Gaining Levels

[sum1lost]

The one ring sounds more like Kurgi than anything else. Superpowers, ethereal, attracts evil things...

[Taqwus]

A ring called 'precious' is already in the game, actually.

[Fate]

At first it does sound scary, but it seems to me that a stealth body-slot item could even be construction 6 and be balanced (then again, I'm a bad SP player).

Here is a stealth item that might be interesting:

Cloak of the Unknown - Construction 2 or 4, something like 1N 1D, Cursed, Causes the wearer to receive automatic feeble mindedness and (maybe?) gives a slight chance the commander will be lost forever. To stop SC's from using it just give -5 MR.

Armour slot, protection 0, defense 0, encumbrance 0.

On the plus side it gives stealth 0 to the commander and up to 10 troops under his/her command.

Another possibility:

Unique Artifact - Sword of Darkness. Maybe 4 or 5 D? 2 hand slots. Cursed, ! automatic Darkness in battle !, blindess on hit? and gives 10 or 20 stealth, and -5 MR again. Att 0, Def 0, Dmg 10, Len 3.

I think the fact this weapon is more or less limited to those with dark vision makes it limited usage.

[MaxWilson]

Not necessarily. Darkness is great for almost anybody against, say, Helheim or Pangaea. Effectively it halves the difference between your units' attack and his units' defense. E.g. a regular spearman vs. a W9 Van:

Without darkness, (spearman) attack 10, (Van) defense 23, difference = -13 = 1% chance of hitting.

With darkness, (spearman) attack 5, (Van) defense 11, difference = -6 = 11% chance of hitting.

Of course the swarm factor will play into this too, but the point is that Darkness is a way of levelling the playing field, so it's useful against anyone who plays with elite units. Unless those elites have Darkvision, of course.

It also works great against arrows and spells, since it cuts precision by 75%.

-Max

Edit: hey, is R'lyeh freespawn upkeep-free? It might be really interesting to see R'lyeh casting Utterdark. Unexpected, anyway.