Impossible Mage, No Losses

[The Rider]

I am playing as Mage on Impossible level. At the moment I am 44 level with 46 level dragon pet. Only the Nameless Isle and Reha are left.
The game was extremly difficult until Montero. From the beggining I removed the peasants, the faerys and the dragonflies. I started with Inqusitors, Priests, Guards, Bowmen and Bears. On Verona later on I switched the Bears for Royal Snakes and the Guards for Werewolves (Werewolves do 30% more damage for their leadership. Usually for units 2-4 level the leadership is the same as the health - for melee units, and the health = leadership - 30% for archers and spellcasters. The max damage is 1/10th or 1/9th of the health, and the werewolves come with 55 health, 6-9 damage for 60 leadership, which is a pure gain, the wolves fear ability too).

I used fire arrow a lot, trap (I wanted to maximize the medal for the trap spell, which had a great influence later on) and healing. I got fire ball spell from a chest on the battlefield. From the beggining I started to invest in the defence with items and skills. The first skill I picked was glory 2 levels - I just waited for enough runes, I picked the 2 mind runes from the priest near the church on Verona, found 1 mind rune from digging, 1 from a chest and the rest I got from the level up. Than I went for chaos magic and Resistance.

I got more leadership from the 1st level of the medal for no losses. The enemies were incinerated, trapped and poisoned. The rest did the royal snakes.

On Verona I was offered the Ancient Amulet (10 magic runes after 50 battles) and on Scarlet Wind the Blade and the Paladin Banner (10 might and 10 mind runes for 50 battles). I got enough money from the digger ability of the pet dragon and because there were no losses, I didnt needed money for my army. First I bought the Ancient Amulet and later I returned for the other two artifacts.

I dont remember where exactly I found the mithirl shield(+8 defence) - it was in one cave with three chests always containing at least 2 4-5 level artifacts, but it was a great addition to my defence strategy.

On Bolo I switched the bowmen for cyclops, which was a great help (less units to heal, resurect). And on Bolo I got another lucky spell - found Ressurection from a chest on the battlefield (I couldnt believe that, this is my second replay and the last time with the Paladin I found Ressurection on Elon from the merchant on the bridge).

On Verona I switched the Priests for Demonologist, another great unit with resurrection ability and the summoning skill they have was of great help, there was no need to put my royal snakes and werewolves anymore in the middle of the battle, the cerberi and the demons did the hard work, I just used trap after trap and fire arrows and fireballs for everything. On Verona I had 2 levels of transmutation skill, so my mana was rarely empty.

Before going to Montero I replaced the werewolves with Paladins, so my army consisted from Cyclops, Inqusitors (lame damage except vs undead and demons, but can resurect), Paladins (slow, but decent damage and the second wind helped the snakes to poison more units in the first round), Demonologist, Royal Snakes (later I discovered that they are the best weapon against bosses).

Montero was pain in the ass, with all these alchemists doing mass damage, cannoneers and giants (again small mass damage, killing 0-2 units of a stack). The Paladins were the ones that have to carry on for the whole army, so I couldnt use them as strikers. My defence was around 22 on montero, my inteligence around 20 and the attack skill sucked. After the half underground was cleared I finnaly got the third level of the trap skill and that changed everything. Why? The battlefield is not very big and ussualy there are many obstacles, altars or chests. The three traps were very usefull in stopping the melee units for 3 rounds - and greatly weaking them, the traps that are placed in the beggining of the combat are much more powerfull than the spell trap. Even with the large ammount of HP the dwarves have, sometimes their stacks were halved. The dragon dive ability properly placed is a killer with all these traps. (Later in the game one trap can kill two of my red dragons, when I am not very carefull when moving them). The third trapper medal was something that made the game very very easy. The stronger armies turned into weak for my mage and the lethal into not very dangerous.

