How to deal with Gremlion ?

[jake21]

So I think this is the last min-boss i have and while I can kill it (with huge losses) I've not figured out how to do it elegantly (I'm a mage around level 45). The thing is that the area attack kills huge amount and it seems to retaliate so I want to use things like assassins; also it appears to be vulnerable to fire but the ony thing that comes to mind are archers.

So maybe royal snakes, assassins, archers, paladins (for resurrection and the tower) and ??

[DGDobrev]

Well, you need units with decent magic resistance and good damage/HP ratio.

Since his mass attack is magic based, an item like the antimage diplom (which is great for a mage with its +2 intellect) from the university in Elon (near the pier and the mage tower, where you land) will work wonders for you. His hand attacks are physical based, so 2 units that have decent physical resistance will do well as main attackers, while the 3 additional units will destroy the towers he spawns.

I propose this lineup:

Paladins
Knights
Horsemen
Guardsmen
Archmagi

Why?

Having non-retaliation units to hack at the boss will actually encourage gremlion to use his mass attack much more often. Having 2 high phys resistant fighter units (like paladins and knights - both have 30% phys resistance base) with stone skin near both his hands (1 each) will minimize the losses you take with those 2 stacks, while the rest of the stacks mop up any towers he summons.

In the battle, use calm rage spell when no units need stone skin or other buffs to gain mana, which should be used for phantoming the paladin stack to ress the losses you suffer with your weaker units.

When he's low on HP, stall. Wait for him to spawn a friendly gremlin tower. Now kill him. Group your units near the friendly gremlin tower and go "phantom the paladins" crazy. Use the phantomed paladins to ress your troops till your out of mana and rage. When you're out of both, kill the friendly gremlin tower and see how you did. If everything went as planned, you should be able to do this battle without losses.

If this does not happen, you may as well wait till you're level 50+ and try your hand at him again.

[TemjinGold]

Glad to hear his mass attack is magic based as I have Mirror Shield, Magician's Cloak, and Anti-Magic Diploma! I think I might try to provoke that more as with Divine Armor, I can easily hit 95% magic resist so a no retal army might be the ticket for me.

[Zechnophobe]

I had the helm that gives 50% magic resistence (from the gift bag) on my last play through, and it went super easy. Just have Red/Green dragons with stoneskin on assault, and black/bone for the towers. Royal snakes where needed.

[jake21]

How do you determine his attack is magic base ? I already have the magic resistant items mentioned (well not the helm; but the cloak and tablet) but I have no clue how to determine his attack is magic base (while playing the game).

[Zechnophobe]

There aren't in game messages, but trial and error works. Note that ONLY his area of effect attack is magic.

[jake21]

So I tried this with archmage, knight, paladin, horseman and archer and it went rather poorly. Basically lost 10 paladin and everything else. The problem is that even with shield and stone skin I lost 5+ knights a round and 2 or so paladin. Also the area attacks were still relatively frequent but not that damaging (had 55% resistance from cape/tomb).

I'll probably redo the fight but not sure of a good strategy. Actually it went ok till he was 3/4 dead then things got out of hand (I used phantom on paladin to resurrect periodically; the problem is I didn't do enough damage - basically the paladin was the only thing doing substantial damage everything else was blah so the fight took a long time). My thought is I should replace the knight and/or archers with assassins or royal snakes.

DBG when you made the suggestion what level/class did you play ?

[Elwin]

on mage i just burned him dawn with fire rain.
on warrior i used imba army : paladin,archmage,tirex,chosha,gorguana.
on paladin .. black knight and only black knight ;p

[ender]

Physical damage resistance>90% is what count in boss fight.
Paladins and Knights are good because they have ~30% physical resistance+ 40% from stone skin + 7% from medals = 77%.
You need another 15% from artifacts (boots, cuirass, dress).

With 92% resistance you take 8% from 4000 damage=320 dmg or 160 with mage shield.

Only Zigaldis need magic protection - for his area attack, fists are physical- but are more artifacts for that than for physical damage (and frog need poison, but is easy).

Royal Griffins (50% magic resist) are good for towers, but not for melee against zigaldis.
Demonogists (30% magic resist) for damage against Zigaldis.
Red dragons for no retal fire attack.

[Karlos]

All the above tips work but I think it's even better to use catapult and cannonneers for the towers instead of any melee unit (such as dragons). For me it took usually one hit from catapult and the 11000 hp tower was gone. If not, cannonneers would finish it. And if Zilgadis didn't summon one, both ranged units can attack him directly. Cannonneers are normally completely useless but here they proved effective.

