Impossible Warrior - no losses?

[Zhuangzi]

Can it be done? Calinda did finish the game with zero losses, but I can't remember if it was with the Warrior or not. That's what I'm going to try for in my first game (I did play the Russian/English mod a bit) but I don't know if I'll manage without losses. Might be too hard for me. :-P

Anyway, in the first 30 min of play I had a couple of challenges in ensuring zero losses. The two training fights I did by dismissing the weak troops and just using the paladins (you get the weak troops back anyway). But then in Debir I found a few of the early fights too difficult to achieve first time without losses. As a Warrior, you don't have access to ANY spells early (other than scrolls which I don't want to waste - except for a few Poison Skulls). I took Strength 1 (+1 attack), Experience 1 (+20 experience) and Scouting 1 by level two. The portrait artefact helps with morale for humans, so I stuck with a team of Swordsmen, Inquisitors, Priests, Bears, and Archers early on. I also got the shoes that give +3 mana and morale for Bears. So all of these units are at positive morale.

The problem is that without access to the spellbook yet, I am using the Dragon Kick a lot and hoping not to take more than 1 loss (which the Inquisitor can cover). No Healing as yet. So I have completed 5 fights without loss but I had to reload from a couple of fights where I lost a troop. The first goal is to get to 10 fights without loss so that I will get the first medal (+200 leadership).

This is good fun though. Very challenging. Any advice on how to mop up Debir without losses as a Warrior? :)

Another thing, if I buy a Royal Thorn (need 360 leadership first) will spawned Thorns that are killed count as losses?

[DGDobrev]

No unit, that is summoned during the battle, counts as a loss. So you can be sure that with 2 summoners in your army you have a decent supply of scapegoat units.

A good start to such game will be with an officers' batton. You will be able to afford it by the end of cleaning up of Debir. Any extra leadership is a boon in an impossible game, especially in the beginning. Another good thing is to use the green dragon or get the hunt ability ASAP. You need the cash, and any spare spells, wanderers' spells, etc. especially in the early game right from the start - preferably!

The party you can use to destroy anything on Debir (at least the one I'm usually using) is Swordsmen, Inquisitors, Priests, Archers and Royal Thorns. Once I get to Scarlet Wind, I usually check the camp protected by Hector Norb for paladins or knights to use as tanks. Then I get the Archmagi from the graveyard for Magic Shield - it helps a lot to minimize the losses if you have a good tank.

That's what I can contribute for now. A good army setup and a strong tank + magic shield can go a long way.

[BB Shockwave]

I did lose only 18 units on my Normal Warrior Walkthrough, and looking back now even those could have been avoided. It's much easier then in The Legend, actually - you won't face that many all-Dragon/all 5th level troops as there, except in Ultrax. (these cases are the worst because you cannot blind/Fear the last troop until you resurrect your own).

I advise you to re-start the game until you get Paladins in Debir or Scarlet Island (in the tent behind Recruitor Norbu, you can lure him away). They are great tanks, can resurrect troops. Another thing you'll need with them is the spell Phantom! And, stack up on items that give you mana - even as a Warrior, I had 87 Mana by the end of the game (Ancient Amulet helped a lot). It's needed for Resurrection and Time Back.

One thing I sorely missed from the Legend was Glot's Armor, there were so many uses and abuses of that skill.

[DGDobrev]

Just to note that Paladins may spawn in Debir Mage Tower only after you get the Amulet Of Revelations back to the Temple of Hope in Debir. So far they spawned in any one of my playthroughs, so it may be guaranteed. I'm not sure about that yet though.

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks for the tips, guys. So far so good - I have cleared out Debir except for that evil dude in the castle. He kept casting Phoenix which was really screwing with my no losses routine. I think it's 18/18 no losses fights now, although I'd be lying if I said I didn't have to reload a few times. :rolleyes:

My tactic so far has been to prioritise Dragon experience, so I've taken two levels of Training and thus the dragon is already at level 6, even though Amelie is still level 4 (nearly 5). I took one point of Treasure Searcher as DGD recommended, and the rest of the points have gone into Crushing Blow (400-500 hit points, which is excellent for Debir). The problem for the Warrior early on is that getting spells scribed is really difficult. I finally managed to get Distortion 1 but I really could use Healing (obviously Order 1) or Phantom. The problem is that for the low hp units I am using it is hard to keep them all alive.

My leadership on leaving Debir for the first time is 820 and my team is Swordsmen, Royal Snakes, Priests, Inquisitors and 2 Royal Thorns. I really need Paladins and/or Royal Griffins sooner rather than later, because I can't keep up the no-losses with units with low hp.

Off to Scarlet Wind. :cool:

[DGDobrev]

Umm, I strongly recommend you get the dragon to 2 chests per battle if possible (costs 6 rage). I don't know how you're doing with the cash, but extra money will be crucial soon. A Paladin costs 1500, and if you find some cyclopses (great for no-loss victories as well) on Bolo island, you'll need the extra cash, as they are 5000 gold each - that is also provided you can get the leadership for them.

I hope you got a few items to boost your leadership in debir. Otherwise the game gets tough very quickly, especially on impossible.

EDIT: A few other things you can try:
- when you get to bolo island, go down into the catacombs, lure the R14-Gromozeka hero away from the chest and dash to take it, then return the amulet. That should spawn paladins in Debir. Oh, and don't forget to use the amulet. +50 leadership is still something.
- the phantom spell, sadly, is a long shot for a warrior. You will need the ancient amulet, or some other mana boosting item to make it effective, as you are low on mana, and a lvl 1 phantom spell won't provide a sufficient amount of paladins early on. And to boost the mana, you will need the money, as the ancient amulet (in the best case scenario) is 50k gold. The next thing that is imperative if you're going to be using phantoms is the Summoning skill. You MUST master it.
- All you need is lvl 1 in Training for the dragon, because the medals will take care of the rest (up to +50%). In my opinion, more than lvl 1 in the training skill is a waste of runes.
- as a warrior, level 3 rage is also a moot. Since you'll push up the Blood thirst skill (meaning you'll retain a certain amount of rage), more than lvl 2 in the rage skill is not needed.
- do now get overconfident with the dragon. Against bosses, you cannot summon him. This means you lose one great asset, and you need to compensate for it with troops and skills.

And of course, good luck :)

[Zhuangzi]

Yeah, I haven't got the second Treasure Chest upgrade yet - it keeps offering me other stuff which is kinda frustrating. I think I will take your advice and rush for the amulet in Bolo - I need those Paladins soon and I doubt I can clear out Bolo and Scarlet Wind without them.

Current team - Inquisitors, Royal Griffins (4 in Scarlet Wind only), Royal Thorns (3 of 4 available on Debir), Archmages (only 4 available - leadership allows 7) and Ancient Vampires (7 or 8 on Scarlet Wind). This is a nice team for no losses and I am up to 31 fights without loss (meaning I got the second Grand Strategy medal - 1500 leadership on level 6). I was able to clear about two thirds of Scarlet Wind but there are still 5 or 6 tough stacks left and I doubt I can take them at the moment.

The key to zero losses at the moment is having units with high hp (at least the highest currently available) and even more importantly units that can summon/spawn units. Thus Royal Thorns and Royal Griffins are a must. Inquisitors provide the rage and the occasional resurrection, Archmages provide Magic Shield and Ancient Vampires are just awesome in every way.

So it's off to Bolo next. Well, in the morning. :o

[DGDobrev]

Well, you're doing great :) In any case, you can be sure that the armies that will give you hard time to do without losses are the ones in the castles, the dragon-only armies (like the ones in Ulthrax - the dragon lands from KBTL are back again), and the Ktahu/Zilgadis bosses. Everything else can be done without a loss without much hastle :)

[Zhuangzi]

Well, I must have played for 8 hours today (at least) and it has been slow going ensuring zero casualties. I am up to 58 battles without loss now, which means I got the Grand Strategy 3 medal. I finally cleared out the last guardian on Scarlet Wind, which gave me the Verona map I needed so badly. Bolo is cleared out except for about 4-5 stacks, and Rusty Anchor is less than 50% clear. But with 3800 leadership all remaining stacks are Lethal, with maybe a couple of Very Hard.

I haven't changed my team for a long time now. It works very well with the exception that I haven't found enough Royal Thorns or Paladins. I know that there will be plenty of these in Verona though.

So I've been fighting with:

63/63 Royal Snakes (the main attack unit)
35/35 Inquisitors (for rage and resurrection)
12/12 Royal Griffins (for Heavenly Guards and mopping up weak enemies)
4/10 Royal Thorns (for Thorns)
6/17 Paladins (for defense and resurrection)

The problem I have had is that with only 6 Paladins, I am doing a measly 144 hp of resurrection. Consequently there's no room for error at all. If I can fill up my Royal Thorn and Paladin stacks in Verona, I can probably mop up the small islands. First I will pick up everything I can find in Verona.

Oh, and despite zero losses, I've only got about 60,000 gold. DGD is quite right in saying that you need to use Treasure Searcher twice a turn if you possibly can. Now that the Trading skill is gone in KB:AP, gold is much scarcer on Impossible. That's a good thing - it's making it a really tough but possible challenge for me.

