KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[DGDobrev]

I was pretty sure there would be a way, and you found it. I kinda dislike all the ifs: mana spring (can scan the save game for it, so no biggie), fewer elves & trap placement (those are pure luck and there is no way for you to know - you could play for hours just to discover it was for naught) - I wonder if you can cheat yourself into the shelter just to check how it looks, but the trap is still a big if, as you won't have the skill if you go peek at start... but... once you get through this, the game is pretty much won for you, so... Might as well be worth it. I had that trap exactly on the same spot as impy with the Demoness, and in one of the fights the Fauns squarely suicided on it, so I can confirm that a trap in that spot is extremely useful. I can also confirm that level 1 poison skull will do as long as you can force it to inflict over 100 damage by moving now and then.

Impy's analysis is based on the premise that every fight plays the same and the AI does the exact same thing, the only thing that changes the outcome of the battle is you. If you cast Poison Skull immediately at the start, or after moving a hex to any side, you will always get a different outcome and a different damage amount. The battle must also run in a perfect tick-tock rhythm - and if necessary, you need to write down what happens in each occasion, so you can adapt accordingly.

This is really high-grade tactical combat where your actions must not deviate by a hex. I doubt many people can do it, but it is doable. I also know how, but sometimes I get too frustrated to do it properly

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by impy

Gentlemen, hold your horses!
I believe it is possible to kill elven Shelter guardian no loss, with original settings and army that is, but everything has to work like a clock. You will need a) specific strategy for current battlefield , b) flawless running around c) no luck during battle actually, everything makes sense and no lost turns in round1 via Diversion are needed d) unfortunately tons and tons of tests until you get specific conditions before and during battle.
Now I have for you 2 screenshots. One at the round 1 so you can see the stacks, trap etc. and two is at round 9, when battle becomes trivial. More on that later.

- using codes i tried good few times a journey from beginning of the game to just before Shelter battles. You always end up either end of level 4 or early level 5, assuming skipping one big spider stack in catacombes.. It is interesting to note though that there is some variability in total gained experience from early battles ( meaning leadership of stacks in catacombs where most of battles take place). I tried skipping spider stack near dwarven castle and not using Clot of darkness at all, and still got to level 5 without dwarven battle on one occasion. Or I played using the Clot and fighting this stack and ended up level 4 only. It seems to me, and people confirm as well, that dwarven battle is mostly just mouse clicking exercise, you can always make it to level 5, so that is not a concern here.

- I tried all sorts of skill combinations at level 5. The best combination of skills looks to be Concentration 2, Meditation 1, Diversion 1, Distorsion 1. It gives whooping 33 starting mana, so although it is only level1 Poison skull, you will be casting it for quite a few rounds, occasionally squeezing in slow spell if needed. On the side note - I never played any of the starting battles leading to Shelter with Vampire. Although more challenging than with demoness, they can be all done apart from big spider stack. Correct me if I am wrong.

- you play with one stack of 2 vampires only. Other units would die miserably

-it is absolutely imperative to start the battle with vampires standing not in the middle , but only on the left spot in order to attract the werevolves from the right side to chase you through the left side - see screenshot 1.

-the first elven shot, which is critical, does almost 10dmg per elf. So once the starting amount of elves is 8+, one vampire will die. 6-7 is fine.

-battle consists of three phases. Phase 1. Dealing with shooters, which has to be done first. You melee attack is weak, survivability is low as bat, so nuking shooters with spells (and trap) is primary concern. Phase 2. Dealing with Fairies. They have the same speed as werewolves, but can cross the middle "non-hex" part of battlefield and are therefore much more dangerous. Phase 3. Dealing with werewolves at the end. Now Phases 1 +2 are not that difficult, if the werewolves in Phase 3 did not have regeneration ability both in elf and wolf shape. You just cannot do with 2 vampires 55dmg in one round. Hence the necessity of magic spring spell and bringing down werewolves with poison skulls. Now I really did not want to go with Distorsion 1 route, much rather Chaos 2 for bringing down stack down quicker, but it just does not do enough damage by the time you run out of mana. I even considered getting trapper medal for 2 traps before shelter, it is still not strong enough. You must have distorsion 1.

