Russian version - first impressions

[Zhuangzi]

These comments by a guy called Dark Individual are from the rpgcodex forum. I thought I'd re-post them here because he has some interesting things to say about AP:

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This is a great expansion. Not only are there new creatures, many of the old ones have been given a bunch of abilities. For example, the Knight is now a Paladin who can resurrect/heal himself and others and also reload a creature's action points. Plus he is holy, steel armor etc. The swordsman can evade attacks and has a special attack. The appearance has been changed accordingly with, for example, the Marauder having daggers.

The little dragon is drawn and animated very nicely.

This is all I got because my Russian needs practicing. The beginning has much more dialog, more NPCs and overall content that the The Legend. The story is a lot stronger with several mysteries you have to uncover and some interesting concepts. For example, the Princess leaves Endoria in a state of timelessness with the help of that Temple Guard.

There's a lot of little differences that mostly balance out the classes and make them more interesting. There's not many completely new skills but the existing ones have been tweaked and rearranged. For example, the fighter has skills that directly give to attack, defense or a mix, instead of something vague like getting additional attack when killing a troop. Mages can now can cast 3 or 2 spells consecutively if they are 7 mana or less.

The dragon is very well animated and drawn. You can pick between several and they give different skills and bonuses. The starting skills are, unlike the Spirit of Rage, ALL useful. I have 3 right now: direct damage that pushes the target, the dragon can find additional chests that your troops can pick up, and the dragon can create a wall that blocks enemies. I predict that I will use all of them and it won't end up with just spamming Soul Drain.

There are many new creatures and existing creatures have been tweaked. Some of them have new abilities, some have a changed appearance and some have different stats from The Legend.

Armored Princess is harder than the Legend. You start off with a lot less Leadership. Almost all enemies are stronger than you and many impossible. Right now I can only recruit 4 priests, for example, and there are higher tier creatures everywhere.

The setting is, as I've said, much better. It's more serious, DARK and EPIC, and I'm not joking. Right off the bat you've tasked with something important and you have several things to discover. None of the "find the thieves and the tokens they stole" bullshit.

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Wow, there's three things I really like about the above comments:

1. More balanced dragon abilities (I agree that Soul Drain was overpowered)

2. Harder than KB:TL - even on impossible, KB:TL is not a difficult game to win.

3. Improved setting/storyline. I didn't care for the storyline in KB:TL. Hopefully I'll agree that the story in the expansion is better.

CAN'T WAIT :cool:

[guciomir]

It sounds great! Thank you for the info :)

what will happen to the KB sense of humour? I loved some funny conversations and i hope that the game will not become too serious and dark:)

[Nike-it]

It sounds great! Thank you for the info :)

what will happen to the KB sense of humour? I loved some funny conversations and i hope that the game will not become too serious and dark:)

Surely the great humor is available in sequel, even more jokes and gags;)

[jwallstone]

Wow! This is great! I love seeing innovation and improvement in games, and it looks like the developers are very aware of the flaws in KB and are being creative in improvements.

I like that they rebalanced units. The new Knight/Paladin plans are great to compensate for it's relative weakness in games now. I'm looking forward to the other unit balancing.

The tweaking of the skills sounds great too, and it looks like they took to heart the fact that some skills weren't very useful. The improvement of the "Rage" skills to make them all useful is also great.

I like that they changed mages to allow successive castings of lower mana spells. This allows probably greater spamming of weaker spells than currently possible, allowing greater tactical variety in that area, while not allowing ridiculous things like casting Hypnotize twice or something. Very creative.

I think the developers showed great judgement with KB:TL, such as with the Talent/Rune system, the Magic Crystal/Spell system, Leadership, etc, and I'm glad they seem to using that judgement and creativity to improve the game rather than simply make a clone with different characters.

[Leind]

It's great that the game is more difficult. Even in Impossible KB was very easy if you were a veteran from Homm. I wanted all the fights to be challenging, looks like it's the case!

[Nike-it]

It's great that the game is more difficult. Even in Impossible KB was very easy if you were a veteran from Homm. I wanted all the fights to be challenging, looks like it's the case!

Armored Princess will be much more challenging, it's really hard on impossible.

[Elias_Maluco]

So what about the editor? Any info on this?

[Elwin]

<Contains much spoilers>


I have managed to use a little translation of fan manual and i am quite impressed. Sacrifice was nerfed quite much ( higher mana cost and lower efficiency). I was often dreaming about a spell converting a rage into mana and there it is ! Good Job.We have timeback spell now, altough timeback + sacrifice combo will loose its power by much.
Also i like the new idea about rewards( or however it will be called) like giving additional leadership after winning certain ammonut of battles without lossing any units. Can't wait for english or polish release :)

[guciomir]

<Contains much spoilers>


I have managed to use a little translation of fan manual

how did you translate it?

