Lowest level challenge

[impy]

Hello,

The idea of the lowest level at which one can finish the game - basically collect the stones and defeat baal - surely occurred to many players, the first in-depth look was provided by axelle back in kbap days. So here we go:
1) impossible no loss
2) no wanderer scrolls to be used
3) no pet dragon digging, no student belt.
4) finish the game at lowest level possible

conditions 2) and 3) I added not because of need of some extra challenging environment, but to make sure the game is fair for everyone. Meaning someone can replay for example 20 debir battles in order to get a rune or wanderer scroll per each battle and gain advantage for all boss battles. Admittedly it would take ages, but it would provide player, although truly dedicated, with probably too many goodies.
I'll continue tomorrow, busy i am afraid. so just screenshots.
Level 33 can most certainly be improved.

[hotfix666]

Hello,

The idea of the lowest level at which one can finish the game - basically collect the stones and defeat baal - surely occurred to many players, the first in-depth look was provided by axelle back in kbap days. So here we go:
1) impossible no loss
2) no wanderer scrolls to be used
3) no pet dragon digging, no student belt.
4) finish the game at lowest level possible

conditions 3) and 4) I added not because of need of some extra challenging environment, but to make sure the game is fair for everyone. Meaning someone can replay for example 20 debir battles in order to get a rune or wanderer scroll per each battle and gain advantage for all boss battles. Admittedly it would take ages, but it would provide player, although truly dedicated, with probably too many goodies.
I'll continue tomorrow, busy i am afraid. so just screenshots.
Level 33 can most certainly be improved.

nice record :) what is student belt???
Try finish the game on shortest time... thats matter if you are level 50 or 30 :)

[impy]

hotfix666: student belt = +1def, +1int,plus 8% probability of getting a dominant rune of character class per fight. As you can see, it is open to abuse, just replay every battle...

Right, the only compulsory fights & quests in order to finish the game are as follows:
Montero guardian - 1055exp
Gremlion - 16000
Demenion - 13016
Ktahu - 20000
Rakush - 7765
Uchkuk - 10455
Shenobi - 15191
Open mirror tower quest - 4590
Spirit of sorrow - 4585
Stone inside Tekron - 1762
Amulet of Illumination - 153
Hagni - 5987
Temple of love quest (hagni) - 1700
Baal - 26000
Reha warriors - 14155 + 18353
Reha warriors quest - 7650
Total: 168417exp = level 30

Also, if you play with droids, there is immensely helpful Axe of Ice (10% phys.res, no retaliation for repair droids, +7defense) which is additional 3740 exp. ; for a total of 172157exp.
Just to have it complete, here is a list of level requirements
Level 30 - 158100exp.
Level 31 - 175100exp.
Level 32 - 193800exp.
Level 33 - 212500exp.
I don't think it is humanly possible to finish the game at level 30. Playing with droids you have cca 2900exp to spare, with black knights it is 2900+3740=6640exp to spare. But this extra experience has to cover experience gained from all early fights (to work on medals) + experience from fighs for new continent scrolls (if you cannot kite them all) + experience from non-compulsory castle battles containing all important artefacts you want. Therefore level 31 seems more realistic, giving you 2900+17000=19900exp to spare with droids and 6640+17000=23640exp to spare with black knights.
I finished the game with cca 215000exp. This is where extra experience come from:
-fight for elon scroll in verona = 2235exp
-antidote quest in order to get twinkling boots = 4500exp
-fight with octopus in scarlet to get to dwarf (slippery cuirass) = cca 1000exp
-scarlet, dwarf's quest, getting 9 runes = 2500exp (bad decision)
-montero, quest levers & gears in order to get access to royal hammer - 1870 exp
-killing professor dambior for +25%magic res. regalia = 7500exp.
-fighting Baal with Learning 1 - 10% extra exp = 2600exp.
-fighting Gremlion with Learning 1 - 10% extra exp. = 1600exp.
- Umkas, fighting for Uzala scroll - ??4000exp???
that is total of cca 27000exp. The remaining 215000exp - 27000exp - 172157exp = 16000exp must have come from early fights when working on medals.
I made a big mistake not making sure that magician cowl and/or mirror shield appear in my game. I thought that chaos crown + crystall ball +leather dress + guardian 3 medal = 17% magic resistance for droids would be enough for defeating Gremlion. Maybe so, this was my first playthrough with droids in my "career" so i gave up eventually, killed Dambior and went for neatness 3. That forces you to take Learning 1. So 2600exp+1600exp+7500exp = 11700exp could have been saved.

