Death Realm

**Death believes in strength through numbers, controlling large hordes of efficient, low cost creatures or disposable undead and utilitizing spells that hinder enemy economy or kill enemy troops to ensure a smooth conquest.**

## **Strengths**

* Easy to gain lots of weak, but free undead units
* Summoning costs are low and the creatures are durable
* Strongest early game
* Powerful against Nature wizards
* Slows down enemy economy through curses to maintain the advantage obtained early on
* Second best at defending own cities
* Creatures have immunity to a wide range of spells and abilities
* Very good at destroying normal units with spells.

## **Weaknesses**

* Death creatures have low resistance
* Lacks defensive buffs almost entirely, can't protect its own units
* Combat spells very reliant on enemy resistance score
* Most combat spells are ineffective against other Death wizards
* Undead units can't heal naturally and are vulnerable to Life magic

## **Common**

### **1. Skeletons**

**Cost : 25 MP**

**Research : 160 RP**

**Creature : 3 melee, +1 To Hit, 4 defense, 3 resistance, 2 movement, 1 health, 7 figures, Missile Immunity, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Cannot heal**

*Skeletons are barely better than a unit of swordsmen, but their cost is extremely low so summoning them in larger numbers is trivial. Their main advantage is having no maintenance cost though, making them ideal for early garrisoning (remember, they do reduce unrest in Caster of Magic!) and expansion. Being immune to Missiles, they also provide an option against bow wielding enemies which can be abundant in the early game. Skeletons can be effective in combat in larger numbers especially when buffed by the also common Darkness spell, and their natural immunity to poison can make them a cost-effective way to fight the much more expensive Nagas or Giant Spiders, although don't expect TOO much. Having no maintenance makes this unit very popular, but overestimating that advantage can hurt when superior forces knock on the player's door asking where the REAL garrison was stationed. Due to their role as a weak, cheap, disposable unit very much like raised undead, Skelestons don't heal naturally, however all other Death realm summoned creatures now do as this downside is unaccaptable on the more expensive, non-disposable units.*

### **2. Darkness**

**Cost : 25 MP**

**Research : 320 RP**

**All Death creatures in this combat gain +1 attack, defense and resistance. All Life creatures lose -1 of those stats.**

*A common spell to buff all Death units is the perfect way to take advantage of the realm's “many low cost units” design. Life creatures are not very likely to appear in larger numbers making the second ability not particularly relevant but it can help Death overcome Life's “Resistance to All” and “Holy Bonus” abilities by making the creature granting them a little more vulnerable which was enough reason to keep the ability. Life still has more Death penalizing spells than one for already explained reasons so it feels fair to keep this one too.*

### **3. Black Sleep**

**Cost : 15 MP**

**Research : 320 RP**

**Target unit in combat must resist at -2 or fall asleep : cannot act and all attacks against it deal maximal damage. Sleeping units can't be raised as undead.**

*The lowest tier “save of die” spell in the game it doesn't outright kill the target but makes it “almost” dead by ensuring any attacks reaching it will deal enough damage to get the job done. Unfortunately this made converting medium and even relatively high end units to undead possible with only common spells and as testing showed that completely unbalanced the game, so sleeping units don't raise as undead as a consequence. Unfortunately the sleep spell destroys the nerves in the body which are required to animate it as undead, or if you can come up with a better explanation, use that :)*

### **4. Weakness**

**Cost : 7 MP**

**Research : 200 RP**

**Target unit in combat must resist at -7 or lose 3 attack strength. This spell ignores Death Immunity.**

*Compared to other attack reduction curses like shatter, losing only 3 is not that great but in exchange this will have a 100% chance of working on most lower tier units. Death being unable to cast anything useful against other Death wizards was a problem and this was selected to be one of the spells that can fix that problem. Most early Death units have low enough resistance and the loss of 3 attack is relevant for them making this quite useful for that situation.*

### **5. Cloak of Fear**

**Cost : 12 MP**

**Research : 260 RP**

**All figures attacking the enchanted unit must save at -3 or not attack.**

*To make this spell playable, only the save modifier had to be improved, as being able to avoid melee attacks is a quite good ability, even if situational. What makes this spell really useful is the effect isn't “one time” like Black Sleep or most similar spells, but triggers as many times as your unit gets attacked, so an entire army of low resistance units can be countered by a single casting of this spell as long as your unit is capable of killing them and only had problems surviving the encounter.*

### **6. Life Drain**

**Cost : 10 MP**

**Research : 320 RP**

**Target enemy unit in combat must resist at -5 or take undead creating damage for each point the resistance roll was failed by. If the spell was cast by a unit, it gains hit points equal to the damage.**