[Elwin]

Used online translators, i didnt translated it fully, just was copy/pasting sentences which i found that could be usefull. Much work but was worth it :P

[Zhuangzi]

I'm pretty sure there isn't a scenario editor in the Russian release. Is this in the works perhaps, or not?

I've been reading the fan manual in the same way as Elwin, and there's some cool stuff for sure. The medals are an excellent addition, as is the new bounty system.

I really think we're on to a winner here. :cool:

[Mandea]

I also looked through the manual and found manny interesting things, new artifacts, spells and creatures. I didn't try to really translate it, as I wanted to be surprised later on, once the english version is published.

[Elwin]

So my first impressions are very positive. Except for many changes for units we have some upgrades maybe not that important but still the game is better.

We have reserve slots now without having skill for it.In the battle summary we have also picture of hero who we defeated.
Much weaker enemies are not kamikaze now, further more they are running away from us and if we catch them up we have option for autoo-resoloving battle. It never caused any loses for me so we save much time.Great change.Also when unit is hitted displays damage done and number of units lots

New units are quite nice mostly i liked Paladin and T-rex. ( Royal griphin is just obvoius that its great)
Paladin skill ressurect himslef and all units standing next to him, its just awesome !!( not working on lvl 5 units tough). Also if we have nothing to do we can give action point to other unit.In battle he presents quite well also, very durable and damge is nice also.

T-rex is 2k leadership unit so very high but he got 1000hp and have very high damage and can heal when defeating enemy or from other corpses.Like i once fireballed some enemy units and fb hit him for 990dmg so he had only 10 hp left but he ate corpses in next move and gotinstantly back to 1000, also eating corpses by skil gives him acction points so he dont just waste turn.


Also i am quit impressed about dragon damage abilities. I feared that it will be like with od spirits that damages spells will be worthless but they definetly dont.Even first levels of this skill do quite much damage. Like a skill working like giant ability for 20 rage dealing 300-600 dmg at start.Another one hitting all units in areo of 19 cellls up to 2k damage att 1st level for 50 rage. With warrior special skill i was able to start every battle with 50 ragr and start with this skills. Most units dead , just finish those who surivived or... use awake the dragon spell if we have rage and hit them again xD

[Zhuangzi]

I've been doing some research on the Russian forums with Google Translate and I've discovered a few things:

Enemy ships now chase and attack like normal units.

There are six bosses in total and they are evenly distributed through the game.

Overall game is somewhat shorter. Maybe 30 hours of game time and 300 enemy stacks (depending on how thorough you are).

New areas need to be unlocked with special maps.

All of this sounds really promising. :cool:

[Elwin]

Yes the fact with enemy ship i discovered in demo. Of course depend in which stage of demo i went there. If it was end they were sailing away from me xD

[Nike-it]

Yes the fact with enemy ship i discovered in demo. Of course depend in which stage of demo i went there. If it was end they were sailing away from me xD

In the full game ships appear to be a big problem, especially at the early stages when they are really tough. Thanks god your ship is faster;)

[BB Shockwave]

I downloaded the demo yesterday and played a few hours - I learned Russian like 20 years ago (back then Hungary was still occupied by the Soviets) and I'm not too good at it, but I can make do...

Notable changes (I will only mention what others have not said already):

-In Battle, the enemy troops also have Morale! You can expect to see bad morale if they have undead/too mixed troops, and good morale if they are all the same race, I found that Paladins start with good morale due to "Valor" even in the enemy army!

-What's more, morale changes during battle. If you kill of half the enemy troops, their morale drops.

-The AI is a bit smarter, I think. They avoid traps/tricks I used in the original game to great effect... They make use of their special abilities to great effect, Lizardman always try to attack two hexes, wounded units gather near Paladins for resurrection, Paladins cleverly boost the AP-s of shooters so they can attack twice per round... etc.

-Followers have some special abilities. I hired an elf guy, and afterwards when I clicked on artifacts, I had the option to turn them into Mana Crystals - one crystal per item, certainly better option then selling what's not needed.

-Great icons for Talents - you can now see how long it'll take to reload them by just a glance, no need to right-click. They are half-grey when 1 more round is needed, etc...

-Some spells have been tweaked - I found that for example Phantom Image does not work on level 5 units, I'm sure it did before...

-Maybe not new, but I managed to put level 4 units to sleep with Evil Beholders (their new skin is great, btw)more often then before, maybe the % ratio of chance was increased.

