general tips n tricks for new players

[oody]

Here are some general tips for starting out you might find useful regardless of your army or choice to Map-kite:


------------------------------- IN BATTLE --------------------------------
Battle Tip #1) Press ALT to so you can see the order that units will move and when you mouseover an enemy unit you will be able to see how far it can move!!

Battle Tip #2) Defending and killing with retaliations seems to build more rage than killing as fast as possible.

Battle Tip #3) Slow and Fear are really really useful spells. Try slow on large scary stacks of enemy melee.

Battle Tip #4) Stone Skin and Healing are great for keeping your army alive.

Battle Tip #5) Prolong battles until round 10 by leaving a small group of archers (any ranged attacker) - at least until you have the Guardian Angel and Fire Mage/equivalent medal (see #5)

Battle Tip #6) Use as much rage and mana as you can to maximize medal progress and dragon exp:
Rage => always 3x Treasure Searcher for Treasure Hunter (exp) medal - you can get combat scrolls, wanderer scrolls, runes, and crystals too!
Rage => Use as much as you can, your dragon gets experience from using abilities, but try to end battles with plenty of rage to keep momentum!
Optional w/Concentration Talent => idle your army until your mana is full (or round 20) so you are ready for next battle!

Battle Tip #7) Traps are incredibly powerful
Spell => Trap to finish their last units. Have troops defend next to enemy archers and they almost always will move away to get a no-retaliation attack

Battle Tip #8) Farm Medals early and often:
Spell => (mage) Flaming Arrow for both Fire Mage and Battle Alchemy medal -until your next flaming arrow will end their final stack of archers
Spell => prolong battle and spam Stone Skin for Guardian Angel medal until round 10




------------------------------- ON THE MAP-------------------------------
Map Tip #0) Quicksave(F5) before every battle you fight, NPC you talk to, or (quest) item you use! The game creates 3 quicksave slots (brilliant) and loading back is as easy as pressing F8 if something goes awry.

Map Tip #1) Do the 'Tutorial' Test at the start. When you get the 5 Paladins, DISMISS your trashy start troops so you get 2 'free' No-Loss Victories towards the Strategy medal. Your trashy start troops will be reset at the end anyway.

Map Tip #2) At least for the first island, fill all your free slots with single inquisitors for holy rage spam. This will guarantee next to unlimited rage for treasure searching and dragon exp. For example, I could have used a troll and 4 single inquisitors for 12 casts of Holy Rage per battle!!! (wish I had thought of this earlier!)

Map Tip #3) When you have rage at the end of a battle, quickly move to the next fight so it is not 'wasted' If there are no more battles nearby, blow your rage in battle by digging up altars, making pointless walls, dragon crushing their final group, etc

Map Tip #4) When there is a difficult encounter you want to save for later, try to also leave a weaker "rage building" enemy nearby. Or see #5.

Map Tip #5) Purchase any item you see that is upgradable. These are essentially "rage building" potions that can be destroyed for crystals later on even if the stats are useless to you. You also get gold, exp, and opportunities to progress on medals during the encounters. I also purchase every rage and mana potion I see, they are very cheap and can be useful.

Map Tip #6) Try using Quest items when you find them, some of them will give you bonuses as documented elsewhere in these forums.


------------------------------ HERO TALENTS-----------------------------
Hero Tip #1) Mind Tree -> Learning 3/3 is for everyone! Glory is strong early game, but I prefer to focus mind runes into Learning.

Hero Tip #2) Might Tree -> Training and Anger 3/3 is for everyone, Rage Control is great too!

Hero Tip #3) Magic Tree -> Concentration 3/3 is great early on for Mages, but Transmute costs many fewer magic runes for Warriors and Paladins and gives ridiculous amounts of mana!

[Newbie1234]

Great post!

[Zechnophobe]

Transmute is much stronger than concentration, and can be bought more cheaply.

Glory is the best skill you can get in the first 3 levels.

[oody]

Transmute and Glory are indeed fine talents.

