells and some decent early-game summons in both of those lists - and that's not even taking into account their other spell levels (Air, Death, and so forth)!

Blood 1 is combat, combat, combat. Which, coincidentally, works quite well to supplement and round out those expensive-but-heavy-hitting Van commanders. And if you happen to run into some Garnet Amazons or some such thing, you can use *them* for blood hunting (or use scouts, as is commonly done with a nation like Vanheim or Jotunheim) or for following your Van commander around casting Sabbath Slave.

[ March 08, 2004, 17:57: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For Vanheim (Vanjarls) it's blood sacrifice. Although I don't think it's used very often.

The other reason is it's "thematic". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Blood 1 means empowering to Blood 3 only costs 75 slaves, not 125 slaves, as if you had no blood magic. However, if you want to play seriously with blood, I suggest you take Blood-3 on your god so you can forge Blood Thorns and Brazen Skulls before you have 75 slaves for empowerment... and be sure to hoard Earth gems so your dwarves can forge Dwarven Hammers.

Vanheim's blood-Users also get randoms, so blood-2 is a possibility if you make lots of mages.

For units that only have blood-1... in combat, I use them to summon imps. But for any powerful mages casting lots of spells, a blood pick is useful for reinvigoration (except that spell is broken right now).

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Keep in mind that a Blood-1 mage can cast Blood-2 combat spells with an extra slave... just make sure he starts with at least 2 slaves, and specifically script the spell.

[ March 08, 2004, 19:55: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Vanjarls get no randoms, although the Vanadrotts do. But at 380 gold apiece, you won't be making many of those, so the odds against a random coming up blood are pretty high. You pretty much need to decide at pretender-creation time whether or not your Vanheim will be a blood nation. I often use a 4 water, 4 blood Dragon for the pupose. Decent blessings, not bad at early province taking, and able to summon Ice Devils and forge blood-empowerement items. After an affliction or 3, your dragon retires to a lab, and jump-starts the blood process...

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Thanks once again for these replies. Hope you dont mind me asking follow-up questions?

- "it's thematic" -- yeah, I sort of had that impression. But my impression has also been up till now: IW has something "in mind" when they designed it like this, they pictured the Van-folk *doing* something, and I hadnt imagined it would be casting bleed. I suspected something else.
- "Blood 1 is combat, combat, combat" -- ok, this is new to me. I have NEVER used blood in combat before, and I like to play Absysia. Am I missing out? My experiences up till now have been: toasting my slaves, little bang for the buck, hence: summoning, summoning summoning. But of course I wouldnt be toasting my slaves with Van. Still, with Air 2 I have lightning bolt, which beats all of those blood spells you listed and costs 0 gems. I just dont see blood 1 being exciting.
- "Empower to 3" or "Pretender Blood3+, then forge" -- ok that is sort of what my suspicion was what I had to do, but felt that this would somehow go against IW's grain (why I thought that I dont know).

So I need to get a LOT of scouts, right, to make all those blood items to then be able to forge em and then to finally use those skills? Anybody have any success with this? Well I will try it out, could be fun.

Thank you very much for your replies.

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Don't forget that Blood 1 allows you to do Sabbath Master/Slave. Now, I'm certainly not saying that Vanheim/Blood = Pythium/Astral (because Pythium has Astral mages cheap and out the wazoo, not to mention Communicants, whereas - as you've stated - Vanheim doesn't have very easy access to Blood mages, and they're expensive as hell) but rather that in a pinch, it can be nice to be able to pump up your Vanadrotts with either other Vanadrotts or some Garnet Sorceresses/Priestesses.

As Cherry pointed out, being able to summon imps very early on in the game can help with some expansion issues, too.

[ March 09, 2004, 15:52: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Some blood combat spells are very potent. Not bleed, but the area-effect ones... like Agony. I've never used Blood Burst, but it looks pretty good too... but really, if Reinvigoration worked correctly, that alone would make Blood worthwhile in combat.

Outside of combat, if you happen to get a Blood-Nature mage, Crossbreeding is very useful. If you have a luck scale of neutral or better, it is worthwhile to empower a Druid in blood or a blood user in Nature just for crossbreeding.

And Lastly, I'm working on a blood mod to make the blood summons more balanced (especially the big ones). There needs to be another blood-1 summon in addition to Serpent Fiend...

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Hm thanks.

What is broken about Reinvigoration?
What changes do you envision in your blood mod besides adding blood-1 summons (yey!)?

As to sabbath master -- I dont know; I am almost more of a fan of matrixes than schlepping all those slaves around... And getting a +1 bonus in all my paths doesnt seem quite so appealing when all my paths are air and blood...

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">1) It does approximately nothing - after casting, the mage has about the same fatigue.

2)
a. Increase the research level and slave cost of greater blood summons (AD / ID), and increase cost of the higher-level blood summons.
b. Increase the number of units summoned by lesser summons (2 Fiends of Darkness or Serpent Fiends, for slightly over double cost).
c. Inrease cost or decrease effectiveness of Soul Contract / Lifelong Protection. Lifelong might be better if it cost 10 slaves and summoned 1 imp per turn, or 40/2, or even 20/1. Right now it is too strong, IMO. Soul Contract... 40 slaves and 1 devil/season rather than 1/month, or 160 for its current effectiveness... or even 80 slaves + 10 fire gems would be better.
d. Possibly give imps higher morale, or else give the Moloch something other than imps, or special 30-morale imps, so he does not rout so easily. An inherent Lifelong Protection on the Moloch rather than an initial clump of imps would keep him from routing.
e. Probably weaken IDs... slightly lower MR, HP, and DEF. I don't think they should be so much stronger than ADs.

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd rather not have my pretender horror-marked, but thanks anyways for offering http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

otherwise the tweaks you suggest seem to me to be mostly about right. the moloch routing "bug" is damn irritating.

the real problem w/ soul contracts/ lifelong protection (IMO) is how abusable they become w/ forging bonuses...

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Have you checked out the stats on the heliophagi and demon lords? They are certainly not worth the extra research and slave costs over ice devils as it currently stands.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I really don't think that blood magic needs to be made any weaker than it already is, since your income is already extremely vulnerable to raiding parties.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would think the better solution would be to make all the higher level blood summons tougher, rather than weaken the lower level ones.

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The solution depends on what you think the problem is...

Ice Devils are super-powerful and you can get them super-early, plus they are super-cheap. Their stats and slots make them superior to virtually everything else as supercombattants... really, what is their weakness? A well-equipped Ice Devil doesn't have any. They have neat special abilities, too.

55 slaves / level 5 magic are just too easy for such might...

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

A well equipped Ice Devil has no weaknesses, though there are different ways in which people like to equip them.

With their initial paths in Water (= Quickness and Breath of Winter) they don't have to fill a slot with a quickness item (only Jade Armor or Boots of Quickness) with their double attacks, naturally high hp and good defense and MR they are a better overall chassis for SC's than any other summon (most lack slots).

There is no item that increases initial hp (which is very important) so that is a very important factor.

The AD's would be on par if they had more HP, simply because they are the opposite element they would have their place (especially since they have intrinsic flying and later in the game Phoenix Pyre).

The Heliophagi are just shafted each way.

Re: Blood-1 in Vanheim
 

Thanks for the replies.
I agree on the ice devil, and feel that the arch devil is somehow pointless against him, but would not want to make other higher-level summons (heliophage, etc.) even more expensive, because I dont find them that great. Anything more than 70 slaves is expensive enough for what you get, at least as far as I have experience.
However, being able to use a blood-1 path more: that would make for more variety for everyone, that would be most welcome.