Proper Path before Demonis?
 

I can probably clear Greenwort, Vernlon, and Arlania (I think I have the Freedom Isle maps already too and Merlasser?).

It just looks like it would take a little bit of time.

Should I do all of them before Demonis?

I don't know if there are any "easy battles" I should save. I didn't use a scanner if one exists.

aka like Skull of Pain sort of items? (actually, being a warrior, it is best served in the normal form).

I'm trying to religiously use up all my valkyrie skills to get the last medal, but honestly it seems like they just ask for more battles the more you use them? :)

Thanks in advance!

Man, That valkyrie medal. Ugh. It's incredibly powerful, but you have to check after each fight if you want to get it as fast as possible. Or I guess you could keep track or something, but that's also annoying.

I don't think you need to do everything pre-demonis. It seemed doable before then. I just hate the idea of missing out on stuff, y'know?

The stacks in Demonis and Hades are way, way higher than the freedom isles ones. This suggests you should probably clean the isles first. I left some parts of the isles uncleared and they're all very weak to me (on impossible difficulty) after Demonis.

I cleared Freedom Islands after Demonis and all fights (except the heros) were easy or very easy. And I also had some trouble in Demonis, a few deadly fights and so on. So I guess the Islands are meant to be explored beforehand, to help you level up a bit. Same goes for the main continent, seems to me it should be cleared before Demonis as well.

As for Merlassar that's a higher level area if I remember correctly, so you can explore before Demonis but I wouldn't start any fights :)

Merlassar was much lower level than Demonis. Fights there were strong/very strong while Demonis was Deadly/invincible.

Ah, crap. I just realized I'm an idiot: I assumed the "rest time" that is reduced by the medals would be that of the valkyrie dialogue abilities - and consequently thought this medal was next to pointless, as those increase their recharge times with each use (and are not very useful apart from Hilda and possibly the last valkyrie). So back to getting it higher than lvl1...

So noone has found an item related to number of battles? Whenever I see a weak or very weak stack, I leave it for rage recharge or item battles...

Wait, what does the Valkyrie medal ACTUALLY do? I also thought like Xargon did, given how it says "rest in between battles."

If you use a Valkyrie for their ability, they say "can't ask me again in 15 battles". Or something.

The lvl 2 medal lowers this by 1 to 14.

However, I can't see the current tick, or remember how many rounds it was the LAST time I asked. I swear the number of rounds they say changes each time to something higher...

Anyway, yeah I'm getting super impatient now and I think I will run a lighter army and just strategically kill "invincible" armies for now.

Just ran to the Freedom isles and it seems that I "overpowered" armies in Greenwort that I wasn't supposed to.

I think the path was supposed to be explore any of the islands like Freedom Isle and Merlasser to get the army type you want and level up.

Crossworld's "problem" was the maps were pretty rigid and if you got unlucky you couldn't get a certain race/army at all until it was too late or got lucky with a beatable "Impossible" map guardian that was non-jukable.

It's a weird thing. You lose all your viking units in the Dark Portal incident, but then get a pretty large selection. Just do the 'port' question from the guy as soon as you arrive in Greenwort, and that'll give you a boat to explore these other lands with. No problemo.

I may actually have to try playing through using Orcs. See how that goes.

Are you sure about this? I think it does indeed reduce rest time in battles. That warrior skill reduces only the Olaf rage skill rest time (and valkyrie rest times display one less than they actually have) and the valkyrie medal decreases those rest times, I believe... I won't get around to testing this conclusively right now, but maybe someone else has already done it? And yes, I think the rest time of dialogue abilities increases by one or something like that each time you use it.

i'd love to play through using orcs, but how do you do it? where can you recruit them?

the first 4islands are 75-90% viking recruits and then the first 3areas of the main continent are 60-80% human recruits! where's my random crossworlds game style

You can do the port quest in Arlania before clearing any of it, and I think without any fights. Do it, and travel to the Isles of Freedom (Kitano has the map) and you can get orc troops from then on. Not exactly the 'entire' game through, since first 4 islands are still mostly viking, but not too bad.

It's strange, the first four viking islands are very rigid , we all felt railroaded and forced to use less than great viking units (okay I'll make an exception for soothsayers - that loki's touch ability is fantastic! - but usless against the hordes of undead good design).

But once you get to Darion, the game suddenly opens up and you can get human, viking, elves and orcs with some dwarves thrown in, with as little as one quest gate!

