🧙🩸 How to Play Blood Mage – Tainted Grail: Conquest

Continuing our journey of how to play, today we’re going to talk about the Blood Mage. With this, you will hopefully feel more comfortable playing this class, as it can prove to be a little more challenging to certain players since some of his abilities can be a little hard to understand. Summoning minions, and promoting them costs Health, but don’t worry, I will try my best to help you understand how to play with the Blood Mage!

The Blood Mage – Basics

The Blood Mage offers his own health to be able to summon minions and have them aid him in battle. Every summoned minion is automatically activated and promoted at the start of each turn. When promoted to level 4, minions will be overcharged, and each minion will have a unique effect when overcharged, and they will disappear after that. So paying health for stuff is like the Berserker. Don’t be afraid of this. The auto promotion and activation is so good that its totally worth it.

Each time you pay health your Ultimate Ability also gets a charge and by activating your ultimate, you can instantly overcharge a minion. The more charges you have, the more powerful your overcharge will be. With four charges, you get a 100% magnitude effect, eight charges 200%, and 400% for 12 charges. So with the Blood Mage, you will need to be careful by using your health, and your main focus will be to use your minions and have them win battles for you.

The Deck

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Getting a working build might be tricky but you just have to choose if you want to concentrate on the Wyrm or the Abomination. Lets see what good cards are:

• Death Mask is the best Summoner Class armor shredder. For 5 turns each hit reduces the armor by 20. This is huge! Get it ASAP!
• If you cannot get Death Mask get an Acid Blood
• More Activations are always good, so get an Invocation, Clouds of Blood or Unstoppable Strength. These are the best activation cards you can get
• Sigils are in generell pretty harsh because they get “unequipped” on overcharging. But still an Overdose or Sign of the Rat are free and big damage boosts for the Wyrm and Abomination.
• To control the enemies you can also get a Hammerhead Sigil to stun them
• And as always get Tactic Mastery from the Man-At-Arms to redraw and cost reduce

Passives

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Passives do rely a little bit on Luck, but if we can choose we would take the following:

Starter Passives

• Bloody Stone start with a Golem
• Bloody Tentacle to start with an Abomination
• Bloddy X to start with the Wyrm

High Priority

• Haste auto activates the minion on summoning. By itself its ok, but in combination with “on activation” effects it will turn huge!
• Close Leash increases the damage by 100% for the first 4 turns of combat
• Power Siphon lets you start the combat with +2 Energy
• Group Power grants you +1 Energy at the start of the turn if 3 minions are alive
• If you focus on the Abomination then Squeezed Out is great, because the Abominations Overcharge will hit an additional time

Totally fine

• Nullification reduces the Armor of all enemies by 10 on Overcharge
• After every Overcharge gain an Energy next turn
• Sigil of the Deep auto promotes the Abomination on summoning
• Sigil of the Serpent auto promotes the Wyrm on summoning
• Sigil of the Wind auto promotes the Fae on summoning
• Vanity increases your Damage by 25% if there are at least 3 minions
• Blessed Death cost reduces 1 card in hand by 1 after overcharging
• Favorite Puppet auto activates the highest level minion. This will always be a Wyrm or Abomination
• Reinforcements lets you draw a summon card on overcharging a Golem
• Power Drip grants you an additional energy on overcharging a Fae

Bad ones

• Lifesaver increases the Max HP of all summons by 15
• Eternal Leash grants 15 Barrier for each summon
• Blood Essence heals all other minions fully on overcharging
• Low Reserves heals your health instead of paying health if you are below 25% max health
• Uncontrollable Growth increases the Max HP of all minions by 10%
• Sigil of the Stone auto promotes the Golem on summoning. This is bad, because we want to keep our Golem as long as possible to shield us.
• Full Cycle is worse than Blessed Death because you need 4 Overcharge in order to get 1 Energy
• Lust for Blood auto activates a minion if you are below 50% health
• Cluster Explosions deals 1 AOE Hit after Overcharging, but your main damage here does not come from the Blood Mage, so its not high damage
• Air Burst stuns all enemies on the 6th Overcharge
• Total Death deals 1 AOE Hit for 75% on minion death
• To the Last Drop gives you a Healing Mixture after every combat won
• Muscle Tissue grants you 10% damage on overcharging a Wyrm
• Poisonous Blessing transfers the reduced Armor from a Wyrm hit to your Blood Mage
• Blood Protection grants 5 Barrier on all allies on Golem Death
• Numbness grants you 1 Armor while you offer HP

At the time of writing some new Passives have been added to the game. I still need to unlock them, but as soon as done, I’m going to update the list.

