How do you actually become a blood power.

[Perro Grande]

Lets say you are playing MA Xil and you have a massive slave income cause you pretty much have B3 blood searchers by forging a 3 slave const 4 item and making a 145 or 165 gold mage.

How do you actually become the fearful blood power?

Pretender is a F3A3W3E3D4B4 demilich.

Nation has access to N2B1 and more rarely either cap or in caves D2B1 + 1AEB

What are good blood spells to cast? Both rituals and combat ideas would be nice.

Should the pretender be empowered to B5 despite the horror mark risk just for access to more spells and boosters?

[Arkrow XIV]

No be aware of doing that, unless you wanna exchange your pretender for that, its better to empower a mage and then try to summon a demon or other creature with blood and then you can empower and boost again until you get enough access to higher levels, cant remember but you can use boosters like rings to increase blood and those dont use blood slaves, so with two kinds of rings, armor, dagger you get a +4 in blood, so not much need to risk a pretender that has 4 to start

[Perro Grande]

Originally posted by Aird:

No be aware of doing that, unless you wanna exchange your pretender for that, its better to empower a mage and then try to summon a demon or other creature with blood and then you can empower and boost again until you get enough access to higher levels, cant remember but you can use boosters like rings to increase blood and those dont use blood slaves, so with two kinds of rings, armor, dagger you get a +4 in blood, so not much need to risk a pretender that has 4 to start

But it's a demilich and only with blood 4 so it can't make or wear any boosters without either getting to blood 5 or using unique artifacts ie Const 8 and maybe blood 8 would be better for winning.

I guess empowering a vampire lord is probably the best bet along with a blood thorn to get to B5 for the next two boosters.


So anyone have good blood spells to cast?

[Uncle Al]

Construction 6 will let you forge a blood thorn with B3 which opens up the other boosters (B5 for Brazen Vessel -> B6 for Armor of Souls). Your N2B1s can also forge armor of twisting thorns with 2 boosters, but you can't use it with the Armor of Souls so you're limited to +3 Blood from boosters on a single commander.

Then you want some way of turning your huge slave income into combat power - probably using demons or vampires.

Infernal Crusade is fantastic, but requires Blood 9 research and your pretender to cast it. Ritual of the Five Gates only takes B5 to cast, so you can have multiple casts going off a turn so long as you have the slaves - either using your B2 casters with 3 boosters or summoning vampire lords and giving them 2 boosters. Five Gates only takes Blood 6 research, too.

Vampire lords (the first one probably summoned by your pretender as Curse of Blood needs B3 D4 to cast - then a lord with a skull staff can summon more lords) can obviously cast blood rite to build up a flock of vampires. Vampires are fully immortal these days (rather than just dominion immortality), so can be used outside your dominion safely. It's hard to argue with using scary armies (that only get better in darkness) where 100% of your casualties get replenished. Vampire lords also have great paths for buffing their vampire army (darkness + blood lust is pretty nasty, hell, you can drop Rigor Mortis if you want to)

Usually I'm not wowed by fiends of darkness compared to demon knights, but if you can get Theft of the Sun up they might be impressive. Forces of Darkness is the B9 bulk summon. I still think I'd probably prefer more vampires though, and they don't require B9 research. If you're mass casting ritual of the five gates you'll get some Fiends of Darkness anyway and they mix in very nicely with your vampire armies - being flyers who also love darkness and blood lust.

Your pretender can summon Arch Devils/Ice Devils for some powerful single unit shenanigans, if you fancy that, too. The Arch Devils probably make better combat casters, especially leading lots of fire resistant demon troops and dropping big fire spells, while the Ice Devils are very capable thugs/SCs when geared.

[Eldritch Gentleman]

He's playing MA Xibalba, without Theft of the Sun. MA Xibalba is not a very powerful blood nation, sadly- but Ways are strong enough to start to bootstrap you.

Fiends of Darkness are a rather potent force to add to your Zotz flankers- especially since a sabbath of Camazotz will be able to cast Darkness and buff them heavily.

But in general, with Xibalba's blood, you're not going to use it as your primary path. Earth, Water, Death, and Nature are likely. Consider making use of Hellbind Heart, Succubi, and rains of toads, and the like to supplement your primary strategy.

[Kamiyama]

I've been playing around with a MA Xibalba Wyrm that has 5W, 4E, 3B. The goal is to turn the blood slaves my Way commanders search for into Blood Stones. I will give Earth Boots and Blood Stones to my Bacabs so they can summon earth elementals.

I try to keep the Wyrm awake to help with early expansion but I end up taking bad scales to get that much magic. Cold 3 and MIsfortune 3. So it might not be for everyone.

I don't know if it's good or not. I'm still playing through a game and haven't finished it yet. But it's an idea.

[Kamiyama]

If you can boost a Camazotz to B5 you can cast Ritual of the Five Gates and Bind Heliophagus. Those give you strong summons.

Horde From Hell looks like it could be fun too.

[Perro Grande]

Originally posted by Eldritch Gentleman:

He's playing MA Xibalba, without Theft of the Sun. MA Xibalba is not a very powerful blood nation, sadly- but Ways are strong enough to start to bootstrap you.

Fiends of Darkness are a rather potent force to add to your Zotz flankers- especially since a sabbath of Camazotz will be able to cast Darkness and buff them heavily.

But in general, with Xibalba's blood, you're not going to use it as your primary path. Earth, Water, Death, and Nature are likely. Consider making use of Hellbind Heart, Succubi, and rains of toads, and the like to supplement your primary strategy.

While the nation has powerful Earth and Water magic built in and can hit N4 naturally with a bit of luck on recruitment + 1 booster, and D4 from either twiceborn luck or recruitment luck + booster, I have also found it to be one of the best blood searching nations in the game, definitely in MA.

My old strategy was to spam out lifelong protection cause I can get crazy slave income before even hitting const 4 just by making an early lab in a forest and setting it to making ways all game.
After a while you hit a nice amount of lifelong protections but still have the whole blood economy set up pulling huge amounts of slaves.

Currently I am looking into making a bunch of earth boots and getting to const 6 for bloodthorns to spam out demon knights 1 by 1. The mages can fly and sneak so they can even get into forts under siege and make them for the breach fight.

Anyone have anything good to say about the crossbreeding spells? They are good for siege strength at least, no? Dark vines any good?