Book of Evil's drain ability - nearly impossible to use?

[camelotcrusade]

So I finally got Book of Evil and used it. It casts it's nifty spell and then it got hungry so the Drain ability appeared.

Here's what it says:

The book satiates itself, consuming a friendly troop,
whose total health does not exceed 174, thereby granting 2 spells.

Seriously? When are you ever going to carry around a troop with so few hit points? You'd literally have to plan for it. I've got 15 intellect and 15% spellpower boost to the book's stats right now... so obviously I don't run around with a stack that small.

It's so useless an ability he might as well not even have it. Is this how it worked before? Shouldn't he eat 174 hit points of creatures and then get his spells back rather than be limited by the maximum health of nearby stacks?

Just wondering if this is a bug or if I'm missing something.

[Numbereleventeen]

He can eat creature of health up to or equal to his own. So yours has 174 health.

Before the fix mine had like 1200 health. While that was less then my army stacks, it was more then my call of nature spell, so I could use that summon to refill him.

After the fix, yea he has too little health to be able to do that =/. Though he's a bit tougher then yours, mine has um ~250 hp atm (I got around 25 int), at chaos magic 2. I think if chaos magic 3 and creation skills scale him good, he might be able to catch up to say a lvl1 version of call of nature later in the game.

It does seem a bit low, would be nice if he could always at least eat a call of nature spells worth of creatures. Maybe someone can make a mod to bring up his health a bit, but keep his other stats as is to be balanced.

~1200 he was too tough and never died even tanking everything, but at ~250 (and lower defense) he got 1 shot by an enemy. So maybe ~500 is the sweet spot.

[camelotcrusade]

Interesting idea to have him eat a summon. I don't remember having to resort to that in previous KB games. I thought he used to take a bite out of your troops equal to his health, but whether or not that was true I am interested in seeing a change.

[Nevar]

A book can eat another book, I think. You'd get twice as many spells for your mana cost, but if the stats have been patched, I see no point in continuing to use them.