Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn

[quantum_mechani]

En Forcer said:

OKAY here is another question. How much reinvigoration do you actually need on your guy?

None, most of the time, assuming you have a lifestealing weapon. It really only comes into play if you have to fight lifeless enemies.

[sushiboat]

What about substitutions based on gem availability? For example, with Abysia, I'll make red dragon scale mail. It is not the best by any means, but it fits with the abundance of fire gems. For anything other than astral pearls, the conversion rate is terrible.

[BigDaddy]

Instead of bloodthorn/shield combinations, you can use bloodthorn/faitful and a burning pearl (depending on enemies) instead of a ring of regen.

[FrankTrollman]

Abyssia usually has a biig pile of Fire Gems, and access to sufficient Blood Slaves and Astral Pearls for whatever it wants to do. You might see a get-up like this:

Bloodthorn
Lucky Coin
Starshine Skullcap
Red Dragon Scalemail
(No Boots)
Amulet of Antimagic
Lifelong Protection (Heart of Life on Caster, Ring of the Warrior on low Attack Skill SC)

If you can afford it, consider swapping the RDS for an Armor of Souls. That thing is awesometastic, although the price (40 Blood Slaves) is off the charts nuts. You can't easily build any boots, so this will want to go on a mounted or elemental king chasis. This can make a pretty decent Pyrflagos.

Atlantis usually has a virtually limitless pile of Astral Pearls and an overwhelming pile of Water Gems as well. And that's... all you can count on. You can't even Blood Hunt in most of your empire. Still, you can make:

Sword of Swiftness
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Blue Dragon Scalemail
Boots of Quickness
Amulet of Antimagic
Amulet of Luck

That's a build that has no life stealing and no reinvig, which hurts. But it gets four attacks a turn, and has a very decent defense and protection values. The Encumberence on the whole thing is only 2, so you should be able to rack up a lot of kills anyways.

Pythium has a very large gem income, and has it split between Air, Astral, and Water. Often you'll have more coming besides, but at the least you should be able to choke out this:

Sword of Swiftness
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Chainmail of Displacement
Boots of Quickness
Dancing Trident
Amulet of Luck

This build maximizes Defense, while staying within the alotment of the basic Pythium Gem resource types. You're walking in with a Defense of +15 plus Quickness (so call it 18). That plus Luck and a huge pile of attacks should keep you in the game long enough to kill most enemies.

Man is sitting on piles of Air and Nature Gems taht a tremendous. They can count on nothing else.

Lightning Spear
Vine Shield
Spirit Helmet
Chainmail of Displacement
Winged Shoes
Ring of Regeneration
Dancing Trident

I'm not very happy with this build, but I normally don't ever consider making a Man god that doesn't have a strong Earth suit for that reason. Also, you'll be putting this (minus the Winged Shoes) on a Queen of Air, so to a certain extent it really doesn't matter what your equipment is. Some people prefer the Weightless Kite Shield to the Vine Shield. I regard that as a matter of preference.

Ulm has access to huge piles of Blood Slaves, and enough Astral Pearls, Death Gems, and Nature Gems to get by:

Blood Thorn
Lucky Coin
Starshine Skullcap
Hydraskin Armor*
Boots of the Messenger
Amulet of Antimagic
Lifelong Protection*

*If you have a really big pile to spend, consider upgrading the armor to the Armor of Souls or the Bone Armor. Those are expensive, but awesometastic in the extreme. If so, you'll want to swap out the Lifelong Protection for a Ring of Regeneration. You don't have Quickness and you don't have flight, but that's what you get for having no elementalists in your empire.

Ctis has Death, Nature, and Water coming out of the woodwork. And that's again all they can count on.

Wraithsword
Jade Mask*
Blue Dragon Scalemail
Boots of Quickness
Cat Charm
Bottle of Living Water

* Note that since only you can build the Jade Mask, you actually can guaranty getting it for your use.

Caelumhas Air and Water Gems to spare, and can at the very least make this:

Sword of Swiftness
Weightless Shield*
Spirit Helm
Chainmail of Displacement
Boots of Quickness
Dancing Trident
Bottle of Living Water*

*Actually, you should be able to Clam enough to have one of your High Seraphs make an Amulet of Antimagic and a Lucky Coin. That's not guaranteed, but it's pretty close.