What is an ideal setup in my opinion?
Hero : Twinkling boots, Scaly set, Royal hammer, Horn of king borg, crown of chaos, Engineer's badge
"business associate" Agvares - Axe of Ice, Slippery cuirass, Belt of the winner, unupgraded painskull for hero fights, crystall ball/portrait of ice queen for boss fights
Slippery cuirass can be swapped for leather dress or magician cloak if other resistances are needed. Of course, i did not have all of it:-)

[impy]

Here is deeper look into lowest level challenge.
1) character. Warrior seems an obvious choice due to highest leadership and quick access to all the attack, defence boosting skills etc.. After all, with all the leadership reduction goodies for droids their req. is only 44. I have not played with other hero class with droids yet but i dare to say other classes may have a good chance as well. Mage has one huge advantage - massive mana pool and better mana management. Whereas warrior struggles to gain his balance after casting one time back spell (assuming you'll have mana around 50) mage with mana 100+ shines - 3+ easy time backs. Or, if things get nasty, mage with maxed Summoning skill + distorsion 3 + higher intellect can cast repeatedly summon and create potent meatshield which can also help with repairing. It is also casting maxed divine armor (25mana) against gremlion which causes warrior problems, it forces frequently wasting turns on calm rage 3.
2) pet dragon. I chose a pink one for +5mana to help with warrior's weakness and immediate access to lightning ball which is the best spell
3) stats. Attack is strictly not neccessary. You will be gaining huge amounts of attack via frenzy skill. Defence is lot more important. Normally, you will not have many problems playing, higher defence comes into play when things get out of hand. For example, after archdemons halving attack you need 30 mana for time back. If you dont have it, then you cast calm rage to regain some. Next turn cast time back. But, in the meantime, since you you can't cast any other spells in 2 turns, your stone skin may have ran out, and you'll need every point in defence. Intellect. Not neccessary. Mana. Yes, please. After droid leadership reduction items and defence plus resistances, this is your priority.
4) Resistances. Fire, Poison, Astral not needed. Majority of damage is physical so physical resistance. If there was not gremlion you would get away with chaos crown bring droids magic res. to zero. Because of him you need some. Best idea would be swapping physical res. - slippery cuirass + scaly shield for magician cloak + mirror shield. Physical res - 7 % (medal) + 15% (twinkling boots) + 20% scaly set + 10% (slippery cuirass) + 10% (axe of ice) + 5% (crystal ball) + 20% (repair droids) = 87%!!
Although this is probably a bit over the top (you'll be casting a lot of stone skins anyway0 and requires a lot of luck.
5) Skills. magic tree - distorsion 3 for stone skin, magic spring, order 3 for calm rage, divine armor. I spent spare runes on wisdom. Mind tree - glory 3, power of spirit 3, i left this tree untouched afterwards until nearly end of game not knowing if neatness and holy anger would be needed. do not take neatness unless desperate it forces +10%experience via learning. Holy anger, yes, makes charging up on baal summons and mana management lot easier. Might tree - frenzy 3, quick draw 3, nightime operations 3 resistance 3 at first in this order. afterwards caution, heroism, revenge...
6) Gameplay. Start a game and kite, kite,kite. Get all the leadership rods on Teana, runes, gold, non-experience shrines. Point is also to get your hands on artifacts which you want before fight 1 - meaning gladiator sword, faith banner,, ancient amulet. I know now these extra runes are not strictly neccessary for success and costed me 100000+ coins. Be careful with picking treasures though. After picking 40 treasures you get +3% experience through treasure hunter medal which you do not want. I did the following - i saved the game before checking each treasure chest. If there was 12000+gold or rune(s) i kept it; as long as i had less than total of 40 chest collected i was fine. Otherwise i reloaded and ignored it.You will need money. Since you will hardly do any quests, hardly any preparation battles + you want all desired equipment right from the start = you need to collect at least some money. Getting yourself killed and collecting money from king Mark is cheeky, i have not done it.
