For a little bit of fun, lets play a game. Make a build using 8XP, any ritual and any magic item from the wiki. Practicality is preferred but totally optional. I’ll start.
The Tardigrade-
“I’m not dead yet”
Ritual:
Vigour of Youth (fortitude x3)
Items:
Bloodfeather Harness (fortitude x3)
Oakheart Shield (fortitude x1)
Tonic of the Distant Shore (fortitude x3)
Result:
Fortitude= 13
Bleed-out time= 3+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13= 98 minutes (or 160 sec venomed)
hides in the shadows while gathering information
Pretty sure that is not how Fortitude works. Each rank adds a minute, not its rank in minutes. I mean, 13 ranks of fortitude should get you a pretty impressive 16-minute bleed-out time, but not 98 minutes.
What is more impressive is the 160-second bleed-out when poisoned; that’s 2m40 and nearly the full 3-minute bleed-out time of a normal starting character.
No, wraith33 is right. See
https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Combat_skills#Fortitude
The Soloist-
“Meet my covenmates. Me, myself and I”
The purpose of this build is to be able to cast as many rituals as possible by ones self consistently. As such, things that provide extra lore only once or once per day are ignored andnight lore is picked because it has the most low level (mag 12 and under) rituals.
Xp:
Magician
Night Lore x2 (+4 mastered rituals, +2 Lore)
Extra ritual x3 (+6 mastered rituals)
Ritual:
Sift the Dreamscape’s Sands (Lore +1)
Items:
Enigmatic Staff (+1 Lore)
Regio (+1 Lore)
Mask of Gold and Lead
Results:
21 Solo Castable rituals. Though, if you become the arch-mage of night with the +2 staff that comes with that office, then this number becomes 24 out of the 26 rituals mag 12 and under in imperial lore. (Funfact: there are 36 Total rituals in night lore in imperial lore. this lets you cast 2/3 of the rituals in that lore by yourself.)
Consistent effective lore of 5. Though, if you become the arch-mage of night with the +2 staff that comes with that office, then this your effective lore is +6 which is also the maximum effective lore you can have with a night lore of 2.
Thou Shalt Not Pass
Night might have alot of rituals, that you can cast but the Winter equivalent, lets you influence battles and potentially wars by yourself. It’s not as versatile, but it deals with threats.
So with fronts against the Druj and the Vallorn at the moment this probably isn’t useless.
XP
Winter 3:
3 Warding Rituals, 1 Territory Curse and Pakanans, Wisdom.
Ritual
Sorin’s Rite of Agony (+1, also the roleplaying effect seems to fit well with the build as a whole “You are painfully aware of the dangers that threaten you and those you care about. You feel an urge to prepare for those dangers, and to ensure that you have sufficient resources to overcome them.”)
Items
Archmage of Winter’s Staff (+2 Lore) (Because honestly as a solo player blagging the Archmage’s Staff to stop X horde, might be easier than having your own :p.)
Winter Potions (+ 1 Lore for one ritual)
Enough Warding sticks that you need someone else to carry them.
Possibly something to bring you above 1 hit
The Wandering Priest
So this is a bit different in that it’s actual starting build, rather than a starting build if you are being bribed with a massive stack of resources to join X club.) It’s pretty much self sufficient, it runs 2 apprentice items, and one that costs 4 Dragonbone all of which you can make (Start with a Forest, and switch out your resource after event 1 and you have that sorted for 14 events.)
You have a real impeteous to go out and use your skills, and if there is a massacre you can literally go from character to character giving all of them religous RP towards the end.
Skills:
Dedicate
Hallow
Testimony
Artisan
Icon of the Pilgrim (Anoint)
Mendicant Cassock (One free Ceremony a Day)
Guided Path (Ceremonies on the dying are Free)
Fair point, the above were assuming mostly unlimited resources and were… quirky 
(ie, i may have played The Soloist but it could have gotten old)
Here is a more new character friendly build:
The Medevac-
“We’re withdrawing back to the gate. Get them up and moving NOW!”
Skills:
Chirurgeon (Heal unlimited bleeding out characters)
Magician (+4 Personal mana)
Extra mana x2 (+4 Personal mana)
Heal Spell
Restore Limb Spell
Ritual:
Chirurgeon’s Healing Touch (+2 Stay With Me’s a day)
Items:
Crystal Tender’s Vestments (+3 mana once a day)
Results
Assuming you find someone who mastered the ritual, you could reasonably afford all of these things with your starting resources (including the ritual and a mana for the vestments). This build will let you heal bleeding out characters for the beginning and middle of the battle for free with chirugeon (hand the more severe injures to physiks and swipe the bleed outs for yourself) and let you quickly pull up 5 people who are bleeding out by swift casting Heal or Restore Limb-ing cleaved legs in addition to the 2 stay with me’s when everyone is retreating from the field and anyone who gets cut off this time will stay cut off. And you have 1 mana left over for a regular cast.
