Tip: Looking for advice on site searching

[Forrest]

So all you need is a lvl 2 search to get 70%. You can come back to get blood out of stones later.

Big point is to watch the dominion as a indicator that you need to spell search a province.

A 2 or 3 across the board rainbow awake starter can jump start your gem income early. The big problem is when he hits the inkpot and gets diseased. I lost a nice rainbow that I was using for this till research was high enough to convert him to a SC.

[Edi]

Not quite. An across the board lv 2 search will net you roughly 85% of possible random sites. It will miss the common (and commonly found) lv 3 sites for FAWESDN (Bronze Pillar, Cave of Clouds, Weeping Stone, Iron Cliff, Crystal Garden, Well of Pestilence and Grove of Evergreens) that each provide 1 gem of the site type. Well of Pestilence also increases death scale, so it's easy to spot unless you have death dominion. The others need either lv 3 search or radar spell. But generally that income is peanuts compared to the general lv 1 and 2 sites.

[CUnknown]

I am rediculously miserly when it comes to site-searching spells. I don't think I would recommend this style of play necessarily.

But, I will go around manually site-searching with level 1 mages, even, as long as the mage doesn't have to walk too long to get there.

I do a cursory search with low level mages (lvl 1-3) for as many paths as I can, manually. Then I might site search with spells in certain spots -- say, mountains, forest, and waste -- and only spots where I haven't already found at least 1 or 2 sites. If I find 2 sites in a province, or sometimes just 1 if it's a plains or cropland, then I stop searching there.

So, I think even going over a province with a level 1 mage is enough, sometimes. Level 2, definitely, that is basically all you would ever need.

[vfb]

Well, you'd miss out on the Summoning Circle (60% off blood rituals) and the Ultimate Gateway (50% off conjuration rituals) and a few nice indy mages like Shadow Seers.

Then again, I've usually got about zero gems in my reserves, so I might be going a bit overboard on the site searching.

[Psycho]

Great job Edi. And thanks others who posted as well.