Strange approach, I think they were trying to build authenticity (Vikings fight with a viking army!) - and make no loss more challenging (if that's your thing) by making the vikings crappy is comparison to the other races.

I mean who arrived it Darion and thought, hah Rune mages, Royal griffens and Paladins! Who needs them, I' going back to the homeland for another full army of vikings!

Before i get bashed just pointing out that the vikings aren't imho a good balanced army, I would takes even dwarves any day over them. Now maidens are good - if you can get them in sufficent numbers, soothsayers as I said above are good for the Loki's touch, Jarls are okay as tanks go but numbers again could be a problem, I've seen 30ish can't see it been viable (Note I haven't played past Demonis so I don't know if the Viking islands replenish at that point) - I would take Royal Griffens over them in a heartbeat (even with the bugged morale bonus to humans)

I generally agree on most points. It was weird they put things on rails for a good chunk of the initial gameplay, and then suddenly let you go pretty much wild (though not completely).

I don't think they INTENTIONALLY made the vikings bad. They actually have a decent group of units:

Skald, Berserker, Soothsayer, Jarl, Maiden

That's a pretty decent force. Jarls tank, Maidens and Berserkers do good damage, soothsayer and resurrect are solid, skald supports. Heck, Jotuns are a complete beefcake unit if you want to load them up, though they aren't particularly good other than that.

The issue really, is that the Human units are INCREDIBLY strong now. Royal Griffons + Paladins was already a good strong combination before the degenerate rune mage unit was added. As cool as the Maidens are, Paladin's are that, plus a total tank, and do AoE heals, which are often more valuable.

Heck, even the human Bowmen is much much stronger than most other archers, due to its ability to slow, chill, and burn targets, depending on the need of the scenario.

Yes, I agree Viking units are not bad at all, Soothsayers are incredibly strong in later stages (Loki's Touch is the best spell ever and they also do terrific damage with their blizzard AND their range attack). Berserkers can win most battles almost on their own, if you don't mind ressing and replenish them all the time, Maidens and Jarls are also great. Vikings, Jotuns and the slingshot guys are average but not bad. And I've never used Skalds, they seem like a waste of slot (but I can be wrong). So Vikings - great.

Yes, Humans are powerful but frankly, I grew a bit tired of Paladins and Royal Griffins over the last three KB games. Moreover Paladin ressing is great but bit of a hassle. You always need a turn extra to huddle your units around Pals.

In CW I much preferred an elf army with lots of spawns, shooters, charmers and non-retaliation melee units. Of course in WoTN the Humans are much more convenient because they're ideal for fighting the undead whereas the elves suck at that.

You can purchase all Orcish units from the 'Mysterious Parcel', which can be obtained the moment you have access to Arlania. Check out the Mysterious Parcel thread for more details.

You can also purchase orcs on the Freedom Islands which come fairly early in the game (check with Kitano).

loki's touch has a limit of ~80% of the leadership of your stack so if you're facing off against a lot of strong/very strong/deadly enemies it'll be almost useless (like if you're doing a mage impossible playthrough) although on a skald-normal playthrough I can imagine it being the best ability in the game! (the ai is borked and basically treats the rabid unit as if it's hypnotized and wastes all of it's turns attacking it all out like a fool)

compare to some of the weaker elf abilities working on 150% leadership, or infinite leadership and it seems a bit stronger even if the effects are weak (1 turn of fighting, or a few turns of sleep) then engineer's blind is infinite leadership and aoe!

True, on Impossible it would probably be close to useless. But on my first Normal playthrough it was magnificent, precisely because the rabid stack becomes the top priority for the AI.

As for the elf CC abilities, AFAIK they don't work on undead (charm, sleep etc.) that's why elves suck at fighting the horde (also ranged attacks are weak against skeleton archers and ghosts and poison damage is weak on all undead). And I've never tried the engineer, does blinding work on undead?

I agree with those points. Blinding worked on undead in CW. I assume it works that way in WotN. Only works on 1-4, but then, the only level 5 Undead is the Bone Dragon.

And yeah, Elves aren't really equipped to fight undead, even if unicorns do get bonuses against them. I can sort of see why the Elves fell against the undead in KB:TL now.

