Champion of the Arena thread

[Zhuangzi]

So I started a Hard Mage game to have a look around, and I like what I see so far. The guild business seems interesting, and there's plenty of stuff to do with the Bounty Hunter missions as well. But with the Mage, I've got such low leadership that the first Bounty Hunter mission seems too difficult presently.

I did manage to beat the turtle without losses though. Here's how I did it.

Royal Snakes, Demonologists, Undead Spiders (which weren't used), Beholders, Repair Droids. Not the best team but I had nothing better.

The Mage has a Demon Portal scroll which is very useful, so I learned Chaos I and scribed it. Fire Arrow 2 is also nice early on.

The strategy for the turtle is pretty simple. Spawn Demon Portals near the turtle, first of all being the square directly in front of him. This is important. Hopefully your portals will get you Imps, but if not it will be Cerebuses. Imps are better because of no retaliation. The Demonologist can spawn some Demons as well. You need to make sure that you always have a unit directly in front of the turtle, as he'll always attack this square if it's filled. Also, NEVER attack from the back corner squares as he'll do a mass attack in response. Bad. The Royal Snakes were useful here because of no retaliation, and the other ranged units just keep hitting the turtle for low damage. You can also use a Calm Rage scroll to get some more mana for Fire Arrows (only 5 mana - useful here). So hopefully you've got some Imps whacking the turtle, plus your snakes, and some ranged stuff. No losses is easy here, meaning that you will get the Grand Strategy medal (+200 leadership).

I really want Demon Portal 2 for the extra leadership, but currently I am 3 Might Runes short....

[DGDobrev]

The turtle is as easy as in King's Bounty - the Legend. I tried it with all classes on impossible and one and the same tactic works all the time.

The Knight you start with - your tank.
Archmagi - for Magic Shield (in all my games there were archmagi, necromancers and druids in the shaman tower, so I can only assume they are always there)
Demonologists - for damage and summoning
Druids - for damage and summoning
Any unit, preferably ranged - I had beholders, elves, and whatnot available.

The idea is that all of the units have high HP and can take an initial hit from the turtle. It will slow all of them in the first round (guaranteed), which makes things a bit harder. However, there is still a way around it. Put your knight in the middle of your lineup, so that the distance between him and the turtle head is the shortest. Have your Druid summon a bear and be ready to move it as close to the turtle's head as possible, using his run ability.

Now you'll take a mass hit, but that's nothing to worry about thanks to the high HP of your units - as long as it is the only such hit you'll take. What's more important is to move the bears in front of the turtle's mouth, even if this means using the Archmagi's Telekinesis ability to gain an extra hex. The Knight will move 1 square and should be right behind them - if he's not, have the bears defend till he gets there or till they die.

Have the turtle kill the bears and have the knight take their place (use "wait" if necessary). After this has happened, the battle is won, as now things get very simple.

Knights get healing from the hero + magic shield from the archmagi and all they do is defend. As a mage, you can do Magic Spring + Wait + Defend so that you don't lose a charge and gain more mana than you spend - this way you get 10 mana, which is equal to magic spring cost + 1 healing, in essence, gaining a free heal, which frees mana for an occasional flaming arrow. The rest of the troops will slowly drop the turtle's HP and that's it

The question is what do we do afterwards. I have a feeling that a bounty should be next, but doing that without a loss will be quite a challenge. 1c definitely made the game harder this time - well worth the money paid for it, as it will provide us with lots of hours of enjoyment.

[rancor26]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

The turtle is as easy as in King's Bounty - the Legend. I tried it with all classes on impossible and one and the same tactic works all the time.

The Knight you start with - your tank.
Archmagi - for Magic Shield (in all my games there were archmagi, necromancers and druids in the shaman tower, so I can only assume they are always there)
Demonologists - for damage and summoning
Druids - for damage and summoning
Any unit, preferably ranged - I had beholders, elves, and whatnot available.

The idea is that all of the units have high HP and can take an initial hit from the turtle. It will slow all of them in the first round (guaranteed), which makes things a bit harder. However, there is still a way around it. Put your knight in the middle of your lineup, so that the distance between him and the turtle head is the shortest. Have your Druid summon a bear and be ready to move it as close to the turtle's head as possible, using his run ability.