*Undead being the main theme of Death, enough spells need to exist in the realm that can create them. This resistance based direct damage spell is perfect for that role and didn't need major changes. Only the save modifier and cost needed an adjustment to ensure the damage dealt is similar to other common tier direct damage magic on average enemies, but being resistance based this enables player decision making as on higher resistance enemies normal damage spells like Fire Bolt work better while on lower resistance enemies Life Drain might even exceed Fire Bolt damage. Casting the spell no longer generates SP - while I liked the idea and even increased the amount at first, this proved to be entirely too abusable and most importantly, making the spell too good as it gave the player 3 effects for the price of one : damage, undead and SP. Now it only generates undead and damage which still makes it more effective than usual spells but as Death's theme is “get additional undead for (almost) free”, that's acceptable. It still heals the unit casting it and is Death realm's main way to keep their heroes alive lacking healing spells and buffs, especially as Life Drainx4 items can new be created early on and the Spell Charges option is available on any weapon type.*

### **7. Ghouls**

**Cost : 88 MP**

**Research : 380 RP**

**Creature : 5 melee, 4 Magical ranged (4 ammo), 3 defense, 6 resistance, 2 movement, 3 health, 4 figures, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Poison 1, Create Undead**

*Ghouls are another main source of undead for Death wizards. They've been converted to a ranged creature to ensure they actually function at this role : at melee, gaining the undead would usually cost the ghoul unit too much damage and would be inefficient due to low attack power - yet the attack power can't be high as it would make it possible to convert higher tier creatures that would completely unbalance the early game. At range, but with limited ammo and still putting itself at some risk (of being hit by enemy spells or ranged attacks) the Ghouls can function as a reliable but reasonably balanced source for Undead creation. Concerns have been raised that the unit is too powerful but testing showed this isn't the case and the high cost of the Ghoul unit itself ensures balance.Finally, the Poison on Ghouls ensures they are the third source of this ability in the early game, while weak, being a ranged creature typically used in larger groups by the AI, the Poison can still be effective enough achieve its design goals. Having no bonus To Hit the Ghouls benefit less than usual from being buffed, ensuring the undead creating powers won't escalate too much.*

### **8. Zombies (new)**

**Cost : 20 MP**

**Research : 320 RP**

**Combat Summon : 4 melee, +1 To Hit, -1 To Defend, 3 defense, 3 resistance, 1 movement, 3 health, 6 figures, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Create Undead**

*Zombies are the other combat spell to create undead, and also double as the realm's combat summoning spell. Zombies are very tough for a common creture as they have 3 hit points per figure, but their inherent To Defend penalty ensures they aren't overly difficult to kill and greatly reduces their potential when buffed which was high enough that a single, well buffed zombie past mid-game could convert entire enemy armies of high end normal units to undead. While very durable for a common creature, their slow movement speed makes them easy to avoid or kill at range. Do note they did not have Create Undead in Master of Magic, even though you'd expect them to. Poison Immunity was removed however, as that made zombies way too effective against Nagas, literally making this 20 mana spell able to convert more than one 73 mana overland creatures to your side at once.*

### **9. Wraith Form**

**Cost : 13/65 MP**

**Research : 440 RP**

**Enchanted unit gains Weapon Immunity, Non-corporeal and it can bypass Weapon Immunity as though it had magic weapons.**

*This spell was moved down from rare to common because Weapon Immunity stops being relevant as soon as Alchemist Guilds are built. Enabling movement on all terrain for a single unit is fair at this rarity as Water Walking has a similar effect. Non-Corporeal also gives immunity to Web and Crack's Call, which fits Death's “good against Nature” role without being overly relevant. Finally, the ability to bypass weapon immunity has been added to ensure there is a proper answer against that in every realm : Life, Death and Chaos have a buff to bypass it, while Nature is reliant on summoned creatures who can naturally do so and Sorcery has tools to ignore the armor bonus entirely. Of course this does not diminish the relevance of the ability as combat spellcasting in the early game is limited, merely makes sure a single unit with Weapon Immunity won't be a game winner all by itself. The spell used to enable ships to move onto land and carry units like Flying ships but this ability has been proven to be too powerful this early in the game unfortunately - unlike the Flight spell that requires a major investment in research, this is a common spell that's available at the beginning of the game. As a consequence movement type stacking rules had to be altered to make sure Sailing takes priority and ghost ships don't carry arrmies onto land. In early phases of development this also granted Poison Immunity for flavor but once the importance of the Poision mechanic was realized, this had to be removed as well.*

### **10. Mana Leak**

**Cost : 20 MP**

**Research : 480 RP**

**All enemy caster units in combat lose 5 Mp each turn, and all units with magical ranged attacks lose 1 ammo. All enemy wizards lose 5 mana crystals per turn.**

