New Spells -- Review

[ckdamascus]

Hey there, I never played King's Bounty the Legend, so I have no idea what the new spells are like, especially since they are probably toned down a bit for balance reasons.

Ice Thorns - surrounds enemy with ice, seems potentially very good against fast moving melee attackers and can help a range build tremendously. Seems like only one point is necessary since it is really crystal expensive, and upgrades only lower the mana cost.

Gizmo - I heard it does healing and stuff? I don't want to waste 60 turns to kill driller with my 4 trolls to find out it sucks. [edit] Seems like if you have Black Dragons wait, the Gizmo will heal your Black Dragons. Sounds very handy in those Solo Missions.

Giot's Armor - absorbs damage, but forces a unit to be unable to move. Seems GREAT if you can predict an attack since it works like the old school AD&D stoneskin. No matter how much damage, you will block the first hit, resulting in 0 damage to the target, but losing the armor. e.g. Level 1 Giot Armor on your rune mage which ALWAYS gets targetted by those imbalanced enemy blood shaman... shaman does 9999 damage against a 300 dmg giot armor, 0 rune mages die. Mwhaha.

Dragon of Chaos - seems crappy compared to Call Phoenix. Expensive and weak. [edit] Might be worth it at level 1 to simply raise a demon's army's morale to break into the 100% critical mark

School of Piranha - excellent on the bridges since you will hit all units on it, but I think too situational for me for now. Seems FAR more mana and damage efficient than Stone Rain

Stone Rain - a bunch of rocks fall from the sky, seems unimpressive. Can anyone comment on this?


Feel free to add or help me find out the hidden mojo if I said some of the spells sucks.

Poisonous Spit - a poor man's "pygmy" of sorts. The real key is the 20% reduction in the enemy's attack rating (not the damage), also it counts as yet another negative status affect when calculating negative morale PLUS it does damage alongside with poison skull. Supposedly this can be used against bosses.

Black Hole - What Death Star should have been. :) Hits all enemies on screen with astral damage, cannot hurt your own units with it. It is like armageddon but better. It seems to do more damage than death star, however, it does not hit buildings and costs 60 mana at level 3.

Ice Orb - somewhat interesting. If used far away, it moves in direct lines (think like a Queen Chess Piece) and it does more damage if you are further away when it strikes. Think - Horsemen charge. Low initiative though so you can't pop it on the fly like Ancient Phoenix. Fairly tanky with 50% physical resists. It does draw a fair amount of aggro though. If any units are next to it, their Attack Rating drops by 25% (probably the base attack rating). It can be cast anywhere. Costs 40 Mana at Level 3.

[Saiko Kila]

I see you haven't discovered some of the new old spells, like Ice Orb or Soul Draining, hehe. As for glot's armor, it's a part of one of the best combos of KBTL: skelly archers + dragon arrows + glot's armor = death to black dragons :) I'll have to try it out in KBCW, I have no archers yet. They may be not so good now, with low leadership of mage hero.

School of Piranha (or Evil Shoal) was one of the best rage skills in the early game in KBTL. It's still good, but I think that you can easily get it too late. But it's very strong, it's total damage heavier than most spells. It can be tricky to position, but I have perfected it in KBTL, so is no problem now.

One of the least impressing rage-skill-turned-spell is Poisonous Spit, I think. But it's distortion school, so may be useful if you maxed distortion and not chaos.

Gizmo is not really useful, it would be if it wasn't spell but rage skill, tough. It's too situational and unpredictable (it randomly heal or attacks). In KBTL I used it mostly to level rage spirit up.

Ice thorns are great for keeping last non-ranged survivors in bay and resurrecting, but I'd prefer it to be cheaper.

Stone Rain... I have yet to find it. It was quite nice in KBTL but only after upgrading (area was huge), but I don't know how it upgrades now.

Dragon of Chaos is completely new spell, not taken from KBTL, and I haven't found it.

[Renevent]

Is there a list of all the new spells/items/skills/ect?

[ckdamascus]

Is there a list of all the new spells/items/skills/ect?

Not that I know of, but I am planning to try to make one.

I want to know what the Dragon Toy does!

