Favour item analysis - What is worth your favour

To make some summary on this, it basically looks like Swift Anklet is the item of choice in most cases.

Amulet of teleportation comes close second and should be determined by map size.

Magical Coin Pouch may also be worthwhile in a long game.

Overall, most items are fairly weak compared to these big three.

Most of the assassin Favour items seem to be reasonably well balanced and helpful. The general items are woefully underpowered, often offering poor base stat increases and potentially useless skills.

Overall, the favour items need a little overhaul and balancing. It seems a little crazy that the best item (in comparison to the shop prices) is part of the first 5 favour items you can earn.

There are a few issues I have here.  The first is that you can't compare favour items once their "equivalent" stock item is in the 3000+ range.  This is because the favour item appears immediately, while items like Journeyman's Treads appears very late, almost in the artifact-level cost range.  That's a huge duration in the game when the favour item was granting benefit but the more costly item was not. 

Secondly, you have to remember that you cannot stack two of the same items.  This means favour items give you stacking that wouldn't normally be possible.  You cannot say that blood of the fallen is equal to two banded armours, because you cannot ever have two banded armours.  In fact, if you want to upgrade your health above what one banded armour offers, you have to throw out at least 1500 for a Nimoth's or 1750 for a Hauberk of Life.

The cheap early game items offer the best bang for your buck, but you have to remember that you're only allowed one of each, so if you want more than the scraps of stat they offer (even if it is at a very reasonable price) you have to stack more expensive items.  This is the real benefit of some of those favour items, particularly blood of the fallen, giving you a way to stack early on that would not normally be available.

I'd also disagree with your statement on symbol of purity.  It is a hand-tailored counted to the UB's spit.  There is no trinket in the game that has the same effect as it, and therefor it is quite invaluable.  There are times I'd gladly part with upwards of 3000 gold for its effect.  To say it's useless sometimes may be true, but it does not take away from the fact that in its ideal situation it's extraordinarily powerful.

In closing:

1) it's not appropriate to compare favour items to more expensive item's like journeyman's or HoL.  These higher end items are not accessible in the early game, and this is the part of the game where favour items are most significant.

2) when there is no equivalent item (as with symbol of purity) it is not appropriate to give a gold cost, since situationally the item may be invaluable since it has no equivalent.

3) you cannot compare stats directly in many cases because the favour item offers "stacking" possibilities that would not otherwise be viable, and certainly not possible at the low costs of some of the basic items like banded mail.

Interesting analysis.

Boots of Speed give 10% movement increase for 1000

Swift Anklet gives 15% movement increase so I'd value it at about 1500 to 2500

Charm of Life also reduces death penalty by 10% so it should be worth atleast 1000

Magic Coin Purse allows you to buy upgrades 10% sooner.

In my opinion, for an all minion build Ring of Divine Might is the way to go if you don't get Swift Anklet or Amulet of Teleportation

Yeah I understand the arguments, the point I was trying to make was that for all the items in the game to be comparable, they need to be in the same standard. Trying to find similar worth items is valid IMO. Their worth is perhaps tenfold, as what would take you 5500 gold to save up for is available from the start. However, if you rebalance the items in the gold standard, you can see how unbalanced they really are.

On the specificness of some items, this goes for the shop items too. Buying say Slayers Wraps for Sedna is not so wise, as the 10% crit is not that great for her, stacking it on UB or Regulus is far more worthwhile, it still has a value in gold. It is hard to make an appropriate cost, however, it can still be made and compared.

On the cost of stacking this can still be done, maybe I just need to up the value, so 2x Banded Armour would be worth 3 times as much. However, there is still a price as many of the later cost items have more powerful combos.

I think it just shows though, how unbalanced the favour items are. These items could be in the shop, they would have a price, thus they can be converted. To compare them to the shop prices is worthwhile as it will affect your judgement to purchase them. Gold wins games, favour does not.

absolutely correct.

it makes it so that you can still be competitive after you play 5 games vs people who have played hundreds of games, it was done on purpose.

Yeah, Journeyman's treads don't cost 6500 because of the 15% static boost to speed, they cost that much because of the additional 50% boost of speed that you almost always get when you need it.

But as someone said, the stacking-ness of things is more important.  The Blood of the Fallen is very solid early on because of the massive amount of hit points it gives you.  And you always have that much MORE than someone with some other item.  Wanna see someone with serious beefcakage... have them pick up the blood AND a Banded armor.  10 hps and 1200 hit points is amazing compared to a starting character with just an anklet.

Conversely, 15% more speed form an anklet also stacks with a potential first level purchase of boots of speed.  +25% movement speed is rarely matched in the first 5 levels.

You're way off on Cloak of Night - the cheapest other item that offers Warp is the Warpstone, which is 5500g and offers no other bonuses.  Furthermore, I think you might want to consider that the items that boost base mana regen - Cloak of Night and Essence of Magic - also drastically boost the effectiveness of +% Mana Regen items that you can get later in the game.  Without the Cloak of Night, it's substantially more difficult for Erebus to reach the 125 MP/s needed for infinite mist-form.

You're drastically undervaluing some of these items by ignoreing their abilities... for example, Ring of Divine Might lets your minions "knock away smaller enemies", which means kill them with one hit. That's pretty useful, and something you can't get through any other item.

Blood of the fallen is an amazing item mostly for the reason darvin has already point out.

Consider the following players right out of the starting gate:

1. 1600 health, 25 percent more run speed
2. 2800 health, 10 regen.

Thats nearly double the health. 

It would be awesome if it did, but it doesn't work as advertised.

With TB at least, I always use Swift Anklet.  I never have mana problems since I can usually afford the crown pretty fast anyway, and it let's me outrun assasin's early game so I can hit and run with rain of ice to kill creeps if I can't get them anywhere else. (rain of ice has some great range) Plus it stacks with speed boots, meaning I can outrun demigods even more and chase them when all my skills are more damaging later.

  When it comes to favor, I'd say it greatly depends on your demigod.  Ranged demigods are great with swift anklet, but melee characters like Sedna and UB are great with them too.  All other demigods it depends on the map IMO.

Yea have to agree depends on the DG and map. Teleport I find useful on large maps but don't think I use it enough to warrant the slot and money saved usually. Swift is usually my choice but the ones I tend to not use it on are Sedna and UB.

For all minion builds I've found the Pendant of Grace is pretty superb.  The 15% dodge for the General is just icing.  Try it out and watch how many times you see 'EVADE' in green on your minions.  With a minion Erebus it gets pretty crazy and your rolypoly guys can take down towers due to the extra survivability.  Definitely seems like more than 10%

I've tried the Pendant of Grace. 15% dodge is nice to have around but if you want to maximize minion dps then the ring is the way to go. Early game the ring is worth 2 ranks of moral and late game its equivalent to 1 or 1.5 ranks in Moral when calculating dps.