By Wigglefig

Special thanks to monkeydew and Cybertron2 for their feedback and suggestions.

Ordinary mages draw their strength from places of power hidden in the wild. A volcano brings bubbling magma from within the world's core and concentrates it into fire gems; a bountiful forest produces nature gems as its fruit; an ancient battlefield yields death gems for eager grave diggers; and within mind-bending labyrinths, astral pearls can be found. The enterprising mage sets out from the safety of their laboratory and travels the world in search of gems in much the same way a geologist prospects for oil in the modern day.

Yet, there are only so many sites to be found. There are only so many gems to be discovered before the only path to more magical resources is conquest.

What if you could find magical fuel closer to home? What if you didn't have to sweep through every nook and cranny for those precious gems? What if you could tap into the vitality running through the very veins of your people?

Welcome to Blood magic, initiate. We hope you enjoyed the complementary "wine".

Blood magic has a reputation for being a noob-unfriendly system to learn, owing to the blood hunting system and the fact that it is sort of sectioned off from the rest of the magic system in its own research school. In this guide, I'll give you a high-level overview of the quirks of Blood as a school of magic before diving into the blood hunting system and how to make the best use of it. I'll finish by discussing some of the most common ways to use Blood magic outside of nation-specific options. By the end, you'll (hopefully) be able to dive right into your first game with a serious blood nation with some ideas about how to set up a blood economy and how to actually use those slaves once you've captured them.

This guide assumes some basic knowledge of Dominions game mechanics, and focuses on the multiplayer Dominions 6 perspective.

Blood magic is a bit more complicated than the other magic paths due to its special method of gathering its "gems". Rather than using gems from magic sites like other paths, Blood magic is fueled with blood slaves captured from provinces (at the cost of some gold) by blood mages using the "Blood Hunt" action. This quirk has a bunch of implications for the way Blood magic is used in Dominions 6.

• Theoretically, Blood magic scales far better than other paths of magic, as blood slaves can be harvested from any province with sufficient population at a much greater rate than ordinary gem income.
• Since it doesn't rely on site-searching luck, Blood magic can also be a very consistent strategy - as long as you expand well enough to capture good blood hunting provinces.
• Blood provides some great summoned units and mages which can really benefit a mid-to-late game army, and many items crafted using blood slaves are super useful. There are also some excellent utility Blood rituals for both offensive and defensive purposes.
• The blood economy does not replace the ordinary gem economy; instead, it exists alongside it. Having both can provide both broader options and more raw power.
• Blood can be used to form a type of communion called a sabbath, which enables mages to cast higher-path spells and cast for longer (at the cost of their sabbath slaves fatiguing and potentially dying).
• Any commander can blood hunt, even without any skill in Blood, and empowering in Blood is also relatively cheaper as blood slaves are obtained in much larger quantities than other gem types. This means that Blood magic is kind of available to any nation, though setting up a blood economy from scratch is difficult enough that non-blood nations will generally only use it as a minor part of their strategy.

• Blood hunting causes unrest and kills population, reducing gold income. Recruiting patrollers to keep the unrest down is a further cost.
• Mages that are blood hunting (or casting Blood summon spells) are not researching, meaning blood nations sometimes struggle to keep up in research compared to non-blood nations of the same size. Exacerbating this is the fact that Blood spells are unlocked through their own research school (also called Blood), which takes more research to get through and doesn't unlock anything for other paths of magic.
• Blood logistics is often quite complicated - both the actual blood hunting, and keeping armies supplied with blood slaves so they can actually cast anything - and can take a lot of real-life mental energy to keep up with.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of nations capable of significant blood economies:

• EA: Berytos, Lanka, Mictlan, and Xibalba
• MA: Abysia, Jotunheim, Pyrène, and Xibalba
• LA: Lots! But particularly Ulm, Marignon, Midgard, Pyrène, Vaettiheim, and Xibalba.

For more details, see Blood Hunting.

Blood hunting is how you acquire blood slaves, and is best accomplished with mages skilled in Blood magic.

For a 100% chance of actually finding blood slaves, blood hunt using a 3 mage (or 2 with a Sanguine Dowsing Rod) in a province with 0 unrest and over 7500 population - ideally a bit higher than 7500, so the popkill from hunting doesn't reduce it below that threshold, maintaining blood hunting success chance.

