Using "Acashic Record" to Find Gem Sites?

[Frostmourne27]

GamerMan12 said:
There is a lot of suffering from Dom2 syndrome here - in Dom3 Strands of Arcane Power works as advertised, it does a level 9 search in all paths in all provinces with friendly dominion. I was playing on the 480 province map, with high dominion and after the massive first turn was getting 6 to 10 provinces per turn discovered to have magic sites.

GM12

Ummm... nowhere in the manual or in game does it say it does level 9 site searches. (Spell desription in maual is on page 217) so if it's doing level 9 searches, it is most definatly NOT doing what it should. That said, having it do level nine searches actually seems reasonable. Maybe have it do like d8+(domstrength/3) level nine searches in each province you control?

[FrankTrollman]

I'd prefer a d(dominon) searches in each province you control each turn.

Which may actually be what it's doing now.

-Frank

[GamerMan12]

From the spell description in the game, it says that the search is based on the mages power - as you need S7 to cast it - I am guessing that it is based on the astral path. My pretender was S11 when the spell was in effect, and I am sure I was finding everything.

GM12

[Frostmourne27]

Unless it's changed, the search strength is approximatly magic in path X/4. It was (at least in dom 2) IMPOSSIBLE to get a mage that could find all sites with it (even not counting holy/unholy) you could powerwish to ten in all paths, wear a robe of the magi, cary an elemental staff, ring of wizardry, and ring of sorcery and you still would only do level 3 searches. Kinda stupid. I hope they've changed it, since it really should allow powerful mages to search better, as opposed to wasting a bunch of pearls.

[Ygorl]

Here's what it did for me, based on the spell being active for several years; this was under 3.0, upgraded to 3.01, with no difference apparent between versions.

It only searched provinces I owned, in which I had positive dominion. It only searched paths known by the caster. The maximum level of search reached was 3, anywhere, even with level 12 astral and level 9 air magic on the caster. Search level could get up to 3 even if the caster did not have level 3 in a path. Having a higher level in a path did make the search level more likely to go up. I don't know if higher dominion correlated with a higher chance of the search level going up.

This spell seems nastier as a way to kill enemy mages, actually. About the only way to make decent use of it for site-searching is with a high-astral pretender who casts it and then wishes for magic power. This is not something that will be practical in most games, probably. It's not a particularly efficient way to kill enemy mages, either, but it can at least be obnoxious.