-Inquisitor's Holy Rage is no longer a reloadable talent (I think due to the Rage to mana spell, it'd mean you'd have infinite mana access) - there are 3 charges of it and that's that.

-New Spells (names are made-up, mind you)

-"Time Back" (Icon : hourglass)= Essentially the same as Reaper's ability, I got it up to Level II only so I don't know whether it will work on Level 5 units too. EDIT: just checked the manual, it does work on level 5! :) Too bad since it's a spell, you cannot use it on Black Dragons anymore... (Distortion Magic)

-"Wake-up call" (icon : ringing bell)= Wakes up Draco, so you can use the Spirit of Rage abilities twice per round (or even when he's resting) - With Higher Magic, this means you can still cast a spell that round. Very nifty spell! (Distortion Magic)

-"Rage to mana" (icon: Dragon head and mana ball)= Transforms a percentage of Rage into Mana, every Mage's dream. :) Very usefull and costs only 1 mana. Especially great with Inquisitors! (Order magic)

-"Angel of Vengeance" (Icon: angel in armor with sword)= Awesome spell - basically, it increases an unit's defense by a bit, and every time that unit is attacked, a lightning bolt strikes the attacker (after the attack). Does great damage, it killed 5 Archmages after 2 attacks, and Archmagi have 50% Magic resistance... (Order Magic)

-"Energy Ball" (Icon: shining ball with steam of energy coming out of it)= A very damaging spell (does Astral Damage to boot! Maybe affects Black Dragons too?) - basically you select a spot on the battlefield, the spell damages the unit there plus all units (friend or foe) in 4 rows starting out from that hexagon. Very hard to get it done in the first round without harming your troops, unless you have Tactics. (Chaos Magic)

New Rage Spirit Abilities

The Dragon is cute, btw. I especially like when he's offering an apple to the snail... :)

Another change is that you can use him every round (mostly) and you get 3 upgrade choices when he levels up.

- "Find Treasure" - he digs out a chest which your troops can open. When you click on it, you will see a green hex on the battlefield, he can only use it there. With upgrades, can be used more often in battle and I guess the chest quality increases - if there are two or more hexes shown to contain treasure on the battlefield, that is.

- "Roundhouse kick" (heh, Bruce Lee could take lessons...)= Attacks one enemy troop with a kick, doing physical damage. The dragon needs to land for this attack, so an empty hex needs to be there. After upgrades, it also pushes the enemy back one (or more?) hexes, that's why you need to choose directions.

- "Build wall" (I wish masons would work this fast...) =Similar to Zerock's ability, except the wall can be 'rounded', not just a straigth line. Also, it last until the end of battle thankfully.

- "Place egg" - The egg hatches in 2 rounds (I think the time can be reduced with upgrades) - I guess it summons reptiles only, for me it was 20 Royal Snakes. Will see, maybe on later levels you can summon dragons too.... would be nice.

- "Comet" (that has to hurt for poor Draco) - He flies up, then slams to the ground, inflicting damage on ALL enemy troops around him. You can select the place of impact, but I did not see any changes in damage no matter where he impacts - maybe on later levels he can stun enemies?

- "Mana Ball" - Like Lina's Superchargers, but new graphic. Places one (on later levels more) mana balls on the battlefield, gives back mana (more then Lina's) and the unit that took it can move one more hex or attack. You can also select the place he'll place them, but it doesn't give back rage.

-New Units (again, names are made-up in some cases)

-Paladin: Very powerfull, resistant to Magic as well as physical. Thankfully (if you are fighting against it) slow, but it'll usually move 1 hex and then use its ability to give Action Points to shooters... a real pain. Magic Shackles is needed against it.

Royal Griffin If you thought Griffins were great, these are even better. Does everything a Griffin does, plus is faster (6/6), stronger, has more HP, 50% Magic resistance (!!!), does 150% damage on Dragons. Talents are great - one acts as "battle Cry" except only works on Humans (I guess, HOMM reference that Griffins belong to human armies). The other is Phantom Griffins - the translucent grey ghost Griffins act like regular Griffins, they have very few (33) HP, but they are phantoms, so 50% physical resistance and can move through everything...

Droids: Although both are fliers, with a speed of 3 you won't see them fly unless avoiding a Giant's earthquake or hasted - they walk when moving. Both are mechanical, meaning mind spells, poison, blinding doesn't work, cannot be healed or resurrected (they crumble to dust upon death). The -50% magic weakness is a big drawback, if you play as a mage they are easy prey and I suspect enemy heroes will bug them as well. The warrior type is a great asset with the grapple cable ability - it can tow in enemies from 5 hexes away! I think they can also shock them like the Archmage. The other is an archer (average one with good HP) and can also heal/resurrect machines, so I recommend you use both types as other then time back they are the only way to heal the droids.

