Surviving on Impossible

[Zhuangzi]

Fresh my my successes on Hard as a Paladin and Mage, I am ready to try Impossible for the first time. Firstly, I feel certain that playing as a Mage MUST be easier than as a Paladin and especially a Warrior, so I'm going with the Mage. Why? Because as a Mage you can limit your troop losses moreso than as a Warrior. I know Warriors get higher leadership (i.e. more troops) and faster ragebox progression, but I feel that this isn't as good as the Mage's access to the Magic tree (including Higher Magic) and Alchemy.

Plus, rage progression is slowed significantly on Impossible. I think it's 70% of the normal rate of progression. But it says nothing about spell progression, i.e. Mage is suited to Impossible.

Okay, looking at the starting screen, it seems that the biggest issue the Mage (and any class) will face on Impossible is that of money. You only get 60% of the money you would get on Medium, which I am guessing will be a serious issue as the game goes on. I just about managed to deal with money problems on Hard, but 60% sounds very low.

The other difference is listed as Enemy Strength on the startup screen. I take this to mean the size of enemy stacks, but I'm not sure this is the case. If Enemy Strength on Impossible is 170%, this should mean that the stacks of enemies are 1.7 times bigger, correct. Well, in actual fact it seems to relate to the amount of experience needed to gain a level. I noticed that on Medium you need 100 xp to reach level 2, and on Impossible you need 170. So is this what is meant by Enemy Strength? Or are the stacks bigger as well? :o

Those of you who have beaten the game on Impossible (i.e. Russian guys), I am looking for a few tips. I realise that I need to develop a strategy that revolves around NOT losing troops, but how do you do this early in the game? I know Demon Portals are great but I won't have access to them for ages, will I?

Any advice would be appreciated. :cool:

[Zhuangzi]

Okay I worked it out myself. You do need 1.7 times more experience to level up AND the stacks are 1.7 times bigger, but this actually makes sense as it means that there is still about enough enemies in the game to reach level 30.

I am in Greenwort still, level 2. My team consists of Archers, Priests, Horsemen (a whopping two of them), Peasants and Swordsmen. I don't think there are any other ranged units available this early? :confused: Fireball is very useful for a Mage early on, but mana regeneration is SO SLOW. So I put a point into that when I could, as well as Scouting 1 and Distortion 1. Given that money is going to be very tight, I have decided that Trading 3 and Trophies 3 are going to be early priorities. I have always loved Trading and I refuse to sell anything until I have Trading 3, and I figured Trophies will help me out too. But I have to avoid getting anything killed. Maybe Stone Skin can help early on...

[leo]

I have also only just started playing with a Mage at Impossible difficulty (for exactly the same reasons you've listed in the first post on the thread).

Based on my own prior experience of Mage on Hard, I think the key is going to be SACRIFICE.

I know based on some of the other threads on sacrifice that you're not a big fan of the spell, but take it from another Mage-Hard player, it is an awesome cost saver early-mid game and lets you keep your favourite units w/o excess travel.

Now, some people have used ancient vampires + sacrifice + letting them regain numbers, but I am not a fan of mixing undead with my troops.

The stategy that I used early and mid game was to get cyclops or giants, monitor your sacrifice strength to be just under the health of 1 cyclops/giant (if you have peacefulness, thats even better - you can increase health by 40% at its level 1 before casting sacrifice). Just cast the spell before close of battle - basically ensuring that you don't lose the cyclops/giant to enemy attack

Final point on the trick is if you have Orc Shamans (probably the most strategic unit in the game) hopefully in the Orc Embassy at Freedom Isles and giants, you can actually heal the giants enough using the magic axes for another go at the sacrifice spell. This is a great alternative to maxing out the healing spell (I prefer to not waste a spell turn on heal). It'll only work with giants though as Cyclops cannot be healed that way..

Btw, I will be looking out at this thread for swapping strategy being in the same boat as you ;).

[Zhuangzi]

Awesome stuff Leo - this will be fun. You are right about me being hesitant to use Sacrifice, I completely missed it in my first game and in the second I tried it once, and sent my troop into a murderous rage for being over cap. So I don't know how to use it effectively. But I will try when I find the spell.

Things are going very smoothly so far (day 2 - level 4). My strategy at the moment is very simple. Three ranged units (Thorn Hunter, Archer, Priest), a stack of Swordsmen who usually do nothing but occasionally deliver a coup de grace, and most importantly a stack of 4 Horsemen. Horsemen are VERY strong in the early game which is probably why they aren't really supposed to be available, except by the trick of getting past the king's tent guard that someone worked out weeks ago. I think there are 13 Horsemen in the tent so I need to make sure I don't lose any.

I am still spamming Fireball at this early stage. This is a great strength of the Mage, who starts with Fireball without access to Chaos magic as yet. All I do is fireball whatever looks weakest (it's great on Thorns - they take double damage from fire) and then attack strategically with the Horsemen. And the Priests are perfect for Blessing/Healing the Horsemen. With this strategy, and only taking on enemies that are listed as Slightly Weaker or below, I have virtually ZERO losses. Sometimes against a somewhat harder enemy I will lose a couple of archers or a swordsman. And I am up to 25,000 gold already which is a lot for this early stage. There is plenty to do in Darion while you are still weak, and I know the continent so well now that I know which enemy stacks and locations are too hard for me.

This is great fun. :cool:

[ThyrsaM]

Great story again, keep us posted.

I think I still don't know how sacrifice works, will have to look into it when I finally get the spell.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Awesome stuff Leo - this will be fun. You are right about me being hesitant to use Sacrifice, I completely missed it in my first game and in the second I tried it once, and sent my troop into a murderous rage for being over cap. So I don't know how to use it effectively. But I will try when I find the spell.

Things are going very smoothly so far (day 2 - level 4). My strategy at the moment is very simple. Three ranged units (Thorn Hunter, Archer, Priest), a stack of Swordsmen who usually do nothing but occasionally deliver a coup de grace, and most importantly a stack of 4 Horsemen. Horsemen are VERY strong in the early game which is probably why they aren't really supposed to be available, except by the trick of getting past the king's tent guard that someone worked out weeks ago. I think there are 13 Horsemen in the tent so I need to make sure I don't lose any.

I am still spamming Fireball at this early stage. This is a great strength of the Mage, who starts with Fireball without access to Chaos magic as yet. All I do is fireball whatever looks weakest (it's great on Thorns - they take double damage from fire) and then attack strategically with the Horsemen. And the Priests are perfect for Blessing/Healing the Horsemen. With this strategy, and only taking on enemies that are listed as Slightly Weaker or below, I have virtually ZERO losses. Sometimes against a somewhat harder enemy I will lose a couple of archers or a swordsman. And I am up to 25,000 gold already which is a lot for this early stage. There is plenty to do in Darion while you are still weak, and I know the continent so well now that I know which enemy stacks and locations are too hard for me.

This is great fun. :cool:

I'm about to start a thread cause i'm going out of my mind here without having a resurrect or hypnosis spell at LEVEL 22!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't read all your threads of course ;) but are you aware of the hypnotise/sacrifice of enemy units to replace your own tactic? I'll assume you have but basically you hypnotise one of the enemy then sacrifice it to replace your own lost units as you go along :cool:

[Shd]

About Hypnosis...

Don't look only at scrolls sellers. There are artifact which gives you hypnosis when you will win "keepers". An that artifact is not "rare" (especially if your have lvl 22 :) ).

[leo]

As it turns out, I never got the hypotize spell in the last run of the game at Mage-Hard, so I am not sure if it works in combination with sacrifice.

I did however use Druids to convert animal troops using their tame ability, and then sacrificed them for the double joy it provided. There were three drawbacks though:
- I could only convert low level creatures (I think 1-2 or 1-3) and I had to thin the troop before I could convert it
- The ability works only on animals and that too not all creatures with that "paw" sign indicating animals
- The druids soon turned out to be not very sturdy survivors, and for the most time I was resurrecting the druids themselves. Basically they outlived their utility.

On this note, the beholder hypotise and the demoness charmed creatures did not allow me to sacrifice them. If someone has another experience, do share - maybe I was doing something wrong.

Sorry, I don't mean this to become a sacrifice thread. I think Zhuangzi has a great thread going for Mage-Impossible game experience, and I am keen to contribute to it, and learn from it.

[Namel]

I have absolutely no experience with difficulty beyond normal but here is couple strategies that might work.

Cursed ghost (normal ghosts might work too) If you have stack of 10+ cursed ghosts they suck enemy life and generate more ghosts. In normal I quickly make more and more ghosts never needing to buy any more. If you go over leadership limit you will lose control but at least for me they never turn hostile to me. I think units only go hostile if they are a lot over leadership. If you got sacrifice you can use that whenever stack goes over limit and gain control and replace some died units. Or just use about 80% of max strenght of ghosts and keep rest in reserve.

Another tactic that should make at least start easy. As soon as you are able to go kill turtle. That gives you extra leadership for rank. After that you can go to pirate islands, buy boat and sail around all the islands and gather leadership. money and scrolls. After that come back to finish normal stuff. Should cut your losses a lot since you have very strong army.

[travcm]

It seems to me like wasting runes on trading and trophies will just weaken you in the long run. I had millions of extra gold (w/o any points in trading or trophies until the end, when I had more mind runes than I could spend) on impossible with my Mage. If you are real concerned about money, you can just incorporate Marauders into your army.

Your starting army should probably be Archers, Priests, Inquisitors (if available)/Evil Eyes, Horsemen/Royal Snakes, Archmagi.

The problem with impossible is that you will have to spend a ton of time trying to sneak by everything to pick up rewards before you have a chance at killing it. Technically, you can get Demon Gate as soon as you have access to the Dwarf area (by sneaking around in the Demon world).

One big piece of advice is to save most of the easy, low exp battles for later on when you have the skull (essential) and other items that are activated by # of battles won.

[phoenixreborn]

I just want to jump in in defense of the warrior and improved rage box.

I have no idea about the strains at higher difficulty levels but I will talk about how it was on normal.

Early the shoal was pretty solid, mid-game the underground blades attack was doing enough damage to destroy a high percentage of enemy units. End game I had 111 rage and had developed soul kill enough to halve an enemy stack each turn for 70 rage (1 turn of rest).

So it can work well. Rage potions are not expensive and the ale worked for increasing rage levels.

In addition after I cast the rage spell I still have a regular spell per turn also. You can have at least one magic skill up to level 3.

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks for the input guys. I will definitely try the Hypnotise/Sacrifice combo but there is a part of me that is wondering why I should spend my spells fiddling about like this when I could just nuke the enemy. :-P But we'll see.

