Blood FAQ?

[jaif]

In my current (SP) game I too the freak lord as my pretender w/ulm just so I could play with blood a bit. The only real thoughts behind it were a) get earth stones, and b) see what cool summons I could get.

I'm a bit lost trying to work out a blood economy. It seems I need to gather 50 slave and then empower someone...maybe a spy? Not sure where to go from there.

Meanwhile, I had my freak lord set on retreat while he was blood hunting just in case something random happened. Well it did, and now I have 6 blood slaves as troops, but I want them back as gems. How do I get them back off the army setup screen and into my freak lord's pocket again?

Finally, is there someone I can go to read about blood magic in detail?

-Jeff

[Lord_Bob]

It is covered in detail in the manual.

Levels in Blood Magic/Slaves Per Turn:

Blood-0:
Chance of success:10%, Blood Slaves Collected 1 to 6.
Blood-1:
Chance of success:50%, Blood Slaves Collected 1 to 7.
Blood-2:
Chance of success:90%, Blood Slaves Collected 1 to 8.
Blood-3:
Chance of success:100%, Blood Slaves Collected 1 to 9.

The Sanguine Rod will boost someone with at least one level in blood magic by at least one level in blood for the purpose of hunting.

[sector24]

I'm not blood expert, but I too found the manual to be totally inadequate in teaching a player how to get a blood economy running.

Generally, putting 1 blood on your pretender to start a blood economy is a waste of his other talents. But obviously you just want to test stuff out. So if you have a unit with 1 blood you want to find a province with at least 5000 population and relatively low income and blood hunt there until you get enough slaves to make a dousing rod. To keep unrest down you will want to reduce the tax rate, possibly to 0.

Once you have a unit with a dousing rod, continue to blood hunt until you can empower, and either empower a new unit to blood 1, or empower your existing unit to blood 2. I'm not sure statistically which is more profitable, I would tend to think more along the lines of what could the empowered unit do in the long term, such as summon ice devils or storm devils, or forge the armor of thorns that boosts nature and blood.

So it's a lather rinse repeat scenario as you slowly build up more and more slaves to empower more and more mages. The dousing rod is obviously a very good deal and every blood hunter should have one.

You should be able to fit 3 or 4 blood hunters (maybe more) in the same province with taxes set at 0 and keep the unrest down. It may help to build a lab so you can cash in your slaves every turn. Eventually you will have to find a 2nd province; again you want 5000 or more population and the lowest income possible.
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Now if you have 0 blood and want to start from scratch, just recruit the cheapest commanders possible (scouts) and put a whole bunch of them in the same province blood hunting at 10% until you have enough to empower 1 commander. This can take quite awhile, and it's generally not worth it until money is no longer an issue for your nation. Once you get to this point, just follow the instructions above.

[Baalz]

Check the post in my sig

[jaif]

Thanks for the replies...

...to my other question, what do I do to get my blood slaves off the battlefield?

-Jeff

[Tichy]

You don't. It's one of the drawbacks of blood battlefield magic. They crowd around the mage until used, or killed by arrows etc.

[jaif]

I'm not explaining this well. During the fight, yes, they are there.

But next turn I now have a bunch of blood slaves in the army setup screen. I can't turn'em back into gems. :-)

-Jeff

[Baalz]

Yeah, I've heard of that happening before, it's a bug and I'm not sure what triggers it. As far as I know there's no way to turn them back into spendable blood slaves.

[Folket]

Do they have any use in combat?

[Valandil]

Arrow Catching. And pain transfer.