Giving magic items

[Ironhawk]

Great! Thanks for all the advice and code Chazar this will prove invaluable. Its unfortunate that you can't place items directly into a lab but I'm sure that the scout thing will work fine.

Oh.. but what about the cursed artifacts tho? For normal artifacts its all well and good to put them on a scout cause you can dump them right back in your lab on turn 1. But what about the cursed artifacts like the Harvest Blade or Amon Hotep, which you will most certainly not want stuck on some scout. Is there any way around that?

[Chazar]

Sorry, I didnt think about cursed items... Maybe using a voluntary shape-shifter (werewolf) will help, because they can get rid of cursed items by shifting, but I am at a loss how to assign cursed head gear in a useful way.

[Alneyan]

You might wish to set up a Wish madness on the first turn, by making Wish a free spell already researched and easy to cast. It would work much better with an indie nation set just for that purpose, though.

If you are playing in the game, you might do that still, give yourself a few mages to get all the artifacts on turn 2, and send them on turn 3. Since you are the host, you can already chat like there's no tomorrow, so it should be fine. In this case, you should make Wish your national spell (only you can cast it, and it's pre-researched), and switch it back to a level 9 spell costing 100 pearls once you are done with Wishing.

Wish is the only way I see to allow *any* artifact in the game at no cost (another way would be to make the artifacts at level 0 of research, but they would still cost something, and everybody could make them).

[Ironhawk]

Ah, shapeshifting! Yeah hadnt thought of that. I'll give the nations a free shifter. If everyone gets the same unit it shouldnt alter the balance at all. Why can't they manage headgear? Do werewolves not have a head slot? I never even thought to check...

[Alneyan]

If the two shapes share a slot, the item won't be dropped after shifting. You should simply create a new unit (or alter one) and remove all slots from its second shape, and it should work out quite well.