Transmute is much easier to obtain for a Warrior or Paladin than Concentration, but doesn't return mana as consistently.
On my mage I simply don't have the Might runes to spare for Transmute, and in my brief test, it returned zero mana when I killed a stack with fireball.

Glory is great if you need that extra leadership early on and can spare the mind runes.

Edit: Huge annoying wall of rambling text removed.

All-in-all I think KB:AP ironed out some of the kinks from KB:TL, like rage input based on max rage and other things I can't think of right now because I haven't slept much lately!! :0 It's a fun sequel, and often reminds me of the original King's Bounty PC DOS game from my youth!

[jake21]

One of your tips is to extend combat to over 10 rounds; why do you want combat to last past 10 rounds ?

[oody]

I'm sorry for the confusion:

I only extend battles to 10 rounds to maximize rage usage and get the initial medals. Trap kills will count at any round also, so it is an excellent way to finish battles until you have the medal. Once I've finished the "first 10 rounds" medals, I only prolong battles by defending to maximize rage usage or sometimes to let concentration fill my mana pool for the next battle.

[DGDobrev]

You should note that only the battles on impossible can easily go over 10 rounds without skipping rounds for medal requirements(and that is boss/hero battles). On normal, for example, battles rarely go over 5 rounds.

Otherwise, I quite like your suggestions :)

[Arilian]

I do not like glory. They eat up a lots of runes and they are not needed as i always run around the first few islands and start with 1k+LDS anyway.

Concentration is great early for mages, it is way more easier to get medals even if the spells are weaker.

Less is More - with mage you probably do not need 5 stack of units. Try get a good lvl 5 unit, if you are out of luck you can get an Emerald Dragon wihouth fight for sure. (rusty anchor where you need 50/50/50 troops for the bandit)
If you get at least order 2 +heal it will never die, no loss victories garanteed and you have an easy way to get medals.

Until you have 1900 LDS for the dragon it is indeed a good idea to start woth 5 inquisitor, however i think it is best to go to scarlet get the archmages from the small island (hopefully 4) and spam shield with them. Very eays and early medals garanteed with this method. You can also push troops into traps...

Later with a mage I have found the best way to kill is to use fog+fire rain.
Less is more is still applied - if you use 2-3 stack of dragons in mid game it is like the enemy do not have melee units as they never get them. You can easy outheal ranged and enemy heroes so no loss also granted by this. Make sure you have enough mana/regen.

[Omghalsasi]

@oody:yeah great tip for the tutorial! Dvide the 5 paladins u get during tutorial in each of the available slot then keep on granting turns to ur fellow paladins and resurrecting them!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 no loss victories even on impossible !

[Zechnophobe]

You don't need to divide them, a single stack is fine. Probably won't even need to cast resurrect even.

One thing to note: For all of those people saying that they don't need glory because they have 1k leadership already because of map kiting, I think you are missing the point. The point is that for people who do not kite maps, either because they don't want or don't know to, it is much better advice to spend a few early runes on Glory to make up for the harsh leadership scenario early on.

[oody]

To quickly recap the huge wall of text I removed earlier:

I believe Glory is a waste of Mind Runes if you can get by without it. It's only powerful very early in the game and Learning will yield much greater results in the long run.

I think Concentration is far better than Transmute for Mages who can't afford the Might runes anyway. Instead, I recommend Mages get Rage Control, Training, Anger, and of course Chaos Magic with their Might Runes.

Edit: You need Might runes to get Higher Magic Prerequisites also, which nearly doubles your medal progress rate early game.

Edit2: The Real power of Concentration lies in extending battles early on, even to round 20, to max your mana so you can go into the next battle with full rage and mana.

[Elwin]

well if they kilte just for 1000 ld they are weak kiters lol. I got like 7-8k last time on my paladin xD

[Zechnophobe]

Medal progress rate doesn't equal game win rate. Also, didn't you say you hadn't tried transmute in that wall of text you deleted? (I actually know you did, because I had half replied to you when I noticed you edited it out).