[BB Shockwave]

I have found two pieces of the Dragon toy, nifty so far.

Funny thing is, some Rage Spirit abilities will finally be usefull. In the Legend, around second half of the game I was only using Rina and Reaper, and of course Glot Armor from Sleem, Zerock did so little damage for even my Paladin, it was laughable. I never got to develop Gizmo so high that it'd resurrect/haste units or debuff the enemy, so I am looking forward to that.

Poison Spit is pretty powerfull, and a Distortion Magic spell to boot - it does not much damage at first hit, but it will do quite high damage in the next three rounds.

[ckdamascus]

I hate how one piece has the -1 initiative to all allies troops level 3-5. :(

[vicheron]

I see you haven't discovered some of the new old spells, like Ice Orb or Soul Draining, hehe. As for glot's armor, it's a part of one of the best combos of KBTL: skelly archers + dragon arrows + glot's armor = death to black dragons :) I'll have to try it out in KBCW, I have no archers yet. They may be not so good now, with low leadership of mage hero.

Dragon Arrow was severely nerfed in AP. Now they only ignore 30% of the enemy's defense.

[Saiko Kila]

Dragon Arrow was severely nerfed in AP. Now they only ignore 30% of the enemy's defense.

I see. I used them on less than ten occasions, because without Glot's Armor the archers were too vulnerable anyway. Oh well, Glot's may be still useful for saving troops or blocking passages.

[ckdamascus]

With a 100% critical archer build (ah, the joy), glots armor opens up a lot of doors for me. Maybe I can do a revised version of it. Dragon arrows SUCKS compared to 100% crit archer builds. As a side note 100% archer builds only seems really good with warriors, not mages.

However, in my current mage build, glots armor can help save my mages from the totally IMBALANCED blood shaman.

See, I usually throw away summon units and such to raise my rage. This strategy is extremely bad against the orcs, since it feeds their adrenaline.

Not fun seeing an ogre HURL my MAGIC IMMUNE phoenix into the air... and die.

Or, seeing blood shamans take out troll and rune mage stacks...

Of course, magic shackles seems to be a little more efficient than glot in this case. :)

I can still see it being somewhat useful to block the first hits of a very powerful ranged stack. I can't wait to experiment more!

[onepiece]

Orcs are a little (if not a lot) more overpowered. NOT called march of the orc for nothing (Maybe stampede of the orcs?).

The ogre drain ability sucks the action point from one of your units and adds it to himself! My royal gryphons where trashen by that shit that moved like 7 squares!!

The dragon toy must be a full set (I have 3 parts and I don't know what it does). Maybe boost your dragons abilities?

[BB Shockwave]

I find it quite the opposite... Orcs can be quite powerfull, yes, but they only get there in 2-3 rounds or more. They start the battle with quite mediocre stats and abilities (The Orc Tracker especially, and the Shaman cannot use any totems early on). Which leaves you with plenty of time to debuff/counter them. A slowed Veteran Orc will never upgrade his adrenaline, if he never gets into a position to attack you, while you pick him off with Archers.

Glot armor as a spell, is nice. Does it mean you can cast it on more then 1 units? How long does it last, fixed or per intellect?

One of the disadvantages of making Time Back into a spell was that now, you cannot resurrect Black Dragons with it... I wonder if the Runa Mage or the Phoenix can. I have not used Blacks since my first playthrough in Legend, I like to experiment with different units on every walkthrough.

[Saiko Kila]

I find it quite the opposite... Orcs can be quite powerfull, yes, but they only get there in 2-3 rounds or more. They start the battle with quite mediocre stats and abilities (The Orc Tracker especially, and the Shaman cannot use any totems early on). Which leaves you with plenty of time to debuff/counter them. A slowed Veteran Orc will never upgrade his adrenaline, if he never gets into a position to attack you, while you pick him off with Archers.


Strange, in my games enemy orcs start with high adrenaline. I saw even like 33/40 for example, every orc has different stats. They can use their specials, at least level two, right away (and if I open with damaging spells, they can start their first turn with level three attacks). Enemy orcs are always better than my orcs. Runemages also start with assortment of runes, if there are two runemages stacks - both have different bonuses. If you have no runes then enemy runemages are better than your runemages, except bonuses provided by equipment.