[Elwin]

Well for mage its ok, warior can do it with strong melee like tirex too.And about ranged, with my arcmage gorguana ad chosha spamming gobots you have enough ranged xD

[Smash]

People really should posting their class, lvl, leadership and difficulty when making statement.

I have Mage on hard lvl 51 with 23k leadership and one thing i can say that bosses are really biased toward warrior like most of the game.

Their health pool is huge. I left with Zilgadis (Gremlion) and this Lizardman and one have 107k and other 120k of life. For mage this is little to high pool.

Gremlion look like have physical resistance as my Royal where doing less damage to him than to towers or he have just high defense.

Main problem for this bosses are their stomp strikes. Zilgadis have magical while Lizard looks like physical (it hit for like 8k on my Archmages but much less on my Paladins).
I have no physical resistance items and only one that give 20% to magic res :/.

[jake21]

Yea for my level 52 mage (on hard) this K'tau is going to be tough. I also have no physical reistance items and my defense sucks. Not sure how I'm going to do him. I think i'm down to two or three fights - K'tau, perhaps one small one i missed in tekron and the final fight.

Hum. So how best to do K'tau ?

[jake21]

Ok which troups did you use on him: This is what I am trying and 1/2 my army is dying before the first round (this is on mage/hard):
shaman (ok), forman (suck), paladin (ok), canoner (suck), cataput (so-so)
(there are no knights available)
items are magician cape, singing dagger, nicklace of firestorm, ring of mind, shaman skull, fire bracelet, golden boots, fools cap, dress of mages, scale shield, diploma a in anti-magic, dragon chain (there are no physical resitance items available)
-
attack 27 defense 25, int 51 level 55 leadership 28,808
--
I have 2 million coins so i can replace troups as needed. I was going to use lizards because I have sinigng blade but it kills morale in the group and only good lizards seem to be those giants and those digger things.
--
suggestions ?

[DGDobrev]

Anything with decent physical resistance (10%+) - Guardsmen, Horsemen, Orc Veterans (their counterattack ability is great), Demons, Executioners, Archdemons, and such. All of K'Tahu attacks are physical based. Having no knights will prove to be a problem though... Still, nothing 2x Stone skin can't fix.

Try playing with Paladins hitting his armored side (armored hand) and one other unit with good damage on his weak spot. This will give you 2 units hacking at him and 3 mopping up his summons.

That is, assuming you want to win the fight with minimal losses :)

[jake21]

Well I won the fight with massive losses. I don't know how you did it but the troups you suggested went down like butter. Even the orcs, trolls, dragons, and ogre went down like butter. About the only thing that seemed to have staying power was the paladin. Oh well at least he's dead.

[Zechnophobe]

So, against K'tahu your first turn as a mage should be to cast stone skin on two of your stacks. Same with your second turn. Don't attack with melee users unless against his weak spot, until you have stone skins up. Keep only one or two stacks hitting him, while the rest deals with his friends.

Trolls with Stone Skin are just about unkillable by ktahu.

[jake21]

I did use only two stacks (vertan orcs and paladin). Not the entire fight but much of it they had divine armor and stone skin. The vetran didn't last long. Not 100% sure they were hitting his 'weak' point; they were near the arms. Anyways even with them there k'tau still did area damage.

Anyways the game is over (only 86 quests so i missed a few). I have a saved game so I can redo the fight if someone has a suggestion I haven't tried yet but to be honest the fight wasn't much fun; but maybe there is a trick i'm missing. The final fight was a little easier; still a bit in the way of losses but victory was never in question.

So, against K'tahu your first turn as a mage should be to cast stone skin on two of your stacks. Same with your second turn. Don't attack with melee users unless against his weak spot, until you have stone skins up. Keep only one or two stacks hitting him, while the rest deals with his friends.

Trolls with Stone Skin are just about unkillable by ktahu.

[ender]

As mage lvl 56 I used 2 stacks: paladins and knight. If you don't have knights (not even in castle at debir?) you need another troop with physical protection instead.

I positioned paladins at his leg - paladins do the damage to ktahu and give another round to knights. Knights block paladins from moving backwards at ktahu leg kick and kill other troops (circular attack). In this aligment surface exposed for melee attacks is minimized. I don't use weak spot because ktahu will change position and paladin and knights are slow.

Paladin and knights will increase defense with 90% after some hits. With frenzy lvl 1 the knight will have a very high attack after a while.

