Questions about a game in progress

[Shovah32]

Or you can just cast earth power (as mentioned) bringing them up to e3 without wasting gems.
If i was you i would (yes i do suggest this to everyone ) i would use my pretender to summon a death mage and then use him to crank out black servants (cheap, stealthy, ethereal, lifedrain) for raiding and spectres (basically the same but more expensive and with magic for buffs) to hunt small armies (or if you send groups they could possibly do better) and equip them with cheap items (protection, strength boosters and vrs most troops fear are all top priorities) from smiths and some different items (special shields, horror helms, luck pendants ect) from summoned mages or your pretender.

[lillumultipass]

Thanks guys for the input!

I see that my early siteèsearching left much to be desired.
I have one master smith with S1 so I have ordered him to auto-cast arcane probing. Better late than never!
Also, I am going to summon some spectres and mound fiends very soon I guess. Maybe I can start summoning black servants also...

[thejeff]

Sure cast Earth Power. But we're talking Ulm here. Give every combat mage Earth Boots, it's only 5 gems apiece. With Earth 4 and reinvig, you can cast more Blade Winds before fatiguing out.

[Shovah32]

Only summon 1 death mage with your pretender though, he has better things to do. Black servants make very skilled raiders, heres an example of (imo) a nice one:

no weapon (built in lifedrain ftw)

charcoal shield (your main damage dealer, works wonders vrs non jotun pd/troops)

horror helm (combined with fireshield its a very nice way to rout the enemy sooner, especially if you used in groups)

black steel full plate (great prot to take hits, need i say more?)

boots of giant strength (boots lifedrains damage, very helpful)

luck pendant (doubles your survivability, almost essential on any combatant without astral magic)

amulet of antimagic (helps you resist those deadly banishings, if using more than one black servant spread them out so they dont all get hit)

and there you go, for 5 astral, 13 earth, 3 fire and 8 death (thats off the top of my head and if your astral/earth/shield items are made by smiths with hammers) you have made a raider who takes almost no damage from attacks (not all attacks hit, mundane hits only have a 1 in 8 chance of getting past luck and ethereality and even then they have to get past your nice protection), is resistant to magic, can heal himself, has fear AND damages anyone who attacks him.

[FrankTrollman]

Hidden in Snow, Enchantment 6 and W3D1, is expensive at 55 gems but gives you up to two Unfrozen mages who the manual lists as having four randoms. That would be very nice if you had more Water gem income.

Yeah, what is up with that spell?

I cast it three times and got:

2 mages, 5 improved unfrozen, 20 normal unfrozen
2 mages, 7 improved unfrozen, 18 normal unfrozen
0 mages, 3 improved unfrozen, 6 normal unfrozen.

The last casting was during Winter, and boy did that suck.

Anyways, the Mages are random, the worst one was 2 Earth and 1 Death, but the other 3 had 6 or 7 picks each, distributed between Earth, Water, and Death (looks like up to 3 in each path, I got a 3 Earth guy, a 3 Water guy and a 3 Death guy with 1 or 2 picks in the others).

Individually, Unfrozen have better stats than Wights, but they tend to fight with stone spears and leather armor, which makes them somewhat inferior. The Unfrozen Leader however, is pretty exciting. Marginally better stats than a Bane and his disadvantage of coming with worse armor is just 5 Earth gems away from being solved.

-Frank

[Shovah32]

Ive only cast it once and I got 1 unfrozen leader, 2 very nice mages, 1 poor mage, 2 improved unfrozen and a bunch of regulars.

[Gandalf Parker]

In general "turtle and research" is a tactic which would work best on
A) large maps
B) few players
C) high setting on independents

Any of those can work, or all of them. Any opposite settings (small maps, many players, default or lower indepts) would create a rush game which would be hard for you to survive. Dont despair though. If you are good at turtle and research then you could be a welcome surprise in the large games.

[NTJedi]

FrankTrollman said:

I cast it three times and got:

2 mages, 5 improved unfrozen, 20 normal unfrozen
2 mages, 7 improved unfrozen, 18 normal unfrozen
0 mages, 3 improved unfrozen, 6 normal unfrozen.

The last casting was during Winter, and boy did that suck.

-Frank

Perhaps the spell has worse results during the winter and best results during the summer... it might also be complete random results. If I wasn't at work I'd do some quick tests.

[Endoperez]

Ah, that reminds me of something else. If you forge a Dwarven Hammer (E3), anyone having it while forging will have a forge bonus 25, the same as your Master Smiths, and it stacks with your Smiths' ability. Can you say no to 50% off of all items?


Black Servants aren't mages. They are ethereal, however, and as most undead they have encumberance 0. That means that they are hard to kill, and won't suffer from high-encumberance armors (their encumberance will STAY at 0, no matter what armor they wear). Black Servants equipped with Black Steel Full Plates and Black Steel Helmets are VERY hard to kill. Another very useful item is Pendant of Luck (S1), having 50% chance of negating anything that might further damage them, and of course Amulet of Antimagic (S1) to protect them against enemy priests. They could also benefit greatly from Lead Shield (E1 or E2), which also increases magic resistance, especially as they can ignore its encumberance.

[Shovah32]

Who said they were?