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McSwan
02-05-2010, 04:07 AM
HI, ( aiming for 0 loss too)

I'm going debir->scarlet -> rusty -> verona-> mont -> verona-> bolo as the first route. I'm in Rusty atm.

I'm trying to use the "1 dragon" technique. I've discovered it's very slow lol. I killed hector norbo, the guy near the tent on scarlet, with 1 bone dragon and no mana. I just flew around for 3 turns, then would cast it's poison spray, then repeat again and again and again, until everything was dead.

I'm on Rusty now, and have 1 green, 1 red and 1 bone dragon.

Given that I don't have the fear spell, my fire arrow does 90 points of damage, healing heals for 75 dam, I "have" to use the dragons to do all the damage, or most of it. I don't know how else others killed the enemies on Rusty. Also, there was the joy that the creeps guarding the map to Verona were unkiteable.

So, I fought the map guards with my 3 dragons and 3% bonus physical resist. I had to kill about 100 bowmen, 50 inquisitors, and lots and lots of hand to hand guys. It was round 15 when the the last of the "shooters" finally fell, with some amazingly crazy kiting so I could hit the archers and not get hit by the tonne of hand to hand guys. After round 3 my bone dragon had just 1 hp left, so that 3% phys resist actually came in handy, and he didn't do much for the rest of the fight.

Then it was the spectre of the Hector norbo fight, of running around in circles, using the dragons special attacks.

Anyway the fight took a mere 2 hours. Ouch. And there's about 6~7 more fights like it.... + many many more in other continents.

So, for the 1 dragon style, do you go hard on levelling chaos magic, so you can kill stuff faster, or go for higher magic, or go for level 2 healing spell? I think the lev 2 healing spell might be the way to go. ( I have level 2 concentration)

DGDobrev
02-05-2010, 12:11 PM
It is slow indeed. I was met by the same choice. I picked higher magic lvl 1 first and then went the order route. The idea was that Flaming arrow is 5 mana and I can always slap the 2 post effects with those casts (flaming for 5 mana and poison skull).

However, if you feel that your green/red dragon is getting hammered, healing is the way to go.

McSwan
02-08-2010, 02:58 PM
Ok,

Decided to get level 3 order instead of higher magic and it got me through the bridge guardian to monterro. I use guardian angel at the start, then try and cosy up with the archers, and heal 415 health every turn. Decided to just use the red dragon. It's way faster than using 3, which is anti-logical in some ways. I found it was too hard finding "safe " spots for 3 dragons.

I didn't have fear and my magic arrow did 200 dam, so I just healed my dragon again and again for 30 or so turns, so my one dragon did 78% of the damage, which I found pretty funny.

Had to "kite" monterro, so lost some time there, but it was absolutely necessary. I don't lose time travelling on the monterro bridge. I think the rest of the game should fall fairly easily for now on.

loreangelicus
02-08-2010, 08:15 PM
I'm doing a similar attempt (no-loss/level 60/7 days) with a warrior and I find it faster to add droids (guard droids and 2 repair droid stacks) than attempt to solo fight the enemies with dragons. You have to go Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Verona-Rusty-Debir initially for this though.

I had the extreme fortune of getting a bunch of call colossus scrolls (1 dug at Debir, 1 dug at Scarlet, 1 duplicate navi map at Scarlet, 1 dug at Bolo) and used one at Scarlet to get a red dragon to clear all enemies there (except for rob cuttlefish cave) and used another one at Bolo to get a black dragon.

Even with a black and red dragon, battles were either easy+long or hard+long. Filling up the 3 extra slots with the droids sped up the battles and made them a lot easier because:

1) droids draw enemy and hero attacks, and can tank big time since you just repair them

2) droids are mobile, with repair droids at movement 5 and guard droids at movement 3; very easy to keep them alive and they help pick up chests :grin:

3) droids have high phyisical and poison resistance

4) you can Sacrifice the droids to top up your other troops and just use their repair to bring back lost units; I believe you could even Sacrifice 1 repair droid stack to top up the other repair droid stack, replenishing itself whenever you get more leadership

5) the repair ability of repair droids is even more overpowered than what Eviln does for undead; it has a repair per leadership ratio of 85% to repair another stack of repair droids, 82% to repair guard droids; and this is a RELOAD ability :); this makes the 30% level 3 Eviln weak by comparison

Having fast and easy battles allowed me to reload fights until I got good chest rewards from the 3 dug chests per battle; I usually reload until I get runes/crystals/wanderer scrolls. Case in point, I have dug up 18 wanderer scrolls out of 176 chests.

I cleared Bolo of all enemies using the setup black dragon/repair droid/guard droid/repair droid/red dragon. Currently just arrived at Verona. Once I have enough mana to power Eviln I will replace the black and red dragons with bone dragons and black knights, further making the attempt for no-loss easier.

I haven't played mage, but you might want to give droids a try. Given that you have taken out the guard at the Montero bridge, you might want to reload from a save game from your Montero visit and get droids there.

EDIT: Just tried it, you can Sacrifice droids, but you can't Sacrifice other units to top them up. So the only way to have more droids is to buy more droids. This kinda sucks, I was really looking forward to a self-sustaining army. The droid-undead army would still work, but the two reserve slots would be taken up by extra repair and guard droids that you need to buy in advance.

McSwan
02-09-2010, 02:13 AM
I'm doing a similar attempt (no-loss/level 60/7 days) with a warrior and I find it faster to add droids (guard droids and 2 repair droid stacks) than attempt to solo fight the enemies with dragons. You have to go Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Verona-Rusty-Debir initially for this though.

I had the extreme fortune of getting a bunch of call colossus scrolls (1 dug at Debir, 1 dug at Scarlet, 1 duplicate navi map at Scarlet, 1 dug at Bolo) and used one at Scarlet to get a red dragon to clear all enemies there (except for rob cuttlefish cave) and used another one at Bolo to get a black dragon.

