another sick challenge from impy:-)

[impy]

you know the feeling.. you have been playing this game for months, you can name anything that lies between debir and reha, you love the game, but it is not as when you were playing your first no loss impossible game anymore. You feel you're losing interest a bit, however there is no replacement for this game as of yet on the market and in your heart. What to do?
I can only think of two more challenges left, if you know more let me know.
1) no loss impossible mage game with no direct damage spellcasting. meaning only ressurecting, buffing, summoning etc.
2) no loss impossible mage game with single red dragon. I managed to conquer everything in the game apart from k'tahu & baal with single blackie; red dragon can be healed, so there is a fighting chance.

what do you guys think?

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by impy

you know the feeling.. you have been playing this game for months, you can name anything that lies between debir and reha, you love the game, but it is not as when you were playing your first no loss impossible game anymore. You feel you're losing interest a bit, however there is no replacement for this game as of yet on the market and in your heart. What to do?
I can only think of two more challenges left, if you know more let me know.
1) no loss impossible mage game with no direct damage spellcasting. meaning only ressurecting, buffing, summoning etc.
2) no loss impossible mage game with single red dragon. I managed to conquer everything in the game apart from k'tahu & baal with single blackie; red dragon can be healed, so there is a fighting chance.

what do you guys think?

Uh, I already did 1), pretty much. 2% total damage from spell book, probably just because I felt like trying to get Fire Mage. I almost never use direct damage spells.

2) Should be impossible. It is only possible if you have ridiculous physical resistance, since Ktahu will kill the red dragon on his first action before you can stone skin.

[impy]

i think it might be possible to survive k'tahu attack..
let's get numbers to do the talking:
k'tahu has initiative 12, which you cannot match so you have to suffer from his first physical attack = 3000-4000 damage.
damage depends on your defence/his attack ratio and your physical resistance.
k'tahu attack = 102.
your defence = 63 (start) + 19 (+3 morale) +31 (+50%defence combo artifact) + 10 (wanderer scroll) + cca 15-20 (hero attribute) = cca 138-143.
therefore his damage will only be 2/3 of 3000-4000 which is 2000-2666.

your physical resistance = 15 (start) + 7 (medal) + 15 (twink.boots) + 10?? (caution 3 skill) + 20 (scaly set) = 67% reduction

therefore (2000-2666) x (1-0.67) = 660-1147 damage.
knowing your dragon has 860 hit points, with a bit of luck you may survive first round

p.s. i put question mark to caution 3 skill, because i am not sure how exactly it works. it clearly says 30% phys. damage reduction in first round, but when i checked it on the black dragon it gave me only 20%. So i only assumed conservative 10%

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah, so that's kinda my point though. The 'challenge' is just loading up games until you have the exact items you need over and over again, since that battle pretty much means you can't succeed any other way.

(Also, am I the only one who thinks the Belt of the Victor should be... a belt? And not an 'artifact'?)

[Harush]

Hah...I've already done #1. My rule was zero spell book damage and no damage from phantoms. Meant I couldn't use sacrifice either.

[impy]

