Shai Hulud

@Not So Clever Hound Another question about vengeance ships. What is the cutoff point in the plot for spawning these? I usually try to get Huana good 2 in first Neketaka visit to complete Muhai's quest, though really I guess reputation doesn't matter in this game... if they still give you all the quests at -3 is there any downside? Been wanting to give that shield a spin. Also I'm not finding it easy to murder everyone at Takano's. Tried kiting them but doesn't seem to work and I end up doing like 9 on 1. Also holy crap that is a tough ship battle, particularly with the ? and the enemy ship being an insanely vast voyager that can board you from distance 105, and all L17. Would be better for me to use grapeshot to reduce ship defenders (get double crew damage from raking fire, quadruple from haeferic) then board at high level. Can I tank my rep later? The ship is very fast and hangs outside Neketaka so probably kinda hard to avoid. But I know there's some cutoff point in the plot for all that just don't know when...

This is true for most damage spells but there are lots of good defensive and buff debuff spells, like Eldritch Aim remains great the whole game except for its relatively short duration, Chill Fog is usable as AOE blind debuff + proc for Combusting Wounds (also still good late), Infuse, Merciless Gaze, Mirrored Image, Arcane Veil, even Concelhaut's Parasitic Quarterstaff I use the whole game vs some enemies. Combusting Wounds + 3x Minoletta's Minor MIssiles shreds certain otherwise hard to hit enemies like The Messenger. Was how I killed him last time anyway. Concelhaut's Draining Missiles is one of the few offensive spells that remains good in general. Would be nice to see stronger PL scaling though. I often find it more effective to punch enemies to death even as a mage...

Also blood mage doesn't really need to take (m)any spells so you often have too many abilities and not enough good choices. I'd take Great Soul. Don't think it is that confusing. Someone who made it to L20 with a blood mage probably understands they can't empower since it says so at character creation and they've made it to L20 without empowering, plus the description doesn't say it lets you empower, just increases max empower points. Similar to the adratic glow buff which is still worth getting as a blood mage IMO, even though no empower. Display would be no more confusing than half the abilities in this game IMO, but I don't know how hard it is to implement and there are likely higher priorities for you

I don't understand why but my spirit of decay is functioning correctly now except for Corrosive Skin and Wall of Many Colors. I exited the game to desktop and reloaded. Spirit of Decay still wasn't working on those spells I listed. I loaded a level 4 save, consoled up to 20 with all the element abilities. Casting the spell Minoletta's Minor Missiles from grimoire still didn't give +1 pen so I reloaded, consoled up, and this time memorized all the corrode ones. Suddenly they worked, not only in this save but in all saves, from grimoire or memorized. Doesn't make any sense to me but I guess whatever bug I was encountering somehow disappeared. Thanks @Not So Clever Houndfor helping me to troubleshoot this, and thanks @Elric Galadfor all your work in continuing to improve the game and personally responding to my disappearing bug.

I combat-tested the rest of the acid/decay/corrode wizard spells. Minoletta's Minor Missiles - no spirit of decay Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon - no Concelhaut's Draining Touch - no Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin - no Kalakoth's Minor Blights - no Wall of Many Colors - no Necrotic Lance - yes Noxious Burst - yes Death Ring - yes Caedelbald's Blackbow - yes Minoletta's Missile Salvo - yes Not sure I tested all the other elemental spells because I haven't noticed any of them not working except wall of flame, but I did test Meteor Shower, Kalakoth's Freezing Rake, Chill Fog, Blast of Frost, Delayed Fireball, Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar, Chain Lightning, Ninagauth's Shadowflame, Ninagauths Bitter Mooring, and all these give +1 pen per their ability. I only have issue with the spirit of decay ability, and more specifically it seems to be the "corrode" spells vs the "acid" or "decay" spells. I checked without the BPM mod and spirit of decay in vanilla says "+1 penetration with decay/acid attacks" and in BMP says "+1 penetration with decay/acid/corrode weapons attacks" I suspect vanilla was coded only for decay and acid keyword spells and not spells like the concelhaut spells that do not have decay/acid keywords except in BPM. So...again I'm guessing there is some issue with the BPM keywords for these spells. Of course none of this explains why @Not So Clever HoundDOES get +1 PEN from spirit of decay for these spells. I'm guessing the BPM implementation is bugged somehow and works inconsistently for reasons I wouldn't understand since I only know really basic programming. But IDK. We need input from more people to see if it is more common for these spells to get +1 PEN or not. ------- Anyway I'm going to get back to grinding XP in Neketaka and in the meantime be slightly sad since my most damaging spells at the moment do not benefit from spirit of decay as they should. EDIT: Just occurred to me, does it matter the order the mods are listed? Like maybe the keyword mod is not being loaded properly for me? I followed the community patch instructions and put icons at the bottom but it didn't specify otherwise. My full mod list looks like this from top to bottom Community Patch - Basic Community Patch - Extra Community Patch - Keywords Community Patch - Typos Community Patch - Icons BPM - Buffs BPM - Nerfs BPM - Summon Rebalance Potion of Enlightenment @Not So Clever Hound Sorry to keep bugging you, can you check if you get the bonus pen in vanilla on the concelhaut spells? Because I don't. If it is a mod issue it wouldn't make sense that you would get the bonus in vanilla also, so I'm hoping you have the same results I do in vanilla and my CP / BPM keywords aren't being loaded properly or something... I'm like 95% sure my keywords aren't being loaded correctly, although they show up in the tooltips. There's even a note in the CP description that says in the changelog for 1.02 (so clearly this type of spell didn't benefit in vanilla, and still doesn't in my game) CP.Keywords: Concelhaut's Draining Touch (weapon/attack): now has Acid keyword, and the attack can benefit from Spirit of Decay talent

