Best item

[selkor]

What do you guys thing is the best or most powerful item in dominions 3?

[Sombre]

Best - Frost brand possibly. Or earth boots. Or dwarven hammer.

Most powerful - Ring of Wizardry?

[vfb]

Ah, fond memories of the great Wishing war of long ago, where all the nations of the land were Wishing for Frost Brands. Those were the days!

[Tuidjy]

Magebane. Everything else can be duplicated, one way or another. But the
mageslayer is the ultimate weapon.

[Endoperez]

vfb said:
Ah, fond memories of the great Wishing war of long ago, where all the nations of the land were Wishing for Frost Brands. Those were the days!



Wish is bugged, and removes all other instances of the wished-for item even if the item in question ISN'T unique. I can see a massive dis-armanent campaign going on. "NO MORE FROST BRANDS! NO MORE DWARVEN HAMMERS! NO MORE STARSHINE SKULLCAPS!"

[Zeldor]

Endoperez:

Ekhem, you mean there is an exploit that if I wish for dwarven hammer every dwarven hammer in the game disappears and no one can forge it?

[Endoperez]

Zeldor said:
Endoperez:

Ekhem, you mean there is an exploit that if I wish for dwarven hammer every dwarven hammer in the game disappears and no one can forge it?



New ones can be forged, but that's still a bug and a nasty exploit.
Actually, I'll go check if it's already in the shortlist, and report it if it isn't. It's been there for a long, long time... I encountered it when I started using 1-gem Wish for all my tests, and noticed I can't get two Swords of Swiftness at the same time without forging.

[vfb]

Endoperez said:

vfb said:
Ah, fond memories of the great Wishing war of long ago, where all the nations of the land were Wishing for Frost Brands. Those were the days!



Wish is bugged, and removes all other instances of the wished-for item even if the item in question ISN'T unique. I can see a massive dis-armanent campaign going on. "NO MORE FROST BRANDS! NO MORE DWARVEN HAMMERS! NO MORE STARSHINE SKULLCAPS!"



I was just making a wee bit of a joke with my post. Are you serious? If so, it sounds like a pretty good case for being added to the bug list.

Rlyeh can haz wish? I stol yur Amulets of Antimagix.

[Endoperez]

Actually, it seems like I never tested it properly. It removes ONE existing instance of that item, so I can't wish for two Frost Brands or whatever in my test games, but if I forge 5 of them, only one will disappear when I Wish for it.

[vfb]

I tested wishing for a Blood Stone. It removes one Blood Stone from each nation, not every Blood Stone from every nation. Still, it's a bit buggy.

Edit: Like Endo said...

[Endoperez]

Nasty for something like Rings of Wizardry. Thankfully it's cheaper to have that S9 mage forge a RoW instead of wishing for one, and in most cases to empower him/wish for magic than to wish for boosters.

[Edi]

That's going into the shortlist right now...

EDIT: Does it work so that it removes one instance of the item from all other nations except the nation doing the wishing?

[Sombre]

I think it removes one from the nation casting wish too.

[LDiCesare]

It makes sense to remove one item if it already exists, though. Easier for the desire demon to bring you one than forge it themselves (if anyone played the pnp Stormbringer game, that was how wishes were handled there). Too bad it takes one from all nations.

[Foodstamp]

I think it is awesome it takes one from every nation.

[mathusalem]

why do you think frost brand is far better than fire one ?

[Falkor]

mathusalem said:
why do you think frost brand is far better than fire one ?



5W gems against 5E, 5F gems.

[mathusalem]

ah ok, obvious


thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[DonCorazon]

Dwarven Hammer / Skull Mentor

[Ironhawk]

Edi said:
That's going into the shortlist right now...

EDIT: Does it work so that it removes one instance of the item from all other nations except the nation doing the wishing?



Whoa, whoa! Hold up there Edi. I recognize that this probably a "bug" in the behavior of wish.... but this is actually a really cool effect! Imagine all the negative wishes you could make on people if that were possible. Like if your enemy had a lot of SCs with fire shields, you could wish for No Fire Shields or something and it would strip them all. THAT would be a huge and nasty surprise for them! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[thejeff]

Or worse, Amulets of the Fish, or Water breathing gear.

