Can't defeat Bagud!
 

I have a problem....I'm a level 29 Paladin and I can't proceed any further without defeating the Giant Orc Bagud. Anyone got any ideas?

I've completed everything else on the map, there is nothing more for me to do or fight so I can't get anymore experience or leadership to get more troops!

I just can't defeat Bagud without more troops...I've tried different types of troops but I just need more whatever combination I use! Am I missing something? It seems that this game doesn't re-spawn, so it seems like I'm stuck.

I don't want to "cheat" and give my hero more leadership, but it looks like after hours of game play there is nothing else I can do.

In order to help most effectively, I need more information, namely what your basic stats are (att/def/int/ldr/rage/mana), what skills you have in the might and magic skill trees, what troop combos you have tried, a rough idea of his army, what spells you have available (mostly talking about distortion and order spells, only mages can really use chaos spells effectively), and finally, the cost and target range of the timeback rage ability of reaper's.

Don't despair, unless you have royally screwed yourself over in some way (e.g. by never having taken leadership upgrades at levelups so you have less than 20k leadership, or not buying/using items etc.), there has to be a way to win the battle with a good application of strategy and the right combo of troops, spells, and rage abilities

I suggest to get in your armee inquisitors, emerald dragons, dryad (with anga's ruby:)),... and whatever else with good kiling ratio.
Fight: 1 round: use lullaby with dryads, as rage you should use ice thorns to protect your ranged units, for spell may will use mass magic shackles, if have skeleton archers, then dragon arrows, or traps with emerald target capture,... kill ogres and shamans ASAP:!:, don't touch lvl 1-3 enemies even if they are teleported:!: 2 round: wait with emeralds (if no traps) and dryads, continue to destroy ogre's and shamans, if you waited with emerald, then use mana source, to regain some mana, in dryads turn use time back to recover the most damaged your units. 3 round: phantom dryads:grin:, use sleep with phantom, continue killing ogres and shamans. 4 round: wait with emeralds (if you haven't in round 2), destroy some ogres and shamans, ressurect losses (you are a paladin, so you start with this spell scroll), for dragons losses, use inquisitors ressurection with gift, or sacrifice something and time back. 5 round: use sleep with dryads, ogres now should be dead;), also shamans too quick killed, continue to ressurection killed allies.
For next: ressurect your losses, every 1,5,9,... round use sleep with dryads, every 3,7,11,... round phantom dryads and ues sleep with them:). When all enemy ogres and shamans are killed, don't rush to hit lvl 1-3 enemies! Instead, every 4,6,8,... round wait with some units and beginn to kill after enemies turns (prefer shooting, or with no ret., so no losses:)), with emeralds when possible, in the end of turn use mana source. Continue so, until Bagud is killed and your units are restored:). Hope, that's help.

Thanks for your help. My stats are:

Attack 10
Defense 25
Rage 67 (0 at start of battle)
Mana 91
Intellect 10

Leadership is 22,400

I have most order spells at level 3, and most distortion at level 1

My "Time back" works on level 1-3 creatures

The only troop affecting artifact I have is "knight boots" which give +5 defense to horsemen, swordsmen, knights etc. Other artifacts affect any units with attck/defense bonuses.

I wonder how it became that you have so low leadership and so low stats ..
10 atack at end game for mage ok but paladin? My was 28 atack, 25 def, 12 int and 25k leadership thats way higher than your and actualy my stats are low could be much higher since i didnt get skull of death on this game.
I think your items might be not good. Are you sure thats the best items you could get? I doubt it but if so you are really unlucky, and whats your wife?
Low timeback is bad also but its not your fault i had same at my first game.
First what come on my mind would be some nice guaranteed items like dragon slayer sword ( +5 attack +50% dmg to dragons), you can get it by doing level 30 tournament in greenwort, also kerus sword (3 attack 3 int) in demonis, one of road architects should have it, either the one with ultrax quest either that one linked with isharra's quest
Anga's ruby is the item affecting troops also ( +3 morale for females)and its guaranteed, you get it after doing one of quest in eastenr islands

And hmm distortion 1 only at end game? we are talking about which difficulty level? easy, normal? Higher i doubt i cant imagine completing demonis without mass magic shackles ..

Ok, the problem here is pretty obvious. You need way more attack. I don't know how you managed to rech 29 aquiring only 10 attack even with items but I am 100% sure that you can re-arrange some items to go at least towards 20 attack. Sacrifice Defense for it. The same goes with intellect. Even a paladin, who royally sucks at casting/spellpower can handle Intellect way more effectively than defense. See it that way: what is the best way to avoid taking a beating ? Easy as this: hit as hard as you can and leave nothing or few to retaliate. Stacking Defense is very ineffective and it doesn't help a lot considering the fact what you're losing, i.e. atk/int. So that's the most important point here. Try to get at least 20 atk and 15 int and lower defense to say 10. I know there are items available, you're practically through the game and almost every shop unlocked.

The time back range of course limits you choice of troops to time back effectively. But to help you I need to know what troops you are using the most (I know you've said you've tried many but you should have found at least a rough setup of faves).