Question: There are 2 Red Dragons for sale on Rusty Anchor. Should I use them when I get my leadership up to 4000 or stick with the current team?

I honestly haven't had so much fun playing a game since Master of Orion 1 in 1996. :eek:

[Elwin]

Well i ony launched a game for a while on my game i have started with sneaking and i went up to rusty anchor. When i come back to debir i see there is one stack of cyclops in undergruond cave ..
i am not going for no loses run but hell i wonder how masters of this game would deal with it ... i have just 6 inquis .. there is no way i cant lose any unit agianst cyclops since i have only 1 res its not enough to kill 650hp cyclops with his resistances on one turn ...

My armie is inqi catapult griffin droid guard evil beholder ..thats what i found to get without fights on rusty anchor .. thinking about royal sankes and those 4 royal torns from debir..

Oh and i refused traing fightsm did i lose much ?

[DGDobrev]

@Zhuangzi

I think the 2 dragons will be a really good addition. Using them will boost your battle alchemy medal. You should also be careful, since only the inquisitors can resurrect them (paladins ress only 1-4 level units).

Royal thorns spawned on 4 out of 7 playthroughs in the barbarian chieftain ship (the one who gives you the quest for his wife) on Bolo island. Still, you may not have been so lucky. As for the monetary problems, they will be a pain throughout the early game, at least until level 25 or so.

As for the fun, KBAP provides plenty of it. You will also notice that with all the rebalancing done, it is much easier to grasp and play without utilizing numerous exploits, as it was in KBTL.

Another thing you can do is to get the treasure searcher ability to 3 chests/2 altars or 3 chests/1 altar if possible (dunno if it was). Generally, there are 4-5 useful dragon skills, which as a warrior you should improve to the max in my opinion - Treasure Searcher (money FTW), Ball of Lightning (Acts as Reaper's soul drain ability, killing % of the stack), Mana accelerator (25 rage for 25 mana, great for phantoms), and battle rage (hits all units in an area with ASTRAL damage). Crushing blow and diving dragon are useful in the mid-game, but by the late game they go obsolete, as you will do little damage with those abilities. Lava flow and Mystic Egg are nice, but lava flow is fire damage and Mystic Egg takes a turn to hatch - and usually the AI targets it first.

EDIT: Oh, BTW, sell any wanderers' scroll you don't need in the early game. They will provide a nice amount of cash. If you were digging with the dragon regularly, you should have 3-4 from fights and a few from maps. Also hold on to the "Call Collosus" wanderers' scroll. You never know when you may need the extra level 5 unit's firepower :)

@Elwin

Well, you missed 2 fights (they also count to no-loss victories), a few gold coins, one random lvl 1 item, a training sword (+1 atk) and a buckler (+1 def). Generally, it's not much, but if you luck out with a +100 leadership belt, it is a nice boost in the early levels.

EDIT: On a side note - let's not forget that not only the trading skill is gone, but in KBTL the gold income on impossible was 60%. In KBAP it's 50%, which makes the things even more difficult. Now, play a mage and slap an Usurer's Ring on (+5 intellect - great!!! -30% gold income - EEEK!!) and see where will you go :P

[travelingoz]

Zhuangzi; the dragons will help a lot, especially if you have Target and Archmages Shield ability. However they really hurt your Royal Griffins Atk and Def due to low morale so you'll have to see if this balances out for you. (Maybe you'll find the King's Portrait on Verona :-P) BTW what day/time are you up to now? I want see if some early sneaking balances out or not in terms of mission time.

Elwin; did i read that right? A cyclops on Debir? In the Cave? I've never seen that before! The only level 5 unit i've ever seen on Debir or Scarlet islands is the green dragon on the pirate ship!:confused:

[Zhuangzi]

Zhuangzi; the dragons will help a lot, especially if you have Target and Archmages Shield ability. However they really hurt your Royal Griffins Atk and Def due to low morale so you'll have to see if this balances out for you. (Maybe you'll find the King's Portrait on Verona :-P) BTW what day/time are you up to now? I want see if some early sneaking balances out or not in terms of mission time.

Elwin; did i read that right? A cyclops on Debir? In the Cave? I've never seen that before! The only level 5 unit i've ever seen on Debir or Scarlet islands is the green dragon on the pirate ship!:confused:

Yep, the dragons are helping but I can't find Target anywhere. The morale problem for the Royal Griffins does suck though, so I am not using the Dragons all the time. My biggest problem currently is that you can't resurrect or even heal Royal Thorns. How to keep them alive? :confused:

I can't find more than 4 Archmages either, which is odd. I am up to day 8 already which is okay because I'm going for zero losses, not speed/high score. 78 fights without loss now.

[Elwin]

Yep i had to fight cyclop on debir in the cave ...

[DGDobrev]

Well, Zhuangzi, as for the royal thorns, you either use sacrifice, or you don't use the royal thorns at all in battles vs. heroes. It is extremely irritating watching them die from a random hero's Flaming Arrow.

The key to doing no-loss victories is flexibility. The more flexible are your troops, the better your chances of doing so. This is why switching between Royals and Dragons (so that no penalty incurs) will greatly improve your flexibility.

As for the Archmagi, I found them in the early-game in Debir (mage tower, after you take a second stone of gods), the temple in Verona, the Mage tower in Verona and the Mage tower on the Elon continent (but I doubt you'll have that map yet). Keep your eyes peeled for some druids. If you manage to luck out with some, they will greatly add to your troops effectiveness. They are good as both summoners and rage-hoarders (because of their Necromancer-like 9-cell attack).

[Elwin]

Those heroes spells irritating ... 3 int barbarian hero is doing more damage with flaming arrow than my 10 int mage wth destroyer ...

[Zhuangzi]

I've been reading a lot about how people are having trouble with enemies that are Very Strong and Lethal. To me, it's less about the overall leadership of the enemy stack, but more about the unit composition and whether the stack is hero-controlled. Then there is the issue of what spells that particular hero uses. If Ghost Blade, okay. If Geyser, not okay.

I was having terrible trouble with a Strong stack just then, because it had Assassins, Inquisitors and Archers, all of whom cause trouble for my no losses attempt. I just couldn't do it, so I took a look at Old Rotbox, who was listed as Lethal, instead. To my surprise, I was able to take him down quite easily even though he was stronger overall and also a hero.

Then I took on a Very Strong stack that I did so well against that I suffered no casualties. I don't mean no casualties after Resurrection, I mean the enemy did not touch my troops at all, even though the stack was Very Strong. Why? Because of the unit composition. 238 Guardsmen, 481 Wolves, 90 Inquisitors and 56 Paladins seems strong, but aside from the Inquisitors there are no ranged units. So I flamed the Inquisitors with my dragon, mopped up the Wolves easily and cast Slow on the Guardsmen and Paladins until I was ready for them. This is where Royal Snakes are vitally important and still, to my thinking, an absolutely vital unit due to the no retaliation. So I made mincemeat of the Guardsmen and Paladins.

This shows that it isn't so much about the overall rating of the enemy stack, and more about composition.

[Elwin]

of course its true .. if they are slow melees they can be stronger and taken down easily ... but i find sometimes those numer way too high to kill them fast enough ..
lethal for warrior with pet dragon skills is not much problem .. lethat for mage is ... lethal indeed ... As i play mage and my bro a warior i have direct comparison ..

[DGDobrev]

Zhuangzi, you hit the bulls eye with that analysis. To complement your example, there is a fight with a goblin hero that you must do in order to get one of the stones. That goblin hero has a swarm of ranged units - goblins and catapult goblins. They alone pose a wondrous threat... unless you have the target spell, or unless you already went to Elon and got some dryads.

With target on the paladins out of their shooting range, the losses are minimal, while your own ranged units take quick work at them. With dryads + phantom and ranged units, you can do the same - keeping the enemy stacks asleep while you take them out one by one. The target tactic is much less costly mana-wise though.

[travelingoz]

I think it's all about strategy based on composition, e.g. if there are Assassins and Archers then the first spell you cast should be Phantom on your Royal Griffins. Then move them up to block the archers. All other units should wait until the Assassins have used their sneak attack on the phantoms before moving (Royal thorns can work too, just be careful the direction you place them!). Using the Royal Griffin's Heavenly Guards is dangerous because they pivot and expose themselves to a sneak attack in the process! If there are several ranged enemy units, cast Target on your Paladins/tank and wait until round 2 before moving your units.

Elwin, don't give up on your Mage yet! You just need to find the strategy that's going to work for you with AP. It's a new game and while some of the old TL stuff works, you'll still need to change tactics and think outside the box a little more. Your Bro may be whipping you at the moment, but tactically you will become a better player than him so when you do try Warrior you're going to kick his ass! ;)

EDIT: I see DG types much faster than i do. :-(

[travelingoz]

Ok back on topic here.
Doing pretty well so far on my Warrior-no-loss run. I'm in Verona, it's halfway through Day 5 and my warrior is Level 23, Dragon Level 24, Rage 90, Mana 37 and Leadership almost 11K.
Hit the motherload with the artifacts, got Ancient amulet and Gladiator sword on Debir and just purchased the Banner of Faith on Verona! I've also found 2 Magessy Dresses, a Princess's Dress, Snake Boot, Mages Boot (+2 Int and +1 to Slow/Haste) , Demonesses Whip, Mask of Hatred and 30% Atk against undead sword.