Ermor Can only necessarily pick up Death Gems. Only Death Gems. Everything else belongs in the realm of "maybe" and "perhaps". But that still means that you can make a good scaffold of:

Wraithsword
Wraithcrown
Bone Armor
(No Boots)
Champion's Skull
(empty slot)

Ouch. Ermor really desperately needs to find something out of distant magic sites. It's almost not important what even.

Jotunheim has access to Astral, Nature, Death, Blood, and Water, making for a nice diverse pile of whupass.

Blood Thorn
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Blue Dragon Scalemail*
Boots of Quickness
Amulet of Antimagic
Amulet of Luck

*Again, this should be the Armor of Souls if for some reason you can actually afford it. You can consider swapping the Shield of the Accursed for a Lucky Coin and thence trading the Amulet of Luck for Lifelong Protection. YMMV.

-Frank

[quantum_mechani]

FrankTrollman said:
Abyssia usually has a biig pile of Fire Gems, and access to sufficient Blood Slaves and Astral Pearls for whatever it wants to do. You might see a get-up like this:

Bloodthorn
Lucky Coin
Starshine Skullcap
Red Dragon Scalemail
(No Boots)
Amulet of Antimagic
Lifelong Protection (Heart of Life on Caster, Ring of the Warrior on low Attack Skill SC)

If you can afford it, consider swapping the RDS for an Armor of Souls. That thing is awesometastic, although the price (40 Blood Slaves) is off the charts nuts. You can't easily build any boots, so this will want to go on a mounted or elemental king chasis. This can make a pretty decent Pyrflagos.

Atlantis usually has a virtually limitless pile of Astral Pearls and an overwhelming pile of Water Gems as well. And that's... all you can count on. You can't even Blood Hunt in most of your empire. Still, you can make:

Sword of Swiftness
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Blue Dragon Scalemail
Boots of Quickness
Amulet of Antimagic
Amulet of Luck

That's a build that has no life stealing and no reinvig, which hurts. But it gets four attacks a turn, and has a very decent defense and protection values. The Encumberence on the whole thing is only 2, so you should be able to rack up a lot of kills anyways.

Pythium has a very large gem income, and has it split between Air, Astral, and Water. Often you'll have more coming besides, but at the least you should be able to choke out this:

Sword of Swiftness
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Chainmail of Displacement
Boots of Quickness
Dancing Trident
Amulet of Luck

This build maximizes Defense, while staying within the alotment of the basic Pythium Gem resource types. You're walking in with a Defense of +15 plus Quickness (so call it 18). That plus Luck and a huge pile of attacks should keep you in the game long enough to kill most enemies.

Man is sitting on piles of Air and Nature Gems taht a tremendous. They can count on nothing else.

Lightning Spear
Vine Shield
Spirit Helmet
Chainmail of Displacement
Winged Shoes
Ring of Regeneration
Dancing Trident

I'm not very happy with this build, but I normally don't ever consider making a Man god that doesn't have a strong Earth suit for that reason. Also, you'll be putting this (minus the Winged Shoes) on a Queen of Air, so to a certain extent it really doesn't matter what your equipment is. Some people prefer the Weightless Kite Shield to the Vine Shield. I regard that as a matter of preference.

Ulm has access to huge piles of Blood Slaves, and enough Astral Pearls, Death Gems, and Nature Gems to get by:

Blood Thorn
Lucky Coin
Starshine Skullcap
Hydraskin Armor*
Boots of the Messenger
Amulet of Antimagic
Lifelong Protection*

*If you have a really big pile to spend, consider upgrading the armor to the Armor of Souls or the Bone Armor. Those are expensive, but awesometastic in the extreme. If so, you'll want to swap out the Lifelong Protection for a Ring of Regeneration. You don't have Quickness and you don't have flight, but that's what you get for having no elementalists in your empire.

Ctis has Death, Nature, and Water coming out of the woodwork. And that's again all they can count on.

