Dominions 3: The Awakening/Magic/Magic Items & Forging

Magic Items & Forging
In the mysterious and magical world of Dominions hundreds of different magic items exist. Mages with sufficient skill can produce marvelous items of the forge if they have researched the recipes or blueprints for thoese items with the Construction school of magic. These items can then be equipped by all Commander units be it mages, warriors, Pretender Gods or void summons as long as they have approriate item slots.

Construction, Paths of Magic & Forging
The Construction school of magic is a special one as every second level (levels 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8) provide a new set of magic items for your mages to forge while rest of the levels provides a small number of other, mostly Earth, spells to be used in ritual use and battle.

The various blueprints for items do not show up individually in the research tree as there are hundred of different magic items. Instead there are five tiers of magic items. The tiers range from the level 0 (no research needed) trinkets to level 8 unique artifacts (only one of these items can exist at once).

These tiers do not affect the cost or skill needed to build an item, even if higher tiers offer more expensive units. For example, Level 6 in Construction opens blueprints for some very expensive items but it also allows you to construct some inexpensive items that do not require much magic skill.

Magic items are built using magic gems of approriate type.

All items have one or two Paths. These Paths affect three things: The type and power of mage needed and the gem cost of the item. For example a Death 2 mage can forge items that require 2 points (levels) in the Death Path to be forged, and these items cost 10 Death gems. Summed up, the more Path an item has the better mage it requires to be forged and the more it needs gems.

It should be noted that you need a mage of sufficient power to see what items you can forge. If you enter the construction menu with a Death 2 mage you can't see items of other Paths or of Death beyond level 4. Be sure to check with all your mages to ensure you can construct the most powerful item possible.

All mages can forge items withing their Path of Magic limits but some mages get a Forge Bonus that appears as a big hammer shaped icon. These mages get a gem discount when forging an item.

Forging an item always takes 1 turn of time, be it 5 gems costing Sword of Fire, a Water Bracelet or the artifact Forbidden Light.

All magic items count as magic items. This might sound obvious but there are spells that destroy non-magic armors and Ethereal creatures are hard to hit without magic items. Some troop equipment also counts as magical, notably ice weapons and armor.

Equipping magic items
Commander units with approriate item slots can equip a magic item. For example, a void summon with no humanoid head cannot equip a helmet because it doesn't have a helmet slot while an Ettin has two head slots and can equip two helmets. Some commanders have more than four hand slots, like Devatas and therefore can wield four single handed weapons or two two-handed weapons.

Any commander can pick a magic item from the item pool as long as he, she or it is in a province with a laboratory.

You can also switch items between commanders. So in some cases using fast, sneaky commanders as item "mules" can be a very good idea. The items worn by a commander show up as small commander tokens on the strategic view.