[MaxWilson]

I think it makse sense for both missiles and magic, and therefore I'm happy with it. Verisimilitude is at least as important as game balance, because game balance can be tweaked by adjusting costs. A good change.

It's certainly not crippling to Helheim. Helhirdlings have shields and good protection, and have access to spells like Legions of Steel that boost that protection further. This change will roughly double the amount of glamour that a given archer volley dispels, but Legions of Steel should roughly halve it again. (It's not as effective against longbows, but those are pretty rare EA.)

The change to Svartalfs is much more important IMO, because it limits Helheim's access to army buffs (Legions of Steel and Strength of Giants, Weapons of Sharpness) AND it slows down their research. Best recruitable-anywhere researcher is now the Vanjarl/Helkarl at 3/turn for an initial 160 gold, instead of the Svartalf at 7/turn for an initial 180 gold. The difference is fairly dramatic, and encourages taking positive Magic scales. (IIRC after ten turns of researching they'll gain 1 star and go up to 4/turn and 8/turn respectively, but it's still dramatic. Because the Varjarl is sacred, maintenance costs don't really suffer, but purchases cost more and you also need twice as many forts for maximum research.) This is offset by Helheim's death magic (helped along by the new site searching spell fix) which lets them get skull mentors, but in a long game Helheim now has real incentive to spend points on something besides a huge bless.

I haven't yet installed the patch, but I would expect the change to Sloth + increased resource cost for lightweight scale mail make Sloth-3 less attractive to Helheim, likewise giving Helheim less free points to throw into a bless.

In my SP games I think I'll mod Helheim back to Svartalfheim (220 gcost recruitable-anywhere Svartalfs) but leave the other changes intact.

-Max