[tinkthank]

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.