What is This Used For "Splinter of Darkness"
 

I got a Magic Recipe for Splinter of Darkness and created one only to find out that pretty much all stats are for the undead in your army.

+10 attack of Black Knights
Black Knights always counter attack
No Ghosts/Cursed Ghost on the battlefield can increase their numbers higher than their starting amount

As far as I know I am getting close to being finished with the game I have only 2 islands at the bottom of the map unexplored and I have not seen any undead units for sale. Which they are the main antagonist for this game so I am guessing that is why you can not use them like previous games. So is this just another stupid item that they forgot to take out of their beta game before release or is this actually used in the future on a quest?

Thanks for any insight someone can give on this

I would like to know this, too. I am disappointed we can't field an undead army if we want to... I've gone by too many empty ghost ships. A neat mod would be one that populated those ships with undead to buy. I've been drooling over the new undead pirate with that treasure digging ability and want to buy some. I miss my treasure dragon.

Yeah, unfortunately you can't buy undead troops I don't understand why (it must be something related to the story but it makes no sense gameplay-wise). I created that artefact only to distroy it and get cristals or runes.

What? You can't buy undead? :) So no more Stone Skin and Target on Cursed Ghost for me I guess.

You have to admit it would be a little weird for Olaf to go around trying to extinguish the Undead with an Undead army. It must be story related... but I will miss my ghosts and my vampires :( . On the bright side, all undead units except zombies and melee skeletons are overpowered so this will help create a harder challange. :)

are they really overpowered? the fact they were immune to most healing effects I'd say always made them a bit underpowered? although with a few key exceptions like cursed ghosts.

Black Knights and Evlin are all you'll ever NEED for undead.

Also, speaking of undead, I run the All Races Mod for my Soothsayer and fielded an undead army for a while. For some weird reason, I kept recruiting Decaying Zombies for free after each battle. I think it was the Necromancer, but it has no abilities that could do that.

What's interesting is the existence of this ability. If we weren't meant to have undead, then why does one of them have the ability to recruit zombies? CPU can't use that at all.

it would, but this is a game, not reality, and since it's a fantasy game what is or is not weird is of less importance in my opinion. if it helps gameplay, then it's good and playing the undead is fun and quite different. in this regard CW and AP are clearly better.

Wouldn't be that weird at all, imo. Lots of examples of evil powers, good users. Take Hellboy, for example, or even Riku from Kingdom Hearts. How different is Necromancy from returning the dead from Valhalla?

Well, they are on the way to Valhalla, not there yet. :) Takes a while for the soul to reach there apparently. This idea also featured in the movie Apocalypto by Mel Gibson, when the dudes that knew they were going to die wished each other "swift journey". The cult of Christianity even to this day has similar ideas about the soul first being judged before it reaches either Hell or Heaven. Of course, as fellow Mandea pointed out, this is just a fantasy game so I;m not saying anything is wrong with these things.

Just what I think about undead..(well, of course not overpowered in the sense that Rune Mages or Droids are overpowered - some units are really totally broken)

Necromancers have splash attack with curse effect, high initiative, high attack and defense. They have plague ability which is very powerful and can summon some cannon fodder from corpses. They also get you free Zombies which you can use as cannon fodder in battles.

Ghosts and Cursed Ghosts with their 50% phisical resistance and ability to raise their numbers are simply "enough said".
Vampires and Ancient Vampires, as in all games in existence, have good stats, ressurect themselves and again, "enough said"

Skeleton Archers is high damage and low leadership, and is simply better then other low lvl archers.

Death Knights are just awesome unit. You can't compare it to his "good" counterpart Knight.
Bone Dragons are good like all dragons nothing to say here, probably easiest to ressurect with eviln; Deals poison damage which is good vs some other good units which are phisical or fire resistant.

Cursed Ghosts add troops to themselves too quickly, though. It's pretty much guaranteed you'll lose control.

Also, Undead have a slight disadvantage versus demons, and an even bigger disadvantage against themselves. There are also spells and effects specifically designed to destroy them. However, there is very little chance of seeing these things actually used against you, especially since you're not supposed to have undead in this game in the first place.

...Which is a much better event then you might think :D (game considers them enemy and their leadership increases your rage skills more quickly.)

Having fun with this game but no undead is knock against it in my opinion. I just don't think limiting entire races should be part of the game. You always got to choose what you wanted to bring with you and play the renegade if it was fun for you.

But no undead or lizardmen... that's a significant part of what the game has to offer, imo. Are they just holding back to make a Crossworlds-like version of WoTN? I hope they do, because I want it ALL. All the spells, all the units... bwa hahaha. Plus I have all these points in those abilities which decrease intolerance and raise morale. I took all those diversity classes for what?!

And I know I can mod it in, but it's just not the same for me as when it's woven into the game naturally. Having said that, a mod to put a selection undead into various ghost ships would be cool. Not all of them in every one, but rather like the other dwellings you could slowly put together an army based on each ship you clear.

Edit: Oops, you can get demons :)

Say what? I can't get Archdemons? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

To be frank though, with all the extra damage buffs we have (Viking Berserker skill chance to 2X dmg, Absolute Rage skill buff attack rating and critical damage), I can't imagine how insane the Black Knight would have been.....

You can get demons, I'm not sure why he said that. I've already found An archdemon for sale, and plenty of others.

My question: Can you get Bone Dragons from Call Colossus?

I know I got one from the Rekross shield, so you can probably get some using the Call Colossus scroll.

I think there might be a bug with the ghost ships. Most of them only offer spell scrolls after you cleared them, which seems odd. there is one (on Fastland, I think) which also has a few artifacts but no undeads on sale, which is unlike any previous game. I've also never gotten undead troops from graves.

Also seems like they removed the Necro Call spell from the game, at least I've never found one. But with all those undead-centric artifacts (including the 3 you're guaranteed to get from that quest) it seems odd that they would intentionally keep you from using any undead troops.

Splinter of Darkness is one of the most over-powered items of the game, if there was undead troops that could be recruited... It makes your black knights retaliate endlessly. Send your black knight forward, let enemy hit him, his defense, attack, crit increases everytime he is attacked + he will retaliate to every attack, and at the end put an evlyn on a corpse restoring your black knight to full+, rinse and repeat for every battle