Wondering about a few rune magic spells
 

I'm interested in hearing your strategies for a couple spells I haven't used or scribed yet.

Justice - It's rune magic and it says it gathers X runes (or X adrenaline) from all your troops and then redistributes them eveningly among all your troops. At level 1, X is 2 runes or 10 adrenaline. Is it supposed to be for long fights when you run out of runes/adrenaline?

Timelessness - adds extra rounds to the duration of spells currently on you, limited to low level spells and only 2 rounds at first, eventually up to level 4 spells for 4 rounds. I guess you cast timelessness when it's cheaper than maintaining the buff(s) individually, right?

Negation - All spell effects on the target are reduced to 1 round. Like timelessness it starts at low levels with a low duration, eventually affeting lvel 4 spells for up to 4 rounds. I'm drawing a blank. Someone suggested using it with kamikaze but then another person said it doesn't work with it. Is it like a poor man's cure you forget about, knowing whatever happens to that unit for the next few rounds it will wear off soon? I'd still rather dispel it, I think.

One more to add. Poison Cloud (chaos magic, I know) says max targets: 12 at level one. But the area of affect is definitely smaller than that, it's like a fireball (one hex and every hext around it). What does that max targets mean, do you think?

Number of units it can infect with poison before it expires, I'm guessing. Unfortunately, since it ticks every single time a unit takes its turn, that 12 ticks away very quickly, and will probably, at most, refresh the poison debuff once.

Poison cloud may be useful at the beginning of a battle with many enemy stacks. If your initiative is greater, they won't be able to move out of the cloud. I remember it being somewhat useful in KB:TL.

Timelessness might be good when you have a lot of buffs on a unit (especially buffs like divine armor and hell's breath with short duration). You only need to cast timelessness every 4 rounds (or more with creation and possibly high intellect, if it's affected by that) to keep the buffs. At least I hope it works that way ;-)

Poison Cloud isn't the same as KBTL. It doesn't do damage directly. It just causes a special Poison effect that does a % of damage.

I wonder how high the % is at level 3, though... Because if it approaches 100%, then this thing is totally broken.

Oh, poison cloud does 21% at max level. At least based on my magic power, not sure if it scales (I'm guessing no). I really don't understand that number of targets thing, either. Oh well, I still enjoy using it.

Any thoughts on Negation or Justice?

1.There seems to be similar spell in KB:CW .But i never used it ,so no comment.


2.I think it can be helpful in consuming scrolls (if spellbook has no space to

learn spell or i don't want to sell them for a poor proportion of prices) .

Furthermore, i can consider casting it on my troops near positive battlefield

objects .


3.I should cast it on enemy (powerful) troops near positive

battlefield objects or my troops near negative ones so that i can cast other

spells in next rounds .


4.Maybe i should cast it on high stacks troops .(I never saw its full

description in my saves)

Timeless can be useful to extend short and powerful buff. I have been using timeless so extend the scolding buff by orc commander. 9 turn double damage is good,

Oooooh. Timeless + Avenging Angel 3?

Something like Archmage's shield + Hell's Breath + Stone Skin + Inquisitor's Bless and then a Timeless every few rounds sounds nice... (Magic Spring as well, but that will probably still be reduced in duration by enemy attacks. It still provides a ton of mana with creation 3 and a fair bit of intellect...)

edit: And of course, use a royal griffin for unlimited retaliation

Lots of good ideas for timelessness, just remember you have to spend a rune to activate it (and I forget what kind that is). So maybe that is a potential use for justice or magic rune.

Still haven't seen any convincing uses for Negation - which also requires spending a rune, so I gather you can't use it on enemies (I haven't scribed it yet to see).

Keep in mind that Timeless itself scales with creation and intellect. I get +8 turns from it with 40 intellect and creation 3. If it weren't for the fact that Rune Mages exist Creation and Timeless would be competing for the Most OP award. Just spam buffs and make them last forever. Runic Word is more than powerful enough to utilize Timeless indefinitely, even without Higher Magic you'll be able to use Timeless for 3 rounds before needing to use Runic word once.

Stone Skin + Divine Armor + Avenging Angel on any unit and you can just wait around while enemies kill themselves. Who needs to attack? :-P . Keeping Avenging Angel/Mana Spring up 100% of the time isn't too hard once you have a strong enough Timeless unless you are against 10 ranged stacks or something (in which case, go ahead and attack :)). Only downside is that stuff like Burning and Poison get buffed by Timeless as well. Hey, this is where Negation can be useful I suppose... Not that you really need it, but might as well cast it.

How do Avenging Angel/mana spring/last hero work with timeless? Do they simply not tick down at all while it is on, but still give mana/damage/reduction?

Timelss very much looks like an incredible Mage spell for single stack fights. Get your defensive buffs out fast, then timeless them so they last forever.

They tick down as normal due to both turns going by and being attacked. Timeless simply adds to their duration. The unit status screen shows a max of 9 rounds duration for an effect but it can definitely be much, much longer than that.

Last Hero would be hilarious if it went off after 100 turns of soaking up damage :grin:. It's not really needed though since you can already maintain Stone Skin and Divine Armor. Using Avenging Angel is just for showing off though, attack buffs that can easily be pushed to last forever and not require constant Timeless to maintain are better.

Oh really? I have theorized muchly about Timeless, but never used it. I thought it added a buff, and while the buff was in effect, nothing else ticked down.

If it just adds to the duration. Hmm. Still good, though not quite as strong as I surmised.

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's a bug or a translation issue. But for things other than Avenging/Last/Mana it's better because you can cast it multiple times to stack it. 1 cast is enough to make any of them last longer than most battles I fight take, and 2 casts should be enough for anything.

I agree that for a mage, creation is the best thing since sliced bread (of which there is far too little in KB). But even though I absolutely love it, it should probably be toned down a bit. 30% increase in power for most buffs/debuffs, summon effects (even from creatures) and maybe something else I forgot PLUS increase of every duration by two (even the short-lived buffs) is a damn big bonus.

Oh, and for the timeless combo, you could slap a target on the unit as well, especially if the enemy has ranged units. I don't understand the use of negation in this situation, though: it would tick down burning and poison to 1, but all the buffs as well, right? Wouldn't a dispel lvl3 be more appropriate?

I haven't had the chance to use that spell yet. But if it's not a buff, then it only extends the duration of buffs already present on the unit, right?. Not of those applied after the cast of Timeless.

Yes, Target is one of the things this can be overly abused with. Though I was specifically talking about a one-stack game before, where you wouldn't even need it.

Does negation affect buffs as well? If so then I guess it's useless. Haven't used it myself.

Ok, at the moment, timeless does not work properly, as was already noted in the bugs thread (but I did not read it...).
It adds a new buff (timeless) to the unit, and every other effect gets the duration of that buff added to its own duration. This fits the description exactly, and the only case that might be unclear are magic spring and similar effects - those still tick down when attacked and can end before timeless does. The problem is that while the unit info shows the extended duration, at least some of the buffs cease giving the corresponding bonus after their original duration. This is definitely the case with divine armor (it's still shown in the unit screen, but the unit does not actually gain the resistances) and may be true for others as well.

Does anyone have experience with this? When I get the time (I am currently timeless), I'll check other spells and maybe have a quick look at the files to see if there is an obvious reason.