A few bless and other questions

[Chris_Byler]

I thought the way to use archer decoys was to put them in front *and to the side* of your real troops, so they don't actually get in the way, but they're still nearer and thus targeted first. Since the slaves have 0 prot and are not buffed, they will take more damage. By the time they break, hopefully your real troops are within a round or two of reaching the enemy (or already have) and the dwarves are tired.

KO, in addition to the wooden warriors suggestion, you might also try mind hunting the dwarves with moon priests.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

From what I hear, the death bless (affliction rate) will affect spells as well. Is this an exploit or an acceptable thing to take advantage of in MP?

[Endoperez]

Everything that isn't a ranged weapon (i.e. doesn't have "range" and "ammo" values) is a melee weapon. Hoofs of the sacred knights' horses will be aflame. A Stone Bird of a sacred thug will be aflame. Ice Blades of Temple Guards will be aflame. The bite of the sacred serpent will also deal fire damage.

[Wahnsinniger]

Well, the affliction rate Does work with normal ranged weapons. Considering the Death bless is considered inferior to the Fire Bless, I'd think that the affliction rate would be acceptable to work with spells.

In reality (for this game, and other fantasy things as well) "Blessing" is the pretender god lending his/her/its power to the sacred unit, so there's no reason why it wouldn't or couldn't buff the units spells also.

[llamabeast]

I'm not sure about flaming hooves. I answered the same question sometime before and said cavalry would have flaming hooves, and I seem to remember I was told I was wrong. I think "bonus" weapons may not get the flaming effect. One way of telling if a weapon is "bonus" is that it doesn't count towards two-weapon penalties.

[Kristoffer O]

> From what I hear, the death bless (affliction rate) will affect spells as well. Is this an exploit or an acceptable thing to take advantage of in MP?

It was quite recently brought to our attention, and we had a good laugh. I think it is quite fun. For the moment the effect stays. I hope the death weapon effect also affects spell, although I suspect it doesn't. It would be beneficient in my current MP game

@Chris: Archer decoys work mainly on archers, who doesn't reevaluate targets each turn. Thus an archer decoys are useful for making archers fire at them in the beginning of the battle, and then continue to do so when other armies close in. Spellcasters are more flexible and might fire at archer decoys, but will not if there are jucier targets elsewhere. Bladewind can target most units on the battle field and if any of those have little protection and stand in tight formation they will probably be targeted.

[MaxWilson]

Chris_Byler said:
KO, in addition to the wooden warriors suggestion, you might also try mind hunting the dwarves with moon priests.

In principle that's a good suggestion, since Helheim has zero access to astral. But aren't moon priests S2? Mind Hunt requires S4, and I don't think MA can forge astral boosters unless your pretender is specifically made for it.

'Course you can maybe trade.

-Max

[mr_Logic]

appearently its a tough question, as no one has decisively answered it yet. i would assume though, that it only affects a hand held weapon, much like the protection bonus from earth magic, and therefor kick, fist, hoof, claw and such would not be affected. but i have no way to know.

[MaxWilson]

About the primary weapon stuff: the only way to know for sure is to turn on debugging flags when you start Dom3. dom3 -dddd (for however many debug levels you want). I've never gotten debugging output to work for me on Windows or I'd check this.

-Max

[Kristoffer O]

> appearently its a tough question, as no one has decisively answered it yet. i would assume though, that it only affects a hand held weapon, much like the protection bonus from earth magic, and therefor kick, fist, hoof, claw and such would not be affected. but i have no way to know.

Endo's answer was correct (unless I'm mistaken):

> Everything that isn't a ranged weapon (i.e. doesn't have "range" and "ammo" values) is a melee weapon. Hoofs of the sacred knights' horses will be aflame. A Stone Bird of a sacred thug will be aflame. Ice Blades of Temple Guards will be aflame. The bite of the sacred serpent will also deal fire damage.