[Edi]

Ironhawk, I'll let it stay in the buglist, but obviously IW will decide whether they take your idea and run with it. Should maybe downgrade it from red to purple or just leave it black, though.

[kasnavada]

I like Ironhawk's idea... somehow wishing to remove some (or all ?) of one sort of item could be fun, especially if we could target.

What do you wish for : "Ryleh's amulets of antimagic"

However, wishing for an item stays buggy. Either the wish steals the item from every nation, and gives all items to the one making the wish, or the with steals 1 item and gives it to the one making the wish. I don't see why a lot of those items should disappear...

[Tuidjy]

> I like Ironhawk's idea... somehow wishing to remove some (or all ?) of one
> sort of item could be fun, especially if we could target.
>
> What do you wish for : "Ryleh's amulets of antimagic"

Heh. What you should wish for is his amulets of the fish. I had a Heroic Jarl
drowned in my current game because someone wished away his Orb of Atlantis.
That's a cool effect. But suffocating all of R'lyeh's Aboleths would be
a horrible abuse, in my book. Fortunately, it cannot be done.

[hunt11]

what about the abuse Ermor could do with wish, two to three castings later all your army would be starving in there domain because of the loss of various items that give supplies

[Ironhawk]

If you have wish as Ermor you are better off just casting Armageddon.

[Zenzei]

While it's not the most powerful item in the game, I really like hydra skin armor because it gives prot, regen and poison immunity in one neat and cheap package. My thugs and SCs are happy customers who have opted for the hydra skin.

[Mozkito]

Best Item: Percival the Pocket Knight (His diet consists mainly of lint!)
Strongest: Chalice and Ark

[Renojustin]

Most powerful - Eye Shield, because a decent defensive SC with this means that many of your enemies' fiercest troops are soon playing banjo at the veterans hospital and predicting rain from when their knee swells up.

Not to mention they miss the spittoon a lot, which is also kinda gross.

[Duncan_Frost]

I love making Juggernauts, Gift of Reasoning them, then giving them the Ark and sending them in solo. They crush all in their path!

[Zeldor]

Renojustin:

Nah, that isn't so easy. I think eye shield has MR check, so to work it against good SC with MR above 20 he needs to hit you like 30-50 times to lose just one eye.

[DonCorazon]

Chi boots.
Can turn any denizen of Dominions into a Bruce Lee - like killing machine.

[Sombre]

I know I like to GoR militia and kit them with chi boots and horned helm.

[Duncan_Frost]

In one of my current games I have a Nataraja (is that right? the four-armed pretender god) with four swords of swiftness, a stone bird, dancing trident, chi shoes and horned helm. Plus, he can cast Quickness!

[lch]

And he can fatigue out in approximately three battle rounds? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Renojustin]

Zeldor said:
Renojustin:

Nah, that isn't so easy. I think eye shield has MR check, so to work it against good SC with MR above 20 he needs to hit you like 30-50 times to lose just one eye.



Eye shield ends up taking out the eyes of units with quite high MR with very good probability. And I didn't say to use it against an SC.

[Lingchih]

Eye shields take out eyes with great regularity. It really does not take much... hit a unit with an eye shield.. you lose an eye. Hit him again, you lose the other eye.

That is why SCs with an Eye Shield are so rarely targeted by other SCs. They don't want to go blind. It is an extremely nice fear tactic.

I know you may throw some game statistics at me, but just forge one, use it, and watch. The Eye Shield almost always causes eye loss when the unit bearing it is hit.

[Duncan_Frost]

lch said:
And he can fatigue out in approximately three battle rounds? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



...damn you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

[Endoperez]

Actually, fatigue comes from "action". Number of weapons you use in one "attack" doesn't affect encumberance at all. Amount of fatigue you get per turn of melee equals "melee encumberance", even if you have 15 attacks such as with the Bow of War. If you have quickness, it's twice that every turn.

[Edratman2]

I like to put the Sickle whose crop is pain on four armed types with every quickness item I can forge. Generates 20 to 30 death gems every battle. Of course you have to remember to transfer them to another commander after every battle, which does seem to pose a few problems for me.

