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

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Baalz

The blessing really is just for the Jarl...ok, it benefits the Niefel giant units as well but that's not a significant factor. You have a darn hard time justifying it with shrouds of the battle saint while simultaneously axing your astral income. All your astral income is going into starshine caps, crystal coins, lucky pendants, amulets of MR, teleports, battlefield spells.... or empowering your pretender as you suggest. The really important factor in my thesis is that practically any 3 gems you scrape up = armor = another SC. Trying to focus more on your pearls is introducing a serious bottleneck.

Nonsense. Shrouds are cheap--3 pearls or 6 of any other gem you have on hand. That's cheaper than most of the other armors you suggest.

-Max

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Baalz

It doesn't show up until you cycle a turn. Check you upkeep. Change a skratti to werewolf form while recruiting nothing. End turn. Your upkeep next turn will be lower.

Nasty bug. I hope they squish it in next patch. and while IW is at it they can hopefully fix the annoying change form bug - whereas if you give the order to change form in battle you end up as wolf and lose all your non misc. items.

[Baalz]

[quote=MaxWilson;664215]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Nonsense. Shrouds are cheap--3 pearls or 6 of any other gem you have on hand. That's cheaper than most of the other armors you suggest.

-Max

rime haubrick, hydra skin, armor of souls, black steel plate, copper plate, fire plate.

Nope, it's not cheaper. The armor I list are all either 3 gems or in a path you reasonably expect to have a strong income in with not a lot else to spend gems on at that stage. Pearls have a huge competition for opportunity costs, therefore pearls are more valuable. You've got *lots* of stuff to spend pearls on, and are probably dumping all your D into skull mentors. This leaves everything else to go to exactly one thing: armor for your SCs. No other items are necessary, you're forging nothing but armor with your gems and can fall back to using just blood slaves if you can't even manage that. Seems clever to alchemize 6N into a battle shroud, until you realize you just basically got the same thing as the hydra skin only with the added cost of fielding the blessing. The only other thing it possibly makes sense to alchemize is water gems which probably does make sense if you have the blessing anyway, but is a weak argument to justify the whole blessing on.

[archaeolept]

eh, clearly the shroud is cheaper than the hydraskin or the rime hauberk

which isn't to say it is quite as good, necessarily...

[KissBlade]

You can just make the rime hauberk or the skin anyway. Just because you have the bless doesn't mean you can't do those things. As I said, the bless really doesn't cost you anything to take even. Heck if you want awake so much, you can still tweak the scales a bit to take have an awake pretender. Just take death 3 and misfortune 1.

[AreaOfEffect]

Just insert this into any mod. Not only will it fix the gold exploit, but it will also fix the not-nearly-as-game-breaking leadership exploit.

#selectmonster 1652
#gcost 250
#poorleader
#end
#selectmonster 1653
#gcost 250
#poorleader
#end

[Tifone]

Nice. Maybe QM could consider putting it in the CBM

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Baalz

slaves if you can't even manage that. Seems clever to alchemize 6N into a battle shroud, until you realize you just basically got the same thing as the hydra skin only with the added cost of fielding the blessing. The only other thing it possibly makes sense to alchemize is water gems which probably does make sense if you have the blessing anyway, but is a weak argument to justify the whole blessing on.

I like KissBlade's suggestion of dormant E9N4S4 better than my own initial thought of E9N4, given the weak MR on the Skrattir. Using a shroud in this case instead of the Hydraskin armor gets you no poison resistance and weaker regen, lower enc, better MR and relative immunity to skelly spam (vs. having to forge boots of the messenger), and saves you a nature gem (or lets you use up whatever random air/water/fire gems you happen to have picked up from cross-path sites or events). IIRC the Prot is equivalent in either case.

In any case I've already made my point: shrouds do not introduce a "serious bottleneck" in your armor production. The master lich might still be preferable on other levels.

-Max

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Well, yes certainly there are other ways to play it, but I don't think the gain of crystal coins specifically can be overstated. It's the difference between having teleporting thugs or not, of which Niefel has none naturally, not to mention opening up the real nice astral stuff. That's a pretty huge difference, bigger IMO than a little extra protection and regen on your sacreds. Also, the teleporting immortal pretender himself is a huge asset that adds a lot to Niefel's flexibility. Not to mention the difference in having an awake site searching pretender makes in your gem flow - astral and earth specifically (not to mention pushing your initial dominion). That imprisoned cyclops is very likely not going to be contributing any dwarven hammers until after he goes out manually site searching a bit, comes back, forges one, then another a few turns later when he has the gems - what into year 4? Contrasted, the awake master lich likely has the first hammer out before const-4 is hit, and almost certainly has several out by const-6 when they're needed, he's probably cranking out crystal coins by then (with the astral and earth income he provided). All this before the cyclops ever shows his face...and then the cyclops doesn't really add much when he does (as opposed to a air drop heavy hitter)

Granted, yes it goes without saying that E/N Jarls are good, and I'll concede that you can have a legitimate difference of opinion, but I wouldn't call that having your cake and eating it to.

As far as boosters and gems, you are overlooking the key tactic of trading for these, potentially saving a huge number of points.

Even disregarding that, the imprisoned build is just assuming you want better scales or dominion. If you are willing to take the same scales, you can have a sleeping Cyclops with e9n4s3. Granted , hammers would come slightly later but you get an awful lot for that small delay. An e9 mage with all kinds of uses, almost totally unstoppable early game troops, an of course the bonus to niefel jarls. Yes, the bonus can be replicated with items, but that would take at least 10-15 gems a jarl... which translates into a theoretical +10 or 15 gems per turn by going the bless route (not to mention freeing up slots).

[KissBlade]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

I like vfb's suggestion of dormant E9N4S4 better than my own initial thought of E9N4, given the weak MR on the Skrattir. Using a shroud in this case instead of the Hydraskin armor gets you no poison resistance and weaker regen, lower enc, better MR and relative immunity to skelly spam (vs. having to forge boots of the messenger), and saves you a nature gem (or lets you use up whatever random air/water/fire gems you happen to have picked up from cross-path sites or events). IIRC the Prot is equivalent in either case.

In any case I've already made my point: shrouds do not introduce a "serious bottleneck" in your armor production. The master lich might still be preferable on other levels.

-Max

Isn't the s4n4e9 dormant my suggestion? =( Though the way I see it is, I wouldn't bother with the shroud on skrattis and just use the bless to power your regular jotun jarls while gearing your skrattis with the gems you get. This way you're not bottlenecked by anything. Have gem deficit? get jarls, have gold deficit? Get skrattis. Meanwhile you have high powered niefel jarls to do your heavy lifting too!