Magic Items under CBM

[Sir_Dr_D]

This reminds me of my most amusing Dominions blooper. I was playing Agartha and was being attacked by Man. Man's army consisted of lots of knights, and backed by lighting blasting mages. I tried to hold off the army with a a risen oracle. I equiped the oracle with the best that I could at the time, which included lighting proof armor, two shields, one of them being an eye shield, and boots of the behometh. I had the oracle cast stone skin, and then try to trample the knights.
The setup almost worked. The knights couldn't damage the oracle. My plan was to get the army to route. The problem, though, was my pretender slowly started to get fatigued. I couldn't figure out why. He was undead and shoudn't have been able to get fatigued. This caused him to route first. He was two fatigued however to actually move. As a result the army of Man didn't route like they should have. The battle got to turn 50. Since I counted as the attacker from breaing siege, I auto lost. Despite being immortal, the oracle did not come back.

It wasn't until a bit after the battle that I realized why the oracle was getting fatigued. I had cast stone skin. He was killed by his own chill aura.

I lost that game, but at least I had the satisfaction to blind a whole army of knights using the eye shield. It was a funny sight: a clumsy size four risen oracle with two shields trying to trample an army of blind knights.

[Sombre]

Frost brand isn't so great vs SCs and thugs, but man it's cheap for what it does.

[Quitti]

Frost brand isn't so great vs SCs and thugs, but man it's cheap for what it does.

Indeed, 5w gems and requires just w1 mage to make.

So, because death has powerful summons available it should also have powerful magic items?

Not necessarily so. Either the items need to be toned up or the summons toned down.

Other stuff from Amorphous

The already stated Standard of the Damned is a better choice than Wraith Sword. And yes, I know con6 vs conj9 and possibly ench8 for demiliches does require more research (difference of path 6 vs path 9 on normal research is 3560 RP afaik), and you basically need both to fully utilize tartarians, both construction and conj9. Not to talk about figuring out how to heal those tartarians, and afford the GoR you'll want with it. Still, I wouldn't WASTE my gems on such a low quality item vs the gem cost currently. The pretty much same effect comes from slapping skullfaces on scouts and using the raise skeletons it provides. Probably better one actually. With the same gem cost. Besides, Wraith Sword, should it be used with current stats, would require HUGE strength most of the time to utilize, in addition to very big attack skill to quarantee hits, and preferably used with quickness (10-15 gems or water magic on the commander). And it doesn't let you use shield or another weapon. Only 2h weapons I can see use for are a) some of the ranged weapons b) Gate Cleaver c) Flambeau (or Holy Scourge in a pinch). And the last two again require quickness to utilize well enough.

Generally, for death gem income, it's simply not worth the effort to forge items with (with the exception of boosters, and few select items depending on the situation, which do not include Wraith Sword), unless you have some useful national summons, such as Lankas blood summons or other monkey people astral conjurations.

[Sombre]

I find eye shield, vine shield, charcoal shield, lucky coin and gleaming gold all pretty much equally useful. Which is a good thing.

qm doesn't tend to like moving research levels or path requirements around for commonly used items, because it does confuse people a fair bit. So I doubt the brands will be moved. At most I would expect a stat tweak.

[vfb]

Nerfing the brands is going to suck for raiding nations, like Eriu. But Eriu is OP anyway, right?

[thejeff]

If you dropped the weapon damage, but left the AE damage the same it wouldn't make much difference against chaff/PD, but would weaken it against thugs/elites. That shouldn't hurt the raiders too much.

[Mardagg]

Originally Posted by thejeff

If you dropped the weapon damage, but left the AE damage the same it wouldn't make much difference against chaff/PD, but would weaken it against thugs/elites. That shouldn't hurt the raiders too much.

exactly.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by Mardagg

exactly.

No. This would hurt them plenty, as it cuts down their options against enemy thugs and SCs, the glam nations have very low strength scores on their raiders and need good, cheap weapons. This is where they ALREADY have trouble in games, raiding and killing PD isn't the issue.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by Micah

No. This would hurt them plenty, as it cuts down their options against enemy thugs and SCs, the glam nations have very low strength scores on their raiders and need good, cheap weapons. This is where they ALREADY have trouble in games, raiding and killing PD isn't the issue.

Surely you don't say that glamor thug nations have troubles against SCs? That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't think it's a good thing to be able to equip your cheap thugs with universal gear that is good against both chaff and SCs. Chaff killing gear should be ineffective against SCs and SC killing gear should be more expensive.

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Surely you don't say that glamor thug nations have troubles against SCs? That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't think it's a good thing to be able to equip your cheap thugs with universal gear that is good against both chaff and SCs. Chaff killing gear should be ineffective against SCs and SC killing gear should be more expensive.

As a matter of fact, they do. I had them as Helheim about a year ago - vs first Bane Lord, then Tartarian. Of course, it's possible that I should have brought larger numbers of thugs - but still. Raiding was quite good at the same time...