Some beginner gameplay and strategies questions

[Corinthian]

Shadow brands are not fire magic though. And the only way to resist it is high magic resistance and/or high protection. (its Armor piercing, not armor negating)

As for dominion strength I have a personal rule to never take less than dom 5 on an awake god and never take less that dom 6 on a sleeping or imprisoned god. I have only broken this rule once and I got to regret that. If you want a supercombatant but dont want to spend points on high dominion I recommend a dragon of some sort. They can do without it in CBM.

[rdonj]

Also you shouldn't need to be building boosters in order to cast Bladewind. You have access to E2 guys who can cast summon earthpower - that takes you to E3 right there and gives you additional fatigue regeneration. So that part shouldn't be a problem. You also have access to Cleansing Water with celestial masters, which is one of the premier anti-undead spells, or Wither Bones with communioned Spirit Guides (one out of 4 gets an astral random), but that one may be slightly beyond your comfort level yet.

For a bog dirt cheap thug, try either banes or Ancestor Smiths. If you're spamming anti-undead spells in a battle an ancestor would probably be the better choice here. But anyway. If you're going to use an ancestor smith, try giving him just a shadow brand, a vine shield, and a girdle of might. And script him for summon earthpower, ironskin, holdx3, attack. This will keep his fatigue down and allow him to fight the undead mostly in peace and without having to purchase any extra armor. If he gets an air random you could consider adding mirror image or air shield to the script if it looks useful for the battle. And as a bonus they can self bless, so if you have something nice there they can benefit from it while thugging. If you had access to fire, fire shields are quite nice against undead as well, as they will quickly kill themselves trying to attack you. The trampling gargoyle idea should also work, though.

You may be interested to know that with an ancestor smith, earth boots, 35 earth gems and a laboratory located in a wasteland, you can get access to fire magic by casting Hidden in Sand

And yes, corinthian is correct about how shadow brands work.

Amhazair has the right of it as well, thugs are *much* more effective in MP. In sp things need a lot more gear to survive, generally. That's why I suggested something cheap, so when it eventually dies you won't miss it too much :P

[Shangrila00]

Heh, Ancestor Smiths are fun, though honestly they don't really work because their hp is too low. But ones with nature randoms have very high stats once they turn young, have magic fear inducing swords, and have potential access to some really powerful buffs.

Purely for fun, take 2 Smiths with nature randoms with slave crystals, and one with a master crystal, crystal shield and cheap weapon. The master casts earthpower, invulnerability, strength of gaia, elemental fortitude, and soul vortex, the slaves cast between them: bless, weapons of sharpness, strength of giants, legions of steel, and iron will, then all 3 attack. They are a lot harder to kill than you might expect thanks to 5 hp regen and soul vortex, mainly vulnerable to a critical early before they suck enough souls to deal with the fatigue from buffing, less so if you have a high earth bless as you really should with all sacred mages. Have a master of the way cast quickness, luck, and body ethereal on them for even more thematic fun. Sure, for 40+ gems, you could probably get and equip a low end SC, but is that as cool as 3 old guys hacking through everything in their path?