Yeah, forgot about them. And in fact they're fantastic. I only used them in the last fight of the game, where you get all-elven army but it seemed to me they do vastly more damage to the undead than the Inquisitors which I used all the time. Even though the Inquisitors have higher bonus (50 % vs. 30 % of unicorns).

rabid doesn't work against undead either, so as a comparison between the viking and elf CC debuffs it wasn't relevant...



engineer in kb:wotn is level 1-3 I am sure. although i think it was lvl 1-3 in kb:cw i might be wrong.

Yea the medal makes no sense because everytime you use a valk ability, the recharge times goes up by 1.
so -1 after 10 uses means your at 20 - 1.. Still a lot more if you just saved them for the hard fights anyways. I guess the only purpose could be to just focus on a 1 or 2 valks, so the others recharge earlier or something, but eh either way, no worth worrying about.

I'm real confused about what order to do things in.... before I go to demonis should i do the elf and pirate islands? and what about the orc invasion of the homeland when does that fit in? the orcs seem really weak even before i've gone to demonis, yet there's not a lot of them and i'm not even sure it's worth the time to bother?

the elf island has tons of awesome stuff but parts of it seem inactive? (lots of yellow enemies and people not responding to you?) does it open up more later? is it meant for after doing something else first?


in fact the pirate islands actually seem in many ways to be easier than arlania and verlon wasteland! was I supposed to visit them before clearing all of that area out?

I've asked this before, and I'll do it again: are you sure about this? I know this is what the description says, but as we all know, this does not necessarily mean that it's true. I read somewhere on this forum that it actually decreases the rest time in battle, and it seems true for me. There are a few discrepancies between the rest time displayed and the actual rest time, though. I'll soon get the valkyrie medal to lvl2, then I'll be able to verify.

edit: Ok, this is untrue. Getting the medal to lvl2 changed nothing (except maybe the cooldown of dialogue abilities, which would be useless). But the rest times displayed are still a bit weird for the valkyrie combat abilities: for Gudrida's rage, it's correct (rest 2), but every other valkyrie ability has one less rest than it says.

About this proper path before Demonis, in my case Guliford, do i need to clear Arlania of undead before battle with Gulifor?
I think that after this battle and elves invated arlania, all undead that i left are gone
can someone confirm this and give some advice

If you want to be a perfectionist, yes. As a pragmatist, I'd go for all the "big invincible/deadly" groups and mini-bosses first (like Griffin on Griffin island). If you don't, a lot of the mobs and mission might get lost permanently as they are reset.

Try to do every mission and mini-hero-boss on all of those maps before you talk to Guilford.

Before giving the Staff of Light to Guilford, you can do an EXTRA hero battle at the dungeon where you rescue the ghost in Verlon Wastelands.

I hope someone writes this all out somewhere... :)

i searched the entire forum but didnt find, thank you. I already kiled ghoust but i think that undead from other 2 island dont disapear, i checked and all that i left are there after battle with Guilford

Do you also know where i can find humans to buy after battle with Guilford, because path to castle is blocked?
I just found archmages and i will need refill cause i must to rise level to be able to rescue Rezo

Oh no! Your only option for humans 'might' be in Messerland (elf land) if you do the quest properly, but I dont' remember archmages being there in my playthrough (only paladins/horsemen but no archmage or runemage).

After that, I don't think there are anymore humans left. :(

You might get a few buys from Rezo, but not a lot and obviously you are in a catch-22 there. (need archmage to save Rezo, but need Rezo to buy archmage haha).

You can use sacrifice to rebuild your archmage army though or stock up on them via easy battles (this is why I save a lot of easy battles around just in case!).

To be honest though, besides paladins and runemages, there are plenty of other subtitutes. So don't fret! Otherwise, reload! If you do reload and buy extra armies, keep the spare armies NOT IN Greenwort/Arlania castles. Stick them back in Viking land or Freedom Isles.

It seems that i must to find some other units, maybe with dragons.
I found archmages on shore but from humans i love Rune mages and Paladins, others are here to boost morale.

And unit that i like the most are Royal Griffins and i also buy them only in Guilford's castle. But if i play with dragons they are not suitable

I'm dissapointed about this, i played with humans in all KB games, and of course witn Royal griffins

You will definitely get Royal Griffins later on. :) I hate those things though, but they are good.

Hey, you can use sacrifice. :) I also ran with a very very small group of Rune Mages since you don't need that many.

I'd definitely pre-stock up Paladins though.

Thank you for everything. I'm combine something of this an maybe add some vikings, maidens or soothsayer