Beating the game with no losses (Paladin)

[sector24]

I wanted to try and make a difficult challenge for myself, so I'm going through the game trying not to lose a single unit. I'm playing a Paladin on Hard for my first try, and I'm level 10 heading for the Islands of Freedom for the first time. I'd like to share some strategies, but also ask other people if this challenge is even possible when you get to the more difficult areas.

Early strategies:

My early army consists of:
Bowmen
Royal Snakes
Inquisitors
Archmages
Griffins/Guardsmen

The game is somewhat random, so before you buy a single unit, you should check the Furious Paladin and the tavern in the Marsh, the animal menagerie in Greenwort, and the mage academy and tavern in Verlon Forest. I was very lucky to get 6 Griffins in the Verlon Forest tavern, Royal Snakes at the menagerie, and 2 places to recruit Inquisitors (Furious Paladin and Mage Academy). You can also get horsemen if you abuse the pathing of the guards there. I chose not to, but if I were playing on Impossible I might.

As a Paladin you begin the game with Resurrect, but with the above setup you can only use it on Bowmen until you get Order 2. Therefore you need to save your Inquisitor's resurrect for emergencies. You should use your griffins to snatch treasure chests, and with the Archmage's Magic Shield harass ranged units. Royal snakes almost always go first, so you should use scorched earth tactics against enemies with move 3 or less. Basically you wait, let the enemy move to you, then at the end of the turn move forward and lunge. On turn 2, retreat back 2 squares and wait. The enemy will come forward 3 squares (1 square short of hitting you) then at the end of turn 2 strike them. At the beginning of turn 3, move back 1 square and lunge. You should also bless them with your Inquisitors, they benefit the most from the bless (6-10 damage becomes 10-10). Three free hits before the enemy gets a chance to hit you knocks out most stacks. Use your freezing arrow and Archmage's shock ability to slow the largest stacks, or to turn a move 4 enemy into a move 3 enemy so you can use the Royal Snake tactic.

With the above strategy, I was able to kill anything up to "match" with no rage, or anything up to "strong" (sometimes very strong) with an evil shoal at the start of battle.

For the really hard fights (very strong/overpowering), I relied heavily on trap and magic spring. Magic spring in particular is the most amazingly awesome and broken spell in the early game. Any time you weren't planning on casting a spell, you should cast magic spring on your griffins and have them hit something. They get the defense bonus, and you immediately get your mana back, with the chance of getting 10 more mana if creatures attack them during the turn. This is the primary method of using resurrect more than once in a battle because paladins don't typically have a large mana pool.

Other spells of note are Gift which resets your Inquisitors resurrect skill, Magic Pole Axe which is your only direct damage spell, and healing is very handy on your high HP units like Archmages and Griffins.

In the marsh I was overjoyed to find 2 Royal Thorns in one of the frog castles. These guys are perfect for a no losses challenge because they summon a stack of disposable units that the AI likes to attack. I use magic spring on them a lot to recover mana for resurrections.

For the Lyaro Island battle, I prevented the enemy from stomping my entire army by putting a stack of griffins in melee range and then defending with them. The Archmage's Magic Shield + Stoneskin + Magic Shield + Healing on the Griffins will allow you to survive indefinitely without losing anyone.

So I've cleared all of Darion except the abandoned castle, Rezo's Tower (I cleared all the way up to the staff), the mage trial, and the undead castle in the marsh. I took a peek at Freedom Islands, and I will have access to Devilfish, Cannoneers, Alchemists, and Sea Dogs from the starting area. I also have access to Cursed Ghosts, so I could switch to Griffins, Royal Snakes, Inquisitors, Cursed Ghosts, ???, but I don't have Sacrifice yet so I don't see any reason to.

I will probably switch out the bowmen for Cannoneers, but I doubt I'll use Devilfish and Sea Dogs due to their low hit points. Just doesn't fit with my strategy until I get access to higher level skills/spells. I'll be sure to add more strategies when/if I get Sacrifice, Hypnotize, etc.

So, has anyone beaten the game without losing any units? Is it even possible? What strategies did you find helpful? Feel free to provide knight and mage strategies as well, I can imagine a no losses knight challenge would be really tough. :-P

[Metathron]

Ummm...so you've defeated the giant turtle with no losses?

[sector24]

Yeah, the turtle is no big deal, I think I could beat him 1 Archmage and 2 Griffins if necessary. :)

Turn 1, move your Griffins forward 4 squares, separate, then move the new group into melee range and defend. Cast Stoneskin on the Griffins. Archmage puts Magic Shield on the Griffins. Turtle deals about 40 damage and pushes them back 1 square.

Turn 2, move your Stoneskin Griffins back into melee range and defend. Cast Magic Spring on the Griffins. Turtle deals about 25-30 damage and pushes them back one square. You gain 5 mana.

Turn 3, move your Griffins back into melee and defend. Cast Healing on them. Turtle deals about 25-30 damage and pushes them back one square. You gain 5 mana.

Repeat turns 1 - 3 until the turtle is dead.

----

I've cleared about half of Freedom Islands now, the Orc Embassy looks like it's going to be very tough to beat. I have replaced my Archmages with Beholders and found 4 more Royal Thorns. No change in strategy yet.

[Zhuangzi]

Wow, sector24, I'm impressed. :cool:

Basically, this game is too easy once you learn how to use spells properly. I am winning on Impossible without many losses at all (not zero losses though). I wonder how you will be able to ensure zero losses against battles where the enemy has lots of mana and offensive spells to boot. I suspect that this will prove impossible in the end, but I'd like to hear how you progress.

[sector24]

I'm up to level 12 now, cleared the western isles minus the orc embassy and a some heroes. (I left a few weak armies lying around as rage boosters)

I also beat the Kraken. Royal Thorns makes this fight a breeze. If you regrow the devilfish stacks into thorns, and put magic spring on them, the Kraken will not spawn more devilfish. Since each stack of thorns you spawn can raise more thorns, there's always enough thorns to convince the Kraken to attack. I usually had to place 3 stacks in harm's way each turn to keep him from spawning devilfish, but I was able to whittle him down comfortably over 20 or so turns.

I'm in a tough spot now, I can try to conquer the Orc Embassy but I don't think I can do it with my current leadership (4700) and no losses. I bought an army specifically for that fight and my best so far is -14 Cursed Ghosts, which was pretty damned close. All the enemy heroes sailing around are strong to overpowering, I can try those but I'd rather just wait until I get some more leadership. My other option is to go back to Darion and grab more Royal Snakes, I can fit about 17 more which is quite a bit of extra damage.

I'm really itching to get some shamans! If I can crack the embassy I think I can wipe out all the heroes sailing around no problem. If I'm lucky I'll get a +600 leadership choice at level 13 and I'll give it another go.

[Namel]

If I'm lucky I'll get a +600 leadership choice at level 13 and I'll give it another go.

Nothing to do with luck. If you took leadership at 12 it won't be offered. Leadership is offered if you did not take it last level.

[ThyrsaM]

Nice story, keep us posted.

[reed]

I was a warrior and doing like that before but then it led me into a frustation :D

[Xelian]

Ummm...so you've defeated the giant turtle with no losses?
I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double :) You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double :) You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

Use the most pathetic unhits you have against your double and "smash him up" with rage and majic, if you're a mage that is.

[sector24]

Namel: That's very good to know. Fortunately I did not take leadership at level 12, so we'll see what I get. Overall my level ups have been fantastic, I took mana once, rage once, leadership twice and the rest have been attack and defense (mostly defense). I think I have a natural defense of 10 (from shrines and level ups), I'm at work and can't check right now. I'm going to start taking leadership bonuses now that they are more valuable.

----

The fights against my own army will probably be the most interesting. Since I have a ridiculous amount of money I will probably buy 5 full stacks of units specifically for these 2 fights. My goal would be to pick all melee units that are easily nullified by spells and have varying rates of movement. Examples being:

Peasants: Casting weakness on peasants reduces their damage by 50%. They also have move 2 so I don't have to worry about them until late in the fight.

Fire Dragonflies: They have haste and the AI will use it on the first turn, so I should be able to focus all 5 of my stacks towards wiping out the Dragonflies on the first turn.

Ideally I'd have a movement 6 unit (Dragonflies) a movement 4 unit, a movement 3 unit, and three movement 2 units. That gives me the most time to focus fire one stack at a time. Spells like trap or slow can further split the speed of the units. With Phantom I can create a stack to eat the counter attack, and then focus fire with all my stacks. Of course this is all theory, I'll probably run half way around the world recruiting an army and then find out it doesn't work and have to try something different. But I think it will be fun nonetheless. :-P

[Zhuangzi]

I'm pretty impressed by what you have to say about this game, sector24. Sounds like someone knows how to think things through properly. :)

I haven't actually tried the double image fight, but I would have thought a Mage can win it fairly easy using crappy units like Miners and Hyenas.

[Dorkus]

I beat the double with no losses. If you have a lvl 1-3 heavy army, it's a piece of cake. i had lake fairies, sprites, dryads, inquis, and emerald dragons. I nuked all the dragons with a couple ice snakes, then put everything else to sleep with my dryads. You can perpetually put everyone to sleep again and again using phantom image (ideally, first level, so it doesn't cost too much mana). My "double" enemy hero didn't even get a move because all of his units were constantly asleep....

[sector24]

I got +650 leadership at level 14, so I filled up on Inquisitors and Beholders, cleared out the Eastern Islands including Lucky James and Duke Sov. Surprisingly, the quest related battles are easier than the random armies that you need to clear to get to them.

So it was finally time to go back to the Orc Embassy and prove my manhood. I decided against using Cursed Ghosts this time and went with:

Beholders
Griffins
Royal Thorns
Royal Snakes
Inquisitors

I also used a charge from my mask of rage artifact (+20 rage) for the first time, up until now I haven't had to use any potions or anything. The problem with the above setup is that I don't get to go first so I couldn't lay down a trap. The enemy hero also had an annoying habit of using magic poleaxe on a different stack every turn, so I had a ton of resurrecting to do. However, I came up with devious and exploitative strategy.

I got the enemy down to 1 shaman, and let him keep his healing totem. Using my ample stacks of thorns, I put magic spring on one and attacked the shaman, who countered and I got my mana back. I could repeat this endlessly except sometimes the shaman would attack me back or use the axe dance and I would get an additional 5 mana. He would also heal himself to full every turn so I didn't need to worry about him accidentally dying. Endless mana loop to resurrect all my troops. :rolleyes:

So I filled my rage and mana before I finished off the shaman, bought my own stack of shamans and went into the basement for some fun. This is the fight with the stack of 1400 fire dragonflies. Again, I lost a couple units from every stack, so to generate mana in this battle I used my beholders to put the dragonfly stack to sleep turn after turn, put a poison cloud on them, and then put my mana springed (sprung?) thorn stacks inside the cloud. You gain 5 mana every time they take poison damage, so your mana spring is guaranteed to pay off in full. This is another exploitative but very necessary strategy for the hardest battles.