About leaving trading and trophies alone - well, I am undecided. I do know that Mind runes are a big problem for a Mage, they just don't seem to be as prevalent as Might runes on the adventure map. I know some people might have millions left over on Impossible but I only had 500,000 left at the end on my Hard Mage game, and I've relied on Trading 3 in the past to get full value from selling items. I had to put a point into Glory which was annoying because it's quite expensive. But I am thinking that I might not bother with Order Magic at all - I barely used it in my last game. Basically, I have played this game without using Resurrect/Sacrifice at all, and then read about other players who seem to use them all the time. :confused:

About heading into other areas quickly and leaving easy enemies alone, I will consider this. In terms of not losing many troops, I think I am coming to the end of my ability to do this effectively with my Fireball 1/Horsemen charge. I got to level 5 no problem but there are plenty of enemies in Verlon Forest who are going to take some troops (i.e. money) off of me. I just got Magic Pole Axe from a quest, but I would prefer to get Ghost Blade before killing the big turtle. I don't think I can avoid Order altogether but I think I might only put one point into it.

But the idea of picking up everything that can be looted in Freedom Islands is a good one. There are heaps of things you can get there without fighting at all. Obviously it will be necessary to kill the Kraken and King James in order to get to Kordar at all.

Then I will see if I can get into Demonis to find some Demon Portals. :twisted:

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

It seems to me like wasting runes on trading and trophies will just weaken you in the long run. I had millions of extra gold (w/o any points in trading or trophies until the end, when I had more mind runes than I could spend) on impossible with my Mage. If you are real concerned about money, you can just incorporate Marauders into your army.

Your starting army should probably be Archers, Priests, Inquisitors (if available)/Evil Eyes, Horsemen/Royal Snakes, Archmagi.

The problem with impossible is that you will have to spend a ton of time trying to sneak by everything to pick up rewards before you have a chance at killing it. Technically, you can get Demon Gate as soon as you have access to the Dwarf area (by sneaking around in the Demon world).

One big piece of advice is to save most of the easy, low exp battles for later on when you have the skull (essential) and other items that are activated by # of battles won.

The what? Do you mean the Orc artefact you get when you meet the Orc Sharman the 2nd time round in the Elven islands?

[travcm]

The what? Do you mean the Orc artefact you get when you meet the Orc Sharman the 2nd time round in the Elven islands?

The Skull that counts down from 100% before you can release the soul.

[Quikpik]

How does that skull work? I just bought it from the dwarven necromancer and didn't really understand the description.

[Sandsai]

My warrior is doing just fine on impossible. The strategy is pretty much slow, isolate and fire away, hitting melee only when there is no retaliation and I have initiative on my side. To this end I maxed the rage inflow early on so I could control the battle a bit more. The wall and ice thorns are very useful for minimizing losses as the AI would much rather walk around the thing, moving at one title per turn (slow) than attack it. I haven't given the mage a try yet but the war is very viable on impossible. The only difficulty I ran into was the turtle; running out of troops in the main castle. This is marginal as I feel the turtle is best confronted with big HP melee units. Archers are kinda weak against high defense targets and their HP pool is also kinda marginal compared to some of the melee units out there. So I mean if this was your first time around you might have had issues but then why are you playing on impossible the first time around....

[Zhuangzi]

That's cool, Sandsai. I had suspected that Warrior was much harder but as I haven't played as one I wasn't sure. This game actually rewards players with the Impossible skill level, as it's Hard but definitely NOT impossible. :)

Oh and I don't melee the Turtle at all as a Mage. I snipe and use Ghost Blade/Magic Pole Axe on it. :cool:

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, I am up to level 8 now and I've just defeated the Turtle using Fire Arrow 2 (can't use Fireball 2 on it which is annoying), as well as Inquisitors, Priests and Thorn Hunters (plus Royal Snakes and Swordsmen which mostly defended until the final round or so).

Things are going quite smoothly. I suppose a Mage on Impossible is going to have the lowest possible leadership in relation to the size of the enemy stacks, which means that most enemies in Darion are listed as Match, Slightly Stronger, Strong or Very Strong. And these are just the normal enemies that you would easily mop up on lower difficulties. Despite this, I have virtually managed to clear out Darion now, except for the usual things like Rezo's Tower, Abandoned Castle and Magic Range. I have a few more things to tidy up but I will certainly be level 9 when I go to Freedom Islands. I am a bit of an OCD player and I don't like loose ends, i.e. enemies wandering around.

I had wanted to have worked on Trophies and Trading by now, but a lack of Mind runes is stopped me from doing this. I don't know why, but Might runes seem much more common than Mind. I'm not sure if this is random or not. :confused: I think I will only put one point into Trophies, but I will definitely max Trading. I know some people don't think it's necessary but I hate selling items at less than full value. I tend to hand onto them until I have Trading 3 (not scrolls - you pretty much have to keep selling them or you can't buy anymore).

More importantly than the Mind tree is the Magic, of course. I have Chaos 2 (doesn't need Mind runes) and Distortion and Order 1. I am using Fireball 2 a lot at this early stage. In fact I think I may go straight to Chaos 3 as soon as I get more runes. I've got Kamikaze but I need Phantom in order to use the 'terrorist' trick that has been discussed in another thread. :cool:

I have had VERY good luck with Feanora's children. In past games I always seemed to get 'scroll children' from her, but this time I have 3 and they are:

+5 defense
+ 20% defense
+ 20% intellect

This is awesome! :-P So I have 4 Attack, 14 Defense and 13 Intellect already.

I also got the belt which gives increase in morale to Priests and Inquisitors, and even better, something called the Banner of True Faith which was expensive at 60,000 gold but it gives I think +4 mana, +800 leadership and 10 Magic runes after 50 victories (48 to go, heh). So I have 3500 leadership already, which is awesome for a Mage this early. And if I can get to Chaos 3 soon, with about 70 mana I think I am ready to dominate much larger enemies.

Bring it on. :twisted:

EDIT: the fourth child gave +20% mana, which is unbelievable. Feanora's children are so good this time I may have to keep them for the whole game!

Even better, when I got to Freedom Islands the king dude there had Ice Snake, so now I'm dealing 1430 damage plus 400 or so to adjacent squares. (I have got Chaos 3 now and 15 intellect). This is at level 9, remember. So I am sailing around the Western Islands picking up stuff and smashing about half of what I can see straight away. This is a domination...on Impossible :twisted:

[Sandsai]

Okay, I am up to level 8 now and I've just defeated the Turtle using Fire Arrow 2 (can't use Fireball 2 on it which is annoying), as well as Inquisitors, Priests and Thorn Hunters (plus Royal Snakes and Swordsmen which mostly defended until the final round or so).

Things are going quite smoothly. I suppose a Mage on Impossible is going to have the lowest possible leadership in relation to the size of the enemy stacks, which means that most enemies in Darion are listed as Match, Slightly Stronger, Strong or Very Strong. And these are just the normal enemies that you would easily mop up on lower difficulties. Despite this, I have virtually managed to clear out Darion now, except for the usual things like Rezo's Tower, Abandoned Castle and Magic Range. I have a few more things to tidy up but I will certainly be level 9 when I go to Freedom Islands. I am a bit of an OCD player and I don't like loose ends, i.e. enemies wandering around.

I had wanted to have worked on Trophies and Trading by now, but a lack of Mind runes is stopped me from doing this. I don't know why, but Might runes seem much more common than Mind. I'm not sure if this is random or not. :confused: I think I will only put one point into Trophies, but I will definitely max Trading. I know some people don't think it's necessary but I hate selling items at less than full value. I tend to hand onto them until I have Trading 3 (not scrolls - you pretty much have to keep selling them or you can't buy anymore).

More importantly than the Mind tree is the Magic, of course. I have Chaos 2 (doesn't need Mind runes) and Distortion and Order 1. I am using Fireball 2 a lot at this early stage. In fact I think I may go straight to Chaos 3 as soon as I get more runes. I've got Kamikaze but I need Phantom in order to use the 'terrorist' trick that has been discussed in another thread. :cool:

I have had VERY good luck with Feanora's children. In past games I always seemed to get 'scroll children' from her, but this time I have 3 and they are:

+5 defense
+ 20% defense
+ 20% intellect

This is awesome! :-P So I have 4 Attack, 14 Defense and 13 Intellect already.

I also got the belt which gives increase in morale to Priests and Inquisitors, and even better, something called the Banner of True Faith which was expensive at 60,000 gold but it gives I think +4 mana, +800 leadership and 10 Magic runes after 50 victories (48 to go, heh). So I have 3500 leadership already, which is awesome for a Mage this early. And if I can get to Chaos 3 soon, with about 70 mana I think I am ready to dominate much larger enemies.

Bring it on. :twisted:

EDIT: the fourth child gave +20% mana, which is unbelievable. Feanora's children are so good this time I may have to keep them for the whole game!

Even better, when I got to Freedom Islands the king dude there had Ice Snake, so now I'm dealing 1430 damage plus 400 or so to adjacent squares. (I have got Chaos 3 now and 15 intellect). This is at level 9, remember. So I am sailing around the Western Islands picking up stuff and smashing about half of what I can see straight away. This is a domination...on Impossible :twisted:

This actually convinced me to get a mage started, so far so good, except I have a sneaky suspicion I am going to get + scroll kids.

On a side note, Firefox now thinks mage is a misspelled word for some odd reason...

[Namel]

This actually convinced me to get a mage started, so far so good, except I have a sneaky suspicion I am going to get + scroll kids.


Started mage as well and took frog wife. My kids, first +scrolls, second +exp, third plus rage. Finally 4th was +defense so it wasn't that bad. I guess I have to try beating kraken early to get new wife. lol

[Zhuangzi]

I'm up to level 11 now and slogging through Freedom Islands. I have cleared out the West, which is unusual because some of the hardest enemies are on the main continent. But they're gone now. :-P

The Banner of True Faith was even better than I realised. It is 10 MIND runes, not Magic, so that really helped me with my green rune problem. As I'm concerned about money, I took Trophies 2 and Reserve 1. I've already got Trade 3, so hopefully money won't be a problem from now on. I've got about 160,000 gold but I had noticed that my money had plateaued. With 20% more gold after combat it must be a similar amount to what you get on Hard after fights.

Ice Snake 3 is such a wonderful spell at this stage. Not only does it deal over 2000 damage (including splash damage) at 15 Intellect, but it slows the enemies down as well. You just need some good ranged stacks to pick them off...

