[kcwong]

I'm back!

I had an accident... this Monday afternoon, in my office I suddenly saw some black floating objects inside my right eye. I have floaters in both eyes since I can remember, but those were new additions. On close inspection they dispersed... and I knew I had blood in my right eye.

I left work immediately for an ophthalmologist... he told me that my right eye indeed had a blood vessel bursted. Bleeding already stopped when I noticed it, and my retina had no sign of falling off, so he sent me home with some medicine, vitamin C pills and "Papase 30mg" (seems to be some anti-swelling enzyme), and told me to come back two weeks later.

I still have no clue why that happened... I never had any eye problems before, other than being close-sighted, astigmatism and occasionally dry eyes, which is understandable for an IT guy that stares at monitors a lot.

So I'm now taking it very seriously... a mandatory 5 minutes break every hour from any reading. Hopefully I won't have another busted blood vessel somewhere...

While I have to stop realtime gaming like Starcraft II, luckily Armored Princess and upcoming Civ5 are still viable choices.


Anyway, I defeated Elenhel, but not really because of a lot of skill on my part. It's just the mysterious ways the AI acts in this game.

I tried single 8/8 EGD stack using invisibility first, but Elenhel's stacks moved first, and I was down to 4 EGD when I get to move.

I tried several times more (on Orc islands), and then started switching the triggering battle, trying to start out on a better terrain with full rage/mana.

Eventually I chose the magic protection test as my triggering battle (I know I won't get a chance to equip it)... I didn't end it with full rage/mana, but somehow in Elon Elenhel stopped spamming geyser every single turn. Instead he chose to use Call of Nature almost every turn, and only used Sheep on my Archmage and Demonologist stacks once each.

Here's the before and after saves...
http://www.box.net/shared/639y9dg97e

And here's the result screen...

Archmage stack didn't deal enough damage to out rank the multiple stacks of Cerberus.


@ impy:

1) improve your magic resistance. majority of his units are ranged magic dealers so if you put on chaos helm, magician cloak etc. they'll do only negligible damage.

Unfortunately I don't have any such artifacts. I make map notes of every single artifact for sale, so I'm pretty sure of it.

2) improve your physical resistance. His geyser is physically based.

Already using all I have! Slippery Cuirass and Leather Dress.

3) dump level 5 creatures. facing those many,many geysers you do not want to spend tons of mana on time back. Replace temporarily or permanently with unit with god resistances - knight, horseman..

In earlier attempts my stacks were quickly reduced to nothing if I went with too much weak units, since he's spamming geyser non-stop.

4) better artefacts. I remember seeing those fire protection boots, shark tooth.. which are not helpful in this fight.

For the boots, I have no other options, other than the pair that makes your slowest stack move faster one. The only other boots for sale is on the demon island, the same pair of fire protection boots. So I think the +2 Def is already my best option.

5) This is one very nasty fight where you either have to wait until he spends all his mana before you start resurrecting or leave last unit - dragonflies and cast fear. So you are actually quite lucky with him having dragonflies. Cast fear on them in the first round.

On Elon he didn't have dragonflies... but then he also didn't spam geyser either. The AI in this game moves in a mysterious way.

7) have you improved those skills are was telling you about - mana acc., summoner? You can improve your resurrection also by - higher intelellect, increases strength of summoning spell, inquisitors blade, increases number of paladins you can have

I closed up a quest and became level 40 before fighting Elenhel. I took Summoning I with that... but it wasn't the deciding factor as it turns out.


Edit: Exchanged mind runes (had near 40) for magic runes, so I have Summoning III now. Might runes is around 15, I think I can go for more bonus defense in Defense and Caution later, or get Anger II. Only Concentration III left, then it's Wisdom or the map-regen on for a bigger mana pool. Got flying mount.