How does item morale work?

[pigeon]

I'm really confused by item morale. I have one human item, one neutral item and two elven items equipped at the moment. My army has been made up of combinations of green/red/black dragons, inquisitors, archmages, evil beholders and royal snakes, and I just cleared out all of the undead lands.

Before I went into the undead lands most of my items had decent normal-good morale, except my neutral item which had poor morale. By the time I was finished with the undead lands all of my human and elven items had gone down to 0 at least once...

Why?! That entire time I had at least 2 human troops in my army, and I was fighting almost entirely undead units and dragons, with some elves thrown in. I even did a test when I got up to Karador. My army makeup was Red and Green Dragons, Inquisitors, Royal Snakes and Archmages, and when the battle was over the morale of all of my items had gone down!

I think item morale is either bugged or poorly implemented. Some of the suppression fights are ridiculously difficult for how often you have to do them...

[Dorkus]

every item has unique morale factors. search for the russian fan manual, and find the automatic english translation that a board member kindly made, for details.

[Eldritch]

I think item morale is either bugged or poorly implemented. Some of the suppression fights are ridiculously difficult for how often you have to do them...

Well my question is: Does the ridiculously difficult suppression battles actually "scale" in level and become even more ridiculously difficult the more you suppress them. This is my first playthrough and at one point I thought I was going to face the same battle I fought to upgrade the greater druids staff when its morale went zero but was confronted by endless legions of demonic forest creatures which reminded me of that south park episode. But that was the g. druid staffs "upgrade fight" and this was its "suppression fight. Will the NEXT supp. fight be even tougher or just the same old woodland critter christmas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodland_Critter_Christmas) ?

[billythegreat]

AFAIK the suppression fights remain the same. I suppressed elven crown 5 times till now and was the same battle over and over.

[Eldritch]

Well that's a relief. I get stronger and it doesn't and soon becomes nothing more than a nuisance. I dread the upcoming archmage staffs supp. fight though. It's just about to go zero and its upgrade fight was even worse than the druid staffs.

[pigeon]

The archmage staff actually was the specific artifact I was referring to when I mentioned the ridiculous difficulty of supressing some items...

I was a level 26 mage and the fight took a long time and sure wasn't easy. It took 2x Ice Snakes to destroy a single gremlin tower, and there were 6 of them plus a large starting army.

And by the way I'm more convinced than ever that there is something wrong with item morale. The morale of every one of my artifacts dropped like a stone while I was killing undead, and now I'm killing demons and all of their morale are slowly going up... Why would human/elf/neutral artifacts lose morale killing undead?! If all artifacts really have their own morale factors then it really should be officially documented. I tried to download the automatically translated russian fan manual but all the downloads timed out after a few seconds :(

[Paksenarrion]

I was able to download the translated russian fan manual last night, so maybe the downloads are working again. There is really a lot of good information in there.

Here is an example from manual:
-----
Staff of the Archimagus
Staff from the blue crystal shone from magic filling it.
Race: humans
Level: 5
Cost: 76’000 +5 intelligence,
+20 % of a loss the Lightning (+20 % of a loss to Archimagi)
(Moral=80, High)
Grows: never.
Falls: -2 in army of the hero there were archimagi.
Having reached outstanding successes in studying of magic art, the magician receives a crystal staff, a symbol of its high status and the big magic power. Such staff is very terrible weapon in hands of the magician, strengthening fighting spells and duration of imposed magic effects. Being not usual, but magic and obstinate enough staff, he does not like to battle. It turns out improvement from the Staff of the Adherent.
-----
So, I guess some living artifacts/weapons do not like fighting at all. So any fighting would led to a morale decrease.

[vicheron]

Geyser and Zerok's Underground Swords are very effective in taking down Gremlin towers.

[Paksenarrion]

Another example:
-----
Hammer of the King
The hammer once belonging to the king of dwarves.
Race: dwarves
Level: 4
Cost: 45’000 +4 attacks
-10 % of the requirement of leadership for gnomes. (See in addition)
(Moral=50, Normal)
Grows: +5 in army of the hero were only gnomes. +1 in army of the hero were both gnomes and beings of other races.
Falls: -4 in army of the hero there was no gnome. -10 in army of the enemy there were gnomes.
This hammer belonged Torn Digor - to the king of gnomes earlier. It has presented this hammer to you as a gift, as a sign on the respect. Gnomes well know this hammer, and willingly enter army of its owner. Shaped personally hands of one them dwarven kings, the hammer despises all other races, and prefers to go into battle with soldiers of the mountain people.
-----
So, if you do not fight with dwarves, I guess the item morale would go down.

Also, I noticed the Druid staff loses morale when anything of wood (Ent) are killed.

[pigeon]

Hmm, strangely the downloads still don't work for me. Roughly 50 kb will download, and then the download speed just asymptotes towards zero... :-\

And Vicheron, you said that Zerok's underground spikes are good at killing gremlin towers? My underground spikes just do a few hundred damage, not that helpful when up against gremlins with 6k+ health...

And, from the translated manual, about the archmage staff:
"Falls: -2 in army of the hero there were archimagi."

Does that mean the archmage staff only loses morale when there are archmages in your army?! If anything it should be the other way around....