Trolls - Very sturdy and dangerous enemies, if slow... "Calming" acts as a weakness spell plus lowers intiative. 30% phys and fire resistance makes them as sturdy as Cyclopes, except they have more HP. Have not fought them underground yet but I guess regeneration is a good thing for a level 5 unit...

Lizard units

Creepers ('Gobots' - heck, I hope the name changes - THIS (http://www.cobraislandtoys.com/gobot/guardians/leader1.html) is a Gobot...): Interesting 'archers' - basically they can attack everyone on the map without range penalty by burrowing under them. They also move by burrowing. Still have to melee if someone is standing next to them. Not very powerfull though, and I lost most of them in bigger battles. If they are down to 50% the original numbers they can split into two stacks of the same size (essentially doubling their numbers) - they never survived enough hits for me to try this.

Adult Creepers ('Mature Gobots')= Little stronger, can poison enemy - with a ranged attack, that's not bad. You can make them from regular Creepers by the Sandworm's ability.

Lizardman (Gorgul)= very usefull unit. Not too strong, but has great special abilities. With running, can move 5 hexes on one turn, can attack two hexes (but won't damage your troops unlike dragons). If it kills a stack, there is an 50% chance it will act again. The other ability is a round-attack like the Knight's, but you can only use it if you have lost half of your lizardmen... not a good tactic but you'll see the enemy using this a lot. Also, they suffer only 50% damage from archers!

Lizardwoman (Gorguana)= Caster and ranged attacker, has an awesome talent "mark of blood" that essentially makes the enemy target receive double damage everytime it's hit (something like the spell Doom) - combine this with the Pteranodon's critical hit ability, and you can wipe out even a strong stack in one turn! If it loses 50% of it's numbers, it can cast a weak attack spell that damages the enemy and resurrects the Lizardwomen, but it's no substitute for resurrection spells. The third ability I have not yet seen in action, from what I guess it works on Lizardman, activating their round-attack even if they are not down to 50%. Lizardwomen also have the "durable scale" and "thirst for blood" abilities.

Pteranodon= A very strong flier (I'd say stronger then even Royal Griffins), the best ability it has is that if it flies more then 3 hexes before attacking, it will always cause critical hits... The AI uses this to great effect, so the Pteranodons always switch targets to cause the greatest damage. Also, it can summon allies, laying an egg that will hatch at the end of next round (has a very funny animation where the ptero chick pops his head out of the egg) containing 50% of the troop. So if you fight against them, wipe out the eggs fast - use spells.

Sandworm A very curious unit. Basically... it cannot move! So tactics is essential if you use it. It has high HP (not as high as Royal Thorns, though) and a very powerfull melee attack, but unless you teleport it it'll never get to the enemy. Has no ranged attack as well... The only thing it can do is to spawn Creepers (can do every second round) and to upgrade them into adult Creepers (also every second round). Frankly, I found this unit not too usefull at all... Creepers, at this stage of the game, are fairly useless, only good for cannon fodder. And basically this means the Sandworm can only do something usefull every second round... The high melee is nice, but the AI is smart and will first attack your moving melee units before attacking this unit. It also has an ability (after 50% are dead) to eat enemies or allies to resurrect itself.

Brontor Very fun and innovative unit! In its starting mode, is very slow - move of 1 - but well-armored. I have not yet had the chance to see it, but I believe it attacks like the Cerberus, on 3 hexes. It has, however, a great talent - acts like Lina's Ice Ball and runs through the battlefield, hitting the first unit in a straight line. With the Brontor's high defence and HP, it can survive the attacks it gets after such assaults. Or, if you have "Fit of Energy", us it on him and make him Burrow - in this mode, it will have even stronger defense, and get a ranged attack it can use even in melee! (he has range penalty though unlike Creepers). What's best - although it won't retaliate, every enemy that attacks it gets hit by the Brontor's spikes (works a bit like the Efreet's fire shield in HOMM3, but it always hits for a fixed amount, not % of damage). A very versatile unit, can be a tank or a ranged attacker, though it's best for blocking enemies.

T-Rex What can I say, I love this guy! :) 1000 HP, 80-120 damage, and 4 movement points? 6 Initiative? Giants and Ogres can sulk away in shame... has physical resistance, increases the morale of your lizards, lowers the defense of nearby enemies, and like Lizardmen/women, is resistant to archer attacks. And the best is saved for the last- like Devilfishes, can scare enemies on attack (only for 1 round), meaning they won't retaliate. Works only on 1-4 level units. Has two talents, both reload in2 rounds. Roar makes all enemies who have less leadership then T-rex to receive damage (not as much as Giant's earthquake) and lose half of APs - it's best used in mid-combat. The T-rex can also eat a corpse (only living creature corpse, zombies taste baaad!) restoring itself to FULL HP (!!!) and still having APs left to attack that turn. This corpse-eating also works automatically if the T-rex kills a troop. I must say, this guy is easily the best Level 5 unit in the game... the healing abilities are great especially. "Me Grimlock... like!"