This is weird. The tooltip says the base pen is 0, +1.5 ability level, +1 scion of flame. But it actually has base pen 7 and does not apply scion of flame. Why would my installation be different? My game was completely vanilla until recently and it's always had the wall of flame tooltip for Scion of Flame. And have you checked your other corrode spells? Corrosive Siphon is far from the only one that doesn't get Spirit of Decay...I just cast MInoletta's Minor Missiles on Vela after adding the talent and there is no Spirit of Decay bonus. I then cast Necrotic Lance on Vela and that one does have Spirit of Decay bonus. Haven't tested in-combat all the ones I listed, I'm going mostly by their tooltips, but Draining Touch and Kalakoth's Minor Blights definitely do not apply Spirit of Decay in addition to Corrosive Siphon and Minoletta's Minor Missiles. The higher level spells I didn't test in combat besides Wall of Many Colors. So far the tooltips are consistent except for Wall of Flame...

The only corrode spell I'd stolen was corrosive siphon. Nothing funny about wall of flame. I also loaded a different save and tried memorizing corrosive siphon and it was the same (also corrosive skin and draining touch and kalakoth's minor blights - corrode). I was level 8 when I picked spirit of decay and noticed this. Anyway after seeing your different results I went back to a save before I had minor grimoire imprint and consoled myself up to level 8. I memorized wall of flame and corrosive siphon and picked scion of flame and spirit of decay. As you can see, I get bonus on wall of flame but not corrosive siphon. I also tried save / reloading because that makes a difference with certain things but it didn't here. Maybe the Steam and GOG versions are slightly different? I'm using Steam. What penetration do you have for wall of flame and corrosive siphon at L8? Maybe the display text is wrong but the values are the same? I don't understand why I get +1.5 ability level to wall of flame but corrosive siphon says "7 base, +.5 ability level, +.5 wizard power level" OH I forgot to check Minoletta's Minor Missiles! I just did and mine does NOT benefit from spirit of decay. Just says "7 base, +.8 wizard power level". I also tried memorizing it from the earlier save. So for me all of these spells do not benefit from spirit of decay Minoletta's Minor Missiles Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon Concelhaut's Draining Touch Kalakoth's Minor Blights Wall of Many Colors (though none of the elemental benefits work on this one) Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin I am using Community Patch 2.0.4 and BPM 2.4.1, not that I think that matters because I got same results with the mods turned off.

Yeah you are right about Wall of Many Colors...I was thinking since I couldn't find any other bugged fire/frost/electric spells (only checked wizard though) that maybe it was intentional. Also thought maybe hazard spells were treated differently but I checked Wall of Flames and it gets +1, so logically Wall of Many Colors elemental damage should get bonus penetration also.

Soul diplomacy of course Another nice thing about the summoning from the bow is it circumvents the normal summon limit. You can have a bunch of cannon fodder as allies. I think it is particularly good for solo. I haven't used Aamina's Legacy much. Never roll dwarfs for some reason...I guess I don't like their stat spread. Boreal dwarf is terrible but Mountain Dwarf seems okay. I'm working on a wizard build to try BPM with all the trials, haven't gotten real far yet but I think it will be doable. You seem like the guy to ask this question. If I wear a bunch of "damage on unconscious" stuff like the cape of the falling star, effort, least unstable coil, and that plate from beast of winter, do they all go off when the phantom dies, i.e. do they stack?