I've managed to do everything on the first 4 islands except Cuttlefish's Cave (He had about 50 beholders and i only had 11 Paladins then). So i've done half of the battles on Verona including the super stack guarding the Elona Map and managed to finish all of those b4 round 10 without breaking into too much of a sweat. Just waiting for a little more leadership and i'll try and upgrade the 2 Magessy Dresses, Grab Elenhal and head for Montero hopefully b4 day 6 starts.

My super summoner army is;

Demonologists
Druids
Royal Griffins
Dryads
Paladins
Royal Snakes

Not sure what i want to use for the last slot yet...possibly Red Dragons or Necromancers. Or possibly sneak to Reha and grab some of those amazing birds to complete the summoning set!

[Urbz]

Hiya fellow masochists :rolleyes:
My impossible warrior is currently lvl18 and got around 73 no-loss battles and I have to say it's tough but simply amazing fun!
But now I encountered a really harsh event, every time i travel to Tekron I instantly land on a still way too strong pirate boat ( black joker ) I hope this will change but i'm affraid not which would be quite harsh after playing for days without any losses, looks like a small bug. :(
Anyone else had this same problem or have tips on how to fix it even?

[Zhuangzi]

Hiya fellow masochists :rolleyes:
My impossible warrior is currently lvl18 and got around 73 no-loss battles and I have to say it's tough but simply amazing fun!
But now I encountered a really harsh event, every time i travel to Tekron I instantly land on a still way too strong pirate boat ( black joker ) I hope this will change but i'm affraid not which would be quite harsh after playing for days without any losses, looks like a small bug. :(
Anyone else had this same problem or have tips on how to fix it even?

I had the exact same problem with my first game of AP! I wasn't trying for no losses then so I just avoided Tekron for a while. I don't know how to fix it. :(

Travelingoz, I will use Target just as soon as I find it! I don't think it's in Verona. Also, I sometimes use the Heavenly Guards and then have the Paladins cast Second Wind on them to get them into the action on turn 1. My Intellect is too low (4) to make much use of Phantom yet. But my preference is to move the Royal Snakes up on turn 1, cast Paladin's Second Wind and Inquisitors Holy Anger on them, and strike! Healing 3 negates poison damage too...

[Urbz]

I had the exact same problem with my first game of AP! I wasn't trying for no losses then so I just avoided Tekron for a while. I don't know how to fix it. :(

Travelingoz, I will use Target just as soon as I find it! I don't think it's in Verona. Also, I sometimes use the Heavenly Guards and then have the Paladins cast Second Wind on them to get them into the action on turn 1. My Intellect is too low (4) to make much use of Phantom yet. But my preference is to move the Royal Snakes up on turn 1, cast Paladin's Second Wind and Inquisitors Holy Anger on them, and strike! Healing 3 negates poison damage too...

I see, so it did fix itself for you in the end or it didnt? If it doenst i might have to think about quitting this game and start over :-x

[DGDobrev]

Starting over? No way :) Tekron has the same difficulty as dersu, umkas and uzala. So you have 3 more islands to do before getting there, which means more levels and more leadership.

[Zhuangzi]

I see, so it did fix itself for you in the end or it didnt? If it doenst i might have to think about quitting this game and start over :-x

No it didn't fix itself. I came back later as DGD says to do.

[travelingoz]

Zhuangzi, you could try sneaking through to Dersu/Uzala, i found it there first this game... Then about four fights later dug it up in a chest on the battlefield. I also seem to be digging it up quite often on Verona now. Go figure! :rolleyes:
I invested in Distortion level 2 quite early and just got the extra 15% skill too so that stragegy is working really well as i can summon enough Griffin phantoms so they don't usually get knocked off in the first round and cast mana spring on them the second round. They are super rage generators with their always retaliate ability. No luck finding Timeback yet though.... that one sure would be handy! :grin:

[Urbz]

No it didn't fix itself. I came back later as DGD says to do.

Yeah okay, I was affraid so. It's my first game so no idea if I miss much and such but i'll trust you guys on it and hopefully i can become strong enough to face the pirate without losses, cheers for the heads up though. ;)

[DGDobrev]

Well, in some of my playthroughs - including the one with the mage I'm doing now, Time back appeared on Montero in the dwarven shops. With any luck it will be there.

Still, it's a 30 mana spell - not everyone can afford it easily.

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, so it's day 10 already because of my travel between islands, and I am up to 102 fights without loss. I found the Portrait of the Griffin which means I can use Red Dragons and Griffins without less than neutral morale. So the Royal Thorns are in reserve - they're just too difficult to use with no losses.

I beat Zig Zag on Rusty Anchor but I can't seem to work out how to get into his cave. There's just one map guardian left there, and the other three small islands are all clear. I think I am almost level 20, about 7000 leadership. In Verona, I've managed to take out about two thirds of the stacks, but I've left the most difficult ones for now. (including heroes like Halt and Peter Drayan) The easily stacks currently are on Montero, some of which seem very easy. I can probably find another 10 or so easy fights on Montero, which means probably 2 more levels.

Attack is about 16, Defense 22, and Intellect 5. I am giving up on Intellect really, as I don't plan to use direct damage spells at all for the whole game.

Things are going okay (surprisingly smoothly this evening) but I am lacking some things that I expect I'll need:

Target spell (not in Verona)
Time Back spell (likewise)
Archmages (only 4 of them - none in Verona)
Resurrection spell (haven't seen it)

Presumably all of these will be available somewhere, hopefully in Montero. :rolleyes:

[DGDobrev]

If you get 50 pirates, marauders and archers to Sohaty (his quest), he'll give you a key to that cave. The cave has a few crystals, a chest or 2 and an emerald green dragon (1) that is willing to join you.

[travelingoz]

Update time.
I've cleaned out most of Montero, except the 2 castles, one fight in the caves and the Mad Miner. I snuck off to check Reha and Nameless and with all the map open, i still haven't found timeback anywhere. :(
The one fight in the cave i'm avoiding has a stack of 25 Archdemons and as my leadership is only 16000, it's taking out half a stack everytime. Also, it doesn't always attack the same stack or in the same place each time, otherwise i'd place a trap on the spot. So i might head to Tekron and see what i can do there and then come back to Montero a little later....
Vitals;
Game Time: Day 7
Battles: 130 no losses
Dragon: LVL 30
Warrior: LVL 29
ATK 20
DEF 18
INT 28 (2 Magessy Dresses :grin:)
LDR 15983
71 Demonologists
70 Paladins
710 Dryads
123 Druids
248 Royal Snakes
7 Red Dragons

[Urbz]

If you get 50 pirates, marauders and archers to Sohaty (his quest), he'll give you a key to that cave. The cave has a few crystals, a chest or 2 and an emerald green dragon (1) that is willing to join you.

In my paladin impossible game i am yet to find pirates anywhere, although it's no biggie just a bit unlucky.
I have to say though with the kiting of chart guards it is starting to feel a bit lame for me personally, i wish i would've played thru the game without trying no-losses right-away at least.

[DGDobrev]

That is not a problem. Simply start a game on normal. On normal, as a warrior, I went from island to island without feeling the need to kite any map guards. That is the first playthrough I made of KBAP, and it is posted on the scores thread.

[Urbz]

That is not a problem. Simply start a game on normal. On normal, as a warrior, I went from island to island without feeling the need to kite any map guards. That is the first playthrough I made of KBAP, and it is posted on the scores thread.

Yeap i was thinking of doing so indeed, just not sure yet about class but indeed warriors seems likethe most solid choice :rolleyes:
I will just not kite chart guardians and maybe even not bother with focussing much on getting medals ( although i must admit i could be fun going for the 3rd trapper medal but seems more of a mage thingy) just play the game normally first and having fun doing so :)

[Elwin]

Geez these no losses on impossible ... respect for poeple with patience ;p i was doing it for a long time but hell castles in montero .... with haglin cosntantly geysering ... ridicoulous ..i have lost very very little but i lost in fact

[DGDobrev]

Well, no-loss victiories are indeed hard to do. For example, just now I did the bounty quest to free the dwarven king, planning that I'll end up just short of level 40. Since I'm using elenhel, I was aware that as soon as he hits lvl 40, he will want to leave with all the items that are equipped on him. Obviously, I can't let that happen and have to fight him.

However, this is not what happened. I hit 40 after killing fangol and his swarm of troops and elenhel talked to me right after the battle, while I was inside the castle (thus no save yet, since the game can't get to that!) and I had to fight his 100 Necros, 300 druids, 200 Evil Beholders, 187 Archmagi and some Polar bears in a badly weaked state, with the stupid pain skull equipped (meaning additional -50% mana!). Well, that doesn't sound like much - Paladins + Target + Armor of God generally solves it. However, he happens to cast max level geyser and has 40 intellect and around 200 mana. Suffice it to say I was losing 5 paladins, 23 gorguanas, 15 Demonologists and 15 archmagi in every cast. The only thing that saved this battle was target on the paladins and phantoms like crazy.