If all you want is medals, sure, concentration, and higher magic are great! But I wouldn't call that 'effective'. It's like the 4 mage stack army is great for boosting the resistance medal, but isn't exactly strong otherwise. My paladin on impossible often spends 125 mana in a 5 round combat.. and only starts with like 35. You just can't do that with concentration.

[sh4dow]

erm... what exactly is map kiting? tried to figure it out but everyone just keeps talking about it like it's something as basic as clicking on the screen to make your character move there ;)

[Zechnophobe]

It is where you run near to a bad guy defending a map, and get him to chase you for a while. And then once he has chased you for a while, you steal the map he was guarding without fighting him.

Or

A way to make the game a lot easier without triggering the 'cheater' flag. Since you get to Islands you aren't strong enough to actually fight on, but that have free xp, gold, runes etc, it makes the game substantially easier until very far in. Some Kiting players claim to get to level 15 before fighting even a single battle.

[Elwin]

I claim lvl 21 on impossible

[Urbz]

It is where you run near to a bad guy defending a map, and get him to chase you for a while. And then once he has chased you for a while, you steal the map he was guarding without fighting him.

Or

A way to make the game a lot easier without triggering the 'cheater' flag. Since you get to Islands you aren't strong enough to actually fight on, but that have free xp, gold, runes etc, it makes the game substantially easier until very far in. Some Kiting players claim to get to level 15 before fighting even a single battle.

This.

I would not recommend doing this on your first playthrough though, it spoiled alot of things for me personally anyhow.

[Goduerza]

Is it possible to kite troops who stay firmly next to the map they're guarding?

[loreangelicus]

I claim lvl 21 on impossible

Level 21 even before fighting your FIRST battle?! Wow...

But is this a feasible path to take if you are going for a 7 days game?

[Elwin]

Yes 21 before first battle. But no u will not end game with 7 days then. i would say around 12. I ended in day 17 but i did hell a lot traveling from island to islands just to kill any demon/undead army to free moro.

Goduerza: depends which one

[loreangelicus]

Yes 21 before first battle. But no u will not end game with 7 days then. i would say around 12. I ended in day 17 but i did hell a lot traveling from island to islands just to kill any demon/undead army to free moro.

Thanks for the reply. I'm on an impossible paladin game right now, goal is 7 days no-loss, and looking into saving a couple of hours early on by initially skipping Bolo and doing Scarlet-Rusty-Verona. But coming from Scarlet and going to Rusty all I see are Lethal and Invincible enemies. :rolleyes:

Just trying to see my options on how to make this path easier, but kiting doesn't seem to be an out for me.

[oody]

Medal progress rate doesn't equal game win rate. Also, didn't you say you hadn't tried transmute in that wall of text you deleted? (I actually know you did, because I had half replied to you when I noticed you edited it out).

If all you want is medals, sure, concentration, and higher magic are great! But I wouldn't call that 'effective'. It's like the 4 mage stack army is great for boosting the resistance medal, but isn't exactly strong otherwise. My paladin on impossible often spends 125 mana in a 5 round combat.. and only starts with like 35. You just can't do that with concentration.

I didn't realize Transmute gives you mana when you kill any units in a stack with your army. You don't need to destroy the entire stack to gain mana?! It seems overpowered like this, I had originally read it like the Trapper medal.

Transmute is great for massive mana income, which is useful when you are using a phantom resurrect strategy and really need a ton of mana.

I still however think AS A MAGE, concentration is great early game for farming medals and saving your might runes for dragon Training-- until you start using Phantoms and other mana intensive spells, at which point Transmute is awesome! I'm also sure if I played a warrior or paladin I would definitely pick this up early instead of concentration.

[DGDobrev]

I totally agree that Concentration is better for a pure caster mage.

In the game I'm doing now, I'm trying to see just how far a mage can go on a spellbook alone. I did some basic kiting (Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Rusty-Verona-Umkas-Uzala-Elon-Sheterra-Debir) to Elon to get Moro (I need his freaking Splinter ASAP, so that I can start working on his purification straight away), got 1 Black dragon egg, a little cash and a few spells.