Problematic troops are tirex - will fear paladin/knights - and gorguana with magic attack (stone skin will not protect from this, divine armor is expensive and it last less time)

I used wanderer scrolls before fight.
Spells: stone skin, dispel, geyser to reduce gorguana numbers, calm rage for more mana, phantom paladins or ressurect from time to time.

[jake21]

Yea i just went back and checked; no knights in verona or debir. I had enough for one stack this game and I used them in eron on gremlion.Kind of sad. In fact this game there were very few trolls and ogre also (not one complete stack of either @ level 55); i.,e 27. No demonologist loaded this game either. Hum. Maybe I was a bit unlucky.

[Starranger]

Yea i just went back and checked; no knights in verona or debir. I had enough for one stack this game and I used them in eron on gremlion.Kind of sad. In fact this game there were very few trolls and ogre also (not one complete stack of either @ level 55); i.,e 27. No demonologist loaded this game either. Hum. Maybe I was a bit unlucky.

That is why I always try to buy every upgradable artefact. If I need a special kind of troops later in game, but could not find enough to got a full stack, then i buy some of the units and use the old Sacrifice/Resurrect trick during the upgrade of the artefacts to fill the needed slot. It is very easy to surround one enemy troop with stone wall or kill everything except a friendly gremlin, kill every summoned creature for rage, convert it by the dragon (not the spell) to mana and sacrifice every time the same troop for the needed troop. If you are PALADIN; you do not need to resurrect (will be done by your Resurrect skill). If you play Worrier or Mage, resurrect them by mana.

I also use this with low level enemys on the map to generate Dragons (in mid game) and to save as much money as possible to buy artefacts (for destroying) and runes.

[MaroonMaurader]

So I've been playing an impossible mage as well. Fortunately I think every unit spawned at least one in my game, so I could get whatever army I want. Unfortunately my game didn't spawn any items that give +magic resistance except (of course) the anti-magic diploma, and the leather vest for a whole +5% (hurrah!). That made Gremlion somewhat difficult.
I was, of course, using the anti-magic diploma and the leather vest. After multiple miserably failed attempts, I sat down to plan things out more carefully and it was eventually practically easy.
Two words: Inquisitor's Blade. The more paladins you have, the more they heal. That's the real sticking point in this whole fight, so it basically lets you get away with 20% lower leadership for this fight. I ultimately went with Paladins, Knights, Archmages, Royal Griffins, and Demonologists. Make sure to use the archmage's shield on the demonologists, NOT the knights. In case you haven't run into it yet, you get the Blade by defeating Thomas Torkve the enemy hero.

[Smash]

So today i returned to KB: AP to finish this two bosses.
After a brainstorm (my head!) and few tries i went to this conclusions.

First fight was Gremlion:
In the end i used Paladins and both types unicorns with items they had over 60% magic resistance so Gremlion aoe strike didn't hurt them so much. Parked them near where tower was pop up to kill it every time. Phantomed Paladins from time to time.

For attacking boss i used Red Dragons, with item -20% to leadership cost i could recruit 14 of them. With spells iron skin and divine armor boss couldn't hurt them in any way.
It was looong but steady fight. I thing you can replace Dragons with Royal Griffins and it should work fine.
No losses in the end.

Them i moved to Lizardman, i knew i need physical resistance but without items i could only stick to naturals, my medal bonus and one shirt +5% to all.

So i leave unicorns and dragon in elves land and went back to debris, fill up Paladins stock and recruited Knights, i was wondering about horsemans but then i remember that there was large stock of Black Knights somewhere, i got there bought and start thinking if it will be enough. So i started rearranging my items once again and then i found that i have helm -20 to Black Knights leadership cost and staff -15% to all undeads i put them on and checked BK cost they dropped from 150 to 98, i was shocked i could get them 250! While i had only 149 Knights and 111 Paladins.
I went to fight with hope that this will be enough and again was shocked after few exchanging hits with boss troops (my BK got few +6 from fury and damage increased from their abilities) i pointed my mouse over boss and got that they can hit him for 20k, omg! Battle went so fast, it was satisfying seeing boss health bar dropping so fast.
It ended with no losses and my Paladins and Knights looks so sad :).

[Hayte]

I found nearly all of the boss fights difficult as a Mage until I went from a 5 stack army to a 1 stack army. Because of infinite retaliations and area damage, you can lose a tonne of units that you won't be able to replenish.

