Monkey Question

[thejeff]

Except without clams, you'll never be able to afford enough of them to make a difference. Astral gems are just too useful. You'll be using a bunch to power the reverse communions and battle spells. More for Mind Hunt gear, luck and antimagic gear, etc, etc.

Patala fits my play style best. Heavy Earth mages for buffing and forging. The loss of hammers in CBM 1.7-8 weakens that.

Bandar Log probably has the best mages. Rishis are very nice high end astral. Low in diversity though.
Bandar Log and Patala can expand nicely with elephants, so there's no real need for a troop bless. Maybe a minor one for the mages and sacred thugs. Kailasa has more trouble early, so may justify a strong bless. I was never able to do well with them, so take that with a large grain of salt.

Unless you're putting all your points into a heavy bless, I'd suggest taking some blood on your pretender to get at Lanka's sacreds, particularly Dakinis. For 50 blood you get a serious thug who's also a 3B hunter. You can bootstrap yourself to one a turn pretty quickly once you get the research done.