Well, suffice it to say, I'm still using that single Black Dragon (backed up by a ton of Black Knights that simply remain in the reserve and have never seen a battle yet) as my army and I've gotten Amelie close to lvl 41 - and she's still going and beating up armies and heroes like crazy :)

The bottom line - a pure caster mage does not utilize Transmute properly, as you need your troops to deliver the final blow (killed by a trap also works). As such, for that kind of hero, Concentration is much better, even if it's a little hard to get to it.

[TemjinGold]

I didn't realize Transmute gives you mana when you kill any units in a stack with your army. You don't need to destroy the entire stack to gain mana?! It seems overpowered like this, I had originally read it like the Trapper medal.


You do need to knock off the whole stack to get mana from Transmute.

[tetleytea]

This question is going to sound noobish. I have no pride....

How do you use the Paladin Resurrect ability? Is it automatic? A learned skill? Or is there an icon somewhere that I'm not aware of that gives me a free cast? thanks!

[oody]

Paladin unit resurrection is in the lower right corner where all unit abilities are.

Paladin Class resurrection I *think* is automatic after battle, but I have never played one so I can't say for sure.

[Zechnophobe]

Yes, it is automatic.

[bmcelvan]

what does kite mean?

[KongMysen]

It means that you lure enemies, guarding maps a few inches away, so that you can snatch the map without engaging a fight.
This way you'll be able to travel to other islands and solve non-fighting quest, visit shrines, collect treasures etc.

There's alot of mixed oppinions about this technique, since the enemy guarding maps are supposed to be immobile. Luring them away with lots of quick-saving and loading is really exploiting a small glitch, and can give you a tremendous advantage. Being level 20ish kinda makes no-loss fights on Debir a blitz.

However since it requires no bot or cheat codes it can't really be considered cheating... Can it?

[travelingoz]

Actually DGD, I'm just using black dragons in my current mage run through with the new gift pack and I still find transmute very useful. I'm tending to use the dragons to collect the chests and spamming demon portal level 3 on the first round. I have the scaly set and twinkling boots, so once i just stone skin and then mana spring every round on whatever has come out of the portal! All of the enemy stacks surround the demons and generally from Montero onwards, by round 10 when mana regeneration starts halving, the summoned demons start finishing the remaining stacks off.
Combined with the Wanderer's gloves and level 1 Teleport, this sure beats the old mana spring-poison shower combo!
So, in this way I'm finding Transmute more useful than Mana Regeneration as the multiple attacks on the demon stacks generate more mana than i can use in the first 10 rounds!

[DGDobrev]

I totally agree with that. However, I was talking about a pure caster mage - one who barely gets his BD stack to attack and hammers the enemy with spells. In such case you will kill with spells and that does not generate any mana back.

If you do have a nice stack of BD's, they are great for mopping up weakened enemy units and in such case, Transmutation is really nice. In that particular game I was referring to, I had only 1 available, and he alone wasn't doing much, so I had to compensate with Concentration rather than Transmutation.

[ShuiMienLung]

You do need to knock off the whole stack to get mana from Transmute.

Whereas the Mind skill, Holy Anger, pays off just from inflicting damage (any of the troops that can dodge, you get no mana from if they do) on demons and undead.
So a multi-attack (like Sea Dogs or Cerberus vs. 3 troops) can pay you 9 mana just for MAKING the attack, if you have the skill maxed.
Then your NEXT troop (Phantom of one of those two?) comes along hits a trio nearby, and there's another 9 mana... and if one of the stacks dies, NOW the Transmute kicks in.

[MaroonMaurader]

If you're not going for high-score or high-level, learning II and III aren't particularly good actually unless you're a Paladin. At best you'll do slightly better than break-even by the end of the game, but most of the game will be harder.

I agree that for an expert trying for a high score Learning is a critical skill, but for a new player just messing around? Don't bother.