And I finally had a go at Sacrifice. I found 5 Royal Thorns somewhere and used Thorn Hunters to increase the stack from 5/14 to 14/14. Is this what I'm supposed to do with Sacrifice? I haven't got Hypnosis yet. Royal Thorns seem very nice but I haven't got any modifiers for them (I hear there is a Thorn Crown or something). Question about Sacrifice, if I increase the stack to beyond its cap it will revolt against me right? So what's the point of that? :confused:

[Sandsai]

Started mage as well and took frog wife. My kids, first +scrolls, second +exp, third plus rage. Finally 4th was +defense so it wasn't that bad. I guess I have to try beating kraken early to get new wife. lol

I had to get Rina because I had two +scroll kids :( along with +10 mana and rage from the frog wife. So far doing pretty good with kids, +20% attack and +5% leadership so far.

[leo]

First up, about Sacrifice; You are using it exactly right. The idea IS to make a 5/14 stack of Royal Thorns to 14/14 for free and when they are not available anywhere else on the map :D. And yeah, there is no point in increasing them beyond your leadership - just focus on the next troop you want to raise numbers of :).

Secondly, The Banner of True Faith sounds AWESOME. Where did you get to pick it up from?

Will post again on my progress in a bit.

[leo]

Impossible difficulty story so far -
Am at level 7 with the following stats:
4 attack
7 defence
11 int

1750 leadership. No great luck with leadership artifacts (have the same priest rope), infact, no luck with ANY kind of artifacts - I am hoping unlucky now = lucky later :)

Clearing some last darion quests, and readying myself for the turtle battle.


Had less luck with Feanora's children, I got a
+5% combat experience
+10 to rage
+5 to defence

The 4th baby is going to occupy the ring slot, so I am thinking if I should leave that open for Anya's (?) (the women unit booster) ring. Thank God for no scroll kids!

I have practically only used fireball myself, and also have chaos at lvl 2, with fireball upgraded (650+ damage on primary target). Have 60+ scrolls, from questing, none of which I am inscribing since I don't feel the need to use them just yet! This also means there has been no seller of awesome scrolls for which I need slots available. It also means I can max my alchemy before I start inscribing them en masse later :).


Had much better luck with mind runes; trade is currently at lvl 1, but I am sitting on around 100k already, so I have some doubts about the merit of pumping more in trade.

Some lessons learnt for impossible difficulty. They'll work just as well on lower difficulties too:

- Dodging is practically a necessity. Had given up hope on Feanora since her frog buddies inside Netvill dungeon were guarded by an impossible necromancer and a very hard zombie group. In fact, I dont think I could have actually beaten them unless I was level 15+. The trick that worked for me was to lure the necro really far, and then lure the zombie just enough to pass safely before the necro returned. Don't even ask how I managed the return with that cage.

- Get the horsemen from the knight tent by luring the group guarding it away from it. They are invaluable at impossible difficulty. Combining well with inquistors, you will not lose any of them in battles.

- Sleem is WAY more useful than Zerock (the fire rock) and easier to get! Evil shoals ROCK early game.

- As a mage, you will anyway rely on magic for real damage. For supressing quest artifacts (they are easier to supress than regular artifacts at impossible difficulty), stay around a castle. Move all/most of your regular combat troops out into the castle slots, and fight using free dragonflies, spiders from eggs, cheap snakes from eggs, thorns from sprouts. Your aim is to survive, and you will LOSE troops to the nasty evil gremlins so free troop losses hurt less - They outlive their utility quickly anyway!

[Enarr]

Playing on Impossible w/ Mage. Level 10 and about to sail to Freedom Isle.

I kinda cheated (well not really) by starting over and over, while checking the items given in the first 2 castles. I was lucky enough to start with the Banner that gives 6 defense, 800 leadership and 10 mind runes after 50 vics, and a helm that gives 5 mana and 20% more dmg to spells. Unluckily, all the other items from other shops have really sucked :( . Dupes of +1 def boots and shields galore!

I saved up 60k gold asap for that banner and then it was real smooth sailing from there. Saving up that 60k took a lot of dodging and luring to get treasures/gold/scrolls from really hard mobs. I only fought weak monsters so I would have next to zero losses. Like the above poster, Fireball's my main spell.

I specced my mage for the long haul. I got 1/3 in both the exp/gold talents and then 3/3 trade talent because I know gold will be the main issue late game. Especially since I've been really unlucky with scrolls (No sacrifice and resurrection scrolls yet). After 3/3 trade, I was rich :) , sold off many scrolls and items I hoarded.

Main army : Nothing out of the ordinary. Good ole Royal snakes, Priests, Archers, Inq, and Horsemen/Polar bears. Ran out of horsemen so Polar bears. I just hope there will be some sweet units in Freedom.
________
easy vape (http://vaporizer.org/reviews/easy-vape)

[Zhuangzi]

@ Leo, that sounds like a good idea about holding onto the scrolls for now. You also get a better deal on them when you put a point or two into Trade (if you are going to). I am just worried about money basically. :-P

The Banner of True Faith was in the building next to King Mark's castle, the one with the tournaments etc. I think this is what Enarr picked up, except that it is +4 defense, not plus +6 (I will have to check this). I hadn't seen this before so I was very happy, not only with the Mind runes but with the massive 800 leadership. I have decided that Mages really do need to work on leadership as a high priority. This is so you can have bigger stacks of ranged units. I think mine is about 6000 now at level 11.

In my two previous games, I had no luck with Feanora, so I went with Mirabella and loaded up on Sea Dogs and Pirates. With the pirate belt and the pirate flag you get from the Coastal Brotherhood, as well as the bonuses you get from Mirabella, Sea Dogs especially become killing machines. And they are cheap. So I would ditch Feanora in your circumstances and go with Mirabella for now. IMO Anga's Ring is most useful in the Elven lands due to the female units there (Lake Fairies, Dryads, Sprites). I don't think there is a single female unit in Kordar :confused:

That Horsemen trick IS invaluable early on. With Priests blessing/healing them those 13 Horsemen in the tent lasted a LONG time. :cool:

@ Enarr, sounds like you got the Banner of True Faith too. One thing that annoyed me about Freedom Islands was the lack of ranged units available. I don't like to go back and forward from Darion to Freedom Islands because I am thinking about my high score, so I usually use whatever is locally available. If you don't like Feanora's kids, I would try to kill the Kraken/Lucky James fairly quickly in order to get Mirabella. You also get the pirate flag when you do a fed ex quest between Eastern Islands/Coastal Brotherhood (the 'wife's weight in gold quest). Then you can use Sea Dogs/Pirates.

[sector24]

One trick I used to avoid going back and forth was to get the reserve skill. I put extra Inquisitors and Royal Snakes in my reserve slots, and then dumped them at the castle in the Freedom Isles. Not sure how viable that is for a mage though, especially if you spent your mind runes on other stuff.

[Chaosti]

On my first time through the game. I started at impossible difficulty with a paladin.

I'm currently starting the elvish isles
I've been using this setup:

archmage, inquisitors, shamans, gryphons, evil beholders (now dwarvish cannons since the beholder blind seems to be good only vs level 1s)

General strategy has been to run the gryphons forward, wait, shield them with archmage, bless them, and let them retaliate against the enemy while casting resurrection a few times.

From what I'm reading, I guess I should of gone mage with sacrifice :) Never even knew sacrifice was that useful haha.

[Zhuangzi]

That sounds like a good strategy anyway, Chaosti. Maximum respect for going for Impossible for your first game. Griffins are great for retaliation, especially if you get the -30% leadership banner. Sounds like you are going fine.

I was annoyed at myself for using up the 13 Horsemen, as I wanted to Sacrifice something to get a full stack of them, and then I realised that I had parked 4 of them in King Mark's castle! So now I have 33/33 :cool: I love Horsemen. They are up there with Griffins as the best melee units.

I forgot to mention before that I found a lame exploit in Freedom Isles. This is related to the Bob Devis quest, for which you get the pirate halberd and some cash. I don't like the halberd but it's worth 20,000 gold if you have Trade 3, so I usually take that and give Devis the money. But I discovered today that you can get the halberd, sell it around the corner in the castle, then go back to Bob and tell him you'll keep the money (i.e. give him the halberd) and I get 'quest completed.' Lame or what? :-P

[dli2k3]

I'm also playing a mage on impossible, I'm lvl 10 and started killing things on Freedom Islands. For the turtle, I found by accident an easy way to defeat it by sacrificing the useless beginning units. I had 2 royal thorns at the swam and brought them into battle with the turtle due to their high hps and I found out that the turtle would always attack one of the units in front of it. So by using the germination ability on the thorn, I generated some thorn which can use the plantation ability to grow other thorns and each new thorn gets the plantation ability again, so in the end, I had like 10 thorn units, some of the with only 1 thorn planted in front of the turtle and each time the turtle kills one, I grow it back...In the mean time, I just blast it with ranged units and spells...

[Zhuangzi]

Yeah Royal Thorns seem to be the perfect thing to use Sacrifice on, as you can't buy an unlimited supply anywhere. I am loving Royal Thorns myself. Like Orc Shamans they give the enemy plenty of things to attack that *aren't* your troops, and that is exactly what you want as a Mage. I have also been using Sacrifice to get a stack of Horsemen as well, long before they become a horde at King Mark's castle.

My own game is progressing very smoothly - in fact I am disappointed how smoothly it is going. I've totally cleared out Freedom Islands now, including the pirate ships, and that's despite the fact that many enemies were listed as Very Strong or Overpowering. Leadership is over 6000 and I've still got Feanora due to her wonderful children. I just cleared out Creiston Mines too and I think I am level 15 now.

I decided that a Mage really wants to race up the Magic tree (obviously) but some things are more important than others. So I already have Chaos 3 and Destroyer 3, but only Distortion 2 and Order 1. The mana regeneration is also not so important this early, so I've only got one point in that. Ice Snake is a very, very nice spell to use and now it's dealing over 2200 damage to the central hex of the attack. Fireball 3 is awesome for any thorns you see too, as they take double damage from fire.

Comparing my money stocks to my two earlier Hard games, I am surprised to find that I have WAY more money this time. Currently I have about 500,000 in the bank, compared to 200,000 at the same stage in my last Hard game. Obviously I haven't been losing nearly as many units, and this is down to the decision to play an 'offensive mage strategy.'

Basically, you want to do the biggest spell damage to the enemy each turn, which means having as high an Intellect as you can (mine is only 16 at the moment) and prioritising Chaos 3 and Destroyer 3. Then you can use spells like Fireball, Ice Snake and later Fire Rain and Armageddon. Ideally you want to use as many ranged units as possible to complement your spells, so I have settled on Royal Thorns and Orc Shamans to create cannon fodder/diversions, as well as whatever melee units are cheap (Pirates and Sea Dogs in Freedom Islands). I don't like the human archer (too weak) but I also have a stack of Horsemen which I created with Sacrifice.

