Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn

[Saber Cherry]

Things that reduce afflictions:

Regeneration - any amount, no matter how high or low - cuts affliction rates to 1/8. Undeads other than Vampires cannot regenerate, so they are more vulnerable. That's one reason I like Ice Devils as SCs.

Luck reduces successful hits by 1/2, which reduces affliction rates by roughly 1/2 (possibly more, due to various cumulative side-effects).

Ethereality reduces non-magical hit rates to 1/4 or less (I think that ethereal targets do not suffer the defense penalty from attacks that miss due to ethereality), and thus cuts affliction rates to roughly 1/4 versus a purely mundane army, or not at all versus mages, enemy SCs, and anti-SC squads.

Mistform reduces damage to 1, which makes afflictions highly unlikely. Of course this is not a really good solution for most SCs because it requires air magic, along with Mirror Image.

Air Shield reduces normal projectile hits to 20%, cutting afflictions from that source. Crossbows are dangerous to SCs.

Defense, protection, and resistances obviously reduce afflictions by reducing damage from relevant sources. Protection is usually better since it is not reduced after every strike, works against projectiles and AOE attacks, and reduces damage even if the opponent rolls higher than the defender. Consult the dice-roll-chart thread for exact numbers in a given situation. Hydra Skin Armor and Black Steel Full Plate cannot be compared without knowing the stats of the attacker(s) and defender.

Reinvigoration and/or lifedrain prevent fatigue buildup. Fatigue reduces defence and protection, which increases damage and thus afflictions.

High hitpoints reduce afflictions because the probability of receiving an affliction from an attack that does X damage is X/(MAX HP). Please note! This makes pretenders and prophets HIGHLY vulnerable in hostile dominion, where a dragon might have a temporary "256 current HP," but due to hostile dominion, only "32 max HP." Inflicting a non-fatal 128 damage on this dragon (by multiple attacks, like crossbow bolts) will cause an average of 4 afflictions!

Immortality makes afflictions almost irrelevant, since immortals heal their own afflictions very rapidly. Thus, even though undeads cannot be given regeneration, many of the best ones don't need it anyway...


Things that increase afflictions:

Curse gives a base 25% chance for any damaging attack to cause an affliction. So once a combat unit is cursed, it's done. Luck does not counter curse. However, I think regeneration reduces affliction rates from Curse to 1/8 of normal, or about 3%.

Things like Blindness, Heart Finder, Eye Shield, and various artifacts cause afflictions that cannot be prevented by anything.

Seeking Arrow causes an affliction if it hits and does damage, but Luck, Air Shield, extremely high protection, and (possibly) good shield will prevent this.

Disease causes afflictions, but they seem to be reduced by regeneration, from my observation.


So, as to your questions:

Regeneration is vital.
A Pendant of Luck is worse than a Ring of Regeneration.
Hydra Skin Armor versus good armor: It depends.
Never send a cursed pretender alone versus massess of weaklings... unless he is healing or immortal, or regenerating and lucky and high protection and (ideally) a trampler. Units with trample like Earth Mothers don't suffer much from afflictions.


Edit: Note that all this is from my memory and I have a very bad one. But I'm very certain about most of it.

[FrankTrollman]

Yeppers, Regeneration kicks Luck hard when it comes to beating battle afflictions. Of course, Luck applies against Soul Slay and Regeneration does not.

As for a Pangean build, sure. Pangea has access to virtually limitless Nature and a reasonable amount of Blood Slaves and Death Gems. As such, you might want to make a build of:

Blood Thorn
Vine Shield
Horror Helmet
Hydra Skin Armor
Boots of the Messenger
Lifelong Protection
Cat Charm

You end up with no Quickness, but you have some Fear going, and the Vine Shield combines well with the Lifelong Protection. Unfortunately, Pangea is not very good at item crafting, since both Nature and Death are craptastic at making equipment for supercombatants (except for the Hydra Armor/Ring of Regeneration).

-Frank

[Saber Cherry]

FrankTrollman said:Unfortunately, Pangea is not very good at item crafting, since both Nature and Death are craptastic at making equipment for supercombatants (except for the Hydra Armor/Ring of Regeneration).

-Frank

I find Nature essential for SCs. Good, non-artifact items other than RoR / Hydra Skin include:

Totem Shield (versus enemy melee SCs)
Eye Shield
Vine Shield
Leather Shield (great no-encumbrance shield for early-game SC, like Earth Mothers)
Ring of Poison Resistance (when you expect poison, but need better armor than Hydra Skin)
Horned Helmet
Cat Charm (great when used with - for example - boots of quickness, main gauche, shield of the accursed, bracers of defense, and chainmail of displacement, for +24 defense unless I miscalculated)
Amulet of Resilience
Boots of the Messenger
Thorn Spear (also for early-game pretender SC, to grant repels versus barbarians and HI... Astral and Earth are the only other paths that can do this)

Granted, it's hard to fully equip a unit with just nature, as it lacks good weapons or boots. And some of these are special-case. But I've equipped SCs with all of them except the Vine Shield, at various times, and I hear some people do use Vine Shields on SCs.

