Hell sword vs Wraith sword vs Blood thorn

[Jurri]

Oy, Frank, have you actually used these builds in a game? To my eye some seem rather dysfunctional, but I might be wrong. One thing to note is that the Heart of Life is not better than an amulet of resilience, and here's why: The chest wound gives you 5 encumberance. If you have quickness, this means 10 additional fatigue per combat turn and thus it does nothing but hogs the slot. (Yah, if you have 0 base and don't cast spells it won't matter, but why would you need reinvigoration at all if that is the case?)

Also, I think you shouldn't dismiss Cherry's suggestions quite so quickly, most of them are pretty useful items. (Well, I never did use a leather shield but still.) And a Pan with a random in astral can make a Totem shield, right?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Saber Cherry said:

I find Nature essential for SCs. Good, non-artifact items other than RoR / Hydra Skin include:

Leather Shield (great no-encumbrance shield for early-game SC, like Earth Mothers)
...
Thorn Spear (also for early-game pretender SC, to grant repels versus barbarians and HI... Astral and Earth are the only other paths that can do this)

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to use Thorn Staves instead of Thorn Spear + Leather Shield. Actually I almost always use a Thorn Staff as my pretender's first weapon with "nature" nations.

[Chazar]

Saber Cherry said: Granted, it's hard to fully equip a unit with just nature, as it lacks good weapons or boots.

FrankTrollman said: These (Boots of the Messenger) are not, in fact, the worst boots. But they are close. The winged sandals and the boots of quickness are the ones you actually want.

• What is wrong with the 4-Reinvigoration from the BootsOfTheMessenger? Sure, BootsOfQuickness or WingedShoes might be better for lifedrainers, but I find all other non-unique boots rather inferior to those three, making them anything else than close-to-worst in my opinion?!?
  Also when compared to the RingOfResilience they look quite good to me: The Ring provides one more point reinvigoration, but costs twice as much and takes up a misc slot...
• As for a nature weapon, I actually like the SnakeBladderStick: it is available sort of early (lvl4), easily available (1 nature, 5 gems), a mere one-handed 3-length weapon doing an area attack. I think that it is quite a good choice early on as long a there are still a bigger number of non-poison-proof units around. Of course, one either needs an undead wielder or SnakeRing, HydraSkin, etc.

BTW, thanks for all the information on affliction chances! SaberCherry's Complete Condensed Survey of Affliction Chances is pretty helpful to have for me!

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Chazar said:

[*]What is wrong with the 4-Reinvigoration from the BootsOfTheMessenger? Sure, BootsOfQuickness or WingedShoes might be better for lifedrainers, but I find all other non-unique boots rather inferior to those three, making them anything else than close-to-worst in my opinion?!?

I know a bunch of players will agree with you. The boots of the Messengers are great items for SCs in many cases, and the best choice bar none in a few.

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
Remember that while Regeneration works on any living or undead characters, and while life stealing will grant life to a living, undead, or lifeless Super Combatant;

Regeneration cannot usually keep up with damage by itself. Reinvigoration items cannot usually keep up with the fatigue from combat.

A Wraithsword against Ermor is just an expensive two-handed piece of junk.

Do that many people play ashen empire ermor? Soul Gate's troops are just as vulnerable as everything else.

A Blood Thorn against an army of Mechanical Men is worse than a Thorn Spear.

How many mechanical men are you expecting to see on the battlefield?

Lifestealing gives you back half as many hit points as you inflict on your enemy.

And gives you twice as much fatigue back and causes twice as much fatigue.

This means that in an otherwise even competition, you'd expect to have regained about half your hit points when you killed the enemy SC (assuming for the moment that your enemy is a living enemy, which is often not the case when it comes to SCs).

There are very, very few lifeless SC chassis. Golems are the only one that comes to mind immediately, and they have their own weakness.

The Quickness also comes with an Attack and Defense bonus, and the Lifestealing doesn't.

Quickness without lifestealing leaves you unconscious before the fight even gets started.

But if you have to purge one, Lifestealing isn't even the best, it's just really good.

Lifestealing is the best of those abilities bar none. Without it, your SC cannot reach full SC status unless it has a base encumbrance of 0, a protection of around 30, or defense in the same area. If you are going to lose anything from that list, lose etherealness, as it provides no benefit at all against SCs, while lifestealing definetly does.

[Graeme Dice]

Saber Cherry said:
This makes pretenders and prophets HIGHLY vulnerable in hostile dominion, where a dragon might have a temporary "256 current HP," but due to hostile dominion, only "32 max HP."

Afflictions are based on base hitpoints, not current max hitpoints.

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
Pangea cannot make Totem Shields except with its god, and even then only if it alchemizes or finds some astral pearls.

Do you not ever build Pan's? They can certainly make totem shields. Once they have Lamia Queens, it's even easier.

[FrankTrollman]

I consider Pangea to be Carrion Woods by default, their Pans have 3 Nature and 2 Death.

-Frank

[Saber Cherry]

Graeme Dice said:

Afflictions are based on base hitpoints, not current max hitpoints.

Hmmm... I always thought it was Max HP. I was basing this warning on a instance in which my Dragon pretender (not cursed or anything) got 4 or 5 afflictions from mundane weapons before dying, in a single battle. I concluded that the only probable way this could have occured was if affliction rates were based on Max HP, since this was in enemy dominion and his current HP was many times his max HP.

So... it may have been bad luck, but I'm not going to risk it again before testing the situation

As for Boots of the Messenger, I never meant to imply that they were bad when I said "Nature lacks good boots," even though it sounds that way I meant something like "Nature lacks universally good boots" since Boots of the Messenger are useless to 0-encumbrance SCs, while Air, Earth, and Water have boots that are useful to any SC. Boots of the Messenger are one of my most common forged items, along with Winebags, Owl Quills, and Dousing Rods. I almost always give them to Ice Devils.

[En Forcer]

So for mages who participate in combat you might want to equip them...how?

Here is my first guess: (this is for a generic combat spell slinger. Gear=up to contruction level 4)

1h or 2h weapon which could boost magic in chosed field.

If shield slot open, Crystal Shield.

Rainbow Armor

Dragon Helmet (all mages except air)
Winged Helmet (air mages)

Boots of the messenger

Girdle of Might
Amulet of Magic Resistance

...hmm the more I look at all the stuff available there is tons of item loadouts which you can tweak based upon which school of magic you will be focusing on with your mage. And if there is a particular stat you want to boost too. I guess this would be a topic for a separate thread. Maybe something along the lines of suggested loadout for specific mage types vs. generic loadouts for any old mage.