Masteries

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The Sigils for the Blood Mage are really dependent on your build. First lets a look of all them:

• Lesser Key of Binding – Remove all Sigils to hand with 0 cost after your minion Overcharges
• Lesser Key of Punishment – HP payed for Summon is tripled an dealt as an AOE
• Lesser Key of Chaining – Whenever a minion Overcharges you gain an Ultimate Charge per minion alive
• Greater Key of Binding – On minion kill or killed it will auto overcharge with 200% of the effect
• Greater Key of Punishment – Overcharge does not kill your minion. Instead it is resurrected on level 2
• Greater Key of Chaining – Increase the maximum amount of Ultimate Ability Charges to 16. 16 Charges will deal 1200% effect

It all depends on your Playstyle. The Greater Key of Punishment means that you do not have to resummon. But with Greater Key of Chaining you can go BOOM! If you have some good Sigils take Lesser Key of Binding. If you do not play Sigils go Lesser Key of Chaining.

Runestones

With our Runestones we have many options, but there are also some Runestones that are better than others. So lets have a look at those:

High Priority:

• Mythical Ger will grant us up to 25%/50%/75% extra damage for each weapon slot used
• Mythical Haegl will grant us up to 100%/200%/300% damage if fully charged
• Common Calc will help us to win normal battles on turn one through drawing 1/2/3 additional card which are cost reduced by 1. This means more activations over all.
• Mythical Ur will cost reduced every 5th/4th/3rd card played. Effectively this will grant us a free card each turn
• Mythical Yr lets our 5th/4th/3nd card being duplicated
• Common Ethel for increased Armor 10/17/30 is really good to keep you and your Golem alive.

Totally fine:

• Common Tir which would grant us up 50%/75%/100% damage for 1/2/3 turn(s)
• Rare Feoh are fine for damage increase 100%/175%/300% or card draw 1/2/3 with cost reduction by 1
• A rare Ken is a worse copy of an Mythical Yr. Rather take the Yr. But if its not available its okish to duplicate on every 15th/8th/5th card played
• Rare Peorth can be switched for a Common Tir instead of having 50%/80%/150% more damage which is decreasing each turn by 5%. But still fine if the fight does not take long.
• Common Gar to get more base damage 2/4/6 are fine at the start but later they fall off

Bad ones:

• Common Stan for increased Health 10/17/30 or the Armor Reduction are not necessary
• An Common Eolh are only good on Level 3, but how on earth to get that far. On Level 1 they grant you every third turn maximum damage or minimum damage on enemies afterwards every 2nd or every turn on level 3. Since with Patch 1.2 these have been downgraded from Rare to Common its easier to reach lvl 3, but still hard
• Rare Gweorth with Armor reduction or gain are not necessary
• Rare Gyfu is an extra Hit or Barrier but only on not playing many cards
• Rare Lor with 10%/18%/30% Lifesteal is totally unnecessary
• Common Man are always bad
• In order to make use of a rare Nyd you would have to not use all your Energy. I would rather play any card from our thin deck
• Rare Os are a really bad healing stone for 1%/2%/3% after a battle
• Mystical Ear will grant is energy on having many cards or keeping unused energy.
• Mystical Ing will give us a chance for Healing Mixtures or Candles
• Mystical Lagu and Mystical Thorn can be useful for more Barrier effects, but mostly not
• A Wyn is bad, because we are not able to Stun that much
• Mystical Beorc grant us an extra energy after every 3rd/2nd/1st turn. Since we mostly able to kill on turn 1, its not good
• Mystical Daeg grant or improves barrier

Items

Lets have a look at good or bad items for this class to use. Everything that help us draw if necessary is good:

High Priority

• Talking Skull lets you draw 3/4/5 cards and after 1 upgrade also cost reduced by 1. Really good defensive option to draw a Stun card if none was drawn. As offensive option you can push out so much damage if you want through the extra cards.
• Tome of Knowledge also lets you just draw 1/2/3 more cards. Extra Draw = More Damage
• Wooden Flute with “A Stunning Song” is the best option in the game. 50% chance to Stun on each and every enemy. Can be used once per Battle and acquired from the Pied Piper. Getting this song might take a while.
• Gnawed Foot as an Escape Option is a lifesaver

Totally fine

• Acid Bomb reduce enemy Armor is great to kill on turn 1 if damage is lacking a bit
• Acid Flask same as the Bomb but single target
• Berserker Potion can be used to get more damage if you can Stun with a Shield Slam or are sure you can kill on this turn
• Consecrated Oil to get 100% extra damage is fine
• Healing Mixture of course is fine
• If you play a thin deck then Wayfarer Leaves are fine on the endless mode. You can trade Healing Mixtures against these to get free energy.

Bad Items

• Meat is a way worse way to heal than a Healing Mixture
• Oversaturated Runestone to fill your Ultimate sound ok, but I with all the mentioned Passives and Masteries we have enough charges.
• Sharpening Stone is mathematical good, but i a little bit to random for my taste
• Smoke Bomb to decrease damage is totally unnecessary, but still nice for endless runs
• Throwing Knives are not necessary to deal damage
• Warding Lore to get Barrier is not needed

Battle Rotation

Battle Rotation is really easy. Get your Wyrm or Abomination out. Buff it with Overdose and/or Sign of the Rat. If you do not have these Sigils go for Tactic Mastery. If you have Death Mask go for it. Then murder them all

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