In Montero I got the first level of high magic, I got 2 levels of chaos magic, 2 levels order magic and 1 level distortion, 2 leves of Power of Spirit (+2 attack and defence) and 3 levels of Resistance. My defence skill was ~30 (even with the lame armors I found), but I invested in boots (+15% phisical resistance) and Spiked boots (+1 attack, +2 defence), the mithril shield (+8 defence), tournament helm (+3 defence, +400 leadership), Portrait of King Griffin (+5 defence, +2 griffin morale), 1 defence altar (+1 defence), steel belt (+2 defence), snake ring (+1 intelligence, later upgraded to ring of snake king + 5intelligence), novice staff (+1 intelligence, in the end of montero, upgraded to +2 intelligence). My companion was Jimmy Kraud.

At the end of Montero I realised that I made a mistake using the fire rain spell insted of fire ball or flame arrow (for some reason the fire rain doesnt increase the fire mage medal). But anyway I got plenty of medals until than - 3 levels of Grand Strategy (+1000 leadership), 1 level Headhunter (+5 rage at the beggining of the battle vs a hero), 2 levels Battle Alchemy (+20% incinaration and poison effects), 3 levels Trapper (3 traps), 1 level Dragon Slayer (+10% pet exp, one of the pirats on Anchor Island got 1 Green Dragon, so I was lucky again), 0 levels of Guardian Angel, I started to invest in this on Dersu and at the end of Elon, at the moment I got the 3 levels), 3 levels of treasure hunter (+7% more exp), 1 level of Blind rage (+1% critical), 0 levels of Illiteracy Exterminator (this usualy is changed after Umkasa and Dersu), 1 level Fire Mage, because of that mistake (+5 mana).

The game after Montero was very very easy, no real resistance, most enemies were lethal or very strong but that means nothing. The first boss I killed was the giant frog, I used fire arrows on it, using my units to kill the summoned snakes and to heal each other. The second one was the giant spider, again from the first try it was down with 0 losses. My resurection spell, paladins' resurection, inqusitors' resurection and the demonologists's resurection ability were used non-stop.

On Tekron I killed very easily the two lethal heroes, the knight and the dragon, took the dragon's cloack for 34 defence (with my Paladin this was impossible to do this immidiatly, until I got the resurection spell from Elon). I maximized the linguistic skill and started to invest in thesis skill for more intelligence. I didnt bother to take the mage companion, on Tekron I found a vial of goddess blood, so Jimmy now gives me +700 leadership. I changed the cyclops for red dragons.

On Shettera it was again very easy (again because of the traps, that stopped the demons, cerberi and executors, the dragon dive ability pushed often the demmonesses on a trap killing half of the stack). I bought the anti-demon sword, anti-dragon sword and the anti-undead sword from different stores, so I switched them when necessary.

The only time I got difficulties was when in fight against the driller, the first re-play was a dissaster, almost half of my army got killed, the second one I finished with minor losses, but the third one was a winner, I waited unitl he summoned droids, which I left for the end, killing the Driller, resurecting all my units (I used Magic Spring and resurection spells/abilities). Knowing what to do I killed Grimaldis (the evil gremlin boss) from the first time with no losses, I just waited until he summoned yellow gremlin tower, the red gremlins can harm you with spells, and the summoned units from the yellow gremlins are very weak. The Grimaldis battle was very long, maybe 25-30 turns, but at the end everything was ok.

I am now on the nameless iceland and I will switch Jimmy Kraud for Gaudi, because of his critical hits against undead and demons (very important against Baal at the end).

I will post the victory screen when I finish the game, but I have to say a mage with lots of defence, max trapper skill and the proper spells is much much powerfull than a paladin. At the moment I have ~18k leadership, on the same level with tha Paladin I got more than ~30k leadership and the battles very very hard for me. Lots of losses and pain. In Elon I found the Geyser spell which is a killer after the Ice Snake for demons or Fire Rain for everyone else. At the moment I got all the medals on max, except Blind Rage and I am not sure if I can do it, I need 5k more rage points for the third level, but if I focus all the time on the fiery grounds I can do it. I have less rage than with the Paladin, but I still use the Rage Blade (10 might runes after 50 battles, +3 attack, +15 rage) and I have 80 rage (my fiery grounds cost 80 rage), I cant cast the lava skill because it needs 86 rage.

