[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by djtool:
I've used them for making ivy crowns and pumping out vine men.

This is actually not a bad use for them, either, considering the poison immunity of the Vine Men (they ARE poison immune, right?)

Regarding the Keeper of the Tombs, however, I personally prefer the Keeper over the Shaman. While the Shaman may be the more useful mage outside of combat, the Keeper is a Holy-2 Mage, and I don't want to count the number of times I try to build Temples with Shamen.

Really, though, the Shaman IMO is the backbone of C'tis's research. A magic scale makes sense with C'tis anyway (fatigue help with Raise Dead and the like is really good for the Sauromancers).

One final way to get Shamen to forge +path items is to cast Forge, which requires some earth gems and an Earth pretender. Earth is far better on a survivability front than Astral, and lends itself well to a Shaman-rush Communion.

The other nice use for the Shaman is to Forge the basic nature items like Wineskins that you probably don't want your Sauromancers to be busy with.