Spreadsheet of Useful Equips with Minor Location Spoilers

[Helios]

Hi, all. I've been working on a list of all the useful equipment in the game so I don't have to parse through the enormous translated fan manual. So, I've made a spreadsheet of what I consider to be the most useful equipment, with the best at the top. It assumes a little knowledge of the game, but should be pretty straightforward even to new players. I made this for use with The King's Bounty Savegame Scanner that works on both this game and Armored Princess: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=11780, with checkboxes for each savegame you scan at the start of a new game.

(And just FYI, I find it helpful to indicate in the checkboxes different symbols for when in the game a particular piece of equipment will become available like "S" for available at the start, a "*" for anything up to the Islands of Freedom and Kordar/Demonis, an "X" for anything in Ellinia/Land of the Dead and a "H" if it's as late as Haas' Labyrinth.

There may be a few cases in which I've named an item wrong, as I was using the fan manual translation as my guide along with my memory, but there shouldn't be too many errors. Also, a few terms in the Russian translation are a bit sketchy about whether an item affects damage or attack (both referred to as a "loss" if I'm not mistaken), so they might not be accurate. If anyone sees any errors in this document, just post here and I'll fix it.

[Vulture]

Very nice collection. I don't really have the time to check all the items so I just browsed through them. I wonder how you determine what to put in italic and what not sometimes. For example you put the Full Helm which is utter crap in italic while you put the Marshall's Baton, unarguably one of the strongest items in the game, usefull for any class, not in italic. Nobody ever needs 4 Def. Ever. But a thousand leadership ? For the biggest part of the game that is 5-10% of your total leadership, especially as a warrior that amounts to 9.5% total damage...

[Helios]

Points, taken! Thanks, Vulture. I definitely should have had the baton in italics. This spreadsheet is definitely slanted toward my list of racial-playthroughs, so I put the Full Helm in italics even though in a normal game, I'd never want it, but if I'm stuck with an all-melee army like I eventually plan to be with "The Outcasts" in my topic in the W/P/M forum, then I'm going to need some defense. (I don't know that watching melee units dying en masse will be much fun, and if that's *9* more playthroughs away, I don't know that I'll have the patience for restocking troops constantly.

So, if you were just playing a typical Impossible TKB game, I gather that trying to boost some stat other than Def would be a good idea on as many slots as possible, even on armor? That's been my typical approach, too, as avoid damage altogether is far superior than taking hits.

Do you see anything off the top of your head that you think needs to be in italics? I already need to revise this as I didn't see the glaring typo in my heading of all places.

[Vulture]

I'll look into that at some point. At the moment I can't be arsed, quite frankly xD Kinda lazy.

But yes, any stat is superior over defense. Even with a strong melee setup. Well, on armor you rarely ever have a choice. My last Warrior character wore two sun cloaks (Zombie Rina has an armor slot) :) Cloak Of Wizardry is an option and for a mage I don't think there's a way around Dragon Cloak.

Btw restocking isn't an option. Sacrifice and Time Back/Ressurrection are. No losses :>

[Helios]

Really? I'm surprised to hear that you wouldn't consider defense even for an all melee team.

And I don't see how I wouldn't have to do at least some restocking of troops as the races degenerate into worse units without having Inquisitors for the endless Rage during those late game battles with thousands of troops. Perhaps I still have more to learn about tactics, though? I thought Inquisitors + Lina's chargers was the only way to reliably achieve no losses when there isn't a no-retaliation enemy unit left!

[Madstrike]

Very nice. I dont see any symbols though, you mentioned to classify them as to what part of the game u can find them. Maybe thats a problem with open office?(I dont have excel), also u just separated them into different colors for sets right? Im only on my first playthrough of the game, and I have played AP, before, once, so Itll definetly help newbies like myself.

[Helios]

@Madstrike: Thanks. I was just suggesting adding those symbols as shorthand to each player's specific save-game scan, since many of the equips won't necessarily appear regularly in the same spots, e.g. you might get a pain skull from the Dwarven Necromancer which would be pretty early: "*" , or you might get it for beating Karador: "X" late-game. BTW, the one thing the KBScanner is completely unreliable about reporting is the item you will get from killing Zombie Noric, so I've discovered.

And yes, the colors simply denote set items except for the gray color listed under Melee/Outcast/Dwarf equips--those just jumped off the page to me as useful to those units (and no others!).

