Royal thorns, have they been mentioned?
 

I have been scouting through the forums for various tips on how to make a third runthrough more fun, however I have failed to see anyone mention the enourmous power of the royal thorns.

They were somewhat limited in my game but I had enough to make most fights ridiculously easy. I just avoided using them against other heroes and dragonstacks.

I had the item which gives them 100% to damage+ 50% slower rage reduction after battle... my companion held a +1 to poison damage dagger and I was weilding a +20% to critical hit sword.

In Elon I got dryads to produce more thorns and I sometimes used the time scroll to renew another summon with the Royal thorns. Each stack of the small thorns were often making crits for 20k damage wiping out any stack + another 1k thorns on the dead body using the paladins "extra turn" if available in the same round.

Against Baal I had so many thorns up that there was barely space to move.

As for keeping the Royal thorns alive I used demonologists and sacrificed paladins to keep up their numbers.

among various topics they are mentioned as good unit;)

Yea; most of my games only a few show up (there seems to always be two guaranteed loads of them; one on debir with 3 to 7 and one on [] with 30ish.

In one game (warrior) over 1000 showed up; had an impressive stack of ~1000. Only problem was resurection. The warrior usage of them resulted in thorns in stakcs of 3000 or 4000; throw in phantom on the royals and .. :)

royal thorns are a pain vs fire damage though:)

a big weakness but oh well xD;-)
don't use em vs dragons or heroes :D

Not to mention that the Spell target isnt needed, since the the thorn stacks automatically attract the attention of the AI ... most times.

most times if they cannot reach a real unit

but archers might hit your real units;)

Yeah, Royal Thorns are pretty good. They tend to be lacking in number though, and their weakness to fire can be... very painful. Also, demonologists are the only consistent resurrectors for them... and also quite possibly the rarist unit in the game. So I think the combination of the two is why you don't hear a lot about them.

Royal thorns are pretty good but they arent so popular because most users here play no loss campaings. And its impossible to do this with them.

it's very easy to do a no loss with royal thorns if u got demonologist
:)

There are some nasty heroes on first islands with flaming arrow where u cant avoid loss of royal thorn. Doubt u have demonoligist in tha part of game. Unless you do map kiting of course

i got demo's on scarlet winds

but anyway

those heroes do like 75~150 damage a royal thorn got more hp than that..

just beware of burning effect in which case u cast dispel;)

Yeo burning is probelem, anyway they are too troublesome for no loss. And demonologist on scralet .. well possilbe but you will get them like once per 50,100 games? :P Iits one of the rariest unit on the game. And i would like too see how it goes with them against big stack of dragons :P Maybe timeback could save them .. but its posibble once per 2 turns actually . Would be hell to do that.

it kinda easy
by the time u reach big stacks of dragons u got onslaught and hopefully quickdraw

corner the royal thorn
spawn thorns

let 2-3 summoned stacks near the dragons and shoot em off;)

Do you mean Tactics?

Dragon breath attacks will rip through your summoned thorns, and royal thorns at the same time. It is really not a viable strategy. At that point you are just doing it out of stubbornness.

what i meant was make sure royal thorn is in corner

if your high enough initiavive u go first
place trap in front of royal thorn

or

summon something in front of dragons so they stay away :P

I always found good quantities of them on the big main island (forgot the name right now). Even used them for a while, but since I was going for no loss as a warrior, and got Time Back only late in the game (and Sacrifice doesn't really work for a warrior due to low magic stats) I dropped them later.

Also, sadly there are a lot of fire-using enemies (Fire Dragonflies, Imps, Demonologists, Alchemists, red and black Dragons) that will most assuredly pick on your royal thorns. Summoning weaker thorns helps, but since they are so slow, they always get to act after these fast enemies.

That said, I still value them more then the Gobot-spawning Chosa. Those cannot do anything when they are not adjacent to an enemy. Royal Thorns can at least move, and with haste they can even move and shoot in the same turn. They also have a very strong attack even at melees range.

Awesome cover art.

I like the picture of lake fairies laying on the dragon's beak :)

I'm a big fan of Royal Thorns, at least in the early/mid-game before the attacks start to outpace their HP.

The only problem is that they do seem to throw the weaknesses of the combat AI into sharp relief. Most of the time, enemies are far too eager to attack the summoned thorns. (You can hear the cry in the greedy little AI's brain: "Ooh, if I attack that stack there will be casualties! I love casualties!!") And then at other times, archers will choose to hit the Royal Thorns for 40 damage instead of shooting a stack where they might actually kill something. Either way, it makes me feel a bit sorry for the AI. :rolleyes:

But yes, they're a fun unit to use.