[travelingoz]

I've been muddling through the first stages of the full russian version the last few weeks.....

You will be pleased to know that the old favorites that were hard to find in KB e.g. inquisitors, Royal thorns (limited quantity) and royal blue snakes are always available in your starting area however... the good new units like assasains, paladins and royal griffins are very random both in quantity and location....
I just completed the first 2 stages and finally found some paladins in the mage hut near the starting castle.... but there were only 5 of them... with 4000 leadership, that's about 16 short...

It seems to be the same as KB regarding most artifacts.

Also the better spells are hard to find again too! No sacrifice, resurrection, gift (is it still available?) yet, however some of the new spells like retribution and summon aninimal allies are quite easy to find.

All in all it seems to be a much more even balance than KB without taking away the random replayability IMHO.

P.S. The new retribution spell seriously rocks! It will have even warriors looking to upgrade their Order Magic skills early! It works in a similar way to mana spring, so on level 2 with 15init it does 350~650 Dmg for 5 turns/hits. Now that its easy to get a few royal thorns early game....... it's party time!