Winning Strategies: Always a Good Idea

[cleveland]

If you expect to have a healthy income of astral, nature, or death gems, make sure you'll have access to S4D1, N5D2, or D3, respectively.

At conj6, you can cast "Ether Gate", "Contact Lammia Queen", or "Summon Spectre", respectively; all of these have random magic picks, and can be an easy way to diversify your magic.

And diverse magic = more options = winning strategy.

[Jazzepi]

I'm pretty sure Ether Gate is way too expensive to diversify your magic with unless you are desperate.

Jazzepi

[Torin]

The bonus is high astral magic + ether warriors.
The price is almost like empowering other mage from 0 to 1 in a non astral path.

[cleveland]

Jazzepi said:
I'm pretty sure Ether Gate is way too expensive to diversify your magic with unless you are desperate.

Summon spectre is by far the best bet.

But Ether Lords (and Lamia Queens) come with a minimum of D2, so add a skull staff and you have a spectre factory.

If you're clamming as below, it's really not a bad option, particularly given the 25% chance for a blood pick, iirc.

[Shovah32]

If you can get even blood 1, you can get access to alot of other blood things. If there are other blood nations in the game, your chance of getting the blood uniques is low, but theres still plenty you can do.

Blood Empowerment is both the best value empowerment(gems generally being worth more than slaves) and, in my opinion, the most thematic empowerful(mass sacrificing of pure virgins to increase ones power).
Once you have blood 1, you can hunt a bit, make a dousing rod, hunt more, empower someone else, and repeat.

If you empower certain mages, you get access to some great stuff - empowering a mage who can cast teleport/cloud trapeze and who has atleast W1 or F1(looking at you, R'lyeh) gives you a great SC killer to deal with end-game raids(once you finally hit blood 9) through Infernal Prison and Claws of Kokytos, although life for a life also works and doesn't require extra paths.
Empowerful and earth mage gives you access to blood stones(I like to think of them as clams on steroids, particularly for a nation who can spend earth gems well) and they are also handy boosters. Earth also gives demon knights(preferably via infernal crusade).

Every path has something to offer when combined with blood(some being more useful than others), with my personal favourites being earth(already covered), death(vampire lords, while expensive, can be very helpful) and astral(Accursed shield is nice, send horror is amazing).