Baleful Star and Mind Hunt

[SpiralRazor]

The mechanics behind Baleful Star are opaque!!! What does it actually do?


Also, I have a lvl 6 and a lvl 8 Astral mage, and Mind Hunt NEVER seems to hit...what gives?:)

[Angelo Dante]

It causes lots of unlucky events in the province, IIRC.

[DasaKamov]

Baleful Star increases the Misfortune scale in the target province (increasing the likelyhood of Bad Events occurring) and Curses a random number of units in that province.

When you cast Mind Hunt, you ARE targeting provinces in which you know the enemy has recruited commanders, right? I haven't heard of anyone else having problems, so I thought it best to double-check. ;)

[Nebulosa]

Baleful Star also increases the unrest in the targeted province.

[rodriguezCIA]

use penetration items

and please don't use a S6 or S8 mage, use an expandable mage (you will understand whend you will mind hunt a province with an astral enemy mage)

[Zonk]

+3 misfortune, +30 unrest, 10% of units are cursed.
The manual claim +2 misfortune and 4% curse which is wrong, though it's correct on the unrest.

For event-causing spells, you can check the event inspector: the event's eff_id should match the spell's damage. In this case, it's 5.

[Mormacil]

Mind Hunt targets a random commander in the target province but then has to make a MR check. Therefor it's useful to equip the mage withpenetration boosters. Preferably ones that aren't cursed so when the mage get's feebleminded they can be transferred to your new hunter.

[Nalbem]

For Magic Penetration items you have Eye of the Void (S1 Cons 4), Rune Smasher (F2W2, Cons 4), Spell Focus (S1, Cons 4) and Starshine Skullcap (S2, Cons 6) as the main items to build.

MA Arco is probably the best nation at mind hunting with easy access to S4, the paths to forge all the penetration items and the best healer in the game as an easily accessible recruitable.

And don't mindhunt nations with S3 or S2 mages. Mind hunters have a 40% chance (if I recall correctly) of being Feebleminded for every level of S a mage has in the affected province. So if you Mind Hunt a province with a single S2 mage, there is an 80% chance your spell gets blocked and you mage becomes Feebleminded.

[Mormacil]

Starshine Skullcap boost MR, doesn't give penetration.

[Zonk]

Magic booster could indirectly give you +penetration though (+1 every 2 excess magic levels over the spell's base). In that case, you could also consider the Crystal Coin.

[Mormacil]

True but wouldn't you ideally be as cheap as possible and not boost your mindhunter beyond lvl 4?

[Zonk]

*IF* the +penetration bonus for magic levels rounds up (so being 1 above the minimum gets you +1 pen), I can easily see a Starshine Skullcap being worth it in the long run, since the spell being resisted means your mage wasted 2 pearls and a turn.

Crystal Coin not so much, since it's much more expensive.

[Count von Bunnyhopven]

It did round up in dom 3.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Nalbem:

So if you Mind Hunt a province with a single S2 mage, there is an 80% chance your spell gets blocked and you mage becomes Feebleminded.

Just to clarify a bit, since the wording in the above post can be a little confusing: If the target Province has an ENEMY level 2 Astral Mage residing in it, your mage has a chance to be Feeble-minded.

However, I thought that chance for being Feebleminded was a opposing dice roll among the "attacking" mage (the one casting Mind Hunt) and any "defending" Astral mages (those residing in the attacked province). Similar to Magic Duel, I would think that the higher-level mage would have a bonus to avoid being Feebleminded.

If I can't find any data that already exists, I'll see if I can run some tests to this effect. :)

[Shinuyama]

void eye - +2 penetration

spell focus - +1 penetration

rune smasher - +2 penetration

some artifacts - penetration bonuses

Mind Hunt is 2 MR checks. One against mind hunt, the other against Soul Slay (or mind burn if you only have that researched). Either failing basically means a wasted turn.

An enemy Astral mage in the province can feeblemind the caster, with a fairly high likelihood, depending on path/number of enemy mages, which also wastes the spell.

Mind Hunt notably hits stealthed commanders. This makes it very good against stealth-using thugs which dodge other remotes via stealth. It's also good against enemies with not a lot of commanders with an army, where killing a few will ruin a strategy (by leaving troops behind, killing blessers, or killing mass-buffers).

Without penetration, it's generally not worth casting.

[Staythecourse]

Originally posted by Shinuyama:

Mind Hunt is 2 MR checks. One against mind hunt, the other against Soul Slay (or mind burn if you only have that researched). Either failing basically means a wasted turn.

What evidence do you have that this is true? It was not true in Dom3, when conclusive testing was done on Mind Hunt mechanics:

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=1307

I believe there is evidence that in the transition from Dom3 to 4, Mindhunt was nerfed to be no longer be considered an S0 spell for purposes of calculating bonus penetration from paths, but I'm unaware of any evidence it has been changed to require 2 separate MR checks.