Yeah, it does make it a lot more flexible, although it doesn't give the gremlins more HP which is the real issue.

I think I broadly agree, though I do feel that the T5 tomes have some spells that are just as warping as the T4 tomes.

Yeah, I think Goldtouched is about right for a Minor on a T4 tome tbh. Astral attunement would be meaningfully less miserable if it was just a minor transformation too, but considering how little it gives you right now it's pretty hilarious it is a Major transformation right now.

Oh no, if only bleed and poison stack that's : ( but potentially understandable if they are indeed ignoring resistances (which I have heard repeatedly as a rumor, but haven't heard directly from the devs). Gremlins are such interesting units with their turn around ability, but they are just hilariously squishy. If they were +10 HP +1/+1 the way Inquisitors are supposed to get buffed that spell could get a lot better. I still think the best use case for the tome by a *wide* margin is just get Balors early and crush people though, as the rest of it will inevitably be flavor text compared to the raw power of a bunch of Balors.

I tried it on release like six months ago and it was very : (. I should try it out again sometime and see how it plays. The siphoner is a very impressive unit when it comes to assassinating enemy heroes at the moment, though it will be very interesting to see how everything plays in the new patch.

Tbh this is important enough it needs to be pinned. I still hate this spell in a world with Lava Burst, but Astral Siphoner is a meaningfully better unit to be spawning and definitely makes this spell more castable. Good catch!

Yeah, I think if you are going to commit to trying to make dragons work, Ascended Warriors is actually a fine place to be. Only issue is that Shrines and Dragons don't really play well together, so you'll only want a few dragons max, *or* you just have some shrine armies and some dragon armies.

Yeah, definitely makes them marginally more useful but still immensely skippable when it comes to the way knowledge costs scale up.

They changed it in the patch that came out Tuesday! It was a well-deserved upgrade for the transformation.

@@wepg weird, I was getting it the whole time even before then. Maybe it was just a tooltip update this patch. Then again, I didnt play since last autumn or so, maybe there was a window where they 'fixed it for some reason.

@@gloomfiend Were you playing with mods? The vanilla version was literally just overhauled to add ethereal, per the patch notes (as well as just reverting to the previous patch to confirm).

God tier dice rolling sometimes comes in clutch.

@@wepg My friend was so mad that he tried to assassinate my hero but failed with a 77% chance to succeed ahah he was so pissed off

We all make mistakes! The reason I'm generally so down on the vision stuff is that A.) You *can* build scouts if you really feel like you need it but more importantly B.) If you *really* *really* need it in the late game, Shadow Empire tree and the T5 Nature Tome do it infinitely better than any of the rest. +7 vision is the best not infinity vision effect except *maybe* crows for Industrious/Barbs, but it's still going to be a really expensive spell that doesn't dramatically change the landscape of battle.

@wepg I haven't taken the T5 nature tome, or shadow yet, do I look forward to your video on it!

If you want to make a living fog kill everything you're going to need a few things. 1.) Ideally Cosmic Overdrive on T5 Astral. Permanent Haste and +30% damage is perfection. 2.) Minimum 2 (Ideally 3+) damage enchantments of varying types, easiest to get are typically Evocation, Cryomancy, and Revelry. 3.) If you want to increase survivability on Living Fog, Tome of Warding for Bolstered Resistance and Tome of Sanctuary for Keeper's Mark are very good here. 4.) Strengthened 5 and Fortune 3. You need to prioritize buffing your Living Fog both out of as well as in combat. Fortune represents the easiest source of crits for Living Fog, but get more stuff for crits for them. 5.) Hero with support abilities. Once you have done all this, however, you will have a unit capable of dealing 100-150+ damage per turn against literally any target thanks to their ability to ignore all defensive stats. The Insanity is basically flavortext if you accomplish this, as the unit you attack will be too dead to insane.

It's a fantasy 4X by Triumph studios and Paradox interactive. Very fun!