*Massively reducing the efficiency of magicians and magical ranged units, this spell ensures Magicians while extremely good, aren't always the best choice for your garrison. While a bit too good for a common, it has low relevance in the early game as magical ranged units are usually midgame or later, and this rarity ensures it'll be part of the game more often.*

## **Uncommon**

### **1. Blood Lust (new)**

**Cost : 50 MP**

**Research : 640 RP**

**Enchanted unit is undead. Enchanted unit deals double melee damage against normal units.**

*This new spell contains the fun parts of Black Channels and Berserk while making sure it suffers from none of its problems. Limiting to overland only ensures the player can't use it to grant immunities to units on the fly and also makes sure players don't end up with permanently undead units for such a temporal benefit (as undead is not a combat effect, it remains on the unit forever), nor can they cast the spell directly prior to attacking which the AI isn't capable of doing either. The spell no longer reduces defense as that would be too much of a penalty for a permanent enchantment, but the double damage only applies against normal units where its powerful but doesn't threaten the design of magical creatures being superior. The spell can be used on fantastic units though, so making Undead bloodthirsty regenerating werewolves that do double damage on regular troops becomes possible, as well as the original “undead trolls” strategy allowed by Black Channels. While not obvious, Heroes are normal units as well, so this spell gives Death wizards a way to counter heroes, and punishes careless human players who think their hero can mow down anything in their way without even looking at them - yet it only takes minimal effort to avoid engaging the bloodlusted units in melee in most cases to avoid that outcome so it still allows players who know what they're doing to dominate the game with heroes as intended.*

*Completely worthless in the original game's 1.31 version due to the dysfunctional diplomacy system, this spell would be brutally overpowered now that the system works. Turning all other players into fighting an eternal war against each other while you sit back and watch is just too beneficial to be allowed to remain in the game, especially now that the AI does put proper effort into their wars and will lose a lot of troops and resources doing that.*

### **2. Syphon Life (new)**

**Cost : 30 MP**

**Research : 1280 RP**

**Target enemy unit in combat must resist at -11 or take undead creating damage for each point the resistance roll was failed by. If the spell was cast by a unit, it gains hit points equal to the damage.**

*This is Life Drain at uncommon. While I usually prefer to avoid redundant spells like this, this spell was added to ensure undead creation stays relevant for the whole game and Death has a stronger spell to use for this role than the commons. The high save penalty enables this to do damage to more resistant targets Life Drain can't expect to hurt, but converting them to undead will still require multiple castings of the spell which introduces a reasonable mana cost of doing so (while still enabling the Death player to obtain the units without spending overland skill on summoning them). However it doesn't make Life Drain obsolete as Life Drain remains more cost-effective on low resistance targets.*

### **3. Reaper Slash (new)**

**Cost : 32 MP**

**Research : 1280 RP**

**Perform a strength 42 attack on target unit in combat. This counts as a poison type attack.**

*Death needed to have at least one damage spell that isn't resistance based - high resistance races are a thing. The spell also ensures Poison Immunity remains a relevant ability in the mid and late game where most cretures causing Poison damage are obsolete. It also means the spell can't be used to easily get around the “Resistance to All” bonus from Unicorns or Guardian Spirits by killing the creature using direct damage. The spell also makes sure Death wizards will be a threat to Charmed heroes through spellcasting, while enough armor and healing magic can cancel out the damage as usual enabling hero strategies to function.*

### **4. Possession**

**Cost : 35 MP**

**Research : 1280 RP**

**If target normal unit fails to resist at -3 during combat, you control it. (this spell can't be dispelled)**

*This spell serves well in the role of Death being strong against Normal units, and makes using Fantastic units to avoid its greatest threat a viable strategy. Save modifier is higher than Black Sleep to ensure this is perceived as the higher tier “save or die” spell it is meant to be. As control changing spells are a stronger version of “save or die” spells than outright killing the unit, the “bug” of being unable to properly dispel these was kept as a feature.*

### **5. Lycanthropy**

**Cost : 105 MP**

**Research : 420 RP**

**Target normal unit turns into Werewolves : 6 melee, +2 To Hit, 3 defense, 4 resistance, 3 movement, 5 health, 6 figures, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Weapon Immunity, Regeneration 0.**