All in all, the Lizards are a powerfull race with good melee units, one flyer and some shooters. The worms are the only ones I'm not too fond of... other then producing cannon fodder, the Sandworm is an useless unit, Dryads can do the same and more. Either is should be able to move (slowly), or it should get a medium ranged attack ability to do something when it's not producing Creepers - even Orc Shamen can be used as melee tanks when they are out of talents.

Can't wait for the game to be released! I wonder - KB was translated to Hungarian, will Armored Princess be translated as well?

[Shd]

BB Shockwave, nice work :)

Just few additions...

Dragon Abilities

"Lightning ball" - Follows and damages enemies (3 changes). Damage is depending on enemy stack overall health

"Battle rage" - Damages all units in 19 hexes (radius 3).

"Burning lava" - Damages several enemies with streams of lava.


There are some more spells and units too :)


Some more "general" changes (may be some of them was mentioned before):

Burning/poisoning does insane damage so at the moment "dispel" is very important (can be changed in patches)

Award system is excellent and its very interesting to try to get all of them (every gives very nice bonuses). Every class have 2 unique awards.

With low possibility (wieght 1) there is chance to dig item/"global scrool" from battle arena (using dragon ability), so "dig as much as you can".

etc. etc. etc.

In my opinion, very nice addon and i hope there is still chance to compleate game wo looses (working on mage now and it is HARD) :)


Anyway, my first impression is very good. AP is more difficult for sure. Especially mage. Anyway i think until english version there will be many balance changes (as i know at 1st patch developers will increase DD spell power (10% for every 7 int to 15%)).

[BB Shockwave]

to compleate game wo looses (working on mage now and it is HARD) :)


Anyway, my first impression is very good. AP is more difficult for sure. Especially mage. Anyway i think until english version there will be many balance changes (as i know at 1st patch developers will increase DD spell power (10% for every 7 int to 15%)).

Thanks!

I agree, the game seems a bit unbalanced - I restarted with a Warrior, and the Dragon's Battle Rage is so powerfull, I killed both pirate heroes and the T-Rex hero in one round... It's too powerfull. I guess by september these will be tweaked, like KB was by the time of the English release. (come to think of it, I think KB was released earlier in Hungary then in English language so I might be able to give you some more info later on).

I also noticed some more stuff:

-Guardsmen now have Smashing Blow and they also seem to have a % chance to Evade attacks, or they evade critical hits like Vampires do.

-I found a lot of items that give insane resistances, for example some DragonScale boots that give 15% physical and a chainmail that gives +5% to all resistances.

-The second ability of the Lizardwomen is that it activates the round-attack of a selected Lizardman unit (be carefull, it damages your nearby units too). Also, the round-attack can leave enemies bleeding like Werewolf Elf blades.

-Lizardmen are awesome! The +50% chance to act again after killing a stack can kick in quite often, there was a battle where I got to attack with them 4 times in one round!

-Small change but something I really wanted in KB too - items and locations (mana wells, etc...) are marked with a little star on your map, so you won't be missing anything out by accident.

-There is a new spell (distortion magic) that I think does damage to Undead only - could not try it as I met no undead units on the map.

-Correction to Brontors - They indeed attack 3 spaces like Cerberi (too bad you cannot really use this to much effect unless you haste them or make them charge a cluster of enemies and wait for retailiations). Also, "spikes" deal damage every time the Brontor is attacked and does not retaliate - even after an enemy has hit the Brontor in retaliation! This works in both burrowed and unburrowed forms. (Also, just how long the tail of that thing is? It can reach enemies on the other side of the screen... :) )

[Elwin]

They have alreasy released patch balancing dragon, no patch feature of AP is failure now :p

[Shd]

They have alreasy released patch balancing dragon, no patch feature of AP is failure now :p

For such game "no patch feature" is impossible goal, AFAIK :grin:

That patch they released (17.04 russian patch notes (http://kingsbounty.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=3982)) changed many other things too...