-important note: everything you do on battlefield, affects the damage of poison skull you are about to cast . Keep that in mind, because the spell damage can vary greatly. Sometimes moving 1 hex forward or left makes a massive difference. Believe that I calculated various branches of moves and corresponding spell damages up to round 5.

-now i can only describe what I have done in my battle from screenshot 1 in beginning of battle till round 9, which is screenshot 2. Start with vampire to the left as described, let the elves shoot, you will heal damage anyway. no need for diversion to incapacitate anyone, but observe the location of trap. Poison skull on elves, 1-2 down. vampires stay in its form, 1 step forward, no sidestepping yet. Round 2, elves shoot, you heal, 3 stacks will almost reach you, transform vampires, cast poison on elves again, and move 3-4 hexes to the left. And here it comes - single most important point in this battle = Fauns, you are still far away from them to receive full damage from their ranged attack. They have speed 4, so they move forward 3 squares and are about to shoot, but there is your trap. It does not end here for battle to be easily won. You have to leave standing ideally one, at most two 2 fauns standing. The trap can kill anything between 10-12 of them I think. The reason for leaving one alive is twofold = it will get in other units way, and secondly it will be used for mana spring triggers later on. Also, as you noticed you just saved yourself 2-3 spellcasts of poison skull right there. Do not underestimate the importance of 1 faun. Since you poison skull is weak you will have to run around the battlefield for about 9 rounds before pretty much only werewolves are left. First 4 rounds = 3-4 poison skulls on elves, 5-9 rounds poison skulls on fairies. If you get cornered, use occasional slow. Screenshot 2 shows the beginning of Phase 3. Just move through the middle, use mana spring and bit by bit destroy werewolves. Unfortunately, I do not have final victory screenshot, since I did not have mana spring, was just testing my theory, but i believe it is rather elementary at this point. All you have to avoid is werewolves coming from both sides.
So you are going to need this :
1) mana spring scroll from Clarissa
2) only 6-7 elves in your Shelter Battle
3) position of placed trap close to Fauns as you can see in my screenshots or similar, you know what I mean (this is probably the hardest to achieve)
4) follow the above

Great post, Impy!

If you get the Phoenix scroll from the Ore Cart in Dragandor, you can also do no loss.

I went back to my original save and added Phoenix via the "magicbook" cheat and was able to defeat both the Elven (fairly easy) and the Human (much harder) stacks with just my 2 Vampires via the Phoenix spell @level 1. You don't even need level 1 Diversion to do it, although it doesn't hurt if you want to get it.

In both cases, 1 of my Vampires got killed, but I was able to get them back up to 2 before the fight ended.

***BEGIN EDIT***

If you do find the Phoenix scroll in the Ore Cart, then you can get it to Level 2 by putting 1 point in Bibliography so that when Daert is Level 4, he can get Order Level 2 and with the discount, Phoenix Level 1 is 8 Crystals and Level 2 is 13 for a total of 21. You should find 17 to 20 Crystals and Daert starts with 4, giving you enough for Phoenix Level 2.

If you do this, then the Shelter fights are cake for no loss.

***END EDIT***

You next need to see if your strategy will work for the human stack as I think this is the hardest of the Shelter fights if you play Daert. I verified that Phoenix works on both the Elven and Human stacks (the 2 Vampires can do all the required battles through the Dwarven Shelter stack as that is what I had done before I stopped and started to explore alternate starting scenarios).

The problem with both of these strategies is you have to keep restarting until you can either get Magic Spring (much easier) or run ahead and check the Dragandor Ore Cart (takes much longer to check).

I don't think this is right - you should be able to take any game and no loss it if you follow the proper strategy. Currently, if you don't get Mana Spring then you have to get Phoenix. If neither falls into place, then you have to restart the game. Perhaps other strategies will be posted, but right now these are the only two we know about.

So I think there needs to be a change made as so far it seems that Neoline can do no loss with pretty much any starting enemies due to her troop complement. The same cannot be said about Daert.

Originally Posted by impy

-important note: everything you do on battlefield, affects the damage of poison skull you are about to cast . Keep that in mind, because the spell damage can vary greatly. Sometimes moving 1 hex forward or left makes a massive difference. Believe that I calculated various branches of moves and corresponding spell damages up to round 5.