*Lycanthropy was given the role of being Death's “rush uncommon” creature that can be researched fairly quickly through the guaranteed turn 1 research feature. Originally too powerful, careful attention was paid to making sure this unit becomes balanced. They no longer retain the adamantium, mithril or magical weapons from the original unit to reduce the luck factor and power level, instead their natural To Hit chance was raised to ensure they're as good as if they still had the magical weapons. Defense was kept low but increased from the original 1 to 3 which makes them still take a lot of damage in combat but not so much that their huge pool of hit points becomes irrelevant. Regeneration is of course the main strength of this unit, but comes at a bonus health gain of 0, as even 1 would mean the 30 effective health of the wolves turns into 55 which would double the combat potential of the unit - the main unbalancing factor was that this unit was far too efficient even when used alone in stacks of one, which allowed expanding in many directions at once and protecting conquered cities with ease. Removal of Poison Immunity made sure the Werewolf is no longer unreasonably powerful against Nagas and Ghouls, those very commonly faced creatures in the early game, and lack of Illusion Immunity ensures the creature isn't a generic answer to everything and is only strong against Nature, Chaos and Death wizards, while Sorcery and Life can destroy them despite the regeneration thanks to Confusion and Exorcise. Removal of Death Immunity instead was considered which would have made them weak to death wizards instead of Sorcery, but doing so would have introduced the issue of being able to create undead werewolves by raising them directly from the enemy army, which, due to their regeneration ability, is definitely undesired and would mean Death AI wizards basically counter themselves by providing their enemy with undead werewolf troops that, being undead, gain the Death Immunity ability and thus will defeat the AI wizard who summoned them. That said this Sorcery weakness can be overcomed by researching the Blood Lust spell which grants Illusion Immunity but doing that delays the expansion and snowballing as well as increases the total cost of one such unit by a relevant amount. Natural Weapon Immunity also makes this unit a perfect candidate for this early game role.*

### **6. Drain Power**

**Cost : 100 MP**

**Research : 960 RP**

**Target wizard loses 180 mana crystals and an additional 3% of their mana reserve. You gain SP equal to this amount.**

*The original spell only drained mana which made it a net negative to use : you spent your mana AND your overland casting capacity to make the enemy player lose mana only. This and the fact lowering the resources of one player at the cost of yours isn't very good strategy when multiple opponents exist, made me change this spell to give the player the mana drained. However I didn't want to risk the spell becoming a source of free mana crystals either so this drained amount was transferred as SP. Percentage effect was added to make this spell also useful in the late game. This spell can give a taste of what it means to be on bad terms with a Death wizard to players early on, as losing mana crystals in large quantities in the midgame can be painful. To make sure it isn't crippling though, the AI will not prioritize researching this spell too high and it won't usually come into play before the player can deal with it. Still, paying attention to the Personality of Death wizards is extremely important as a Maniacal or other curse trigger happy wizard can seriously ruin one's day by spamming the spell. In that case forming a treaty or eliminating them in a rapid war can become necessary.*

### **7. Black Prayer**

**Cost : 35 MP**

**Research : 1600 RP**

**All enemy units in combat lose 1 attack, 1 defense and 2 resistance.**

*Nowhere near as good as Prayer for military potential, this spell mainly functions to enable resistance based spells to work better and affect more targets at the cost of spending one turn (and skill and mana) for that. This is a key spell to playing Death but also has great combo potential with other realms who have their own resistance based spells but don't specialize in them. The resistance stat on late game units has been designed considering the existence of this spell to ensure they have the intended amount of vulnerability.*

### **8. Wall of Darkness**

**Cost : 30/90 MP**

**Research : 1280 RP**

**Ranged attacks can't be done from outside the wall to the inside.**

*One of the two spells that made Death good at defending cities. While the spell itself was fine, AI needed significant improvements to be able to recognize it. The idea to move this into Sorcery which might be more suitable was considered but I decided to keep it in Death to ensure the combo potential between the two realms and also because Sorcery already has plenty of ways to counter magical ranged attacks. Wall of Darkness combined with Mana Leak can guarantee enemy ranged attacks won't get used even after the units walk inside the wall, so keeping the two spells in the same realm was important.*

### **9. Night Stalker**

**Cost : 225 MP**

**Research : 1920 RP**

**Creature : 7 melee, +1 To Hit, 5 defense, 8 resistance, 3 movement, 13 health, 1 figure, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Weapon Immunity, Death Gaze -3.**

*While the idea of an invisible unit that attacks with instant death attacks is great and fitting the realm, the implementation left a lot to desire, in particular, the creature needed more hit points and defense to ensure they are able to withstand the retaliation from those few enemy figures that made their resistance rolls. Weapon Immunity was added for the same purpose and to fit among the other uncommon or better creatures in the realm who all have it. This is the only uncommon source of Invisibility, and thus it was considered to be moved to the rare tier but instead the creature's research cost and casting cost was raised from what I initially had in mind to ensure the time frame during which the early invisibility can be taken advantage of is limited and comes with a large sacrifice - producing this much RP instead of investing magical resources into mana and skill to summon creatures and expand is a big deal. 8 book guaranteed 1st turn research Night Stalkers are still a decent strategy, but no longer unreasonably powerful due to how slowly the strategy can start deploying them.*