Most important changes (in my opinion) except bug fixes:

Dragon level cap moved to lvl 60. Decreased exp gaining for some dragon skills.
High magic gives 2/4/6 casts (instead of 1/2/3) with 1st cast mana consuming 10/15/20 (instead of 7/14/20).
+15% damage for every 7 int (instead of 10%)
for "magic shackles" spell mage/paladin get 2.0/1.4 multiplier when calculating enemy unit max leadership (there is leadership limit for this spell now).
Burning/poison is calculated depending on attacker/defender leadership.
Corrected evade skill in a way that unit cannot evade 2 attacks in row. (this was annoying when at 20% possibility there was like 5 evades in a row)

-Lizardmen are awesome! The +50% chance to act again after killing a stack can kick in quite often, there was a battle where I got to attack with them 4 times in one round!


Yesterday, when i played, most funny thing was when my summoned and enemy demons (each have 50% possibility to get another action point after being attacked even when their move is done) started to hit each other... It was like 5 hits for each in one turn :)

[Ryastar]

-Guardsmen now have Smashing Blow and they also seem to have a % chance to Evade attacks, or they evade critical hits like Vampires do.

THAT EXPLAINS IT! One battle I was fighting had a stack of Guardsmen as the last enemy stack, and the stupid thing evaded six attacks in a row stretching across two rounds of combat. I eventually just gave up and killed them with a spell. That % chance must have kicked in (along with terrible luck on my part).

[BB Shockwave]

I must say, as much as I like Lizardmen, the 50% chance to act again is sometimes too powerfull. Once I got to act FIVE times in a row in the first round with them, basically killing all the enemies with one stack of 50 Lizardmen...

High magic gives 2/4/6 casts (instead of 1/2/3) with 1st cast mana consuming 10/15/20 (instead of 7/14/20).

Let me get this straight... so if you cast 2 spells in a round, the second will cost 10/15/20 more mana? Was it not so that Higher Magic will only work with low-level spells, IE that cost little mana as it is?

-Also, something I noticed - Good Morale now has a Heroes of Might&Magic like effect too! It shows just like in those games, a golden eagle-like animation appearing randomly over one of your troops at the beginning of each turn. Basically, the initiative and speed of that troop is increased for the duration of that turn. I wonder if bad morale has a similar but negative effect?

[Elwin]

NO you read wrong.Just higher magic works for spells which cost 10/15/20 mana

[Ryastar]

-Also, something I noticed - Good Morale now has a Heroes of Might&Magic like effect too! It shows just like in those games, a golden eagle-like animation appearing randomly over one of your troops at the beginning of each turn. Basically, the initiative and speed of that troop is increased for the duration of that turn. I wonder if bad morale has a similar but negative effect?

No, that`s not the effect of morale. It`s actually one of the skills in the mind tree, the one that looks like two feet, it`s about halfway down the right side of the tree, directly above diplomacy. It took me a while to figure it out, but what it does is it increases the init and speed of one of your troops at the beginning of each round by 0/1 at level 1, 1/1 at level 2, and 2/2 at level three.

[Shd]

Let me get this straight... so if you cast 2 spells in a round, the second will cost 10/15/20 more mana? Was it not so that Higher Magic will only work with low-level spells, IE that cost little mana as it is?

That means:

You can cast second spell in round (no matter how much mana it will comsume) if 1st spell casted in round consumes less or equal than 10/15/20 mana (1st/2nd/3rd High magic level).

And you can cast 2 spells per round in 2/4/6 rounds per battle

:)

[MisterBarca]

Overall game is somewhat shorter. Maybe 30 hours of game time and 300 enemy stacks (depending on how thorough you are).


So there was false advertising, as the developer claimed that the expansion would be even longer than the original game.

[Zhuangzi]

Actually I recall them saying it would be 30% shorter than KB:TL. So I don't think it's a case of false advertising.

Just hurry up and release it. I'm waiting. :rolleyes:

[Metroplex]

All good things come to those who wait... I guess the same applies to KB:AP:)

[DGDobrev]

The game itself is indeed shorter, with less battles, but it's much more challenging and much more fun to play - at least in my opinion.

Since I got the game on my company's trip to Moscow, I was able to play it through a few times with all chars. I did give some info in other thread, but this seems like a proper one to pour some stuff out...

The game, in my eyes, is once again made for a warrior. The warriors get a neat last-tier skill that allows them to retain rage to a percentage of their total rage, meaning you will always have some rage even if you don't fight for a while. If you use up all your rage, you will gradually get back to the minimum amount set by this skill for free :) Neat. The rest is pretty much like in KBTL - xp booster dragon skills, tactics, etc. In addition to that, the dragon is pretty powerful and with a proper dragon skill build-up you can use it on every turn, pretty much like a spell book - but of course, you get tons of rage per turn in combat, while you can't get that much mana per turn. It is very common to finish a battle with full rage and be ready for the next one straight away.