• You'll need patrollers to keep unrest down so blood hunt success chance remains high.
  • These will usually be random independent troops recruited in the province itself and led by an independent commander using the "Patrol" command. Later on, you can quickly summon patrol chaff using spells like Call of the Wild and Carrion Reanimation.
  • A good rule of thumb is about 25 patrol strength per 3-equivalent blood hunter to keep unrest at 0. Make a copy of the Blood Hunting Analysis Dominions 6 spreadsheet and play around with the numbers to find the best patrol strength for your situation. You can check the patrol strength of individual units by clicking on their 'Precision' stat.
• 1s are really bad at hunting, with a max success rate of 40%. 2s are a bit better at 70%. Use Sanguine Dowsing Rods to improve their odds, and add Blood Thorns later on if needed to reach 3-equivalent hunting skill. These items pay for themselves quickly when you factor in the massive increase to success rate they provide to less skilled blood mages. Additionally, higher Blood paths or a blood searcher bonus increases the number of slaves found with every successful hunt.
  • Generally you will want to start your blood economy by hunting primarily with 3 or above mages. Less skilled Blood mages can then be brought in once you have researched Sanguine Dowsing Rods and have a few blood slaves stockpiled to make them.
• Accompany your blood hunters with bodyguards to protect them from the occasional blood hunting retaliation event. Additionally, higher friendly dominion decreases the chance of blood hunting retaliations, so it might help to keep blood hunts within your dominion.

• Avoid hunting in really high population provinces as unrest impacts gold income proportionally and higher population than 7500 does not increase the chance of a successful blood hunt. Especially try to avoid hunting your capital unless you really need the blood slaves - it reduces your gold income by a ton!

• The more hunters you put in a province, the fewer slaves you get. This is because each successive hunter takes into account the unrest produced by the previous one in the same province, lowering their success rate. However, concentrating blood hunting in a few provinces also has a smaller impact on your gold economy.

A successful blood economy might look like several 9000-10000ish population provinces set up with 3-4 blood hunters each, accompanied by a force of patrollers. A nation of moderate size can easily be producing hundreds of blood slaves a turn this way, once they have gotten their blood economy properly set up.

To start with, patrol with cheap units to get as much patrol strength for as little cost as possible, ideally recruited directly from independent provinces so your forts can produce actual fighting units for your armies. The various types of independent Militia are excellent for this purpose.

Once you've researched a bit more, you could consider summoning upkeep-free patrol chaff instead. At low research levels, Pack of Wolves, Call of the Winds and ordinary Reanimation are actually fairly efficient at turning gems into patrol strength. Later on, units summoned from spells like Watcher, Summon Great Eagles and Contact Draconians can provide a huge amount of patrol strength all at once. Carrion Reanimation gets a special mention here for synergising with the corpses generated from blood hunting, reviving dead population to serve a second purpose as patrollers.

If blood hunters find blood slaves, but there is no lab in the province, the blood slaves go directly into their inventory. To use these slaves for rituals, you will need to ferry them back to a lab and transfer them into your treasury using another commander. In many games you will see two indie Commanders going back and forth between a blood hunting province and a neighbouring forted lab.

One cool outcome of this process is that blood hunters will often have a lot of blood slaves with them if their province is ever attacked. This can be absolutely devastating to raiding parties if you have Leech researched, and is still a bit problematic even if you only have Summon Imps.

If you can't be bothered to set this up, you can just build a lab in the blood hunting province instead. Although it's much more expensive than just hiring two commanders (and also means your blood hunters won't have blood slaves on them to dissuade raiding parties), this could be a good option if there's an independent mage you want to recruit there, or you want to establish a forward supply base for your armies.

One of the more well-known facts about Blood magic is that it can be bootstrapped into relatively easily from scratch compared to other magic paths, as any commander can blood hunt. This usually looks like mass recruiting any cheap indie commander and having them blood hunt in a province with lots of patrollers. Each has only a 10% chance of success, but enough hunters will eventually find a few blood slaves. If you are able to save up 50, you can empower a commander to 1, then make a Sanguine Dowsing Rod with 5, allowing them to hunt with the effectiveness of a 2 mage. Zotz, a fairly common indie type underground, innately have a blood searcher bonus that only activates when they are empowered in blood, so you could use them to start a blood economy as well.

Alternatively, hire the mercenary Göte (22) as soon as he appears and use him to blood hunt for you!

This is a fairly laborious but worthy pursuit when you expect to get to the late game and want a few more tools to play with. Non-blood nations will never have a very large blood economy, but a few Lifelong Protections can't hurt!

There are a great many ways to use Blood magic once you've set up your blood economy. In this section, I'll point out some highlights from this path, though this is by no means a complete list. I'll also mostly be focusing on the generic options available to every nation, rather than nation-specific magic.