Wraithsword
Jade Mask*
Blue Dragon Scalemail
Boots of Quickness
Cat Charm
Bottle of Living Water

* Note that since only you can build the Jade Mask, you actually can guaranty getting it for your use.

Caelumhas Air and Water Gems to spare, and can at the very least make this:

Sword of Swiftness
Weightless Shield*
Spirit Helm
Chainmail of Displacement
Boots of Quickness
Dancing Trident
Bottle of Living Water*

*Actually, you should be able to Clam enough to have one of your High Seraphs make an Amulet of Antimagic and a Lucky Coin. That's not guaranteed, but it's pretty close.

Ermor Can only necessarily pick up Death Gems. Only Death Gems. Everything else belongs in the realm of "maybe" and "perhaps". But that still means that you can make a good scaffold of:

Wraithsword
Wraithcrown
Bone Armor
(No Boots)
Champion's Skull
(empty slot)

Ouch. Ermor really desperately needs to find something out of distant magic sites. It's almost not important what even.

Jotunheim has access to Astral, Nature, Death, Blood, and Water, making for a nice diverse pile of whupass.

Blood Thorn
Shield of the Accursed
Starshine Skullcap
Blue Dragon Scalemail*
Boots of Quickness
Amulet of Antimagic
Amulet of Luck

*Again, this should be the Armor of Souls if for some reason you can actually afford it. You can consider swapping the Shield of the Accursed for a Lucky Coin and thence trading the Amulet of Luck for Lifelong Protection. YMMV.

-Frank

I hate to burst your bubble, but all of the builds without lifedraining are not near the power of those that do have it. And it is not hard for any nation to get lifedraing weapon. Put some death on your pretender, search until you find at least one death site, and then use mages with a death random to find more. By the time you are outfitting SCs, your pretender can whip up a skull staff any mage with a death random can start making wraith swords.

Alterenatively, about 2 mages with blood randoms can do enough hunting in 10 turns to empower themselves 1 level and make hellswords and eventually blood thorns.

Now, admittedly there is some chance you will find no death sites and/or get no death or blood randoms. However, I have yet to play a game with any nation where I did not have access to life draining by turn 30 (unless my research was so bad I did not have tech to).

[FrankTrollman]

I hate to burst your bubble, but all of the builds without lifedraining are not near the power of those that do have it.

That's a needlessly confrontational way to state that opinion.

First of all, the question wasn't "what's the most awesome build", it was "what can you make on an extremely limited budget of gems". Some games are played with a site frequency of 25, getting even a single death site ever just because you invested in Death magic on your god is by no means a sure thing.

Secondly, even your opinion that lifestealing weapons are necessarily more powerful than the alternative is subject to debate. Remember that while Regeneration works on any living or undead characters, and while life stealing will grant life to a living, undead, or lifeless Super Combatant; nonetheless Lifesteaing only gives benefits when you damage living opponents. There are entire groups of enemies against which lifestealing is a waste of time, and there are entire national armies composed exclusively of those groups!

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk. You'd way rather have a charcoal shield and a herald lance. A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

And even more tellingly so, Quickness makes a bigger difference against an enemy SC than does Lifestealing. And not by a little bit either, the difference is ginormous.

Lifestealing gives you back half as many hit points as you inflict on your enemy. This means that in an otherwise even competition, you'd expect to have regained about half your hit points when you killed the enemy SC (assuming for the moment that your enemy is a living enemy, which is often not the case when it comes to SCs). On the other hand, adding Quickness doubles your number of attacks, so it also would expect to leave you with half your hit points left when you triumph over an otherwise equal opponent. But Wait! The Quickness also comes with an Attack and Defense bonus, and the Lifestealing doesn't.

There are lots of abilities that you want on your Super Combatants:

Quickness
Life Stealing
Regeneration
Elemental Immunities
Flight
Fire/Astral Shield
Luck
Etherealness

But if you have to purge one, Lifestealing isn't even the best, it's just really good. Really really good, yes. But not indespensible. Nor is it *always* available.

-Frank

[quantum_mechani]

FrankTrollman said:

That's a needlessly confrontational way to state that opinion.

First of all, the question wasn't "what's the most awesome build", it was "what can you make on an extremely limited budget of gems". Some games are played with a site frequency of 25, getting even a single death site ever just because you invested in Death magic on your god is by no means a sure thing.