So now that I have Royal Thorns and Shamans, it's time to go sink all the pirate ships and make the oceans safe for mass murdering heroes like myself.

[Shd]

Sector24, good luck in your adventure to complete wo looses...

Some hints from my mage (impossible, 0 looses):

1. Dont count on necromancy talent (if nothing is changed then ressurected units by talent is counted as "killed")
2. Be careful to not overupgrade spells/SR skills (sacrifice, time back etc.). I made such mistake, so in my opinion Sacrifice must be lvl 1, time back - up to lvl 2-3 units... But anyway, it is heavily depending on your gamestyle and Paladin one will differ from Mage one :)
3. All lvlup upgrades must be aimed toward tactic you will use against dragons (Because when you will get dryads from elves till dragons fights will be "piece of cake").... Just you must know what to do, if there will be 3-4 stacks of them with about 10 in each (there Mage tactic will not work, so i suppose i cannot help you much :( ).
4. Dont dismiss armies (not sure if it can hurt in straight way, but it really helped me in some fights when i got forest spirits (15 from mage strating army multiplied by hypnosis+sacrifice) before reaching elflands), just put them in garrisons.
5. Always have enough money to completly change your army. I needed to change it at least 5-6 times.
6. Dont expect "high" score at the end, because AFAIK its based on time spent (not killed/loss koeficient), for example mine was less than 800 when i played wo looses. :)
7. And last one... If you want to make such game interesting - dont use cheating tactics like greens+invisibility etc... :)


P.S. Killing turtle without looses is very easy. Just block her head with melee unit (cavalry will suffice). In such case she will not use AoE damage spell and knockbacks.

P.P.S. Killing "old double" is easy if you using dryads+ring+gift.

P.P.P.S. Beware of undeads, but as Paladin it can be more easy that as Mage :)

P.P.P.P.S. Most hard part will be dragons, i suppose... But, who knows... :)


Good luck and keep us informed of your progress :)

[kennec]

this is good reading.


anyone have tips for a paladin against unded hordes of ghosts and skeleton archers and legions of vampiers.

[sector24]

The most important thing to do when fighting undead is to use the right damage types against the right enemies. Ghosts have 50% physical resistance, skeletons and bone dragons are resistant to projectiles, etc. Typically the ghosts are the highest priority for me because they have high initiative (cursed ghosts move before my royal snakes so I can't cast first) and they have movement 4. I can usually trip up vampires with a death totem, and the bone skeletons die in droves after the ghosts are gone. So a generic undead fight (abandoned castle for instance) goes like this:

Turn 1:
Ghosts rush me, I have my royal snakes wait. I put Holy Anger on my beholders and they blast cursed ghosts, or the biggest stack of ghosts or skeleton archers if there are none. My shamans put a death totem in the back to waste the vampire/skeleton turns. Royal thorns summon a stack of thorns, I put Mana Spring on them, and then my royal snakes lunge at the cursed ghosts.

Turn 2: The cursed ghosts will either attack the summoned thorns (I get my mana back) or my inquisitors and I'll lose a few but the cursed ghosts will nearly kill themselves. Royal snakes attack the cursed ghosts in such a way that the regular ghosts are forced to attack the summoned thorn stack. If that's not possible, I have my shamans put a totem of life down so that the summoned thorns + the totem block the ghosts from getting to the snakes. Inquisitors and Beholders hit the skeleton archers. The battle is all but won at this point. The vampires are 2 turns away from hitting anything because they went back to kill the death totem, there's maybe a stack of ghosts and 1 or 2 crippled stacks of skeleton archers.

You can use the healing spell for direct damage against undead. It has a very efficient damage to mana ratio. If you can't take out a stack of cursed ghosts halfway through the 2nd turn, the enemies might just be a little too tough for your current leadership level. There are also some undead specific artifacts such as the silver rapier (+30% damage to undead) and silver chain )+1 intellect, -2 defense to undead). I found 2 silver rapiers in the Freedom Isles, I can't wait to marry the demoness so I can wield them at the same time. ;)

[sector24]

I finally finished the Freedom Isles, my character is level 15 and I have 5700 leadership. 11 Attack, 22 Defense, 10 Intellect, which I feel is pretty good at my level. Sleem is level 22 and Zerock is level 17. I let my underground blades get a little out of control, it costs 37 rage (although it pretty much wipes entire armies off the board).

I am finding that I made some choices that I regret concerning my character. First, I took Rockfall when I should have skipped it, and I even upgraded it once because my other choice was to increase the stone wall's life to 300 (and increase the cost by 5 rage). Two wasted levels probably won't make a big difference in the long run though.

In the skill tree I took 3/3 Glory which in retrospect was too expensive for what you get. 500 leadership sounds like a lot when you're level 8, but at the higher levels, the leadership bonus from a level up dwarfs that. I would have preferred to have spent the might runes towards onslaught so dragons don't tear me a new one on the first turn. I have had serious problems getting might runes in my game, although magic runes are abundant so it's not that big a deal. If I find enough might runes to get what I need by the time I'm fighting big stacks of dragons, then it will probably turn out to be nothing.

In the mind tree I have 2 Order, 3 Distortion, and 2 Chaos, and I'm not really sure what to do with my mind runes from here. I would like to get the last 2 points of concentration, not that I need the mana but it does make all the fights easier if I had it. I have fire rain and ice snake as my primary damage spells, but I regret using the magic crystals on Ice Snake because the damage is awful for a Paladin and the freeze effect isn't high enough. It probably won't matter, but we'll see. I still haven't found Hypnotize, Phantom, Phoenix, Sacrifice and a few other useful spells.

I feel like Paladins need to be very careful about spending their mind runes because everything in that skill tree is so expensive, so I can't really afford to make a mistake. I need to decide to either go for the spell damage skill at the bottom of the tree, or get concentration and extra mana. I'll probably hold onto them until I reach a point in the game that I can't continue.

Going back to Darion was fun, the abandoned castle was a breeze, the undead castle in the marsh was challenging but not frustrating. I beat the gorgon in the arena which was a real pain due to her incredible initiative. I am now regretting not leaving more enemies alive in Greenwort, I have 2 arena battles to go and no one to build rage off of. I guess potions will have to do, but it's much easier to drag out an easy fight than it is to use the few consumables that the game provides. I have only found 2 rage potions in the entire game so far. I haven't tried the level 15 fight. I'm sure I could win, but probably not without losses. The archmage's staff is also best left for later.

As awesome as royal thorns are, they are becoming quite a liability against enemy heroes. Their fire vulnerability ruins me when the opponent has alchemists, dragons, fireball or flaming arrow. Since I don't have sacrifice or time back I have to reload the fight if I lose one. They're still great for 90% of the fights in the game, but I really need to find a replacement soon. I will be heading into the mines tonight, so we'll see what they have to offer. :)

[Zhuangzi]

About needing weak enemies around the place, I had this problem too because I tend to clear everything out methodically. I need easy fights to use Sacrifice on Peasants to replenish my expensive units. Then I realised that I habitually leave the neutral Griffins on Griffin Island in Arlania alive. But you can turn them hostile by stealing their egg from beneath them. That's a pretty low thing to do, but if need an easy fight... ;)

[sector24]

More good luck, I found 10 cyclopes at the castle in Creiston Mines, so I was able to finish up that stupid quest for the rare animals and replace my royal thorns against fire based enemies. I think it's amusing that it costs 5000g to buy a cyclops and the reward is 4000g. :rolleyes:

The dwarven lands are severely underwhelming after cutting my teeth against pirates. Most fights are "match" or "slightly weaker" which I guess makes sense because not every player would take the time to kill every single army they came across and do every single quest. So it seems I'm overleveled for this area.

I have used the lull to level up Lina, I summon her at least once every fight, although I think I've had some back luck on the actual level up bonuses. Twice, I've had the option to increase either the ice ball's offensive or defensive stats. So basically my level up had to be applied to the ice ball no matter what, and the rage cost went up. It costs 30 rage now which is too expensive for what it does in my opinion. Thankfully Gizmo is still only 12, and I can always use chargers which basically trades 6 rage for 4 mana.

The boss in laboratory 44 was also very easy. I used my royal thorns to summon thorn stacks, which summoned more thorn stacks, and I used my shamans to drop totems on the outside hexes, until I had filled the entire battlefield. If the boss decided to summon allies but there aren't enough hexes open, it just skips its turn. So basically royal thorns = free pass on this fight, and the 6600xp puts me just short of level 17.

I think this fight needs a boost. At a minimum, if the summon allies action isn't possible the boss should attack, but I think possibly the boss needs a 3rd type of attack to prevent the royal thorns exploit. Perhaps spitting webs on everyone causing mass slow (so it's harder to raise all the thorn stacks), or spitting poison on everything causing a 3-round poison debuff. I don't know, something. I mean at least the Kraken could hit multiple stacks each turn so it was pretty much impossible to fill the screen with thorns. This boss was not challenging at all.

Going to keep poking out the eyes of beholders and cyclopes over the weekend and see how far I get.

[sector24]

Traveling further into Dwarven territory I was able to finally find some Evil Beholders to replace my normal ones, and Giants to replace the Cyclopes. Giants can be healed with the Shaman's Axe Dance, and with my intellect I can heal 360hp for 2 mana which is a big improvement over the Cyclopes which could only be healed with Gizmo. I also found 4 Sacrifice scrolls buried under some tracks in Lower Hadar so I promptly dived into the Gremlin Castle and using the fights there to generate unlimited mana while I maxed out my stack of Royal Thorns. Giants are now one of my favorite opponents.

Since they use their Earthquake ability every other turn, you are guaranteed to get your mana back from Mana Spring, and at level 3 it lasts 5 turns so you are guaranteed to make at least 10 mana out of every 5 you spend. Also since Giants have 900 hp each, they are not prone to accidental death. So in order to create the Mana Spring loop I had to whittle a stack of Giants down to just 1, and leave my Royal Snakes and Inquisitors inside the field of a totem of life. The Earthquake damage was not enough to kill 1, and at the beginning of every turn the stack was healed. However, it takes 40 mana to create 2 Royal Thorns, so this was a fairly tedious process.