Strange, but thanks for explaining. BTW, small bug, probably a bug in vanilla too to be fair, just noticed Concelhaut's Draining Touch does not benefit from spirit of decay. The spell itself is keyworded acid, but it summons a Concelhaut's Draining Touch weapon that has no keywords but does corrode damage and the penetration is not affected, which I'm pretty sure this time is actually unintentional since description says "+1 penetration with decay/acid/corrode weapon attacks" Huh. Just checked and Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon doesn't benefit either. Neither does Kalakoth's Minor Blights - Corrode. I have Spirit of Flame also and the flame blight gets 9 penetration and the corrode blight 8 penetration, so it definitely seems like a general problem with spirit of decay. Hmm. I'll pull up another save with more and higher level spells to see if it is universal. Okay I checked all the spells I had Necrotic Lance gets +1 Noxious Burst gets +1 Minoletta's Missile Salvo gets +1 Death Ring gets +1 Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon does not get +1 Concelhaut's Draining Touch does not get +1 Kalakoth's Minor Blights - corrode does not get +1 Concelhaut's Corrosive Skin does get +1 And I checked the other elemental spells that I had, and they all seemed to get their respective penetration bonuses besides corrode. Except Wall of Many Colors where none of the spells get bonus penetration, but perhaps that is intentional. I'll compare with vanilla now... yep the same spells are affected in vanilla, so it's a universal bug I guess.

Sounds good. Always hated it when you take major damage and get back a level 1 spell (or worse, nothing, if you haven't used low level spells). Unfortunate the damage can't be correlated to the level regained though. Something I was wondering though, the -100% healing debuff seems to override my other healing modifiers, e.g. dawnstar's +50% healing, might physickers belt etc. I don't seem to heal at all after a blood sacrifice, is that intentional? I'd assumed -100% + 50% = -50% healing but it seems to be -100%. Also with more practice I'm finding the blood sacrifice ability is still useful in combat, though it requires more planning, can't be spammed etc. Maybe that's a good thing IDK, makes the battles drag on longer that's for sure. I expect I'll be buying a lot of potions of enlightenment.

Not sure what spells the xaurips have, but priests of eothas all have restore, and the dawnstar priests are mostly eothas (I think just xoti is gaun). Might be some other priest subclasses that have it too, I recall coming across it a lot but I grabbed it when I slaughtered the dawnstar temple. Which this time around may be a little difficult because Adaryc is a freaking beast, so...probably have to kill the sick one Pitli. I think the goldpact priests with Beina are also eothas and have withdraw + restore. Meryel and Yseyr are Berathian, there are some Woedica in oathbinder's sanctum, ran across quite a few Wael priests. Not sure about the Magran and Rymrgand but I don't think their spells are anything special. Yeah boarding a ship is suicide without withdraw, and I might die as well depending on the encounter...once you have enough spells it is no problem. I boarded tons of ships with the soul devourer. Granted she wasn't worrying about recovery time much and could zerg enemies with soul annihilation. Be a lot grindier this time. The druid spells the moon's light and nature's balm are also pretty handy. The moon's light has a pretty long duration of passive healing. Nature's balm not so much but not completely terrible. The naga shaman have exactly these two spells from levels 1 to 3 (and maybe blizzard?) so it is very easy to grab them on hasongo from that one shaman that is by himself. Eventually I can steal moonwell which is better than the moon's light but not until level 16+... if I can crit a decent amount might wield sanguine great sword and devil of caroc breastplate, they provide a lot of healing on crit. But probably will be invisible mostly summoning things later. Need to find someone with the phantom spells. Arkemyr has them and he isn't terribly hard but there's probably someone easier...Bekarna is easy but hard to get to. Do you know if Meryel (or anyone besides Yseyr) has Halt? I thought she'd have halt because they're both priests of Berath but I've been trying that encounter for about an hour and I am either really unlucky or she doesn't have it. She seems to have three level 1 spells, four level 2 spells, and two level 3 spells, which is a little strange. Touch of Rot, Interdiction, Barbs of Condemnation, Holy Meditation, Repulsing Seal, Spiritual Weapon, Pillar of Faith, Spreading Plague, and Divine Mark. Yseyr has most of these spells but not sure about Pillar of Faith, Divine Mark, and Interdiction. I guess different characters that have more than the standard 2 spells per level could have different spells. Halt isn't a must have or anything but it is pretty useful to get Vela to be stil. --------- Edit: Good call on the xaurips! The xaurip priests have both withdraw and restore and don't do much damage so they're ideal for stealing these spells. There's one with Purakau you can kite away from him, and I think there are some in Cavern of Xaur Tuk Tuk.