TLDR:

• Blood items are really good and probably the majority of your midgame spending if you don't have national summons.
• Combat Blood magic requires a lot of blood slaves to sustain but can do really well into non-inanimate units.
• Generic Blood summons are hard to get into early and often not that useful until later in the game.
• There are several great utility Blood rituals for a variety of tasks.
• Blood/Astral is a pretty gross crosspath.

For nations without their own unique Blood summons, a lot of their mid-game blood slaves will probably go to Blood's great items because they do not require you to spend time researching Blood magic specifically, which could delay your other important techs. Here are a few highlights from everything below Construction 9:

• Ring of the Warrior: a straightforward attack skill and morale bonus. Great for thugs.
• Heart Finder Sword: instakills non-inanimate enemies if they fail an MR check. Really good for army thugs.
• Lifelong Protection: an incredible source of chaff that continues working throughout the whole battle. Slightly nerfed from Dominions 5 in that there is a global limit on the Imps that can be produced from LLPs in any one battle, but still invaluable for messing with enemy formations or providing extra bodies to assist solo thugs.
• Flesh Eater: makes its bearer berserk when wounded, preventing it from running away. A useful item for some types of thugs. Also creates chest wounds.
• Sanguine Dowsing Rod: essential for any established blood economy. Pays for itself quickly and greatly improves the blood hunting success of less-skilled hunters.
• The Heart of Life: cannot be removed from its bearer, but grants a net +5 reinvigoration.
• The Black Heart: also cannot be removed. Makes any commander into an assassin, which can create some really scary assassination battles. Note: if the commander is not already stealthy, you'll need to give them stealth some other way for them to actually be able to assassinate.
• All of the boosters made with blood slaves: Armor of Twisting Thorns, Armor of Souls, Brazen Vessel, Blood Thorn, Blood Stone, and the very expensive but awesome Robe of the Magi. Blood Thorns in particular are the cheapest way to boost blood hunting success rate after Sanguine Dowsing Rods, though they come a lot later in the research tree.

In general, Blood combat magic has very high fatigue costs - at least 100 for most spells. It is often a good idea to take 1 to reduce this fatigue slightly, allowing a low-level blood mage to get at least one more cast off before falling asleep for several rounds of combat. Another idiosyncrasy of blood magic is that basically every spell that does anything costs blood slaves to use, meaning Blood magic is heavily reliant on good logistics to be effective, especially on the offensive.

Finally, rather than mages carrying abstract numbers of gems in their inventory, blood slaves are represented by actual, very fragile units: Blood Slaves. They are easily killed by random evocations, battlefield-wide spells like Earthquake, or even the heat auras of their own mages, so be careful with them! Note that Blood mages can use any blood slave near them, instead of only blood slaves in their "inventory", so keep this in mind when positioning to avoid one off-script blood mage using the slaves you were trying to reserve for another.

Early in the game, the premiere Blood combat spell is Summon Imps. For a relatively cheap price, this spell creates flying chaff that can disrupt unguarded mages and break up formations. It is very fatiguing to cast, though. Bleed can come in really handy against a single durable creature, such as an enemy pretender. Also relatively early in research is Blood Lust, a battlefield-wide +4 strength but for demons only, useful for nations such as Lanka and LA Pyrène.

At Blood 5, Hellbind Heart is sort of like a lower research level Charm that costs blood slaves to use. Potentially useful, though expensive to cast repeatedly.

Blood 6 brings Blood Rain, a morale-debuff spell that synergises with high-morale troops. Undead and demons, which a lot of blood nations have access to, tend to have really high morale.

At Blood 7, Leech is a high-damage, armour-negating, un-resistable spell that affects anything that isn't inanimate and restores fatigue to its caster, allowing it to cast even more Leech - a potent spell if you have enough blood slaves. Also at Blood 7 is Purify Blood, a Blood version of Serpent's Blessing.

At Blood 8, Damage Reversal is a nice (but very late) thug spell that reduces incoming damage by reflecting it back onto enemies, while Rush of Strength is a battlefield-wide +4 strength for all creatures, not just demons. Life for a Life is like Leech, but single-target, massive range, and even higher damage - perfect for taking care of enemy thugs. Finally, Infernal Prison and Claws of Kokytos are hard spells to cast, but literally send an enemy to hell with no chance to resist.