Even with a black and red dragon, battles were either easy+long or hard+long. Filling up the 3 extra slots with the droids sped up the battles and made them a lot easier because:

1) droids draw enemy and hero attacks, and can tank big time since you just repair them

2) droids are mobile, with repair droids at movement 5 and guard droids at movement 3; very easy to keep them alive and they help pick up chests :grin:

3) droids have high phyisical and poison resistance

4) you can Sacrifice the droids to top up your other troops and just use their repair to bring back lost units; I believe you could even Sacrifice 1 repair droid stack to top up the other repair droid stack, replenishing itself whenever you get more leadership

5) the repair ability of repair droids is even more overpowered than what Eviln does for undead; it has a repair per leadership ratio of 85% to repair another stack of repair droids, 82% to repair guard droids; and this is a RELOAD ability :); this makes the 30% level 3 Eviln weak by comparison

Having fast and easy battles allowed me to reload fights until I got good chest rewards from the 3 dug chests per battle; I usually reload until I get runes/crystals/wanderer scrolls. Case in point, I have dug up 18 wanderer scrolls out of 176 chests.

I cleared Bolo of all enemies using the setup black dragon/repair droid/guard droid/repair droid/red dragon. Currently just arrived at Verona. Once I have enough mana to power Eviln I will replace the black and red dragons with bone dragons and black knights, further making the attempt for no-loss easier.

I haven't played mage, but you might want to give droids a try. Given that you have taken out the guard at the Montero bridge, you might want to reload from a save game from your Montero visit and get droids there.

I think the repair droids will work well with a warrior game, although there are some battles I think might be untankable, and you have to use kiting tactics that the guard droid will struggle with. When I hit Bolo I'll grab a couple of droids, and see if I can make a new red dragon.

The chest idea is pretty good. You could drink a potion of rage before a battle and open 3 chests and see what they are. Then reload without drinking the potion and I think the chest remain the same ? If you spawn a 1 new thorn, I think you'd get 3 new random chests. I'll have to try that tactic. Arg! - 3 or 4 reloads before every battle?, but probably worth it to maximise ancient knowledge scrolls/ runes.

Elvin level 1 only heals 10%, on 1 bone dragon it's worse that level 1 heal.

KongMysen
02-09-2010, 12:24 PM
The chests changes in each battle. Regardles of using an egg or not.

You cannot sneak peek with higher magic, Awaken dragon and a rage potion.

loreangelicus
02-09-2010, 04:11 PM
I think the repair droids will work well with a warrior game, although there are some battles I think might be untankable, and you have to use kiting tactics that the guard droid will struggle with. When I hit Bolo I'll grab a couple of droids, and see if I can make a new red dragon.

The chest idea is pretty good. You could drink a potion of rage before a battle and open 3 chests and see what they are. Then reload without drinking the potion and I think the chest remain the same ? If you spawn a 1 new thorn, I think you'd get 3 new random chests. I'll have to try that tactic. Arg! - 3 or 4 reloads before every battle?, but probably worth it to maximise ancient knowledge scrolls/ runes.

Elvin level 1 only heals 10%, on 1 bone dragon it's worse that level 1 heal.

I only replay battles that are both easy and fast (around 7 turns to finish). You could change the position and resulting chest contents by "inspecting" the chest position at different times. For example:

Try 1: start of battle, use dragon dig ability to check where chests are
Try 2: move and complete action of 1st unit; on 2nd unit's turn use dragon dig ability to check where chests are
Try 3: move and complete action of 1st unit; move and complete action of 2nd unit;on 3rd unit's turn use dragon dig ability to check where chests are

When inspecting, you don't even need to immediately use the dragon dig ability; the inspection "locks" the position of the chests, and resulting contents.

As for Eviln, it shines mid to late game; the more leadership you have the better it works. At 30,000 leadership when you have 200 black knights (at 150 leadership each) that is a total of 32,000 HP at 160 HP per BK. 10% of that is 3,200 HP, so level 3 Eviln at 30% is 9,600 HP or 60 BKs resurrected.

The Resurrect spell for the living cannot compare to the power of Eviln for the undead. Even Heal (while admittedly efficient) can't compare, and there is the point that it can't bring back lost units.

McSwan
02-10-2010, 07:07 AM
Yep, it does appear that you can "sneek" peak the chests. You just need to be clever about it using the above technique.

I'm very keen on getting some black knights. It still takes a while to bring down huge stacks with just 1 dragon, like 190 paladins.

loreangelicus
02-12-2010, 12:20 AM
The problem with doing solo unit fights (black knights excluded) is that you don't generate enough rage, probably just enough to do the 3 treasure digs. This also means you don't get to level up your pet dragon too much.

For tough enemies like paladins/dragons/etc. the pet dragon ability Ball Lightning and Eviln are quite useful. These two attack options take out a percentage of the enemy stack, no matter what defense or resistances they have.

McSwan
02-12-2010, 04:58 AM
"The problem with doing solo unit fights (black knights excluded) is that you don't generate enough rage, probably just enough to do the 3 treasure digs. This also means you don't get to level up your pet dragon too much."

Yeah, you'd think that, but my play style makes my dragon level fast, atm the moment I'm level 19 and my pet dragon is 20. I went hard on order magic, so I send my dragon in, and put on guardian angel, then heal the red dragon after most turns with 1 mana. Guardian angel seems to make a fair chunk of rage, it's like 5~6 free attacks. All the hitting, zapping, healing etc makes rage gen. fairly good.

Free Dragon egg units I usually try to send to there death, and they can sometimes pay there rage cost, I even occasionally cook them with my red dragon to get the rage happening. I usually go the ball of lightning though.