Death, I agree, is not very good for equipping SCs; it offers only the Wraith Sword, Duskdagger, Horror Helmet, and Wraith Crown. Death should have lots of weapons, at least; and probably some cool armors and trinkets.

[FrankTrollman]

Totem Shield (versus enemy melee SCs)

Pangea cannot make Totem Shields except with its god, and even then only if it alchemizes or finds some astral pearls.

Leather Shield

It's half. The size. Of the Weightless Shield.

That's bad.

Horned Helmet

It's not the worst helmet. But it's pretty close.

Cat Charm (great when used with - for example - boots of quickness, main gauche, shield of the accursed, bracers of defense, and chainmail of displacement, for +24 defense unless I miscalculated)

+25 I think, but you're talking about a SC who has no meaningful weapons and can't be built by Pangea, so I'm not sure what the point is here.

Amulet of Resilience

The Heart of Life is better.

Boots of the Messenger

These are not, in fact, the worst boots. But they are close. The winged sandals and the boots of quickness are the ones you actually want.

Death, I agree, is not very good for equipping SCs; it offers only the Wraith Sword, Duskdagger, Horror Helmet, and Wraith Crown. Death should have lots of weapons, at least; and probably some cool armors and trinkets.

I disagree. I'm totally OK with Death sucking the funky hot dog when it comes to equipping SCs. They get to make all the Bane Lords they want and their summons are all cheap and awesome and their special leadership comes in gang piles.

Unless and until Death users are forced to pay gem totals comparable to what Fire has to pay to create an army or blast a province, I'm really pretty content with them being virtually incapable of outfitting a reasonable SC without help.

-Frank

[Jurri]

Oy, Frank, have you actually used these builds in a game? To my eye some seem rather dysfunctional, but I might be wrong. One thing to note is that the Heart of Life is not better than an amulet of resilience, and here's why: The chest wound gives you 5 encumberance. If you have quickness, this means 10 additional fatigue per combat turn and thus it does nothing but hogs the slot. (Yah, if you have 0 base and don't cast spells it won't matter, but why would you need reinvigoration at all if that is the case?)

Also, I think you shouldn't dismiss Cherry's suggestions quite so quickly, most of them are pretty useful items. (Well, I never did use a leather shield but still.) And a Pan with a random in astral can make a Totem shield, right?

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
Pangea cannot make Totem Shields except with its god, and even then only if it alchemizes or finds some astral pearls.

Do you not ever build Pan's? They can certainly make totem shields. Once they have Lamia Queens, it's even easier.

[FrankTrollman]

I consider Pangea to be Carrion Woods by default, their Pans have 3 Nature and 2 Death.

-Frank

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Saber Cherry said:

I find Nature essential for SCs. Good, non-artifact items other than RoR / Hydra Skin include:

Leather Shield (great no-encumbrance shield for early-game SC, like Earth Mothers)
...
Thorn Spear (also for early-game pretender SC, to grant repels versus barbarians and HI... Astral and Earth are the only other paths that can do this)

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to use Thorn Staves instead of Thorn Spear + Leather Shield. Actually I almost always use a Thorn Staff as my pretender's first weapon with "nature" nations.

[Chazar]

Saber Cherry said: Granted, it's hard to fully equip a unit with just nature, as it lacks good weapons or boots.

FrankTrollman said: These (Boots of the Messenger) are not, in fact, the worst boots. But they are close. The winged sandals and the boots of quickness are the ones you actually want.

• What is wrong with the 4-Reinvigoration from the BootsOfTheMessenger? Sure, BootsOfQuickness or WingedShoes might be better for lifedrainers, but I find all other non-unique boots rather inferior to those three, making them anything else than close-to-worst in my opinion?!?
  Also when compared to the RingOfResilience they look quite good to me: The Ring provides one more point reinvigoration, but costs twice as much and takes up a misc slot...
• As for a nature weapon, I actually like the SnakeBladderStick: it is available sort of early (lvl4), easily available (1 nature, 5 gems), a mere one-handed 3-length weapon doing an area attack. I think that it is quite a good choice early on as long a there are still a bigger number of non-poison-proof units around. Of course, one either needs an undead wielder or SnakeRing, HydraSkin, etc.

BTW, thanks for all the information on affliction chances! SaberCherry's Complete Condensed Survey of Affliction Chances is pretty helpful to have for me!

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Chazar said:

[*]What is wrong with the 4-Reinvigoration from the BootsOfTheMessenger? Sure, BootsOfQuickness or WingedShoes might be better for lifedrainers, but I find all other non-unique boots rather inferior to those three, making them anything else than close-to-worst in my opinion?!?

I know a bunch of players will agree with you. The boots of the Messengers are great items for SCs in many cases, and the best choice bar none in a few.