Site-searching question

[Snacktime]

Noob question about site searches. If I have a mage searching for sites, to what extent does his magic skill matter? I gather that if he is, say, a level 2 fire mage, he will only find fire magic sites that are level 2 or below. But are there a lot of magic sites that are only discoverable with far higher levels? So far it doesn't seem that way to me.

Maybe I should ask it this way: what is the rough distribution of magic sites that might be in a province, in terms of the level search required to find them? is it a waste of time to cast Auspex etc in a site that has already been searched by a lower level?

[Archonsod]

As far as I know most sites are level 2, with one or two per school which are level 3.

Whether it's worth casting spells depends on the site frequency set at the start of the game. A high frequency means there's a good chance of at least one site per province, however with a L2 mage you'll likely find the one's of interest. In this case, you're better off casting something like Acashic Record to find the sites you otherwise couldn't (i.e. those of a school you can't access).

Location also seems to play a part. Deserts and Mountains tend to be good for fire sites, forests for nature, coasts & rivers for water and so on.

[Cor]

IIRC sites go up to level 4. Which means once a level 4 mage comes through you have found all the sites possible.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Search for Edi's signature. It's unfortunately not in the sticky thread, last time I checked, but his database is linked to in his sig. And it includes a full list of magic sites. If you know how to sort the database, you can easily get an idea of a). the frequency of sites b). the level required to find them, and c). the terrain you can find them on.

[Edratman]

If you refer to EDI's magnificent spread sheet you will see that you can get almost all of the sites, especially the independent mages, with a level 2 search. I have found that is is a waste of time and resources to do a level 4 search if a level 2 search is performed because the level 3 and level 4 sites are so far and few between that you might go several games before you had a hit with a level 4 search vs a level 2 search. As an aside, if you only did a level 1 search, it is worthwhile to do at least a level 2 search.

[vfb]

On the other hand, some L3/L4 sites can give you a really powerful ritual discount or some nice units (recruitables or free summons).

Astral everywhere (non-ocean) is important for the potential units and 50% conj discount. Blood nations should Bowl of Blood in swamps and forests first.

Here are the really nice sites (imo):

Mountain:
E3 for Conjurer's Cave (30% conj discount)

All except water:
S3/S4 for Libary of Time/Grey Tower (Shadow Seers)
(S4 everywhere can also find the Strange House, I think it might have a void gate, but I've never found it.)
S3 for Ultimate Gateway (50% conj discount)
N3 for Oak of Ages (50% enchant discount)

Forest:
B3 for Blood Rock (30% blood discount)

Swamp:
B3 for Summoning Circle (60% blood discount)

If you are planning on a lot of Gift of Reason and Beckoning:
All except water:
D4 for Crown of Darkness (40% thaum discount)

[Velusion]

So basically the vast majority of sites are L2. If you want a shot at finding a few of the really nice discount sites (which can make a big difference in large late games) you can search with a L3. Search with L4s only if you have nothing else to do with them.

[Jazzepi]

Can someone help me out comprehending this database? I'm looking a the excel version.

There's columns "LVL", "TYPE", and then F/A/W/E/D/N/B. I assume that the level means the level you need of the specific type listed next to it, and all the letters are the gem output. Is that correct?

Is there an easy way to organize it so that I can see which sites appear in the water?

I checked on the actual number of level 1-2 sites and I counted it to be 299. Compared to the # of level 3-4 sites being 74. Breaking it down even further, there are 57 level 3 sites, and 17 level 4 sites.

What I'm curious about, more than anything else, is that I'm going to make a pretender to do some specific spell casting, but I also want to use him for site searching, so I'm trying to figure out the highest level he should be in paths when I'm only pumping them to site searching. It seems like level 3 is the answer. If you have level 3 in a path, according to this database and my bad math, you should have a 95.44% chance of finding a site of that type in the province. This doesn't take frequency modifications into account, which probably shift the number higher as level 4 sites are less frequent (the ones you can't find) and level 1-2 sites are going to be more frequent.

So I'd like to hear other people's ideas on this.

Jazzepi

[lch]

LVL = level required to find it. 0 is prolly visible from the start, for the others you need to look with a mage from that TYPE who has at least the level listed to find it.

FAWEDNB is the number of gems by type, yes.

If you scroll a bit more to the right, you can see the province terrain where the sites can be encountered. I guess you can sort the data by the Sea column.

[Endoperez]

There's also a terrain column for Deep Sea. Otherwise, read what lch wrote.