My big issue right now is ancient knowledge scrolls, I've got none :(. and the save game scan says there are none available. The replay the game to get better chests things give me more scrolls, runes, etc, but still no ancient knowledge scrolls. I wish could do that with wanderer scrolls that you "swap" when you have the continent map.

I just got +50% to XP from items +learning skill atm, so maybe that will help, but i suspect I have to find a lot more ancient knowledge scrolls. I have found about 15 wanderer scrolls so far, so it sux that none are ancient knowledge.

loreangelicus
02-12-2010, 05:56 PM
You probably always play mage? :grin: A paladin game I started (and stopped when I realized his ultimate resurrection skill does not support no-loss run) had the pet dragon at level 22 when the paladin was at level 15. Same with the warrior game I have right now, level 17 warrior and level 21 pet dragon. But leveling the pet dragon is not really that big of an issue, unless a level 60 pet dragon is also one of your target goals.

Oh no... for a game that you want to target level 60/high score you should really use the KBScanner to make sure that you have at least 3 ancient knowledge scrolls being sold or as treasure pick-ups. Then pray that you get at least 3 more from duplicate navi maps and dragon dig. :grin: If you have read other posts, ancient knowledge scrolls are critical for a high level and high score run. And there is absolutely no guarantee you would get them in great supply.

It would be very frustrating to be in the mid to late game and still not know if you could reach level 60 simply because you don't have enough AKs. As painful as it may seem, I would suggest restarting the game. If you do restart the game, I suggest making sure you have 3+ ancient knowledge scrolls and 2 hand of necropolis at the starting islands (in my game, I got them both at Verona).

McSwan
02-15-2010, 12:40 AM
I started again, this time with 6 AK scrolls that can be bought. However, I didn't get "call colossas spell" or the undead summoning spell, so have to clear creeps with just a green dragon, which are a fair bit crappier than the reds.

DGDobrev
02-15-2010, 01:14 AM
There is a workaround :) You can modify the digging in battle. Simply reload a number of times and check for chests after a unit has moved - this gives you 5 different digouts per turn, provided you use 5 troop army. Surprisingly, this produces some wondrous results. For example, I'm halfway through Scarlet with the Warrior and managed to dig 3 depth of thought, 1 Song of the Wind (hello hayterrants!), 1 Call Death (dug in the training fights - hello Mr. Bone Dragon), 2 Titan's Sword, 1 Titan's Armor, 2 Flaming Eyes and 1 Call Collosus (on Debir, unused yet because I have only 1300 leadership). The rest of the fights I settled for a rune of a random kind (with preference to mind and magic ones).

I know it's a lot of restarting, but if you want to squeeze out the most of a game, one must compromise :)

McSwan
02-15-2010, 02:19 AM
Lol, I've done that quite a bit already, but I've just increased the number of runes, the wanderer scrolls just haven't been appearing.

loreangelicus
02-15-2010, 05:33 AM
Same here, I get a ratio of about 1 wanderer scroll for every 10 chests, far better than the 1 in 40 that it should be. But even then, Ancient Knowledge is not guaranteed. I only dug up 2 AKs, and I have cleared Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Rusty and around 5 fights at Verona. Tons of other wanderer scrolls though... but you only need one Depth of Thought (to get Elenhel early), maybe 1-2 Call Colossus early on (before hitting Bolo/Rusty), and 1-2 Call of Death/Call Colossus to get Bone Dragon and Black Knights, that is if you go the undead army route. Everything after that is just extra gold, with the sole exception of Ancient Knowledge.

Playing a Warrior, I'm at the point wherein I take a Magic or Mind Rune over a non-AK wanderer scroll.

6 AK scrolls built-in? That's beautiful! :-) If you get enough additional AKs from chests and duplicate navi maps, maybe you should try for level 61? :-)

DGDobrev, you've done a level 60 run before. Is level 61 possible/reachable?

McSwan
02-15-2010, 06:30 AM
Also, I'm guessing it easier to to the reloading like that playing as a warrior.

I'm at Verona, I skipped bolo, and have found 2 wanderer scrolls with reloading most battles.

loreangelicus
02-15-2010, 07:28 AM
Hmmm... you mentioned that you didn't get Call Colossus or Call of Death at Debir or Scarlet. At impossible difficulty, any class would be hard pressed at Bolo or Rusty without it. I myself had to stop playing my initial impossible warrior game simply because I was stuck at Bolo; I stopped that game even though I had 3 AKs in shops via KBScanner and already had an additional 3 AKs via duplicate navi maps and chest digs, and that was just Debir-Scarlet-Bolo! Granted, going back to Bolo via Debir-Bolo-Verona is only 1 hour more than Debir-Verona, but that only counts the travel time. Then you have to run around Bolo to clear up what you failed to do on the first run, and that would definitely add more time.

Don't worry, according to other players it gets easier for mages by early mid game due to higher magic and the use of solo unit tactics, notably black dragons. So you could go back to some serious AK digging then. :)

DGDobrev
02-15-2010, 12:09 PM
Loreangelicus, that is a good question. I think it is possible to hit 61, if you have enough AK scrolls. I made the mistake of using them on the tougher islands against regular armies and for a while, I wasn't sure I'm going to cut it. The biggest bonus AK scroll provides is vs. heroes and vs. bosses. Even on Reha, with full +xp items (that amounted to +62% XP per battle), the regular armies provided up to 6-9k at most XP.

So the bottom line is, leave stacks of heroes available (if necessary, don't kill them in the first run through a territory, but do check in advance how much XP are they worth and reload if the result is not satisfactory) and when you do the second run, slap an AK scroll on and beat them up one by one. That may provide the experience you need to get to 61. You should, of course, check the XP the heroes will give you after the fight. If it's over 9k, you're on the right path. If not, the extra AK scrolls will serve you better against regular armies on Reha.

