Blood Indies

[Hoplosternum]

I think a small side blood economy is worth the cost for nearly all nations. If you are a nation without death access and no Thug/SC commanders then it is especially valuable (Jomon / EA or MA Arcoscephale etc.)

But even a small Blood economy gives access to some nice items too. A single blood point enhances most mages as there are nice joint path magic items and it opens up communions to the none astral ones. There are also the horror overland spells for joint blood/astral mages.

Even a single blood 1 mage with a SDR is going to gather a lot of slaves and the blood economy can quickly snowball. It is far easier to create a blood economy once you have blood mages than become strong in say death if you are not to begin with. But the difference between a Level 1 (especially with the SDR) and a Level 0 hunter is huge. And you need 50 slaves to empower the first one. So I am not sure it is worth trying to use zero level blood hunters by themselves (I have tried it a few times with miserable results even using dozens of indie scouts and commanders). I am not sure hoping the extremely rare Jaguar Priest with blood turns up is really worth it unless you want those Priests anyway either. But the (rare) blood indie mage sites give decent hunters and a SDR is just 5 (??) slaves away.

You won’t match a dedicated blood nation’s hunters but they are not too inefficient compared with the part time ‘heim hunters. The idea is to empower a decent multipath mage with blood, rather than the often magic limited mages of the part time blood nations. So a none blood nation who finds a source of blood mages can be especially effective. Plus many of the dedicated blood nations have their own decent blood SC summons and may not bother with all the standard blood uniques so there may be some left even if you are getting in to it quite late.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Hoplosternum

I think a small side blood economy is worth the cost for nearly all nations. If you are a nation without death access and no Thug/SC commanders then it is especially valuable (Jomon / EA or MA Arcoscephale etc.)]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to actually do this? I've been taking some Blood on my pretender and dedicating him to bloodhunting sometime during year 2, and then empowering a national mage and moving my pretender to other duties. I used some indy scouts together with my pretender. Once I have the one B1 mage and forge a Sanguine Dousing Rod, things are easy, but any tricks towards getting there would be nice.

Also, since bloodhunting reliability is supposed to be linked to site frequency, is it noticeably harder to hunt with scouts in LA than in EA (default site freq. goes down in MA and again in LA).

[Hoplosternum]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to actually do this? I've been taking some Blood on my pretender and dedicating him to bloodhunting sometime during year 2, and then empowering a national mage and moving my pretender to other duties. I used some indy scouts together with my pretender. Once I have the one B1 mage and forge a Sanguine Dousing Rod, things are easy, but any tricks towards getting there would be nice.

Also, since bloodhunting reliability is supposed to be linked to site frequency, is it noticeably harder to hunt with scouts in LA than in EA (default site freq. goes down in MA and again in LA).

This is exactly what I did in the Megagame as Jomon. I think I gave my Ghost King blood one and forged him a SDR ASAP. He also had a bit of death (2) and had been site searching after the first few expansion turns.

With my first few death gems I had managed to summon a Revenant to cast the remote Dark Knowledge on my remaining unchecked provinces. But it was clear my death income was never going to be huge. While a few turns blood hunting with my Pretender had empowered my first mage. Who with the SDR and a half dozen (practically useless) scouts was building up another another 50 fairly quickly.

I survived to about half way through the third year before being quickly snuffed out. But the difference between my death and blood eceonomies was huge. My Pretender spent more time site searching (and casting Revenent) than blood hunting. But I doubt I got 50 death gems in the whole game. Enough for a Ghost General & 2 Revenents with a bit of remote site searching. Compared to about 100 slaves from just over a years hunting with 2 different level 1 blood hunters (Plus scouts). My Pretender was already on to other things. I felt my blood economy was up and running and on the verge of decent expansion while I realised my death economy would never really meet either my Thug or forging needs.

So I think the blood on your Pretender can work well. It has for me. You only need blood one as the SDR is cheap and very effective at that low level. So if you have a rainbow its well worth getting. There is also the excellent blood spell which eliminates the casters fatigue. Very useful for scripting after the casting of that big spell and it gets you in to communions without the risk of having low levels of Astral on your Pretender. If you build a Rainbow it is almost a no brainer for a none blood nation, especially if you intend doing any manual site searching. It's cheap and opens up decent options.