Yeah most enemies have 2 spells per level but a few have 3 or even 4, like the spellblade has 3 I think and eamund the fox might have 4. Pretty sure I stole 10 spells from him from 1 to 3, so probably 4 per level unless he just has more of a certain level for some reason. I don't have a grimoire with corrosive siphon yet. It is a pretty rare spell. I know the warlock on tangaloa island has it, which is one reason I'm heading there when I finish deadlight, even though it is a bit out of the way. Other reason is his grimoire has draining touch. And hopefully I can steal some stuff from the zealot. They are both easy to lure one on one. The priest of skaen is a bit harder, but he could prove easier than the celebrant in secret dock. I did successfully isolate the spellblade in secret dock, though. It is quite tedious but you can lure him and three of his cohorts to one spot using a trap, then lure them to another spot, spellblade arrives last, then you time the third trap correctly and you lure just him. One on one he is still kind of a pain given I'm trying to steal spells without killing myself with blood sacrifice, but with a lot of practice I managed to steal concelhaut's parasitic quarterstaff, infuse with vital essence, fetid caress, minoletta's minor missiles, and mirror image. Only big one I was hoping for that I missed was spirit shield, but that is a pretty common spell. Don't really care about his fireball or tattered veils or concussive missiles. Parasitic quarterstaff, mirror image, and infuse are fairly hard to find early. In this kind of fight you eventually run out of healing potions and I don't have significant passive healing at this point (just the blood mage passive), so I can't steal every spell he has like I normally would, so 5 is pretty good, though I think I'd only do this well maybe one time in three. Also used up both my withdraw scrolls. I'm hoping the zealot at tangaloa island has withdraw, otherwise I'll murder a dawnstar for it I guess. At the moment I'm trying to figure out how to lure out the celebrant, who unfortunately is way in the back of the docks. Spellblade was way to the left but possible to lure out. Don't think I can lure out the celebrant, will likely have to kill everyone else. Barrels can do that easily but they get the celebrant a lot (and vela). Gotta reposition them with traps and sparkcrackers. Very tedious but I think it is doable, just gotta get the timing down.

So I found a group with a celebrant in the secret dock, but it is a pretty hard encounter so I was trying to spawn this group you're talking about. I went to the northern ramparts from aeldys' quarters, blew up the lamp oil barrel at the top of the stairs on the left (one pirate guard nearby but I could do it just out of her steal detect range), then I saved and reloaded, nothing happened. So then I tried blowing up the lamp oil barrel to the left of the container with the god killer rum. Save, reload. Nothing happened. Am I targeting the wrong container or is there some special trick to this? That's true, could cast shadowflame from invisibility then shadowing beyond ~1.5s later with dex bonus, maybe less with deleterious. May be useful, though you encounter these guys late game. Any idea if Concelhaut's Draining Missiles is stealable from anyone besides Concelhaut? I've found some "unique" spells on random characters like Eamund the Fox has way more spells than he should including "Ninagauth's Death Ray" but haven't seen the missiles. I think I should go maje => tangaloa ruins temple => deadlight, I'm only L6 then so I can't steal anything but the crazed warlock has concelhaut's draining touch in his grimoire, and it's only in a couple others IIRC (concelhaut's, menzaggo's, and the mercenary wizard grimoire which the wiki says lady eparo encounter has). This spell would make early encounters more bearable.

Wow. But how do you know all this? Just grimoire imprinting everything or is there some database of enemy spells I don't know about? I just go by experience and the wiki, which is incomplete regarding a lot of spells... That said I don't use the Shadowflame that much because of the long casting time. It's great as an opener though. Still pretty badass, definitely one of the better nuke spells. If its cast time were more like fireball it would be god tier.

