[rdonj]

Empowerment is a sort of last resort because it's the most expensive way of increasing your magic. For example, empowering a nature 2 mage to n3 costs 30+ gems, I don't recall exactly. Whereas building a thistle mace takes 10 gems, fewer if you have a forging bonus on the mage creating the item, from a magic site, or from the forge of the ancients. And that thistle mace can be passed around to other mages if you need an extra level of nature on a different mage more than on the n2 mage you made it for, whereas an empowerment can't be transferred.