Unfortunately I cleared out all the Giants and my favorite enemy has been replaced by dragons and demons. These guys are seriously difficult for my army of relatively low HP units. The Royal Thorns are actually better than Evil Beholders here, but I have to put Glot's Armor on them to keep them alive, which reduces my damage output. Still, the dragons love to burn my summoned thorn stacks and that keeps my important units alive. I have cleared Ardan's Peak and am prepared to storm the underground there, I have cleared the Gremlin Castle except for the last three armies guarding the dragon eggs (those are listed as overpowering) and there's one area in Taron Mines I decided to skip because the armies there were a tad too difficult.

[travelingoz]

Seems like you're doing really well there. Could you give us another update on your paladin? Stats and leadership. Also what was your early game (levels 1~9)strategy? Did you take any leadership points? I am trying mage on hard now and took my first leadership points at my last level up. Consequently, I have good basic stats ATK 7 DEF 8 INT15 MAN70 RG 46, but leadership is only 3600. I am finding most of the fights in the Eastern Islands really tough and although i have lots of cash, there are no leadership arties anywhere to buy....?

Also regarding the mana loop:~ Am i doing something wrong? When i cast mana spring it only seems to last 2 hits/attacks, not 2 turns (or 3 on level 2)????

[maverick6146]

Seems like you're doing really well there. Could you give us another update on your paladin? Stats and leadership. Also what was your early game (levels 1~9)strategy? Did you take any leadership points? I am trying mage on hard now and took my first leadership points at my last level up. Consequently, I have good basic stats ATK 7 DEF 8 INT15 MAN70 RG 46, but leadership is only 3600. I am finding most of the fights in the Eastern Islands really tough and although i have lots of cash, there are no leadership arties anywhere to buy....?

Also regarding the mana loop:~ Am i doing something wrong? When i cast mana spring it only seems to last 2 hits/attacks, not 2 turns (or 3 on level 2)????

No you didn't, that's the intended behavior of mana spring.

I am playing a paladin on impossible now and get through most of the battles with no loss or slight loss. However I was stuck on storyline battle on undead territory. I believe these storyline battles are the most challenging ones for OP's "no loss" quest unless he has good equipments/wives etc.

[sector24]

Travelingoz: Buffs tick down every time your character takes an action. So take the Inquisitor's Holy Anger spell for instance. If they cast it on themselves, it immediately loses 1 turn duration because they apply it to themselves, then their action is concluded and the duration decreases. Much better to cast it on something that hasn't moved yet. You can stall the duration by waiting instead of defending, so it's quite often a good move to have your Royal Snakes wait, then buff them, and then they take their action at the very end of turn 1 and the beginning of turn 2.

How this applies to Mana Spring is that the duration goes down by 1 every time you are hit AND every time your unit takes an action. At the lower levels, Mana Spring doesn't last very long so it's hard to get a lot of mana out of it. At best, you put Mana Spring on a unit, attack with it and get counterattacked to refund the cost of the spell, and hopefully someone attacks you. Then it's gone. But at level 2 and 3 the duration increases to 4 and 5 respectively so there's some real potential to gain a lot of mana. My favorite is still to put a stack of summoned thorns in a poison cloud, because you are guaranteed the full return on your investment.

As for levels 1-9, I didn't do anything different than what I described in the first post. I also didn't take any leadership bonuses from leveling up until level 12 or so. For me the first 14 levels or so were the most "tactical" because I was frequently fighting strong or very strong opponents, but Darion is also the easiest continent so there's the most opportunity for strategy to pay off. When you get to the later levels the game is much more "brute force" because some stacks are just too big. I remember fighting a stack of 70 demons, it took at least 6 turns of all of my stacks focusing on them before I brought them down. I guess tossing totems and stone walls in the way is still strategy, but not like it was in the early levels. ;)

As a mage on Impossible you may need to start taking leadership bonuses sooner, especially if you can't find Fire Rain. Either that or spend your early runes on the Glory skill.

I will look up my current stats and post them today. I can say that I don't feel like I have particularly good equipment. Having read about some of the items other people have found, I think I'm missing out in that department. Here's what I'm using (from memory):

Some Intellect Helmet (+3 INT, +1 Defense)
Pirate's Halberd (+3 Attack, +5% gold, from quest)
backup: Silver Rapier (+30% damage to undead) x2
backup: Adherent's Staff (+2 INT, +10% lightning damage)
backup: Pilgrim's Staff (+1 INT, saving the upgrade battle as a rage booster)
Slippery Cuirass (+2 Defense, +10% Physical Resistance)
Ogre's Sandals (+2 Defense, +1 Move for Giants and Ogres)
General's Baton (+750 Leadership)
Battle Shield (+2 Defense, +1 Attack)
Some Round Stone Artifact (+4 Defense, you can trade Magic Crystals for Stoneskin scrolls. I got it from the zombie in the Marsh, not sure if it's random or not)
backup: Silver Chain (+1 INT, -2 Defense to enemy undead)
Anga's Ruby (+300 Leadership, GIRL POWAH++)

I do not have a wife yet, mostly because I don't have any artifacts that I feel like I "have to have" but don't have slots for. I probably should have married Feanora early in the game, but since I didn't I'm just going to wait for the demoness in all her dual wielding glory. The undead lands should be much easier with 2 Silver Rapiers.

Also, another mana loop for fighting keepers. Originally I was of the philosophy that the friendly gremlins (brown) needed to die first because they continued to summon units. However, now I feel like the evil gremlins (red) should die instead, and you should hold a brown gremlin hostage to summon an endless supply of units for you to use Mana Spring on. As long as your army is strong enough to take control of the fight, the small # of allies one gremlin tower can summon will not be strong enough to beat your endless supply of summoned thorn stacks. However, I still can't upgrade my archmage's staff or baton without taking losses so I obviously need more practice. :rolleyes:

Edit: Added Battle Shield, changed Colonel's Baton to General's Baton

[sector24]

My stats at level 18:
9100 Leadership
13 Attack, 23 Defense, 11 Int

Ok, back to story time. Instead of pushing to Castle Bogacho and weaving around the overpowering heroes, I instead went back to Darion to restock my troops. While I was there I absolutely creamed Archmage Rezo (it felt great) with a Geyser + Underground Blades on turn 1. My reward was 14 more Inquisitors. :rolleyes:

I also killed Big Pato in the arena, and upgraded my baton from the lowest level up to General's Baton (+750). The extra 650 leadership puts me at 9100 which didn't change the enemy army status (still overpowering) but I am a little bit stronger. More importantly, my army stacks are above the enemy demonesses charm capacity so I should be able to clear some of the tougher demon armies now without taking ridiculous losses.

[travelingoz]

Thanks Sector24. Doing upgrades with no losses is no mean feat!

I do wait and double strike with my blue snakes already and since my last post i've got more leadership arties and distort lvl 2 now so life is going much easier .:cool:The main problem is that i can't find phantom or sacrifice yet anywhere. Also, the old fella in the swamp had only 33 inquisitors and the mage in vernon had only 14!! I Haven't found anymore anywhere yet. Which is leading to some serious gilot's shield abuse!

I just snuck through the mines tonight and got leena juiced up. I got away with few losses by sneaking past the big guys and taking out the little guys. So i'll go back and mop up the few big fights left in the islands and try and get gizmo, etc going.:cool:


I

[travelingoz]

Well, some good news to report at last! Did some more mopping up around the islands and some of the easier stuff in the mines. Finished titan's tear and got geyeser. Managed to sneak through and beat the castle with the kings son in, then got out with only having to fight 2 or 3 of the easier patrols! I only lost half of the stack of brown bears i'd bought along for the purpose. But there's still a lot hard fights left throughout the dwarven lands.

When i got back, the mages shop in greenwort had phantom and gift so i hope with those 2 i'll be able to do most fights now with no losses. But :evil: still no sign of sacrifce anywhere!

So now i'm an earl and level 15. Stats are ok for a mage i guess. AT10 DEF10 INT21 RG46 MN80 and LD7500. Chaos 3, Offense 2 and Destruct 2.

I had i quick look around elves land and managed to sneak past the patrols to the queen's castle (everything still way way to hard fight 4 me yet). There were some dryads in there which could be nice with the ruby ring but i was wondering how they'd go against what's left in the mines and the dwarven lands?

Also would you go for offense lvl 3 next or save the runes and wait for higher magic?

[sector24]

I must confess to making a grievous error. In my haste to get promoted to increase my leadership, I made peace with the dwarves before clearing out the Underground Sea and the dwarven armies turned neutral. They wouldn't have been difficult, but it is missed experience, gold, and random treasure chests. The completionist within me weeps. :( Did I mention that in one random battle I found 2 magic runes and 1 mind rune? All in the same battle? True story. Every battle I miss, I imagine that there were 1 or more runes waiting to be pilfered. :evil:

EDIT: Gatts and YENKO informed me that they are always neutral and I didn't actually miss anything. Thanks guys.

On the bright side, when I advanced the main story Tom Digor granted me his +4 attack hammer (since I still use giants there are no item morale issues) and King Mark offered me a new artifact, the ring of intelligence. It's +3 int and after 30 battles I can use it for a permanent +3 int. I took off Anga's Ruby for now (I just got promoted so no leadership issues) and since I finally broke 15 INT I did the mage trial in Arlania. I was massively overleveled for it of course, and got a staff that I already owned as a reward. ;)

So I have 3 options going forward:
Mehgard via locomotive
Elven Lands via boat
Demonis via portal

I'm tempted to loot Demonis before going to the elven lands, as I don't want to go back and forth too often. I also noticed that the train ride to Mehgard is instantaneous (unlike dirigible rides that advance the game 1 day) so if I cared about my score, going back and forth between Mehgard and Ardan would not matter.

travelingoz: I have never used Dryads, but I have fought against them. I would have to imagine Dryads are head and shoulders above Royal Thorns, since they have the same ability to summon thorns plus putting low level stacks to sleep. In addition to that, you can heal and resurrect them and they are not vulnerable to fire. As far as how they'd fare in the dwarven lands, I think they would do fine. They float, so giants won't hurt them, and their hit points are low but not terrible. Every dryad lost is an inquisitor saved. ;)

[Saridu]

Dryads are fantastic, their sleep always hits against units level 1-3 not immune to mind spells. That won't help against cannoneers but will keep those pesky dwarves and miners under control. That aside the AI loves targeting summoned units esp poor thorns so pop out a stack to draw archer fire. Of course with Anga's ring they truly become a menace with their no retaliation.

By abusing the phantom sleep combo of cheese you can keep those massive dryad/lake faerie/dragonfly stacks in la la land while you clean up.

In Haas's dungeon I just snoozed my way through 10000 peasants!

Demonis is worth it for some good spell/arties and top units as long as that champion is guarding the portal :(
The lead up fights (there's usually two on the bridge) can be pretty tough...

[travelingoz]

Thanks for the tips guys!

