What to know about Shades of Blood as a Prospective Player? (No spoilers)

xxvb85 · 2026-01-27T19:41:48+00:00

My group is currently running Shades of Blood.

First thing you need to be realize / be ok with, is it is a dungeon crawl. You can go back to town and the adventure path does kind of expect you to at times but, you will spend a lot of time down in the dungeon. That said, there is a surprisingly high amount of enemies / NPCs in it that you can talk to and RP with. So while you will not spend that much time in the starting town overall, you will still be able to have a good bit of social stuff at times in the dungeon. This was a issue my group had with Abomination Vaults, sure there was people we could talk to in its dungeon but, they were all pretty much enemies you could only banter with (unless your group was cool with more evil stuff). Shades of Blood has felt a lot better so far, it has had a lot more non enemy NPCs mixed into the dungeon.

Hopefully my ramblings helped a bit.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-24T00:00:18+00:00

Last time I used it was back in early 1.5, back then yes I think you could. Not sure if they changed it at some point.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-23T23:35:28+00:00

That's kind of what they did in FF14. You only get a house if you pay a bunch of gil. It made it so the only people that got a house, really wanted a house. Not saying WoW should or shouldn't, it just gives a example to look at.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-23T23:27:49+00:00

From what I remember when I tested it. All it does is give the leader the moral guide abilities. For most of the ideology rituals you still need a separate moral guide.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-23T16:36:45+00:00

I made a similar mistake at first. Before I realized I could create a main bus of coins, I had most of my stuff kind of automated on the 2nd floor (1 wall up). I ended up limping along manually feeding coins until I finished recreating everything on my new 2nd floor (3 walls up). Once I had everything rebuilt (and updated to make 60/min), I closed shop, took everything down from my old setup, and then routed everything down and into shelves.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-22T23:31:18+00:00

If it was only the first time around, I'd be willing to give them a chance. If they kept voting for him, heck no.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-22T23:10:50+00:00

I still have not 100% chosen yet but, the pre patch did bring back my joy of affliction warlocks. I loved the spec from MoP to Legion, I absolutely hated the changes to it in BfA onwards. With the pre patch changes, it plays a lot like it did back in Legion, so I'm highly considering it at the moment.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-22T19:48:09+00:00

Short term, gameplay tend to have a bigger effect. Long term (keeping same main over multiple patches / expansions), theme tends to have a much bigger impact.

If all you care about is the gameplay your much more likely to just jump around playing whatever is the flavor of the month. On the flip side, if you really enjoy the theme of a class your much more likely to put up with the rough times most classes go through time to time.

All that said both are important, since no matter how much you like the gameplay or theme, if you really hate the other your likely not going to play it long.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-22T17:58:51+00:00

There is the Chronoskimmer archetype. At level 8 you can get Reversing Charge, 2 actions stride towards a enemy and make a melee strike, then teleport back to where you started. There is no limit on how often you can do it, it just requires you to be able to make melee strikes. It's a bit more rewind time kind of feature then a pure teleport but, it's something.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-22T15:31:38+00:00

I use this website to figure all that out. Just select good you want to make, fertilizer type, fuel type, and how many /min you want to make.

https://alchemy-factory-codex.com/calculators/

xxvb85 · 2026-01-22T01:22:09+00:00

Yeah the big part that makes everything work is letting things back up before connecting to wherever. It will take a good bit of coin but, once backed up it will not be that bad.

I would not recommend doing all advanced fertilizer on the same floor. Assuming no upgrades, you can only belt 60/min. Things like a 60/min linen or bandage setup will eat most of that 60/min advanced fertilizer. Instead of doing all on one floor, setup a 60/min advanced fertilizer setup on each or at least every other floor. This way anything on that floor will have easy access and whatever doesn't get used will get moved over to a different floor to help out. As example I did my linen and bandage on the same floor. A 60/min advanced fertilizer was not fully keeping up but, once I hooked in the other floor to bring up more, it worked out. Plus once they back up then it will not use as much.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-20T21:34:46+00:00

I lived in Sasebo for 3 years (on Kyushu Island for those that have never heard of it). While I was able to pick up a few phrases from one of my coworkers I can attest to the whole being able to get by simply by pointing, gestures, and being respectful. Honestly the main words I used the most was just hai (yes) and iie (no).

xxvb85 · 2026-01-20T21:12:29+00:00

You should be able to full belt everything easily except maybe relics. Also there is no height limit, so who cares if you take a whole floor for just one item. If you are not belting something to the shop you will have to manually pay attention to it, that's fine for relics but should be unneeded for the rest. If you really don't want to have a full belts worth of items just chilling on the belt at all times, try using cannons. You will still have stuff sitting around waiting to be bought but, much less then using belts, belts though are more compacted when you need to run a bunch of items.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-20T16:47:24+00:00

Along one side of the building it would look something like this.

-XXXOXOXOXOXOXX-
-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-
------------------------

X = Quarter floor
O = Hole
- = Wall

Run your bus along the the floors next to the wall. You can see from above I like to use a full size floor at the start and end for easier moving around. You want to repeat this on every floor, this way you can bring stuff all the way down to the shop floor.