Oh, an of course, stock up on items that quickly lose morale for extra XP through suppressions. Steam Armor and Paladin shield are a good example.

loreangelicus
02-15-2010, 07:24 PM
Thanks for the reply DGDobrev, I'll keep those things in mind. If I get more AKs in my game (currently 3 in shops, 2 dug up, 1 dupli map of Montero when I took a quick peek) I'll see if I could try for level 61. My game is slow going though, with the reloading games tactic and somewhat limited time to play.

I keep screenshots of all hero battle results for posterity, and I'll probably upload them once I finish the game to hopefully help others who try the feat afterward. But like I said, it would take me some time before I finish the game...

DGDobrev
02-15-2010, 07:32 PM
I know how it feels... I'm doing something similar and in 3 real time days I'm barely haflway through scarlet. I'm sorry to say that it will take at least 8 scrolls to get to 60, but looking at your success with those, you should be just fine. I guess this is the reason for the developers to refrain from setting a max level :)

McSwan
02-16-2010, 12:11 AM
It's pretty sad, but I'm killing them with the 1 free green dragon from Rusty. Just took down the bridge guardian to Montaro with him and level 3 order magic (level 10). Took about 60 rounds. I like the red because the burning it does kills them faster. Don't have Chaos magic yet, so only 110 damage with fire arrow. Also, some battles are impossible with 1 green dragon, and possible with the red dragon.

Had a funny battle with a bees nest taking down 170 bears, doing about 270 damage a turn. Just flew back and forth, the bears stuck in a cycle. They deserved it for stealing honey all the time.

One of the things I'd like to try it getting 4 inquisitors and 1 dragon, getting the inq to rage up, and just before the end using resurrection + there res ability to bring them all back to life. You could do it easily if you just let them die, but then you wouldn't have a zero loss game. Apparently resurrection is in dersu for me.

loreangelicus
02-16-2010, 04:19 AM
McSwan/DGDobrev, I just made an additional discovery.While attempting to get better results and reloading a battle, Elenhel finally completed his first wanderer scroll for me. On my first try he gave me Flaming Eyes. When I tried a different battle sequence he gave me Magic Flow. Nice... so the reload tactic also changes what wanderer scroll Elenhel makes. :)

I know Elenhel didn't give you AKs on your previous run DGDobrev, but I'll check if I could make him cough up an AK.

EDIT: It only took me 5 tries to get Elenhel to produce Ancient Knowledge instead; see attached screenshot. I dug up nothing useful in the battle though, just gold. And I had to give up a battle wherein I dug up a Call Colossus and Elenhel gave me a Titan Sword, but I'm at the point in my game where these two scrolls are just more gold to me.

But AK from Elenhel! Since Elenhel is guaranteed to give you a wanderer scroll every 30 battles, and there are only 11 wanderer scroll types... I think its time to do up to 11 battle tries every time Elenhel is about to write another scroll. :)

McSwan
02-16-2010, 05:54 AM
Hmm, every scroll from him might have to be an ancient knowledge then, no matter how much I want a call colossus. Can you do it off the first scroll he gives you ?

McSwan
02-16-2010, 06:42 AM
Might be worth getting items that are very easy to suppress and use that for the 30th battle.

loreangelicus
02-16-2010, 02:30 PM
Hmm, every scroll from him might have to be an ancient knowledge then, no matter how much I want a call colossus. Can you do it off the first scroll he gives you ?

You mean the wanderer scroll he gives you when you initially enlist him? I think that one is fixed, always Fortune's Smile for me. And there is no way to change that since there is no tied up battle to it.

But no biggie, all others after that could be AKs. :grin:

McSwan
02-17-2010, 01:07 AM
Been doing the chest trick a lot more and have picked up an extra 5 "mad rage" wanderer scrolls, which is a good reflection on what I think about my mood on my random wanderer scrolls.

Ended up buying a "deaths call" for 18K, which will give me black knights later on.

MaroonMaurader
02-17-2010, 11:05 AM
I deliberately played through the same battle 3 times in 3 different ways when I first was about to get a scroll from Elenhel to see if it was randomized, and drew Magical Flow all three times... so I assumed it wasn't random. Now it looks like I was just very unlucky (like... 1/121 unlucky).

McSwan
02-22-2010, 01:07 AM
OK, I'm gonna stop doing the chest trick now that I've hit Dersu, the only advantage is getting extra Ak scrolls, and they're extremely rare, and far too painful to try and maximize via chests.

I finally got a "call colossus" after doing Verona, in Bolo, so I finally got 3 red dragons.

My new strat is 4, 1 unit inquisitors, and 3 red dragons. The inquisitors pump rage at the start, then die giving me lots of mana (and some rage) from transmute - so cast big spells at the start and you'll get your mana back. I usually pump out mystic eggs everywhere, and usually get 1~4 extra dragon stacks and the odd swamp snake or royal griffins, who I stone skin and send to there death to get me more rage. It's important not to let anything die over your inquisitors bodies. I res 1 inquisitor at the end of the battle and then he/they chain res the rest of them, and also they rage me up for the next battle, so I burn through about 200 rage a battle instead of about 50.

Use slow over fear, cause fear will make them kill your mystic egg.

Also, if you loose a real dragon, heal the dragon stack to full and 1 inquisitor can res the dragon with 7 hitpoints.

loreangelicus
03-02-2010, 08:14 PM
OK, I'm gonna stop doing the chest trick now that I've hit Dersu, the only advantage is getting extra Ak scrolls, and they're extremely rare, and far too painful to try and maximize via chests.

I finally got a "call colossus" after doing Verona, in Bolo, so I finally got 3 red dragons.