Literally never use wall of draining, you could also nerf that spell rather than the whole tier for every blood mage / x combo. Well I see you did nerf that spell. Nerf it harder then, IDK. Yeah of course I can use both the potion and blood sacrifice. I'm still on the fence and haven't done enough playtesting but I think blood sacrifice may be borderline unusable at low levels for this specific build at least, and the "borderline" question is likely outweighed by the +15 enemy accuracy malus which is pretty serious at lower levels. If I just avoided combat until high levels blood mage would probably still be better. Money is not hard to come by so whatever the potions cost it doesn't really matter, I tend to have over a million dollars halfway through the game. I agree about DEX which is why I have it at 19 base. That makes blood sacrifice cast time .6, recovery 2.4, for 3 seconds per cast if I spam as fast as possible and don't heal in between. So that's 6 seconds on average to regain a level 4 to 7 spell and 9 seconds on average to regain a level 8+, but I need to heal in between and just drinking a healing potion takes 4.4 seconds at the moment. Plus 6 seconds to wait out the -100% healing malus. I need to heal roughly every one to two blood sacrifice since I'm meanwhile being attacked. One cycle of cast spell, blood sacrifice, wait, heal, takes on average say 5 seconds for the spell, 3 seconds for blood sacrifice, 6 second wait (can trim to 5 and start drinking potion early), 4.4 seconds to drink a potion, for a total of roughly 17.5 seconds per cycle. With two cycles to regain a level 4 spell on average, that's 35 seconds. Also sometimes it will take much more than the average cast to regain a spell, and that is what matters on iron runs. It's just too random. I'll try moon godlike with voidward, maybe that helps enough I won't have to drink as many potions but this nerf is pretty serious especially for more difficult runs (solo, POTD upscaled, etc.). I get the larger audience doesn't play on those difficulties but some of us do, and some of us post videos of our playthroughs so I'd hope you'd at least give some consideration to feedback from people like me. IMO, drop the recovery time OR remove the healing malus (or at least reduce it to -50%). My 2 cents. What difficulty do you play? Do you have a party? Do you have to babysit Vela, etc.? The ability to repeatedly use blood sacrifice USED to be much better than a one off Empower, but now to get back a spell you want can take ages and you take more damage from the -100% healing. And we have alternative sources of resource replenishment now with Potions of Enlightenment which have zero downsides besides money, which is not really a downside.

Thanks for showing me where the file is. Still unsure if I should delete it. I prefer the original but it kind of defeats the purpose of an ultimate run if I alter the mod so idk. May just reroll a normal wizard and chug potions of enlightenment. They last through entire fight so I only need them in a handful of encounters to steal certain spells, maybe a dozen if I'm greedy and want more wizard spells that aren't necessary to the build. But really Beina encounter, Biakara, Eamund the Fox and Katrenn give me everything I want. Nornal wizard with potions of enlightenment looks better than blood mage in bpm unless it is a tanky build centered around low level spells like your armored arcanist. Voidward says -25% raw. So BPM modified godlikes to make them better and moon godlike which generally sucks has a random defense against raw damage? I mean that would help a bit but I'm still thinking potions of enlightenment are a better option. Assuming they aren't hard to get or something. Like idk if each place only stocks one or something like that. They're only 800 to craft but Vithrack brains are kinda rare. Investing in CON is not enough for early encounters at least. I actually tried setting all my stats to 35 and I still can't do the secret room encounter. I mean I can kill them easily enough but leaving just the celebrant alive is quite hard and the other guys tend to kill me pretty fast. Barrel explosion sets them all bloodied or worse so it is actually pretty rough for a L7 blood mage. They do massive damage and I'm doing massive self damage and can't heal and rolling for minor grimoife imprint injects so much randomness into this encounter I don't think a blood mage can do it at L7 with all the trials. Not while stealing escape. It is 1/6 to steal that so on average that is 12 casts of minor grimoire imprint. I mean I've done it a few times but the probability of a wipe is quite high unless I can figure out how to consistently kill everyone except the celebrant immediately. He doesn't really do damaging attacks but buffs the hell out of everyone else. Stealing from both the celebrant and the 10 spells the spellblade has is not realistic. He does do damage and I don't have enough withdraw scrolls to grind it out. The celebrant won't attack vela unless he gets within 8m then he may use escape. Once I get escape and withdraw I can chug a potion of enlightenment and zip around until I get back minor grimoire imprint. Could script it even. And once I steal shadowing beyond it is easy to steal spells, so the smart thing to do would be run with a normal wizard but buy some potions of enlightenment before any combat because a wizard can't reliably steal escape without it. OR I can stay blood mage, it is useful for this specific encounter since I haven't picked up any enlightenment potions and this celebrant is only available during blow the man down, which is best done right after maje for pathing reasons, but dropping by neketaka first wouldn't set me back so much I couldn't finish the eothas challenge. Hmm. Working right now but next time I play ill see if I can figure out that encounter as is, if not I think start over with a regular wizard and do neketaka quests first, then go to deadlight, dunnage, crookspur, hasongo. Can definitely squeeze that in but won't be able to do poko kahara before. Hmm. Reaching L16 by beina is also tricky. Ah I'm rambling. I'll figure it out eventually with your help