Other questions that need to be answered (and don't kill me if they exceed your knowledge of the game, since I don't know you :> )
Are you married ? If yes, to whom ?
Does your wife have kids ?
As Ryastar already asked you to tell us: what skills did you take in the might and mind tree (since these 2 are the key to the paladin)

As for the distortion magic level 1. Distortion Magic is the strongest CC magic in the game and no class can afford going without disto3 in late game. Of course, this is my view on the game and my personal playing style. Spells like Magic Spring, Target, Magic Shackles (one of the most important spells in late game for a pal especially) are inevitable. They need to be maxed out asap. I hope you can somehow fix that with buying runes at Castle Bogacho. otherwise you have a big disadvantage here, especially against orcish troops. Shamans and Catapults turn absolutely useless being magic shackeled (lvl 3 = mass for 3 turns). If they're not they'll screw any of your defensive strategies for avoiding archer/support losses.

€dit: to confirm Elwin here. I would say that any game is completable with the guaranteed items. It's no cup of tea relying only on these (in cases of very very bad luck) nut with time back, ressurrection, sacrifice, disto3 and given items you can beat any game. You cannot lose unless impossible game diff. You can perform bad and take losses but you can't lose. So the tournament sword, and/or (depending on weapon slots on the wife) kerus sword will give 8 attack together. And you don't have 2 atk base, do you? So more than 10 is granted. Anga's ruby not only gives 3 morale to females, it also gives speed, atk, def and most importantly INIT. In a game not filled up with the finest of random items this IS the strongest one you will have and it's crucial to use it.

Oh you write completly that i have on my mind vulture i realy wonder how he get so far without disto3 ^^ U made one little mistake, shackes are 2 rounds alaways. 3 turn or more cames if your int is higher than 15

Oh, I didn't realize the additional turn derives from the int. Didn't pay attention to it. The moment I upgraded shackle to 2 and 3 was the moment when I already hat 15+ Int so I didn't notice although the tooltip of INT displays exactly what you say. Thanks for the correction here :>

a nice strategy is to use cerbers + demonesses with a time back support. It worked very nice with Bagud for me. As I remember cerbers are lvl 3 so they work with your low level time back rage.
If you have onslaught ability than you can:
- use ladies ability and switch cerbers with some enemy unit
- cast lvl 3 bless spell
- attack with cerbers 3 enemy units at once
- use some rage of your choice
- destroy enemy unit that is close to your melee forces
- attack with range units
- cerbers will counterattack and hit 2-3 enemy units
- end turn
during next turn use time back on cerbers (after they attack and after they counterattack)
other hints:
- use better equipment as everyone suggest (swords, anga etc)
- wait with your spells so you can dispel any hipnotize that bagud loves to use

My might and mind trees are fully developed for all combat relevant attributes. I finally managed to beat Bagud by trying different spell combinations and relying on luck with critical hits (and less luck for the opponent) a victory dropped out in the end! Believe it or not, I finally defeated him with a troop of Horsemen, Knights, Swordsmen, Inquisitors and Elves!!

As a Paladin, ofensive spells aren't that great and spell use is mainly countering spells cast on my troops.

I like to play the game with just one type creature, i.e all elves or humans or orcs etc. but I am now in the position where I stand absolutely no chance of defeating Haas.

I think this is where the game is flawed. It is clearly possible to get to this stage of the game having completed all the quests and beaten all the wandering monsters and still have insufficient stats to finish! As for artifacts, I got a surprising number that raised intellect or mana, but very few to help with attack. I guess this is due to the randomness of the the game.

I hope the new game gives us the chance to battle some higher level groups so that it's possible to level up if need be. Re-spawning after a period of time would help with this, or some more complex quests that give more experience....let's be honest, the quests in this game are pretty basic and don't take much in the way of intellect to complete!

Post screen of your character we can se what items you have, I have already gave you some ideas of items in game which are incresing atack and are in every game.And thats not true with Haas, Haas is pretty easy .. if u cant beat him you screwed something and your seetup isnt great anyway. Why elves if u can get hunters f.e?
In attachemt my hero before Bagud for comparison, only one wepaon which is not guaranteed its trident called Demetrius but instead of it u can take Kerus which will be only 1 atack less ( but more int)

Example for a fight with Haas on hard ( types of haas armies can differs a little)
Beggining we are first sprites and lf takes down bone dragons and dragon arrow skell archer takes down black dragon, demon with pentagram on giant, hm hunter i guess for red dragon.
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3018/haas1.th.jpg

Round 2 beggins fire dragon flies and one stack of gren dragon killed by retaliation of demon ors skel anyway its dead ;p. time back on skel archer to shoot down the ramaining green dragon, sprites for red dragon or something i dont rember exactly ;P
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2027/haas2.th.jpg
Few rounds and ..The last standing giant and hunter takes finish blow :p hmm that was some different try tough after getting back to finish quest with haas and get more troops :p result is same in both i did it easily ;p
http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/7866/haas3.th.jpg

For that team u must have tolerance 2 , if you dont dont even try, that was one example how too kill haas vvery easily with realy low loses even on hard level difficulty ( will see soon how it will be on impossible :P ) I usualy do have inquistor in my army but for that fight i find him pretty useless, he dies fast and dont do anything, need very good tank who can take much damage or good damage dealer who kills fast

Does that include Onslaught3 and Dark Commander3 ? If not, your might tree is NOT developed for all combat relevant attributes.
Does that include Tolerance2 ? If not, as a paladin with s sh*itload of mind runes to spare that makes your choice of troops very felexible which you need as a paladin.