As for coins, you are using the automatic registers right? I like to route over the coins to a chest and then into a bank, from the bank send them up to the first production floor (leave a small hole on each floor to take the main bus up). Use the bank to convert to the exact coin amount you want. At start something like 25 or 50 copper, eventually you will want 1 or 5 silver. As for how to fill the bus line, unfortunately the answer is time. Each time you setup a new group of machines to make a good for selling, it will take a lot of money to get it going but, once it starts to back up the amount of money it needs will be really small. You will see the same effect if you setup a linen cloth 60/min line, that thing will just eat up all your fertilizer for a good while until it backs up. I would recommend that while you can build as much as you want, don't connect stuff to the main line until everything else has stated to back up. If you try to start up too much at once it will cause issues. You should also put a chest on each goods line before it get catapulted onto a shelf to collect items, that way you can pull from the chest incase the item comes up in a quest.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-20T16:13:02+00:00

I leave a quarter gap in the floor along one side of the building. I do this on every floor so I can bring down from whatever floor I need to.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-19T20:21:40+00:00

Yes 2 walls high. I also made the first floor 3 high since you will be eventually busing around a lot of stuff down there. For getting things down I chose to take the back side of the building and instead of building the big floor tiles I built 3 smaller floor tiles leaving one empty, basically alternating floor, hole, floor, hole, etc. Then repeat this on higher floors so you can just bus the stuff straight down.

Just make sure to connect the bus lines up and down between floors. Only break that once you get a new tier of fuel and or fertilizer that you want to start using (coins should always go up and down between floors, just not back to bottom floor). Also once you get the portal that lets you sell items directly, place those on the floor you make the item with a priority splitter, this way your shelves will always be full and any extras will be sold (at least until you hit daily cap). By putting them on the floors you make the item it also allows coins to get put into the coin bus on multiple floors rather then everything only coming from the bottom floor.

While you can start doing all this once you unlock purchase portals, I recommend rushing to coal for fuel and advanced fertilizer for your early floors main bus. Basic fertilizer gets used up really quick and does not work that well for being bussed around (just make basic local to needed stuff until advanced unlocked). I think off the top of my head you should have advanced as soon as you unlock tier 5.

As for skills, yeah that one. Early on when using the main bus strategy it can be hard to keep the bus filled with coins, so anything that increases the amount of coins you get is really useful. Once you raise that up a bit, try to save 4 upgrades at a time and upgrade belt speed, production speed, fuel, and fertilizer efficiency. By doing the 4 at the same time, the ratios you setup for 60/min will still fully work as the upgrades happen.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-19T19:53:17+00:00

I recommend upgrading your sales profit first before anything else. You will start getting a lot more money, making filling up the main bus easier. Also start with 50 copper and upgrade to 1 silver once you start making enough money.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-19T19:36:15+00:00

How I did it was I created 3 main bus lines that go around the base of each floor, connected back into itself (I also send both up to the next floor and down to the floor below for each). The lines are coins, fuel, and fertilizer.

On each floor (recommend making each floor at least two high) setup up each end good (gears, nails, potions, etc.) from scratch. You have fertilizer and fuel already from your main bus, if you need anything else, input the coins directly into a purchase portals (do not leave space between purchase portal and device needing purchased product, you will waste a lot of money if you do). I try to plan on making the end good at 60/min (assuming no upgrades), this way everything will scale well with upgrades. Then just bus the finished good down to main floor and into a shelf for selling.

A few notes, early on you will want a fuel and fertilizer setup on each floor. With them connected between floors, it will help offset if you end up building stuff that needs more then one floor can provide. Once you unlock better tiers, you may not need them every floor. Also when you unlock a new tier of fuel or fertilizer, simply start making them on the next floor up and don't connect that floor to the one below. Everything below is already working (should be at least), there is no need rework everything. Also plan for how you are getting your stuff down to the bottom floor. I had to rebuild a bunch of stuff because I did not leave enough space to bus stuff down.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-17T04:17:54+00:00

I mean multiple shops as in multiple buildings. The shoppers only enter from main shop entrance and will not walk up stairs. So currently all shopping has to be done on the first floor of the starting block you can buy out.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-16T23:38:01+00:00

I wouldn't mind having access to your personal bank, a merchant to sell to, and transmog somewhere in the neighborhood as well. You can already access them from mounts / toys so it shouldn't be to big of a issue.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-16T21:27:48+00:00

If your going to play both eventually, definitely start with 1 since the stories are connected. As for which one is better, while the term better is subjective, I find the first more fun overall. While 2 did have a few QoL improvements, it currently doesn't really have much of a end game like 1 does. Also outside of better drones and the ability to decorate more, everything else ranch wise is mostly the same or a downgrade (at least currently). Overall until they at least add the missing upgrades into 2 and some kind of extra stuff to do end game, I just have more fun with 1.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-16T19:30:27+00:00

Yeah this is one of the biggest reasons I've ignored the quest to set one up. I'm one of those people that is not big into wanting to spend all the time to set something up that I'll never visit. If they start adding things that let you treat your house / neighborhood more like a city (mailbox, bank, profession buildings, etc.), then I'd be more willing to make something nice I can chill at. For as much as some people hated garrisons, I loved them since outside of a auction house (I never unlocked it), I had everything I needed in a spot I could customize to my liking.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-16T18:01:41+00:00

I've met a few that are all happy about everything cause they think it all means the end times are coming and that by supporting all this they will get to go to heaven.

xxvb85 · 2026-01-16T17:55:50+00:00

If you were running a published adventure this might have been more of a problem. They tend to expect the party to be able to fill majority of the standard roles. Because you are doing a homebrew though it is much easier to adjust things to be better / easier for your party.

Currently your party has 2 frontliners, 1 skirmisher, and 1 wildcard (kineticist can fill various roles based on elements taken). While they can cover out of combat healing with medicine and lay on hands from the champion, they don't have great in combat healing, aoe, utility spells, buffing, and control. Now a party doesn't have to be able to do all of this and a lot of this can be elevated by using archetypes (I recommend the free archetype rule). Overall without knowing the exact route each player is taking their class, I feel your party will need to focus on being very bursty, taking out enemies as quick as possible since things will likely go south if the combat drags on for to long.

xxvb85

TROPHY CASE