Where do i find Princess Set- The dress

[Zechnophobe]

I think the game is simply EASIER to play with a warrior. Ultimately the mage has a lot more potent control elements than a warrior does, and this makes the hardest hero battles a lot easier. That said, you don't have to do nearly as much work, and whatnot, with a warrior, and more items buff your play style.

As a note, I finished the madman's set with my Mage... and man is that a crazy experience. 40 bonus rage put me over 100!

[Smash]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

2) Generally, that's what this means. You won't have that much magic runes to delve that deep into the magic tree, and skills like Transmutation and Summoning are a must to minime the casualties - Paladins + Phantom spell + Summoning lvl 3 = More phantomed paladins = More resurrected units.

But it is really everything what you need so it is not so hard to accomplish especially when you can exchange runes.

Btw. Mage a nuker? Not in this game, not only offensive spells are poor, they nerfed higher magic so bye bye to 2x geyser or armaggedon :/. Overall spells do poor damage, not even compared with what warrior is capable off.

Every thigt for mage is about how to survive. Tank'n'Spank combo can get boring :/.

[DGDobrev]

I beg to differ. Once you get up to 50+ intellect, Death Star lvl 3 becomes very powerful. In the end of my mage game, it could inflict up to 9200 astral damage, which, as you can imagine, can wreak some serious havoc, even on impossible.

For a reference, my spells at the end had the following damage output values:
Armageddon - 11'650 max (astral)
Fire Rain - 6450 max (fire)
Fireball - 5995 max (fire)
Geyser - 9250 max (phys)

Phantom health: 93% (!!)
(This is with 58 Hero intellect + 10 from scroll, so 68 total)

So I would dare to state with absolute certainty that the mage in KBAP becomes really, really great nuker as the game progresses and that battles do end up in a few turns thanks to the new intellect system and the overpowered chaos spells.

[Smash]

It is really nothing, my mage griffins without problem dealt 10k dmg.
Key factor to look at is how much you will kill with this spell compared to others that will buff your army and help to survive. What point is to kill f.e. 20 creature in stock if 180 that left will steam roll over your army? In other words offensive spells are not scale too well.
Other problem is ai armies often are not only big in numbers per stock.
Btw i ended in original KB on impossible mage with 160 mp and 71 intellect playing as destruction mage but it was only possible because i found on start island geyser spell.
Let's sum it up.
- game has poor selection of single nuke spells, they all do crappy damage.
- most aoe spells has to crappy damage, too small radius. Excetpion was geyser and armaggedon but they were worth only because you could cast it twice.

Summoner playstyle is not possible too because they change stats system and heavy nerfed summoning spells.

Mage left with only one playstyle Tank'n'Spank type.

Pls tell me that i am wrong.

[DGDobrev]

Well, 93% phantom health means that you phantom 93% of any stack, which is a lot of additional firepower. I assume you know the phantom demonologists/royal griffins trick which will make the phantomed units summon permanent stacks.

Death star can hit EVERY unit its rays come in contact with (including your own, so a little planning is needed). Against Arnold Heninghem, I was hitting 5-6 units for 8000+ damage every turn. That equals a lot of units down in a single cast. His red dragons were down before they even managed to get to my weaker stacks. His paladins were down 50% before they ever managed to swing at my own tanks.

There is more to the mage than what meets the eye. I was heavily biased against her for quite some time, because she's such a lousy starter. Since I managed to do the no-loss victory with her (a thing that I wasn't even sure that it's possible), I no longer consider her the weakest of them all.

Take a look at this video. I did that with a paladin, but I am sure I can do better with a mage, because of the new artifacts in the gift bag that add astral resistance, which means armageddon will hit my units for much less. It's all down to some Evlin afterwards to ress the losses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDGmNH-8FFY

I hope you like it

[Smash]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Well, 93% phantom health means that you phantom 93% of any stack, which is a lot of additional firepower. I assume you know the phantom demonologists/royal griffins trick which will make the phantomed units summon permanent stacks.

I know every tip and trick, i do not understand what phantom spell has to do with my previous post. I talk about offensive spells which mean direct damage ones.

Death star can hit EVERY unit its rays come in contact with (including your own, so a little planning is needed). Against Arnold Heninghem, I was hitting 5-6 units for 8000+ damage every turn. That equals a lot of units down in a single cast. His red dragons were down before they even managed to get to my weaker stacks. His paladins were down 50% before they ever managed to swing at my own tanks.

Eh looks like you didn't understand my post. 8k really isn't much if stacks are huge. Destruction mage was bearable in KB:L only if you got geyser and Armageddon and 2x cast from Higher magic. 20k per turn? bearable, 8k no :/.

Take a look at this video. I did that with a paladin, but I am sure I can do better with a mage, because of the new artifacts in the gift bag that add astral resistance, which means armageddon will hit my units for much less. It's all down to some Evlin afterwards to ress the losses.

I hope you like it

What gift bag you are talking about? Problem with your video is that your BK didn't really need help from this spell, iron skin, divine armor and maybe +40% fire enchant and there would nothing to stop them especially when supported by Evlin.

You know i casted offensive spells from time to time too but because i was bored not because they were important for fight.

Okey if you want challenge try play on impossible as offensive mage which spells are main damage dealer not army or summons.