And the last words - mage on impossible with no losses isn't impossible at all :)

[DGDobrev]

Good work :) You should be able to do it, I don't doubt that. Besides, the only battles that provide some challenge are K'tahu and Baal.

[Zhuangzi]

I'm having a go at this now myself. After the training fights and the two very weak Devilfish units on Debir, the next weakest unit was listed as Lethal! :eek: So it was necessary to do some exploring of the other islands - I don't think it'd be possible to complete this challenge otherwise. Found 5 Demonologists on Scarlet Wind which I am very happy about. I'm wondering whether they only spawn in Mage games, as I didn't see any of them in my Warrior game. Demonologists are just so awesome - not so much the drain life/heal but summoning even 1 Executioner right amidst the enemy is just beautiful. Angel Avenger works well with this for maximum carnage. :-P

I should have mentioned that I picked the Green dragon and set to work on digging up those treasure chests every battle. With 10 rage only at this stage the fights have to be managed correctly. Currently I am using the 4 Royal Thorns that always seem to be available on Debir, Demonologists, Inquisitors, Swordsmen and Royal Snakes. I know that leadership is going to be a big problem so I bought anything that added leadership as well as two points of Glory. So now I have 1700 leadership at level 6 and Debir is clear. The other thing to keep in mind is that there is the quest on Rusty Anchor where you just pick up bottles - this should be done very early.

[DGDobrev]

Make sure to get the 50 archers/pirates/robbers to get the key to the cave in rusty anchor. The emerald green dragon is a great tank this early in the game.

[Zhuangzi]

Make sure to get the 50 archers/pirates/robbers to get the key to the cave in rusty anchor. The emerald green dragon is a great tank this early in the game.

Yep, done. In fact, it's the first time I bothered to complete this quest. With that and the other quests on the first four islands that don't require fighting, I am up to 2800 leadership at level 8. Getting the leadership up is absolutely critical for a Mage, as we know. I also just did the 30th fight without loss, so I got 500 leadership from that.

Team currently hasn't been decided 100%, but currently I have:

- 2/2 Trolls
- 1/1 Emerald Dragon
- 5/11 Demonologists (no more to be found)
- 7/11 Paladins (same)
- 4/7 Royal Thorns (same)
- 46 Royal Snakes
- 28 Inquisitors

I have the Snake boots so I'll definitely be using the Royal Snakes, and the Paladins and Inquisitors, and I'm thinking of maybe going with two tanks for now in the Emerald Dragons AND Trolls. Bad idea? I will need to clear out Scarlet Wind and Bolo with these guys if possible. Intellect is up to 15 already and I've got 2 points in all schools of magic, so spells are looking okay.

[DGDobrev]

As a mage, especially if you're going for no-loss, tough units are mandatory. So I completely support the idea of having both Emerald dragons and Trolls. Emerald dragons do some great work in improving the trap medal as well - simply put the trap in advance, bite something (the bite must not kill it) and draw it to the square with the trap, so that the trap can kill it safely.

You doing great, the few strating islands should be a snap right now :)

[The Rider]

Actually many units that are described as lethal or invincible for the mage are the same as very strong or strong for the warrior, so don't worry if you see that kind of troops, always look at the numbers, not at the description. I killed that stack near the devil fishes just before leaving Debir and it wasn't so hard (right after I did the first level of Grand Strategy medal for more leadership and the second level of glory).

[Zhuangzi]

It was very amusing for me, as I left Debir with leadership of 140 which made everything lethal, and returned with over 600. Suddenly a LOT of enemies were running away from me! Everything in Debir was weaker. Leadership isn't everything, but it is almost everything. :rolleyes:

[Zhuangzi]

Made it to 50 fights without loss, and the first level of Trapper in the same fight. I haven't gone for Trapper before but I thought it would be good for a Mage. With level 2 Distortion, Intellect of 15 and Destruction 1, plus the 25% bonus for the first Trapper medal, my traps are doing 560-840 damage. Not bad for level 11. :cool:

I got my leadership up to 3800 by this stage, but I've got a bit of a problem with proceeding now. I've been around the first four islands but I haven't got the Verona map yet. Presumably the easiest guardian is the one on Scarlet Wind, but he's got about 50 Assassins and my Resurrection power is puny with only 7 Paladins and 28 Inquisitors. I find that against Assassins my units are often pinned to the back of the map so that the Assassins can't use their backstab ability. I tried to kite one of the maps on Bolo or Rusty Anchor but no such luck so far. :(

[DGDobrev]

They are tough to kite... Try kiting the one on Scarlet. You should be also aware that on Rusty Anchor, the stack in the graveyard that's guarding the verona map is sometimes easier than the one on Scarlet, so you may as well try that one out as well.