Secondly, even your opinion that lifestealing weapons are necessarily more powerful than the alternative is subject to debate. Remember that while Regeneration works on any living or undead characters, and while life stealing will grant life to a living, undead, or lifeless Super Combatant; nonetheless Lifesteaing only gives benefits when you damage living opponents. There are entire groups of enemies against which lifestealing is a waste of time, and there are entire national armies composed exclusively of those groups!

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk. You'd way rather have a charcoal shield and a herald lance. A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

And even more tellingly so, Quickness makes a bigger difference against an enemy SC than does Lifestealing. And not by a little bit either, the difference is ginormous.

Lifestealing gives you back half as many hit points as you inflict on your enemy. This means that in an otherwise even competition, you'd expect to have regained about half your hit points when you killed the enemy SC (assuming for the moment that your enemy is a living enemy, which is often not the case when it comes to SCs). On the other hand, adding Quickness doubles your number of attacks, so it also would expect to leave you with half your hit points left when you triumph over an otherwise equal opponent. But Wait! The Quickness also comes with an Attack and Defense bonus, and the Lifestealing doesn't.

There are lots of abilities that you want on your Super Combatants:

Quickness
Life Stealing
Regeneration
Elemental Immunities
Flight
Fire/Astral Shield
Luck
Etherealness

But if you have to purge one, Lifestealing isn't even the best, it's just really good. Really really good, yes. But not indespensible. Nor is it *always* available.

-Frank

You're right, for every rule, there is an exception. All I am saying is that in about 90% of cases, a lifestealing weapon is the best choice. And in 90% of the cases where you want one, the paths/gems can be made available.

Oh, and if you want a 100% tactic for getting lifestealing with a non-death/blood nation: take some blood magic on your pretender and blood hunt a bit. While I don't recommend this tactic except for extremely low magic site games, it is nonetheless available.

[Molog]

Wouldn't the Rime hauberk be nice for a jotunheim sc.

Also do a Pangea sc.

[Chazar]

(This is interesting stuff, especially since I seem to experience cases where lifestealing is not so easy to come by (as oppossed to quantum_mechani). So let me assume again a scarce availability of adept forgers (i.e. not all paths available) and a scarce supply of gems (including blood slaves):

One of the things I fear most are battle afflictions. These can be prevented by:
a) Regeneration
b) High defensiveness: defense, protection, luck,..

So what are the experience-based advices in order to make the appearance of battle afflictions an unlikely event? Is high regeneration a must have? Is a PendantOfLuck better than a RingOfRegeneration in this respect? At which base protection is a high-protection armour better than a HydraSkin armor in order to prevent afflictions?

What about being cursed? Does a LuckyCoin cancel out a curse evenly? Is it generally stupid to send out a cursed pretender alone against masses of weaklings instead of still-useful-but-no-risk office duty?

(Actually for an example, I am sending a cursed[i] Titan pretender out against masses of human weaklings controlled by Marignon AI (Järnsaxa in a Shepherd Game). She is currently equipped with
SnakeBladderStick
CharcoalShield
HyrdaSkinArmor
BootsOfQuickness
PendantOfLuck
BurningPearl
100% fire resistance seems useful vs. AI Marignon nevertheless it would really hurt to get e.g. the mindless affliction, so I wonder how to improve the mass killing capabilities while not getting hurt. I thought to add either a ring of Resilience or Regeneration (plus FireHelmet instead of BurningPearl). The script is SummonEarthpower, Personal Regeneration, Mistfrom and IronSkin in order provide some Reinvigoration and to decrease the affliction risk.)

[Turin]

FrankTrollman said:

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk. You'd way rather have a charcoal shield and a herald lance. A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

-Frank

lifestealing works against undead(ermor etc) . It just doesn´t work against lifeless units(mech men, most other constructs).
The reason lifedraining is so important is not the nice hp gain effect, but mainly the fatigue stealing aspect.
A high prot, high def SC with 90 fatigue and 300 hp is very easy to kill, a high prot high def sc with 0 fatigue and 50 hp is far harder to kill.