Black Servant Gear
 

Forget Seraph equipment. I'd rather know some ways to turn a black servant into a PD killer. The lower the research the better.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

QM is renowned for using black servant thugs. You should try and get him to weigh in on the subject

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

I personally prefer self buffing spectre mages for this kind of thing, as the gem cost always comes out similar anyways for me.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

Well the key for Black Servant thugs is cheap and early.

I think the usual suggestions run along the lines of Black Plate, maybe Luck and a cheap shield. Horror helm?
Whatever you can forge with Construction 2 and your starting gem income, since you probably haven't done much site searching yet.

Ethereal with luck and high protection, plus native life drain goes a long way against indies and PD.

Obviously once you've got Conjuration 6, spectres are better, but that's much later and there are plenty of other options by then.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

const 2: luck, eye shield, black plate (or the cheaper version)

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

And if no great Nature income/mages? I run into such a problem some time before...

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

Give him Pendant of Luck, Shield of Gleaming gold and Horror Helmet and he will almost never be hit. Any armor to your taste will mean that when he is hit he won't be hit badly. Such build will defeat, I guess, any PD in the game. Maybe except Mictlan 20+ PD.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

If you've got no/little Nature, you're just looking for a shield to block arrows.
Constr 2, you've got E1 Black Steel Tower, A2 Weightless Tower, E2 Lead, E1A1 Valor, N1 Raw Hide.
Lead Shield's probably the best, if you're swimming in Earth gems. The weight is not important since he's encumbrance 0 and not a caster.

Eye shield is by far the best, if you can.

Of course, if you're using him against PD without missiles, don't bother with a shield, except for the eye shield.


Shield of Gleaming Gold is good, especially with Horror Helm, but it's also Constr 6.
Even without it Horror Helm is nice and only Const 2.

Still it's all about efficiency with these cheap little thugs. What's the cheapest you can get away with using? 5D for the Servant, 5S for Luck, 5/10E for armor 10N for the eye Shield. It's already 25 gems for a PD raider, likely to be killed if he hits any real resistance, especially a mage or 2.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

That is indeed the point. How cheap and how fast can you get a cost effective PD raider out and about.

Sure, it might just be better to play as one of the glamor factions, but that is a very limited list of nations. The black servant on the other hand can be gotten by everyone. Even those nations without death mages and/or gems can use a site searching death god. That's why I think it would be a good thing to know.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

I'm personally not so much of the thugs.. I prefer to use armies that will have near 0 losses or SC that will certainly win.

Thugs always have a lil risk of getting killed and then your gems are gone and so is your expansion.

Better use gems on research stuff and weapons to really pump the best unit you can get your hand on to SC status.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

Well, there certainly is a lot of logic in that. Yet their is a fault as well in assuming that there is a true line between thug an SC. A SC in reality is just a significantly better thug, and so the threat of losing your precious investment is still their. An avoidance of mid-tier units only perpetuates the idea that a SC is somehow different.

I will grant you that thugging has a cost and to use thugs that cost gems on top of the gear cost would be less then favorable.

Personally, I tend to neither use thugs or super combatants. Armies and boosted mages are my bread and butter. I just wanted to juxtapose a thread against the Seraph discussion. I think it's the second one we've had in a month to be honest. Maybe it's the same thread revisited though.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

Black Servant is the best cost effective measure for exploring city of the damned and the other adventure site. I typically only provide one misc item for exploring.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

Sure there is a continuum there but... When I have a SC the chance of loosing him too PD or small armies are so small I don't consider them.. They will be equiped with more than low level items though :D there is a severe difference between your balck servant and whatever I produce mostly.

I only use chassis with loads of HP and good stats.. races which don't have those.. well I just stick to armies then. Problem isn't loosing the items I think.. the problem is that the enemy can pick them up.. and that sucks :D especially if he has better chassis so he can use the items better than you could. (yes this is experience based)

PS I never even had a Seraph though but I'm trying to get one one of these days.

My SC are Niefel Jarls with Frostbrand, amulet of luck, boots of reinvig, eye shield and ring of regen. I know some slots are open but I'm trying to outfit one every 1-2 turns so I'm focussing on the basics here (also they aren't REAL top-class SC I know but they won't loose too PD and are decent for turn 30-ish if you have 4 of them and one or two dozen giants behind them) ... I admit that is more of a thugish use of them ... I use the one with the HP bonus as real SC though.. taking provinces alone.. the rest follows to take the castles.

Re: Black Servant Gear
 

It's actually much harder than in Dom2... now even highish PD can squish the old black servant lite. Still, the classic research level 2, blacksteel armor set + luck amulet build has it's uses. As has been mentioned golden shields are also expectational useful if you still have a need for black servants at that point. Barkskin amulets are another great addition.