[Urbz]

Made it to 50 fights without loss, and the first level of Trapper in the same fight. I haven't gone for Trapper before but I thought it would be good for a Mage. With level 2 Distortion, Intellect of 15 and Destruction 1, plus the 25% bonus for the first Trapper medal, my traps are doing 560-840 damage. Not bad for level 11. :cool:

I got my leadership up to 3800 by this stage, but I've got a bit of a problem with proceeding now. I've been around the first four islands but I haven't got the Verona map yet. Presumably the easiest guardian is the one on Scarlet Wind, but he's got about 50 Assassins and my Resurrection power is puny with only 7 Paladins and 28 Inquisitors. I find that against Assassins my units are often pinned to the back of the map so that the Assassins can't use their backstab ability. I tried to kite one of the maps on Bolo or Rusty Anchor but no such luck so far. :(

Just a tip concerning assassins, if you have flying units what I do is luring them in a trap by flying over one and landing right behind it, so the unit will stand with its back towards the trap, this way the joke is on the assa's when they try to backstab you, they will take some nice damage and will be pinned down aswell. ;)

[travelingoz]

Great going Zhuangzi. For tips on kiting the Verona map on Scarlet : http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?p=121788#post121788
What's your rage pool like? For those early tough battles, spam pet dragon eggs! They're a godsend for low leadership Mages.

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks guys, but I managed to win that fight now anyway and luckily it was the Verona map after all. I had to be aware of which direction units would be facing (to keep their backs 'closed' so to speak) and soaked up the damage with the Trolls and the 1 Emerald Dragon. Currently I have a rage pool of 12 :o , mainly because I've been concentrating on the Magic tree. So I can't even use Mystic Egg yet. Mainly I have been using Mana Accelerator and Trap/Healing. Higher Magic would be really useful right now for this.

But when I got to Verona I saw 3 more Trolls at the first shop on the pier. :) So that will do me for a tank for up to 8000 leadership. :cool:

[Zhuangzi]

A lot of sneaking in Verona and Montero has me up to 4600 leadership at level 14, which seems pretty good for a Mage. I have the ridiculous stats of 3 Attack, 5 Defense and 26 Intellect! Just got Distortion 3, and already have Destroyer 1 and Higher Magic 1.

Team consists of:

4 Trolls
21 Paladins
21 Archmages
70 Royal Snakes
46 Inquisitors

This seems to me to be close to the perfect team at the moment. I found Target early so I can use it on the Trolls (and at night especially this tactic is nearly unstoppable with their regeneration). The Snakes are for striking, Paladins for support resurrection, Archmages for Magic Shield/attack and Inquisitors mainly to generate rage for Mana Accelerator.

I am especially pleased to have Trap up to 1200-1800 damage, which at this early stage ought to do a lot of killing on Rusty Anchor (which I haven't touched yet). I've got the elf follower already and two of those dresses that can upgrade to Magess' dresses (not strong enough yet though) so I can see me having an Intellect of well over 30 by mid game and maybe closer to 40. :o

[The Rider]

yes, trap medal is something very important for a mage if you need something to stop enemy units, later in the game it helps you against the cerberi/brontor special run attack :)

[Zhuangzi]

Well, it has been quite difficult through to about 130 fights. The period between about 60-140 fights seemed to be the hardest in my Warrior game, and it's even more so here as a Mage. But I can see that soon the game will be a lot easier and by level 40 the Mage will probably be stronger overall.

