some details I discovered

[grobblewobble]

Last week I been playing some more LoH, man it is such a sweet mod, I still love it.

Well, maybe all of these "discoveries" are common knowledge, but for me they're new:

- Mana shield is great to use on T'Vril. Obvious if you think about it maybe, but I never tried it before, for some reason.
- A darkling seems to cast leech life for less mana than other races do.
- The Harvester of Souls is a great melee weapon, as the "life-steal" effect is applied on top of the normal damage. So, the total damage is greater than what is displayed (about twice as much, it seems). In practice, this means T'Vril deals significantly more damage with the Harvester than with, say, Leech Life. Of course, the price is that you expose yourself more as well, but still..

[Liantedan]

Not entirely sure about the Darkling, but the rest is certainly correct.

Another useful thing is to know that Shield of Flames ( or what was it called again ? ) is very useful against those pesky 1-hp rats and bats.
Aura of Death, however, isn't. Though it is plenty useful in other situations.

[grobblewobble]

Now that we're discussing buffer spells, which ones do you mostly use?

Lately I was playing around with a Valkyrie. She's trained in the "standard" valk way, meaning:

- gained most of her uber-level in melee, so has high str, low int
- has also trained both magic skills, for backup.

So I've been trying different buffer spells, comparing their "cost" (mana / duration) with their effect.

The ones that seem worthwhile so far:

- magic armor (small effect but extremely cheap)
- mana chant
- mana shield (especially if you wear any rings of insanity)
- clean strike (expensive but worth it)
- divine armor (fury only)
- death blast
- regeneration

About regeneration I'm not entirely sure. It seems natural to cast it, since your health regen is already very high. But it is kind of expensive too, so I wonder: how much does it help, exactly?

Death blast is very expensive, but with life-steal items it completely refills your health whenever you kill something. However, this may be bug abuse (just like life-steal + flaming defender), so I hesitate a bit to use it.

Any good buffer spells I'm overlooking?

[Liantedan]

Just the two I mentioned, I guess.

Oh, and Spirit Armor.
I think it's better than Magic Armor.

Flameshield/Fireshield/Shield of Flames ( I keep forgetting the actual name of this one ) also adds a little bit or armour value, and does a little bit of damage on top.

I may be mistaken, but I think you can get +200 armour from those two combined, if you have a high level in Combat Magic. On top of the armour, the latter of the two prevents you from targetting those pesky rats/bats instead of the actual dangerous mobs.

Aura of Death is very good if you're playing on your own, or are the tank. It usually makes the mobs target the person who has it cast, so if you're the caster and you have a tank with you, better not use it unless you want to be casting more healing spells than other stuff.

Likewise is Mana Shield NOT a mage's best friend. If you have a troll or two bashing on you, casting heals is more mana-efficient than Mana Shield. Mostly because with Mana Shield you'll quickly run out of mana, and have no offense left to dispose of your attackers.
For people who don't have much use for mana, however, it's a very useful buff.

Mana Chant is very useful. Whether you use your mana actively ( casting spells ) or passively ( Mana Shield ), this buff will make a difference for you.

Lightning/Firebolt Armor or whatever they're all called are not entirely useless, but are less cost-efficient as a combination of Spirit Armor and Flameshield, I believe. They also don't stack well, so I usually don't bother with them.

Clean Strike may be useful, but personally I prefer a Ring of Excellence ( +20% chance to hit ) or two. The Valk's sword has an innate ( progressive ) bonus to chance to hit anyway.

Divine Armor is indeed very nice to have against Fury.

Personally I've never used Death Blast, so I can't say how good it is or isn't. Though I also never felt I needed something like it.

Regeneration gives +1 to health regeneration, I'm guessing. By the time you can cast it, you should have at least some progressive armour that gives you +2 or more. Granted, it's still a nice boost ( and as far as I know it does stack ), but I'm not use if it's worth bothering casting it all the time ( fairly short duration, no ? ).
Again, personally I've never used it, so I can't really form a proper opinion on how useful it may or may not be.

Oh, and, of course, Swiftness of the Dead can be a good friend.

[grobblewobble]

First of all, thanks for the tip on the spirit armor / flameshield combo, I will try it.

Now about regeneration: I did some tests. Regeneration (at NM level 110) lasts 250 seconds for each cast and costs roughly about 150 mana, which is not bad as buffers go.

First test: valkyrie, str 110, about 3500 HP, +6 regeneration from items. Time to regenerate all health from 0 to full: 28 seconds.

Second test: same valkyrie, but now +7 regeneration from items. Time to fully recover all health: 25 seconds. Improvement: about 10 to 15 %.

Third test: same valkyrie, +6 regeneration from items, but now with the regeneration buffer activated. Time to fully recover: 19 seconds. Improvement: about 50%.

So the buffer is a good deal better than +1 regeneration from an item. I'm going to cast it more often.

If you never tried Death Blast, I can only advise you to give it a try, unless you never get beaten up by cave trolls any more.. against those trolls it is one of the best.

I can see your point about clean strike. You can use rings of excellence, yes. And it is a very expensive buffer, too. Maybe I'll drop this one. However, IMO +to hit is always good, especially for a valk, because it works for all the adjacent attacks as well.

Swiftness of the dead is of course one of the best buffers ever.. forgot to mention that one.

I have one more question about the Valkyrie. No doubt you know this trick: equip as many +melee items as possible, re-equip sword, unequip +melee items. The damage bonus remains.

But what about the other bonuses, on to-hit, more adjacent attacks and blocking damage? Do they remain, too?

[Liantedan]

All bonuses get calculated on equipping the item, as far as I know. Same goes for progressive armours.