In the end, no-losses from both of the fights. I even managed to sacrifice for some extra gorguanas and popped up all the chests. Phew.

[Elwin]

I have no phantom yet ...

[DGDobrev]

Ouch. Try every single place, because the spell is indeed invaluable. A lot of digging will help too - I found it on least 6 separate times (including the one in verona tavern).

[Elwin]

I saw everyhting on debir,rusty,bolo,scarlet,verona,montero,namelss,sh attera ... also have sneak to dersu tekron .... on umkas and elon didnt sneaked all .. yet reha and uzala i dont have maps ... currently i am in abandodned mines ... reminds me hell of haas laby
anyone made map for this? :p
on mentero ther only dragon lair and ironfist left .. but both damn hard

[Zhuangzi]

I hear you, Elwin. I've got Phantom myself but I haven't started using it yet. I am going to take DGD's advice and put some work into the Summoning ability to counteract low Intellect (currently, at level 2, Phantom is only doing 31%) but Mind runes are a big problem. I think I'm going to have to do the rune exchange in Montero.

In my game I still can't find Target, which I could really use, or Resurrection or Time Back. I used Time Back a lot in my last game and I think it's the best way of 'rolling back' damage (although very expensive in mana). I used Horsemen in my last game for this reason, as they are both strong in terms of hp and very fast.

I got the Shettera map quite easily in Montero and, as someone said in one of these threads, Shettera is really good for picking up flags/crystals. There's even one quest you can do without fighting. But what I really want is that damn Target spell! I have the Tekron map but I don't want to run into that problem someone had where they were always running into one of the bosses when they arrived.

I think I am up to about 110 fights without loss and it's day 11. So I'm doing this slower than travelingoz, for sure. But I won't care if I get there in the end! :)

[Urbz]

I think the chance of landing on a pirate ship when traveling to Tekron must be really small though, i only heard of one other person besides me having this happen. But ye trust me, it's not pretty.
Tekron is well worth it, you can get blood of the goddess if you cba to get it for jimmy and have an insane leadership boost and you can do some easy quest like the soap and submarine, also i managed to get a map to Shet I think even, down in the canal which was quite a nice suprise,
Shet is indeed a very easy place for sneaking aswell, and I think there's at least two doable quests there aswell, the arcitect and the escaped imp ( although im not sure how smart it is to turn him back in :-P )
Also really high level spell/items/units for sale there.
I wish the kiting of chart guards didnt felt so cheesy though but it seems like the only way to go if you go fully for no-losses. :?
Nice to read you guys are doing well though, keep it up! :)

[Elwin]

Found phantom on Urzala !! yet te tmeback needed ;p

[Zhuangzi]

Well, I bought lots of Mind runes so that I could get Distortion 3 and Summoner 1 - so my Phantom is worth 49% now. I am starting to use Phantom -> Paladin + Mana Accelerator a lot to get through fights. It can be a bit tedious but it's quite effective unless the stacks are too big. Leadership has just ticked over 10,000 and I think I am level 22. This is much higher leadership than I have read in other threads for Mages so I feel very sorry for them. I am up to about 118 battles without loss now and I am off to Dersu to try to find Target, Time Back or Resurrection. Haven't seen any of them yet! Not on Shettera. :(

[Zhuangzi]

I not 100% sure why, but now I am absolutely breezing through this. Fights 120-150 or so have been very easy, with few needing to be replayed (and those generally because I made a stupid mistake). I put it down to three pieces of advice that DGDobrev gave:

- Use Treasure Hunter 3x a turn to make money (up to 700,000 now)
- Get the Summoning ability and Phantom Paladins (57% now)
- Prioritise Mana Accelerator

With these tools, plus my standard team of Paladins, Inquisitors, Royal Snakes, Royal Griffins (sometimes Druids instead) and Red Dragons, I am smashing Very Strong and Lethal stacks with ease, often by the end of turn 3 or 4. 13,000 leadership by level 29 really helps, as does the Inquisitor's Blade you get from a quest (-20% leadership for Inquisitors and Paladins).

It is quite easy to max mana and rage by the end of fights, and I'm someone who basically doesn't have patience for this kind of tactic if it is going to take forever in real time. But it doesn't. The Warrior creates enormous amounts of rage, which can be turned into mana using Mana Accelerator. This is important for Phantoming Paladins (I only have 31 mana, but it doesn't seem to matter currently).

Standard fight goes like this:

- Use Fiery Phantoms (50 rage) on the clustered enemy.
- Cast Mass Haste
- Use Red Dragons to cause mayhem in enemy clusters (often using special ability).
- Bring up Royal Snakes six squares.
- Inquisitors cast Holy Anger on Royal Snakes.
- Royal Griffins cast Heavenly Guards.
- Paladins cast Second Wind on Royal Snakes.
- Snakes cause a lot of damage to something.

On turn 2 I usually cast Fiery Phantom again, and Healing 3 on the Red Dragons, which are my main tank. I'm usually doing any necessary resurrecting on turn 3. :cool:

[DGDobrev]

Keep up the good work :)

Still, with the money that are piling up, make sure you are on the lookout for mana boosting items or the rage eater. These 2 will greatly add to your effectiveness in battles where you can't summon the dragon. Relying on the little fellow usually works but in boss battles thangs change.

Also, be careful with that sword. Usually its morale improves in each battle, but if there are Paladins or inquisitors in the enemy army, it drops down seriously. But since you're past verona, you should be fine :)

Good luck in the following battles as well. Have you decided on a companion?

[Zhuangzi]

Nope, I'm still stuck with the pirate guy. Any suggestions for a warrior?

[DGDobrev]

Well... good question :)

I like Moldok - he's stupid and lazy, but has pretty decent slots:
Shield, Weapon/Shield, Belt/Regalia, Artifact

No second armor though. However, with him you have 3 weapons + 1 shield (or 2 weapons 2 shields or 1 weapon 3 shield), which can boost your attack/defense seriously, as well as add a certain flexibility to your char. He doesn't have that good ability (bonus to orcs), but I really like it when amelie gets angry with him for taking half the battle's gold. It is great to do a castle siege after such an event, because you always start with max rage.

If you need a second armor + weapon, Moro Dark is a good idea:
Weapon, Armor, Helm, Belt/Regalia
+3 attack (hero) bonus

Especially if you're like me - I had 2 elven crowns in my mage game, and was forced to leave the second one on the shelf to collect dust. However he doesn't have an artifact slot, and as a warrior, you have only 1 artifact slot if I recall correctly.

If you need artifacts, or you need to boost intellect a little, Elenhel is also a good choice. Gaudi isn't bad, but he doesn't have an artifact slot, nor he adds attack like Moro.

[Zhuangzi]

I went with Moldok, for now anyway. Thanks for the advice.

Bosses:

Spider - easiest of the bosses, much the same as in TL. I used Royal Thorns for this one and filled the map with thorns. Took a while, but very easy around level 30.

Frog - the second boss, but maybe even easier than the Spider. I blitzed this first try at level 34 or so.

Driller - this was a different story. The Driller was the hardest battle in the game so far - quite difficult to ensure zero losses. I was level 38 when I tried it and I failed to keep the losses down over 4-5 tries. I had read somewhere of the idea of using only 4 stacks (as that is the width of the map) so I used Paladins, Inquisitors, Red Dragons and Archmages. This was with 20,000 leadership, enough for 10 Red Dragons. I had a lot of trouble at first keeping the Inquisitors alive. I know they aren't a good choice for this fight, but I could use the Resurrection ability. Then I realised that the Driller likes to use his machine gun on the stack on the far side of the map (i.e. the Driller's right side). So I switched the Paladins to that side, and I did much better. My main tactic was to use Stone Skin and Magic Shield on the Red Dragons, who were doing about 3000 damage for a puny 110 retaliation. Spells cast were Healing, Stone Skin, and occasionally Haste. One or two Phantoms at the end.

So now I am level 39 with 21,000 leadership, and I am ready to smash Tekron. When I got there, I was surprised to see that the enemies were listed as Slightly Weaker, Equal in Strength, with the heroes Very Strong.

189 fights without loss now, and I expect to kick ass on Tekron and Umkas. Then there's Shettera, Nameless, Elon and Reha to go. :-P

EDIT: one thing I am doing differently is NOT progressing down the Might skill tree very far. It seems to me that skills like Quick Draw, Nighttime Operations, Frenzy, Tactics and Power of Darkness are of limited value and therefore optional. Revenge and Bloodthirst are very nice, but maybe not a necessity. So I've decided to trade in a lot of Might runes for Magic and try to increase my mana pool and mana regeneration. It seems to me that the left side of the Magic tree is very, very useful. I want to max out Wisdom, Meditation, Concentration and even Linguistics, which will give me a large mana pool for boss fights. What do you guys think of this?

[DGDobrev]

I think that is is a really good idea. Especially in the last few boss fights, you will need the extra mana to recover from the losses.