Anybody like Essence Interrupter? The hunting bow you can buy from Henric in Maje. It is stupid good, does pierce/shock, has damage scaling with metaphysics and on crit makes enemies spawn various allied summons (with upgrade). I toyed around with using it with black jacket multiclass builds. With quick switch black jacket has zero recovery on weapon switch so you can use a more damaging alpha strike weapon like Red Hand then switch to Essence Interrupter when the target enemy is near death (this is easily scriptable actually). I didn't follow through with a complete run but it is pretty powerful combined with a lot of classes (cipher, chanter, blood mage). With chanter (troubadour probably best with black jacket) you can summon things and attack from behind enemy lines to summon even more things. I think even your own crappy summons (like skeletons) can be turned into better ones if you kill them but I could be wrong on that. With cipher you get huge defense and accuracy buffs from borrowed instinct and psychovampiric shield, and can cast pain link on summons so it also works well. Not sure about subclass, I'm most familiar with soul blade but that wouldn't work well with ranged build. Ascendant might be good but I dont know much about it. Vanilla cipher is fine too. And blood mage is good with anything, give you a ton of defensive buffs plus all the blood mage cheese with black jacket and essence interrupter providing summons and adding even more survivability with unbending.

What you don't like the insane jester wizard chic?

Damn. You're (mostly) correct. I just tested it extensively, was going to post a video showing it always gives a spell, but I just ran good when I tested it last night. If you are missing a level 1 to level 4 spell and cast blood sacrifice, you always get back a spell. But this doesn't happen for level 5+, I didn't do enough to get a sample size but it is probably 33.33% if you have all 9 spell levels, 50% if you have up to 7. I didn't catch this until now because the spell I spammed the most was minor grimoire imprint, and that was always restored with one blood sacrifice. By the time I was casting higher level spells I typically had brilliant, plus Wael to make it harder to track. My bad Elric. I guess blood sacrifice is working more or less the same as vanilla, though it seems weird to me the description doesn't say there's a *chance* you get a spell back, it says "variable raw damage to self to restore a proportional level wizard spell resource". I mean I get now it first does the damage, then checks if there's a missing spell in that proportional level, then restores if missing, if not, damages you and does nothing. Would make more sense (to me at least) if the programming first checked for what was missing, then rolled for damage if missing multiple spell tiers, otherwise does the damage corresponding to whatever tier you're missing and gives you that back. One thing to note about changing from 4/7/9 to 3/6/9, though, it affects the probability rolls significantly when your highest spell level is either 4 (goes from 100% to 50%) or 7 (1 to 4 go from 100% to mixed 100% / 50% and 5 to 7 go from 50% to mixed 50% / 33%). I'm guessing, if the *sometimes return a spell* behavior is intentional, that the devs did 4,7,9 because level 7 is where multiclass caps and multiclass blood mage plays a lot better when your highest level spell comes back 50% of the time instead of 33%. And they made the level 8 to 9 spells hardest to get back. That also corresponds with doing the most damage. With BPM you get high tier damage on L7 instead of medium tier, and you get medium tier for L4 instead of low tier. One more thing, I'm not sure if blood mage is even worth using anymore unless you're solo. You can't reliably get back spells, and I guess you couldn't in vanilla either, but in vanilla there's no recovery penalty or healing malus so you can spam the sacrifice to get back the spells you need. I agree that is a little OP (though nothing compared to grimoire imprints), but having to cast on average 3 times for one level 7 to 9 spell means you're going to basically always have the severe healing malus if you mostly cast, and meanwhile half the enemies have +15 accuracy vs all your defenses. And you can't empower, which in vanilla isn't that big a thing but BPM buffs empower, right? So I need a L8 spell, I might have to cast eight or nine times with bad luck, and with the inability to heal that is just going to kill me. An ultimate run may actually be impossible, now. And I know, not intended for that, but to me it's kind of sad. Think I might just remove the blood sacrifice change, if I knew how to do that... The healing malus is a good nerf, OR the recovery time, but both, especially combined with 4/7/9 to 3/6/9 make the skill almost unusable because of how random spell restoration is for L4+ spells. It also encourages multiclass, because again, the high tier spells are impossible to get back reliably without taking massive massive damage that you can't heal. One could maybe work around it with an infinite supply of healing potions and patience. Blood sacrifice, miss, wait 6 seconds, heal self, blood sacrifice, miss, wait 6 seconds, heal self, blood sacrifice, miss, wait 6 seconds, heal self, blood sacrifice, miss, wait 6 seconds, heal self, etc. Honestly those potions of enlightenment seem way better than blood sacrifice now. Yeah it takes 30 seconds for a spell but 3 casts of blood sacrifice with intermittent healing takes just as long, and sometimes you'll need more casts than that (sometimes less, but in an iron run it's only the more that matters). But with potions of enlightenment, you can actually do things while waiting for class resources to replenish and aren't taking massive damage in the process.