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Impy's analysis is based on the premise that every fight plays the same and the AI does the exact same thing, the only thing that changes the outcome of the battle is you. If you cast Poison Skull immediately at the start, or after moving a hex to any side, you will always get a different outcome and a different damage amount.

By the way, these statements are not necessarily true. It is a bit complicated to explain, but the sequence of events is what is important and the locations of all the battlefield troops effect the seed of the random number generator, but not within a troop's turn as long as they only move and don't use any abilities. If you cast a spell and then move your Vampires, there will be no difference between moving your Vampires and casting the same spell so long as the target is the same (and your Vampires do not use a skill or end their turn).

I tested this out and no matter where I moved my Vampires after combat had started (without finishing their turn or using their transform ability), the Poison Skull damage was the same to the same target; however, if you move your Vampires to a different slot in your army and then start, you've changed the starting location of at least one battlefield troop and now conditions are different and events will change. I think this is what you guys mean.

Also there is an issue with the first time you fight a battle and then fight it again when reloading the last save with the Diversion skill such that different armies may lose their turn. It was this way in WotN, too, but the differences are only between the first fight and the second. The behavior when loading from a save will always be the same, but not necessarily when you save a game, immediately fight, and then reload it and immediately repeat that fight.

/C\/C\

[DGDobrev]

I think the save game scanner can fix that as long as we find out which one of the mine carts in Dragandor actually gives the phoenix spell, and how is it called. I have no qualms starting and saving 50 games before scanning them all and checking for stuff. It will be a rather fast check.

Since I don't know if anyone updated it since KBAP, you can get it from here:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...e+game+scanner
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...e+game+scanner

Thin is, I think steam saves for KBDS are a bit different for KBAP, so it might take a bit of fooling around to get it working. Or alternatively, if you can use another program to read the steam files used to save the game, I guess it can be used too.

[Loremipsum1]

Wow, great job, Matt and Impy!

My own test games both spawned significantly larger stacks (the one I made it in had 9 elves, 2x 13 werewolves, 96 fairies, 10 fauns); I didn't realize it varied quite so low.

Impy, interestingly enough, your strategy was almost exactly the same as mine with the single ancient vamp. Did you play through to Whitehall? I'm wondering how likely it is that the RNG gives you three unwinnable fights there.

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Since I don't know if anyone updated it since KBAP, you can get it from here:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...e+game+scanner
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...e+game+scanner

Thin is, I think steam saves for KBDS are a bit different for KBAP, so it might take a bit of fooling around to get it working. Or alternatively, if you can use another program to read the steam files used to save the game, I guess it can be used too.

It was updated for WotN; I'm not sure what changed between that and AP, but you can get the WotN version here, halfway down the page:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...t=35533&page=2

I thought that thread was difficult to follow; the main thing you have to do make a save game scannable is:
1. Within the save folder, copy "data" to "savedata".
2. Create a zip archive containing savedata, crc, info, and name, all at the top level. (If they're in a directory, it won't work.)
3. Change the .zip file to a .sav file; so, for example, if it was Vamp.zip, it'd be Vamp.sav.

And that works. KB_DB_EDIT could conceivably edit a save game to ensure that the ore treasure is a Phoenix scroll.

[DGDobrev]

Ok, it works. Now we need to know which cart exactly contains the scroll and how is it called. I have a save right now, with a phoenix spell in a chest in dragandor, but I don't know if it's in the explorable area or not. No magic spring though. This will make for fun poking around. I will sure spend some time toying with it.

[MattCaspermeyer]

I was fiddling with this this morning as I also have a save with the Phoenix scroll (it is in one of my modded games), but I'm not at my computer right now, so this is from memory:

In the savedata.txt file, search on telega_ore_box and you should find the first occurrence in savedata.txt is the correct one. This should be dragondor_embyro_13 (note that it is spell as "dragondor" with an "o" instead of the spelling we see in the game "dragandor" and you can also search on this as it should be unique for the file).

Just a few lines lower you will see the entry for "spell_phoenix" - your Phoenix scroll.