Think i'm going to sneak back over to grab those dryads now! Also, saw a shop with 8 emerald dragons and leadership lets me have 4, so i might grab those too for their mana ability. So that leaves 3 slots. At this stage i'm inclined to go with evil beholders, inquisitors and Royal snakes but that leaves no room for shaman...

I got the telescopic sight in a fight last night in the mines and the beer barrel was at one of the shops early in the game so i have that set. I tried with the canoneers but they weren't doing serious damage so i guess i'll have to wait until my leadership gets higher. Also they didn't seem to affect the power of the beholders attack either but the beholder has "archer" as it's ability???


When i go back to elves land, i'll do some more sneaking and see if i can get some hunters. So if i can get those then maybe emerald dragons, dryads, hunters, Royals, inquistors, beholders and shaman and switch between those 7 depending on the fight.

Keep you posted.

[Dorkus]

dryads hp per leadership is actually the highest in the game.

also, if there are ever any difficult fights, you can always use the somewhat cheap invisibility tactic. it does somewhat ruin the fun of the game, though, as you can win basically every fight with a single dragon.

[sector24]

You can cast Precision on Beholders, so I suspect their ranged attack is considered an "arrow" of sorts. However, I have not been using my Evil Beholders at all and am doing quite well. I still only have Order 2 so I cannot resurrect them via the spell and have to rely on my Inquisitors. Perhaps if I bit the bullet and got Order 3 I'd find them more useful, but I have had no problems crushing enemy stacks all the way up to overpowering so I'm not going to mess with success. ;)

[Shd]

Thanks for the tips guys!

When i go back to elves land, i'll do some more sneaking and see if i can get some hunters. So if i can get those then maybe emerald dragons, dryads, hunters, Royals, inquistors, beholders and shaman and switch between those 7 depending on the fight.

Keep you posted.

I think better is change: emerald dragons=>Forest Spirits, Royals=> Lake fairies (both of them has "no retaliation") :)

[sector24]

Sneaking through Demonis was a ton of fun. I managed to pick up all the important spells in the game that I was missing except for Phantom. I have absolutely no magic crystals and a long line of spells to upgrade, but at least now I can calculate how many magic crystals I need to get the spells I want.

I also picked up some very nice artifacts in Demonis. I got a Dragon Tooth Necklace to replace my +4 Defense stone egg thingy. The necklace is +3 Attack, +2 Defense, and +1 INT, so a big upgrade there. I also bought the Sword of Equilibrium from Xeona's castle and completed Isshara's quest to get the whip. The +attack to Demonesses isn't very important to me, but the +1 Fire Damage is very interesting. If you are using low leadership units in large numbers that +1 damage ends up being very powerful. For instance, your peasant stack would do an additional 3000 damage per hit, or your sprites would do an additional 1800 damage, etc. Not very useful for Giants and Dragons though. ;)

I have leveled up the Reaper's Time Back skill so that I can turn back the clock on level 1-4 units for 25 rage. This has made fights so much easier. Of course everyone knows that you can put a powerful unit in harm's way and then restore 1.999 turns of losses with Time Back, but it also resets any charges you used in the last 1.999 turns. If my Inquisitors get hit, I make sure to use their Resurrection ability before I Time Back so that I can use it again later in the fight. I'm sure as more powerful charge based units come along this will be a handy trick.

Demonis has some interesting recruits available:

Demonesses, Demons, Scoffer Imps, Cerberi, Fire Spiders
Druids, Black Unicorns, Sprites
Necromancers, Black Knights

I was tempted to recruit some Druids, but I'm really stomping through the Dwarven lands with my current army so I'm not sure I should switch anyone out. At level 19, the Xeona castle fight with no losses was impossible so I'm going to clear out Mehgard and come back. I am just now beginning to learn the pain of switching out my weapons depending on what the enemy stack contains. If they have dwarves, I can't use the dwarven hammer, if they have humans/elves I can't use the sword of equilibrium, if they have undead use the sword of equilibrium, but if they also have humans then the silver rapier. Annoying. :mad: It'll only get worse when I have 3 weapon slots. ;)

[sector24]

I logged a lot of hours this weekend and the game has become a lot more fun. I finished Mehgard and went to the Elven Lands, where I promptly looted the entire continent blind before clearing one stack to get into the land of the dead and robbing that place blind as well.

I also replaced almost my entire army with new units:
Royal Thorns -> Dryads
Royal Snakes -> Lake Fairies
Giants -> Demonesses
Shamans -> Evil Beholders
Inquisitors -> I can't bear to let these guys go. :)

I don't have tolerance, but with Anga's Ruby the girls' morale is still high, plus I found the Elven Crown which is an additional +1 to elves, and the Marshal's Baton gives +1 morale to Humans. So the mixed army penalty is mostly negated.

I would love to replace the Evil Beholders with Sprites, but I searched the entire Elven Lands and they are not for sale. How disappointing, now my Power Puff Girl army is missing the blonde. But honestly I don't need them, this army is ridiculously powerful. Here's how most fights go against low level units:

Turn 1 - Send the Lake Fairies in to cripple/destroy the most dangerous stack. Dryads use Lullaby to knock out level 1-3 units. Inquisitors build rage, Evil Beholders mind control any level 4 or 5 unit, Demonesses don't have to do anything.

Turn 2 - Lake Fairies cripple/destroy another stack. Dryads summon a huge stack of thorns, then I cast Time Back on them to get the Lullaby and thorns back. I have all my units wait, and after the Lullaby wears off I deal as much damage as I can.

Turn 3 - Repeat of Turn 1
Turn 4 - Repeat of Turn 2, except if Reaper is on cooldown use Gift instead of Time Back.

With this style of fighting you can go ~20 rounds before you start to lose mana/rage. Lake Fairies generate 3x as much rage as Royal Snakes did, a good critical hit will generate 12 rage, and you get double rage for the last strike of the battle, so sometimes you get +6/+6 at the very end to carry you on to the next fight. In fact, against normal armies I end every fight will full rage and mana so you can just clear the whole continent in one go without ever stopping.

Against dragons the fight goes a little differently:

Turn 1 - Lake Fairies hit the most powerful non-magic resistant unit (usually Bone Dragons), the Dryads summon thorns, Inquisitors generate rage, Beholders mind control if possible and attack the dragons. Usually the dragons are all up in my business, and I usually lose a few units but more often than not they attack the thorn stack so it's important that you summon them in such a way that they can't breathe fire on you in a line. Demonesses can do 1 of two things here. They can deal heavy physical damage or use their infernal exchange to get a stack of dragons out of the backfield. Meanwhile the rest of the army pummels your Lake Fairies, although you get one counter attack which usually cripples/destroys whoever attacks you. Your turn 1 spell should be Magic Spring if you need mana, or Sacrifice on the Lake Fairies if you need units.

Turn 2 - Lake Fairies attack again. Black dragons attack your thorns again hopefully, if not you lose a few units, no big deal. Business as usual, but after all of the enemy units have taken their turn (you get 1 more counterattack with the Lake Fairies) use Time Back on your Lake Fairies. Make sure the hex they started on is not blocked, by the way. So basically your Lake Fairies get 2 massive attacks and 2 massive counter attacks (plus possibly a sacrifice) and they're back to full. Your demonesses plus thorns plus dryads should be able to take out whatever dragons are in your backfield. Resurrect as necessary and finish up the slower units.

Items:

The elven lands provided me with:
Dragon Slayer Shield (+2 Defense, +20% Fire Resistance)
Elven Crown (+1000 Leadership, +1 morale to Elves)
Some boots that upgrade to Spiked Boots (+2 Defense, +1 Attack)

I was also able to clear every item suppression battle with ease. So I also have:

Mantle of Wizardry
2 Archmage Staves
Great Druid's Staff
2 Marshal's Batons

My leadership at level 22 was 15,500.

I decided to take a detour and go back to dwarven territory to tie up some loose ends. First, I had finally touched all the obelisks so I got the map and traded it for the Mithril Shield. Second, I defeated my double twice. I used Dryads, Lake Fairies, Inquisitors, Royal Snakes, and I bought Miners because they were right there. Using the Lullaby - Time Back - Lullaby - Gift combo I defeated both armies without my double ever being able to cast a spell. Third and most importantly, I went to Demonis to win myself a worthy wife.

The castle Nexy fight is tough, and what made it worse was that I didn't have level 3 Magic Shackles. I was 5 crystals short, which made me seriously regret learning spells like Battle Cry which I have not used even a single time. Anyway, the fight consists of 3 stacks of Cerberi, one huge stack of Imps, 2 huge stacks of Demonesses, and a little stack of Knights and Catapults. I started the fight with an Underground Blades and a Geyser to thin out the stacks a bit, and sent my Lake Fairies to wear down the Demonesses. The Dryads could put the Cerberi and the Scoffer Imps to sleep, leaving just 2 stacks of Demonesses and the Knights. My Evil Beholders mind controlled the Knights and had them attack the Demonesses, nearly killing themselves in the counter attack.

The nice thing about Demoness vs. Demoness combat is that when they make a bad Infernal Exchange, you can undo it with your own. If the Demonesses swapped one of my units with a sleeping unit, I didn't care, but whenever one Demoness swapped the other into my back lines, I swapper her back out. That kept my Inquisitors and Beholders firing on the Demonesses and wearing them down.

Using the Lullaby - Time Back - Lullaby - Gift strategy I kept half of Xeona's army asleep for the entire battle, and whittled down the Demonesses and Xeona's Demon Portals. I took severe losses, but once I knocked out all the level 4 units, Xeona couldn't cast anymore and I could start producing insane amounts of thorns. I then used the Poison Cloud + Mana Spring trick plus Chargers to get my mana back. Because I had 15 INT, Mana Spring returned 30 mana and only cost 5. I think I spent 10 turns killing Xeona's army and then 20 turns resurrecting my losses. But I won and that's all that matters.

So I'm headed back to the Elven Lands now. I'm really hoping that one of the questgivers turned shops in the Elven Lands sells Sprites. That would make me so happy. But I'm not holding my breath. I also can't buy Hunters anywhere, but at least I got a friendly troop of 43 of them garrisoned so I could sacrifice them up if I needed to. I plan on clearing out the rest of the Elven Lands and then killing the undead.