As for the driller, I did it with 4 units. The idea was to utilize his weaknesses (as well as the weaknesses of his summonings - -50% mahgic resist) to the best of your ability. 5 units is simply begging for constant gunshots which means a lot of damage you can barely fix in time.

[Elwin]

Well on normal even with 5 its much doable but on impossible its different story

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, it has now gotten ridiculously easy. Tekron and Umkas were so easy I barely had to use my Paladins for resurrecting, and Elon wasn't much harder. I blitzed it easily (except the Gremlin guy which I haven't done yet) and so now I am up to level 46 and 250+ wins without loss. I've got so much money and stuff I don't know what to do with it.

My standard team has been Paladins, Inquisitors, Red Dragons, Archmages and Royal Snakes for a LONG time now. I had to trade out the Royal Griffins eventually due to their morale problem with the Red Dragons. The Reds are so good that they are the tank AND the main destroyer. And the Inquisitors can resurrect them. An easy game, this. :-P

[DGDobrev]

Well, so far it's easy, yes :P Good luck with the boss battles :)

[Elwin]

Yep I moticed that if someone got familiar with new gamemechanics is easy ... till Ktahu and Baal ...

I am doing hard warrior .. clered montero now no loses lvl 32 i think 150+ battles. And its easy, playing with the same army as Dobrev did on his mage. But i have wicked archmages with 100% crit xD

[Arilian]

Hi,

I have also tried this but it seems i am stuck. So far I am at 55 win/no Loss lvl 12, i have access to Verona, but i dont have access to any lvl 5 unit.
Currently I run with

Royal Snakes
Inquisitors
Demonologists
Archers
Paladins

It seems now every enemy is Very Strong+
I always have money problems despite i am digging 2-3 chest/battle out

In Verona I have access to Royal Griffins but i am not sure i should buy them, I only need like 15k Gold for the 4Int+15ManaArtifact and it would cost all my money.

I have
8 Rage 3/2 Dig
39 Rage Dive
14 Rage Kick
14 Rage Mana Orb (Acceleration)
so far i had a point where i could choose betweeb lightnig orb and Dive and while i see at the engame LO will be mutch better i was thinging of today first. Still i am not sure it is a good choice.

My problem is that even if i kill a few more group with a lots of patience in Rusty anchor next stepp vould be Verona with Lethal+ Enemies. Is there any missing Islands nearby i should have found?

Should I have lvl 5 unit aready?

Also, I will run out of paladins soon

[Elwin]

Verona is next after rusty anchor, lvl 5 unit is a personal choice,i didnt use even a single one on my first gameplay. Paladins are in big number in temple of hope ... but its beetween verona and montero. Never tried to kite bridge guard since it wasnt hard enemy when i reached that place but for lvl 12 it can be a problem

[DGDobrev]

Orb of Lightning - oh, that must be the worst skill ever :P Check this out:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=123338&postcount=1

Dragon dive isn't bad, but it rapidly loses it's usefulness. It is nice to have it as a 20-rage tool, since it pushes enemies back but in the end, it inflicts physical damage, which is pretty coomon and quite a bunch of units have resistance against it.

[Arilian]

Thx,

Also i am waiting for L.Orb to be a possibility again, i think it can offer it again, right?
I now have the possibility to pick Lava flow vs Improving Dive/Mana.

Lava flow is "yet another fixed damage spell" or is that any useful?

I found some packs in earlies isles so i am soon lvl 14 and changed to royal griffin after all. I need to another pac of decoys.
I have found resurrect/sacrifice/phantom in verona but i cannot really use them with order 1/chaos 0 :)

Not finding Lvl 5 units are not my choice but I never found any so far.

[DGDobrev]

Lava call is great on Elon, against undead and against lizards. It inflicts fire damage, and must be used appropriately. As for the orb, you will get it, don't worry. You are still pretty early in the game, anyway :)

[Zhuangzi]

I don't think level 5 units are essential, but they are nice for absorbing hits I guess. A lot of people seem to like Cyclops but I highly recommend Red Dragons if you can find them.

For me the hardest part of the game so far was roughly from battles 50-120. That part dragged on for a long time and I did a lot of island hopping to fight the weakest possible enemies. 120-250 has been much easier.

[Elwin]

Anyway the best for tanking is paladin :D

[Arilian]

Well I am at 80 now :) so hopefully it will get easyer.
Unfortunately all of Veronas Map guardians are still way too powerful.
I am at leas getting better with money.

Just killed the 10000 peasant, really fun fight for once, Heroes2(3?) had a similar one when you needed to gather an army with your necromancer :)

[Zechnophobe]

I don't think level 5 units are essential, but they are nice for absorbing hits I guess. A lot of people seem to like Cyclops but I highly recommend Red Dragons if you can find them.

For me the hardest part of the game so far was roughly from battles 50-120. That part dragged on for a long time and I did a lot of island hopping to fight the weakest possible enemies. 120-250 has been much easier.

When I get cyclops' early I will actually run them forward before attacking to get them out in the thick of things. They actually have two very high quality special abilities. Push does massive damage for a unit of that leadership, and their stun ability is also a nice no retal ability.

Of course, an early dragon is much better. It would seem that booking it to Rusty Anchor, supplying the man there with pirates/robbers/marauders and then kiting for the green dragon should be about the most consistent way to get an early level 5er. (You will need 1900 leadership though).

[Elwin]

Progrees report : Cleraed dersu and uzala currently on tekron oh and beat a spider menawhile ;p i didnt change army for him. Since he had insane hard hitting poison i didnt bother to atack him with my troops i just swarmed him with gobots xD

[Urbz]

Well I am at 80 now :) so hopefully it will get easyer.
Unfortunately all of Veronas Map guardians are still way too powerful.
I am at leas getting better with money.

Just killed the 10000 peasant, really fun fight for once, Heroes2(3?) had a similar one when you needed to gather an army with your necromancer :)

Sorry for OT, but indeed Arilian this was in the evil campaign of HoMM2, where you had to fight loads of stacks with thousands of peasants, a really challenging yet fun map!
I might actually replay the campaigns again some time, should still be awesome. ::grin:

[Zhuangzi]

Elon and Shettera done. The big demon guy in Shettera was a moderate challenge for no losses, but the Wandering spelling that gives +10 attack fixed him up. Zigaldis was very easy. My stack of 500+ Royal Thorns could score 20,000 on a critical, meaning that the summoned towers were dead before they could spawn. And I just kept zapping him with the Inquisitors, Archmages, Red Dragons with their special attack, and phantomed Paladins. Zigaldis does have a nasty area of effect attack, but it's nothing that the Paladins can't fix.

On to Nameless then, at level 49 with 32,000 leadership. Day 22.

[DGDobrev]

Well, the good question is how did you manage to save the royal thorns and the red dragons from dying? :) The dragons can survive one such blast with the proper equipment, but the thorns seem to be another matter.

As for Samman, I remember that I used the stalling tactic. I simply waited out till he's out of mana summoning demon portals. Otherwise he is very quick to dump an armageddon spell without thinking...

[Zechnophobe]

500+ Royal Thorns? That would require 190,000 Leadership. Do you mean 50+? (boggle!).

[Zhuangzi]

Whoops! I mean Royal Snakes. I've got 500 of them, not Thorns. :o
I've stopped using the Thorns altogether because they can't be resurrected. Shame, as they are potentially an outstanding unit.
I am yet to be convinced that Royal Snakes aren't among the best strike units in the game. 6-10 damage means that Holy Anger from the Inquisitors is a big help, and like I said, I was seeing 20,000 damage on a Critical (40 per snake - is that the max possible?)

[Elwin]

i have around 200 gorguanas they also have 6-10 and crit for around 9k so its same .. but gorguana kills and takes next xD 5-6 kills in a row is normal :p

Progress: 235 no loss left to do nameless shattera reha zilgadis ktahu ball uldara uldara

and btw my units have 70-100% crit chance its insane powerfull :P

[Zhuangzi]

Nameless done. Up to about 270 fights or so. It's day 23 but I will have to travel around a bit to finish a few quests. I finally got the Pain Skull but I think it might be too late in the game. It's only down to 84% and there's only Reha left. The thing is that I am generating rage and mana so fast that it hardly seems to matter that I am using the Pain Skull.

Would you believe I am going camping this weekend? I'm sure it'll be fun, but that means that Reha will have to wait two days or so. :rolleyes:

[DGDobrev]

Keep up the good work, guys! I can see that both of you enjoy the game big time as well as its challenges :)

Zhuangzi, I would propose that you leave the skull as it is and use something else, if you have it (Dragon Necklace will do). You have 30 battles + a few suppressions or item upgrades at most, which will push up the battle count to 300-305 at most. That's only 35 battles. The skull reduces its counter by 1-3% each fight, and you need to be really lucky in order to get to to 0% by the end of the game.