[kennec]

zhuan nice to read your post.

i am at same stage in the game as u almost on impossible.

altough i play an paladin lvl 13. soon cleared the freedom islands.

i use whutever forces avaible i only have leadership 5600.

i use frogwife in frogform and have a strong stack of royal snakes and the griffin banner and a stack of griffins.

i cant realy find royal thorns , where did u get those? i have only found 2 so far and i cant use sacriface spell for a long time. i got a crown wich doubles thorn damage and i realy would like to use that more.

every mob stack i encounter are ar least at match but most often on strong or overpowering.resurection spell comes very hand and i got 100 mana nowso i can use 5 lvl 2 resurections on my tropps now.

about money : i got like 200k gold and stacks in castles worth of 100k+. i change my army when i meet undeads.

i havent got the control of the orc castles yet couse they are to hard for me atm and i gotta wait till i get stronger army.

something i am struggling with on impossible is to upgrade items. the officers batoon is guarded with massive forces and so are the other items also.

very challanging so far to bad random factor have given me realy bad items in game so far.

[Zhuangzi]

I got my Royal Thorns somewhere in Eastern Islands. It's pretty random - one game I don't think I saw them at all. I wish I had the Thorn Crown though. 3 games and I've never seen that. :mad:

I have discussed the merits of Chaos 3 and Destroyer 3 enough, but now I want to explain how I stop the enemy from hitting my troops. For this strategy you need Ice Snake 3, Royal Thorns and Orc Shamans. My other troops are Horsemen, Griffins and Cannoneers, although I don't much like Cannoneers.

Ice Snake is a great spell because it deals massive damage AND slows the enemy using freeze. I spam this virtually every turn (unless using Sacrifice basically) and take out anything dangerous straight away, e.g. Evil Beholders.

Orc Shamans are great because the AI is pretty retarded when it comes to attacking the totems. This is very exploitable. And the Shaman can dish out huge melee damage when required as well. Certainly one of the best units in the game.

Royal Thorns are awesome because of their ability to spawn more Thorns. This is an awesome way to slow the enemy down from reaching your real troops, and then the Royal Thorns are ranged units too.

Horsemen and Griffins are there to pick off any weaklings. The only rage spells I use currently are the occasional Evil Shoal and more importantly Glot's Armor, which basically gives 'one free hit.' But I hardly touch the ragebox otherwise.

Using this strategy, with 97 mana (2 regeneration per turn) I can end most battles within 5 turns, i.e. by the time I would run out of mana. My losses are VERY low and I've got over 600,000 gold now. This is too easy. :cool:

Another lame strategy, this one against the Giant Spider. Shamans spam totems, Royal Thorns spam Thorns which spam more Thorns, and pretty soon you can cover the entire grid with your units. Guess what? No more spider drops. I cast Flaming Arrow 3 on the giant spider every turn, because it's only 5 mana and deals over 1000 damage. This is a pretty tedious strategy (took over 20 turns and toward the end nothing could move) but all I lost was 13 Horsemen (they got wedged next to the Giant Spider near the end) and 1 Cannoneer. :cool:

[Zhuangzi]

Lower and Upper Hadar were very straightforward, but Taron Mines and Ardan Peaks seemed much harder. I noticed a LOT of enemy heroes running around, many of whom were listed as Overwhelming. Never a good sign. It looked like my strategy that had served me so well up until level 15 would need to change.

So I snuck into Demonis. :-P

Sneaking is fun in this game. It's actually a 'clickfest' in that you have to run away from and dart around sometimes impossible stacks, but it can be done. Sometimes there is a hero guarding the demon gate, but this time there was just a normal stack that could JUST be gotten around.

You can get around Demonis easily too without fighting anything. Heaps of enemy stacks here, most Impossible. At least 5 heroes. I will have my work cut out here later, I can see. But instead of fighting, I went shopping.

I managed to find:

Armageddon (actually this was inside the big fish's belly)
Hypnosis
Demon Portals (which I hadn't used in earlier games).

The only thing I couldn't find that I wanted was Fire Rain, but no matter.

The only quest you can complete in Demonis without fighting anyone is the Isharra's love quest. With a bit of running around and dodging dragons you can complete the quest and get yourself Isshara's Whip. (+2 attack, +20 attack to Demonesses) Time to get myself a stack of Demonesses and equip Anga's Ring. With this done, here are the Demonesses' stats:

Attack 52
Defense 60
Initiative 9
Movement 5

Plus the Demoness has a 2 square attack like Royal Snakes, and can also Charm human enemies.

What unit can beat that? :cool:

So now I move onto the rest of Kordar with beefed up Demonesses, Demon Portals and Armageddon if I need it. :-)

[Dorkus]

Isn't Isshara's Whip +20% damage? +20 to attack is kind of... wow.

[Zhuangzi]

No, you are right. I was just about to go to bed when I wrote that. :rolleyes:

[milo]

Actually there are two quests you can do in demonis the other is collecting dragon eggs in ultrax. One thing I have found very very effective is using elven she fighters with agna's ring. The dryad's lullaby spell is immensely powerful, it will put almost all 1-3 to sleep for two rounds (except undead and immune mind spells). You can use gift on dryads to keep renewing the lullaby spell. This allows you to concentrate all your attacks on levels 4 and 5, the sprites hit without retaliation with high morale from agna's ring and do massive damage. Do it correctly and most enemies won't even get a chance to move.

[Dorkus]

Actually there are two quests you can do in demonis the other is collecting dragon eggs in ultrax. One thing I have found very very effective is using elven she fighters with agna's ring. The dryad's lullaby spell is immensely powerful, it will put almost all 1-3 to sleep for two rounds (except undead and immune mind spells). You can use gift on dryads to keep renewing the lullaby spell. This allows you to concentrate all your attacks on levels 4 and 5, the sprites hit without retaliation with high morale from agna's ring and do massive damage. Do it correctly and most enemies won't even get a chance to move.

Why use gift when phantom is cheaper and better? it allows the same functionality (lullaby has the same effect whether you have 1000 dryads or 1), for 15 mana rather than 20, and gives you another set of dryads (and thus another set of thorns) to boot. It also seems like a waste to gift an ability that will recharge on its own, in 2 rounds, in any event.

It's a good strat, though, and one that i've used extensively.

[Zhuangzi]

Yes I had forgotten about the Ultrax quest. I did this without fighting in my last game, but I think I will clear out everything in Demonis later for the xp.

Anga's Ring is wonderful in Elinia due to the access to 'she-fighters.' I had great success with massive stacks of Lake Fairies and Sprites. I have read about the Gift/Dryads trick but I am more inclined to use Phantom, I think.

[Shd]

Sorry for offtop, but is something changed or Phantom she-fighters still have no bunuses from ring of Angi (that was a reason why i prefered +gift not +phantom tactics) ?

[Zhuangzi]

Shd, Demonesses get insane bonuses from Anga's Ring, like any other female fighter. I think it is +3 attack, defense, morale, initiative and movement. That's 9 initiative and 5 movement, plus 3 special abilities. One of the best and most versatile units in the game, IMO. :)

[kennec]

my paladin is lvl 17 now on impossible.

finaly i have found a tactic that works and picked skills and monsters that works well with it.

important skills
order magic 3 : to rez lvl 4 mobs
tactic2 : to be able to attack first round

mobs
griffins : best unit. unlimited retaliations togheter with psycial resist buffs

royal snakes: with frog wife and snake boots they do very good damage are hard to kill and have long movement

orc shamans : perfect to use totems to make enemy waste attacks and have an usefull range attack sometimes

archmagis : have one good skill : shield, perfectt boost up griffins

cannoners : range unit. can be replaced by any ranged units. i prefer evil beholders under ground elfs over ground and cannoners upgrading stuff.

i have also found jade belt witch increase damage for spiders with 50% and thorn crown wich do the same for thorns. mayby i will change range unit for royal thorns or fire spiders later on if i can find them in masses.

http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=paladin17kl3.jpg

[Zhuangzi]

kennec, I am level 17 as well so we are at the same stage. I am currently clearing out Ardan's Peaks and Taron Mines. It's funny how we all play differently. I never used Resurrect at all, and yet you seem to be using it extensively. I suppose this is because Paladin starts with this spell? Also, I don't like Order spells, even though there are a few I would get.

But we agree on units it would seem. I have finally settled on 5 units that do the job together very well:

Griffins
Royal Snakes
Orc Shamans
Demonesses (with Anga's Ring equipped)
Royal Thorns

This team is good because you have a lot of speed and versatility, and plenty of scope for spawning stuff and generally controlling the enemy. Basically I use the spawned Thorns and totems as the bait and the Griffins and Snakes as the stick. :-P There are also no human units here, which is good because they would have terrible morale as I don't have Tolerance to undead/demon creatures. This is not really needed anyway - later I prefer an entirely demonic army. :cool:

The only two spells I am really using is Ice Snake (3000 damage to central hex) and Sacrifice. The way I am using Sacrifice is by buying a big stack of 500 Miners (which is only 20,000 gold) and cycling my 5 real units through the reserve system. The Miners will get terrible morale from the Demonesses but I don't really care - they are just in the fight to be sacrificed anyway (and absorb some hits if necessary). After you complete Tom Digor's quest he has a horde of these for sale, and they are so cheap. This way I am able to replenish my stacks of hard to find creatures, especially the Thorns. In fact I am loathe to go back to Darion just to top up on Griffins/Royal Snakes so I am using Sacrifice for them as well.

EDIT: looking at your screenshot there I am interested to see you putting a lot of runes into the Might school. I think I only have about the first 3 or 4 things (but I am a Mage, I know). You will need to save some more money though, 93k is not much for this stage (although I see you have the bag of coins worth 80k to sell). At the same stage I have over 800k.

[Calinda]

Just finished on impossible, 27 days, and could have spared a couple of flights. Attaching a screenshot ;)

[kennec]

zhuan i am doing same as u. clearing out dwarfen underground. i have spiderboss left to kill to.

paladin start with rez spell. i use mass bless , lvl 2 and 3 rezes and sometimes stoneskin. the other spell i use rarely altough i plan to make my dragon slayer to lvl 3 for mass effect in endgame.

about my money : yes its very hard with money on paladin. i havent invested in the mind thread at all and traded for magic and might runes one time. i have alot of units in stock though. like 300 griffins and 300 royal snakes 100 shamans 200 evil beholders and a few more units.i also have like 20 artifacts i dont need but i save couse they are part of a set or give specific bonus for monsters wich mayby will come in handy later on:!:.

when i find units i wanna use buy all of them and transport em to a friendly castle preferbly human or dwarf main towns. so i save time running around look for replacments.also i can change my stack to priests and inqvisators if undeads guard an area.

royal snakes are pretty much awesome with frogwife and snake boots

my next plan in game is to upgrade the evil necro head, i read on the forum it gives +5attack and +5int.

