New Spells -- Review
 

Hey there, I never played King's Bounty the Legend, so I have no idea what the new spells are like, especially since they are probably toned down a bit for balance reasons.

Ice Thorns - surrounds enemy with ice, seems potentially very good against fast moving melee attackers and can help a range build tremendously. Seems like only one point is necessary since it is really crystal expensive, and upgrades only lower the mana cost.

Gizmo - I heard it does healing and stuff? I don't want to waste 60 turns to kill driller with my 4 trolls to find out it sucks. [edit] Seems like if you have Black Dragons wait, the Gizmo will heal your Black Dragons. Sounds very handy in those Solo Missions.

Giot's Armor - absorbs damage, but forces a unit to be unable to move. Seems GREAT if you can predict an attack since it works like the old school AD&D stoneskin. No matter how much damage, you will block the first hit, resulting in 0 damage to the target, but losing the armor. e.g. Level 1 Giot Armor on your rune mage which ALWAYS gets targetted by those imbalanced enemy blood shaman... shaman does 9999 damage against a 300 dmg giot armor, 0 rune mages die. Mwhaha.

Dragon of Chaos - seems crappy compared to Call Phoenix. Expensive and weak. [edit] Might be worth it at level 1 to simply raise a demon's army's morale to break into the 100% critical mark

School of Piranha - excellent on the bridges since you will hit all units on it, but I think too situational for me for now. Seems FAR more mana and damage efficient than Stone Rain

Stone Rain - a bunch of rocks fall from the sky, seems unimpressive. Can anyone comment on this?


Feel free to add or help me find out the hidden mojo if I said some of the spells sucks.

Poisonous Spit - a poor man's "pygmy" of sorts. The real key is the 20% reduction in the enemy's attack rating (not the damage), also it counts as yet another negative status affect when calculating negative morale PLUS it does damage alongside with poison skull. Supposedly this can be used against bosses.

Black Hole - What Death Star should have been. :) Hits all enemies on screen with astral damage, cannot hurt your own units with it. It is like armageddon but better. It seems to do more damage than death star, however, it does not hit buildings and costs 60 mana at level 3.

Ice Orb - somewhat interesting. If used far away, it moves in direct lines (think like a Queen Chess Piece) and it does more damage if you are further away when it strikes. Think - Horsemen charge. Low initiative though so you can't pop it on the fly like Ancient Phoenix. Fairly tanky with 50% physical resists. It does draw a fair amount of aggro though. If any units are next to it, their Attack Rating drops by 25% (probably the base attack rating). It can be cast anywhere. Costs 40 Mana at Level 3.

I see you haven't discovered some of the new old spells, like Ice Orb or Soul Draining, hehe. As for glot's armor, it's a part of one of the best combos of KBTL: skelly archers + dragon arrows + glot's armor = death to black dragons :) I'll have to try it out in KBCW, I have no archers yet. They may be not so good now, with low leadership of mage hero.

School of Piranha (or Evil Shoal) was one of the best rage skills in the early game in KBTL. It's still good, but I think that you can easily get it too late. But it's very strong, it's total damage heavier than most spells. It can be tricky to position, but I have perfected it in KBTL, so is no problem now.

One of the least impressing rage-skill-turned-spell is Poisonous Spit, I think. But it's distortion school, so may be useful if you maxed distortion and not chaos.

Gizmo is not really useful, it would be if it wasn't spell but rage skill, tough. It's too situational and unpredictable (it randomly heal or attacks). In KBTL I used it mostly to level rage spirit up.

Ice thorns are great for keeping last non-ranged survivors in bay and resurrecting, but I'd prefer it to be cheaper.

Stone Rain... I have yet to find it. It was quite nice in KBTL but only after upgrading (area was huge), but I don't know how it upgrades now.

Dragon of Chaos is completely new spell, not taken from KBTL, and I haven't found it.

Is there a list of all the new spells/items/skills/ect?

Not that I know of, but I am planning to try to make one.

I want to know what the Dragon Toy does!

I have found two pieces of the Dragon toy, nifty so far.

Funny thing is, some Rage Spirit abilities will finally be usefull. In the Legend, around second half of the game I was only using Rina and Reaper, and of course Glot Armor from Sleem, Zerock did so little damage for even my Paladin, it was laughable. I never got to develop Gizmo so high that it'd resurrect/haste units or debuff the enemy, so I am looking forward to that.

Poison Spit is pretty powerfull, and a Distortion Magic spell to boot - it does not much damage at first hit, but it will do quite high damage in the next three rounds.

I hate how one piece has the -1 initiative to all allies troops level 3-5. :(

Dragon Arrow was severely nerfed in AP. Now they only ignore 30% of the enemy's defense.

I see. I used them on less than ten occasions, because without Glot's Armor the archers were too vulnerable anyway. Oh well, Glot's may be still useful for saving troops or blocking passages.

With a 100% critical archer build (ah, the joy), glots armor opens up a lot of doors for me. Maybe I can do a revised version of it. Dragon arrows SUCKS compared to 100% crit archer builds. As a side note 100% archer builds only seems really good with warriors, not mages.

However, in my current mage build, glots armor can help save my mages from the totally IMBALANCED blood shaman.

See, I usually throw away summon units and such to raise my rage. This strategy is extremely bad against the orcs, since it feeds their adrenaline.

Not fun seeing an ogre HURL my MAGIC IMMUNE phoenix into the air... and die.

Or, seeing blood shamans take out troll and rune mage stacks...

Of course, magic shackles seems to be a little more efficient than glot in this case. :)

I can still see it being somewhat useful to block the first hits of a very powerful ranged stack. I can't wait to experiment more!

Orcs are a little (if not a lot) more overpowered. NOT called march of the orc for nothing (Maybe stampede of the orcs?).

The ogre drain ability sucks the action point from one of your units and adds it to himself! My royal gryphons where trashen by that shit that moved like 7 squares!!

The dragon toy must be a full set (I have 3 parts and I don't know what it does). Maybe boost your dragons abilities?