### **10. Shadow Demon**

**Cost : 175 MP**

**Research : 2140 RP**

**Creature : 5 melee, 5 Magical Ranged +2 To Hit, 4 defense, 6 resistance, 2 movement, 5 health, 4 figures, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Weapon Immunity, Flying, Non-Corporeal, Regeneration 2, Plane Shift**

*An iconic creature that's probably the best uncommon summoning spell in Caster of Magic, Shadow Demons offer a lot of good abilities with mediocre stats but extreme strategic potential. Regeneration ensures they suffer no losses in most battles even from spells or ranged attacks while they fly outside of reach of melee enemies and shoot their large amount of ammo at their victims. Regeneration 2 then allows them to be relevant participants of melee combat despite their low defense and attack strength, although the potential here is limited by the turns used up in ranged combat and their slow movement speed. While almost entirely unkillable in the early and even some of the mid-game, their very high research cost and semi-high casting cost means they come late enough that this doesn't enable conquering the entire game using them, especially thanks to their slow movement speed, and their very low magic resistance ensures at least one realm - Life - can be more difficult to beat this way than the others who typically have no tools to permanently destroy a Shadow Demon before rare spells. Like in case of all regenerating creatures, of course you need to be winning the battles, so trying to save on costs and using them in smaller groups to expand faster is a very risky maneouver that can easily backfire. As the role of Planar Travel was completely redefined, the Plane Shift ability on this unit also had to be altered : now it only allows shifting planes if the player already opened up the other plane either by breaking their first tower or researching the Plane Shift spell.*

## **Rare**

### **1. Evil Presence**

**Cost : 180 MP**

**Research : 2500 RP**

**All religious buildings (including Oracle) in the target city no longer reduce unrest. All Barracks, Alchemist Guilds and War Colleges have no effect on units produced.**

*All of the Death rare curses suffered from the same problem, they were very powerful and unfun to play against when used by the AI, while offering very little the human player would really want to use, other than completely covering the enemy empire with them and winning by that resulting in having no resources at all to stay in the game - a difficult to achieve task as the AI stuggled against this and used Disenchant Area more and more. For this reason they have all been redesigned as well as the AI which is now willing to overlook a certain amount of curses depending on their personality before starting to use Disenchant Area.*

*On Evil Presence the chosen solution is to stop affecting magic power (the unfun part) and instead disable the military functions of the city : that is one effect even human players can use to their advantage and it can make Weapon Immunity relevant in the late game. Elimination of a major source of unrest removal makes the tax rate game mechanic, interracial unrest mechanic and spells that increase unrest more relevant.*

### **2. Drought**

**Cost : 150 MP**

**Research : 3000 RP**

**Reduces the maximal population of the target city by 6 and sets percetange production bonus to zero. If the city exceeds maximal population, it'll shrink by 120/turn. If cast on a neutral city, the garrisoning units will desert.**

*Reducing food is a problematic mechanic because without food, units can't be maintained, so Famine was making the game nearly unplayable in some cases. The human player mostly used this to reduce the enemy population by combining this with other curses to ensure the city can't even feed itself and shrinks, or to reduce productivity by forcing more people to be farmers instead of workes. So the new spell will produce those results directly, without relying on food production changes. It's fairly important to note cities don't shrink when exceeding their maximal population normally, only if the total food production is lower than the population, which made Famine especially hard to use. Removing percentage production bonus makes the spell have a more reliable effect as well compared to turning workers to farmers, while it can't cripple production rates so much the city becomes unable to build anything.*

### **3. Warp Node**

**Cost : 120 MP**

**Research : 4000 RP**

**Half the power produced by target node is transferred to the caster of Warp Node.**

*Total elimination of power was way too unfun (especially combined with the original Evil Presence erasing city power it could outright make players lose to having no magic power remaining at all) but this even added insult to injury by reducing power production below zero. To fix that the power reduction was halved and to make this a spell human players enjoy to cast, the effect of transferring that power was introduced.*

### **4. Dark Ritual**

**Cost : 150 MP**

**Research : 4000 RP**

**Triple the power production of religious buildings in the target city and increase unrest by 1.**

*This used to be a common spell but the effect was far too good for that as early doubling of power can lead into some serious snowballing especially when combined with the religious power retort. More importantly, reducing popolation growth early on, without even having the proper buildings built to have anything to double, was obviously not viable as a plan so having this spell as early as common tier was pointless.*

*Moving this into a rare spell slot allowed moving Wraith Form down to common. Power production was changed from double to triple because now only half of the city power is religious : Wizard's Guilds and Magic Markets are not affected. Population growth penalty was removed because as a rare spell there is no need for a large downside like that, but the unrest increase was kept for flavor.*

### **5. Cloud of Shadow**

**Cost : 200 MP**

**Research : 3500 RP**

**All combats taking place in enchanted friendly city start with Darkness, Terror, Black Prayer and Mana Leak already cast.**

