No loss, no kite, no luck, impossible mage

[Moonheart]

Hello everyone,

I just started the game one or two weeks ago and found the normal difficulty a bit too easy after having learned some ropes of the game.
So I tried to do a no loss game... but without using any kitting, as I think such methods are most often cheating by abusing IA failures.

It makes the no loss game even harder as you quickly end to fight nothing but "lethal" opponents, being unable to run all over the island to catch the flags and get some extra punch. Actually, I even jump in joy if I see anything else but "invincible" foe to strike, but still manage to go forward everytime I think I'm stuck.

Sooooo what's my problem? => Bad luck !

I didn't manage to find any resurrection or phantom scroll of the whole game (currently reaching Elone) !
I'm even digging two chest every battle with my pet dragon, got almost any scroll I could dream except those ones !
Unable to loop-resurrect except with drones, I'm forced to keep an army with on stack of guard drones, on another stack of repair drones split in three and a stack of red dragons (black dragons are a mess when being targeted because I can't heal them, and a single death means an immediate reload)

It is becoming tedious... so anyone would have a suggestion for me for something I could add and keep to 0 loss easily without resurection or phantom?

[MaroonMaurader]

Fun with Sacrifice infinite combos!
1. Sacrifice + infinite mana combo + repair droids = infinite resurrection for any unit in your army.
2. IIRC, you can also sacrifice the bears druids summon, which they can do every 2 turns.
3. Low-intelligence hero + Tirex (or other tank) + Sacrifice + Heal + infinite mana
4. High Astral-Damage resistance + tank + Sacrifice + Heal + infinite mana (astral damage resist lowers damage from Sacrifice, but not amount of healing given).

Fun with Turn Back Time!
1. Turn Back Time + Inquisitors (or any other resurrecting unit) + infinite mana lets you reuse their resurrect.
2. Turn Back Time + Sacrifice + infinite mana.
3. Target on turn 1 of a battle; turn back time on turn 2. If your initiative checks are just right, you can even do target, then turn back time at the end of T1, and repeat that on T2 etc. Very mana-expensive, but it can buy you several turns before you start actually taking losses.

The Undead!
Eviln is a very powerful spell in the right hands. There are whole articles on this forum devoted just to the solo Black Knight + eviln strategy, although you're free to add in other units if you want.

Depending on the artifacts you have, Troll-at-night strategies can be extremely powerful. Troll regen + Stoneskin + Divine Armor + artifacts giving physical resistance can quickly give you a tank that ignores all physical damage. Add in Target to make enemy units shoot at them, and you've got yourself a game-breaker for the first 2/3 of the game. Eventually enemy stacks will start doing more than 700 damage in a turn, at which point it becomes far less useful.

I've heard good things about Royal Thorns, but haven't really tried them out myself.

[Moonheart]

I almost reached the end of the game, I think (currently only have K'thalu and Zilgadis available to fight)
I was unlucky until the very end of the game, with no Resurrection, Phantasm or Sacrifice spells until I reached Reha.

I just kept with an army of drones and dragons + Turn back in time until the that last part.
Actually I'm even so trained with it that I plan to kill Zilgadis with only red dragons and three spells (tried yesterday and just failed due to a miss-click, Zilgadis had only 10% hp left and I didn't lost any red dragons)

[MaroonMaurader]

That's rather impressive. How did you do enough damage to keep his towers from spamming out of control?

[Moonheart]

Since my last message, killed both Zilgadis and K'thalu with a single stack of red dragons as my army.

For Zilgadis:
I couldn't wipe out all the tower spam, so I concentrated on killing Friendly Gremlins towers ASAP to avoid to end overwhelmed by ennemy troops, letting the Evil Gremlins live on purpose and tanking their spell damage.
I had 15 Red Dragons (level 53 mage + dragonix) and they survived during 117 rounds to the spell spam of 4 Evil Gremlins towers + Zilgadis himself.
That's long, but as soon you know perfectly what you are doing, that wasn't so hard. The only difficulty is to not get your starting position taken when you move to kill summoning towers (it forbids you to cast Turn Back Time)... or when those Emerald Dragons grabs your stack and force it to move.

For K'thalu:
My bane was lizardman shamans and their dreaded "blood mark" ability, that double damage recieved by my red dragons... allowing K'thalu to destroy 9 red dragons at once
I had to do multiple tries to find how kill them fast enough to not let them use the mark.
The Death Star spell helped a lot. I kept carefully any spare mana I had between Turn Back Time castings to be able to cast this spell when 2 shaman pack were summoned at once.
Was a bit tricky, but after 141 rounds of "get out of there, ******* shamans!" shouts, I won.

I'm currently struggling A LOT with Baal.
Archdemons are the big problem: if they halve my stack (7 dragons killed in one blow), then Baal's flying sword (5 kills each time once Gilbert's units are dead) and remaining ennemy troops just finish them off easily.
Also, archdemons are much more resiliant than lizardmen shamans.... so wipe them out is harder.
AAANNND demons are also fire-resistant, so Fire Flood isn't doing much damage.

I need to change the type of creatures I use in my single task for something with more hp.
I ran some tests, and it seems that I should be able to kill him with Ancient Ents or Brontors without much problems... once I understand the arena collapse pattern that wiped me two times already.

[Moonheart]

Finaly reached the end of the game.
Won against Baal with a single stack of Cursed Ghosts.

Ghost have a 50% physical resistance, making them thougher than most level 5 units and regenerate themselves. I loss many attempts because they were regenerating too fast, in fact.

Once I learned how to balance their regeneration with the damage taken, it was almost a piece of cake.

[1darklord]

Congratulations.

I'll likely replay myself at some point, it really is a great game. I may go for Hard, with minimal losses though, I like using a variety of troops to much to do any of the extreme tactics. (splitting repair droids, using one stack of dragons etc)

Daniel.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Doing a Mage run on impossible is incredibly tedious, i'm doing it at the moment but..he's a mage and does not have any decent attacking spells for ages so fights take 30+ rounds.

This campaign is for those how have far too much time on their hands..I want to try but, at times i'm just like "f+ck this, it's not enjoyable"