Not knowing what difficulty to expect i went the usual route. 50 easy fights for mastering medals, some money, getting runes from artifacts. Again, now i know it is not strictly neccessary. If and when i try again i'll go for only 30 fights in debir and some scarlet for negligible experience, that gives guardian 3 medal with some dificulties, grand strategy 2, and hopefully squeeze in some battle cry's for iron knight 1-2. You can collect extra bonuses via unfinished quests. Examples being - antidote quest - +5mana for some money only, shackle destroyer - 1 might rune, reha - red stick, shettera - demon tongue etc.
7) fights.
1) first more serious fight is guardian on the bridge to montero. with all the leadership rods collected, and dragon eggs, 2 black + red dragons should dispose of them easily. I happened to see there once fairly big group of cyclops. In any complicated case, droids should hold up. Use your pet dragon a lot, he'll be gaining huge experience due to enemy army size
2) temple of sorrow. I love this fight, the enemy is level 39, but melts under repeated lighting balls. Can be killed with one group of black dragons flying around. Buy all rage potions in advance / or have some cheap artifacts ready for upgrading in order to start hero fights with lots of rage. Two lighting balls in round one help a lot since enemy likes to cast summon. The fight was peppered with fact skeletons are now "transdimensional" travellers so watch out.
3) Hagni. Time for 2 armies of repair droids.His geyser is not a problem due to high phys. resistance. Kill magic dealers first and especially gorguanas. I crippled Choshas so the amount of summoned gobots i could kill easily with one hit from repair droids. Charge up on them repeatedly via frenzy and kill the rest once hagni uses up all his mana.
3b) after killing Hagni and collecting wings it is time to create axe of ice (no retaliation, 10 phys. resistance, +7defence, also melee attack does lot more damage than ranged) First, kite the guardian of pillar of ice. Now fly close to remaining two pillars and do your bit before guardians get to you. This way you avoid all 3 fights.
4) Ziracks. As pure physical damage dealer i tried my luck with him next. Just sit in the corner, cast stone skin + magic spring and wait until he fills up the whole screen with very small amount of hayterans. then charge up on them and finish the big stacks. Start the fight with 2 lighting balls to bring down those brutal stacks . As a rule of thumb, in all fights do not let you repair droids be separated, keep them close to each other for repairing purposes.
5) Rakush. very interesting fight. With chaos crown, ghost armor and crystal ball for a total of 75% astral resistance i fairly nicely survived initial astral onslaught from 3 groups of goblin shamans (over 1100 of them!). But the problem comes with their 5% reduction per attack. 3 groups = 15% reduction of resistances per round, too much. So I employed the following - 3 groups of dryads, and black dragons, droids + unupgraded pain skull for massive rage generation. Here is the theory bit. Enemy shamans initiative = 7. Dryads initiative = 4 (horn of the king borg, which does -1 initiative to elves had to be temporarily removed.) With elven song it goes up to 7, which matches shamans initiative, but does not guarantee dryads to go before shamans. Casting battle cry repeatedly would be mana costly and mana was low and needed for something else. That's where 1 army of black dragons come into play = -1 initiative to enemy. Only problematic bit - dryads 3 round reload time was sorted out by repeated casting phanthom 1 on them at some point. In the meantime - pet dragon - lightning balls, occassionaly mana balls. So the fight goes as follows. Round 1. droids go first - initiative 4 + quick draw 3 (+3) + onslaught 1 (+1) = 8. cast battle cry level 3 in order for dryads to go before shamans. dryads = initiative 4 + onslaught (+1) + battle cry 3 (+3) = 8. dryad cast sleep, other stack elven song. droids and black dragons kill everything without enemy getting a turn
6) Shenobi. Again physical damage dealer. The usual - do not get your droids separated, charge up on weaker stacks first. Can be done very early.
