Death Weapons
 

As in the D9 blessing on sacred troops. Does anyone know what it does exactly?

Re: Death Weapons
 

Death Weapons, ahhh, I am so happy that there are still esoteric mysteries in the game. No-one knows if they do 2 points of AN damage that can be resisted by MR, or if they turn all of the damage to AN damage and do +2 damage that can be resisted by MR, or...

Re: Death Weapons
 

The game knows.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...60034-temp.jpg


EXTRA damage and THE damage, so only the 2 points of AN damage is negated by magic resistance, and only it (THE damage) is magical.

This also fits with Fire weapons, which deals extra damage that is magical but doens't affect the base weapon.

Re: Death Weapons
 

So is this like the Fire bless in most respects?

Re: Death Weapons
 

Except a fair bit weaker. The crazy affliction chance propably has it's uses though.

Re: Death Weapons
 

Sort of. I think its every time you hit an enemy they take a mr test and, if failed they take 2 point of AN damage (tien chi S&A/marignon have cheap, 2 attack sacred. Give them a w9d9 bless and let 'em rip on enemy SCs).

Re: Death Weapons
 

SCs wont fail the MR save too often though.

Re: Death Weapons
 

Actually, no.

Firebless deals extra armor-piercing damage, 6 points IIRC. Fire grants high attack. This means that Fire 9 blessed sacred units usually hit their targets, and deal extra damage when they hit. Extreme armor and/or fire resistance, even partial, works against flaming weapons.

Deathbless grants only 2 points of damage, which is negated by magic resistance so even normal units can get by unaffected. However, Death grants more afflictions. This works (AFAIK) for the 2 damage as well. Death doesn't kick in always, but when the sacred units have lots of chances to cause AN damage, eventually they'll get through. High defense helps against Death bless, and high magic resistance AND armor can greatly reduce both effects, but lucky hits can still get through and these will most probably cause afflictions.

Fire bless is for dealing lots of damage, fast. It's pretty simple to protect commanders from the effect, and protecting normal troops is possible but harder to do.

Death bless is for causing afflictions, even to ethereal, highly protected creatures, and only high MR and high def and/or protection can help against this. It is very hard to protect against Death bless.

Fire bless is for killing. Death bless is for crippling. Fire bless works against hordes. It can be countered by Fire-immune thugs/units/SCs, but they need high protection as defense doesn't work against their high attack. Death bless works against elites and tough guys and event thugs or SCs. It can be countered by using units you don't mind being crippled, and high defense works very well against them.

Re: Death Weapons
 

You'll pay through your nose for it though.

Re: Death Weapons
 

You could always do a F9D9, turmoil 3, sloth 3, cold 3, death 3, dominion 10 lich queen with Ermor. You get about 5 knights of the Unholy Sepulchre per castle per turn with that setup.

Re: Death Weapons
 

Teraswaerto, while i agree SC's wont fail their test too often, a bunch of cheap units with 2 attacks each and a w9/d9 bless puts out plenty of attacks. Other uses for the d9 bless could include:
d9f9:
Advantages: great affliction causing abilities, 2 extra (magical) damages, very high attack and generally annoying vrs anything that dosnt have huge numbers.
Disadvantages: sacreds with 1 attack could be swarmed, sacreds with multiple low strength attacks could have problems (if death weapons didnt work)vrs high prot

d9w9b6:
Advantages: Multiple, high strength attacks and high defence.
Disadvantages: Only one i can think of is cost, getting this would probably need imprisoned+fairly poor scales

d9b9:
Advantages: +4 Strength, death weapons and 350% chance of causing afflictions, death curse means even with cheap units (flagelants/warriors of the 5 elements) you can cause alot of afflictions (curse+350% chance+death weapons), could be done with VQ
Disadvantages:
Low strength stuggles vrs armour, high strength sruggles greatly vrs hordes

Those were the pointless ramblings of a bored teenager

Re: Death Weapons
 

Do you think (i doubt it) there would be any way to fit some fortune into that? with all that turmoil you will benefit greatly from it.