Two Dresses of the Magess' really helped to boost Intellect and leadership, and so now I am up to about 10,000 leadership at level 27. I have the Dead Skull down to 12% and Intellect already at 38, so I think about 45 or even 50 will be the final Intellect. With Higher Magic and Destroyer, I think I am going to kick ass toward the end of the game.

I also finally got my Trapper 3 medal, so that's really useful. 4000 damage per Trap. What I really need now is to kill the paladin with the Inquisitor's Sword as I have the other two items for the set. This will have a double whammy effect - the Inquisitor Sword allows for 20% more Inquisitors and Paladins, and the set gives +3 morale to all humans! So I have waved goodbye to my beloved Royal Snakes in favour of Giants at the moment, but eventually I will go for Horsemen instead.

[Zhuangzi]

Just had the longest and in the end most successful and satisfying fight I can remember in all my KB playing. I had just ticked over to level 40 but Elenhel didn't challenge me straight away (he must have a chance to challenge after every subsequent fight?). So I fought Demenion's castle for the stone and THEN Elenhel attacked. I was starting the fight with about 20 mana :o but I really didn't want to have to reload and replay the Demenion fight, so I gave it a try.

I had heard that Elenhel loves to spam level 3 Geyser but at first he seemed to be using Call of Nature instead, which is a terrible choice for 40 mana and gives something like 150 Red Snakes or something. But Elenhel did start using Geyser after a while and I took a great deal of damage from his units. The Inquisitors especially took a hammering and at one stage I was down to 11 of them! I really should have used Target more. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I just about managed to keep the Inquisitors alive, and I was down to about 20 Horsemen and maybe 40 Knights. I could win the fight, but with no losses?

So I left one Necromancer alive and started the arduous task of trying to regenerate health/mana/rage. I started off by Phantoming level 1 Inquisitors (15 mana) as I planned on regenerating my mana/rage that way (I have 25 for 25 Mana Accelerator). After a while I realised that this wasn't going to work, at least not for hundreds of turns. I was about to give up when I thought about Magic Spring again. But how could I make it effective without using Target?

Then I had a revelation. The 1 Necromancer does an area attack for maybe 5 damage per hex, so if I clustered my units together and cast Magic Spring on the middle stack, the Necromancer would always hit it! By trial and error I discovered that level 2 Magic Spring was the most effective - costing 7 mana, it generates 15 mana over three turns. So I was gaining 8 mana every 3 turns, which meant that over time I could generate enough to Phantom Paladin my troops back to full health.

Took 111 turns in total. Screenshots attached. :cool:

[DGDobrev]

Good work :) I remember doing something like that in my game. His geysers are simply way too ridiculous damage-wise, but that is to be expected with his 40+ intellect. As for call of nature, I was really happy to see him use it - if he went geysering from turn 1, I would have been left with a single paladin stack in the end...

[Zhuangzi]

Done! The game was a breeze after level 40 - this is where the Mage ends up being more powerful than the Warrior, IMO. I had four Flaming Eyes scrolls so I saved them up for Zigaldis, the big lizard whose name I've forgotten, and Bhaal. Also plenty of other Wandering scrolls to give me ridiculous stats of 35 Attack, 33 Defense and 60 Intellect for the last few battles. I managed to get my leadership up to 32,000 with Flaming Eyes, which is much lower than the 47,000 I had for with the Warrior.

But it didn't matter. Against Bhaal, my spellbook usage was Haste + Geyser in turn 1, then Stone Skin x 2 on turn 2, followed by more Stone Skin, Divine Armor, Magic Shield and Geysers when Bhaal brought more demons across. I managed to screw up my first try at this though - you really do need to preserve a stack of Scoffer Imps if you can for the long resurrection. On my second try, I was preserving a stack of Scoffers until Bill Gilbert's Archers shot them just before they flew off the burning ledge. :rolleyes:

I was so annoyed and I thought I would have to start again. After killing Bhaal all there was left was 7 Demons, so I tried without much luck to run around the map having slowed the Demons, trying to resurrect. It wasn't working. Then the Demons spawned 11 Scoffer Imps, and I've never been happier to see those Imps in my life! :cool: Killed the Demons and used Calm Rage to stock up on Mana for Resurrection. No problem - zero losses.