With a 1 stack army, you only need to worry about mitigating damage and replenishing 1 stack. I no lossed all the bosses recently on Hard using either 1x stack of Red Dragons and in a few instances 1x stack of Black Knights.

First things first:

1) Stoneskin is king. You can make almost any unit stack take peanuts in damage with Stoneskin III + Divine Armor III but the latter is expensive so it makes more sense to use Paladins or Black Knights + Stoneskin III only since they have good physical resistance. To get more physical resistance you want to get items like Twinkling Boots and Scale Set if they are available. It just makes things easier if you have them but I wouldn't say they are necessary unless you play on Impossible or something.
2) Right click your units on the battlefield to see how many turns of Stoneskin you have left as well as other buffs. When it gets to '1' you need to recast Stoneskin or the next turn you are going to take mega damage.
3) Exploit Calm Rage and Magic Spring. You can get pretty substantial mana gains long after you stop regenerating mana each turn. Cast these whenever you see the opportunity but Stoneskin always comes first.
4) If using Black Knights you can resurrect them using Evlin. If using Paladins you have Resurrection Spell, Phoenix and Phantom Paladins.
5) You will need high maximum mana and intellect. The more the better. I found 110+ mana and 50+ intellect to be ideal. You can use a Wanderer Scroll for +30 mana and +10 intellect over maximum if necessary.
6) The reason why you need loads of mana is that you are going to use screen clearing spells to nuke summoned creatures from friendly gremlin towers and k'tahu. This also creates corpses for Evlin. The best spell to use is Black Hole which you can get from doing one of Dark Mistikus's quests - the Grimoire one I think. It is not listed as a reward, so you will just see 2 scrolls appear in your spell book. Black Hole will also do fairly significant damage to the boss.

Gremlion:

This is doable with no losses using a 5 stack army but only if you have high magic resistance (Diploma in Anti-Magic, Cape of Wizardry, Crown of Chaos etc) and at least 1x stack of Paladins or Black Knights. You set the Knights on Gremlion, cast Stoneskin every 4 turns, resurrect to replenish losses over time which should be low because of high physical and magical resistance. Every other unit stack can be aranged in a circle to knock down towers when Gremlion spawns one.

If you 1 stack this with Paladins or Black Knights, use the same types of items but ignore the Gremlin towers. Use Haste on turn 1 to quickly get to Gremlion and start wailing on him. When you get surrounded by units you will occasionally want to wail on them, but not kill them. They form a wall between you and the other enemy stacks so you can use them as protection. If you use Black Knights you will eventually want to replenish their numbers so you will want to cast Black Hole and create a tonne of corpses and free space to use Evlin.

For Paladins, its probably better to just let all the summoned baddies build up and weaken the adjacent enemy stacks but not try to kill them. Eventually you will kill them through retaliation but the idea is to buffer yourself.

K'Tahu:

It may take 40+ turns but you will eventually kill the boss with no losses. K'Tahu is harder than Gremlion but I found him pretty easy using 1x stack of Black Knights. I always attacked on his non shielded arm side since his retaliation does no damage. I tried his shielded arm side but I still took a fair bit of damage and spread over 30ish turns, it eventually lowered my Black Knight count despite using Evlin where available. It became more difficult to maintain high damage with less and less units and at some point it reached a critical point where it was doomed to failure.

If you attack his non shielded arm, he will switch sides alot so you need to occasionally squeeze a Haste in between Stoneskins, Black Hole to clear the screen, and bullrush the other side. So you need to calm rage/mana spring whenever you can. If you miss an opportunity things will go badly for you.

I no lossed K'Tahu in something like 40 to 60 turns with 139 Black Knights. I was level 46 or 48 (I forget which), had about 130 mana, 60 intellect and 15 attack (!) after Wanderer Scrolls. I only had 1 item that gave physical resistance (Twinkling Boots, no Scale Shield on this run I'm afraid). I had Crown of Chaos, Cape of Wizardry and the Anti Magic Diploma so I had huge magic resistance when I needed it.

Black Knights were doing something like 10,000 to 16,000 damage per hit, once they build up Rising Fury. I believe a Warrior can get much much higher damage by virtue of having much higher attack and loads more leadership and then -x% undead leadership items like Black Helmet and Staff of the Acolyte. I've heard 60,000+ damage hits on Gremlion which ends the fight in less than 5 rounds? Either way, if you have the right items and you have more levels and leadership than I did, then you can do it much much faster and will find it easier on Impossible.