Chaos Eater build?

[ethandestruct]

Aside from Mayhem & Pandemonium, what are some other tomes and/or traits that go well with Dark culture faction focusing on Chaos Eaters?

[Cindeerella]

Chaos Eater by itself is not bad unit, you can have specific debuff build but it could do just fine without its ability.

But anyway good options are tome of artificy for battle mage enchantment, tome of cycling for projectiles of decay enchantment, tome of misfortune for misfortune enchantment, tome of drednough for 2 hex AoE spell that puts marked and immobilized AND with amplifier lens either misfortune or sundered defense for debuff number to utilize ability, tome of alchemy to miasma for debuff stacking and utilizing ability, and ofc going to tome of archmage (t5 astral tome) to get that super enchantment to make them fast and huge crit numbers. Also nice would be tome with enchantment (I think it called demonic focus? don’t remember tome name) for battle mages to get 1 strengthening and 10 hp when unit dies.

Those are the best options but definitely not all of them. Just general idea where to aim at. So Chaos-Materium-Astral or smth would be good. Yeah it doesn’t really ties good with Shadow affinity from Dark culture but oh well.

[Bob]

Tome of Teleportation can also work to give them Phase, so they can teleport in between enemy lines to use their AoE attack, they're one of the best battle mage users of Phase. Tome of the Demon Gate gives you access to the Demon Gate province improvement which allows you to produce Chaos Eaters in your cities using Draft instead of casting points, so you can pump them out faster. As for a Tier 5 tome, you can either go with Tome of the Arch Mage and get 30% extra damage and Hastened on them through unit enchantment, or Tome of the Chaos lord and achieve similar results for your entire army through Demonic Onslaught (needs Chaos Matrix in your Throne City to make Demonic Onslaught grant 3 Strengthened). Demonic Onslaught also gives your army Killing Momentum which can be quite brutal. If you go with Tome of the Arch Mage, I can recommend going for both the Astral Lens and Matrix so Disruption Wave also gives the entire enemy army Sundered Resistance while giving your entire army 3x Bolstered Resistance.

[Aurumworks]

Or if you are feeling particularly fancy, you can pick the tome of dragons and flamer specialization for a long range fire bomb that inflicts burning and bleeding in addition to the other status effects. That tome conveniently also comes with an AoE healing spell.

[Terrkas]

Maybe stench to apply reduced res and status res.

[Pantagruel]

Chaos eaters are kind of terrible, but if you're just trying to stack random debuffs, tome of alchemy is pretty good.

[Alexander]

Hideous stench race trait.
Some chaos-aspected culture traits (you need chaos affinity to unlock the Tome of Pandemonium).
Tome of Alchemy for afflictors and miasma. Miasma applies weaken, and attacks on units standing in the miasma also apply bleed (from physical damage) and poisoned (from poison damage dealt by afflictors).
Tome of Zeal for the Legion of Zeal. Now attacks on units in miasma apply condemned, which weakens status resistance.
Tome of Pyromancy for fire damage enchantments and more chaos affinity. Now you can apply burning to units in miasma.

Once you get to the Tome of Pandemonium, there will be a lot of chaos to eat.

[StopSolo&HelpTeam]

Tome Transmutation -> Melt Armor

The issue is that you already said you want Chaos & Shadow so what kind of help do you want? Posters have their hands tied as it's hard to do 3 elements builds.

[Alexander]

Originally posted by StopSolo&HelpTeam:

Tome Transmutation -> Melt Armor

The issue is that you already said you want Chaos & Shadow so what kind of help do you want? Posters have their hands tied as it's hard to do 3 elements builds.

It is not hard if you know what you are doing. You need to figure out which tomes you need to pick and how much affinity you need at each step. But yeah, two element build is easier (meaning you can just grab whatever tome seems better at the moment).

Moreover, the culture is as much a replaceable part of the build as any tome. Picking the Dark culture doesn't mean the build has to be Shadow-based. As far as I'm concerned, the two Shadow affinity points from the culture may be the last ones in the whole run.

[Telos]

If going Dark + Chaos Eaters, I presume you probably want to leverage Dark Warlocks to stack a bunch of debuffs on targets for your Chaos Eater then to eat. Here's a build progression that would work fairly well for that.

(Incidentally, I've been enjoying the Unique Unit Rank Bonuses mod, and it would be fun to play with this strategy.)

Traits: Arcane focus, hardy, herbivore. (Dark has trouble with healing; herbivore can help a lot to get injured guys ready for each fight.)
Society:
Prolific Swarmers (reduce upkeep on warlocks and witches, gives a C-affinity that you'll need)
Runesmiths (make enchantments cheaper to research and upkeep, as you'll be using a lot, and E-affinity can help)

S1 Cryomancy. Witches are a great complement to warlocks, as almost anything can be frozen after a curse or two. The frost weapon enchantments are a nice boost for whatever random archers and melee units you'll have, and witches can help trigger the melee bonus too.

S1 Necromancy. Decaying enchantment for mages boosts their special attacks too, use your souls primarily to create some backline skelemages with good traits who'll enjoy your mage enchantments, and some skeleshields to help stand in front of your guys. Skeleshields can regenerate via your Dark enchantment by hitting a target weakened by a warlock, or if they die, they'll be easily replaced. If you get a few skeletons you'd like to keep alive, a Necromancer to buff and resurrect them can be a fine investment.

S2 Souls (soul-binding for your mages, increased souls economy)

N2 Glades for leafskin and aspect of root to help skele-shields/pikes to survive, and helps unlock next tome. (Or if you'll have the affinity you need for later tomes, a great alternative is M2 Artificing to make your mages deal more damage and siege faster, and crit chance for melee units).

NC3 Dragon. Firebomb enchantment for mages. Draconian transformation will help keep your guys healthy. [Provides C-affinity that you may need to unlock the next.]

C3 Pandemonium for Chaos Eaters and Vessels of Chaos transformation that works great with your warlocks. [Note: you need 1 more C-affinity than was planned here to unlock this, likely from taking a Chaos signature trait with your leader.]

Some runner-up tomes that you might consider trying to work in instead: C1 Horde spawnkin makes your warlocks and witches deal more damage; A1 evocation provides another mage damage enchantment that can add a debuff for chaos eaters; M2 artificing has a great mage enchantment; C4 demon gate lets you recruit chaos eaters with gold+draft rather than mana+casting points and the demon transformation is a good alternative to the dragon one; NA4 Sormborne Naga transformation is another attractive one for slow mages.