[Spiralkill]

Hey Sector 24. Nice effort there will be interesting to know how u did in the end game where u are facing Bigger armies. I am tackling this game on IMP with a paladin and managed to lose only few units only on the most difficult of battles (or when my time get short and i have to wrap it up ;) ).I use a different creatures than what u use.
IMO shaman is one of the best supporting units and great board control, tnx to the totems totems i did the kraken and the spider with 0 loses (u can control where the little spiders or the Devilfishes spawn and the death totem zaps them) so he is always onboard. even though Knights are slow they are very strong and late game creatures can either shoot u or get to u on 1st round so their speed is not an issue. Demons and arch demons are great!!! especially when facing dragons. green dragons are also great creatures and help to generate mana. and last but not least the horsemen. In order to gen mana i use the mana spring spell (if i am lucky enough to encounter a no ret creature) or after withering the Mobs out I blind the last stack and i rage take (spirit of death) / Charges (Ice spirit) and that gives huge amount of mana but takes a lot of time.

Good luck on ur quest, will be interesting to know how u did :).

[sector24]

I wanted to keep the shamans, but they suffer -2 morale with the demonesses in my army. Inquisitors only suffer -1 due to the Marshall's Baton. Although to be honest neither unit is there for their damage dealing capabilities so I guess it doesn't matter too much. I guess I'm still used to HoMM where your unit could have a critical morale failure and lose their turn.

Looking back at my Demonis post, I noticed that I had found Sprites somewhere. So fresh off my siege of Castle Nexy I scoured the place and found that the human merchant there had 109 Sprites. Awesome.

On my lunch break I tackled the level 30 arena fight. I wasn't taking it too seriously; I started the fight with 0 rage when I normally would have gotten at least enough to start the fight with Underground Blades, and my 5th unit was 109/2000+ Sprites.

I used my opening spell to Hypnotize one of the Knights, and used my Demonesses to charm the other stack. This kept the dragons busy, and Lullaby knocked out the dragonflies. I did take quite a few losses to the dragons mostly because they can fly over everything so I couldn't physically block them like I do with most units. However, I took control of the fight and eventually there were just 25 Knights left. Because their speed is so slow, I had several methods of control here. First, I could use the Demoness to charm them, although a failed charm would kill the stack. Second, I could use the infernal swap to place them on the far side of the board. Third, I could just run away. This gave me plenty of time to not only resurrect my losses but also generate about 500 extra Sprites with Sacrifice. One of the things I didn't highlight in my last post was that you can cast Sacrifice two times before you use Time Back to double your efficiency. However, a full stack of Sprites is over 2000 and I only get 130 for each Sacrifice, so it's going to take several battles to reach capacity.

I just made level 23 and here are my stats:

16662 Leadership
19 Attack (Using only Isshara's Whip. Xeona has 2 weapon slots but I swap the weapons out depending on what I'm fighting)
30 Defense
17 INT

[Spiralkill]

I wanted to keep the shamans, but they suffer -2 morale with the demonesses in my army. Inquisitors only suffer -1 due to the Marshall's Baton. Although to be honest neither unit is there for their damage dealing capabilities so I guess it doesn't matter too much. I guess I'm still used to HoMM where your unit could have a critical morale failure and lose their turn.

Looking back at my Demonis post, I noticed that I had found Sprites somewhere. So fresh off my siege of Castle Nexy I scoured the place and found that the human merchant there had 109 Sprites. Awesome.

On my lunch break I tackled the level 30 arena fight. I wasn't taking it too seriously; I started the fight with 0 rage when I normally would have gotten at least enough to start the fight with Underground Blades, and my 5th unit was 109/2000+ Sprites.

I used my opening spell to Hypnotize one of the Knights, and used my Demonesses to charm the other stack. This kept the dragons busy, and Lullaby knocked out the dragonflies. I did take quite a few losses to the dragons mostly because they can fly over everything so I couldn't physically block them like I do with most units. However, I took control of the fight and eventually there were just 25 Knights left. Because their speed is so slow, I had several methods of control here. First, I could use the Demoness to charm them, although a failed charm would kill the stack. Second, I could use the infernal swap to place them on the far side of the board. Third, I could just run away. This gave me plenty of time to not only resurrect my losses but also generate about 500 extra Sprites with Sacrifice. One of the things I didn't highlight in my last post was that you can cast Sacrifice two times before you use Time Back to double your efficiency. However, a full stack of Sprites is over 2000 and I only get 130 for each Sacrifice, so it's going to take several battles to reach capacity.

I just made level 23 and here are my stats:

16662 Leadership
19 Attack (Using only Isshara's Whip. Xeona has 2 weapon slots but I swap the weapons out depending on what I'm fighting)
30 Defense
17 INT

well, I dont have the Hypnotize spell (didnt find it :( ) and the problem with charm is that it works on low leadership score. I have ~21k leadership at lvl 26 and since lvl 18 I am facing chalges of stong and above constently (It became very strong and above recently) so charm would not work on enemy stack. I use blind and trap (only if i know exactly where the enemy will move next or to block chock points) for control and laer on mana spring and resurection with ocational sacrifice if a dragon/archdemon dies. I am seriusly lacking in the spell department (for example i got fire rain at lvl 16 and armagedon/sheep at lvl 24 I still dont have Hypnotize) so i leared to do with what i have. though armagedon has it advantages I never use it since it damages ur units also and i try to keep my losses at 0.

[memanme]

So if you start the fight with 500 archers 900 fairies, you will finish the fight with 500 archers and 900 fairies? Is that what you mean by no loss? If so, wow? You should youtube a few fights.

[Zhuangzi]

Basically, sector24 controls the fight so as to minimise losses, and then uses Resurrection to replenish his losses by keeping a weak enemy alive.

[Spiralkill]

Basically, sector24 controls the fight so as to minimise losses, and then uses Resurrection to replenish his losses by keeping a weak enemy alive.

Yep that's the trick. u try to keep a no retaliation enemy or a shooter alive since then u don't kill him by accidental retaliation. in the mean while u use rage drain/recharge to get ur mana up (shooter option) or mana spring if it is no retaliation troop (u can control who it will attack by keeping only one stack close to it) if there is no shotter and no ret stack in the opp army (very rare case) u just keep a low lvl stack alive and u just blind them(high lvl stacks cost more mana to blind ;) ) or use slow and let them chase u around the board. upgrade/suppression combats are the easiest to control since u keep the a defensive tower alive and it will always resurrect a stack that stack will always attack the closest stack to it (gain mana via mana spring) and combined with rage drain/recharge trick u have unlimited amount of mana to resurrect everything u want back.

the only down point to this tactic is sometimes combats can take a long time.

[sector24]

I've been grinding methodically through the elven and undead lands and finally cleared all the stacks. The fights were fun, but there were a lot of them. Most battles were 2 or 3 turns, I did not have to cast any spells, and I always had full rage. So I opened every fight with an underground blades just because I could, wiped out 90% of the enemy army on turn 1, then on turn 2 used Time Back and killed the rest. Zerock hit level 30 halfway through the undead lands, which seems crazy. Since then I've been opening with Evil Shoal and just wasting the extra rage to try to level up Sleem. He's 29 now.

Finally I cleared everything except Karador. This fight probably should have been harder, but one result from committing mass genocide on everything I could find is that I was already level 27 before I got chance to siege the castle. So needless to say it was a lot easier than it should have been. The way to control this fight is to simply wipe out all of the units but leave the crystal alive. Karador will no longer be able to cast and as long as there is an available corpse on the map, the crystal will use Necro Call on it and then you can knock it down again. Even better, you can put Mana Spring on your summoned thorns and put a poison cloud over them, and the cloud won't move (unless the crystal raises a stack and you don't kill it right away). It's very easy to generate huge amounts of mana very quickly.

King Mark promoted me and my leadership is 22,000 now but I have been taking leadership on odd levels so I only have one more leadership bonus coming at level 29. I'm still a couple magic crystals short of Magic Shackles 3, so I'm not sure how I'm going to handle Demonis. Probably with heavy losses. If I had to do it again there are a lot spells I would not have scribed.

Isshara's Whip adds +1 fire damage that demons are resistant to and my silver rapiers are useless here, so there won't be any more ridiculous crits. But some of the stacks are only rated as "strong" and my army isn't even full strength since my promotion so I think I will be able to figure something out.

[jake21]

Confused by two things:
a) How do you recharge mana (what is rage/recharge?)
b) How do you wipe out 90% of the enemy with a single rage attack? When I use that attack it does approx 300 damage (hardly a dent to elven/undead stacks I faced).

[sector24]

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that my Underground Blades did that much damage. I leveled it up to 820-900 damage for 40 rage, and now that Zerock is level 30 he no longer gains experience. It's mostly used to thin the crowd a bit. It's very helpful against black dragons due to their magic resistance for example.

The fights are always the same, even the ones with black dragons. I send the Lake Fairies in to cripple/destroy the strongest stack. Demonesses either wait or swap an enemy stack with sprites. If they swap, then my sprites fly all the way back to my side of the board and kill the stack I just swapped (basically I use 2 of my stacks to kill 1 enemy stack safely). If not, the demonesses and sprites wait, and then at the end of the turn they do as much damage as they can. Dryads also wait and after all the enemies have moved they attack. Against undead, my Inquisitors can usually wipe out a stack as well. So counting it up, I cripple/destroy 4-6 stacks on turn 1:

Lake Fairies
Lake Fairies counter attack
Sprites
Inquisitors
Sometimes Demonesses
Sometimes Dryads

At the beginning of turn 2, all my units except the inquisitors go first again because of the initiative bonus of Anga's Ruby. So I can wipe out another 4 stacks before the enemy moves. And the Inquisitors can finish a 5th stack as long as they're faster than the last unit on the board. If for some reason I can't clear the board, then I have all my units wait in the backfield while the Lake Fairies suck up another turn's worth of damage, then use Time Back on them and attack at the end of turn 2 and the beginning of turn 3. None of the normal fights lasted past turn 3, except one against 23 Black Dragons where I had to do a couple turns of resurrecting.

[sector24]

I did not get to play a whole lot this weekend, I just cleared out Demonis. Ultrax was the hardest, I had to come up with some interesting strategies to minimize losses there and the Ultrax battle map was not very helpful. Basically you want to deploy your units in such a way that the enemy can never hit two of them at the same time. That means if you have adjacent units you need to line them up against a wall or obstacle. Red Dragons are the worst, they can breath fire in a line all the way across the screen so you have to watch out for that. An girl-powah army is not ideal for dragons, but the demonesses are strong enough to kill 4-5 black dragons per turn. Also, there is usually 1 stack that can be controlled to resurrect and regain mana. I don't think any of the fights went past 7 or 8 rounds though.

Demonis itself was easier than I thought it would be. I still don't have Magic Shackles 3, so I was worried about all sorts of Demoness switching and imp fireballs. However this turned out not to be an issue. Dryads won the day here, their lullaby knocks out imps and cerberi (plus random additional units such as inquisitors and fireflies) and that just leaves you with demons, archdemons, and demonesses. You have to treat archdemons like dragons, you simply can't stop them from hitting your weakest unit. Demonesses will swap units with you, but most of the time they swap a melee attack sprite/fairy with a unit that you have already put to sleep so there's no danger there. Large stacks of demons are the most dangerous, but well placed Stone Walls and Ice Thorns can contain them until your dryads summon some thorn stacks.