*A rare spell that is limited to city defense only needs to do way more than casting Darkness (an effect you might not even have a use for if your garrison is living troops), so additional effects were added. This makes Cloud of Shadow a powerful defensive enchantment, second only to Sorcery's Flying Fortress and Spell Ward.*

### **6. Terror**

**Cost : 40 MP**

**Research : 4000 RP**

**All enemy units in combat must resist at -3 each turn or become unable to move for that turn. All enemy units lose -1 To Hit.**

*Initially a common, this too was moved up in rarity because a global spell making the enemy skip turns is either too powerful for a common or too useless, having horrible save modifiers. Loss of 1 Hit was added to ensure Death does have a spell at rare that can do something that doesn't rely on resistance and to make sure it remains useful even if the enemy is lucky on their resistance roll(s).*

### **7. Gate of Hades**

**Cost : 40 MP**

**Research : 4000 RP**

**All enemy figures in combat must resist at -1 at the end of each turn or take 1 point of irrecoverable damage. This spell ignores Death Immunity.**

*Death desperately needed more spells that are effective against other Death wizards, especially something to counter Shadow Demons. This seemed like the best candidate for that purpose because it's a somewhat situational spell that's very powerful when the time is right but often sees no play at all - now it's much more likely to find use every game. Spell was renamed to make the functional change more obvious and to have a spell name that has appropriate flavor for bypassing the immunity.*

### **8. Zombie Mastery**

**Cost : 800 MP**

**Research : 5000 RP**

**At end of combat, all dead normal units are transformed to zombies under your control.**

*An often underestimated spell that's frequently a game winner. Zombies themselves aren't particularly powerful, although with spell support, Darkness and/or other buffs they can be capable of killing enemy stacks, consequently transforming them to undead or more zombies, the real strength of this spell is economic potential. Enemy wizards will spend a lot of mana on killing all those zombies you received for free, which will result in them either running out of mana crystals or reducing their research and SP spending. Of course the military role shouldn't be underestimated either - investing effort into making sure the zombie armies win battles can cause a massive snowballing effect of converting enemy troops into yours in wide areas. Not as powerful for this role if the enemy already has rare or better spells and can wipe out zombies easily, but even in that case the economy role is a lot more significant than one would expect.*

### **9. Wraiths**

**Cost : 350 MP**

**Research : 4500 RP**

**Creature : 10 melee, +2 To Hit, 6 defense, 8 resistance, 5 movement, 8 health, 4 figures, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Weapon Immunity, Flying, Non-Corporeal, Life Steal -4**

*Wraiths are the only Rare creature in the realm but they are definitely powerful enough for that role. They are very fast and can regain a massive amount of hit points while doing massive amounts of damage thanks to the powerful Life Steal abilty, however as testing and adjusting ensured, they are also vulnerable enough that careless use of them can cause losing the unit, especially when engaging an enemy stack that has no low resistance units to feed on. On the other hand the Wraith can wipe out entire enemy stacks of lower resistance units alone, converting many of them to undead in the process with the help of Black Prayer reducing the resistances even further. Life Steal damage does need to exceed the fairly high melee damage of Wraiths, so using Darkness or other spells that make Wraiths deal more physical damage is not recommended if that's the player's goal and casting Black Prayer is especially important to make the undead.*

### **10. Wave of Despair (new)**

**Cost : 72 MP**

**Research : 5000 RP**

**Performs an Irrecoverable Cold attack with equal to (255/(2+enemy unit count)-10-target resistance) on all enemies. This attack ignores defense or conditional resistance modifiers. This spell is unaffected by casting cost modifiers.**

*Death needed a spell to deal with powerful high end units that typically have too much resistance to instantly kill (and enabling that would be far too unbalanced anyway), is more effective than the uncommon Reaper Slash (which simply does not do enough damage to kill something like an Archangel) but is balanced despite that large power. Death also had no area damage spells and although it needed to be worse at that than Chaos' Flame Strike, it defintely deserved to have one. So a “reversed flame strike” spell was designed which is more effective when cast on smaller groups of enemies and weaker on larger armies. The damage formula was adjusted a few time to reach a perfectly balanced version. The spell ignores Death Immunity which matters for intended targets like Archangels, but is affected by Cold Immunity so it won't be useful against Death creatures and gives this seldomly used damage type a new source. This spell is Death's answer to powerful heroes : the human player must use their heroes in a large enough army to ensure they survive, and using the “immortal” hero alone against larger AI armies for maximal snowballing will immediately be punished by this spell as soon as the AI reached the rare tier spells. Of course, heroes are meant to be a good strategy so this is not impossible to counter : other than the obvious solution of bringing another 8 units along, items with Inner Fire can provide the Cold Immunity needed to withstand this spell. Finally, the spell being unaffected by cost modifiers both ensures it remains as expensive to use as intended (being a fairly universal and powerful solution against medium and smaller armies with only the price being the deterring factor of overusing it) and also provides Death with another spell that isn't negatively affected by Divine Order.*