You do realise you can Swift Cast spells with Crystal Mana Right?
The Medevac isn’t a bad build BUT honestly unless you are hitting a combat player event Chirurgeon’s Healing Touch, probably isn’t worth it. That 4 mana could be 4 Swift Heal/Repair Limbs, rather than maybe getting 4 Stay with Me’s.
Also slight variant for my amusement of throwing Heroic and Magician in a starting build
Healer Boyfriend
Chirurgeon (Heal unlimited bleeding out characters)
Magician (+4 Personal mana)
Extra mana x1 (+2 Personal mana)
Hero †
Stay With Me
Restore Limb Spell
Item:
Forlorn Hope -Gives you the Heal Spell
Wow… You are right now I look more carefully.
How is this not getting nerfed by PD? A 98-minute bleed-out is an entire battle just waiting on the ground to be revived if necessary.
Because that’s the sole capacity of that character - to take ages bleeding out. They’ve spent huge amounts of resources on it, and basically have no other capabilities.
98 minutes of bleed-out time isn’t much better than 15 minutes, in practice. If the battle hasn’t shifted back within 15, then it’s probably because your forces are retreating and won’t be back at all - and all the Fortitude in the world doesn’t help much if you get executed.
Precisely this. There’s a fair number of characters every event who would probably survive with 1-2 ranks of fortitude, but as soon as you get beyond about 3 it’s extremely rare to be rescued in that time window. If you’re on the ground for 10 minutes you’re probably on the ground for the rest of the fight. Nobody in practice has tried building anywhere near that far, because it’s vastly more worthwhile to pick up a range of skills.
You can make similarly daft builds for nearly any skill - 13 endurance is achievable on 8xp, as is 21 hero points* and IMPALE by two-handed weapon blow. They all share the issue of involving vast resource costs and not really offering much advantage in practice.
*Including drinking an ilium refresh potion
Swift cast is more expensive, it’s 2 mana per spell and it makes Heal less efficient - only brings target up to 3 hits instead of full health. Which is a little better but also considerably more expensive than Stay With Me. Having a couple of free uses of Stay with me without the need for Hero Points is actually better than it looks, especially if one wants versatility or tends to run out of mana during battle (which is perfectly possible even with Crystaltender’s Vestments and Extra Mana, I know that from experience).
Swift casting is two personal mana - you can cast any spell swift or normal with a single crystal. Because of that the four crystal spent on CHT is losing out on four swift heals.
Source? I’m genuinely interested now because it would be great news for me, but I can’t find it anywhere on the wiki…
https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Spellcasting
Relevantly:
Spellcasting
“Your character may also use crystallized mana to cast spells; a single crystal can be used to cast any single spell.”
Swift casting
“* Swift casting a spell costs 2 mana rather than 1”
The key line is “a single crystal can be used to cast any single spell” - that is true regardless of whether the spell is cast normally or swiftly. The spell casting rules have changed a few times over the course of the game, so some of the descriptive text isn’t the clearest. I’ll see about tidying it up a bit.
The Tardigrade build is definitly silly and impractical (and probly pretty boring to play). From what i’ve heard just the Tonic of the Distant Shore should be sufficient to keep you alive and maybe spending 1 xp on fortitude to be extra safe. I know i wouldnt want to play this one.
The solo ritualist is actually, imho, a decent build. yes you need alot of expensive things, but even if you dont have them you would be a very valuable member of a coven just because you’ve mastered 10 rituals. They dont have to be the low level rituals, casting as many rituals as possible solo (even less useful rituals) is the silly part of this one and can be negated by mastering more “useful” rituals.
I stand by the stay with me choice, mostly because i am morally opposed to spending mana for spell casting . As mageblood are roughly the same price as a mana and someone else can still use the mana. (but lets not argue on the efficacy of this please, this post isn’t about optimizing crystal mana expenditure)
OOH! I’d love to see this build. It would make a really good sentinel whose arete is “I rend my foes before me” or something similar.
Hero point optimisation:
Weapon Master
Hero (2 hero points)
Extra Hero Points (x2) (+2 hero points)
Mortal Blow
Runeplate (+2 hero points)
Trollslayer’s Crescent (+2 hero points)
Still Waters, Running Deep (+3 hero points)
That’s 11 hero points and IMPALE, on 8xp (It turns out the effect of Still Waters, Running Deep was changed at some point to make it +3). After calling your eleven impales, drink an Elixir of Exalted Puissance to restore them all and add a temporary bonus one, for a total of 23.
I like the impale god build! 
ekhm not god… eternal? ^^