Re: Death Weapons
 

Death bless sucks compared to fire bless. That's all you need to know.

Re: Death Weapons
 

I disagree, for the reasons listed above. Death bless is much worse for dealing damage, that's true. Death Weapons is weaker than Flaming Weapons, that's true. Death Weapons works very well with the minor Death bless. They have different uses.

Re: Death Weapons
 

Drop the dominion down to 7 or 8 and you can bump the luck scale up by a couple of notches, but won't have as many KotUS to play around with.

Re: Death Weapons
 

In most case. Vrs fire resistant troops, very highly armoured troops and SC's(afflictions rock http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif) and possibly in other cases the death bless would be better. The fire bless does more damage but the fact that death does AN damage and gives very high chance of causing afflictions gives it an equally useful job. Although, as i suggested taking both would be fun but i have one question:
would the extra affliction chance extend to the damage caused by fire bless? if so that would be very nice on warriors of the 5 elements (who previously i only used with f9/w9 for great speed, stats and damage) whom i have grown rather fond of.

Re: Death Weapons
 

Fire bless may be better than Death bless, but I suspect there's more benefit to having high Death than high Fire on your pretender. In terms of summons, globals, artifacts, etc.

The game is balanced in odd ways.

Re: Death Weapons
 

And, in most cases i think we can agree that death bless beats air http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Death Weapons
 

While we're on blessings, I seem to remember once experimenting with high Blood+Fire bless on D2 Lava Warriors. Talk about extremes -- especially once berserk, they were extremely powerful offense + no stamina or defense. :p

Re: Death Weapons
 

I don't see how you're still disagreeing when you're proving my points for me. The game is largely determined by early and mid anyway when it's coming down to effectiveness of most level 9 blesses. As people mentioned, not only will the mr not work most of the time, your units not gain the attack bonus that f9 provides. Lastly, your extra bless does little to nothing compared to indies, as jeff mentioned, d9 on a pretender IS more useful than f9 on a pretender, but bless effects, death is weaker. As the saying goes, making someone lose isn't necessarily the same as helping you win. Sure you may get lucky and chop down a SC with enough afflictions to make it useless but f9 will help you in a lot more situations. Not to mention the bulk investment in a SC comes from their equip, not their chassis.

Re: Death Weapons
 

While we are talking about blesses. I am curious exactly what the "Death curse" is at blood9. I tried blood9 to see if I could figure it out during a test game, but I did not see any extra icons on my blessed units. I thought maybe it gave the unit a chance to curse the enemy with successful attacks?

Re: Death Weapons
 

I'm pretty sure Death Curse has a chance to curse once the blessed unit dies to an attack.

Re: Death Weapons
 

Death curse causes the unit that killed the blessed unit to become cursed if it fails a magic resistance check. Not particularly useful, but then, blood 9 is one of the more useful paths on a pretender.

Re: Death Weapons
 

And a pile of d9b9 flagelants could be very nasty vrs tough enemies. Or should i say flagelants and artillery mages (The flagelants hits can cause alot of afflictions, they get 2 attacks each AND whenever they die they could curse the enemy)

Re: Death Weapons
 

I'm sure Death Weapons would indeed work very well with the minor Death bless. Such a pity you can't get Death Weapons without a more-than-minor Death-9 bless. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Death Weapons
 

I meant the increased afflictions rate, of course. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I'll add one more case where high Death bless is good. Sacred units with ranged weapons. Death Weapons help onnly in melee, just as Flaming Weapons, but the increased affliction chance also works for ranged weapons. In LA, Wardens of Chelms and Ancestor Vessels of Tien Chi could both be very nice with Death 9 bless. They could deal with enemy pretenders that come on tromping your early game. If they had just Fire 9, they probably couldn't.

Re: Death Weapons
 

True. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif
..as for death weapon, I prefer f9 bless over d9 anytime.