Blood-1 in Vanheim

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
Hey thanks very much.

BTW I like Helheim too. Unless I am totally mistaken, however, Hangadrotts get NO blood. It's Air 2 DEATH 3, but maybe I am wrong.

Ack! You are right - I was thinking of Vanlade (one of Van's national heroes) who I always seem to get relatively quickly. Mea culpa. Those Hangadrotts are still beastly, though, after the Behemoths start coming out!

(I think I need more coffee.)

But other than that: what can you do with Blood 1?

Bleed, Blood Burst, Blood Heal, Pain Transfer, Reinvigoration, Sabbath Master/Slave, Summon Imp, Banish Demon, Leeching Touch, Bind Serpent Fiends, Leech, and Blood Vengeance all only require Blood 1 - quite an impressive list, actually, for a commander with all the other great skills possessed by Vanheim! Just one forged +Blood item gives them access to Spine Devils, Fiends, Agony, Hellbind Heart, and Harm.

There are some really good combat spells and some decent early-game summons in both of those lists - and that's not even taking into account their other spell levels (Air, Death, and so forth)!

Blood 1 is combat, combat, combat. Which, coincidentally, works quite well to supplement and round out those expensive-but-heavy-hitting Van commanders. And if you happen to run into some Garnet Amazons or some such thing, you can use *them* for blood hunting (or use scouts, as is commonly done with a nation like Vanheim or Jotunheim) or for following your Van commander around casting Sabbath Slave.

[ March 08, 2004, 17:57: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
- What is the deal with blood-1 skills?

For Vanheim (Vanjarls) it's blood sacrifice. Although I don't think it's used very often.

The other reason is it's "thematic".

[Saber Cherry]

Blood 1 means empowering to Blood 3 only costs 75 slaves, not 125 slaves, as if you had no blood magic. However, if you want to play seriously with blood, I suggest you take Blood-3 on your god so you can forge Blood Thorns and Brazen Skulls before you have 75 slaves for empowerment... and be sure to hoard Earth gems so your dwarves can forge Dwarven Hammers.

Vanheim's blood-Users also get randoms, so blood-2 is a possibility if you make lots of mages.

For units that only have blood-1... in combat, I use them to summon imps. But for any powerful mages casting lots of spells, a blood pick is useful for reinvigoration (except that spell is broken right now).

Originally posted by fahdiz:
Just one forged +Blood item gives them access to Spine Devils, Fiends, Agony, Hellbind Heart, and Harm.

Keep in mind that a Blood-1 mage can cast Blood-2 combat spells with an extra slave... just make sure he starts with at least 2 slaves, and specifically script the spell.

[ March 08, 2004, 19:55: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Truper]

Vanjarls get no randoms, although the Vanadrotts do. But at 380 gold apiece, you won't be making many of those, so the odds against a random coming up blood are pretty high. You pretty much need to decide at pretender-creation time whether or not your Vanheim will be a blood nation. I often use a 4 water, 4 blood Dragon for the pupose. Decent blessings, not bad at early province taking, and able to summon Ice Devils and forge blood-empowerement items. After an affliction or 3, your dragon retires to a lab, and jump-starts the blood process...

[tinkthank]

Thanks once again for these replies. Hope you dont mind me asking follow-up questions?

- "it's thematic" -- yeah, I sort of had that impression. But my impression has also been up till now: IW has something "in mind" when they designed it like this, they pictured the Van-folk *doing* something, and I hadnt imagined it would be casting bleed. I suspected something else.
- "Blood 1 is combat, combat, combat" -- ok, this is new to me. I have NEVER used blood in combat before, and I like to play Absysia. Am I missing out? My experiences up till now have been: toasting my slaves, little bang for the buck, hence: summoning, summoning summoning. But of course I wouldnt be toasting my slaves with Van. Still, with Air 2 I have lightning bolt, which beats all of those blood spells you listed and costs 0 gems. I just dont see blood 1 being exciting.
- "Empower to 3" or "Pretender Blood3+, then forge" -- ok that is sort of what my suspicion was what I had to do, but felt that this would somehow go against IW's grain (why I thought that I dont know).

So I need to get a LOT of scouts, right, to make all those blood items to then be able to forge em and then to finally use those skills? Anybody have any success with this? Well I will try it out, could be fun.

Thank you very much for your replies.

[fahdiz]

Don't forget that Blood 1 allows you to do Sabbath Master/Slave. Now, I'm certainly not saying that Vanheim/Blood = Pythium/Astral (because Pythium has Astral mages cheap and out the wazoo, not to mention Communicants, whereas - as you've stated - Vanheim doesn't have very easy access to Blood mages, and they're expensive as hell) but rather that in a pinch, it can be nice to be able to pump up your Vanadrotts with either other Vanadrotts or some Garnet Sorceresses/Priestesses.

As Cherry pointed out, being able to summon imps very early on in the game can help with some expansion issues, too.

[ March 09, 2004, 15:52: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

[Saber Cherry]

Some blood combat spells are very potent. Not bleed, but the area-effect ones... like Agony. I've never used Blood Burst, but it looks pretty good too... but really, if Reinvigoration worked correctly, that alone would make Blood worthwhile in combat.

Outside of combat, if you happen to get a Blood-Nature mage, Crossbreeding is very useful. If you have a luck scale of neutral or better, it is worthwhile to empower a Druid in blood or a blood user in Nature just for crossbreeding.

And Lastly, I'm working on a blood mod to make the blood summons more balanced (especially the big ones). There needs to be another blood-1 summon in addition to Serpent Fiend...