In general I found the Mage quite a bit harder in the earlier stages. You really have serious leadership issues on Impossible as a Mage, and it's not until past level 45 that you've really reached your full potential as a spellcaster. I just smashed my way through Elon and Reha with Geyser, which is insanely powerful when you have 50 Intellect. (About 5000-6000 damage x 8 stacks)

I just improved on my score by about 25 or so, but it's still in the 1400s as I took until day 28 again. I just can't keep the time down. That's the one thing I can't do with this game.

I was surprised to see that Archmages did the most damage, 22.5% This is because of the two Dresses of the Magess I had, which must be the best item in the game for a Mage. +4 Intellect, +800 leadership and +30% Critical chance for Archmages is insanely good. Two of them were enough that the Archmages ended up with a 95% Critical chance. :cool:

Oh well, it's been fun but it's really time for a break from KB:AP. I've been playing this so much over the last month it's caused marital stress. My wife is not happy. But I've had more fun playing the King's Bounty series over the past 15 months than I've had with any other game in the past ten years :-P

And I literally mean that. I never thought anything would top Master of Orion 1 + 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 for me, but King's Bounty is just as good as those great games of the past. :-)

[Petwin]

And I literally mean that. I never thought anything would top Master of Orion 1 + 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 for me, but King's Bounty is just as good as those great games of the past

I almost agree. King's Bounty is up there with MOO2, XCOM, and WarCraft3. But I liked Homeworld (all 3 of them) even more.

[travelingoz]

Well done Zhuangzi! :grin:

[MaroonMaurader]

*Now* I know the true meaning of frustration.

Level 59, 1,604,784 experience. Level 60 requires 1,606,500. However, I have finished my impossible no-loss mage game, so that's something. If someone wants to tell me how to attach screenshots I'm happy to do so. I also have a save from before Baal, but forgot to grab a save from afterwards and am really not too interested in playing that again. The fight wasn't too difficult, but slow and chancy. It took three tries because the first time I accidentally killed off the imps I was saving before I resurrected my griffins, the second time because something died on top of my griffins' corpse so I couldn't resurrect them. I'd never played AP before (although I'd played through TL once, and played a lot of heroes 3), so I didn't even bother trying to do things quickly. It took me 79 days to finish, and my score was a measly 721.
87 quests completed.
1079 crystals :D
318 battles
516,219 enemy casualties
0 casualties suffered
77% damage by troops
23% damage by spellbook

Most effective troops...
Archmage, 15%
Knights, 14.6%
Tirex, 13.5%
Red Dragon, 12.2%
Inquisitor, 11.6%
Royal Griffin, 7.7%
Paladin, 6.9%

level 39 pet blue dragon
and of course, all medals at level 3 (although I only spent about 21,500 rage).

I kited my way as far as I could go before fighting, getting up to level 21 before my first post-tutorial fight. My game didn't spawn a Tekron map, so I'd gotten basically all goodies from everywhere but Tekron and Monteron at this point. That included enough runes to get to learning 3, 2 hands of the necropolis, the Shark's Tooth, Elenhel as a companion, and 102 chests opened. Then I grabbed one troll and proceeded to clear every enemy before verona (picking up the Memoirs of the Marshal from the Dragon Trap mini-quest), and all non-heroes at Verona. I kited Monteron and Tekron, then decided my single Troll wasn't strong enough to make it too much further and I needed a full army backing him up. It was pretty clear I'd want inquisitors and paladins, and archmages also seemed obvious. I bumped into DGDobrev's write-up about his impossible mage attempt and decided to steal his last two units - Tirex and Gorguanas. The Tirex were awesome, but I never really felt like the gorguanas were pulling their own weight. I should mention that somewhere in here I picked up 2x dress of the magess, which made my archmages into unholy killing machines with 96% critical chance.