By the way, I'm conducting a test right not and have created at least 35 new games and have not seen it pop up again. I have actually seen Power of the Night twice and Flame Arrow once, so Phoenix is not the only spell you can get from the Ore Cart.

I'm going to keep creating batches of 5 savegames and processing them until I see it again and give a statistical breakdown of what you get from the Ore Cart in Dragandor.

I did try changing Power of Night (spell_dark_knight) to Phoenix (spell_phoenix) and using KB_DB_EDIT, but it crashes when trying to compile the file. So it may need to be updated for the new KB games.

/C\/C\

[DGDobrev]

Gotcha. I found it. You should open savedata.rpt with any text editor (I use notepad ++) and look for the following line:

dragondor.embryo_13 Vagon money 2300

So in this case, there's cash in the wagon. No luck there... Matt, have you checked in where the Magic Spring spell is supposed to spawn? I will jump in the savegame testing process as well.

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, some thoughts on the endless saga of Demoness Impossible No-loss...

I'm up to level 48, having just roflstomped my way through Okkarland against Very Hard and Deadly stacks.

Wizards are ridiculously powerful. Buffed by the Archmage staff, given ridiculously high morale by the Amulet of the Twilight Order (Heroic), halving stacks like crazy with Beserker level 3 (15% chance of having PER attack, and the Wizard hits three stacks with one attack when he's in the Fighting Trance). I've picked up a couple of items that increase Crit chance - Undead Master Belt +5% and, even better, a Dagger of Judgement, +20%!!!, that I got from a treasure chest in battle So the Wizard has a Crit chance of 59% and I feel sure that he's halving enemies more than 15% of the time (is this chance affected by whether it's a crit?) I just know that when I finish the game, Wizards are going to be my biggest damage dealer BY FAR.

The rest of my team consists of Dark Paladins, Demons, Executioners and Demonologists. You could use whatever unit you liked in the place of these last three. The only essentials are the Wizards for damage dealing + Magic Shield and the Dark Paladins for resurrecting. At a certain stage of this game, roughly from fights 120-170, I was struggling to win some battles no-loss. I was having to redo fights and look for the easiest fights. But once you get a stack of Dark Paladins, it's game over. Sorry, you also need Phantom in case you've taken too much damage for the initial resurrection, and Calm Rage too. But once you have these spells, we're back to the old Paladin + Phantom + Calm Rage infinite resurrection trick. My main problem here was that there was only about 130 Dark Paladins available in my game, and my current leadership (32k) allows for over 250, so I've had to use Sacrifice to fill out the stack, and this is tedious because I only have Sacrifice at level 1, not wanting to waste the crystals.

Is it just me or are crystals really scarce in this game? I only have about 12 spells learned and I never seem to have enough, so I've taken to buying all the trashy artifacts etc available in the game and destroying them for the crystals.

At level 48 I've cleared all islands except Amazonia (which I'll do next), Galenirim and Aralan, and also Helvedia. I'm up to 269 fights without loss, and I'm guessing that with some failed quests that I couldn't be bothered with (such as when they conflicted with other quests) I must be looking at about 400-450 fights for the whole game.

[DGDobrev]

Crystals are indeed scarce, so breaking items becomes a must at one point. Not that I mind, with so much gold and so much stuff to buy, it is quite all right.

I am nearing the end of the game. Level 71, finishing off stuff here and there. I have only a few quests left that I need to finish - the one about the Ancient Oak and a few assignments for the council in Helvedia. The Oak bugs me though. I have the primordial flame, but I don't see any guardian stacks around it. I think it is because I don't have the stupid Silver Axe. Gotta roam around the maps a bit and see if someone sells it, or look for ways to acquire it.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Gotcha. I found it. You should open savedata.rpt with any text editor (I use notepad ++) and look for the following line:

dragondor.embryo_13 Vagon money 2300

So in this case, there's cash in the wagon. No luck there... Matt, have you checked in where the Magic Spring spell is supposed to spawn? I will jump in the savegame testing process as well.

No need - just start your game and get through the two dialogues and hit "q" to bring up the Quest Dialogue. You'll see which spell you get right there!

Simple as pie!

/C\/C\