Actually Outworn Buckler and Lethandria's Devotion procs on switch are easily scriptable...not that I think you should remove them. In my ultimate run that script only triggered once. But if it saves me from a wipe it's worth scripting from my point of view.

I recently played a blood mage in vanilla, using lots of grimoire imprints and I'm pretty sure I always got back a level X spell if that was all I was missing. Yeah I just removed the mods and loaded a fight, toggled god mode for testing, and tried casting one single spell from every tier and blood sacrifice always returns exactly the missing spell. Yes, if you're missing one (or more) spells from levels 1 to 4, 5 to 7, and 8 to 9, and I'm missing a L6 but not 5 or 7, there's a 1 in 3 chance I get back the level 6 spell, but if I'm only missing a level 6 spell, the chance I get back a level 6 spell should be 100%, and it IS 100% in vanilla. I don't care about 3/6/9 vs 4/7/9, the bug is that I'm taking damage from blood sacrifice and getting no spells back. Right now I just have 1 to 4, so with your new division that's two tiers of spells and spell damage. Okay, sure. But there is always a 50% chance I get back a spell from tier 4 when that is the only level that I've cast from. That cannot be the intended mechanic. If it is, then the original blood sacrifice is "bugged" to give back spell levels you actually need instead of rolling randomly for it. I sometimes take four to five blood sacrifices to get back ONE spell, and meanwhile I'm just taking damage and negating healing for no reason! You really intended this or did I not communicate the issue well? And it is a *huge* nerf if blood sacrifice is indeed functioning as you intended. Going from always getting a spell back to 50% is really bad, and at high levels it would drop to 33.33% chance. This on top of the increased recovery and healing malus.

Huh. Could have sworn I saw some videos of Pale Shelter with like a dozen summons on the screen, but I just looked up his run and it's actually just one summon spell, the instruments of death (3 summons), plus the chanter phrase that summons an endless stream of skeletons. So he has like 7 or 8 skeletons at a given time and 3 weapons. Maybe I should do a loremaster. I did find a skaen celebrant at Deadlight during Blow the Man Down. There is another one in the secret dock but that group is pretty nasty. BUT you can explode them with the barrel. BUT to explode all of them or nearly all of them you need sparkcrackers. BUT Vela runs after sparkcrackers and gets blown up unless your timing is absolutely perfect. And because of Skaen you can't see where all the characters are so I'm not sure it's even possible to kill the ones you want to kill and leave just the celebrant, for example. The spellblade down there also has some good low level spells (spirit shield and concelhaut's staff mainly, but 8 others also). I don't think I can do this encounter right now though (even though it is only available during blow the man down)... only have two withdraw scrolls. I did steal escape from the celebrant so he is definitely skaen, but I'm like 1 for 30. Keep blowing Vela up, or blowing everyone up, or leaving 4 to 5 alive and I get wrecked if there's more than two. Also blood sacrifice seems to be bugged in BPM. Won't really be an issue once you steal enough spells but it makes stealing them at the moment extremely difficult. The way the spell is supposed to work is you get a variable amount of damage, low, medium, or high, and then you get a spell back corresponding to that damage (low level, mid level, high level). But if you are only missing a level 4 spell you should always get the level 4 spell back. That's how it worked in vanilla anyway, unless my memory is really, really bad. Now it seems to roll for the damage amount and if it doesn't correspond to "medium" you don't get the level 4 spell back, so I have to cast blood sacrifice I think twice on average per cast of minor grimoire imprint. That can't be how the ability is meant to work. It is bad enough with the healing malus and increased recovery but having to cast multiple times to get one spell back is ridiculous.