Have fun on your camping trip. I'll be doing something like that on Saturday - a hiking trip. 24 kilometers :)

[Elwin]

Not much a challenge .. running at half leadership army and taknig down everything easily ... uldara is first who got me in trouble for no loses .. but for exa,ple i had 90 of 200 paladins .. killed everything in elon except her and headeing to nameless.. i will be back and she wil be in troubles ;p :P

Since half of game it was clear to me that i should just prepare for ktahu and baal :P

[Arilian]

For me it is still pretty hard, but at leas i can kill leathal armies except a few really irritating kind if enemies.
I am at the 100th battle atm. (no losses)
Money is finally not a problem
Tried out Assassins and for me they work better than snakes (i got not snake boosting item) bat not a big difference anyway.

Lots of shamman in a lethal enemy are really the pain in the ass, they have TONS of hp and they can kill any of my units with the axe spell.

Can i somehow guide the lightning orbs to a spcific enemy?

[DGDobrev]

Well, the AI chooses the target with the most HP overall or the most dangerous one currently. So if a goblin stack has the most HP, the AI will attack it. A way to remedy that is to cast awaken dragon and summon another Lightning Orb, which will surely hit it.

It's a bit dodgy, and you should be aware that you can't get 2 orbs to attack the same enemy, but they can take out quite a bunch of units in one go anyway.

[Elwin]

Preparing for the last battle and kinda confused wh exactly to do,

I am gonna do ktahu+bal with dark knight army but

1. i didnt free moro so i do not have splnter of darkness . could redo part with nameless and shattera but its quite tedious to do that again ..

2 another point is i do not have much black nights .. just 50 .. tried o get it with call necro scroll but no luck .. sacrificing would be realy tedoius ,,, i would need to rise like 300 of them with a warior its too much work ... the easiest would be wth moro and train knights into black knights.

3 And then come 3rd thing .. armorer beraer with proper slots ...i have a helm dwecreasing black night leadership to make a set with splinter. But moro do not have artifact slot .. so as warior i would be strict to just one atifact - and i have rage eater, splinter,death skull ancient amulet to choose ....
Also i do no have any good armor .. i have awesome dresses of the mages but he cant wear the.. bonus to morale of undead is good point also ,, just that lack of atifact is a pain ..

other choice could be agvares he got artifact slot and can wear dresses .. but no helmet and 4th slot ith belt/gloves would be epty i do not have ny decent one to give him ...


hard choices ;s


Edit : didnt notice splinter is regalia. that chnages a little but i dont realy feel i wanna do that battle s again

[Elwin]

OK didnt need that splinter, black nights is the most ovrpowered unit KB:AP. Killed hard ktahu in 5 round (rest was kling fking gorgiuanas) and ball in 10 rounds no loss ...

Iys over i did it .. ktahu nad baal like 5-10 min real time xD


Oh and final ktahu blow was for 60K but somehow didnt catch it in scrrenshot :( or i wil re do its jsut 5 min of fight );P

[Amidamaru86]

Finished the game at impossible with a warrior today (1st attempt, started at impossible, because I know KB: Legend 100%), basically the no losses is easy as hell once you get a proper army + a decent amount of mana.

My main strategy was:
1 tank - royal griffin (best tank for a warrior In my opinion, can summon Angelic Guards - very nice unit - can Cheer = the best buff in the game)

Damagers:
Hunters - avaible once some castless were conquered
Elves - a bit weaker version of hunters, still very powerfull
Skeleton Archer - HUGE damagers, with items +talents they got almost 70% crit !!!! did not use dragon arrows, cause it was nerfed badly in AP, in late game with a crit (70% of the time) they did around 25,000 dmg each round if the enemy was in range.
Inquisitors - I know they suck, but the only archer worth swaping for a warrior was a goblin.. and elves hate undead and orcs so the loss of morale was too great, and the skeleton archers were my primal dps)

The most important thing : Turn Back Time spell (30 mana for a creature lvl 4), once you have it you can take lethal or invincible monsters without any worries, with no losses.

Basic strategy:

1) You send griffins without attacking close to the enemy ranged units to block them, and cast summon Angelic Guards if the enemy is very strong, or cheer if you know the battle wont last long.

2) You rape the enemy with your archers, starting with their ranged units

3) at turn 2, put your inquisitors on wait, attack with all the rest, then when the enemy will move its every unit cast Turn Back Time on Royal griffins.

4) Turn 3: if you are low on mana, use your dragon to replenish it or cast Calm Rage.

5) Repeat steps 1-4 if necessary.

The only casualties you will have is when facing enemy heroes who cast offensive spells.

The reason why I used Royal Griffins instead of paladins:
- they counterattack every time, combine it with the +counterattack talent which gives +20% crit I think = pure awsomeness :)
- they fly - no need to worry about obsticles
- better speed and initiative then paladins
- cheer = best buff in game, not to mention the bonus to all humans (only inquisitors in my case..)
- can summon Angelic Guards, great units for blocking

The companion I used was the guy who gives bonus to archers crit chance, he gives 25% at the end = that is a great boost

Was also considering to make dark knights a tanking unit, with the artifact which makes them counterattack each time, but the flight+cheer+summon of a griffin owns.

IMPORTANT: this unit setup was made with the +1 morale bonus from the paladin tree talent, crown of elves (supressed every time the morale of the crown went to 0) = with those two, elves suffer no penatly for having an undead in the party, later on I got another great item +1 morale of all archers +dmg or sth. When choosing items look for +phisical dmg or dmg of all archers etc, or a +1 fire dmg item (from the demons set)

With the money you save that way, you can really abuse the rune shop, I had like 4,000,000 gold at one point (used treasure hunt in each battle 3 times) and bought runes for it and almost maxed out all three talent trees (finished the game at lvl 55)

Hope it helps, now starting a mage at impossible :>

[DGDobrev]

Very inovative strategy - I salute you!

I was really interested to see how a person with archer army will do. On paper it won't work that well, because archers generally, have low Health. Skel Archers should be dying easily, but still, with 2 always retaliating tanks in the enemy lines (Royals and Angelics), your archers will be safe most of the time - besides, if the enemy gets to your skellies, I suppose that there is nothing an evlin spell can't fix (because evlin resses part of the stack, and keeping in mindyou have thousands of sekl archers, that is not a problem).

Still, as warrior you are a small disadvantage - as a mage, you can easily cast Target + Stone skin at the begining of round one and simply watch the carnage with the same troop setup :)

[Arilian]

Can you Rez skeleton archers in AP?

I am at battle 120 atm but went to the elves already. I have found Hunters in 5 place but no elves...
Also did not found time back so far...

In KB:TL i have used timeback the most of all spells and abilities i think. I even have Disortion III already but no luck with the spell. (I have -20% LDR for griifins, works woth royals too, and +2 moral for griffins, so they are really good, but withouth timeback the enemy kills too many if i send them in the first round....)

[DGDobrev]

Yes, you can. Resurrection will not work, but there is a new wickely overpowered spell in KBAP - Evlin. It resurrects from 10 to 30% of a slain troop (lvl 1-3), for a hefty amount of mana, but suffice it so say, that is more than enough. Sadly, this tactic suffers against mechanical enemies (they leave no corpse, which is the prerequisite for the Evlin spell) but still, playing with undead is much more easier now. In addition to that spell, Demonologists, the new unit in KBAP can easily resurrect undead through his Life Drain Ability.

Suffice it to say, playing different races is much more interesting that in was in KBTL. KBTL was biased towards humans, elves and dwarves (mostly, but not entirely, I now) - bit no longer! :) In KBAP almost every race is playable. Humans with a balanced army of tanks and rangers? Elves with rangers +1 tank? Dwarves with Gants and brute force units? Undead with no-retaliation, aways regenerating units? Demons with constantly etaliating units? Pure Dragon Parites? Lizards, summoning tons of meat shield units, as well as units that everyone fears, capable of destroying 96 %of a single enemy troop if used properly?

In KBAP, everyone can have their pick of extras :)

[Elwin]

Yes you can ress them with evlin spell. I like griphons veru much but i didnt found any in my 2nd game .. always casual griphons i found ..

[Amidamaru86]

Can you Rez skeleton archers in AP?

I am at battle 120 atm but went to the elves already. I have found Hunters in 5 place but no elves...
Also did not found time back so far...

In KB:TL i have used timeback the most of all spells and abilities i think. I even have Disortion III already but no luck with the spell. (I have -20% LDR for griifins, works woth royals too, and +2 moral for griffins, so they are really good, but withouth timeback the enemy kills too many if i send them in the first round....)

Yes you can ress them by evlin spell (at my 1st playthrough havent use that spell even once), but you wont have to in 95% of cases (5% of cases when fighing heroes), you can use sacrifice + ressurection from inquisitors, its rather crappy (think that I got like 16 skeletons per sacrifice). In my case the only reason I had to replenish skeletons in my army is when I leveld up and got more leadership, but skeleton archers are unlimited at one point of the game (a bit expensive but still unlimited), combine it with no losses and they are almost a free unit.

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, I am finally up to Baal but I'm having terrible trouble with him currently. I had to alter my team for K'Thalu to include more tanks, so now I'm using Knights, Paladins, Horsemen, Archmages and Royal Griffins. This worked okay for him, but now I am getting smashed by Baal. With Flaming Eyes and the Knight set, I am up to 44,000 leadership which gives me a hell of a lot of the above units. But it doesn't seem to matter. The biggest problem is Baal's 'flying sword' attack which hits three units. I am using the Royal Griffins + Phantom to make an unlimited supply of Heavenly Guards for cannon fodder, but that flying sword attack is too much. It does something like 12,000 damage on the Archmages.