The only change in strategy here is that archdemons love killing inquisitors. So often instead of using time back on my lake fairies, I would use the Inquisitor's resurrection skill on turn 2 and then cast Time Back on them. This serves the double purpose or restoring the Inquisitors to full strength and getting a free resurrect out of the deal.

The castle Magni battle was interesting but again not as hard as I thought it would be. There are too many Demoness stacks to control the fight, so I decided on a different tactic. My opening rage move was to cast Ice Thorns to block myself in. Since the ice surrounds 3 squares not only did I get 3 shards adjacent to my units, but another 3 shards blocking the top of the drawbridge. Basically a double wall for the price of 1 rage skill.

All of my units waited except for my Dryads who used Lullaby, and the enemy archdemons spent their turns knocking down the ice thorns instead of hitting me. The black dragon got through to my inquisitors but that's what Time Back is for, and then the 3 Demonesses did their swapping. However, this was negated by the fact that everyone they swapped in was asleep, and they swapped out my sprites and Demonesses so that they were no longer blocked in the backfield (and could still take action on turn 1). If one stack of Demonesses swapped in another stack of Demonesses to attack, I could still swap them out with my own, but I didn't have to. Once all the opponents had moved I wiped out the Black Dragons with my Lake Fairies, and 2 stacks of Demonesses with my Sprites and Demonesses.

Turn 2 I wiped out the Archdemons with my Lake Fairies, and some of the sleeping stacks. The last stack of Demonesses attacked me but killed themselves in the counter attack. I used the Inquisitor's resurrect and then used Time Back on them, and I had resurrected everyone. Baal could no longer cast because all his units were asleep, and I could finish the battle at my leisure.

[Crocodil]

I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double :) You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

there is an item that give u 5 mana for 5 rage + inquisitors = unlimited mana
item + inquisitors + gift 2 = unlimited resurrect units lvl 5
green dragon + phantom 3 = 15-40 mana

that should be enough mana

[sector24]

I cleared Haas' Labyrinth last night. I should have written down the names of the dragons and how I beat them, but honestly the fights were business as usual even though the armies listed as overpowered and impossible. I'm still using the all-girl + inquisitor pimp army. The one fight that was troublesome was the one in which the enemy had all level 4 and 5 units. I think it was Green Dragons, Archmages, and Cyclopes. The hero also had 190 mana.

Without any form of crowd control, I couldn't stop the hero from casting Geyser every round. I just gave up on resurrection until he was tapped out, but at that point I had to resurrect 20% of my army without him accidentally killing himself. I left 2 archmages alive and surrounded them with summoned thorns, but occasionally he would attack my inquisitors or sprites. Very annoying.

I did develop 2 new mini-strategies that helped:

1) I put 7 stacks of summoned thorns in a hex and cast fire rain on them. Some of them are afflicted with burning, and I cast Magic Spring on those as a way to get my mana back. It's just barely efficient, but getting 8 mana every 4 turns through Charger was just too time consuming.

2) Putting Glot's Armor on a unit that you cast Time Back on. If a spell like Geyser takes down Glot's Armor, you can use Time Back to restore the previous HP of Glot's Armor. Also very useful for avoiding incidental archer damage from 2 Archmages.

The other dragon that was mildly troublesome was the one with 9 million ogres and 3 million giants. One of the ogre stacks hit my lake fairies so hard that 2300 of them died. However, giants = unlimited mana so it was easier to resurrect. (I wrote about how awesome Giants are in a previous post in this thread)

I hit level 29 in the Labyrinth, and now I'm in Murock where the battles are easy again. Shamans are dangerous only because you can't control who they hit with the dancing axes, but thankfully 90% of the time they choose the Inquisitors or summoned thorns. Most orcs can be put to sleep with Dryads, and the odd stack can be charmed with demonesses. My biggest issue is my elven crown rebelling at inopportune times. I am -1400 leadership on all my stacks because of this, although I'm still able to plow through everything pretty easily. When I get access to a castle I can begin to build up my stacks again. I wish you could suppress an item when the morale reaches "bad" instead of having to wait for "terrible".

[Zhuangzi]

Almost done, sector. :) This has been interesting to read. Out of interest, how many hours of play do you think this has taken? I think you've probably played more than the standard 60 or so hours in pursuing this strategy, right?

[sector24]

I imagine I did play more than 60 hours. The first post is October 18th, and I probably played ~4 hours a day with the occasional breaks.

So I beat the game this evening. I'm not sure what to say about the last fight. Your tactical position ensures that the losses will be atrocious, so it was really just a grind to survive the Armageddons and knock the enemy down to a single giant while you use Magic Spring to regain mana. I used the girl power army, but it was definitely less than ideal. Sprites are vulnerable to fire and there was no need to bring Dryads with nothing to Lullaby. Still it was good enough to win and that's all that matters.

You can see my attachments for the score. I think 19 days is pretty good considering the no losses challenge. I could definitely have shaved off 2 days for an unnecessary trip from Ellinia to Darion, and if I skipped Anga's Ruby that would be another 2 days. I could definitely see how players could win in 13-14 days. Ironically my Zerock and Sleem were level 30, but my other two were not. I used Time Back exclusively, I never used Soul Drain which is the big XP gainer. Other than that no surprises in my combat statistics. My highest critical hit for the game was 52,788. I updated my signature to reflect the awesome. ;)

I hope you guys enjoyed reading, I must say that this challenge is definitely doable on impossible, but probably not with the warrior unless you find Resurrection very early. I imagine that you'd have to go to the Freedom Isles immediately (like around level 6 or 7) and see if you could buy it from a merchant there or find it in a scroll bag. If you could find Resurrect though, it would be the same as doing it as a Paladin.

I don't plan on another crazy challenge, but if I was going to try one, it'd be a no recruitment challenge. Playing as a Mage on normal/hard, the only restriction is that you cannot buy units. You would have to rely on purchasing items such as eggs, diplomacy, necromancy, and friendly/graveyard units. Unfortunately people report having problems with the diplomacy skill so it might not work out like I imagine it in my head. :-P

[pantasd]

congrats
it was nice reading :p
and learned some things that helped my game

[ThyrsaM]

very nice indeed. A really good read and a great accomplishment.

[Shd]

Grats, Sector24! Nice job (and surprisingly nice score.) :)

[travelingoz]

hey sector24,
awesome job! a truly awesome effort!

If you were to do it again, i think a better challenge would be to complete paladin on impossible with the highest amount of cash in hand. The tricky part should be no transfer of troops between areas. i.e. after you finish darion, you have to recruit your new army from only what's available in the islands. And so on.

What your proposing now i think is too dependant on the availability of sacrifce.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

I can't understand how some of you are doing it so easily on impossible.. Is there a "beating the game on impossible" without cheating thread?

[sector24]

shd said that he beat the game with a mage on impossible, but I don't think he blogged about it like I did. I'm sure the Paladin and Mage can be done with no losses on impossible, and the warrior too if you don't mind starting over if you can't find a resurrection scroll.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

shd said that he beat the game with a mage on impossible, but I don't think he blogged about it like I did. I'm sure the Paladin and Mage can be done with no losses on impossible, and the warrior too if you don't mind starting over if you can't find a resurrection scroll.

So you're saying it can be done? To beat the game on impossible with no losses?

[TemjinGold]

I can't understand how some of you are doing it so easily on impossible.. Is there a "beating the game on impossible" without cheating thread?

And how do you know anyone is cheating? Just because YOU can't accomplish the same? I'm all for playing fair and I do but just because you can't fathom how it's done doesn't automatically make people cheaters.

[Zhuangzi]

I imagine I did play more than 60 hours. The first post is October 18th, and I probably played ~4 hours a day with the occasional breaks.

So I beat the game this evening. I'm not sure what to say about the last fight. Your tactical position ensures that the losses will be atrocious, so it was really just a grind to survive the Armageddons and knock the enemy down to a single giant while you use Magic Spring to regain mana. I used the girl power army, but it was definitely less than ideal. Sprites are vulnerable to fire and there was no need to bring Dryads with nothing to Lullaby. Still it was good enough to win and that's all that matters.

You can see my attachments for the score. I think 19 days is pretty good considering the no losses challenge. I could definitely have shaved off 2 days for an unnecessary trip from Ellinia to Darion, and if I skipped Anga's Ruby that would be another 2 days. I could definitely see how players could win in 13-14 days. Ironically my Zerock and Sleem were level 30, but my other two were not. I used Time Back exclusively, I never used Soul Drain which is the big XP gainer. Other than that no surprises in my combat statistics. My highest critical hit for the game was 52,788. I updated my signature to reflect the awesome. ;)

I hope you guys enjoyed reading, I must say that this challenge is definitely doable on impossible, but probably not with the warrior unless you find Resurrection very early. I imagine that you'd have to go to the Freedom Isles immediately (like around level 6 or 7) and see if you could buy it from a merchant there or find it in a scroll bag. If you could find Resurrect though, it would be the same as doing it as a Paladin.

I don't plan on another crazy challenge, but if I was going to try one, it'd be a no recruitment challenge. Playing as a Mage on normal/hard, the only restriction is that you cannot buy units. You would have to rely on purchasing items such as eggs, diplomacy, necromancy, and friendly/graveyard units. Unfortunately people report having problems with the diplomacy skill so it might not work out like I imagine it in my head. :-P

What, you don't get experience for killing things with soul drain? :eek: This is why I never hit level 30, always 29. :-x

[sector24]

Sorry, I meant Reaper's XP not your character's XP. From what I understand, your character gets experience based strictly on the number of units you wipe out regardless of how you do it. But the spirits of rage gain xp based on the skills they use AND who they use it on and several other factors. So it's very easy to level Zerock with Underground Blades, especially if you're hitting level 5 units. Reaper is also easy to level if you use Soul Drain on say Black Dragons or Black Hole on level 5 units.

My Reaper didn't hit level 30 because I used Time Back 95% of the time, and Rage Drain the other 5%. ;)

[jake21]

I never hit level 30 until I started taking the paladin skills to gain extra exp. Both games I took the skill I hit level 30 (one was mage on hard the other was paladin on hard). I forget what the skill is called but with the mage game I only took the first two levels of that skill and I took them very early. The paladin game I had extra mind runes so I took that skill all three level and the second skill that gives you extra exp against undead.


