[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Micah

Singling out astral magic is incredibly misleading. Astral is only weaker inasmuch as all of the non-blood magic in the game is weaker. Due to alchemy and wish mechanics the removal of clams DOES NOT have an appreciable effect on pearl availability *in relation to other gem types*. E and F gems, otoh, do become harder to procure for much of the game (until wish is unlocked.)

Sorry Micah - you're wrong.

The lack of clams drastically decreases the availability of pearls, especially early.

Can you compensate by alchemizing gems - sure but at a cost that did not exist in the vanilla game.

Clams made bootstrapping in astral - skullcap, astral coin, ros, row a viable strategy. It can still be done - but at a cost to (for example) your thug or SC forging.

Certainly, earth and fire were also affected. But to say all nonblood magic is just not right. Water and nature are certainly not less available - if anything they are more available (no clamming).

I think it is also fair to say that clamming was more widely practised than either blood stones or fever fetishes. Blood stones more or less are precluded for most water nations, for example; and I generally only identify a handful of weaker nations practice FF'ing.

In short - the ratio of other gems
a) does not apply to water, nature.
b) is not as commonly expressed in bloodstones and fever fetishes
c) is not the only relevent metric. Summons such as rudras, siddhe's etc, and forging like ROW do not depend on ratios but rather on raw numbers. Reducing the raw numbers of gems delays the introduction of these items and summons into the game.
Pearls increase your raw gem production (invisibly); and were a good investment. Strategies which therefor require a lot of pearls are therefor strongly affected.

Do you really mean to argue that R'lyeh (MA or LA) is not much worse off under CBM than under vanilla, solely considering the change to gem generators?