[Vulture]

Well, you can't really go endless anyway because after Round 20 your mana reg stops entirely.
As an alternative, if you don't have a no-retal unit left you can always
a) hypnotize them (with a Demoness at best, it's on a 2-round cooldown), cast magic spring on them, put poison cloud over them
b) get Ancient Vampires in humanoid form and do the same, placing them next to that unit. The Ancient Vampire will regenerate after each turn and not lose a single unit.
c) get Vampires in Bat form and do the same only leaving the final blow to the Vampire so they can drain life up. Just make sure it's no plant or undead ^^

About the defense: why is it surprising ? You need insane amounts of defense to make a noticeable difference at such high costs (atk, int, ldr instead?) that it never pays off.

[Helios]

Those are some good ways for Demons and Undead to regenerate. But I would guess that having to rely on the Hypnosis spell in other race situations wouldn't be very profitable for its high mana cost, making a long series of resurrecting either take a really long time or not possible.

Looking at the base defense numbers of units does make loading up on defense boosting items pretty pointless, especially if an enemy hero is involved. And it does make the most sense to be inflicting, rather than worrying about taking damage. I imagine with an all-melee army that one could somewhat minimize the hits taken even as counter-attacks if one sent out a phantom to take the first hit, and then mob the unit with every available unit. It would still be tough to do without Dryads putting half an army to sleep and dealing with 8 stacks of units. I suppose defense buff spells are probably more useful than hero defense could ever hope to compensate for.

It's the sort of dilemma that makes me think certain wives just aren't viable at all. Even on an all Dwarf run with the Mithril shield equipped to lower leadership requirements, I see Xeona being more useful for the two weapon slots than Gerda with a morale boost. Maybe I'm underselling the morale, but only one point boost doesn't seem to make up for her terrible equips (she's obviously built for a tanking approach). It's too bad the wives weren't more universal in their equips so that their morale or other boosts were more viable.

[Vulture]

Well, it's not like all 5 units take hits from all 8 enemy stacks. Firstly, you don't play with 5 melees as you don't have the space on the battlefield in the front row anyway. So let's say you have one archer. They take out a full enemy stack to begin with.
Secondly you put Icy Thorns in the enemy ranks that forces them to waste a turn, destroying them. Or an Ice Ball for that matter. And then you have Phantom or Target. All these targets are preferred by AI over any one of your troops.
Thirdly, if all of these fail you still have one unit that the opponent will pound the hardest and you can time Back them by the end of turn two.
Fourthly, if you play all melee, you don't use 4 melees that can't restock themselves. Not even as a mage. Nobody has the mana and/or the patience to ress up so many troops. Say they're level 4. That makes 120 mana to ress each stack only once. Of course you use the two vampire troops who restock themselves. That gives you one to ress and one to Time Back. I don't see the problem, nor the need for defense.

And Gerda sucks because the game isn't balanced to begin with ^^
Xeona/Rina > Neoka/Frog Lady > rest.

[Helios]

I don't make good enough use of Ice Thorns. I'm always too busy with the Ice Ball or Chargers. I still don't do a good enough job of making sure that only a few units take hits, rather than the entire army, thus making ressing too expensive and arduous. I need to make better use of Target, I think.

And I've been thinking about the suicidal attempt of melees that can't restock themselves, hence my thoughts on defense. But as you indicate in the other thread, it will be impossible without putting thousands of units nearby to restock in tough areas, which is quite pointless.

LOL that Mirabella didn't even deserve mention by name among the wives.

[Vulture]

Yeah, one must add that I'm a very patient player. Have always been in all games. Sometimes I take it too serious with the "perfect play". I don't play anything but no loss campaigns and I make sure I do everything to pull that off, even with Karador, Xeona, Baal and Haas. Whereas Haas is always a pain in the ass, more than Baal and that already is.

I also spend 40 rounds in battles against gremlins, keeping only two Friendly Gremlin towers alive to boost my ranks after a rank-up (Viscount, Lord etc), sacrificing Vampire Bats and Ancient Vampire Bats standing next to the towers to drain life out of what they summon every round ^^
Or with whatever Dragon or Demon Summon and let Poison Rain after Poison Rain fall on them and the Tower summons (not too often or the Tower dies, too ^^) with magic spring on them.

[Helios]

There's nothing wrong with patience. I've been adding that to my tactical repertoire more lately. Friendly Gremlin tower abuse helped me reduce my casualties a great deal last time out. Part of me wants to beat the game as quickly as possible to complete my current playthrough and start the next interesting one, but I find taking it slow and putting in the 60 hours to beat the game to be satisfying in the present. Plus, less losses = less backtracking to stock up on units.