[kennec]

Just finished on impossible, 27 days, and could have spared a couple of flights. Attaching a screenshot ;)

nice. my score will not be close that one. i am flying and using boats all the time.

i am at 66 days already at lvl 17 ;)

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Just finished on impossible, 27 days, and could have spared a couple of flights. Attaching a screenshot ;)

How did you manage that with a poxy Warrior!

You and I need to talk :cool:

[Sandsai]

How did you manage that with a poxy Warrior!

You and I need to talk :cool:

Cause wars are actually pretty good and are not that dependent on getting lucky with spells early on? I am currently playing a mage and having issues due to lack of available offensive spells in the game. I am still primarily relying on fireball and my secondary nuke is magic missile. That's sad considering I am about to rap up Freedom Islands. My war did not have that many problems, I mean you do have to sneak around mobs and explore before you kill stuff but I would think you do the same with any character. The only spells a war really needs early on and mid game are arguably slow and berserk. Other spells are nice but I managed very well without other spells.

[milo]

Something I found yesterday, the map of endoria obtained from the oblelisk quest, can also be turned in at the magic academy in verlon forest for a wide range of spells, I have not tested whether spells are random but it appeared the spells I was given were all spells I did not presently have.

[Zhuangzi]

@ Calinda, that's super impressive. You finished Impossible on day 27 as a Warrior with 1.7 million gold in the bank? Respect. :cool:

I think I will finish in about 30-35 days, so my score might be near this but perhaps only 1200-1300. I don't like to use dirigibles etc except when I have to. Do you think you could explain how you managed to win the Impossible Warrior challenge so easily? A lot of us here are of the opinion that playing as a Mage is a fair bit easier than as a Warrior. Therefore I have come to the opinion that Impossible Warrior is the hardest actual game. So how did you do it?

@ kennec, yes I find Trading and Trophies to be very useful for obtaining money (obviously). I like to 'upgrade and trade' items I don't need for profit. I've got two Officer's Batons which are perfect for this. Looks like you will do fine if you have all of those units stashed away.

@ Sandsai, you need Ice Snake, which is an awesome spell for Freedom Isles. Bit like I know. In this game the king of Freedom Isles had it for sale straight away. Chaos 3 plus Ice Snake at level 9 meant I smashed everything in Freedom Isles without much difficulty.

[kennec]

impossible warrior must be hardest in game.

mage>paladin>warrior.

altough i agree posters above that mages devolpment can be slowed alot with acces to wrong spells early on. warrior and paladin only need like 3, stoneskin,haste,slow, and mayby rez.

calinda whut type of rage skills did u use?

[Sandsai]

@ Calinda, that's super impressive. You finished Impossible on day 27 as a Warrior with 1.7 million gold in the bank? Respect. :cool:

I think I will finish in about 30-35 days, so my score might be near this but perhaps only 1200-1300. I don't like to use dirigibles etc except when I have to. Do you think you could explain how you managed to win the Impossible Warrior challenge so easily? A lot of us here are of the opinion that playing as a Mage is a fair bit easier than as a Warrior. Therefore I have come to the opinion that Impossible Warrior is the hardest actual game. So how did you do it?

@ kennec, yes I find Trading and Trophies to be very useful for obtaining money (obviously). I like to 'upgrade and trade' items I don't need for profit. I've got two Officer's Batons which are perfect for this. Looks like you will do fine if you have all of those units stashed away.

@ Sandsai, you need Ice Snake, which is an awesome spell for Freedom Isles. Bit like I know. In this game the king of Freedom Isles had it for sale straight away. Chaos 3 plus Ice Snake at level 9 meant I smashed everything in Freedom Isles without much difficulty.

Ya I know I need spells, the problem is I can't seem to get a break here and get lucky on any of the important spells. I guess the plan will be to dump points into Geyser: SPOILER AS TO HOW TO GET: that I will get as reward for Titan's Tear. I ran into some merchants selling fireball more than once though which is weak considering you start off with the spell. I swear I have much better luck with my war.

[Sandsai]

Something I found yesterday, the map of endoria obtained from the oblelisk quest, can also be turned in at the magic academy in verlon forest for a wide range of spells, I have not tested whether spells are random but it appeared the spells I was given were all spells I did not presently have.

Neat, I presume you got high level spells? Hard to give up 10 of each rune or that uber shield.

EDIT: Sorry for the kinda double post, should have just addressed this in my previous post. Again, sorry.

[kennec]

u always get geyser spell book from dwarfs for that titan thingy u found on freedom island. at least i have got it 3/3 times so far.

lighting seems to be easy to get to.

[Calinda]

My favorite rage skills - Stone wall from first one; Evil shoal early on from second, and only glot's armor later; from third - chargers, ice orb, and ice thorns; from reaper - time back, and sometimes soul and rage draining, but time back is essential later.

I used 4 shooting units(1 being inquisitors - for resurrection and 1 archmages - for shields) + 1 tanking/melee most of the time.
Tanking was Horsemen and later Archdemons when i got tolerance, but my guess is that anyone could work.
I had telescopic sight (got it after I married the dwarf, and i did marry her only to get it, then dumped her for the frog, and stuck with frog till the end, I just happened to have nice artifacts, and 3 artifact slots = win).

First magic I developed to level 3 was distortion, and lvl 1 chaos and order.
BTW 1,7M gold is nothing I spent millions to get runes (bought like 8 magic ones :S)
Mostly used spells - haste; slow; target(!); gift + sacrifice; magic spring, stoneskin, peacefulness, battle cry.
Basic tactics is make them hit your tank :) Target spell helps a lot if there are many range units.
Do not buff the tank on the first turn unless the enemy is very strong; Use time back on it at the end of the second turn, and then buff it with mages and a spell; Use time back on tank each time it charges up. Leave one enemy unit unkilled (as much weakened as possible) and drop an ice orb near it to prolong the battle, then use chargers/rage draining/time back/gift/resurrect/holy anger to recover as many loses as possible.

[Enarr]

Just finished on impossible, 27 days, and could have spared a couple of flights. Attaching a screenshot ;)

Nice but...
Hows your warrior's INT so high? My paladin has the same int and he's wearing a couple of +int items and I was actually going down the mage route on my paladin.

Not only is your int really high, your other stats are even higher. 31 atk, 27 def?
You mustve been really lucky with the spawns of Shrines that gave +stats...
________
Suzuki GSX series (http://www.cyclechaos.com/wiki/Suzuki_GSX_series)

[Sandsai]

u always get geyser spell book from dwarfs for that titan thingy u found on freedom island. at least i have got it 3/3 times so far.

lighting seems to be easy to get to.

The reason I used the white font to describe this is in case someone new was readying this and would not get his enjoyment spoiled......

[Calinda]

Int is from Frog wife (+3), Necromancer's skull (+5) and some Dragon necklace (+1) so that is +9; remember spell correctly and tree of life thing both give +1, so basically I have found like 5 int shrines and/or got from levels.
For high attack - warrior can wear 2 weapons and no shield (as I did); Necromancer's skull gives +5 dragon necklace gives +3; May be something else too, can't remember.

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks Calinda. If I ever decide to try Impossible Warrior, I will re-read what you have said in this thread and try to apply it. :) I am up to 1 million gold in my Impossible Mage game at the beginning of Ellinia, but I would never consider paying 100k for one rune. I guess it depends how much money you have. ;)

[megajon]

I have only played the game to level 9 as a warrior, but didn't really find much challenge, and figured I would try it on impossible as well.

So far only lvl 4 as a mage, and doing well I guess... have the gift and trap spells thus far... also luckily inquisitors aren't in short supply. I guess it coulda started off better, but I don't want to keep restarting the game untill I see an uber spell at the vendor.

So far it's basically feeling like easy mode with fireball, but that won't last long I guess...

[Zhuangzi]

Fireball is very useful early - helps to minimise losses, but it quickly loses its effectiveness. You need to stay above the 'difficulty curve' in this game by constantly increasing the damage you can deliver.

Freedom Isles was actually the easiest part of the game for me this time because I was ahead of the difficulty curve (even on Impossible) at level 9. This was due to finding Ice Snake, having prioritised Chaos 3, and having 15 Intellect.

My game is plodding along at level 21 now. I had left a few hard fights in Kordar when I started on Ellinia, but I decided that I needed Xeona. I had used Feanora for the whole game due to her very useful children, but it was getting to the stage where I had some items I wanted to equip, and Xeona is the best for this IMO. I also found that my team of Royal Thorns/Shamans/Royal Snakes/Griffins/Demonesses was losing effectiveness. There were a lot of big stacks (Very Strong or higher) in Great Forest that looked like I might start to struggle with.

So off to Demonis, before which I cleared out just about everything in Kordar (Underground Sea etc) as well as the first 'double fight.' This time I had a lot of trouble with the fight against Xeona. I guess level 19 is a bit early for this, and on Impossible she has massive stacks (like a stack of 400 Cerebus - ouch) I had to reload and go get Kerus's sword first, which I got from completing the Ultrax world quest (well, I still had to pay for it). Interestingly, I noticed that Griffins were really seeming to lose their damage power, so I traded them out and went for an all demon team (I don't have tolerance).

Having whipped Xeona the second time, I stocked up on demons (Demons, Cerebus, Demoness, Scoffer Imp, Imp - couldn't find any Archdemons) and headed back to Ellinia to clear that out. I still can't find Fire Rain which is annoying, but I am having fun with Demon Portals and Geyser. I've got two Archmage's Staffs again (5 Int each), one which was an upgraded Disciples Staff, and the other which I got from clearing the Magic Range. So my Int is 27 now. I want to get it above 30 and max out Higher Magic soon. But I need Fire Rain - that's the best direct damage spell in the game IMO (except Armageddon, but I don't like hitting my own units).

[Eldritch]

Freedom Isles was actually the easiest part of the game for me this time because I was ahead of the difficulty curve (even on Impossible) at level 9. This was due to finding Ice Snake, having prioritised Chaos 3, and having 15 Intellect.