I'm heading to Deadlight now. L6 but should be L7 by the time I finish Blow the Man Down. Can murder Aloth and use his grimoire to steal escape. The celebrants are multiclass but should get escape at L7 also. Then I can save Beina for L16 and steal Shadowing Beyond. Or I can figure out how to get to L16 without combat and without going way out of my way, then go to Beina. The pathing is kinda tricky. Usually I'd be around 13 when I go to Beina after Hasongo, if I went from Hasongo to Dunnage to Crookspur to Beina I think I'd be L15. I could go north and do Nemnok's quest but pretty out of the way since I have to come back and kill him. Hmmmmm..if the boots of cheese still worked like they used to I could do Bekarna's Folly, but they don't. Could throw in Poko Kahara but that requires a battle at the end. Maybe doable if I stock up on scrolls especially if I already have escape and withdraw. First I'll try to find those celebrants. I can technically save and load, I just need to time it at the end of a session if I'm recording or it looks sketch. That is really weird they only spawn if you blow up an oil barrel though... This is just a practice run though, I'm not used to BPM changes yet, probably be a while before I can do an actual "ultimate" run. Not technically ultimate since that turns off mods, but I already did a real ultimate so whatever. This should be harder anyway. ------- I got to Deadlight and I haven't looked for the celebrant that spawns by the barrel yet, was completing Blow the Man Down and saw quite a few celebrant guards around, but most of them aggro everyone. But there is one in the secret dock you can kill without repercussions. However the fight is pretty tough because the enemies start out neutral so you can't kite them and have to take on several at once. Exploding the gunpowder barrel in the middle takes out most of the group but leaves 2 to 5 guys depending how lucky you are. The spellblade is also a source of spell theft but doesn't have anything particularly great (though free casts are free casts). I'm trying to figure out how to group the enemies so I take out as many as possible but not the spellblade or celebrant. The celebrant usually is out of the explosion. I remember on a normal POTD solo run I could take the whole group out by throwing a sparkcracker first, then blowing up the barrels, but Vela is really, really stupid and she runs towards sparkcrackers and gets blown up, so...hmm. I don't have enough good equipment yet, scrolls etc. to make it feasible taking on several at once. If I could reload I'd just cast grimoire imprint on the celebrant and steal escape, then the fight is doable, but that is 1/6 chance so I have to be able to take some hits and use the nerfed blood sacrifice that destroys healing in case it takes me a dozen casts. Kinda tricky... Just have two withdraw scrolls also. Don't have any fangs yet so can't make more. This would be much easier if I had already stolen withdraw, but I haven't run into any eothas priests yet I don't think. Might need to rethink the stat spread. I dumped might and resolve and maxed INT DEX and PER because once I get Escape resolve doesn't much matter and after Shadowing Beyond might doesn't matter either. But...I am really bad at combat right now. The celebrant is definitely skaen because he just used escape to zip past me and murder vela when I thought I had them engaged...

Ha, so I could have explosive suicide phantoms, if I can remember those items. Mantle of the Seven Bolts, yes. There's "Echo of the Godhammer" in One Dozen Stood plate. Cape of the Falling Star. Unstable Coils. Can't recall any others, but probably some of the weapons and shields have those enchants. I never used them because going unconscious is very very bad in solo runs, but I'm pretty sure there are others. Assuming the effects stack one could do pretty significant damage with those. Oh, the sword Effort has one of those enchants. "Valiant Demise" gives Steadfast for 20 seconds to allies on unconscious and does a full attack on every enemy in 6 feet. Cape of the Falling Star is in general a better cape. IDK which one does more AOE damage. But that's potentially four AOE attacks, though two are late game items. --- Another question, maybe a stupid one, how many summons can you have at one time? I've never played a character that summoned more than one thing at a time. Usually I nuke things or beat them up. --- Also I found some old ultimate runs with blood mage where they dump RES and CON but not MIG. I assume they're using Potions of Final Stand or something because with 3 CON and 18 MIG won't one Blood Sacrifice nearly (or actually) kill you?