In the Blood/Astral crosspath, the spells Call Lesser Horror (Blood 4) and Call Horror (Blood 6) can be found. These spells summon in dangerous neutral monsters that will happily attack both you and your enemy. The tactic with these is to cast them quickly and then immediately run away, leaving your hapless opponent to face the Horrors on their own. Call Horror especially sometimes summons Horrors that can be frighteningly difficult to deal with, capable of taking out entire mid-sized armies supported by mages! These spells are made especially easy to cast by the fact that Blood/Astral mages can be linked into communions with Communion Master and Communion Slave, making potentially any B/S mage a Horror summoner!

Of course, no discussion of combat Blood magic is complete without touching on sabbaths.

Sabbaths are a type of communion with a few key differences:

• Sabbath masters have a normal cast time compared to 25% longer cast time of regular communions.
• The Sabbath Master and Sabbath Slave spells are very high-fatigue and take a bit longer to cast than Communion Master and Communion Slave; without intervention, the slaves will begin taking damage from their masters casting almost immediately. Luckily, blood also has the Reinvigoration spell which can be used to cleanse sabbath slaves of their fatigue.
• Sabbath masters gain 50% less fatigue from casting while slaves gain 25% more.
• Obviously you need blood slaves to cast the spells needed to enter a sabbath, meaning that any army relying on sabbaths will need a lot of reserve blood slaves to maintain its effectiveness.

Niefelheim and Jotunheim are famous for their turbo-sabbaths, which load a bunch of Gygjas into a sabbath with Skrattir as slaves. The natural regeneration of the Skratti slaves, plus a quick cast of Personal Regeneration by one master, allows the Gygja masters to cast essentially forever, allowing them to flood the battlefield with skeletons from Horde of Skeletons. This gives time for the actual killing mechanism of the army (e.g. Rigor Mortis, wading army thugs) to take effect, and is really hard for some nations to deal with, at the cost of requiring a lot of expensive mages.

Otherwise, sabbaths are fairly similar to other communions in that they allow you to cast higher levels of magic than would otherwise be available to you, or cast more sustainably throughout a battle if you don't overload the sabbath - a very useful tool, but one that relies on a steady supply of blood slaves.

One general note I should make about blood rituals is the existence of "Blood bonus" sites, which discount the cost of Blood rituals cast in that province. You can find them by searching for the property "blood" using the 'Site' section of the Mod Inspector. Almost all of these can only be found by site searching with Blood mages, and almost all of them are unique. Finding one can make a huge difference if you plan to cast a lot of Blood summon spells!

Cross Breeding and Improved Cross Breeding mostly summons a pile of junk. There are some interesting results but not enough to make this militarily useful. Crossbred units are usable as patrol chaff, though.

Dark Vines are enormous blocks of hitpoints that aren't terribly expensive and come with three armour-piercing (but fairly low damage) attacks. Could be used to stand in the way of the enemy, bodyguard a Soul Vortex-ed mage to restore their fatigue, or buffed up a little to do some actually fairly serious damage to enemies in melee.

As for actual demons, there are basically five kinds that are actually interesting to summon: the Fiend of Darkness, Devils, Frost Fiends, Storm Demons, and Demon Knights.

• Fiends of Darkness have great combat stats but their actual attacks (2 Claws) don't deal that much damage, although they are magical. They are powered up under Darkness.
• Devils have a heat aura, a strong Trident and a weaker (but magical) Barbed Tail attack.
• Frost Fiends have excellent defence skill, but are notable mostly for their AOE ranged Frost Blast attack.
• Storm Demons are really cool: they have a ranged, armour-negating lightning attack whose damage can be improved with strength buffs. They're sort of like mini air mages, and they are great at countering a variety of elite threats such as sacreds and thugs.
• Demon Knights are mostly really durable cavalry, but also come with a fear aura.

Before Blood 9, all of these are available only through spells that summon one unit per cast - a woefully slow rate that makes massing them rather tricky - or the Ritual of the Five Gates spell at Blood 6, which is much faster but takes a 5 mage to cast. Most of the single unit summon spells also require crosspaths that make them available only to certain nations. Of these, Storm Demons are probably the only units worth summoning one at a time due to their unique threat vector, and in limited numbers so as not to disrupt your research schedule too much.

At Blood 9, you can choose to research one of the "Forces of x" spells that mass summons these demons. At that point, it becomes much easier to summon these units in large quantities, and you can use them to try close out the game if it has somehow dragged on long enough for you to have already researched the other level 9 spells you wanted.

Probably the most notable commanders summoned through Blood are Vampire Lords. Although they come out late at Blood 8 (Curse of Blood), they are immortal, not unique, stealthy, and highly mobile with flying. They are skilled in Death magic, which is a decent path for thugs and a great one for combat magic. In theory, they can also blood hunt and summon more of themselves if boosted with a Skull Staff, though in practice your Vampire Lords can probably be put to better use in other ways. An excellent way to produce raiders that are harder to make go away, and high Death mages for your big armies.

