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| + | ======Generic Blood Magic Guide====== | ||
| + | //By Wigglefig// | ||
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| + | //Special thanks to monkeydew and Cybertron2 for their feedback and suggestions.// | ||
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| + | Ordinary mages draw their strength from places of power hidden in the wild. A volcano brings bubbling magma from within the world' | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | 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? | ||
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| + | Welcome to Blood magic, initiate. We hope you enjoyed the complementary " | ||
| + | |||
| + | =====Introduction===== | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | This guide assumes some basic knowledge of Dominions game mechanics, and focuses on the multiplayer Dominions 6 perspective. | ||
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| + | =====What makes Blood magic interesting? | ||
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| + | Blood magic is a bit more complicated than the other magic paths due to its special method of gathering its " | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====What are the advantages of Blood magic?==== | ||
| + | * Theoretically, | ||
| + | * Since it doesn' | ||
| + | * 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. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====What are the downsides of Blood magic?==== | ||
| + | * 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, | ||
| + | * 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. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====What nations should I play if I want to learn Blood magic?==== | ||
| + | Here is a non-exhaustive list of nations capable of significant blood economies: | ||
| + | * EA: [[berytos ea|Berytos]], | ||
| + | * MA: [[abysia ma|Abysia]], | ||
| + | * LA: Lots! But particularly [[ulm la|Ulm]], [[marignon la|Marignon]], | ||
| + | |||
| + | =====Blood hunting===== | ||
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| + | //For more details, see [[Blood Hunting]].// | ||
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| + | Blood hunting is how you acquire blood slaves, and is best accomplished with mages skilled in Blood magic. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====Best blood hunting practices==== | ||
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| + | For a 100% chance of actually finding blood slaves, blood hunt using a {{path> | ||
| + | |||
| + | * 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 " | ||
| + | * A good rule of thumb is about 25 patrol strength per {{path> | ||
| + | * {{path> | ||
| + | * Generally you will want to start your blood economy by hunting primarily with {{path> | ||
| + | * Accompany your blood hunters with bodyguards to protect them from the occasional [[blood hunting# | ||
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| + | * 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! | ||
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| + | * 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. | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====What should I patrol with?==== | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | 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 ?? | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====Transporting blood slaves==== | ||
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| + | 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 ?? | ||
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| + | 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??. | ||
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| + | 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' | ||
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| + | ====" | ||
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| + | 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 {{gems> | ||
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| + | Alternatively, | ||
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| + | 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?? | ||
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| + | =====Using Blood magic===== | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | 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/ | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====Items==== | ||
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| + | For nations without their own unique Blood summons, a lot of their mid-game blood slaves will probably go to Blood' | ||
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| + | * ??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??: | ||
| + | * ??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]], | ||
| + | * 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. | ||
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| + | ====Combat==== | ||
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| + | In general, Blood combat magic has very high fatigue costs - at least 100 for most spells. It is often a good idea to take {{scales> | ||
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| + | Finally, rather than mages carrying abstract numbers of gems in their inventory, blood slaves are represented by actual, very fragile units: ??Blood Slave??s. They are easily killed by random evocations, battlefield-wide spells like ?? | ||
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| + | ===Combat spells=== | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | At Blood 7, ??Leech?? is a high-damage, | ||
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| + | 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, | ||
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| + | In the Blood/ | ||
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| + | ===Sabbaths=== | ||
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| + | Of course, no discussion of combat Blood magic is complete without touching on sabbaths. | ||
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| + | 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, | ||
| + | * 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. | ||
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| + | Niefelheim and Jotunheim are famous for their turbo-sabbaths, | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | ====Rituals==== | ||
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| + | 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 " | ||
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| + | ===Unit summons=== | ||
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| + | ??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. | ||
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| + | ??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. | ||
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| + | As for actual demons, there are basically five kinds that are actually interesting to summon: the ??Fiend of Darkness??, ??Devil??s, ??Frost Fiend??s, ??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 ?? | ||
| + | * 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' | ||
| + | * Demon Knights are mostly really durable cavalry, but also come with a [[fear]] aura. | ||
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| + | 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 {{path> | ||
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| + | At Blood 9, you can choose to research one of the " | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Commander summons=== | ||
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| + | Probably the most notable commanders summoned through Blood are ??Vampire Lord??s. 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. | ||
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| + | Succubi (??Summon Succubus??, Blood 5) and Incubi (??Summon Incubus??, Blood 5) are {{path> | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | ===Remote attacks=== | ||
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| + | 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' | ||
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| + | ??Infernal Disease?? is a very cheap assassination ritual, although it requires a {{path> | ||
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| + | 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' | ||
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| + | ===Defensive/ | ||
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| + | Blood gives you the ability to increase Growth scales in a province using the spell ??Blood Fecundity?? | ||
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| + | Afflicted mages can use the spell ??Blood Feast?? to heal their afflictions, | ||
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| + | Like other paths, Blood has a protective dome spell that blocks remote rituals targeting that province, though it requires the Astral/ | ||
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| + | 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. | ||
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| + | ===Globals=== | ||
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| + | ??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. | ||
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| + | ??The Looming Hell?? is an odd defensive global that, according to its description, | ||
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| + | ??Astral Corruption?? | ||
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| + | =====Strategy===== | ||
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| + | So, now that you know your options, how do you actually use Blood magic to win games? | ||