You could try ents and ancient ents. Sure, they don't get the double damage that thorn warrior/thorn-hunter/royal thorn get from the Crown of Blackthorne, but they still get all the benefits from Hagrid (+10% all resistance, resurrect, and more importantly +50% health).

I had the same problem with thorn warriors. I have 1 troll and 4 archmages, and they could definitely take out the Driller (as the 3rd boss to take out) by themselves, but it would take FOREVER. I added Hagrid, Crown of Blackthorn, and a full stack of thorn warriors (close to 900), they did a lot of damage, but even with the Driller dividing his attacks between magic shielded/stone skinned troll and thorn warriors Hagrid simply couldn't resurrect them fast enough (even if you make them move away the Driller still attacks them with range despite the Troll standing in front of him). I replaced the full stack of thorn warriors with less than half a stack of regular ents (11 initially available, leadership cap allowed 25) and they did quite well simply because Hagrid could res them to full stack whenever the Driller damages them (just keep stone skin and magic shield on them).

The big difference is the high defense stat, and resurrect works better on higher defense units since it restores on a fixed hit point amount (as opposed to say Eviln which restores based on a percentage of the stack's leadership size).

Well, ents and ancient ents have even lower chance to spawn in the main area then royal thorns I think... And since he's doing the 4-bosses quest, things are going to get tough for him.

Have you found ents in the main area? I'm also interested to know, since ents should kill the bosses faster than royal thorns and they have a nice amount of armor for their level.

No ents so far.

I guess, that finding royals in main arena should to the trick. 4th battle is the only hard one, so i'm gonna focus in finding the best possible start for a imp/mage game. Boots or armor to raise psyh ress or just royal thorns.

Well, just checked the stats. Thorns have a Def of 3 as for ancient ents 60 :) And 1400 HP!! Heh, i guess there's a reason that they don't spawn in main arena, because with Hagrid, this would be too overpowered.

I have seen Klissan sell Ancient Vampires, Ents, Repair Droids, and Thorns Warriors (in different save games, of course).

4-bosses quest for the School of Gloom? Hmmm... why not kill the Turle and Spider, then join Humans/Orcs/Dwarves/Elves (which always have Ents and Ancient Ents), then take out Toad/Driller/Kraken/K'Tahu? Doesn't that count as taking out 4 bosses in a row without joining a new guild in between boss fights, or have I misunderstood the quest completely?

can't check right now, but as far as i remember, the quest says "take out 4 bosses without joining any guild"...

The quest is to kill 4 bosses WITHOUT joining any guild. This is why there's so much ramble about units in the main arena area :)

This is why in my opinion, the best thing to get is ents, encient ents, royal thorns, trolls and such and do the Turtle-Spider-Toad-Kraken kills in order to complete the quest.

Wow... that is some insane quest. :)

from the looks of it, plants are just too overpowered in this little campaign.

any legitimate run through should NOT involve them.

Everything in this game that involves some type of strategy is legitimate. Otherwise we'll have to ban plants, vampires, trolls, black knights, paladins, knights, rune magi, inquisitors, fairies, dryads, droids, dragons... Am I forgetting something?

That is so mean. :) This is the only official campaign that has Hagrid in it. :)

Anyways, going (royal thorns + Hagrid + crown of blackthorne) suffers the same issue as the more overpowered (black knight + black helmet + eviln) strategy: it takes a LONG time to kill some bosses. And besides, it is rare that the game generates enough royal thorn spawns to hit your leadership cap.

If you want overpowered for this campaign I suggest going this route:

1) use (royal thorns + Hagrid + crown of blackthorne) AND (black knight + black helmet + eviln) for the tough bosses; throw in repair droids (single-stack + phantom or split stack, depending on the situation) if you like

2) use royal thorn combo/black knight combo/split stack repair droids/bone dragons for hero and suppression battles; phantom bone dragons engage the enemy, repair droids and royal thorns attack, black knight sits back and relaxes (so it is easier to "top up"); use sacrifice on repair droids to keep royal thorns/black knights/bone dragons at full stack

Btw, I've tested fighting Metamorph. If you use a full lineup of troops he actually goes with a regular assortment of troops. But if you fight him with "classic" single stack strategies his army seems to be composed of mainly that unit type BUT has the same unit count as his regular army. So for example you just bring a single stack of trolls his stack of 900 bears becomes 900 trolls. So do you guys have any suggestions as to the army composition to bring to this battle to MAXIMIZE the XP gain while still making the battle doable without any losses?