Succubi (Summon Succubus, Blood 5) and Incubi (Summon Incubus, Blood 5) are 2 mages and dream seducers that are become available at a midgame level of magic. Potentially useful to provide extra glamour mages and a way target enemy commanders.

There are several unique commanders that can be summoned through Blood magic, all of which are powerful mages with durable chassis:

• Ice Devils (Blood 6) and Arch Devils (Blood 7) are basically chunky commander versions of Frost Fiends and Devils respectively. They mostly have the same paths that are used to summon them, meaning they don't provide much additional magic diversity, but they are powerful mages in their respective paths. The Heliophagi (Blood 8) have slightly more interesting crosspaths but take a lot of research to get to.
• Pedoseion - Father Illearth (Blood 7) is a really cool summon with a huge hitpoint pool and 15% regeneration on top of great magic paths - essentially an Earth King that is a bit easier to summon.
• The Demon Lords (Bind Demon Lord, Blood 9) have great paths on scary bodies, but are difficult to research up to. Still a great investment if you have gotten to this stage of the game.

Blood rituals are excellent at disrupting the enemy. At Blood 5, there are two distinct Blood rituals which raise unrest: Wrath of Pazuzu and Rain of Toads. Casting both at an enemy's capital is enough to almost completely shut down its recruitment in a single turn, and chain-casting them will have the enemy scrambling to patrol down the unrest while your own armies march in.

Infernal Disease is a very cheap assassination ritual, although it requires a 5 to cast. The Disease Demon it summons is quite deadly on its own, and if it manages to deal any damage against a non-inanimate commander, it will immediately disease its victim. An excellent way to harass enemy commanders and mages.

A special mention goes out to Send Lesser Horror at Blood 5. These Lesser Horrors are capable of dealing with a modest amount of province defence, and also go away after they attack. This is important because they are treated as a neutral force, meaning that if they have killed all of the province defence, you can easily ping that province with a commander on the same turn (normal attacks always take place after magic-phase ones) and take the province that way. Their being neutral also means the victim also technically doesn't know who sent the Lesser Horrors, though in practice only a few nations are actually capable of casting this spell easily.

Blood gives you the ability to increase Growth scales in a province using the spell Blood Fecundity. Worthwhile in certain high-value provinces like capitals.

Afflicted mages can use the spell Blood Feast to heal their afflictions, while old ones can reduce their age using Rejuvenate.

Like other paths, Blood has a protective dome spell that blocks remote rituals targeting that province, though it requires the Astral/Blood crosspath: Dome of Corruption. One neat side effect of this dome is that it raises the Magic scales in its province, boosting research for the mages within.

Blood is also famous for its instant fort-building spell, Three Red Seconds (Blood 8). This can be critical for a throne rush, as it prevents enemies from taking the throne province, making claiming the throne virtually uninterruptible. Three Red Seconds is also unique for producing a fort with a +2 CP bonus (equivalent to a citadel); though it comes late in the game, nations that cannot natively construct this level of fort may wish to demolish their capital fort and replace it with Three Red Seconds, enabling them to recruit even more of the cap-only commanders.

Blood Vortex is a fairly basic gem-generator. It scales based on the population of the province it was cast in and also benefits from increased Turmoil scales, but also raises unrest and kills population, so you could cast it in a captured enemy capital to gain maximum value while protecting your own capital.

The Looming Hell is an odd defensive global that, according to its description, appears to only target up to 5 enemy units within your dominion to seduce them to your side. According to Loggy's misc notes, there is a 5% chance per point of your dominion that one of these 5 "charges" is not used up, allowing it to target more enemy units. This global is more powerful than it seems, however; each of these seductions also triggers an assassination battle against the commander leading the seduced unit by a Devil and that unit. This is great at stalling army movement into your territory, as mundane commanders often don't hold up that well against a Devil assassination, and taking out weaker mages who happen to be leading troops. However, due to the way this global works, mages who are not leading troops are completely safe from the Devil assassination.

Astral Corruption makes it so that each time a non-Blood ritual is cast, a magic item is forged, or a mage tries to empower themselves, they have a chance to be attacked by a Horror. The chance scales with the number of gems spent. Obviously everybody will hate you for this, and this spell should really only be cast when trying to close out a game.

So, now that you know your options, how do you actually use Blood magic to win games?