i played no loss impossible mage game with single red dragon.
Game was lot less nail biting than playing with single black dragon, due to heal/stone skin combo. Defeated everything in the game but ktahu & baal without using any wanderer scrolls apart from 50% exp. If you're interested see my previous thread about single black dragon for info. See screenshot after killing gremlion.
I got to ktahu and was wondering if he can be defeated. I had cca 250 mana, 6o int, 42% base phys. resist, 128 base defence on dragon + 61 scrolls ready (10 death stars, 4 geysers, 15 ice snakes, 10+ lighting etc.)
Idea was as follows:
1) first round : survive ktahu physical attack. It is doable as i mentioned earlier. I had twink.boots, caution 2, leather dress, belt of the victor. Heal, stone skin, hide in the corner where dragon can be attacked by 2 creatures only.
2) ktahu summons units. preferably 2 units of hayterans. Point is, that the whole battle with ktahu would be very long 40+rounds. Eventually the whole screen will get filled up with lizardmen summons. After killing ktahu one has to kill them all as well. My idea was to let hayterans which cannot reach dragon to lay eggs and have half a screen filled up with low numbers of hayterans, which can be easily killed by a few fire rains at the end.
3) dragon stays in the corner. Ktahu's attack does about 250dmg. So every 5 rounds cast stone skin, every 3 rounds heal spell. In between fire arrow to ktahu, occasionally calm rage or magic spring.
4) once lower on mana, save mana for stone skin, start using scrolls for damaging ktahu - my scrolls alone could do 70000+ damage!
5) this strategy works perfectly, got ktahu down to 80000 hit points and started to dance around my pc. But then the inevitable happened. Ktahu summoned gorguanas (again). Not a danger damage-wise, due to my 95% magic resist, but double damage for 2 rounds ability. That immediately brings ktahu damage to 500/round. I killed them easily the first time while i could cast two spells /round. When it happened again, after turn 30,I was effectively forced to cast heal every round and at some point 10000 death star to eliminate gorguanas. But then I could not heal or cast stone skin = game over. The only way to go then, is not to use up those 6x 2 castings/round at all, and save them only for the moments, when gorguanas appear. But it's gets soo messy.

[machival]

Originally Posted by impy

I can only think of two more challenges left, if you know more let me know.

I have a good challange for you if you're feeling up for it and find it interesting. I'll go for it myself soon.

-Impossible Mage
-Pet Dragon can never use any direct damage ability, nor mystic egg. (he can use stone wall, treasure searcher and mana accelerator only
-Not allowed to use "Repair" with the Repair Droid.
-Banned spells: Phantom, Ressurection, Eviln, Sacrifice, Turn back Time, Invisibility, Armaggedon. (can never cast these even by scrolls)
-Banned units: All Dragons, Trolls, Black Knights, Vampires and Ancient Vampires, ALL "no retaliation" units (royal snake, assassin, etc)
-Not allowed to buy troops that are in Horde quantity.
-No map kiting with reload (if you are caught trying and lose the battle, you lose the challange, but you are free to try).
-All wanderer scrolls that give you troops by any kind are banned.
-No battles lost.

Don't try a no loss game with these rules
I hope you'll like it.

[impy]

Originally Posted by machival

I have a good challange for you if you're feeling up for it and find it interesting. I'll go for it myself soon.

-Impossible Mage
-Pet Dragon can never use any direct damage ability, nor mystic egg. (he can use stone wall, treasure searcher and mana accelerator only
-Not allowed to use "Repair" with the Repair Droid.
-Banned spells: Phantom, Ressurection, Eviln, Sacrifice, Turn back Time, Invisibility, Armaggedon. (can never cast these even by scrolls)
-Banned units: All Dragons, Trolls, Black Knights, Vampires and Ancient Vampires, ALL "no retaliation" units (royal snake, assassin, etc)
-Not allowed to buy troops that are in Horde quantity.
-No map kiting with reload (if you are caught trying and lose the battle, you lose the challange, but you are free to try).
-All wanderer scrolls that give you troops by any kind are banned.
-No battles lost.

Don't try a no loss game with these rules
I hope you'll like it.

I see you made sure common strategies are not "abused" - droids, trolls, black knights, dragons, ancient scrolls, paladin hero ressurection ability..
-pet dragon not using lightning ball is acceptable.
-"little annoyance" would be no phantom hero spell. one would have to make sure there are plenty of paladins in Verona, so one can cast at least one ressurection with them per battle, and use summoners a lot - demonologists, royal griffins, demons, target.
-Fight for Verona scroll would be interesting, due to no royal snakes. Also, Not allowed to buy troops that are in Horde quantity would mean a fight to the last breath
-Difficulty lies in - no battles lost - to clarify = absolutely no reloads? hmm..I usually have to restart k'tahu & baal fights, one never knows what they have up their sleeve, but then I usually play no loss
-i'm afraid it would be necessary to use scanner to make sure conditions are favorable = twink.boots+slipp.cuirass, chaos helm, and as mentioned earlier paladins, demonologists, griffins

we'll see. I'm not saying yes, not saying no.
i yesterday bought KB the Legend, so i'm in the middle of playing in for the first time

