[Norfleet]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
1. Dont you need at least some blood slaves to be able to make a dousing rod?
2. I read that post, and am also confused about it. Didnt all other searchers perform better than .95 slaves/trn? Wasnt that the results?

Dousing rods cost 5 blood slaves base, which means you need at least blood-1, or Forge of the Ancients and any magic skill, to make one.

However, a dousing rod is not required to find blood slaves: An untrained scout still has a chance to find blood slaves, and scouts are fairly cheap.

According to Cherry's data, a blood-1 mage hunting with a dousing rod is roughly 4 times better than a scout at this...

But Vanjarls are $280! For the cost of a single Vanjarl, dousing rod not included, you could hire 14 $20 scouts. Vans are sacred, so their upkeep is reduced by half, but for that money, you could pay the wages of 7 scouts. A Vanjarl will only hunt as well as about 4 scouts. So for Vanheim, it appears to be somewhat more efficient to hunt with scouts. One other benefit of scout-hunting is that you can spread the hunting out across many provinces easily, to avoid savaging the blood-hunted province.

Mictlan can afford to hunt with their priests, as the Mictlan priest is $80 and sacred, so has the upkeep of a $40 unit, or two scouts, and hunts as well per unit cost as a scout, and twice as good with a rod. Vanjarls are much more pricey, however, so it's not quite as economical to bloodhunt with Vanjarls.