The mage is doing great, and the little tweaks to the Intellect attribute (like boosting spell power every point and such) make a nice change for the casting-oriented players. Now mass damaging spells like geyser and armageddon are well worth the buck, since with more intellect you can do some substantial damage (and not the fixed one in KBTL, where in time spells were easily outclassed by spirits' abilities in the endgame - in my opinion). Still, after each battle you will be pretty much hard pressed to wait a bit on the field to replenish your mana supply unless you managed to mana spring it back to full somehow, but not all battles allow for that - especially because there are armies without ranged or no-retaliation units. So... Emerald Green Dragons for the Mages once again, and heavy investment in the new Transmutation skill (up to 10 mana when an enemy units dies or up to 20 mana when an allied unit dies) :P

In my eyes, the Paladin once again gets the worst of the game. First of all, no resurrection scroll at start. It is replaced by peacefulness. Just great... Top that with the lack of good mana regen in combat - unless you try to get the best of all classes, which won't be easy, I promise you, especially because mana regen is a last-tier skill in the mage tree now. The paladin also gets the pretty much useless skill Resurrection which picks out a random stack of units that have died and resurrects some of them, in addition to boosting the similar spells of the Paladin itself and units that have it (Paladins, inquisitors and such).

However, there are a few good things about the paladin. Since he can go deeper in the mind tree, he can get a skill that adds 1 morale to Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Lizards and Demons, as well as the last-tier Voice of the Dragon skill, which boosts the morale of animals and dragons by 2 at max lvl. So, one can try playing a paladin as a Dragon master. Top the high morale (+20% attk/def, +30% crit chance) with Prayer (adds some chance to all your units to get a crit - up to 10% at lvl 3) and Adrenaline (random unit gets up to +2 initiative/speed) and you can get a good idea as to where the battle may be going. However, as a Warrior, I could get a high-morale army without a problem as well.
As in KBTL, the Paladin performs better as a warrior than as a mage, using buffs and boosting spells to support his army.

However, just as in KBTL, the question remains - is morale and its bonuses worthwhile? That's one for everyone to answer for him/herself, but in my eyes, it's not. It's all too well and good to act first, but against an overwhelming enemy it may not prove to be enough in some cases. Sadly, the spells and the dragon are the backbone of pretty much any victory - and the paladin can't manage any of them properly, or to their fullest extent.

He still makes for a quite challenging and fun game with lots of tough battles though. And he (whoops, she) is still my personal favorite :)

That's my input for now... When I finish hard with both 3 chars I may add more. I'll try to keep it with less spoilers.

[DGDobrev]

THAT EXPLAINS IT! One battle I was fighting had a stack of Guardsmen as the last enemy stack, and the stupid thing evaded six attacks in a row stretching across two rounds of combat. I eventually just gave up and killed them with a spell. That % chance must have kicked in (along with terrible luck on my part).

In the new patches that was fixed. Now a unit that has the evade trait can only evade 50% of the time. This means that after it had evaded a blow, the next attack will hit with a 100% chance.

[master.jimmy]

For example, the fighter has skills that directly give to attack, defense or a mix, instead of something vague like getting additional attack when killing a troop. Mages can now can cast 3 or 2 spells consecutively if they are 7 mana or less.

loooooool and the PALADIN?

[DGDobrev]

The Paladin gets a skill that adds directly to the Atk/Def values of the units. He also gets the skill to directly reduce the atk/def of the enemy demons and undead (Holy anger).

In addition to that I must say I have sorely underestimated the Resurrection skill that the paladin gets. At lvl 3 it ressurrects 100% of any one fallen troop (they still count as losses though), usually the most important one (if you lose 3 archdemons, 1 Black Dragon and 150 archmages, it will ress the archmages).

[master.jimmy]

The Paladin gets a skill that adds directly to the Atk/Def values of the units. He also gets the skill to directly reduce the atk/def of the enemy demons and undead (Holy anger).

In addition to that I must say I have sorely underestimated the Resurrection skill that the paladin gets. At lvl 3 it ressurrects 100% of any one fallen troop (they still count as losses though), usually the most important one (if you lose 3 archdemons, 1 Black Dragon and 150 archmages, it will ress the archmages).
i understand, not bad..... but paladin also is not bad on KB TL. Resurrection scroll is GREAT, for many guys like me, that play with ONLY 1 race without changing..... i hate mix units from other races, i won't pick "the best of them", and an easy resurrect is very usefull from beginning


But i'm finishing now with paladin KB TL, i won't play with paladin the KB AP....
perhaps the mage ;)

[Dargor]

T-Rex What can I say, I love this guy! :) 1000 HP, 80-120 damage, and 4 movement points? 6 Initiative? Giants and Ogres can sulk away in shame...