My new strat is 4, 1 unit inquisitors, and 3 red dragons. The inquisitors pump rage at the start, then die giving me lots of mana (and some rage) from transmute - so cast big spells at the start and you'll get your mana back. I usually pump out mystic eggs everywhere, and usually get 1~4 extra dragon stacks and the odd swamp snake or royal griffins, who I stone skin and send to there death to get me more rage. It's important not to let anything die over your inquisitors bodies. I res 1 inquisitor at the end of the battle and then he/they chain res the rest of them, and also they rage me up for the next battle, so I burn through about 200 rage a battle instead of about 50.

Use slow over fear, cause fear will make them kill your mystic egg.

Also, if you loose a real dragon, heal the dragon stack to full and 1 inquisitor can res the dragon with 7 hitpoints.

Hi McSwan, how's your game going? I myself stopped trying to go for wanderer scrolls in general during reloads; I content myself to runes and crystals. Lately, I reload only up to twice per fight, and take the results even if its all gold or regular spell scrolls.

Elenhel is fully manipulated though. 3 out of 3 so far have been AK scrolls, but it's not easy! First scroll took me 5 tries, the second 6 tries and the 3rd roughly 11-12 tries! Given that there are 11 wanderer scroll types, one has a 50-50 chance of getting the AK scroll by the 5th-6th try. I was really getting frustrated on the 3rd AK scroll, but I thought I would be swimming in AKs so I used 2 AK scrolls in Montero-Verona so I had no choice but to get an AK. You could still get AKs every time from Elenhel, but much patience is necessary.

I dug up 2 AKs and got 1 AK from a duplicate navi map; these are my "backup" AKs. So with 3 AKs from Elenhel and using 2 already, I currently have 4. I still have 3 AKs in stores, but they are in Umkas (1) and Tekron (2), which I would be passing only after I take on Dersu-Uzala-Elon-Nameless-Reha (the path unicornxp used since that takes me back to Montero to get more droids and spend for runes); I might need to leave some heroes alive and kill them on the return if I run short on AKs.

For those interested, here are the XP gains one gets from using AKs on Montero-Verona heroes/boss; note that I have Learning level 3, 2 Hand of Necropolis, Shark's Tooth and Memoirs of the Marshal on as well for these battles:

Hagni - 11,004
Thomas Torkve - 8,498 (note: not always in Montero, so kill Xerxes instead)
Crazy Miner - 8,661
Iron Fist - 9,521
Fangol - 15,649

Driller - 20,701
Necromancer Mesmer - 7,215
Arnold Heningem - 18,771
Marquis of Krause - 8,902
Demenion - 24,891

pavned
03-02-2010, 08:48 PM
That Arnold Heningem is so good to get XP, too bad I didn't knew that before killing him. Would have save him for later and use an AK on him!

Not sure about the numbers but I think I got more then 10k XP from him without AK on (but Shark, Memoirs, 1 hand and level 2 learning). He kept summoning Demon Portal and getting Demons which, themselves, kept summoning demons. I think at one point there was 13-14 ennemy stacks on the field! Counting that I was facing him with only my stack of 3 Red Dragons, it was a great XP generating battle.

loreangelicus
03-02-2010, 10:05 PM
Yup, if you use a small number of troops (as is always the case with solo unit strategies) then some heroes content themselves to just casting summoning spells; that is, if they have any. I went against him with a near-complete lineup though (black knights-repair droid-bone dragons-repair droids-guard droids), so he kept hammering away with Lightning; not that it made much difference, undead and droids can easily recover from losses.

I don't think summons count towards getting more hero XP though. I've done multiple suppression battles on the Magician's Cape and Dragon Slayer Sword and I always get the same amount of XP, even if a friendly gremlin tower does a lot of summons or not.

Using less troop doesn't generate more hero XP either, but they do generate more pet dragon XP per rage ability use.

DGDobrev
03-02-2010, 10:35 PM
Well, it is confirmed that summons do not improve the XP in the end. Shame, that could be exploited for fun :)

McSwan
03-03-2010, 07:49 AM
I'm in Reha atm, just downed elenhel. I have a boatload of AK scrolls from elenhel and digging them up, +6 extra ones in game. I used them for all battles in Nameless and Reha so far, and probably use them in sheterra, and all bosses I haven't already killed. I think all up I'll have about 13-14 of them.

I think that it's likely using a warrior + repair droids will prove a superior tactic though. Might need to hurry up and beat the game with a slightly higher score than unicorns, then have you beat me by a couple more so at least I can say I was no. 1 for a day or 2 lol. Killing guy in Monterro was a good idea.

I'm using 3 inquis stacks for rage generation, occasional I swap in demonologists and necromancers. other than that I use Black knights and red dragons, the inquis can res 3 red dragons, but the dragons usually never die. The inquisitor stacks get killed, and give me rage and mana, and I res before the end of the battle.

I use mystic egg non-stop with awaken dragon, especially against undead for some funny battles. The critters from mystic egg go to there doom to give me more rage, and if there not dying enough, I use dragons fire ability to kill my own troops to turn them back into rage & mana. Nothing quite like lining all your troops up in a nice straight line, and cooking them all.

Man it would suck to be in my army! The inquis die and get resurrected over and over again. Still, I*cough* *cough* still have 0 losses *cough*.

ivra
03-03-2010, 02:59 PM
Man it would suck to be in my army! The inquis die and get resurrected over and over again. Still, I*cough* *cough* still have 0 losses *cough*.

:-)

loreangelicus
03-03-2010, 04:12 PM
I'm in Reha atm, just downed elenhel. I have a boatload of AK scrolls from elenhel and digging them up, +6 extra ones in game. I used them for all battles in Nameless and Reha so far, and probably use them in sheterra, and all bosses I haven't already killed. I think all up I'll have about 13-14 of them.