Nobody was talking about Chaos i.e. the real "offensive" spells. You're right about chaos3 being not that great. Not even "not that great" but totally senseless except sacrifice (where leveling up only saves time/turns). But once again, nobody was talking nukes, but CC and manipulative status spells. Shackles3 for example as I said is vital and inevitable.

The game is not meant to be like this. In some cases "pure" setups do work fine, but not everywhere. Undead only fe works perfectly well against almost any kind of enemy troops except other undeads, especially with bone dragons. All Elves army with the right choice of items also works fine but definetely not the best way to go against fire based (fe demonic) enemy hordes.
I mean, it's fine to go with what you like the most but deciding WHAT you like the most shouldn't depend on race but on initiative/dmg/health/special abilities/speed. There is no reason to choose Horsemen at all, same counts for elves. There are in both cases at least 4 different units that perform better in their respective job. Any Dragons work better than horsemen. Skel Archs, Bowmen, even Thorns (provided a few items) and Hunters perform better than elves.

As stated by Elwin and myself there are enough guaranteed items to achieve a decent amount of attack. And the number of random weapons with +3 atk +random effect is countless.

I agree to some degree. There can be stages in the game where difficulty varies depending on leadership grabbing opportunities and the one or another "skirmish" fight in a distinct area (more tournaments or portaled areas) would help at certain stages to compensate. General respawn is not an issue. 90% of the players dedicated to this game would disagree on a general respawn.
As for the addon providing higher level enemy troops to boost XP reward I disagree. You have the possibility to proceed to a more difficult area any time by completing Mark's quests earlier than you're meant to. This gives you access to higher lands and you can go there although it's way above your level. Makes leveling up faster (but harder of course) since the Playerlvl/Monsterlvl multiplier changes to your advantage.

Thats what i like in this game is that you have quite early access most of units, not for just last few fights, beating lucky james or red beard which is pretty easy gives acces with little sneaking to all dwarf and mostly demon units and some powerful artefacts and spells. Beating bogacho castle ( which is also easy unless you dont have magic schackles3 or its game on imposssible level difiiculy) gives access to elf land and so lotd which unlocks everything and its far from the end of the game.
About damage spells the only one which find usefull for warrior and paladin is pain mirror, send sprite/lf to enemy he got hit pretty badly and timeback, and pain mirror :p on impossible it easily does 7-14k dmg it helps ^^ also sending just phantoms of sprite/lf is good for that\

@Vulture about those random +3 attack thats not true, there are no random items at all there are only a few of them in fact ^^

weapons != items. In my first game I got at least 5 weapons providing at least +3 atk (not counting dragon slayer sword and kerus sword). Just count all those dwarven hammers. I think there are (along with the quest item) 3 different dwarven hammers out there giving 3atk + either 1 dwarven morale or +3 atk to dwarves each. And these are by far not the only weapons of this quality. I wasn't talking regalia/artifact. Indeed there are practically none providing +3 atk. But I was talking weapons anyways.

I take your points, but I still think this game is very weak on quests. They aren't difficult and usually involve going between a couple of characters delivering messages, with maybe a little battle thrown in for good measure.

I guess I was spoilt in that I was used to the older Might and Magic series....some of the quests you reall had to think about, and your choice of solutions really affected the gameplay. The other frustrating thing about this game is the lack of adventure spells, movement around the world is tedious and time consuming.

The Dirgible graphics are fun the first time, but just frustrating and a waste of time after that! Same for the ship to "Freedom Isles". Why not have a option to bypass the animation? It all looks pretty but it makes for tedious gameplay!

Anyway, I went back to an earlier saved game and adopted a slightly different levelling up strategy to defeat Haas, but I won't play this again unless the tedious travel is sorted! It's a good game, and in my view a positive step towards the earlier RPG/strategy games, in the longrun it isn't graphics that make make a good game (anyone can do that these days), but the gaming quality and complexity. I hope this series continues and improves upon itself!

Just hit Esc button on your keyboard to skip animation ;)

That would certainly help!!....although I still dislike the fact that you can't go anywhere without going back to the point of arrival. Just a few adventuremap spells would make this game much more enjoyable (for me!!), I know there are many that are happy to go through the process of getting back to somewhere, I just find that a bit of waste of time...especially when you have to do it a hundred times or more!

I know these are silly niggles, and I can put up with it in a game which is more complex, but this is not a complex game and the lack of adventure map movement spells is annoying!