How to deal with Gremlion ?
 

So I think this is the last min-boss i have and while I can kill it (with huge losses) I've not figured out how to do it elegantly (I'm a mage around level 45). The thing is that the area attack kills huge amount and it seems to retaliate so I want to use things like assassins; also it appears to be vulnerable to fire but the ony thing that comes to mind are archers.

So maybe royal snakes, assassins, archers, paladins (for resurrection and the tower) and ??

Well, you need units with decent magic resistance and good damage/HP ratio.

Since his mass attack is magic based, an item like the antimage diplom (which is great for a mage with its +2 intellect) from the university in Elon (near the pier and the mage tower, where you land) will work wonders for you. His hand attacks are physical based, so 2 units that have decent physical resistance will do well as main attackers, while the 3 additional units will destroy the towers he spawns.

I propose this lineup:

Paladins
Knights
Horsemen
Guardsmen
Archmagi

Why?

Having non-retaliation units to hack at the boss will actually encourage gremlion to use his mass attack much more often. Having 2 high phys resistant fighter units (like paladins and knights - both have 30% phys resistance base) with stone skin near both his hands (1 each) will minimize the losses you take with those 2 stacks, while the rest of the stacks mop up any towers he summons.

In the battle, use calm rage spell when no units need stone skin or other buffs to gain mana, which should be used for phantoming the paladin stack to ress the losses you suffer with your weaker units.

When he's low on HP, stall. Wait for him to spawn a friendly gremlin tower. Now kill him. Group your units near the friendly gremlin tower and go "phantom the paladins" crazy. Use the phantomed paladins to ress your troops till your out of mana and rage. When you're out of both, kill the friendly gremlin tower and see how you did. If everything went as planned, you should be able to do this battle without losses.

If this does not happen, you may as well wait till you're level 50+ and try your hand at him again.

Glad to hear his mass attack is magic based as I have Mirror Shield, Magician's Cloak, and Anti-Magic Diploma! I think I might try to provoke that more as with Divine Armor, I can easily hit 95% magic resist so a no retal army might be the ticket for me.

I had the helm that gives 50% magic resistence (from the gift bag) on my last play through, and it went super easy. Just have Red/Green dragons with stoneskin on assault, and black/bone for the towers. Royal snakes where needed.

How do you determine his attack is magic base ? I already have the magic resistant items mentioned (well not the helm; but the cloak and tablet) but I have no clue how to determine his attack is magic base (while playing the game).

There aren't in game messages, but trial and error works. Note that ONLY his area of effect attack is magic.

So I tried this with archmage, knight, paladin, horseman and archer and it went rather poorly. Basically lost 10 paladin and everything else. The problem is that even with shield and stone skin I lost 5+ knights a round and 2 or so paladin. Also the area attacks were still relatively frequent but not that damaging (had 55% resistance from cape/tomb).

I'll probably redo the fight but not sure of a good strategy. Actually it went ok till he was 3/4 dead then things got out of hand (I used phantom on paladin to resurrect periodically; the problem is I didn't do enough damage - basically the paladin was the only thing doing substantial damage everything else was blah so the fight took a long time). My thought is I should replace the knight and/or archers with assassins or royal snakes.

DBG when you made the suggestion what level/class did you play ?

on mage i just burned him dawn with fire rain.
on warrior i used imba army : paladin,archmage,tirex,chosha,gorguana.
on paladin .. black knight and only black knight ;p

Physical damage resistance>90% is what count in boss fight.
Paladins and Knights are good because they have ~30% physical resistance+ 40% from stone skin + 7% from medals = 77%.
You need another 15% from artifacts (boots, cuirass, dress).

With 92% resistance you take 8% from 4000 damage=320 dmg or 160 with mage shield.

Only Zigaldis need magic protection - for his area attack, fists are physical- but are more artifacts for that than for physical damage (and frog need poison, but is easy).

Royal Griffins (50% magic resist) are good for towers, but not for melee against zigaldis.
Demonogists (30% magic resist) for damage against Zigaldis.
Red dragons for no retal fire attack.

All the above tips work but I think it's even better to use catapult and cannonneers for the towers instead of any melee unit (such as dragons). For me it took usually one hit from catapult and the 11000 hp tower was gone. If not, cannonneers would finish it. And if Zilgadis didn't summon one, both ranged units can attack him directly. Cannonneers are normally completely useless but here they proved effective.