I think that it's likely using a warrior + repair droids will prove a superior tactic though. Might need to hurry up and beat the game with a slightly higher score than unicorns, then have you beat me by a couple more so at least I can say I was no. 1 for a day or 2 lol. Killing guy in Monterro was a good idea.

I'm using 3 inquis stacks for rage generation, occasional I swap in demonologists and necromancers. other than that I use Black knights and red dragons, the inquis can res 3 red dragons, but the dragons usually never die. The inquisitor stacks get killed, and give me rage and mana, and I res before the end of the battle.

I use mystic egg non-stop with awaken dragon, especially against undead for some funny battles. The critters from mystic egg go to there doom to give me more rage, and if there not dying enough, I use dragons fire ability to kill my own troops to turn them back into rage & mana. Nothing quite like lining all your troops up in a nice straight line, and cooking them all.

Man it would suck to be in my army! The inquis die and get resurrected over and over again. Still, I*cough* *cough* still have 0 losses *cough*.

LOL... well, at least your army is composed of the living; my army is more like a cross between The Matrix and Lord of the Rings wherein the machines won out, and have found a way to "animate" their fallen enemies. :)

I think the key with the Elenhel manipulation tactic is to have a good grasp of how many total enemies you have left. That way you know how many AK scrolls you could milk from him (her?). One also needs good scouting reports on how much XP each hero is worth, and where to find them. Unfortunately, this is my first run of the game, so I have to make do with scouting out an island every time a navi map opens it up; having the flying horse helps a lot in this aspect though.

You just downed Elenhel? I guess I have my mindset wrong though, I thought Elenhel rebels when Amelie reaches level 40. Is it worth preparing a chain of hero enemies so that one uses an AK on the Elenhel battle as well?

Take your time, I'm not finishing the game anytime soon. :) And besides, we'll probably finish with the same score (level 60/7 days/all quests). It's pretty tight in my game though, I'm not exactly sure if I'm making good time... I've finished this path:

Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Verona-Rusty-Scarlet-Debir-Verona-Montero-Verona-Dersu

I'm at Uzala atm, Day 4 at 1:50am already. And as per the unicornxp path, I still have:

Uzala-Elon-Nameless-Reha-Umkas-Montero-Terkon-Rusty-Scarlet-Debir-Shettera-Dersu-Elon-Nameless-Uzala-Verona

Granted, I've wiped clean all previous islands and all I need is to talk to NPCs for quests, but I still need to clear 7 complete islands... we'll see what happens.

As for battle tactics, steamrolling everything in my path. Level 39 and 21,000 leadership, lineup is black knights-repair droids-bone dragons-repair droids-guard droids. Last unit type that joined my army was the bone dragons, and I thought it would be more difficult since I now have 2 undead units that I needed to use mana to resurrect. Boy was I wrong... Phantom level 3 on bone dragons, mana accelerator, Phantom level 3 on bone dragons, mana accelerator... wow. :) Technically I already have 3 scapgoat units in my droids (since you don't need rage/mana to resurrect them), and now I could have up to 3 more tough phantom units in play. :) Warrior doesn't even have problems with rage generation, and I have 6 units (3 droids and 3 phantoms) that I throw at the enemy with abandon to generate rage. Nice. :)

Right now, the black knights usually just sit on their @$$ while the rest of their team do their thing. This is because even the guard droids move faster than he does, and the guard droids could pull enemies from afar (sometimes I use the black knights to help pound on this victim, but often find it unnecessary). Also, what I like about this team is that all the enemies and heroes seem to hate the repair droids with a passion; it's like I have Target level 10 on them. :) That's a huge plus for my 2 undead units; the only time I use Eviln to resurrect my undead is when I choose to use my black knights to do some real fighting.

And the thing I love the most about warrior? No more real need to end battles with max rage and max mana. :) I could end a battle with zero rage and zero mana, and immediately on the next battle my rage jumps up to 40% of my max rage (jumps to 44 rage right now at 110 max rage). Then just use mana accelerator to start the chain of phantom bone dragons. :)

EDIT/NOTE: Got a navi map for Reha on Uzala, so I took a quick peek. Overall, I was greatly disappointed... too few enemies for such a large island. I'm just level 39 and 21,000 leadership, and the non-hero enemies at Reha were all showing as just "Lethal" (and I'm technically just using 4 full stacks since 2 slots are occupied by repair droids). This means they won't give too much experience, plus the fact that on the whole island there is I believe only 5-6 of them. I took a quick peek of Tekron, and the hero enemies there show as "Lethal" as well. As such, if you have only a few AK scrolls, better just use them on Tekron heroes instead of non-hero enemies on Reha.

Uzala on the other hand has low-level heroes (level 28-34), but they command large armies, still showing as "Invincible" against my army. Worthy of an AK scroll I believe, especially since there are 4 of them (then use the last AK charge on the diploma battle at Elon, the next island one logically visits).

McSwan
03-04-2010, 06:43 AM
I'm at the end of day 5 in Reha, pretty sure I've done this too slow. I'm hoping that my slightly higher level might get me through. I should have used ak scrolls on the heroes in uzala, in fact it looks like most heroes verona on give you more xp than ordinary troops in Reha.

It's funny how you are using phantom as your main weapon, and I'm using mystic egg. Feels like role reversal.

Make sure you have plenty of repair droids in reserve too. I found out too late that you can't use sacrifice to make more.

loreangelicus
03-04-2010, 09:35 AM
Well, if you're following unicornxp's path, then that means you are done with Elon-Nameless as well. Next to Reha is Umkas and Tekron, small islands. Only Shettera is a bit big. You can still make it by day 7!