This unit is great but it hate dragons and dragons hate T-rex. Also Royal Griffin hates this lizard VERY much. I think army of dragons is one of the strongest you can create (self-resurrecting units like vampires can be more effective against bosses). It is possible use together 4 types of dragons - black, red, emerald and bone. And only black ones can't be cloned with "Phantom". 5th stack can be a type of demons or vampire - dragons don't care. By the way daragons have best speed.

[DGDobrev]

Dragons are good, especially if you manage to get the Voice of the Dragon skill (last tier skill in the paladin tree, requires a crapload of mind runes), but still, a high-morale party with good fire resistance makes a minced meat out of them, and even a mage can get it. The portrait of bill gilbert + royal griffins = +2 human morale very early in the game, meaning +20% atk/def and increased crit. Besides, you can't resurrect Black Dragons (unless you're playing Paladin and have ress skill lvl 3), which is a certain setback, because they do cost a lot and you usually have limited amounts of them.

Dragons do well for a mage because of their high HP's and initiative, allowing you to cast spells before the enemy starts advancing at you. As a mage, the only way you'll have to resurrect the Black dragons you lose is through Time Back, a spell which is usually available on the Rehau and Shetterra continents or Nameless island (haven't seen it anywhere else by now), both of which must be discovered first, and suffice to say, the maps are heavily guarded. In addition to that, with the new patches, map guards are immobile, so no map stealing anymore.

I do agree that dragons are good, but in higher difficulties (even in hard, late game, I can imagine what will be on impossible), they just don't cut it, because it's difficult and costly to resurrect them all the time. I'd rather go with a party with maximum paladins + inquisitors + ranged units with high morale + 2 more melee units in reserve (for the end-game boss Ctakhu and the last battle). Time back may restore dragons to a previous state, but it also restores the use of Paladin's unit Prayer skill, allowing you to resurrect all allies of lvl 1-4 around the paladin (it isn't hard to cast mass haste and get them around him in 1 turn, doesn't work on lvl 5 units) and hit the big resurrection button. Then hit time back and resurrect again. That usually is the best way to end the battle without any losses in the endgame. The only setback is that Prayer doesn't resurrect slain troops, but this is why you have Inquisitors. That's pretty much entire army ressed in 2 turns without even losing a sliver of mana - and it works on hard like a charm (99% of the time without the second ress, I personally only used it once in the battle with Ctakhu and once in the battle with Baal, which are the 2 toughest battles), so it will work on impossible as well. That allows your mage to cast offensive spells like crazy or your paladin or warrior to preserve their mana supply (which is usually small) for extra resurrections and buffs, since there is no gift spell anymore. We abused it enough in KBTL :)

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I do agree dragons are good. I'm just biased and over-obsessed with high morale armies that have high chances to get a critical. As you know, a critical strike multiplies the damage by 1.5. So if you have a stack that, say, is worth 2000 leadership and crits 100% of the time, this means it's actual leadership is 3000 (because it acts as if you have 1.5x2000 units). If it crits 50% of the time, it's like you have a stack of 2500 leadership (1.25x2000 units).

[travelingoz]

"In addition to that, with the new patches, map guards are immobile, so no map stealing anymore."

Is there a new patch out? I have patch 1.1.If so could you post a link? many thanks! :-)

[DGDobrev]

http://www.kingsbounty.ru/

http://www.kingsbounty.ru/patches.php - provides patches + changelog, provided you speak russian :)

The second article in the official site provides 2 patches, the first one is for the CD/DVD version. However, map guardians are immobile since patch 1.0.0.2 I think. Actually, the new patch doesn't improve that much. The most notable thing is that it fixes some improper rune giveaways - there is a proper scheme to it, consisting of 5 different giveaways, although I haven't noticed a discrepancy. Other notable fixes are Battle alchemy (counter of burnt/poisoned enemies improves properly), some fixes to items and creatures and time back and trap work properly in "complicated situations" (whatever that means, I never saw a problem with it). Also AI is supposed to be better.

I doubt they're referring to the reduced rune incomes after lvl 50, because for all I read it is supposed to work that way and there are 2 ot 3 rune giveaway schemes.

EDIT: Maybe there's something to do with the no level cap. However, getting up to 60 is hard to do. The last game with Paladin on hard, I had +5% XP from lvl 3 upwards and got the +XP by digging as many chests on the battlefield as I could ASAP. I killed every enemy on the map, did every quest and still got up to lvl 55, as it was in my normal game with a warrior.

So I guess in order to get up to 60 or more, one would have to use some sort of a mod.