undead question
 

Are undead units immune to death magic? Like drain life,bane fire,hand of death,disintigrate,cloud of death?

Re: undead question
 

Not to this spell.

Re: undead question
 

they still get decay, I don't know if it manages to kill them.

generally, a spell will say if it affects or doesn't affect lifeless, etc.

ghouls may well be subject to drain life, for example, because they aren't lifeless. idk. someone who knows more will come along soon enough

Re: undead question
 

Also, do any of those spells work on lifeless or mindless targets?

Re: undead question
 

mindless, yes. lifeless, no.

Re: undead question
 

Cloud of Death, Disintegrate, and Banefire are quite indiscriminate in terms of what units they can hurt.

Re: undead question
 

I ran some tests and, as mentioned, disintegrate and banefire seem to kill everything. Undead, lifeless - doesn't seem to matter. Same for hand of death (tough to use though because it requires such close proximity to the target).

However, I couldn't get cloud of death to cast against undead units and when I mixed normal units into the formation the undead units weren't effected so I don't believe cloud of death has any effect on undead. Actually, I think this spell is not infrequently used *with* undead troops since they won't be hit by friendly fire.

As mentioned, drain life will work on many undead - but not lifeless ones.

Dust to dust is a nice single target anti-undead spell. Wither bones does less damage but has a large AOE and can be devastating.

And of course if it's late game you could try undead mastery...

PS - Don't forget banishment, especially against undead that have low/average MR.

Re: undead question
 

Hmm. Might be right on CoD; I'm not very heavy on death casters in my current game so I haven't seen it used for a while.

On a related note, undead will also ignore the disease effects from certain death magic (leprosy bombardment, say), generally can ignore decay (since they tend to have high maximum ages) and tend to be pretty resistant to fear effects (most being either mindless and completely immune, or good morale/good MR... ghouls might be an exception), and also perform perfectly fine under Darkness and Rigor Mortis. Poison is also an obvious complement, since undead tend to be completely immune.

Re: undead question
 

speaking of decay, how does that work with the boots of youth, or the elixir of life?

Re: undead question
 

While Cloud of Death doesn't work on undead, a variant of it does. Leeching darkness.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Leeching_Darkness

The spells look rather identical, so I think that is where the confusion came from.

Re: undead question
 

Also, Shadow brand's weapon effect is leeching darkness, with the difference in that it doesn't persist and acts instantly.

Re: undead question
 

Really? I haven't checked in awhile, but I remember Shadow Brand not working on undead. Or at least not on lifeless undead.

On a similar note, does Life for a Life works on undead (or lifeless undead, if there's a difference)?

Re: undead question
 

Yes, there is a difference, not all undead are lifeless (a majority is tough) and not all lifeless are undead.

Re: undead question
 

I know there is a difference, that's why I mentioned it. Does the difference make a difference in this case?

Re: undead question
 

various immunities, and certain spells targeting one or the other.

think of a corpse with it's heart still beating. think of the frankenstein monster (not the corpse-construct found in-game); that would be a great example of a non-lifeless undead.

Re: undead question
 

Yes. I know.

That doesn't speak to "this case". Which was, from my original question:

Shadow Brand/Leeching Darkness and Life for a Life.

I have memories of Shadow Brands not working on undead and was wondering if I was wrong or if lifeless was actually the distinction.

Re: undead question
 

Life for a Life
"Lifeless beings are immune to this spell, everyone else will take severe and irresistible damage from it"
this is found in the spell's in-game description. Maybe next time you should try looking there first?

As for leeching darkness, there is nothing that indicates whether anyone has an immunity to it, so you may as well assume it will work on the lifeless and the living dead.

Re: undead question
 

Thanks for that. I'd looked in the manual, but it didn't specify. The in-game descriptions are often not that specific.

I'll have to test Leeching Darkness when I get the chance.

Re: undead question
 

I tested leeching darkness on the MA_Ermor reanimate horsemen, and it did damage them. So it works on both undead and lifeless units. (iirc the horsemen are both).

Re: undead question
 

unless it only works on both at a time, not one or the other? A cruel twist by the developers? just kidding.

Re: undead question
 

You know it wouldn't surprise me. This game has more exceptions than Java.

Re: undead question
 

I just played around with this.
Leeching Darkness does work on undead, lifeless or not, as you said.

The Shadow Brand effect does not work on lifeless undead. I'm not sure if it's the lifeless or undead that stops it. Not enough non-lifeless undead in my test.
The effect doesn't seem to be Leeching Darkness. The visual is different, it's not a cloud effect and it doesn't work on undead. I'm not sure what it is, if it's an effect used elsewhere.

Re: undead question
 

Now that is funny :) Though obviously not more than Windows does...

May I hijack this thread to ask a question? Could someone explain simply what the point of undead is? I like to understand "conceptually".

It seems to me (newb, sorry) that to counter you want priest-types casting Banish, which is cheap and ubiquitous, and most nations have these reasonably available. Then it's a war of attrition on the battlefield, you might need lots of priesties if you're fighting undead, but that's the gist?

Re: undead question
 

I don't understand your question JonBrave. Are you suggesting that undead aren't likely to be useful?

