I hate horrors

[Wish]

does blood vengeance do a 1 for 1 damage redirection or does it swap targets?

what I am saying is would it matter if your mage was magical or not?

[Edi]

Swap targets. I'm not sure how mage bane treats mages, if it considers them magic beings or not, or if the slay magic weapon has a trigger that activates only on targets that possess magic.

Edi

[Belcarl]

Slightly out of topic. Has anyone managed to enslave a Doom Horror with spells or items like "Tartarian chains" ?

The setup would ofcourse need a pretty rock solid SC, or a mage with lots of guards.

I have tried this in a singel player game, but havent had any horror visits on my prepared SC yet

[Nick_K]

I've heard that wished-for doom horrors tend to randomly disappear. I suspect enslaved ones might do likewise. Doom horrors presumably have huge MR so enslaving them would be difficult.

Oh, is the 'slay magic' ability the same as from the 'elf bane' weapon? From the description, I believe that only works on creatures with the 'magic being' trait.

[Edi]

Yes, it is, so it should only work on magic beings.

[Aleph]

Claws/Prison always work - at least, I've never seen them fail. And if you can't beat them, join them - come over to Blood.

I've been trying to enslave horrors with Hellbind Heart, and it doesn't work - the battle ends when the spell goes off successfully, but you don't get to keep the horror. I think it's more about the assassination format, though - I've definitely gone for the Dreams of Rl'yeh / Enslave Mind combination in the past, and the same result - you're considered the victor, but you don't get the commander.

BUT I too have been having a great time in a LA Mictlan game with Astral Corruption - I beelined straight to it after a slight diversion for SDRs and Jaguar Toads. Then I finished out Blood Magic so I could have access to Claws of Cocytus and Infernal Prison. These work 100% of the time on horrors, just like they do everything else (at least, I've never seen them fail, and that includes on Kurgi and several other Doom Horrors). Trouble/opportunity is, horrors are tough - especially the kind of horrors (like, say, Kurgi) who show up looking for trouble when you have cast a 100+ gem global spell under Astral Corruption. So they eventually find their way out of Inferno, and once they do they are regular units in the world. So at that point you've got a shot at enslaving them.

I haven't pulled it off yet - one time I brought too large an army and my commander decided that it would be a waste of resources to hellbind a horror, and fighting Kurgi my placement was off and my commander didn't advance into hellbinding range. But I'm convinced it's possible, and I think blood magic is the way to do it - it's the lowest level domination spell in the game in terms of path requirements, therefore you can get the highest amount of bonuses for going above and beyond, and bloodslaves are accessible in much larger numbers than other gem types. They also make a nice human shield around your spellcaster.

I haven't yet gotten to the point of casting Send Horror at my own army, but I'm getting there. Since that's a battle format, not assassination, and yet the horrors normally go away at the end, I'm not sure what the net result will be.

[Nick_K]

Actually, whether the mage bane instakill works against your commander or not is pretty irrelevent... if the fatigue gets redirected onto you from blood vengeance while you're fighting a doom horror then you're dead meat anyway I'd imagine.
Interesting about Infernal prison. I haven't used in yet in DOms3. Where do the horrors return to when they get out?

[mivayan]

Edi said:
Swap targets. I'm not sure how mage bane treats mages, if it considers them magic beings or not, or if the slay magic weapon has a trigger that activates only on targets that possess magic.

Edi

What makes you say that?

Looks like a 1 for 1 damage redirection is more accurate, since for example arrows need to get through the target's protection before blood vengeance can hurt the archer.

[Baalz]

Aleph (or anyone), have you played around with the Horror Seed spell? The description seems horribly cool for the cost (20 blood slaves?!?), but it's kinda hard to see an effect and knowing how some of the other spells are bugged I'm wondering how well it works. I cast it a couple times on my own provinces/armies, but given I've got astral corruption and a bunch of lightless lanterns its a bit hard to tell what, if any, effect it has since there are horror attacks every few turns anyway.

Hmmm, I wonder, if the doom horrors are actually in a special state while they're in hell (as would seem to be the case if they find thier way back to the "real" world), I wonder if you can send them all to hell so they no longer are available to attack people (might be worthwhile if you've got a very horror marked pretender you'd like to call back who can't deal with the doom horrors himself). As they are unique so there are a presumably a finite number of them. I'm guessing that if you can actually hellbind one of them the result would be similar to if you wished for one...he'd disapear a few turns later.

[Aleph]

Nick - It seems to be like getting lost in the void - they just pop out wherever. Certainly a bunch have shown up in places I've never cast any spells from. If they show up over a fort of yours they will start sieging it - the first time it happened to me I was like "what paratroopers could have eaten through my PD" and was stunned to see that Kurgi was sieging a fort of mine.

Baalz - I've used Horror Seed a bit but, as an SP player, I don't get feedback on how it works - and, like you, I'm using it in conjunction with Astral Corruption, so I don't know where all the horror marks on my enemies are coming from. The only thing I've noticed is that sometimes after using it extensively I'll be fighting a big enemy army and sometimes after I kill someone a Horror will pop out. Whoops! Seems much less effective than a nice mix of Infernal Disease and Send Horror, overall, and it's usually only my pretender who can cast it, so it's a low priority for me compared to the other nastiness he can be throwing around.

I've also noticed what I believe you refer to in your second paragraph - I'm pretty sure I've cast massive 100+ gem spells and only been attacked by a regular Horror, which would imply that the Doom Horrors are all busy elsewhere. If so, you're weakening your hold on the world through the Claws/Prison combo, but it's still a small price to pay to be able to continue normal spellcasting and forging. Even a regular Horror is good enough to wipe out most commanders (as the OP is so stricken by).

Does anyone know the timing on Astral Corruption? That is, if you throw a Dispel at it, will you be attacked by a horror if the Corruption is dispelled? Not that there's much chance of any blood spell being dispelled unless you're in a large MP game and people gang up to dispel it, given the prevalence of blood slaves compared to most other gem types.