## **Very Rare**

### **1. Annihilate**

**Cost : 41 MP**

**Research : 15000 RP**

**All figures in the target unit in combat must resist at -5 or become irrecoverably dead. Normal units suffer an additional -2 save penalty. This spell ignores Death Immunity.**

*This is the ultimate save-or die spell expected to exist in the realm, having kept the very high save modifier of the original game, and further increased it on normal units, which this spell should be able to kill with a very high reliability. Cost of 41 is relevant being the lowest possible cost that won't make the spell available for Caster 40 units. Save modifier of -7 can make this a threat to heroes if the player is too careless and assumes the usual amount of 14-15 resistance will be sufficient. The resistance of very rare creatures has been carefully adjusted to have the intended interaction with this spell - a low or medium chance of killing them at most but some are entirely immune to it. It wouldn't be fair to kill 400-500 mana creatures with a single use of a combat spell. Many very rare Death spells were renamed simply because the original names were uninspired and not very expressive : Death Spell, Word of Death or Death Wish all basically only tell the tale they are spells that kill stuff. In fact, “Death Spell” is literally so generic it could refer to any spell in the Death realm. I wonder if these were even intended to be the final spell names or simply got stuck that way initially being a development codename.*

### **2. Massacre**

**Cost : 60 MP**

**Research : 15000 RP**

**All figures in all enemy units in combat must resist at -2 or die.**

*Not much to say here, this is expected to existing in Death Very Rare and the save modifier is reasonable so I had no reason to make changes.*

### **3. Final Wave**

**Cost : 1000 MP**

**Research : 18000 RP**

**All enemy normal units must resist or die.**

*The adjustments done to unit resistance globally made this spell quite worthwhile to cast so additional improvements were unnecessary. Casting cost was raised though as 500 mana for killing hundreds of units is far undercosted. Like Great Unsummoning, a diplomacy penalty was added, although it's not as harsh as one would expect from such large scale murder to ensure the spell is usually safe to cast if used in moderation.*

*A spell that reduces casting skill is unfun, extremely hard to properly balance due to the difference in human and AI resources as well as the non-linear nature of Casting Skill and goes against the philosophy of the mod that spellcasting, especially at this tier, should be dominating gameplay. For the same reason, spells that reduce enemy research efficiency were never added even though the idea was considered.*

### **4. Pestilence**

**Cost : 250 MP**

**Research : 9000 RP**

**Each turn if the population of enchanted city exceeds a D10, population is reduced by 1. Unrest is increased by 2.**

*Unlike the rare city curses, this very rare city curse serves the role of a game-winning spell and wasn't made any weaker. While the casting cost makes it somewhat time consuming to cast it on an entire enemy empire and the effect also takes time to shrink the city, this spell is capable of reducing an entire empire's gold and production output drastically, almost entirely denying them the ability to rely on producing and maintaining normal units. While it doesn't directly reduces magic power, the building maintenance on magical buildings can and will cause the player's economy to collapse given long enough time, meanwhile still allowing them to retaliate using their magical armies and spells and even obtain money from war to keep their economy alive long enough to eliminate the enemy and win the game. Reseach cost is low among very rares - due to the delayed nature of the effect it needs to be used as early as possible to be the most effective.*

### **5. Evil Omens**

**Cost : 1250 MP**

**Research : 15000 RP**

**All spells cast by other wizards costs 50% more.**

*This simple and elegant spell provides Death the global “everyone else is cursed” effect where it matters the most, spellcasting. The cost increase provides both an economic and strategic disadvantage to everyone else, without obstructing or denying their ability to still properly particpate in the spellcasting aspect of the game which would make things no longer fun. Originally this was an anti-life/nature spell but removing those realm specific spells is part of the design.*

### **6. Animate Dead**

**Cost : 50 MP**

**Research : 15000 RP**

**Raises a dead unit in combat as undead with the buff : Animated (+1 attack, hit, defense and weapon immunity). If the unit wasn't originally the caster's it disappears after combat and units that were already undead can't be targeted.**

*While the unit becoming undead makes this a bad idea to cast on a hero, ensuring Death doesn't get similar levels of hero support as Life, this spell works on fantastic creatures, even those immune to Death Magic if they were initially your own, allowing the Death wizard to use all their fantastic creatures twice before they truely die, or turn enemy units against their own army after killing them for the duration of the battle, both of which amazingly powerful effects suitable for a combat spell at this tier.*