Re: undead question
 

No, I'm sure they're not.

First, explain to me whether lots of cheap priests will get rid of the majority of undead on the field?

Then, priests are available to everyone from the start, right? They are a "fundamental unit" of the game, and they are able to get rid of undead. So they are mostly against Death magic. So at that level, Death magic is different from all the others (Nature etc.), there's an obvious, cheap and readily available counter?

Re: undead question
 

Well, there are different kinds of undead. the longdead and soulless variation are just a form of chaff. Chaff is a term used by most players here to indicate cheap inexpensive units that sit between your mages/archer/long range killers and the heavy close combat stuff of the enemy. There are also undead such as the banes, wights, or liches, but those are heavy combat troops, and casters resp. I will not mention those.

A constant problem with normal chaff is low morale, hit it a few times, and they turn tail and run. (And if you kill 75% of all troops everybody runs). Undead have morale 50. And will never run. So that is great. And in large enough groups they will eventually hit normal other troops (who get fat, another bonus of undead, they don't get fat from combat) kill them and force the other side to take morale checks. And while this is happening your death 2+ mage is just quietly casting away. Never in harms way. (This trick also works vs some SC's, if they can only kill 2 troops each turn, a high death caster with some reinvig can keep them busy until the turn limit).

So a high death mage can skelly spam vs a lot of different types of pd. (you need some sort of arrow guard, but you can bring those along). Which is fairly cheap. You only need a mage and some troops to guard him (or few shields on the mage). Lets say you take LA ctis, a 240g sauromancer (d3+) and 10 heavy infantery to guard him will provide a nice way to start a attack force.

Now lets see what you need to counter it. One priest to banish the undead will not be enough. You will probably need at least 5 priests. To counter one d3+ caster. 250 gold. Sure that is cheaper than the 340 gold for the sauromancer and guards. But you also need to build the temples for the priests, and you need either 5 tempels, or 5 turns. While the ctis player can recruit one sauromander each turn. And which is more useful? One high level magepriest? Or 5 normal indy priests? So, the dead spam mages have more uses than the counter. (so when you invest in a gazillion indy priests, the dead spammer has already switched to his next strategy. Or use troops who can withstand a few banish attempts, lets say, normal slingers:) ). And your countertactic doesn't scale. He can beat your indy spam by getting more mages, as the creation of one fort forces you to get another 5 sources of indy priests each turn.

And if you pick your native priests it gets even worse, these are either more expensive in gold. Or are very cheap, and tie up a fort for a turn. Sure those 200 gold h3 priests can kill raise dead spam real quick. But a h3 priest cannot research, nor provide other forms of support. So you might win a few battles but in the end you might lose the war.

Or at least, that is how I assume it works, never really used dead spam competitively. :)

Re: undead question
 

Also, priests are more defensive, not really useful as an offensive weapon.

It also totally depends on the type of undead, some can spam reanimate in combat. Others (ma ermor, la ermor) summon large hordes of undead outside of combat, and throw hordes and hordes of these into combat. (Usually your small groups of priest are easily overwhelmed, flanked, crushed, evocated into oblivion).

Re: undead question
 

Since they're casting Bless or Sermon of Courage most of the time, I think of them as both?

Re: undead question
 

But then you have a bless nation, that is different. Sermon of courage is not that offensive, it helps your troops, but not really a lot.

Also, undead have a few basic resistances. Cold and poison. Which helps them outlast the enemy when certain battlefield only spells are active. Lets say grip of winter, or foul vapours (the last of which is way to weak btw, it hits only 10% of the battlefield each turn. It might get an upgrade in CBM).

Re: undead question
 

I think what you're missing is that you need a lot of priests, because you can get a lot of undead chaff very quickly. Either with Raise Dead spam or with reanimators.
Sure, if you're not fighting undead it's useful to have a couple priests in the army to bless and Sermonize, but it isn't useful to have 20. And you're not likely to have 20 H2 priests unless they're mage-priests, in which case they're more expensive.

Also, while undead are vulnerable to banishment and some other spells that normal troops aren't, they also are immune to some things regular troops are vulnerable to. Most of the chaff undead are cold resistant, fear and awe don't work against them, mind attacks fail, life drains don't work. Plenty of thugs that could slaughter regular troops will die to unexpected undead.

Re: undead question
 

This makes me imagine troops killing and eating the undead until they are too bloated to defend themselves. Then the undead kill them and do not feast because they are dead.

Re: undead question
 

point is, you have to build your army of offense priests first.

and a good MR trumps a banish spell

Re: undead question
 

Ps, Johnbrave, care to put your ideas to the test? you vs me as MA/LA Ermor or LA c'tis?

Re: undead question
 

Psst, johnbrave, pick a nation that can recruit a ton of W2 mages and spam cleansing water.

Re: undead question
 

lol, you really want mp. sorry that I wasn't interested. should have replied I suppose

Re: undead question
 

Wow, you're all threatening me with MP! Nooooo, I'm green, I was asking you experts, who I'm sure are correct, to enlighten me. :)

Your responses all make good sense to me, thank you.