Btw, no-losses play is much easier in expansion that is original game thx to paladin and easy mana replenish tools.

[DGDobrev]

With all due respect, I have already completed the Impossible mage no-loss challenge, and I used mainly offensive spells right from the start, as my mage was low on leadership throughout the game. First of all, you NEED to use offensive spells as a mage, as you need 600+ fire-based spell casts to get the Fire Mage Medal lvl 3, so unless you get on working on it right from the start (and use them at least twice per battle! Max fights is about 300, so 300x2=600), you may miss out this medal. So I did start using Flaming Arrow/Fireball from the very beginning as means of reducing the enemy stacks. You can view the info you need in the high score thread, as well as download a save game just before I ended the game. The boss battles were another thing, though. Using offensive spells against them is a waste of mana, especially on impossible, so the army has to do the trick. On normal it's... normal to use spells vs. bosses, as they are low on health - twice as less than impossible, and a 10k astral damage can hurt them quite a bit.

If you are referring to the cheesy KBTL playstyle where Black Dragons + Glot's armor + 2xArmageddon were the "I win the game" button, this is no longer easily applicable here (as you will suffer certain losses). That tactic in KBTL did not need any army, only a sizeable amount of mana, a lot of intellect, destruction and higher magic. However, we are playing a different game here, and we need to adapt different tactics.

The Gift Bag is a bonus "campaign" - actually, it's bonus items, some of which provide resistance against astral damage. Have a few of them equipped and the Argageddon tactic may work pretty well as a mage.

As for the damage, how about 3x8k damage (meaning death star hitting 3 enemies and no allies) for a mage? 24k would seem like a good deal. How about 7 enemies (that's the best I managed in my game)? 7x8k=56k would seem a whole lot better.

It is my opinion that if you give it a try, you may start feeling otherwise. Believe me, I thought the mage is way too underpowered for quite some time. I no longer do so, as my playthrough has clearly shown that the mage can do wonders with her spells.

[Smash]

Please give me break, yes you can use even need to use fireball in early stage because at the beggining his damage if you go fast Chaos lvl 3 nice especially against plants.
But i will not believe that u used offensive spells through all battles (bosses excluded) for their damage capabilities.

Show me your score page where your damage done by spells is higher than damage done by your troops.

Maybe in late game is possible once you get Armaggedon, Geyser or DeathStar but before this relaying on fireball or rainfire only will go you no where i think as they drop in efectives very fast. There is one still thing to try it may work or not... hmm... Worst thing is you do not get back mana where your spells do the kills.

Well rules for playstyle are simple in every fight your spells has to do mayor part of damage (boss battle excluded)

Black Dragons + Gloth Armor? No i used one stack of lvl 4 Demons (unlimited retaliate awesome stats, can be resurrected) plus 2 x Armageddon and Back Time.

And before this combination i used necromancers, 2 x imps, demons, mistress and 2 x geyser for really nice aoe havoc in enemy army.

P.S. No mods allowed, so no gift bag.

[DGDobrev]

The Gift Bag is an OFFICIAL "mod" (if we can call it that way, as it only adds new items and new sets), made by the developer of KBTL/KBAP - 1c/Katauri as a present for all their supporters and players. As such, I consider it legal, as it is not fan made and it does not shift the balance of the game in favor of any hero class. Here's the thread for you:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=12174

It will be hard to find a scoreline in which the damage done by spells will outweigh the damage done by troops. Troops exchange strikes all the time (and there are 5 of them, unless you play with less), so by the end of the game, they will deal at least 20k damage per turn (actually, 20k is really, really low, but it is a good number to start from). With spells, you can barely match that, unless the enemy stacks are well grouped for a decent death star cast, or physically weak for a 20+40 mana geyser cast. In my own experience, the best I got from a mage was 34% damage done by spellbook, 2% dragon, the rest troops.

An option for the spellbook to outweigh the troop damage can be what you saw in the video - play with one stack, armageddon all the way and that's it.

EDIT> As you said, in boss battles, you must use direct damage. Well, Baal has 253332 Health on impossible. K'Tahu has 172000. Zilgadis has 154000. Dersu frog has 80000. The Spider has 60000. The Driller has 14000+28000+56000=98000.
That's a total of: 817332 damage you will need to do with your troops. In order to have your spellbook damage on par, you will need to inflict that much damage with it in advance. That's quite some damage to catch up, don't you think?

It would appear that you want to have a playthrough where you do the most damage with spells right from the start. If I am correct in assuming that, there are ways to do it here, and you are by all means free to pursue them. Regretfully, Time Back is a spell now, which means you'll be wasting quite a lot of mana, but it is doable if you use the mana accelerator pet dragon ability to regain at least part of what you waste and calm rage for some more.

[TemjinGold]

I think the issue is that the mage doesn't have a single spell that deals damage based on percent (not counting Pain Mirror, since that requires you to get hit first.) When I look at the dragon abilities that do damage, I may USE quite a few of them for amusement, but Ball Lightning is the only one I actually rely on in a pinch because it scales with opponent strength. To be on par, the mage really needs a spell that does a percentage like that. They probably should've lowered the mage's leadership even more (to 25% of a warrior's maybe?) but included more spells that hit percents, that hit a wider radius, and that hit different resists (why is there no area effect poison spell for example?)