So, advice? I have buffed my character with any Wanderers Scrolls that I had, but I didn't have a Titan's Sword left or the +10 defense one. Also, I could be using 21 Red Dragons instead. What to do? :confused:

[Elwin]

Well i could tell you take moro and dark knights xD screenshot what he does in prevoius page :p0 with black helmet and staf of acolyte necromancer to get much more of them xD

with such high leadership even evlin lvl 1 is sufficient. With 49k ld and those 2 itrms i had 500 of them .. so 455 +0.1x455 = 500 .. and as loong you have stoneskin on, you will not lose 45 blackies

[DGDobrev]

A way to keep low losses from that attack is to keep your 3 tanks (paladins, knights, horsemen) close to one another with stone skin always on. The swords hits the 3 units that are the closest to one another, and those 3 should be it. Also, keeping your ranged and support units on the back line helps a lot.

You should also employ the tactic where 2 units stand one behind another. The Heavenly Guards should be perfect for that with their high physical resistance. Baal is most likely to hit 2 units that are one behind another than throw his sword or summon allies (according to the boss attack table - hit 2 units if possible has the highest chance, the next is throw a sword, and finally summon allies if you have 5-6 units - if you have more than 6, the chance for him to summon allies increases progressively). Keep using the Heavenly guards that way and things may change.

[Zhuangzi]

YES! I finally did it even if it drove me nearly crazy doing it. I realised that against Baal you have to attack and quickly. So I put away the Inquisitors and went for a team of Paladins, Knights, Horsemen, Inquisitors and Guardsmen. I had the Knight set (20% more leadership), Flaming Eyes and the Inquisitor sword, which meant I had something like 334 Paladins. I needed every one of them though.

The strategy was to allow Gilbert to cast Mass Haste and then use Stone Skin myself every turn. I made sure to have a line of two troops in front of Baal at the end of each turn to encourage him to hit me. That flying sword is a killer so you want to avoid it if you can. I took him down in about 12 turns by just repeatedly whacking him with the Knights, Paladins and Guardsmen. Mostly the Horsemen were for mopping up spawned enemies. If Baal takes a certain percentage of his damage, he will do the attack that destroys part of the ledge, but no matter.

The trick I was trying to pull off (and it took about four tries to get it right) was to almost kill him and then allow him to spawn some stuff before finishing him off. I used Blind at first to try to complete my resurrections, but I kept running out of time and mana, and it was a pain. Then I realised that if I left a stack of Scoffer Imps, I'd be able to do it as Scoffers have 3 rounds of special attacks (2 x Fireball and 1 x Enrage) and THEN they have no retaliation. Perfect. So I used Calm Rage to get more Mana and kept pumping out the Phantomed Paladins every turn. Probably took about six turns of this until I was back up to full stacks.

Then, after all of this, the sweetest of victories! :cool:

[DGDobrev]

Well done, Zhuangzi!!!

That's the stuff. You too prove to be a master of KBAP. Getting a no-loss win is not based on advices only - but on good tactics on the part of the player as well. I thank you for your kind words, but it is you who should be commended entirely :)

Once again, great work :)

[Urbz]

Congrats Zhuangzi! :grin:

[Arilian]

Grats.

I am not planning to win the last battle with no loss, there must be heroic sacrifices to rember :)

[Elwin]

I think i am not gonna do impossible run .. i know i wuold do it judging how easy the hard was .. just much time consuming thats all

[Arilian]

BTW i have restared on the same map because i tried out all dragon skills and a felt that i should be more focused.

I tried to skip Dive and i failing to win sometimes even agains "equal strengt" enemies (withouse loss ofc).
I feel that Dive is a must between battle 40 and 100

after battle 120 it did not really mattered, with a good build and army setup i was able to beat invinciable heroes with no loss.

No i am not sure i should go back to battle 30 and choose dive or go back top battle 150 and live with a few badly spent point on dragon skills but i think i will do the later...

[Arilian]

Also a tip, on the first map you cave Beholders on the cave.
They are great for no loss as they can sleep huge stack of lvl 1 creatore in almost 100% chance.

[DGDobrev]

In my opinion, you should go on. Dive seems as great a skill in the beginning, as pointless and stupid it looks in the middle of the game, where it simply doesn't do much. Pushing towards skill like Lava call and Fiery Phantoms is much better, and the way to those skills (which require a certain dragon level) lies in Ball of Lightning, Mana Accelerator and Mystic Egg, as they are one of the best skills to pump up dragon XP AND be useful altogether.

In my opinion, even Mystic Egg is better than dive, because if you improve it well, you get a strong lvl 2-5 troop which alone can win your battles.

[Arilian]

Hm, I was not planning to get mystic egg, but BOL, Treashure Hunt, and Mana accelerator mainly. I have a lot of cannon fodder already, but i might try it anyway.
There should be a respec for the dragon :)

[Zhuangzi]

Well, I used Dragon Dive a fair bit in those earlier stages of the game too, but every becomes very easy by about the 120-130 fight stage anyway, so don't start again now. I used Fiery Phantoms a lot in my game, as well as Ball of Lightning. Ultimately, I only really used those two in the late game and Dragon Kick and Treasure Searcher in the earlier stages. I found that an upgraded Dragon Kick does have some strategic value when it can push enemies 3 squares.

[golgo13]

when I first heard of no-loss impossible quest it really tempted me (my friend told me, as he knew I always play the games on the hardest possible), and I felt like i had to achieve it! and i jumped on it without even reading any forums and utilizing-sharing peoples strategy ideas. I started a paladin 'cos i like a balanced hero, but seems like its not the best choice as I read. the fist time I found my first paladin unit and resurrection spell (yes both in the same place) was not until I fought over 130 no-loss hard won battles with blood and tears (and Zhuangzi I know what its to be married and investing your 8 hrs a day in a game, it could be a pain in the ass :) and all about the golden games of past.. (MOO2, Master of magic, star control 2, heroes2-3, romance of the three kingdoms series, starwars x-wing, tie fighter, x-com ufo, jagged alliance2 and unfinished business.. and it goes on.., check out www.hotud.org for the old games and such. I have a PS2 and 3 and I dont even want to mention my months dedicated into square enix games.. (did anybody say FinalFantasy :) being a hardcore gamer I felt like home while reading these threads. after the paladins, it was relatively easy, with the inquisitor's sword I could get 75 paladins, and 120 inquisitors.. but up until now I avoided boss fights, maybe with the addition of paladins in my army, I should give it a try.. my strategy up until now was using target lvl 3 on my dragon, increasing its defence with stone skin, raising them with inquisitors if needed be and wiping them away with my beholders. on though fights I accumulate my rage -either with potion or after a relatively easy fight without using much mana- and lay a mystic egg. it really helps, anything that tanks is more than welcome. my army consists of;
beholders
evil beholders
red dragons
paladins
inquisitors
being a paladin hero, inquisitors and paladins are utitilized at maximum with increased dmg and such.. I also completed the inquisitor set.
one hint that i want to share is about battlefield. İslands consist of parcels of different battlefields. we all know very well that even the tiny obstacle on that battlefield saved our life countless times. when you enter an area the game creates all the battlefields, and place them on island. if you didnt like it, you can exit and enter area again. if not the shape of the battlefield change, the places of the obstacle do.. sometimes you should lure an enemy to better battle grounds on your behalf.. for example you wouldnt want to fight with an undead army in a graveyard if you could.. one great place to fight and win an invincible enemy easily is on dersu island, right in front of the spiders cave. Dont you like those battlefields with only 3 square(they r more like hexagonals I guess) wide path? and if there r some obstacles too its almost only one square for enemy units to pass. there's one lizardmen hero with only melee fighters and only uses phantom spell.. an easy catch.. and you can lure other gusy to this battlefield too.. btw there's this dersu island and uzala island in the game. actually Dersu Uzala is the name of the oscar winning movie filmed by Akira Kurosawa in 1972, original name 'dersou ouzala' akira kurosawa filmed it based on the russian explorer vlademir arseniev's memoirs.. I think this is where the developers of the game inspired. The movie is really moving, I recommend it. anyway thnx for reading ppl, this is my very first entry on this forum.
P.S. I still didnt finish the game

