Niefelheim - Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

[AndonSage]

Originally Posted by Alpine Joe

It was actually blindness that did me in more than petrify, as werewolves equipped with athames have no AOE attack.

I've read several Niefelheim guides, and one of them has the following for countering darkness:

Have a Gygja cast Twiceborn. Get her killed in your dominion. Voila, now she can see in the dark. Do this with a couple of Skratti as well. Your enemies will try to use darkness against you in their desparation, so this is a must-have for late-mid-game battles. A typical darkness casting foe is not well-suited to defend against white mages casting.

Anyway, just something I thought might help.

[Fate]

To install a mod, look at the appropriate section in the FAQ (link).

The CBM Mod changes numerous things, ranging from costs/abilities of recruitables to level/cost/power of spells, the effects of scales, and the costs/abilities of pretenders. It also includes the Worthy Heroes mod (a mod the adds new and better heroes to nations that don't have any/enough).

While they all do work together to diversify strategies, the option to install the parts seperately is for the convenience of those who like some, but not all, of the mod. For example, if you like the pretender and spell changes but you don't like the changes to recruits (which can be odd at times), the capability is there without too much work or modding knowledge.

[AndonSage]

Originally Posted by Fate

To install a mod, look at the appropriate section in the FAQ (link).

Thank you I was looking for instructions on installing mods in the Mod forum. Silly me

Thanks for the explanation on CB Mod. I'll just install the whole thing and see how I like it.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by AndonSage

I've read several Niefelheim guides, and one of them has the following for countering darkness:

Blindness is different to Darkness.
Blindness = cheap fire spell that targets one unit and can be resisted
Darkness = expensive spell that targets everyone and can't be resistet, but undead can see in the dark.

[AndonSage]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Blindness is different to Darkness.

Whoops, you're right. Not sure why I confused the two.

[AndonSage]

Baalz,

I've been reading and re-reading your guide to make sure I understand it, but I still have a few questions.

Protection/Wooden warriors brings these guys up to a 15 protection in human form

The manual says Barkskin (and those two spells are just mass Barkskin) raises Protection to 10, or adds 1 Protection if the unit is already at 10 or higher. Since the Jotun Skinshifter's Protection is 9, how are you getting it to 15?

The ones with a blood random are B3, which means with no need to forge a sanguine rod they can optimally blood hunt in a province using just 2 of them (rather than the 3 blood -1 guys with rods which is typical).

Do you mean 2 Blood - 1 other random guys? Otherwise I don't understand that.

I was wondering what you suggest for a prophet for this strategy? I would normally make a prophet out of a Niefel Jarl.

I'm also wondering why you suggest to research Construction 4 first. It seems to me that you need to take territories, so you can site search them, and the buffs you recommend for the Gygjas begin at Alteration 3 (Protection and Body Ethereal). Luck is Alteration 4. So why not go for Alt 4 first, since if you go with Constr 4 first, you probably won't have many sites searched by that time anyway? You need a gem income to take advantage of item construction, yes?

[thejeff]

"3 blood -1 guys" means 3 guys with blood 1.

As for Construction 4, his plan starts with the pretender site-searching so you'll have some income. And the main items for the Skratti at first are Blood (Flesh Eaters), not gem-based.


Edit: Barkskin gives you a natural protection of 10. With their armor of 7, that should give them 15 total.

10+7-(10*7/40)=15.25

[Baalz]

Thanks Jeff, right on all counts.

As to your prophet, it's not really important to the overall strategy so make it whoever seems like the most fun, you could do worse than a jarl.

As to the research order, obviously it's a bit flexible but my thinking was: bloodhunt with no sanguine rods so you've got a few blood slaves ready by the time you hit constr-4. In the two turns it takes to forge a few items and move your skratti to wherever the fighting is you can pick up quicken self which is really all your skratti need at this point. In a very general sense if I need constr and alt for a build, I like to go with construction first because I can hit the research for alteration after I've passed out items and my guys are on the way, while they need to hang by the labs to have magic items passed out if you do that in the reverse order.

[AndonSage]

Originally Posted by thejeff

"3 blood -1 guys" means 3 guys with blood 1.

Ah! That makes sense now, thanks

Originally Posted by thejeff

As for Construction 4, -snip-

Originally Posted by Baalz

As to the research order, obviously it's a bit flexible but my thinking was: -snip-

Yeah, I guess I just wanted the Gygjas I was using as commanders to be able to do something at the start, but I guess it doesn't matter. The skinshifters are doing all the work.

Originally Posted by thejeff

Edit: Barkskin gives you a natural protection of 10. With their armor of 7, that should give them 15 total.

10+7-(10*7/40)=15.25

Ah hah! Now I understand

I've started a game with the Faerun 466 Adventure Map, and independents at 7. I can take the regular indies with 10 skinshifters, but the provinces with a crown icon chew them up and spit 'em back out. I figure I'll need a few souped-up Skratti along with them for those provinces.

A funny thing happened in that game... my first two Gygjas were D1N1B4! What are the chances of that?!? Pretty small, I know, hehe. So I had the two of them doing the blood hunting instead of Skrattis, at the start BTW, for blood hunting I just find a large pop province and set the tax rate to 0% to control the unrest. Is that the normal way to do things for blood hunting?

One of the problems I see with using S1 or N1 indie commanders is the cold. You should probably mention they'll need a CR ring or something similar. Since you also usually need a Lab to recruit them, at 500 gold, that's another two Gygjas worth of gold, so at this point I've been sticking with Gygjas.

So, what do you do when you don't find any Astral Pearls income? Just use alchemy?

Thanks for all the help guys!

[Fantomen]

You´re on the right track, but there´s no benefit to hunting from population after the first 5000. So basically the more the population exeeds 5000 the more money you lose. Use provinces with 5000-7000 pop.