You are correct, good XP overall in Uzala for an AK scroll:

Koruskan - 10,667 (not bad for a level 28 hero)
Elenhel - 15,315 (he/she rebelled after my fight with Koruskan when I got level 40)
Urh-Urh - 10,043
Rakush - 13,237
Weed - 11,425

I misjudged a bit, there's actually a 5th hero in Uzala; Captain Krueger, level 35. He moves around quite a bit though, being in a ship and everything. Maybe I'll just take him on the second visit to Uzala; just before Baal? :)

Yup! Bought 1,200 repair droids and 800 guard droids on my initial visit to Montero. If by some miracle of leadership I need more (probably once I get all 3 leadership-reducing items for droids) there's always the second visit to Montero.

EDIT (3-7-2010):

Hi McSwan, I removed some of the stuff I wrote before concerning how my game is going. The reason? This is your post, and it is not my intention to troll it (and with my updates, it was beginning to look like a post regarding MY attempt at the highest score); my apologies for this.

Anyways, do keep us updated on your game, and don't forget to post your results in the high score thread!

McSwan
03-11-2010, 06:27 AM
Well, if you're following unicornxp's path, then that means you are done with Elon-Nameless as well. Next to Reha is Umkas and Tekron, small islands. Only Shettera is a bit big. You can still make it by day 7!

You are correct, good XP overall in Uzala for an AK scroll:

Koruskan - 10,667 (not bad for a level 28 hero)
Elenhel - 15,315 (he/she rebelled after my fight with Koruskan when I got level 40)
Urh-Urh - 10,043
Rakush - 13,237
Weed - 11,425

I misjudged a bit, there's actually a 5th hero in Uzala; Captain Krueger, level 35. He moves around quite a bit though, being in a ship and everything. Maybe I'll just take him on the second visit to Uzala; just before Baal? :)

Yup! Bought 1,200 repair droids and 800 guard droids on my initial visit to Montero. If by some miracle of leadership I need more (probably once I get all 3 leadership-reducing items for droids) there's always the second visit to Montero.

EDIT (3-7-2010):

Hi McSwan, I removed some of the stuff I wrote before concerning how my game is going. The reason? This is your post, and it is not my intention to troll it (and with my updates, it was beginning to look like a post regarding MY attempt at the highest score); my apologies for this.

Anyways, do keep us updated on your game, and don't forget to post your results in the high score thread!

Hi,
Been busy, dam work takes away from important game playing.

Don't forget necro call scroll for a quest in umkas too.

Made it back to Monterro, after taking down K'TAHU down with 132 black knights. Man it is sooooo much easier now, on my final spin around the islands.
Day 6 currently, pretty sure I won't finish it by day 7.

Feel free to post anything on here too, lol. I imagine that, yes indeed, it would be an unbelieveably interesting thread with just me posting, but occasionally other peoples input is nice to make it appear as though the discussion is balanced.

I'm currently just spamming phantom mainly with emerald green dragons, the phantom giving me back the mana it cost to make them.

Also, I'm pointlessly casting fireballs on the ground where is no enemies to get that mage medal - 600 casts of fire arrow/fire ball. Do medals counts towards the score ?

Metathron
03-11-2010, 07:35 AM
Also, I'm pointlessly casting fireballs on the ground where is no enemies to get that mage medal - 600 casts of fire arrow/fire ball. Do medals counts towards the score ?

It's better to cast oil mist as it costs less mana.

loreangelicus
03-11-2010, 07:03 PM
Hi,
Been busy, dam work takes away from important game playing.

Don't forget necro call scroll for a quest in umkas too.

Made it back to Monterro, after taking down K'TAHU down with 132 black knights. Man it is sooooo much easier now, on my final spin around the islands.
Day 6 currently, pretty sure I won't finish it by day 7.

Feel free to post anything on here too, lol. I imagine that, yes indeed, it would be an unbelieveably interesting thread with just me posting, but occasionally other peoples input is nice to make it appear as though the discussion is balanced.

I'm currently just spamming phantom mainly with emerald green dragons, the phantom giving me back the mana it cost to make them.

Also, I'm pointlessly casting fireballs on the ground where is no enemies to get that mage medal - 600 casts of fire arrow/fire ball. Do medals counts towards the score ?

Yup, same here, I have a scheduled project to start next week, so I don't know how much time I could spend playing.

I also made a stupid mistake:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=11137&page=4

It's not the first mistake I've made. I remember in KBTL I'm already in the dwarven mines, about to go to Ellinia, when someone mentioned to me that losses in the training battles counted as actual losses in the record. Being a no-loss attempt, I had to re-do that from the start. :)

As for your question, stuff like no-loss, the level of the medals, the level of the pet dragon, these don't affect the score, but are nice goals to target anyways.

zhaozhilong
03-12-2010, 06:59 AM
Don't mind if I sidetrack a bit....
I was worried earlier that I will not hit my fire mage medal as I need like was like 200 more at about level 25ish or something....

So I when I thought of getting Imp I can get a bonus. 2 fire balls charges, phantom and phantom

So easily hit 50 per battle with L3 high magic.

Unfortunately No.

Havent' found a reason for that though....

Anyone noticed it ?

DGDobrev
03-12-2010, 07:19 AM
That's probably because leveling the medal doesn't include unit abilities, only spells cast. In any case, Fire Mage is one of the hardest medals to raise, so don't worry too much about it.

Metathron
03-12-2010, 10:08 AM
Nah, I wouldn't say it's especially hard, what with higher magic. That's 6 rounds times 2 fire spells + 4 more rounds = 16 casts per battle. You just have to stall the battles often, and that can get tedious.

Zechnophobe
03-12-2010, 09:29 PM
Nah, I wouldn't say it's especially hard, what with higher magic. That's 6 rounds times 2 fire spells + 4 more rounds = 16 casts per battle. You just have to stall the battles often, and that can get tedious.

Well, I think that's what he meant. All the 'cast a spell' medals just require you casting a lot of spells. But the Fire one requires a LOT more than the others. It is tedious and annoying to get.