7) Uchkuk. Comes with blood shamans. Chaos crown should be sufficient. Cripple them with well positioned lighting balls and kill the them as priority. afterwards, with only phys. damage dealers left battle is decided.
8) Harrum. In my game Harrum had 600+ gorguanas, so i had to leave him for this late. Well, they do magic damage, mark of blood is nasty, quantity of 600 gives them +20 attack & defence, harrum has 30 defence, all in all they had 84 defence to start with and harrum loves to cast divine armor. Way to go is cast repeated lighning balls on them, and corner them so they have to use melee attack which is physical.
9) Ktahu. apart from nasty gorguanas, all atacks from him and summons are physical thus manageable. Sit back in the corner, cast stone skins, magic spring. Idea is to wait for ktahu to summon hayterans. They have high initiative and would attack if given a chance. That's why sit in the corner surrounded by other units, forcing hayterans to lay eggs. Once they fill up the screen with small stacks charge up on them for massive attack increase. Then take on other ktahu summons and then quickly on ktahu himself. Leave some slow stacks (brontors) standing for the last round of repairing. Generally, boss battles - gremlion, ktahu, baal - do not attack the boss straight away - your droids attack will be around 40, whilst bosses defence are around 60, so you'll do very little damage. Charge up on summons, i usually go for 100+ attack, and then quickly bring bosses down doing 7000-10000 damage per round in total.
10) Demenion. Again, left for this late due to - guaranteed high number of magic dealing inquisitors (usually 400+), now added nasty runemages, and archdemons with their halving specialty. The way to go against halving ability is either time back spell, so make sure you keep mana fairly high with magic spring. and/or high amount of droids for powerful repair coming from unaffected stack. Obviously the best is combination of both. I was also considering glot armor. I mentioned in previous post i struggled with magic resistance so it was painful. This late with higher number of droids it was manageable, but not nice. Obviously all stacks apart from inquisitors, runemages and archdemons are ignored. I immediately blasted inquisitors with lighting balls flew my droids close to them and runemages.after 4-5 rounds their numbers were no longer a threat so all energy was focused on archdemons including dragon dives. Afterwards, the battle is won in usual manner.
11) Gremlion. Easy opponent when plenty of magic resistance is available. As mentioned before, not in my case. I had to go for dambior's +25% magic res. regalia and neatness 3 for more powerful repairing. Idea is to let gremlion bring 2 x summoning towers early. Then he places two evil towers somewhere; one group of droids ocuppies one of the slots where normally gremlion places the last tower. This is to make sure droids do not get trapped close to gremlion without access to summons in front of the towers, or the other way around, basically saving time which would have been wasted by bringing down one tower to create passage. The other group of droids stands next to first group, and also next to gremlion in order to lure him into physical attack rather than magical (works with very limited success but helps)The battle goes the same way as others - wait for summons, kill them, charge up, and go for gremlion. The reason why this fight is complicated is the neccessity to cast very expensive divine armor 3 all the time on both stacks to make up for my lack of magic resistance. Since killing any summon gives maximum rage it is the key and it is to be immediately transferred into mana with calm rage 3. So it requires some planning order of killing summons in order to have steady inflow of rage and mana. Again, once attack 100+ is reached while maintaing mana + divine armor + killing summons balance, go for the kill
12) Like i said, holy anger makes mana management very easy. I was actually helping Bill Gillbert to cast stone skin on his units! Baal attacks do very little damage under stone skin+magic spring. So again, kill summons quickly, be afraid of archdemons!
screenshoots.
fight for elon scroll at level 2
fight at the temple of sorrow
rakush
gremlion
amelie before slapping baal