[machival]

Yes, that was my idea, a playthrough that does not involve (ab)using the most powerful combos in the game. I think that the game would have been more demanding of a player's strategy and skills if it would not present the opportunity to the player to use them, i.e, it would have been better for those to never exist.. There would have been diversity in play. Every creature should have a % chance of being attractive enough so that a player uses it. Who uses Bears? Undead Spiders? Zombies? Who ever chose Snakes, when he can buy Royal Snakes? Well I read something about using Bears for keeping armies with no-retal alive for rage and mana growth, by using their sleep mode, but I think that was for The legend only. ( i hope i did not give you any ideas :p)

I think that if you insist on having the dragon making some kind of damage, let it be Crushing Blow .. or Ball of lightning. I don't think Ball of Lightning is that good when there are multiple strong stacks, as you need time to kill them all with it.. Sure there is awaken dragon but still, you waste your castings with the hero by it. Doing massive damage with the dragon to all or almost all enemies takes out a lot from the strategy of playing with the units. (with a powerful enough dragon you could beat lethal armies or invincible with 5 stacks of peasants, dragonflies, firefly, hienas, etc.) Besides, Ball of Lightning is not so good in Gremlin fights i think, whereas with a dragon dive you can hit all gremlins and units.

The no horde quantity buy idea is to "care" for your units. I mean, think about devilfish. They are inexpensive, and Horde after a certain mission on Scarlet Wind. One can use them as a "berserk kamikaze" unit in most battles with melees. Just cast bless and stone skin on them and that's all. But to have them limited by number means you can't do that all the time because at some point you run out of them. Anyway it applyes to other units too I just wanted to exemplify.

No battles lost does not mean no reloads. You can reload all you want. Means you must not actually lose a battle and go back to the castle and continue from there. ( In the legend some players abused the fact that the hero was given free new troops when he was put at castle after a loss of a fight (retreat actually), and you could basically make legions of fearies and peasants for free. just attack a random monster and retreat.

Using a scanner would be , in my oppinion, yet another attempt to bypass some of the challanges a game presents. Knowing that everything will be perfect and easier then it should be. Why not just start a game and see how it goes. Even the worst case scenario game should be winnable by a skilled player. Why avoid the challange if challange is what you seek? Regardless, it's up to you eventually to pick the constraints that you consider desireable.

[impy]

You say you wanted to prevent all powerful combos from your challenge, but would allow dragon lightning ball. I wonder if you are aware of super powerful combo in round 1 : gorguana cast double damage spell on strongest enemy stack, pet dragon: lightning ball on this stack, hero : awaken dragon, hero: phantom on gorguanas, phantomed gourguanas cast double damage spell on second strongest enemy stack, pet dragon : lightning ball. This way in round one you eliminate 40-96% of two strongest enemy stacks in enemy army (there are few exceptions). So NO to dragon ball if you want your challenge to be challenging..I hardly use damaging spells apart from ball with pet dragon, usually it is mana recharge. I only rarely cast low level dragon dive to move opponents back one tile,when they come to close and represent a danger.
Not using creatures provided in "horde" amount to buy is not really a problem. That is normally level 1-2 creatures which I never use anyway. So once you get to Verona, you should have plenty to choose from. Since it is not no loss game, you can use anything you want. Example you found 150 druids, use them until their numbers drop, then take other unit on board. Also, due to general mage lower leadership, once you find for example stack of 200 demonologists, you're ok, since you only suffer smaller losses until Reha if playing smartly.