Well good for you then ;) I guess if you had got in a similar situation in your impossible game like me;

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?p=56450#post56450

Then your impossible game should have got REAL impossible... like, "unable to progress" impossible. Srsly, this is my first playthrough on hard difficulty and I'm level 15 now and searched every nook n' crevice on the isles and most parts of kordar AND I'm still stuck with the fireball. All the "randomized" scrolls, ALL of them turned out to be either the book of fail or the sacrifice which is useful but not so useful on its own. Or the incredibly lame "kamikaze" which is just flat out a product of bad game design. Who'd even use that s**t?

So, as you can see... My "hard" game just became "almost impossible" either because of bad game design (extremely imbalanced randomization) or just really s**t luck. *jinxed*

Oh well.. at least I got a ridiculous 27 intellect now which makes even the fireball utterly devastating.. :)

[Eldritch]

A good idea for surviving on impossible could be the extensive usage of sacrifice to get back all your heavy losses instead of actually buying them back which makes you lose money and precious limited stacks of valuable creatures (e.g. royal snakes). All you have to do is to leave some weak mob alive as a controlled environment to do your thing and either hypno-sacrifice the enemy or buy cheap ass infinite "horde" critters and regularly sacrifice the crap out of them to either replenish losses or actually create full stacks of otherwise unavailable creatures. Like creating a full stack of horsemen early in the game as soon as you get sacrifice by luring out the huge mob guarding them through the pathfinding bug and making a full stack out of the mere 6 horsemen in the tent later. Also through sacrifice it is almost impossible to actually "dry out" a certain valuable creature's stacks again like the royal snakes. As long as you got at least one remaining specimen alive and kicking, they're saved from extinction! :o

Maybe one could more easily tolerate the aftermath of critical battles with extreme casualties on impossible with the miracle of sacrifice!!! Sacrifice... don't leave home without it! Especially if leaving the home under an impossible difficulty setting. :)

[BobbRobb]

A good idea for surviving on impossible could be the extensive usage of sacrifice to get back all your heavy losses instead of actually buying them back which makes you lose money and precious limited stacks of valuable creatures (e.g. royal snakes). All you have to do is to leave some weak mob alive as a controlled environment to do your thing and either hypno-sacrifice the enemy or buy cheap ass infinite "horde" critters and regularly sacrifice the crap out of them to either replenish losses or actually create full stacks of otherwise unavailable creatures. Like creating a full stack of horsemen early in the game as soon as you get sacrifice by luring out the huge mob guarding them through the pathfinding bug and making a full stack out of the mere 6 horsemen in the tent later. Also through sacrifice it is almost impossible to actually "dry out" a certain valuable creature's stacks again like the royal snakes. As long as you got at least one remaining specimen alive and kicking, they're saved from extinction! :o

Maybe one could more easily tolerate the aftermath of critical battles with extreme casualties on impossible with the miracle of sacrifice!!! Sacrifice... don't leave home without it! Especially if leaving the home under an impossible difficulty setting. :)

The only problem there is actually getting the sacrifice spell. If you get lucky you can find it early in the game but so far on my mage I'm already lvl 17 (impossible) and haven't found it anywhere. It was hard for me to keep down losses because I also never found Resurrect and the only place selling inquisitors had just about 60 of them. :(

[Desperx]

Just finished impossible as mage. From begining i used fear, fireball, royal snakes and other snakes with frog wife and at lvl 9 arrived on freedom islands and clear all there.

I was really unlucky with ice snake or fire rain so i decided to rush for elven islands. I did not kill anything in Kordar. So at lvl 14 terrible battle vs castle in taron mines.

Finaly elven lands so i found ice snake scroll somewhere in the middle while sneaking even lands of death. I found fire rain in guarded castle thx dryads and sprites mostly. All enemies were overpower or impossible after then fight match or strong party was pretty easy. At 22 lvl battle vs karador castle was really hard. Then i went to clear Kordar, mines and Demonis and everything else :)

Good spells: fear, slow, sheep, blind, magic spring, phantom, stone skin, doom, magic shackles, ice snake, fire rain and flaming arrow.

Good units: royal snakes, marauders, priests vs undeads, shamans, unicorns, sprites, dryads, elven archers, green red black dragons and all demons. Most time 3 dragons and archers or unicorns.

Wife feanora all the time with one 10 mana child just triyed one for my luck and still better then scrolls :)

Tactic:
Toughest main quest battles defending in corner and nuking by spells.
Other challanges i prefered cc meele such as sheep and doom then focused by 3 dragons slowing rest and nuking if possible.
Phantomed dryads can makes 12 turns all 1-3 lvl crazy stacks sleeping. Also easy way using higher lvls units and fear all lower still good at the end vs 1800 goblins in one stack etc.

Nice challange at all. Id like to see yours records and story :)

[bman654]

What is the pathfinding bug with the horsemen tent? I can usually get to the tent by doing some quick dodging but don't know the bug.

[Zhuangzi]

I think we just mean 'pathfinding exploit' bman, i.e. the unit doesn't follow you around to the side.

Fire Rain has got to be the best direct damage spell in the game, and I couldn't find it ANYWHERE this time. So, after finishing the Pyramid - King Fandor's obelisks quest I traded the map in at the Mage's Tower in Verlon Forest. This seems to work by giving you the three 'best' spells you don't already have. Lucky for me, Fire Rain was among these. :cool:

30 or higher Intellect + Higher Magic 3 + Chaos 3 + Destroyer 3 + Fire Rain + 120 Mana = Win

It's pretty simple - you use Fire Rain twice a turn on turns 1-3 and avoid the enemy. If the fight lasts until turn 4, there isn't much left to fight. Only downside to Fire Rain is it's not much good against Dragons.

I'm up to level 23 now and I've just defeated Karador. This time it was absurdly easy, which is a disappointment because I recall this being just about the hardest fight in the game. I always seem to go for Xeona as my final wife but maybe I should go for the Elf wife instead, because I seem to have the best luck with Elves in the end. My demon team actually didn't last very long in Ellinia, but this team is extremely powerful:

Leadership 15,000

Sprites - 1800
Hunters - 130
Elves - 250
Dryads - 700
Black Dragons - 6

The only reason I am using Black Dragons is because there are NO Lake Fairies anywhere in Ellinia, which is bizarre. Anyway, with Anga's Ring equipped Lake Faires, Dryads and Sprites are probably the most overpowered units in the game. Massive movement, no retaliation, and massive damage. Plus Dryads can put things to sleep. Anyway, my stack of 1800 Sprites will sometimes do up to 18,000 damage in a single hit if they score a critical (presumably 10 damage per unit). This is insane, and I don't think any other unit in the game can do damage like this. Can it?

[alon]

The only problem there is actually getting the sacrifice spell. If you get lucky you can find it early in the game but so far on my mage I'm already lvl 17 (impossible) and haven't found it anywhere. It was hard for me to keep down losses because I also never found Resurrect and the only place selling inquisitors had just about 60 of them. :(
My experience exactly.
And I got so depressed not getting Sacrifice that I returned and continued where I left off with my Normal Game.

Now I just read that there might be a little cheat that will give you just 1 single spell (instead of that awful one that gives you the full book). hmm.

[BobbRobb]

My experience exactly.
And I got so depressed not getting Sacrifice that I returned and continued where I left off with my Normal Game.

Now I just read that there might be a little cheat that will give you just 1 single spell (instead of that awful one that gives you the full book). hmm.

I would gladly use that cheat to get myself the sacrifice spell, if you know it please share it.

[Eldritch]

So, after finishing the Pyramid - King Fandor's obelisks quest I traded the map in at the Mage's Tower in Verlon Forest. This seems to work by giving you the three 'best' spells you don't already have. Lucky for me, Fire Rain was among these. :cool:

So does this basically mean if I already have Armageddon, I'm p. much guaranteed to get Fire Rain? There's no visible tier/level descriptions of spells and that's probably why people like me keep getting for example the book of fail instead of ice snake because they're somehow ridiculously considered the same tier.. Armageddon sounds like the "best" one even though I agree Fire Rain is superior.

Anyway, with Anga's Ring equipped Lake Faires, Dryads and Sprites are probably the most overpowered units in the game. Massive movement, no retaliation, and massive damage. Plus Dryads can put things to sleep. Anyway, my stack of 1800 Sprites will sometimes do up to 18,000 damage in a single hit if they score a critical (presumably 10 damage per unit). This is insane, and I don't think any other unit in the game can do damage like this. Can it?

And because sprites are one of your default starter units along with the peasants and the lake dragonflies, as soon as you get anga's ring after the cursed pirate quest you can garrison all your troops in castles and lose/retreat a battle with no army and after ya get the default sprites you can just create a full stack out of them using sacrifice. Seems like a nice way of getting the buffed up sprites of doom earlier before getting them in Ellinia. I think I should try that now. :) There was even an item for sale in the 'isles in my game which gave all elves +1 initiative. That way with the sprites I'll have a unit with an extremely high initiative which is vital for a mage to nuke everything before anyone starts movin'/shootin' !!! The best I got before was the horsemen.

[player1]

Still, I think it's a challenge to actually find so many sprites in the game.

[Dorkus]

the all female elf team is certainly powerful. i played that in my last game, and it served me very well -- although be wary of magic resistant enemeis like black dragons.

in my current game, i'm trying a new tack because the druid's staff was in the first castle.

frog wife, druid's staff, and an all snake, sprite, druid army. what this means is that all the snakes get 150% to attack. royal snakes have +27 attack -- essentiallyd ouble damage. snakes and poison snakes have ~ +20 attack each. they all have no retaliation and better survivability than sprites and wood fairies.

I'm still at level 12 and am waiting to see how this army turns out. But up to this point it's been fantastic for a mage. I mainly sit around nuking waiting for the enemy to get to me, in any event. So the lack of mobility by the snakes doesn't really matter. and their first strike is a lunge in any case -- that stuns the enemy for a turn, in the case of snakes and marsh snakes, to boot.

[milo]

It is easy to give yourself spells at the start of a new game just edit hero.txt inside ses.kfs. For your given class of character under spells add spell_sacrifice=3 for third level sacrifice spell. Unsure if there is any way to add a particular item to an existing game.

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, the game is finally getting quite challenging at around level 25/26. I am finding that there are lots of enemies listed as Overwhelming or Impossible. This is with 19,000 leadership. I haven't been able to fully clear out the Land of the Dead or Demonis as yet for this reason, even though I have completed the main quests there. It's actually a bit sad that the main quest fights are easier than the ordinary ones. :-P

In Haas' Labyrinth, the 7 dragons are listed as Impossible. I just beat one fairly easily though using my 'all elf' team (Hunters, Elves, Lake Fairies, Sprites, Dryads). Unfortunately, there are no hordes of Lake Fairies or Dryads so I am having to use Sacrifice in the Gremlin castle to replenish my stacks. This is going to be quite boring and time consuming. I spend a lot of time waiting for mana to regenerate...