Now you'll take a mass hit, but that's nothing to worry about thanks to the high HP of your units - as long as it is the only such hit you'll take. What's more important is to move the bears in front of the turtle's mouth, even if this means using the Archmagi's Telekinesis ability to gain an extra hex. The Knight will move 1 square and should be right behind them - if he's not, have the bears defend till he gets there or till they die.

Have the turtle kill the bears and have the knight take their place (use "wait" if necessary). After this has happened, the battle is won, as now things get very simple.

Knights get healing from the hero + magic shield from the archmagi and all they do is defend. As a mage, you can do Magic Spring + Wait + Defend so that you don't lose a charge and gain more mana than you spend - this way you get 10 mana, which is equal to magic spring cost + 1 healing, in essence, gaining a free heal, which frees mana for an occasional flaming arrow. The rest of the troops will slowly drop the turtle's HP and that's it

The question is what do we do afterwards. I have a feeling that a bounty should be next, but doing that without a loss will be quite a challenge. 1c definitely made the game harder this time - well worth the money paid for it, as it will provide us with lots of hours of enjoyment.

Thanks for this strategy i might actually try to play champion of the arena without cheats now but i still have a lot of difficulties when it comes to K'tahu and driller... kraken is pretty easy though atleast if u have red dragons which i did get from demons guild and as a mage demon portal helps A LOT. As a warrior champion of the arena campaign looks very hard.

[Zhuangzi]

Well, DGD, I'm certainly not thinking about no losses at the moment. Hard is hard enough at the present time. I was having terrible trouble with my Hard Mage game - couldn't beat the big spider or the first Bounty mission. Got close to killing the spider but always overwhelmed. In earlier KB games you would just go away and level up for a while, but here?

The solution, as it turned out, was to die.

If you die in the Bounty hunter mission, you are reborn as part of the Undead guild. Then of course you have access to some awesome units like the Black Knights, Necromancers, and Ancient Vampires. There's a follower that buffs the undead too for a mere 5000 gold. Needless to say, I went back and did the first Bounty fight easily, and then the Spider in like 6-7 rounds too, losing on 2 Black Knights and 6 Skeleton Archers

So I am Undead this game.

[DGDobrev]

COOL!!!

This might turn out to be a new tactic - become undead - because right now, I can't see a way to win the next battle without losing a unit - the bounty puts you against a hero who has 2 stacks of demonesses, who easily swap your weakest units right into the heart of the enemy army, which equals a lot of lost units.

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

COOL!!!

This might turn out to be a new tactic - become undead - because right now, I can't see a way to win the next battle without losing a unit - the bounty puts you against a hero who has 2 stacks of demonesses, who easily swap your weakest units right into the heart of the enemy army, which equals a lot of lost units.

Yeah I can't see any way of doing no losses here, DGD. Unlike earlier KB games, you have few fight options, and they're all quite hard.

[axelle]

i got the game, where do you get champion of the arena mini-games?

[mare911]

Any tips how to defeat metamorph guy?
I am unsure about AI behavior there, is it guarantied that he will transform units from weakest to strongest always, or transforms are random?

Anyway, in my game, i got some funny sized black dragon stacks against me check out pic below

[Jaedar]

Originally Posted by mare911

Any tips how to defeat metamorph guy?
I am unsure about AI behavior there, is it guarantied that he will transform units from weakest to strongest always, or transforms are random?

Anyway, in my game, i got some funny sized black dragon stacks against me check out pic below

He seems to always transform to the 3rd creature in your lineup the first round. Personally, I bought a snake and put it there, and then wiped all his snakes before he got a chance to transform again.

[maxakapsa]

Hi all, i found accidentally very brutal combination of units, companion and item on the beginning of this campaign. This combination helps me finish campaign in two hours without problem on hard difficulty.
I bought from first NPC three royal plants, diploma in botany (+10 att, +10 def for thorns, ents and dryads ) and as companion choose gardener Hagrid. This companion is really overpowered because my plants were indestructible, he has huge hp boost for plants but what is really strong that he can ressurect plants every round.I won 90% fights without loss thanks to ressurect from gardener.
But be warned there is no chalenge with this combination, but i was very lucky on the begining. POWER OF PLANTS .