Most Useful Items

[Vicious Love]

Ironhawk said:
Actually, QM was the one that made it no-strength added, not Zen. Zen just increased the cost IIRC. But regardless, I am with shovah on this one. QM's concept behind it was that the blade itself should be ethereal (as per the description, i think?). So that makes total sense to me that it should be no-str added. My only, admittedly minor, complaint is that its damage should be 1-2 points more so that it has a higher % chance of killing a regular inf unit in one hit.

"When in command of a Wraith Sword, a warrior can replenish his life energy by stealing it from those he cuts down. This sword is often used by powerful undead beings". End description. Questions of balance aside(and the strengthless sword is virtually useless), I dislike the idea of a "powerful undead being" causing no more damage than a Hoburg with this thing. Against unarmored opponents, it does one point of damage more than a hoburg's punch. A hoburg's punch. Even if the blade does go right through a foe, the idea of a sword that does less damage than a human's fist is... no.

[Frostmourne27]

I wouldn't really be able to say whats best on early game SCs (I tend to do one or two SCs in the late game and go all out and spend upwards of a hundred gems on each (sometimes more). I find the best items in the early game are path boosters and possibly survival items for mages (especially against archer heavy races, like man or races that tend towards offensive magic). Under Conceptual balance most of the late game items are fairly unaffected (the ones I take anyway) so it doesnt really change my choices. In the late game i doubt theres a better value than Amon Hotep (its summoning ability aside). Ummmm... what else? Quickness I find to be good only in one or two scenarios: SCs that dont get fatigued (or have someway of getting rid of their fatigue-I suppose that's most of them) and big bad undead killer priests (priests with spell foci (possibly a rune smasher too) and a high priest lvl). i find that with quickness all you really do is compress a seven turn cast orer into four turns, then you fall unconscious, whoop di doo. I find that regeneration is excellent but more for the health per round than the lower chance of getting afflictions, but again, that's more from late game experiance where I often have the chalice, gift of health, healing units (witches are fun) or an SC that will get rid of afflictions on its own (immortal or recuperative).

[Endoperez]

Quickness has other uses as well. One of the most devastating is high-water pretender aiming for Falling Frost. With Water 9, you not only give all your sacred units lesser quickness and get a chance to make a prophet out of Quickness-Heroified commander (double the fun!), but the spell has huge AoE, range AND damage. It isn't very good against armor, and Crushers barely got damage by it, but fatique doesn't really matter in most battles. It is easy to get dozens of kills in few easy battles.

EDIT: When I said that fatique doesn't matter, I meant that thanks to that high Water level the fatique the Quickness-Frosting pretender gets from casting the spell is very low.

[Agrajag]

Besides, sometimes cramming all of those action into a shorter period of time can be useful.
If you spam skellies for example, because then you get a thicker squad each time, which will function better.
Also useful for decimating armies with spammable magic before they reach the mage (especially with short-ranged spells, like Nether Darts).
And its also useful for buffing soldiers (though most of the time, you have no reason to do that), so you can get them all buffed before they reach the enemy/die in a hail of arrows.

[Valandil]

Nether darts isnt very short ranged... What do you mean you have no reason to buff soldiers? are you insane? am I insane? aren't buffing spells some of the best in the game? helllp?

and this isn't an insult, just a question. Sorry if it sounds critical.

[quantum_mechani]

Valandil said:
Nether darts isnt very short ranged... What do you mean you have no reason to buff soldiers? are you insane? am I insane? aren't buffing spells some of the best in the game? helllp?

and this isn't an insult, just a question. Sorry if it sounds critical.

The confusion is that while buffing spells are very commonly used, most are used for enhancing the caster's combat power. Troop buffs are quite a bit rarer, only body ethereal is used with regularity

[Agrajag]

Quantom_Mechani is right about what I meant with troop-buffing spells.
And as for Nether Darts, they are range 15, not too short, but much shorter than other damaging spells, and I gave those as an example because Nether Darts is a very powerful spammable spell, which could really benefit from Quickness.

[Frostmourne27]

fair enough. quickness is good on mages. I still don't really see its worth on any sort of SC except maybe if your Sc's stratagy is to kill everything in sight before it gets hit (as opposed to something with regen, luck etc).

[thejeff]

Quickness does help mage SCs get their buffs up faster, which can be a life saver.

[Valandil]

And it DOES give bonuses to defence and attack.
(are those really all that usefull?)
I see about the troop buffs. Fog warriors? Just wondering.

Valandil