[Zhuangzi]

when I first heard of no-loss impossible quest it really tempted me (my friend told me, as he knew I always play the games on the hardest possible), and I felt like i had to achieve it! and i jumped on it without even reading any forums and utilizing-sharing peoples strategy ideas. I started a paladin 'cos i like a balanced hero, but seems like its not the best choice as I read. the fist time I found my first paladin unit and resurrection spell (yes both in the same place) was not until I fought over 130 no-loss hard won battles with blood and tears (and Zhuangzi I know what its to be married and investing your 8 hrs a day in a game, it could be a pain in the ass :) and all about the golden games of past.. (MOO2, Master of magic, star control 2, heroes2-3, romance of the three kingdoms series, starwars x-wing, tie fighter, x-com ufo, jagged alliance2 and unfinished business.. and it goes on.., check out www.hotud.org for the old games and such. I have a PS2 and 3 and I dont even want to mention my months dedicated into square enix games.. (did anybody say FinalFantasy :) being a hardcore gamer I felt like home while reading these threads. after the paladins, it was relatively easy, with the inquisitor's sword I could get 75 paladins, and 120 inquisitors.. but up until now I avoided boss fights, maybe with the addition of paladins in my army, I should give it a try.. my strategy up until now was using target lvl 3 on my dragon, increasing its defence with stone skin, raising them with inquisitors if needed be and wiping them away with my beholders. on though fights I accumulate my rage -either with potion or after a relatively easy fight without using much mana- and lay a mystic egg. it really helps, anything that tanks is more than welcome. my army consists of;
beholders
evil beholders
red dragons
paladins
inquisitors
being a paladin hero, inquisitors and paladins are utitilized at maximum with increased dmg and such.. I also completed the inquisitor set.
one hint that i want to share is about battlefield. İslands consist of parcels of different battlefields. we all know very well that even the tiny obstacle on that battlefield saved our life countless times. when you enter an area the game creates all the battlefields, and place them on island. if you didnt like it, you can exit and enter area again. if not the shape of the battlefield change, the places of the obstacle do.. sometimes you should lure an enemy to better battle grounds on your behalf.. for example you wouldnt want to fight with an undead army in a graveyard if you could.. one great place to fight and win an invincible enemy easily is on dersu island, right in front of the spiders cave. Dont you like those battlefields with only 3 square(they r more like hexagonals I guess) wide path? and if there r some obstacles too its almost only one square for enemy units to pass. there's one lizardmen hero with only melee fighters and only uses phantom spell.. an easy catch.. and you can lure other gusy to this battlefield too.. btw there's this dersu island and uzala island in the game. actually Dersu Uzala is the name of the oscar winning movie filmed by Akira Kurosawa in 1972, original name 'dersou ouzala' akira kurosawa filmed it based on the russian explorer vlademir arseniev's memoirs.. I think this is where the developers of the game inspired. The movie is really moving, I recommend it. anyway thnx for reading ppl, this is my very first entry on this forum.
P.S. I still didnt finish the game

Sounds like you are going fine there. Yeah, I know about the different terrain thing for the battles. It's just another one of the small details that makes this a great game. In terms of the bosses, you will find the Spider and Frog to be the easiest. The Driller is comparatively a lot harder. I love your reference to Star Control 2 as well. For many, many years now I've been looking for a space adventure game as good as this and I've never found it. Space Rangers 2 is the closest I've got to finding it, and in fact that's how I found out about King's Bounty. :)

[golgo13]

being a paladin you have gotta be somewhere in btw warrior and mage, but somehow I always end up having intelligence as my highest stat. unlike the heroes series, in this game all ur stats come from items and altars/training dummies u touch. so I guess its more like a choice than a fate. but the real sad thing is I dont even use a dmg spell ever. As a conclusion my stats really suck.
One issue I want to underline is my army. although I prefer archers(beholders or elven ones depending on the enemies resistances) to be the main dmg source, my paladins also hit hard. I see that for no-loss impossible run paladins are a crucial element. so why not utilize them in battle? they seem to be slow and we need them right in the center of our troops to resurrect them. to overcome these issues I recommend teleport spell. it comes very handy, your paladins are right there when you need'em and where you need'em, almost like the cavalry. and towards the end of the battle you can place them right in the center of you troops via teleport.
and about star control 2 (there was also project nomad from the old times) it realy brings back sweet memories. years later I also finished star control 3, but I couldnt get the same taste. space rangers 2 did excite me for real, its a real gem with all those details and beautiful 2D graphics (oh how I miss'em) if only I could find time to play it more. do you recommend it? 'cos honestly I still have its shortcut on my desktop..
P.S. I think it'd be fun if ppl could share screen-shots of their desktops :-P

[Zhuangzi]

Yes, I'd recommend Space Rangers 2. Katauri did a 'Reboot' edition which is basically the patched game. I played both versions and honestly there isn't that much difference. I think I played SR2 through twice and I loved doing so, but I got to the stage where I didn't see what else of interest there was to do with the game. The actual combat (i.e. space ship battles) are quite weak, so I don't think it has the long term appeal of King's Bounty. But that's just my opinion.

My desktop isn't very interesting at present. The game I've been playing a fair bit of recently is PopCap's Plants vs Zombies, which is an insanely fun casual game. I played at least 20-30 hours of this over a week or so. That's the only game I've enjoyed other than KB:AP in the past couple of months.

[DGDobrev]

Not to mention incredibly addictive... Brraaaains!!!

As for my desktop... Nothing much on it (KBTL, KBAP, PES2010, Plants and Zombies), but the wallpaper is Xeona from KBTL. The guy who drew her most certainly left his "hands" there :)

EDIT: Added the wallpaper.

[Elwin]

My desktop :
KB:AP. Warcraft3 tft, brother's WoW.Silent hil 1,2,3. Playstation II emulator.
And tons of tools for PC diagnosis, orthos,victoria,everest,occt,cpu-z etc

[lauvhk]

Hah good to know that I am not the only one who plays Plant vs Zombie.

[TemjinGold]

There's a zombie on your lawn... :D

[Zhuangzi]

Not to mention incredibly addictive... Brraaaains!!!

As for my desktop... Nothing much on it (KBTL, KBAP, PES2010, Plants and Zombies), but the wallpaper is Xeona from KBTL. The guy who drew her most certainly left his "hands" there :)

EDIT: Added the wallpaper.

My four year old daughter LOVES playing Plants vs Zombies with me, so much so that she has started doing a zombie walk herself with the 'BRAAAINS!' cry. It is very addictive, but I got to the end of the campaign and did most of the challenges (not the Survival ones yet) and I've suddenly stopped playing.

And cheers for that wallpaper, DGD. Now it's my wallpaper too. :-P

[DGDobrev]

And a beautiful wallpaper it is :) I've been keeping it for more than 3 months and it still looks as pretty as the first day.

Come to think of it, Xeona was one of the best wives in KBTL and was a good match to any hero who's doing a no-loss game.

[Zhuangzi]

She was always my favourite. From memory she had two weapon slots, which was sweet.

[spangler]

I've done mage on hard on the legend, but this is my first time through armoured princress. I'm having my ass kicked on impossible, I've made quite a few mistakes as I can see now.. I'm probably going to have to restart.

I am just wondering, when people got the learning skill, and to what level. Generally what skill order people went with, I am prety sure I messed up. Also are droids any good for my warrior.

What dragon skills do you use mostly? I just got the lightning one, it's amazing. whats his rest period though, does it increase with more charges. I chose stone wall this time through first, but only 1 option of upgrade and keeps getting 1 hitted. >.> Crushing blow seems good for distancing 1 stack, got the dagon arty that puts it to 3 now.

Anyway thanks for any advice.

[MaroonMaurader]

This forum is mostly dead - you're the only strategy post in the last week. There's lots of good info. floating around old threads, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for answers to questions.

Learning is a great skill if you're going for a high-level or high-score game. In that case, you should get it as fast as possible. Otherwise, it's not worth it - you won't earn the runes back until around level 55/56, by which point the game is basically over. To my mind, the big skill to get is Distortion magic. The other thing I'd advise is that you make a concerted effort to get the medals as early as possible.

When I played as mage, I mostly used the charges, dug for treasure, and threw down stone walls with the dragon. As a warrior, I found lightning to be a superb skill (DGDobrev has a post doing over 100k damage with one use of it IIRC).

Repair droids are absurdly good - dare I even say overpowered - if you're going for no-loss on Immortal. Make sure to split them into two stacks so they can repair each other.

[Sir Whiskers]

What dragon skills do you use mostly? I just got the lightning one, it's amazing. whats his rest period though, does it increase with more charges. I chose stone wall this time through first, but only 1 option of upgrade and keeps getting 1 hitted. >.> Crushing blow seems good for distancing 1 stack, got the dagon arty that puts it to 3 now.

I haven't played impossible, so some of my suggestions may not fit, but here goes.

Ball Lightning has one upgrade that increase the rest time, and no upgrades that decrease it back to one. It's a tough choice whether or not to take the upgrade, as a maxed out ball lightning is truly wonderful in the later game, when taking on big stacks. But that extra rest means casting a lot of Awaken Dragon spells. For a mage, that's generally okay (I often use Awaken Dragon the first few rounds so I can use the dragon twice), but other characters will be impacted far more, as they won't have the Higher Magic skill.

Crushing Blow never impressed me with it's raw damage, but having played Crossworlds where I can see the amount of XP earned, once you upgrade it to max, it earns your dragon a ton of XP compared to the other abilities. It's also useful for finishing off or weakening stacks that ball lightning ignores.

I've never been a big fan of the wall. At low levels, it's so weak it usually only lasts a short time, often only one blow. At higher levels, I usually prefer to use ball lightning or crushing blow. Fiery Phantoms can also be useful in a battle where all the enemy troops are packed together. YMMV