[Endoperez]

Edratman2 said:
I like to put the Sickle whose crop is pain on four armed types with every quickness item I can forge. Generates 20 to 30 death gems every battle. Of course you have to remember to transfer them to another commander after every battle, which does seem to pose a few problems for me.



Every quickness item you can forge would be Boots of Quickness, then? Because, you know, quickness from spells and items doesn't stack with itself. It stacks with heroic quickness if you get a non-pretender four-armed guy to the Hall of Fame and get lucky, but that's about it as far as Quickness stacks.

[Edratman2]

Endoperez said:
[
Every quickness item you can forge would be Boots of Quickness, then? Because, you know, quickness from spells and items doesn't stack with itself. It stacks with heroic quickness if you get a non-pretender four-armed guy to the Hall of Fame and get lucky, but that's about it as far as Quickness stacks.



But the problem is that I did not know quickness doesn't stack. Whoops.

Which brings the question, what doesn't stack?

[Endoperez]

Effects don't stack with themselves, and duplicate items don't stack their special effects (unless you abuse a bug). So two identical Staves of Elemental Mastery won't produce +2 to elements, but different ones will.

As for finding which items give identical effect with each other or a spell, check the manual. Marble Armor and Boots of Stone both have the effect "Stoneskin", so that won't stack with Stoneskin the spell.

[Wauthan]

I guess it's just me but I really like those extra life bottles. It's just takes away a lot of stress knowing that my carefully developed SCs need to be killed twice. And the anti-aging quality is a nice bonus as well.

Must be the best birthday gift ever.

[Ironhawk]

Lingchih said:
That is why SCs with an Eye Shield are so rarely targeted by other SCs. They don't want to go blind. It is an extremely nice fear tactic.



Yeah this is definitely the case. In my last game I was faced with an enemy SC wielding an Eye Shield. I had a pair of strong SCs which could have defeated it, but I was unwilling to let them fight because I didnt dare risk that they would lose an eye.

However you can still counter it by just bringing the SC down with mages or a suicide thug of some kind.

[chrispedersen]

Armor of virtue + Carcator the pocket mage.
You teleport. Carcator stays.
When he dies.. he comes back to you.

[Zeldor]

I am absolutely sure that Eye Shield is not so great against SCs. You really need luck and it may take even 20-40 hits for other SC to lose just one eye. I had 1:1 fight, my Tartarian with Eye Shield against Arch Devil and he lost one eye after about 40 turns of battle.

[DonCorazon]

Z, you are destroying the fearsome mystique of the Eye Shield.

[Dedas]

Stop doing that Zeldor... I want to believe.

[Kuritza]

I'm pretty sure eye shields dont have a MR check. They just work when you block.

My favourite item is Boots of the planes, methinks. And a vine shield, cheap but so damn nasty with a cold aura.

[Lingchih]

Zeldor said:
I am absolutely sure that Eye Shield is not so great against SCs. You really need luck and it may take even 20-40 hits for other SC to lose just one eye. I had 1:1 fight, my Tartarian with Eye Shield against Arch Devil and he lost one eye after about 40 turns of battle.



And I have given eye losss to an SC after the first hit. So who is right? Shall we fight about it? My eye shield wielding SC vs. your eye shield wielding SC?

[sum1lost]

I think that the attack has to miss into the exact range that the eyeshield improves defence by.

[Wick]

If there's no MR check then any (non-spider etc.) attacker would be blind on the second round. That's easy to check if you're worried about it.

[DonCorazon]

What about Visions Foe - the blindness causing crossbow - does that have an MR check or just need to hit?

[Saulot]

No MR check on Vision's Foe.

[Edi]

sum1lost said:
I think that the attack has to miss into the exact range that the eyeshield improves defence by.


This is possible and even likely given the description of the eye shield. So is the MR check, but we currently do not know for certain.

[triqui]

Falkor said:

mathusalem said:
why do you think frost brand is far better than fire one ?



5W gems against 5E, 5F gems.



Frost brand is slightly more cost-effective, but i still preffer firebrand. With a dwarven hammer the firebrand is cheap enough, it is AP damage, and *Can* kill skellies and other (really common in this game) undeads.