What, you don't get experience for killing things with soul drain? :eek: This is why I never hit level 30, always 29. :-x

[jake21]

I'm curious sector - did you reload frequently to avoid losses ? Also i've not quite understood how thorns are used to gain mana. I think I understand how griffen are used with magic spring since they retaliate with every hit (I guess certain demons can also be used this way) but griffens can be a bit difficult to find early in the game.

I've played all three classes on hard and while it was not too difficult I'm not sure I want to play another game on impossible (or any other level :) ) for a while. While I think I can win on warrior on impossible I'm not sure it is worth the hassle - the step from hard to impossible doesn't seem too large.

[sector24]

On certain fights I did have to reload if I put myself in a position where I accidentally let the last guy attack me and kill himself. But they were all avoidable situations that occurred just because I wasn't paying enough attention or made a mistake. Occasionally I would try out a new unit to see how they worked with my army and if I didn't like them I'd reload. But more often then not, if I got some of my units killed due to my own poor judgement I'd just have to take a couple extra turns at the end of the battle to generate more mana. Even the battle where I lost 2300 fairies in one hit to a stack of ogres, I didn't reload.

I think there's a gap between the people who understand how to milk the combat system for unlimited rage and mana, and those who don't quite get it, which has caused some bickering on the forum. I tried to explain how I did things as best I could, but I'll give another example:

In the Castle Nexy fight to win the heart of the lovely Xeona, I took severe losses and had to generate a lot of mana and rage to replenish my forces. I used summoned thorn stacks to do this, just like I did in many of the regular fights. By the time I had run Xeona out of mana, there was just a single stack of 120 cerberi that I kept alive. There were tons of corpses on the field, so I kept the cerberi asleep with Lullaby long enough for my summoned thorn stacks to turn all the corpses into other stacks. It would not be uncommon in some fights to have 20 stacks of thorns making a living wall 3 hexes deep between my units and the last stack.

120 cerberi is a frightening stack, and they could kill any of my thorn stacks in a single hit and I wouldn't retaliate. But they could only kill 1 per turn so there is literally no danger at this point. You have all the time in the world to generate the mana and rage that you need. So how do you do that?

Generating Rage:
The most obvious way is to use the Inquisitor's Holy Anger ability. The second and slightly less obvious way is to receive damage. You'll get a couple points of rage each turn as the cerberi chew you up, and you can also damage your own units to generate rage. I'll elaborate a little more in a second.

Generating Mana:
Chargers converts rage to mana, but it's not always efficient unless you're lucky with level ups. The primary method of generating mana is the Magic Spring spell. At level 3, it costs 5 mana and lasts 5 rounds (potentially you can recover 25 mana for 5). If you have 15+ INT the duration is extended by 1, so you can recover 30 mana for your investment of 5.

Putting it all together, the best way to generate massive amounts of both rage and mana is with poison cloud. At the end of the turn, cast Magic Spring on one of your thorn stacks adjacent to the cerberi. At the beginning of the next turn, cast Magic Spring on another stack adjacent to the cerberi. Cast Poison Cloud on the cerberi so that it hits both your Magic Springed (Sprung) thorns. There are 120 cerberi, so the cloud won't kill them, but you'll gain 10 mana every time you command a unit to "wait" 6 times in a row. Essentially, for a 10 mana investment, you'll have 60 mana at the end of that turn.

Additionally, every time you "wait" the poison cloud does enough damage to generate 1 rage. Granted, this is not a guarantee. If you're playing on impossible you probably won't get the +1 rage because rage generation is reduced. Also, as the fight wears on the rage generation is reduced by 50%, then 75% and finally it is set to 0 after turn 20. But you really don't need all that much rage. Just enough to Time Back every 2 or 3 turns, and Poison Cloud every 4 or 5 turns.

To speed up the process, every time Reaper is available, have your Inquisitors use their resurrection on someone, and then cast Time Back on them.

So assuming everything is available to be used, you start with:

Loads of thorns
10 mana
10 rage

And two turns later you have:

Still loads of thorns
60 mana
20 rage
1 free res

Now just repeat that as often as necessary to replenish your troops and then finish off the cerberi. This is just one example of how to generate the mana and rage you need for a no losses challenge or just to minimize downtime between fights.

[Zhuangzi]

This is the best explanation of how you do it - cheers. I think shd was on about some exploit using Black Dragons and Invisibility as a way to have zero losses, but I forget what he said. That might have used Poison Cloud too.

For me, there are so many fights in the game (500-600) that I generally wanted them over as quickly as possible. I realise now that if I had been more efficient in the fights I could have completed the game quicker, but no matter. The great thing about this game is that about two months after the release, there are dozens of different strategies to use. It's such a diverse game. :cool:

[kennec]

gr8 post sector

[Gatts]

----

I've cleared about half of Freedom Islands now, the Orc Embassy looks like it's going to be very tough to beat. I have replaced my Archmages with Beholders and found 4 more Royal Thorns. No change in strategy yet.

Fighting orcs is easy when you get vamps -> much easier to make 0-loss tactics. They may be tough - but have plenty of life to be sucked out. (much more than they deal damage :) )

[Gatts]

To speed up the process, every time Reaper is available, have your Inquisitors use their resurrection on someone, and then cast Time Back on them.

I wonder - is not "time back" working only fo the actual round?
From my usage of time back - I understood that it can't be used on "ressurect" my stack that was damaged more than 2 turns behind.

Once I even god message (Your unit did not move this turn - it can't be moved back in time) on my dragons, who were killed (partially) previous turn.

So I wonder if you really can use "time back" rage ability to ressurect units x turns after the cerberus tactics (as I understand - cerbers are luled, you first cast magic spring, poison cloud, another turns you repeat this - so at least one whole turn passed from your last lost normal units... )
Or how should I understand it?

[sector24]

Have your Inquisitors use Resurrection, and then cast Time Back on the Inquisitors. Sorry for the confusion.

Time Back will restore a unit to its former state back 1 turn. So if you use at the very end of the current turn it reverts back 1.99999 turns but never a full 2 turns.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Yeah, the turtle is no big deal, I think I could beat him 1 Archmage and 2 Griffins if necessary. :)

Turn 1, move your Griffins forward 4 squares, separate, then move the new group into melee range and defend. Cast Stoneskin on the Griffins. Archmage puts Magic Shield on the Griffins. Turtle deals about 40 damage and pushes them back 1 square.

Turn 2, move your Stoneskin Griffins back into melee range and defend. Cast Magic Spring on the Griffins. Turtle deals about 25-30 damage and pushes them back one square. You gain 5 mana.

Turn 3, move your Griffins back into melee and defend. Cast Healing on them. Turtle deals about 25-30 damage and pushes them back one square. You gain 5 mana.

Repeat turns 1 - 3 until the turtle is dead.

----

I've cleared about half of Freedom Islands now, the Orc Embassy looks like it's going to be very tough to beat. I have replaced my Archmages with Beholders and found 4 more Royal Thorns. No change in strategy yet.

In my game the turtle has 4000 health I have

2 Griffins
4 inquisitors
2 mages
2 horseman
3 polar bears

i'm a mage playing on impossible.

Maybe defending the horseman isn't the problem. Killing the turtle is though with 4000 health! I'll try it by placing my unit in front of it's foot.

[Handel]

About needing weak enemies around the place, I had this problem too because I tend to clear everything out methodically. I need easy fights to use Sacrifice on Peasants to replenish my expensive units. Then I realised that I habitually leave the neutral Griffins on Griffin Island in Arlania alive. But you can turn them hostile by stealing their egg from beneath them. That's a pretty low thing to do, but if need an easy fight... ;)

Explain me please the trick with those easy fights? How you can replenish depleted expensive units?

[Gatts]

Explain me please the trick with those easy fights? How you can replenish depleted expensive units?

Do you know Sacrifice Spell?
It kills x units of one of your stacks (gains x HP capped by your INT / sacrifice level in conjustion with the HP of killed units)
then you select other of your other four stacks (not the same :) ) - and it will gain the HPs from the damaged stack and use it to replenish / revive / or add new units. If the second stack did not receive any damage in the easy fignt - you will end the fight with more units than you started it. This comes quite hande if you found only limited number of very good units (like archdemons... ) but you can have more in your army than they are selling... by using sacrifice you can pull them on your max leadership level.

[ywhtptgt]

More good luck, I found 10 cyclopes at the castle in Creiston Mines, so I was able to finish up that stupid quest for the rare animals and replace my royal thorns against fire based enemies. I think it's amusing that it costs 5000g to buy a cyclops and the reward is 4000g. :rolleyes:

The dwarven lands are severely underwhelming after cutting my teeth against pirates. Most fights are "match" or "slightly weaker" which I guess makes sense because not every player would take the time to kill every single army they came across and do every single quest. So it seems I'm overleveled for this area.

I have used the lull to level up Lina, I summon her at least once every fight, although I think I've had some back luck on the actual level up bonuses. Twice, I've had the option to increase either the ice ball's offensive or defensive stats. So basically my level up had to be applied to the ice ball no matter what, and the rage cost went up. It costs 30 rage now which is too expensive for what it does in my opinion. Thankfully Gizmo is still only 12, and I can always use chargers which basically trades 6 rage for 4 mana.

The boss in laboratory 44 was also very easy. I used my royal thorns to summon thorn stacks, which summoned more thorn stacks, and I used my shamans to drop totems on the outside hexes, until I had filled the entire battlefield. If the boss decided to summon allies but there aren't enough hexes open, it just skips its turn. So basically royal thorns = free pass on this fight, and the 6600xp puts me just short of level 17.

I think this fight needs a boost. At a minimum, if the summon allies action isn't possible the boss should attack, but I think possibly the boss needs a 3rd type of attack to prevent the royal thorns exploit. Perhaps spitting webs on everyone causing mass slow (so it's harder to raise all the thorn stacks), or spitting poison on everything causing a 3-round poison debuff. I don't know, something. I mean at least the Kraken could hit multiple stacks each turn so it was pretty much impossible to fill the screen with thorns. This boss was not challenging at all.

The spider boss is easy to kill no matter what... By the time you reach the dwarves, killing stacks of 100+ spiders without magic should be easy enough. The boss does pretty much nothing unless you stand next to it.

[Keneth]

Next to the turtle, the spider fight is probably one of the easiest in the game. Another strategy is just to attack it with one or two stacks of ranged/no retal troops and let the other take care of spiders. Since you kill the spiders every turn, it's gonna try summoning new ones every time and meanwhile you're just pounding and nuking it, it falls quickly on any difficulty.

[Gina S.]

I am very impressed and read your strategies with fascination! I'll be using some of them, I'm sure :)

You're much more patient than I am so I know I could never do this, but I admire someone who us undertaking it. Good luck!