It would be better if I had the dwarven telescope for the archers and the elf wife, but no matter. One of Haas' dragons had two stacks of 360 Knights each. :o But they were easily killed with slow/Sprites etc. I had wanted to finish the game in around 30 days but all the stuffing around trying to clear out Demonis and the Land of the Dead has meant it's day 34 already. :rolleyes:

Oh and I have 2.2 million gold, so it's just a matter of time....

[player1]

It's actually a bit sad that the main quest fights are easier than the ordinary ones. :-P

I actually like that. For reason that you are not forced to clear whole map just to be able to win the game.

[Zhuangzi]

I actually like that. For reason that you are not forced to clear whole map just to be able to win the game.

Okay, but it's annoying for those of us who have to kill EVERYTHING. Obsessive compulsive disorder. :-P

[Candyman]

well just finished the game on impossible, basicly i didnt want to, but wanted to try the final fight and i was kinda tired, there are still a lot things to do for me :D

guys a lot of fun awaiting you in Land of Death and Haas Labyrinth!!! GL and HF

[megajon]

lvl 6 on impossible so far...

I have trap, gift, and phoenix.... still no sacrifice, ice snake, phantom, hypno, or other uber spell tho...

army:
snakes, inquisitors, cannoniers, archmage, bowmen... altho workin on clearin the swamp brothers quest now and likely to replace the bowmen with beholders soon.

so far I have put 2 levels into spirit mastery and the rest into the magic tree.. since I have no ice snake I am just saving up for higher magic and forgoing leveling up chaos magic. I guess 2 traps on round 1 will be pretty nice.

[Dorkus]

Okay, the game is finally getting quite challenging at around level 25/26. I am finding that there are lots of enemies listed as Overwhelming or Impossible. This is with 19,000 leadership. I haven't been able to fully clear out the Land of the Dead or Demonis as yet for this reason, even though I have completed the main quests there. It's actually a bit sad that the main quest fights are easier than the ordinary ones. :-P

In Haas' Labyrinth, the 7 dragons are listed as Impossible. I just beat one fairly easily though using my 'all elf' team (Hunters, Elves, Lake Fairies, Sprites, Dryads). Unfortunately, there are no hordes of Lake Fairies or Dryads so I am having to use Sacrifice in the Gremlin castle to replenish my stacks. This is going to be quite boring and time consuming. I spend a lot of time waiting for mana to regenerate...

It would be better if I had the dwarven telescope for the archers and the elf wife, but no matter. One of Haas' dragons had two stacks of 360 Knights each. :o But they were easily killed with slow/Sprites etc. I had wanted to finish the game in around 30 days but all the stuffing around trying to clear out Demonis and the Land of the Dead has meant it's day 34 already. :rolleyes:

Oh and I have 2.2 million gold, so it's just a matter of time....

I think it's always a good idea to leave some random enemies wandering around in the early stages. 20 exp ultimately means nothing in the scheme of things, and those initial weak enemy stacks are invaluable for sacrificing, building rage for tournament or item battles, and running the table on items that have some battle requirements (pain skull, ancient amulet, etc)

I share the completionist instinct, but in this game it's an instinct that does not serve you well.

[Zhuangzi]

I win. :)

I got bored by level 28, so I rushed through to the end. It's pretty funny that the 'boss fights' are very easy compared to the Overwhelming and Impossible stacks wandering around, but there it is.

I finished on day 36 with over 2 million gold. Score of 1274. However, there were HEAPS of things I didn't do this time, like close the Demon portal, completely clear out the Land of the Dead and the Gremlin Castle, and I virtually didn't touch anything in Murock at all. So I probably would have finished on level 30 at about day 40-42 if I could have been bothered.

Looking at the stats, it is no surprise that I killed stuff with spells (51%), troops (46%) and rage only 3% I barely used the ragebox at all towards the end, only Soul Drain. My best unit was Sprites with a massive 21.3% of total kills! When you consider I only reached Ellinia at level 19, you can see how overpowered a big stack of Sprites/Lake Fairies with Anga' Ring equipped is.

For the final fight I had red, green and black dragons, Sprites and Horsemen. I nuked them on turn 1 and finished on turn 2. Talk about anticlimax. :eek:

I think this thread has proved that not only is this game possible on Impossible as a Mage, it's not even that hard. I thought I would struggle with money but I had over 2 million gold at the end, and I wasted a lot on Armageddon when I couldn't be bothered to fight properly. So money just isn't an issue for a Mage, period.

I've really had enough of King's Bounty for now. I need a rest. :)

[Eldritch]

I've really had enough of King's Bounty for now. I need a rest. :)

Now go play some heroes3+wog! I sense it's time for a replay in your case. It could result in an overdose though... A turn-based overdose. :lol:

[Zhuangzi]

I've got The Witcher: Enhanced Edition which I bought FOUR WEEKS AGO and I'm still in the prologue. Also Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. So I think it's RPG time. :-P

[Eldritch]

Don't forget to get wesp's fan patch for bloodlines. That is one awesome but rushed game with millions of bugs and unfinished features.(Especially the clan perks/histories a la fallout) The tragic death knell of the holy Troika. Still, they pulled through an amazing writing and atmosphere under Brian Mitsoda.

I'm plannin on gettin TW too. Too much hype with that game :) Can't resist it...

[ThyrsaM]

Great going...

[bman654]

I've got The Witcher: Enhanced Edition which I bought FOUR WEEKS AGO and I'm still in the prologue. Also Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. So I think it's RPG time. :-P

heh I am alternating between TWEE and KBtL. I just made it to chapter 2 of TWEE.

[kennec]

I've got The Witcher: Enhanced Edition which I bought FOUR WEEKS AGO and I'm still in the prologue. Also Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. So I think it's RPG time. :-P

i am still suck in land of death with my paladin at lvl 22. havent been motivated to play when fights takes 20 min at least to finish.

[laffwis]

i've a question. do you have any problems to reach a higher level since you need far more xp on "impossible mode". i'm playing with a mage now and am still in darion, everything is going smooth but i think i get too little xp to reach level 10 before going to freedom islands which i used to have when playing on "normal mode".

and also a question to leadership. when should i start to go for leadership when leveling up? i'm at level 7 now and have only about 1700 including the flag which gives me 800. so my base leadership is only about 900 and thats really very little.

thanks for any suggestions :)

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks Eldritch for the tip re: Bloodlines patch. Got it now. :)

Laffwis, no it scales appropriately. Enemy stacks are 170% bigger and levels take 170% more experience, so it balances out. From memory, I am always around level 9, not 10, when reaching Freedom Isles so you are doing the right thing.

I would go for leadership all the time. IMO Attack and Defense modifiers are somewhat overrated. My order of preference (as a Mage) would be:

1. Leadership
2. Intellect
3. Mana
4. Attack
5. Defense
6. Rage

[Dorkus]

In the early game, leadership is close to useless. You should win all of your fights with intelligent spell usage, and with mage towers replenshing mana instantly, there's no reason not to do this at all. It's the fastest way to win battles, and it takes no losses.

At the end of the game, the difference of a few hundred leadership literally has no impact. On the other hand, attribute modifiers scale pretty well. I agree with you somewhat that defense is not all that useful. The stacks in the late game are so big that you need to minimize the number of times you are struck. And if you're not being hit, then there's no point in defense. But attack is still mildly useful, as it will help you focus fire on a single stack and wipe it out, with spells, in a single turn. Three points in attack is +10% damage. That's not jaw dropping, considering 1 point in intellect does ~+11% damage to spells. But it's nothing to sneeze at.

I also disagree with you about rage. Rage is incredibly useful, not always for killing stacks -- although maxed underground blades, blackhole, and soul drain are good for that. It is useful for crowd control and support. Ice thorns can delay melee stacks for two turns. THe stonewall can delay them for one. Timeback can effectively delay an entire army for a turn -- just send in a big stack on a suicide run, absorb all the blows (perhaps casting kamikaze on that same stack), then timeback to get your unit back to full strength. Glot's armor, with a bit of investment, can allow you to cast armageddon TWICE without taking any losses. Chargers can essentially duplicate the effect of the most overpowered item in the game (devourer of fury), and improve the efficiency of the somewhat cheap invisibility tactic that can allow you to go through the entire game with no losses, at least if you can find invisibility early.

Unfortunately, for the mage rage does not build up quickly. ANd inquisitors that are useful in the early game simply don't cut up, as damage dealers or rage builders, in the late game. Especially if you are going to build up black hole and/or soul drain, you need some serious rage. Seven roasted rats help, but I would take rage/mana over attack/defense any day of the week, and certainly over leadership too, at least until lvl 10-15 or so.

Intellect and mana are fairly straightforward. These are the bread and soy butter of the mage, and well worth investing in. If you have a big mana pool, you can pull some pretty crazy stuff -- such as the double armageddon with glot's armor first turn. In sum, my ranking would be the following for early game:

Intellect
Mana
Rage
Attack
Leadership
Defense

Starting at around level 15, I would say:

Intellect
Leadership
Mana
Rage
Attack
Defense

[laffwis]

In sum, my ranking would be the following for early game:

Intellect
Mana
Rage
Attack
Leadership
Defense

Starting at around level 15, I would say:

Intellect
Leadership
Mana
Rage
Attack
Defense

ok thanks for the suggestions, it's obvious that you need intellect and mana as a mage, but i still don't get the part with rage? if you don't invest in rage, you will probably reach 30-40 rage until end game (from my previoius walk throughs) and most of the rage skills only use about 20+ rage.

so actually you need maybe let's say 30 rage to have a little surplus and during battle it will replenish anyway?

or do you mean you want to use potions and fill up the rage before going into battle? then let's say you have maye 50-60 rage and it's full so you can use more powerful skills more often since gaining rage goes slowly?

but then again there are not so many potions to fill up the rage before battle.

i'm not sure if black hole is that usefull, since the max. damage is only about 1100 or something and for that you need - compared to sould drain, which indeed is maybe the best skill IMO - far more rage.

as we're talking about soul drain, to what extend shall one expand that skill? 20 %, 30, or 40 %? for 20 % you only need 5 rage (which means you can for sure use that skill every turn when maxed out; as a mage) and for 30 % 20 rage (maybe only every 2 turns?). i never expanded to 40 % since i think the proportion between damage and needed rage is not effective. but again, if considering the big stacks, maybe it could be worth to expand to 40 %?

could anybody clarify this, please? thanks :)

[Zhuangzi]

Using Rage as a Mage is not that important, IMO. I know Dorkus disagrees. :) I agree that Time Back and Soul Drain are very important, but I don't think I picked Rage as a level up choice in the entire game and I still had 55 rage by the end, which was quite enough.