There are way more cold inmune units than fire inmune ones in the game.

[Falkor]

I fully agree with you Triqui about the effectiveness of brands. Strangely, I always have more water gems to spend than earth gems, not to speak about the fire ones. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[thejeff]

What do the brands actually do? From the description I'd assumed it was normal (or AP) damage to the unit actually hit, and then fire or cold affect to the whole area. I'd originally assumed this was a minor affect, like chance of catching on fire or freezing, but it's actually the main damage.

Is the cold/fire damage the same as the weapon damage? Strength based? That makes little sense to me, but seems to match actual results.

[Endoperez]

They use the weapon effects "small area fire", "small are frost" etc. I don't know how powerful those effects are.

[Tuidjy]

I'm moderately sure that the damage is a constant value that does not depend
on the commander's strength. For some reason, Firebrand seems way more effective
against troops with neither resistance, which makes me believe that the fire damage
is armour piercing while the cold is not.

[Jazzepi]

Endoperez said:
They use the weapon effects "small area fire", "small are frost" etc. I don't know how powerful those effects are.



My general impression has been that the AoE effect off of those weapons does somewhere in the range of 6-7 damage. Enough to kill a normal human solider, and therefore clear an a single square with three of them in it, with two attacks from the AoE weapon.

Jazzepi

[Gregstrom]

From the db:

Small Area Fire is a 14 point AP attack. Small Area Cold is a 12 point AP attack.

Interestingly, Ember's Small Area Frost and Fire is a 15 point AP attack with no cold tag, followed by Small Area Fire.
Is this a db error or a bug?

[Edi]

14 ap fire and 12 ap cold respectively. So fire brand is clearly superior of the two. AP+AP damage, with the second AP being higher than the frost equivalent and less units that are immune to it.

[Edi]

Gregstrom said:
From the db:

Small Area Fire is a 14 point AP attack. Small Area Cold is a 12 point AP attack.

Interestingly, Ember's Small Area Frost and Fire is a 15 point AP attack with no cold tag, followed by Small Area Fire.
Is this a db error or a bug?


DB error, it should have the cold tag. Thanks for catching that.

[Gregstrom]

My pleasure :-)

[chrispedersen]

just recall that there are several small area fires - and without investigating them carefully (for other weapons or effects) it may not be the ap14 version.

[Gregstrom]

The db disagrees with you there - there may be different weapons with the effect, but they appear to use the same effect each time.

[Edi]

They all use the same SAF effect, since there is just one of those. Don't believe me, you're free to mod units to have different weapons starting from 1 and going up to 500+ so you can see for yourself, chris.

[fictionfan]

Armor of virtue you can put it on a mage have him cloud trapeze and cast wrathful skies. You can do it every turn and kill army after army. In fact I would like to know a counter to it.

[Argitoth]

oh, that mage is an air queen.

[DonCorazon]

fictionfan said:
Armor of virtue you can put it on a mage have him cloud trapeze and cast wrathful skies. You can do it every turn and kill army after army. In fact I would like to know a counter to it.



That is generally considered a bug exploit. See here:
Here (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=591958&page=&view=&sb=5&o =&fpart=1&vc=1)

[Tuidjy]

> Armor of virtue you can put it on a mage have him cloud trapeze and cast wrathful
> skies. You can do it every turn and kill army after army. In fact I would like to
> know a counter to it.

1. Anti-SC type storm fliers. They won't kill him, but they'll make him leave
before he does any damage. Kited as anti-SC commanders, so that they can land a
blow despite defense/mirror image/protection.

2. Mind spells. Armour of Virtue does not help against Soul Slay, Charm, or
Enslave Mind, for example. (Not that he will be in range for Charm)

3. Mega damage spells - Bane Fire, Gifts from the Sky, etc... If he is casting
Wrathful Skies, he is not casting Mistform or Twist fate.

4. Wish the Armour away, then enjoy killing the bugger.

But seriously, your problem is not with the Armour of Virtue... After all, two
Silver Adepts with ritual of returning can do the same job. (One recasts the
ritual on the turn during which the other wraths the army)