[Hoplosternum]

I think a small side blood economy is worth the cost for nearly all nations. If you are a nation without death access and no Thug/SC commanders then it is especially valuable (Jomon / EA or MA Arcoscephale etc.)

But even a small Blood economy gives access to some nice items too. A single blood point enhances most mages as there are nice joint path magic items and it opens up communions to the none astral ones. There are also the horror overland spells for joint blood/astral mages.

Even a single blood 1 mage with a SDR is going to gather a lot of slaves and the blood economy can quickly snowball. It is far easier to create a blood economy once you have blood mages than become strong in say death if you are not to begin with. But the difference between a Level 1 (especially with the SDR) and a Level 0 hunter is huge. And you need 50 slaves to empower the first one. So I am not sure it is worth trying to use zero level blood hunters by themselves (I have tried it a few times with miserable results even using dozens of indie scouts and commanders). I am not sure hoping the extremely rare Jaguar Priest with blood turns up is really worth it unless you want those Priests anyway either. But the (rare) blood indie mage sites give decent hunters and a SDR is just 5 (??) slaves away.

You won’t match a dedicated blood nation’s hunters but they are not too inefficient compared with the part time ‘heim hunters. The idea is to empower a decent multipath mage with blood, rather than the often magic limited mages of the part time blood nations. So a none blood nation who finds a source of blood mages can be especially effective. Plus many of the dedicated blood nations have their own decent blood SC summons and may not bother with all the standard blood uniques so there may be some left even if you are getting in to it quite late.