### **7. Eternal Night**

**Cost : 800 MP**

**Research : 21000 RP**

**All combats are under the effect of the Darkness spell.**

**All enemy religious buildings produce halved power.**

**All non-Death enemy units lose 1 resistance.**

*The first and original effect is useful as it allows the Death wizard to play without requiring to spend their first combat turn on casting the Darkness spell which they most likely already have, this was nowhere near good enough for a spell of this tier. Halving enemy power was added then to provide a secondary, economy benefit which isn't very powerful but can be still relevant. Still being somewhat boring, finally the resistance reduction was added which is a huge benefit for any Death wizard and makes most of their spells more potent, escalating the combat relevance. Being an overland global resistance modifier, this spell also applies to Final Wave unlike any other, making wizards who invest enough picks to get both spells quite a lot more powerful.*

### **8. Death Knights**

**Cost : 420 MP**

**Research : 12000 RP**

**Creature : 12 melee, +3 To Hit, 9 defense, 10 resistance, 5 movement, 8 health, 4 figures, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Weapon Immunity, Flying, Non-Corporeal, Life Steal -5, Armor Piercing, First Strike, Supernatural**

*Similar to Wraiths but even more powerful, Death Knights offer the realm an excellect creature to carry out offensive maneuvers and finish off the remaining enemies in the military way. The creature is almost impossible to kill thanks to its decent armor and very powerful Life Steal, having the only weak point of suffering from extremely low magic resistance which can make it less optimal against Sorcery players, and gives a tiny sliver of hope to Nature players who can attempt to petrify the unit which is immune to all other forms of Nature magic. Non-corporeal was added to ensure using them is not a downgrade in any way from the Wraiths who already had the ability.*

### **9. Summon Demon (new)**

**Cost : 41/123 MP**

**Research : 6000 RP**

**Combat or Overland Creature : 14 melee, +1 To Hit, 5 defense, 7 resistance, 2 movement, 12 health, 1 figure, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Weapon Immunity, Missile Immunity, Flying, Caster 40 OR {Death Touch -4 and Life Steal -4}**

*Having the Summon Demon ability of Demon Lord in the game, one might wonder why this creature can't be summoned directly. This spell makes it possible and while it doesn't offer a powerful creature, it's extreme verstaility makes it great. Having all of Flight and Illusion and Missile Immunity, being able to combat summon this creature is a big deal, and there is a high chance it is literally free as it offers casting power equal to its own cost (minus one to ensure it can't summon more copies of itself). Unfortunately due to coding limitations combat summoning a Caster unit isn't always possible, in which cases (or when the die roll comes up unlucky) A Death Demon is summoned instead which has two powerful touch abilities. The true power in the Demon though lies in the fact it gives access to all rare and below combat spells from the realm, making it very valuable for players who picked fewer Death books and missed them - Death had no Caster creature in the game unlike all the other realms. Finally the creature can be summoned overland, being an excteption to the rule that summon spells can either be combat or overland but not both, where it offers a cheap, by this phase of the game spammable utility creature that can support the player's armies with significant spellcasting ability - the overland summoned Demons are always the Caster 40 version.*

### **10. Demon Lord**

**Cost : 666 MP (18 MP/Turn)**

**Research : 24000 RP**

**Creature : 25 melee, 20 magical ranged (8 ammo) +3 To Hit, 8 defense, 13 resistance, 4 movement, 35 health, 1 figure, Death Immunity, Cold Immunity, Illusion Immunity, Poison Immunity, Weapon Immunity, Missile Immunity, Flying, Summon Demon 3, Quick Casting, Supernatural, Life Steal -2, Primal Force.**

*The most expensive creature in the game, Demon Lords offer by far the most versatile and powerful very rare unit in terms of abilities, although in raw stats Nature and Chaos dominates. Quick Casting was added to ensure summoning demons doesn't deny the creature the ability to also attack, or that demons can be summoned in a timely fashion instead of waiting 3 full turns for them. Missile Immunity was also added as regular Demons have that ability. I added Doom Bolt spell at first but that was entirely too much, as a stack of Demon Lords could deal enough damage in one turn to wipe out up to 5-6 other very rare creatures. They also had more immunities added and had 10 armor, both of which had to be toned down as it made the creature almost impossible to hurt for the AI. It's still a very very powerful creature that can be expected to take down enemy cities or most armies with ease when used in smaller groups but it's now vulnerable enough that doing so might cost one of them against a fully prepared and powerful enemy. It works even better on the defense though, where it can utilize the summoning and ranged attack before enemies even get a turn to damage it using spells AND generate power for their owner through Primal Force in addition. The price? Well, unleashing multiples of these on the world will likely come with severe consequences, but that's something a Death wizard won't be worried about for sure, especially after winning the game and eliminating all rivals.*