Discussion of the Necropolis faction. Auto-translated

and for the Necromancer, what would you recommend? Blood or Tears?

The Mage prefers the path of Tears, while the Warrior prefers the path of Blood.

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Regarding the Mage, I can offer this advice: in the campaign, it's better to choose a Blood hero, as the first level of Blood provides an excellent buff to the power of attacking spells. In a duel, however, it's better to choose a Tears hero. I haven't tried the Necropolis Warrior.

If you take the first level of reputation, you can change it by taking the second level of a different reputation. If you have developed a hero's reputation to the second level, it can no longer be changed. By the way, the achievements "Repentance" and "Rewind" hint at this :).

because on the first level of Blood, there is an excellent buff to the power of attack spells.

Which one is that?

“Sign of the Necromancer” seems to be the case. Actually, the Necropolis hero-mage only has one first-level Blood skill.

While playing as a Necromancer, I noticed a peculiar ability: it deals damage to all living creatures and, on top of that, restores health to its own units. However, the "sacrifice" ability is unclear – does it transfer damage from one of your units to another, or can it be used to damage an enemy unit? Also, does the "Path of Tears" ability work similarly at higher levels? Could someone explain it in more detail?

You choose one of your units as a sacrifice, and it takes damage for all your other creatures. The damage is reduced by a certain percentage.

Okay, I understand. Then it's probably not a very good skill((( although I haven't tried it. As I understand it, blood is an attack, and tears are defense. As far as I understand, all skills, whether magical or physical, are defensive (tears) or offensive (blood).

To be honest, it would be better if this skill worked like in Heroes of Might and Magic IV, i.e., one unit takes damage instead of another.

but on the other hand, if I understand correctly, if the target takes damage from all units, then you only need to heal one unit!!! The damage is reduced by 33%. You can apply regeneration to this unit. By the way, regeneration is a very good thing)) it lasts for 5 turns))) slightly off-topic, but the cyclops impressed me))) they die on the next turn)) I tried for a long time to kill them without losses)))

Added after 54 seconds
It's interesting how vampirism works))) the archer also replenishes his HP.

You can read about effective tactics for using "Sacrifice" here :).

"Unholy Word" has a very, very weak effect :(. However, increasing Blood reputation spells by 20% or more is a good bonus for the first level, compared to 2-3% for Necromancy at the first level of Tears reputation. That's why I recommend developing the Blood path for a Necropolis mage hero in single-player games and campaigns.

"Unholy Word" has a very weak effect.

I haven't tried it yet, but dealing over 700 damage to all enemy creatures (and this number will increase as magic attack increases) is pretty good! The feeling is a bit underwhelming, but still decent; you can practically play without losing and without resurrecting the hero's units. But as for Tears... sacrificing in 2 turns is a bit too little. Although, I haven't played and used it yet. I'll play through the campaign twice, once with Tears and once with Blood. I have a question... can you gain reputation in the first map? Because I don't have time to gain Blood reputation and only get it on the second map.

Sometimes it even shows 2000. But for some reason, in practice, the damage to creatures with a strength of 300 is only :(. Try "Sacrifice" first, and then draw your conclusions ;). And "Drain," by the way, deals about 50% damage and works very well.

well, for now, I've maxed out my skills in blood magic)). I'll go down this path and then, for comparison, I'll max out my skills in tears... But in the topic you mentioned... there's more theory than practice... by the time you cast all that, your troops will be destroyed))). The game starts right away, and you need to destroy the enemy right away. Whoever does it first wins... and while you're summoning elementals, giving stone skin, etc., your troops will be killed. Besides, I think that each battle is unique in itself, and you can't write a rule on how to fight!!! For example, in Heroes 5, when playing duels with small troops, the main thing is which hero goes first. If it's a mage, then he casts, for example, meteor shower, and in 50% of cases, with incorrect troop placement, the game ends!!! Perhaps sacrificing is effective in long battles, but in the average scenario, all battles last 2-3 turns, or even less.

I consider sacrificing a unit to be borderline cheating. If it weren't for the 2-turn cooldown, but rather a 5-turn cooldown, we could be talking about another ban for Necropolis in tournaments. The situation is also saved by the fact that it's quite difficult to obtain a sacrifice on a regular map, as it requires a lot of reputation, so I think most players would prefer to go for Blood.