What's your favorite summoning spell?

[moderation]

I'm bored, so I think I will start another favorites thread. What's your favorite summoning spell?

I rather like Lichcraft for the nice immortal death mage you get. Summon Umbrals are also nice for the fantastic deal they represent.

[Omnirizon]

i am quite enthralled with all the la argatha summons, they are very powerful. the argatha specific level 5 tomb oracle is in many situations a far better summon than things such as the level 7 & 8 elemental royalty and golems. e3 d3 h3 mucho hp and they are 'regenable'. e3 and d3 is a very versatile combo; the h3 is icing on the cake. umbrals are cheep cheep cheep and can be summoned by the equally cheepo basic non-cap mage; so you can summon up a storm of them anywhere.

edit: in discrete response to the OP, I guess i would have to say for the moment tomb oracles are my fave, given their cost, position in the research tree, and ability. they are really a lot of bang for relatively little research and gem buck.

[NTJedi]

My favorite spell is probably my most unfavorite spell as well.... this is Eater of the Dead.

I really like the creation for Eater of the Dead since it captures the blob effect on the battlefield, it's also able to grow stronger and the image is great... there's lots of creativity within this unit.

UNFORTUNATELY... it has major weaknesses making it my most unfavorite spell as well. First it only has 18 MG resistance, considering it takes 50 astral and 4D plus 4S to cast that's low since the unit only has two misc slots. Considering the cost, necessary paths and research level the default MG resistance should be 25. Second an enemy can destroy it by summoning one of his own... there goes all the hard work on feeding him to the larger size(s). Third there's no warning when the creature will turn independent so the time and gems spent can end up hurting you as it may turn and attack your kingdom, ideally there should be a one_turn warning. Fourth the creature is ridiciously overpriced at 50 astral gems... no MP veteran would summon this creature except out of fun.

Surprisingly nothing has been done to decrease its cost or drastically improve the creature so it remains unused for MP games. I'm developing a unique SP game which will need a mod and plan to drop its cost to 20 astral, yet still doubt the creature will be summoned.

[moderation]

I did notice that the game gives you a warning that the eater is getting difficult to control when you feed it too quickly. Maybe this is a new feature though.

[NTJedi]

moderation said:
I did notice that the game gives you a warning that the eater is getting difficult to control when you feed it too quickly. Maybe this is a new feature though.

Yes I've seen those, but there's no warning before it reaches the final stage. A one turn or two turn warning would be nice so it could effectively be dropped further away from the provinces of its creator.

[moderation]

What is it's final stage? Is there a specific HP number? That would be nice.

[NTJedi]

moderation said:
What is it's final stage? Is there a specific HP number? That would be nice.

With patience and proper protection you can have the creature reach its final stage... it takes time which is more like babysitting. It's final stage is unit_ID 997 "Unfettered" having 5 attacks yet it's main attack is still trampling. It's fear is 10... and HP vary depending on how much life its drained from the last battle.

Yet it only has 18 MG resistance so it's not very difficult to kill with spells. Also no protection from missile weapons by default so two independent commanders with ethereal crossbows could probably kill it without blinking.

[Endoperez]

I probably hasn't been updated because no one has mentioned that it's magic resistance is too weak. Increasing it's MR by one for every form after the first would give the Unfettered pretty good total mr.

Once it is fed well enough and has regeneration in the hundreds it may survive soul slay. It will have over 1000 hp. It would probably get killed by the swarms surrounding it, because it doesn't have much hp to spare, and it starts battles with less hp than it can regenerate up to, so it doesn't really change anything in this case.

The fact that it can be summoned as the small form is probably a bug. It shouldn't be summonable if any of the forms exists in the game.

[moderation]

Hmm, I wonder if it's CBM stats are better.

[Lingchih]

To get back to the original question... I like Abominations. They are kind of battle specific (not usable in every battle), but damn, they look cool. And I love it when they blink their eye.