[BB Shockwave]

Orc Shamans and Blood Shamans have the "Enraged" ability, meaning they start off with 15 adrenaline. Plus, if they attack, they increase the adrenaline of friendly orcs too...

You can increase the effectiveness of your own orcs with some Might skills - these not only give Rage, but adrenaline to your Orcs! I plan to do an Orc-Only walkthrough, but frankly the reason I am a bit against it is because I like to do no-loss and with their sacrifice-skills it is quite impossible with Orcs. It could be done, but it'd be tedious.

Thanks for the info about enemy Rune Mages - have not fought any yet, but I was wondering about this, without runes they'd be much weaker.

Does anyone know what the ability "Runic Armor" means? There is another overlap/slide in ability description so just hovering your cursor over it doesn't say.

[Saiko Kila]

Last time I was fighting and had first move - enemy shamans started with like 50/65 or 33/65 Adrenaline - I think they cheat! :(

About Runic Armor, from game files:
The armor's strength depends on the Talent Runes of the hero. The player's dominant Rune determines the bonus:
Might Runes: +30% Physical resistance
Mind Runes: +30% Resistance to Poison and Fire
Magic Runes: +30% Resistance to Magic and Astral damage
If the hero possesses more than 20 of the same Rune, then the armor's resilience will be increased by another 10%.

[stubbie]

With Runic Armour I'm guessing it refers to the number of unused runes you have and doesn't include runes you have already used in your skill tree? :confused:

[Saiko Kila]

With Runic Armour I'm guessing it refers to the number of unused runes you have and doesn't include runes you have already used in your skill tree? :confused:

Yes, it's unused runes, for all their skills and bonuses. And the description is inaccurate, runemages don't get astral resistance from runic armor. May be a bug.

[Puce Moose]

I'm having a great time with the rune mages; I've sacrificed my hero's own learning at the expense of the rune mages, which makes for an interesting commentary on units vs. hero. It's a conundrum I find I'm enjoying quite a bit. Pretty clever idea on the part of the developers in my opinion. Do I make myself tougher, or be a martyr of sorts and let my rune mages take advantage of my untapped resources to expand their functionality?

Thumbs up 1C! I like additions that present these sort of challenges.

[BB Shockwave]

I am using them too, but not at the expense of my own hero - I just always try to leave some surplus runes around and wait until 2 more levels to get a new skill, until that time they can kick ass.

I have found a new spell that so far I think has not been reported:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y139/BB_Shockwave/screen_100926_001.jpg

Totem of Adrenaline (Chaos): In place of a Fallen troop, raises a totem which on each move (round?) increases the Adrenaline level of Orcish allies, while at the same time decreasing the defense of those who stand against the orcs. Has no effect on creatures immune to mind spells.

[Saiko Kila]

I have been using this spell since the beginning, because I started with blood shamans and goblin shamans. I don't use it now after I dumped these stupid orcs. It gives some adrenaline at the end of turn if I remember correctly, but killing others is way faster, so it's mildly useful. Also, at least to me, it worked not exactly every turn, even if my orcs were running around near it. I wasn't paying much attention (and orcs get adrenaline on many occasions), but it has visible graphical effect to the units it dopes.

[ckdamascus]

I added Ice Orb in there.

I have mixed thoughts on it. One advantage it has over Ancient Phoenix is it can be dropped anywhere on the map, as opposed to Ancient Phoenix requiring a "spotter" to get it close enough to fly over to your target.

It almost seems too defensive though. To get enough intellect to make it super strong (admittedly, at merely 32 intellect it was semi-beefy), you aren't going to have enough leadership or damage boosting items to take advantage of the tank.

I can see this being useful for some armies. Maybe more for the solo Black Dragon type that uses spell nukes?

[BB Shockwave]

Ice orb is Magic immune, and has a very high defense. In the Legend, I loved using it to roll into an enemy magic-shooter (Mages, inquisitors, Beholders) blocking it, then watching as they did only miniscule damage to the orb.