Laffwis, with soul drain it depends how much rage you have and how many other rage spells you like to use. I settled on 30% drain for 25 mana (I think) because 40% needed 50 mana, which was a little too much for me. But 40& would be nice.

And I disagree that Leadership isn't important too. I think it is very important to work on throughout the game, especially on Impossible, as the enemy stacks are already much bigger than your own. I worked on Leadership whenever I could and was able to raise it to 20,000 by the end.

Basically, Leadership (20,000), Intellect (33) and Mana (140) are your most important things as a Mage. Attack, Defense and Rage are less important. You will get all three of those from Targets/Training Dummy/Shrine of Rage anyway, Rage especially if you visit Demonis early. I would like to have raised my Attack higher that the measly 15 I had at the end, but I found a LOT of Training Dummies throughout the game, and had over 25 Defence.

[Eldritch]

30% Soul Drain takes 30 rage which was my maximum with also no level up choices for rage in that insane battle for Xeona I fought at lvl 20 on hard difficulty and it makes you feel funny when you kill 30% of that 500 strong scoffer imp stack you paralyzed for two turns with dryads lullaby. That was a LOT of imps out of the picture.

I didn't lose a lot in that battle but I wonder how it would be like at lvl 20 on impossible.

[Zhuangzi]

Xeona was the hardest battle in my Impossible game at level 19, so yes, it can be tough. In fact it was the only time I had to reload and try a new strategy. :)

[Dorkus]

ok thanks for the suggestions, it's obvious that you need intellect and mana as a mage, but i still don't get the part with rage? if you don't invest in rage, you will probably reach 30-40 rage until end game (from my previoius walk throughs) and most of the rage skills only use about 20+ rage.

so actually you need maybe let's say 30 rage to have a little surplus and during battle it will replenish anyway?

or do you mean you want to use potions and fill up the rage before going into battle? then let's say you have maye 50-60 rage and it's full so you can use more powerful skills more often since gaining rage goes slowly?

but then again there are not so many potions to fill up the rage before battle.

i'm not sure if black hole is that usefull, since the max. damage is only about 1100 or something and for that you need - compared to sould drain, which indeed is maybe the best skill IMO - far more rage.

as we're talking about soul drain, to what extend shall one expand that skill? 20 %, 30, or 40 %? for 20 % you only need 5 rage (which means you can for sure use that skill every turn when maxed out; as a mage) and for 30 % 20 rage (maybe only every 2 turns?). i never expanded to 40 % since i think the proportion between damage and needed rage is not effective. but again, if considering the big stacks, maybe it could be worth to expand to 40 %?

could anybody clarify this, please? thanks :)

If you don't touch rage at all, you should still end up with 50-60 rage, assuming you get some rage statutes and buy all the roasted rats.

with the mage, rage will usually NOT replenish at a speed that you can use it consistently, IF you are fighting smart. Rage goes up most when you're trading blows with the enemy. If the point is to use rage to avoid trading blows with the enemy, or eliminate stakcs before trading blows can even occur, you are not going to be building much rage in fights, other than from the fury gathering ability. This is when your max store comes into play. If you go into a fight with near max fury, you can get off a few abilities in the first few turns, pop a fury gather, then use another ability, in the first four turns.

Black hole does max 1500 damage and according to the fan manual, and my experience, scales damage by LEVEL, not morale. Level 5 units receive 50% more damage, meaning max 2250 damage against all level 5 units. It's also worth noting that it does ASTRAL damage, which no unit in the game, including black dragons, can resist. Again, this is invaluable for thinning out stacks without being forced to trade blows.

The money spots for soul drain, in my opinion, are 20% and 40%. You cannot get the first rage cost reduction without moving to at least 20%. And 20% of a stack for 5 rage is well worth the cost. It's a useful ability to have for those moments when your rage is depleted, and you need an offensive ability. On the other hand, I think 40% is much more useful because in practice, when your rage is depleted, you'd rather use the fury gathering ability. 40% also is worth more than 20% twice, since a second 20% attack will not only take a few turns (and prevent you from using other abilities), but also reduce the stack less on each successive use.

Again, however, the key point is that rage is invalualbe on impossible, if properly used in a support role. If you are going to try to kill off all opponents using rage, it's not going to work. But if you use it strategically to stave off enemy advances, protect your own troops, refill your mana coffers, etc. it serves a very important function. But it can't serve that function if you don't have the stats to use it....

[Dorkus]

Using Rage as a Mage is not that important, IMO. I know Dorkus disagrees. :) I agree that Time Back and Soul Drain are very important, but I don't think I picked Rage as a level up choice in the entire game and I still had 55 rage by the end, which was quite enough.

Laffwis, with soul drain it depends how much rage you have and how many other rage spells you like to use. I settled on 30% drain for 25 mana (I think) because 40% needed 50 mana, which was a little too much for me. But 40& would be nice.

And I disagree that Leadership isn't important too. I think it is very important to work on throughout the game, especially on Impossible, as the enemy stacks are already much bigger than your own. I worked on Leadership whenever I could and was able to raise it to 20,000 by the end.

Basically, Leadership (20,000), Intellect (33) and Mana (140) are your most important things as a Mage. Attack, Defense and Rage are less important. You will get all three of those from Targets/Training Dummy/Shrine of Rage anyway, Rage especially if you visit Demonis early. I would like to have raised my Attack higher that the measly 15 I had at the end, but I found a LOT of Training Dummies throughout the game, and had over 25 Defence.

There are plenty of rage fountains. But no rage statues that I can recall. If you have 40 max rage, you're not even going to be able to get a black hole off to start a fight, much less pull a black hole then continue spamming rage abilities for the first few turns.

I played one impossible game with 60 max rage at the end, and another with around 100 (with a +10 rage kid, 7 roasted rats, and a little luck with rage statues), and it was a big difference. Being able to cast max black hole (80 rage) to start off every fight is incredibly nice. Being able to cast black hole, then spam diversion abilities before the opponent can even get a strke in, is even better. Once your opponent is down to the last stack, moreover, with a strong enough ice ball you can simply leave the last stack alive and use chargers and the fury gathering ability until your mana and rage are back to max for the next fight.

Also, I did not say leadership was unimportant. I said it was unimportant in the early stage. The difference between 20,000 leadership and 19,000 leadership is not significant. The difference between 40 rage and 80 rage is.

[Zhuangzi]

From memory Dorkus there was a Rage Shrine in Kordar (maybe Ardan's Peaks), one in Demonis and one in the Land of the Dead. These shrines add 5 rage permanently each, but I know that all of the shrines etc are randomised in the game.

Obviously I would prefer 80 Rage to 40, but it depends on what you aren't getting instead. Admittedly I tended to ignore the ragebox a little towards the end, but I still used it for Glot's Armor and Reaper's skills. It's basically a matter of opinion as to whether Leadership or Rage is more important to a Mage, as it would seem that both strategies work. Toward the end when offered Leadership it was over 1000 being offered, so it's probably more than just the difference between 20k and 19k overall. Plus, my strategy involved massive stacks of Sprites, Lake Fairies and Dryads, which are very powerful. You just can't discount the damage 2000+ Sprites can do in a single hit. I have seen 1800 Sprites do 18,000 damage (I think 10 damage per Sprite must be the highest damage they can do on a Critical). Because nothing retaliates against Sprites, I used Glot's Armor on them a lot to decimate massive enemy stacks. Say I hit the enemy for 8000 damage, no retaliation. Then I cast Glot's Armor on the Sprites and the enemy stack attacks my Sprites, breaks the bubble but does no damage, and then the Sprites retaliate for 6000 damage. These aren't criticals either. :cool:

I should say that I always have Anga's Ring equipped. Best item in the game, IMO.

[Infiltrator]

Except that units don't retaliate when they are under the effect of glot's armor..

[Zhuangzi]

Yep, I thought they retaliated when the Glot shield is broken, but it's not the case. It's still very useful though.

[Infiltrator]

It is, especially since it can absorb a trillion damage if it has 1 hp left..

[Eldritch]

Double druids staff along with the snake boots and anga's ring equipped Xeona using royal snakes, sprites, lake faeries, dryads and elves makes for an excellent combo for a mage, it's working really well for me. I got 39 intelligence with all the important magic feats maxed out and an insanely powerful army to boot at only lvl 21 on hard difficulty. Would use the same combo again on impossible. As someone mentioned (Dorkus?), a snake army with the g. druids staff along with the snake boots and frog feanora also seems p. devastating alright.

[Calnus]

You guys are a crazy lot. I've read this thread from head to toe and guess what, i just abandoned my normal mage just to get started on impossible. But guess what it is worth it. More satisfaction in winning harder battle. My game on normal is at Hass Laby and the enemy even though rated very strong is not as tough as it says. Thank god I've read this thread. Thanks guys.

[Zepdog]

I have been playing with the Palidan on Impossible and it isn't too bad. I made sure I married all 6 girls and had babies with the first 5 so I could get money for them. Then I would buy all the army I could (or items) and dump them so they don't take my money. Yes money is hard to come by but it isn't so bad. I chose the Palidan because I wanted to get more use from my runes since all 3 skills share the Mind runes and the Palidan gets the most of those. My last wife is the Demoness since she has 2 weapon slots. I went ahead and had 1 baby with her and was going to restart the game before I asked her for a child if it wasn't any good. But, it was +10% to Leadership so I kept it. It took 1 of my weapon slots and that was all I was going to do since the second would take my other. I floated around as much as possible and got to the Dragons as fast as possible. Once I had the Dragons their special abilities made the game alot easier. I am all stoked up with reserves of dragons in the Elven Capital and long range dwarves in my own reserves. I am going to go back and get the key now to open the gate to the Crazy Dragon and close the Demon realm. With all of the items that I have I shouldn't have a problem with money to finish the game out.

I do have 1 question though. Is it possible to move a child into another slot? That would help out alot since boots suck and I can get another +5% to Leadership from my next baby. It just isn't worth the weapon slot.

[Zhuangzi]

You guys are a crazy lot. I've read this thread from head to toe and guess what, i just abandoned my normal mage just to get started on impossible. But guess what it is worth it. More satisfaction in winning harder battle. My game on normal is at Hass Laby and the enemy even though rated very strong is not as tough as it says. Thank god I've read this thread. Thanks guys.

No worries. Have a look at the Impossible Warrior challenge thread for an even harder game. :eek:

Oh and Zepdog you can't move children to other slots. Maybe ask in the mod forum though - those guys might know how to get around this.