Cross-breeding

Arcturas · #1 June 18th, 2009, 12:43 AM

Is it worth it? It seems pretty terrible to me...am I missing something? I suppose for chaff it's vaguely decent at 2 units per blood slave...but I don't love it. I think my biggest problem is the micro involved. I can't double-click to select all the spawned units, and having to double-click 5 or 6 times to organize my troops for a single spell, more if I want an effective force, is just too much of a pain.

Does anyone know how luck scales play into it? Are there exceedingly rare but awesome creatures at improved cross-breeding?

Dragar · #2 June 18th, 2009, 01:47 AM

It scales upwards with blood and luck, blood level increasing the number of spawns (up to 40ish per casting for normal cross breeding) and luck the chance of the good ones. There are a few very nice spawns, exceedingly deadly. I forget their names. One has solid hit points, flies and has fire breath. Another is fragile but does a crazy Gaze of Death attack with a pretty big area, and there are two others worth having.

I've looked at it using a Fountain of Blood, but don't think you get enough of the good spawns to make it really worth pursuing. I've never taken the trials up to Improved Cross breeding though, hard to imagine it's worth it at that stage though.

Gregstrom · #3 June 18th, 2009, 02:13 AM

The chaff are upkeep free, which can be handy for some blood nations. Some of them get interesting powers, but they're still pretty much worthless in a fight.

I did a little testing once, and with Luck 3 you'll normally get one of the good spawn with a casting (or 2 with Improved Cross Breeding).

MaxWilson · #4 June 18th, 2009, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcturas

Is it worth it? It seems pretty terrible to me...am I missing something? I suppose for chaff it's vaguely decent at 2 units per blood slave...but I don't love it. I think my biggest problem is the micro involved. I can't double-click to select all the spawned units, and having to double-click 5 or 6 times to organize my troops for a single spell, more if I want an effective force, is just too much of a pain.

Can't you just click one unit and hit "a" for all? Alternatively, shift-click to select only a subset.

-Max

Zeldor · #5 June 18th, 2009, 03:07 PM

Try Improved Cross Breeding. Never used the weaker version. You get some cool stuff, then some situational ones [amphibian or with good attacks, like touch of leprosy, or life drain, etc] and then you get lots of crap [use it to patrol blood hunting? or for sieges].

Gandalf Parker · #6 June 18th, 2009, 09:26 PM

The worst thing is that people use them by themselves. What good is it to have something that causes sleep or paralysis and not provide any troops to hit the enemy when they are asleep. I look thru all the results and try to assign them individually where I think they will work best.

MaxWilson · #7 June 19th, 2009, 04:59 PM

Actually, units which causes fatigue (e.g. Sleep) are fantastic at dealing damage. I learned this to my chagrin when my Zamzummite mage leading an army of Wights (mage was place in the middle of the Wights, scripted to cast [Weapons of Sharpness, Legions of Steel, Strength of Giants] while they did [Hold and Attack]) had the misfortune to step into a Cold-2 province. He cast his spell as usual, and then suddenly he disappeared. The chill aura from 40 Wights exceeded 200, converted to damage, and killed him instantly!

-Max

Executor · #8 June 19th, 2009, 05:12 PM

Carrion beasts, fatigue damage. I'm pretty sure they can kill just about anything.

vfb · #9 June 19th, 2009, 05:20 PM

Are you sure Sleep Vines affect lifeless (Golem, Gargoyle, etc)?

Executor · #10 June 19th, 2009, 05:39 PM

While it should not affect them, it does, there is damage anyway.

A while back I ran a test with a golem and carrion harpies. They have two sleep vine attacks, that's six actually since they have nrat3, but they did slowly, very slowly afflict damage to the golem for some reason.

Only two sleep vine attacks, no claw or anything.