Metathron
03-12-2010, 09:43 PM
Well, I kinda disagree. In my experience, the guardian angel one is rather tedious to get depending on the units you use of course; as for the fire mage medal, I usually raise a huge chunk of it just by casting spells "the natural way", i.e. not by artificially prolonging battles, since in my opinion spells like fire arrow and fireball are a mage's weapon of choice from the get go.

travelingoz
03-14-2010, 03:59 AM
Guardian Medal is not too bad. Just Start in Debir with 3 Arcmages split. You can easily get 15~20 casts in per battle and have the medal by the time you finish Bolo! :grin:

KongMysen
03-14-2010, 05:49 PM
I hate all these medals... Its just tremendously boring spamming the same spells over and over. Obviously you will use a lot of fire arrows and stoneskin throughout the game, but reaching lvl 3 means a lot of boring and unnessesary castings.

The trap medal is aquired by killing the last unit in a stack. The best thing about traps is that they reduce ap to 0, so by using it on enemies, that dies... Not to mention the poisoning...Well you get the point.
And why cast fireball if you have fire rain? Or cast magic shield on your troll stack 3-4 times every 2nd round?

There is a little challenge in getting the medals and an absolute NEED to get them to build the perfect character, but the way you win them are just not making gameplay more fun.

Zechnophobe
03-14-2010, 07:24 PM
I agree with Kong, which is why I don't go far out of my way to get those kind of medals. One game I got trapper, and it was kinda interesting. And I've gotten level 2 fire mage before, and level 3 guardian angel once. But they just aren't enjoyable enough for me to spend time on... and ultimately not that useful.

Metathron
03-14-2010, 09:30 PM
I'm also not going for trapper this time around, as I became quite fed up with going for the other two spamming medals.

McSwan
03-18-2010, 12:14 AM
I realized I made a mistake by kiting monterro instead of killing everything there on my run through, and it cost me enough time that I would not have made it by day 7.

So I've started back just before bolo, getting repair bots there and working my way through again. So far it's a heck of a lot easier!

McSwan
03-22-2010, 03:10 AM
Been using

repair bots
repair bots
guard droids
1 green dragon
vampires

With level 3 heal for the dragons, this army can recover fairly easily from hideous casualties. I'm beginning to think that vamps are superior to black knights at the start, as they usually don't need an eviln to recover. Against undead, you do need eviln though. And vamps damage isn't great, but against most creatures they seem to hold out, maintaining there level and slowly kill the mob. Back doing Verona atm.

loreangelicus
03-22-2010, 02:37 PM
I realized I made a mistake by kiting monterro instead of killing everything there on my run through, and it cost me enough time that I would not have made it by day 7.

So I've started back just before bolo, getting repair bots there and working my way through again. So far it's a heck of a lot easier!

I'm glad you have decided to replay the game to go for a day 7 finish; to be honest, I don't think you would have gotten a higher score than unicornxp had you continued and finished the game in 8 days and level 60.

Been using

repair bots
repair bots
guard droids
1 green dragon
vampires

With level 3 heal for the dragons, this army can recover fairly easily from hideous casualties. I'm beginning to think that vamps are superior to black knights at the start, as they usually don't need an eviln to recover. Against undead, you do need eviln though. And vamps damage isn't great, but against most creatures they seem to hold out, maintaining there level and slowly kill the mob. Back doing Verona atm.

You are correct that black knights require Eviln support each and every time you decide to engage the enemy with them, and that is why for most of the regular fights, even most hero battles, I just let them sit back and relax at the back lines. But this is only because it is a lot easier to spam Phantom bone dragons (EGDs in your case) to take out the opposing army.

I don't know how it goes for the mage class, but you might miss their firepower during tough fights, like boss battles. Their 30% base physical resistance helps a lot too. Do keep us posted on how your battle with the Driller/Zilgadis/K'tahu pans out.

I'm at Uzala atm, but I've also started on a 2 month project at work (finished by early/mid-May) so it would be slow-going for me again.

Nightingale
05-02-2010, 01:03 PM
How do you get dragons that early in the game besides the quest in rusty that gives green dragon only? Don't tell me you load till you have a save game that gives you a call colossus spell.
IMO , you guys aren't really going for a challenge when you actually tweak the game with a savegame scanner and knows exactly where to get what. Thats just one step from using cheat codes. Even the multiple reloads to attempt to get a rune or wanderer scroll from dragon chests is kinda extreme and almost felt like cheating.

Metathron
05-02-2010, 05:12 PM
How do you get dragons that early in the game

By stealing navigational charts is another way to do it.

loreangelicus
05-03-2010, 11:35 AM
IMO , you guys aren't really going for a challenge when you actually tweak the game with a savegame scanner and knows exactly where to get what. Thats just one step from using cheat codes. Even the multiple reloads to attempt to get a rune or wanderer scroll from dragon chests is kinda extreme and almost felt like cheating.

If you use it "to know exactly where to get what", then I agree with you. But if you just use it to guarantee the existence of Ancient Knowledge scrolls and XP items, then that is a different matter altogether. This is because that unlike the original game KBTL, in KBAP you NEED an abundance of AK scrolls to ever hope of reaching level 60. If you happen to just play a random game without guaranteeing at least 3 AK scrolls and some XP items then you are most likely to hit level 57-58 max, even if you kill all possible enemies and solve all possible quests.

So would you go through 20+ hours of playing time on a random game that most likely would not net you your primary goal? :) I personally cannot; between family and work I haven't even finished the singular game that I started last January (am at Nameless atm and will remain there till mid May, when a project contract I'm doing finishes). :)

As for reloading battles to get better "drops", try it first. Unlike the use of the KBScanner, the results of this "tactic" is random so only people with a lot of patience/fortitude/time could do it. I have good patience, little fortitude, and very little playing time, so I quit doing it after Verona. :)