That army carried me a ways further, but eventually it got a little stale and the Tirex's devour corpse ability stopped being used frequently (I just wasn't killing stuff that fast), so I switched out the lizard people for red and green dragons. Ultimately the dragons began to be more of a weak point than a strength, when even stoneskin + 20% physical resistance from items + 30% magic resistance from items wasn't keeping them alive for a whole turn at a time. I switched one final time at around level 45, to an army I *highly* recommend - paladins, knights, archmages, inquisitors, and royal griffins. Royal griffins are, hands down, my favorite new unit of the game - the morale boost was great, the high mobility excellent, they do a *ton* of damage (particularly when they have high morale, and I had voice of the dragon 2), and they almost always went first in combat (with a +1 initiative boost from my pet dragon). They're a tad on the fragile side, but you can also run some nasty combos with their always-retaliates ability followed by timeback. Keep some knights in reserve with that unit mix and you can always switch them in for inquisitors to have an all-level 4 army (which makes fear much more useful in some situations).

I didn't really run into any particularly difficult fights after that until end-game. I was a little nervous about Elenhel given all the dire talk about his geyser spell, but for some reason he just spammed call of nature until he was practically out of mana. As I killed the animals faster than he could summon them, that wasn't a big problem. I think he tossed off one geyser all fight, and it was after the real fight had been decided. There was some hero who spammed armageddon against me who was annoying as heck and took three tries for me to figure out the right strategy (answer: kill most of her units faster than she could kill mine. Then fear an imps and resurrect everyone). Otherwise, everything was pretty much smooth sailing. And there was a lot of sailing, because as I think I've mentioned I just kinda wandered from island to island fighting whatever interested me at the time.

The spider boss never actually attacked me. Not sure what was up with that, but it made the fight easy. The frog boss was a pain in the next, but once he was dead the handful of royal snakes floating around made it real easy to take my time and restore my army. The driller caught me off-guard with his rockfall the first time; the second time I kept stoneskin-ed paladins by his left hand with target and he spent all his time beating a brick wall and never bothered the rest of my units. Gremlion slaughtered me the first half-dozen times I tried, but once I got the Inquisitor's Blade (plus advnaced from level 44 to level 52) the fight was a snap.

I stuck paladins by his left hand, knights by his right, royal griffins to the rear, archmages to the left (next to where he placed towers, so they'd do their melee attack against them instead of ranged and thus do more damage), demonologists to the right, and left a gap in the middle for phantom paladins. I took a handful of casualties and had to stall off some ents at the end to resurrect, but could do so just with mana already sitting in my mana pool.

K'Tahu died first-try. I was, admittedly, level 58 at that point. And I used one of every combat-oriented wanderer's scroll first. I had an army of knights, paladins, horsemen, and guardsmen. Incidentally, I strongly recommend leaving that fifth slot open - a fifth unit isn't needed, and becomes just one more unit to be casting stoneskin on. You could be better using those casts on Phantom. Phantom paladins basically kept ahead of the damage, so when K'tahu was dead my paladins and knights were at full strength, my horsemen down 5% or so, and my guardsmen down about 10%; it didn't take long to restore that.

Baal took 3 tries, as mentioned. I went with my standby army (archmages, inquisitors, paladins, knights, royal griffins). I'm torn on whether the royal griffins were the right unit to include, as they kept dying but they also did a ton of damage to the demons Baal kept summoning, boosted the morale and thus damage of my paladins and knights hacking at Baal, and the angelic guard made excellent blockers for convincing Gilbert's units to go elsewhere and not crowd my nice little circle formation.

I probably could have gotten to level 60 if I'd played this before, as I wasted one fight from one ancient knowledge against a low-xp enemy (the tower fight in the temple of sorrows). But that was about 150 fights ago so I'm not about to go do it all again to correct that. Otherwise, I was actually pretty careful - once I sensed I was running out of fights I toured all the islands and counted how many invincible enemies there were left, and it turned out there were exactly 5x as many as I had ancient knowledge scrolls (including the 3 boss fights I had remaining). So I went used up all but one wanderer's scroll killing invincible enemies and Gremlion, then killed off everything not rated invincible, then turned on my last scroll, fought the last 3 heroes, killed K'Tahu, and killed Baal. I drew a grand total of 9 wanderers scrolls this game for what it's worth. I suspect I must have had lower-xp enemies in sum or fewer xp-giving items on the map than possible or something, as UnicornXP managed to get only 14k xp short of where I was despite finding 4 fewer ancient knowledge scrolls.

