[Micah]

Ich, about the blood stones - Middle Era doesn't have much blood, the only nations with it are Pan, Abysia, Jotunheim, and Vanheim. Of those Abysia and Pan are cap-only blood units, and the magic diversity of both of them sucks, I think it's good to leave them access to a gem-producing item given how many gems they miss out on not site searching early-game, and neither has access to clams or fetishes.

Jotunheim doesn't have any earth mages, so they're looking at having to find indy E mages to make them, and Vanheim's blood hunters are 280 gold and only have a single point in the path, so they need dousing rods to get any sort of decent income. Both of these nations also require a blood empowering on an earth mage to get the required paths.

Basically MA doesn't have any nations that can abuse them, so they don't need to be nerfed. LA Marignon, on the other hand...

Anyhow, dunno if that's Vel's reasoning or not, but the difficulty of getting the stones in MA seems to balance out the fact that they're now a better deal than clams. Upping the earth requirement would hurt Abysia a lot since they have weak earth magic, and they shouldn't take a hit to their already limited late game, IMO.