Magic Items under CBM

[Mardagg]

Ive never used the vine shield vs physically strong SC`s.
There is a strength check involved IIRC,so do you still get a free hit vs very strong units or do they instantly break free?

I like to mix in the eye shield vs chaff ...only a few turns and there is generally no one left that can hit you.Also,vs stronger units/thugs u can often do some serious affliction problems with abit luck,even if you lose.

generally,Nature gems are pretty sparse in mid to late game,thats something to consider when evaluating the Vine shield
vs the Earth/fire gem shields.

Also,the parry and protection value for the vine and eye shield are much worse than from most others.

I do like the scutata a lot,btw,its pretty good at what it does AND offers Lightning protection which can be useful as it is generally more needed than fire/cold protection which u often already have natural or via brands.

[Trumanator]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Definitely. Vine shield is better against chaff, better against elite units as you can't get swarmed easily and better against thugs, since eye shield requires a MR check which a thug will often pass, but if he gets tangles by vines you get a free hit, which can be enough to kill him.

It's also better than gold shield, since it doesn't have problems with bersekers and undead. And charcoal and lucky coin are rarely used - you need units that can survive being swarmed to use them. Vine shield is the goto shield.

Eye shields inflict permanent damage though. If your guy runs, or theirs gets away, you've still done major damage. As for resisting the effect, its a pretty high check to make, like 18. I blinded a 32 MR Allfather once. Its also almost as good as the vine shield against chaff.

[Frozen Lama]

I'm willing to be proven wrong here Psycho, but i've used the eye shield a lot, and the MR check is very very hard to pass. i'd say that over 98% of the times i've used it it results in a lost eye. this includes vs tartarian, arch devils, jags, seraphs, pretty much everything.

[Sir_Dr_D]

This reminds me of my most amusing Dominions blooper. I was playing Agartha and was being attacked by Man. Man's army consisted of lots of knights, and backed by lighting blasting mages. I tried to hold off the army with a a risen oracle. I equiped the oracle with the best that I could at the time, which included lighting proof armor, two shields, one of them being an eye shield, and boots of the behometh. I had the oracle cast stone skin, and then try to trample the knights.
The setup almost worked. The knights couldn't damage the oracle. My plan was to get the army to route. The problem, though, was my pretender slowly started to get fatigued. I couldn't figure out why. He was undead and shoudn't have been able to get fatigued. This caused him to route first. He was two fatigued however to actually move. As a result the army of Man didn't route like they should have. The battle got to turn 50. Since I counted as the attacker from breaing siege, I auto lost. Despite being immortal, the oracle did not come back.

It wasn't until a bit after the battle that I realized why the oracle was getting fatigued. I had cast stone skin. He was killed by his own chill aura.

I lost that game, but at least I had the satisfaction to blind a whole army of knights using the eye shield. It was a funny sight: a clumsy size four risen oracle with two shields trying to trample an army of blind knights.

[vfb]

MR check for wielded items is vs 12, according to the debug log.

[Trumanator]

Originally Posted by vfb

MR check for wielded items is vs 12, according to the debug log.

Is that the Eye shield specifically? Cuz its a lot more effective than a check of 12 would indicate. Even if it does turn out to be 12, the number of checks you generally get almost guarantee the enemy's eyeloss.

[Psycho]

All MR checks in the game are against base value of 12, for all items and spells. Sure you can blind a MR 32 creature, but that requires a great deal of luck. Lama, I guess you just had luck with the eye shield or maybe your opponents didn't bring enough MR to the table. But it's not something you can rely on and if the eyeloss effect doesn't work, then you brought along a near-worthless parry 5 shield. It's easy to blind a bunch of knights or jags if they can't kill you fast enough. But then it means that they probably wouldn't be able to kill you anyway.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by Micah

No. This would hurt them plenty, as it cuts down their options against enemy thugs and SCs, the glam nations have very low strength scores on their raiders and need good, cheap weapons. This is where they ALREADY have trouble in games, raiding and killing PD isn't the issue.

Surely you don't say that glamor thug nations have troubles against SCs? That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't think it's a good thing to be able to equip your cheap thugs with universal gear that is good against both chaff and SCs. Chaff killing gear should be ineffective against SCs and SC killing gear should be more expensive.

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by Sir_Dr_D

I want to add, that I love what has been done to the midget masher in CBM. It has definate uses and weaknesses. This makes it an interesting weapon. We need to find ways to make some of the other rarely used weapons just as fun.

Agree!

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Surely you don't say that glamor thug nations have troubles against SCs? That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't think it's a good thing to be able to equip your cheap thugs with universal gear that is good against both chaff and SCs. Chaff killing gear should be ineffective against SCs and SC killing gear should be more expensive.

As a matter of fact, they do. I had them as Helheim about a year ago - vs first Bane Lord, then Tartarian. Of course, it's possible that I should have brought larger numbers of thugs - but still. Raiding was quite good at the same time...