[unicornxp]

by the way

u don't need 79 days but enough luck :D

this is the result of 5 ancient knowledge


LV60 is quiet possible

i replayed my game and got a better result

i need 16000 EXP to reach lv60 ,so one more ancient knowledge would make it.

(During the game i found at least 10+ flamming eys ,Titan sword and other stuff but only got 5 ancient knowledge.)


Since i didn't use pet dragon to dig for at least 50 fights, it's quiet possible to find the scroll in 150 chests.

But i think it's impossible to reach lv61 unless got 20-30 ancient knowledge~~~



http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachment.php?attachmentid=1726&stc=1&d=1261997467

PS: there's a trick about morale items to get extra EXP, like having undead units and equip paladin's shield to lower it's morale on purpose. This means every 10-14 fight u will get about extra 2K exp.The same with steam armor(2500EXP of every 20 fights)

in my game i got about 40-50K EXP by playing this~~~

[DGDobrev]

Interesting. Would you be so kind to elaborate how morale affects the XP? I am not aware of such a trick :)

[lauvhk]

What he means is to perform in a certain way to reduce the morale of the item such that it will go out of control faster than you can otherwise. To add another example, you can reduce the morale of the Crown of Blackthrone by fighting enemies with plant and the Dragon Slayer Sword by fighting non-dragon enemies.

[tofucsek]

It's just a wild guess but maybe he did lower the morale of the items on purpose so he was actually forcing it into terrible "mood" and fought the battle to restore it's balance.

[loreangelicus]

Thanks for the advise on morale items unicornxp. I actually did something similar in KBTL with the Crown of Blackthorn and Elven Crown and doing a royal romp of Ellinia (bunch of thorns and elves).

Currently on an impossible no-loss warrior game, just still at Bolo and already have 3 Ancient Knowledge scrolls, and KBScanner shows 3 more sold at various shops. Depth of Thought sold at the Head Office at Verona, and I might buy this (if I don't get to dig one by end of Bolo) just to get an early Elenhel for even more wanderer scrolls.

Any advice on when to use the Ancient Knowledge scrolls? Do I just save them for the last battles of the game (too bad they don't stack...), or is there any earlier scenario when it would be useful to use them?

[unicornxp]

about ancient knowledge

the top 3 exp battle is

Baal --MirrowTower--and Moro Dark YES,Moro Dark!!
(about 26K with all exp items and ancient knowledge)

so the poor knight should die- -+

Driller is about 21K EXP, spider and frog are not worth using the scroll~~~

but in my route i can only kill the frog in last 5 fights>_<

All heroes on Elon(except the magic test) and Shaterra have enough exp no less than the spider Boss, if i can got 1 more ancient knowledge in my last game, the heroes on Shaterra will made me reach LV60

Other heroes(Vernoa,Reha) we all know- -
================================================== =======
in my game i kept lower these 3 items

sword of dragonslayer

default morale:50 after supress:100

growth: enemy have dragons +9
losses:-4 every fight

paladin shield

default morale:50 after supress:100

growth:+1 every fight ; enemy have demon +1;enemy have undead +2
losses:have undead in your army -8; have demon in your army -5

steam armor

default morale:50 after supress:100

growth: never
losses:-5 every fight

These 3 are lv4 4 5 items that won't conflict with all exp items,
other stuff like fee dress, hammer kingtorn i didn't care~~

[unicornxp]

The first time i suppressed the paladin shield is about lv15 on Verona, after cleaned up the dragon lair, with 2 red dragon and 2 black dragon, its really not easy....the magic tower can do about 100 damage to the balck dragon with 92% magic resistance

so u should have the ability to suppress these items at low level and got no losses- -

[adecoy95]

crazy, how do yall do no losses with those item upgrade tower imp things? i cant even do it with single troll strategy

[DGDobrev]

A single Black dragon stack and some spells do wonders there :) Just destroy the friendly gremlin towers first, or you may get overwhelmed by the enemy.