[Harush]

The way I beat the spider is to dump Demon Gate and thorns in every open square. You can surround your ranged guys with expendables way before the spider armies get too tough.

[Hento]

It is not possible to have no losses because of initial dragon quest.

[YENKO]

It is not possible to have no losses because of initial dragon quest.

Bah, ignore the quest/test and go straight to the King's castle! ;)
Never argue with the pro's, absorb their knowledge instead :D

[Gatts]

It is not possible to have no losses because of initial dragon quest.

You are right - but that is not reason enough not to have 0-loses

Guys who finished the game on impossible all said that they either captured the doll avoiding the dragon fight - or as Yenko said - went out without the training... (what is not advised as in the training you can get some exp, money ...not much but on impossible everyting counts)

[Keneth]

Yup, there's no need to fight the dragon but it is true that you can't fight the dragon and have 0 losses.

[Gatts]

Sadly it is really impossible to beat the dragon wo loses, and here is why I believe why:

Difficulty: Impossible
Race: Paladin
You may have HEALING spell - but it heals 55 HP only
Ressurection can't be placed in spellbok, but you can't use the scroll anyway - as it does not work on knight / horseman
You can't really buff your hero - as you have only 2/4/2 runes (might/mind/magic)
even if you play "hit me first" strategy -> you could with max luck win wo loses, but you would lose ressurection scroll -> so all ohter battles would not work for ya :)

"hit me first strategy" -> keep only one weak stack -> i.e. 5 peasants - dragon will wait if your army is far away enough - move only peasant one step forward and dragon will use his "drag and hit" skill on peasant -> try to finish the dragon using heal spell and horsemen and knights (still it is only question of luck luck luck each hit and there is huge probability that either horseman or knight will die, but reload can do it) - befor you land last hit, you don't need heal - use only ressurection on peasants...

but even with many many reloads - you will lose the scroll... so where is the win?

[taltamir]

Sadly it is really impossible to beat the dragon wo loses, and here is why I believe why:

Difficulty: Impossible
Race: Paladin
You may have HEALING spell - but it heals 55 HP only
Ressurection can't be placed in spellbok, but you can't use the scroll anyway - as it does not work on knight / horseman
You can't really buff your hero - as you have only 2/4/2 runes (might/mind/magic)
even if you play "hit me first" strategy -> you could with max luck win wo loses, but you would lose ressurection scroll -> so all ohter battles would not work for ya :)

"hit me first strategy" -> keep only one weak stack -> i.e. 5 peasants - dragon will wait if your army is far away enough - move only peasant one step forward and dragon will use his "drag and hit" skill on peasant -> try to finish the dragon using heal spell and horsemen and knights (still it is only question of luck luck luck each hit and there is huge probability that either horseman or knight will die, but reload can do it) - befor you land last hit, you don't need heal - use only ressurection on peasants...

but even with many many reloads - you will lose the scroll... so where is the win?

maybe with extreme luck and some reloads you would find one available for sale early on, early enough for you to fight and kill and earn the needed money to buy it. But that would be a truly insane challenge just to kill the dragon.
Question then, this is about finishing the game, not killing all enemy stacks.
So, tell me sector24. did you kill all roaming stacks and finish / fail all quests? or did you choose not to do some of them?

[sector24]

I killed every stack possible except the Green Dragon in the starting area, and a couple stacks of Giants in the Underground Sea that I accidentally set to neutral when I made peace with the Dwarves.

I did all the quests I could find, I think the screenshot I posted said I completed 101. I definitely didn't go back to the Freedom Islands to recapture the embassy, so if that's a quest then I missed it.

[Gatts]

I killed every stack possible except the Green Dragon in the starting area, and a couple stacks of Giants in the Underground Sea that I accidentally set to neutral when I made peace with the Dwarves.

I did all the quests I could find, I think the screenshot I posted said I completed 101. I definitely didn't go back to the Freedom Islands to recapture the embassy, so if that's a quest then I missed it.

Don't worry about the underground sea area - these dwarven units would not attack you anyway... I tested it in all versions (oldest 16b7) and they never attacked me (test was based on going directly in the undeground sea w/o any quest in dwarven lands)

[YENKO]

Same here: I went to the under.sea way way before signing the peace with the Dwarven King, and the giants were 'neutral' to me.
At one time, I went back to the Orc Embassy and recaptured it. The only benefit was that now I can recruit goblins, shamans, catapults AND Orc Veterans....
Funny thing was that i went to the Embassy because i needed to recap my stack of Shamans, I had no idea of the forthcoming battle. Now, that was one helluva nasty surprise! Bravo, Katauri! :)

[sector24]

Thanks for the info guys!

[YENKO]

Thanks for the info guys!

Thank YOU for this thread!
I've just re-read this thread from the beginning, and realized that I missed many good tips on my first read, because I was much more green than I am now. I 'discovered' that I can cast Sacrifice on one my stack, then boost another stack, cast time back and voila, zero losses. But, in doing so, I missed the point: you need rage for time back AND mana for Sacrifice = fail.
A couple (dozen) posts ago you clearly explained a much better and efficient method to achieve the same goal for those that employ Inquisitors (like I do): Inquisitors: Resurrect, Reaper: Time Back. Done. Cost? Rage only, which I usually have tons anyway, because of Inquisitors (holy anger) and Lina's Chargers (6 mana+12 rage for 20 rage at the moment).
Thanks again for the tip ;)

[worm_wood]

The only reason I signed up for this board is to give props for a great thread.

Thanks for the posts sector24

Cheers,

[BB Shockwave]

I've done that too. But later on it is impossible to do it. So far you are managing to kill almost everything fast enough but later on you will be unable to do it. You won't have enough mana and intellect to resurrect everyone. Also you can't beat your Future Double :) You can barely beat him without losing your whole army.

The giant turtle is the easiest boss - I killed him in like, two rounds. Without losses, and I didn't even have Resurrect at the time...

basically my tactic with him - and later the giant spider too - is to attack him only with troops who have "no retaliation" ability, or with cloned stacks.

For the turtle, my troops were: Royal Snakes, Griffins, Alchemists, Inquisitors, Evil Beholders. I just went straight for the Turtle with the Snakes, then cast Phantom Image on my snakes. All the others attacked the turtle afterwards, except the griffins. Next round I hit him again with everyone and used the Inquisitors to resurrects the few snakes that died.

For the Spider, (I had almost the same troops but the last 3 were replaced by Giants, Evil Beholders and Shamans) I always killed off all the spawned spiders, while my Snakes, cloned snakes and cloned Giants were hitting the Spider. That way, he attacked me directly only twice during the whole battle, otherwise he just kept summoning the useless spiders. Even the Shamen could easily take out one stack of those without fear of retaliation. I have split my Griffins to help in the cleanup.

[Ryder]

I finally completed my own no loss Paladin on impossible game. I have a screenshot there of my longest battle (except the final battle), which went for 209 rounds. The only way I could get spell points was to use chargers, so I was getting 4 spell points every 5 rounds. Then on some occassions I had to summon the ice ball to put in front of the 2 Alchemists that were left. The worst thing was is that I had to do the battle twice as the game crashed before I got to save it after the first time. The final battle went for about 350 turns, I forgot to take a screenshot in my haste to save it incase it crashed. It took about 4 hours to finish that fight.

The battle arena goes a bit crazy after 100 odd rounds, you'll see that some hexagons are missing for one. The biggest pain of all is that when Lina summons the chargers and you cant see where they are, so you have to go to every hexagon on the arena to hope you run into it.

Finding out that you can use Time Back on killed units after as many rounds as you wanted was a lifesaver. I lost my Elves in about round 3 of the final battle and didnt resurrect them until about round 100. The same with my Inquisitors, they were down to about 12 left at the end of round two so I cast time back on them and then I lost them the very next round, I then got them all back about 10 rounds later.

I love pain mirror. That is all.

[Metathron]

Yeah, the turtle is no big deal, I think I could beat him 1 Archmage and 2 Griffins if necessary. :)

Turn 1, move your Griffins forward 4 squares, separate, then move the new group into melee range and defend. Cast Stoneskin on the Griffins. Archmage puts Magic Shield on the Griffins. Turtle deals about 40 damage and pushes them back 1 square.

Turn 2, move your Stoneskin Griffins back into melee range and defend. Cast Magic Spring on the Griffins. Turtle deals about 25-30 damage and pushes them back one square. You gain 5 mana.

Turn 3, move your Griffins back into melee and defend. Cast Healing on them. Turtle deals about 25-30 damage and pushes them back one square. You gain 5 mana.

Repeat turns 1 - 3 until the turtle is dead.


This will seem like a silly question, but just how does the turtle die using this strategy? I see no damage being dealt to it? :confused:

[Ryder]

This will seem like a silly question, but just how does the turtle die using this strategy? I see no damage being dealt to it? :confused:
It confused crap out of me too, plus it also didnt work for me as the Turtle kept jumping.

I ended up using Knights from the tent in Greenwort and two stacks of Archmages, one of one and the other of four. I used their teleport ability to get the Knights to the turtle quickly, and attacked with the stack of four while the single one cast shield on the Knights. I used stoneskin and heal aswell.

[Vilk]

I did all the quests I could find, I think the screenshot I posted said I completed 101. I definitely didn't go back to the Freedom Islands to recapture the embassy, so if that's a quest then I missed it.

Is there a list of quests somewhere? I have also a "problem" of a missing quest and that's not the embassy.

Well I suppose I could reload and browse to have the answer of quest not done the few time I finished the game but that's tedious. My bet is I just forget do one because of reload and believing to have done something not anymore done because of a reload.

[Razorflame]

check out gamebanshee on the walktrough and see if u have missed a quest:)
easiest way ^^

[Elwin]

Embassy doesn;t count as a quest so thats not it for sure

[Vilk]

Gamebanshee doesn't show clearly what count a quest and what doesn't, there's something like 105 quests listed (I count!). That's a good base to get a full list but that's not the full list. But there's the Calinda last save, I suppose look at the quest book gives the answer.

[Calinda]

Remember that there are some mutually exclusive quests too. And in my save I didnt finish Anga's ruby quest cause it would require 1 more day to finish.

[Vilk]

Ok then the gamebanshee site is perhaps not that wrong. One problem is that some quests aren't count as quest in the final score. But perhaps that's only quests that aren't recorded in the quest book. The site provides probably also the quest that aren't in the book.

For my cases I think the missing quest was just the second viking quest that need to finish in battle to succeed. But clearly I had a second missing quest but not failed as I always did the ruby quest.

[Razorflame]

maybe u let the dwarf die :>
(the one that u have to move to his factory)

[Vilk]

I don't think it's this one.