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[blacklegionary]

I guess MajorS mod his file.There is no way he can get that much rune,gold and crystal without modding plus his spirit Lina is too high lv(for a mage) while my mage nearly have no chance to use due to low rage increase rate of Impossible and Mage.

[jake21]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Jake, I used Phantom a lot in my first (Paladin) game but less in my second and third games. But I will be interested to hear how he did it. 24 days - I didn't realise that was even possible. There is a certain amount of sea/air travel that is necessary, right?

Don't know how he did it - in my 29 day game I could have shrunk it to 27 - of course that was on hard and not impossible (like you). Then again I noted the person above me who thinks his game was modded to be extra easy

[MajorS]

Originally Posted by blacklegionary

I guess MajorS mod his file.There is no way he can get that much rune,gold and crystal without modding plus his spirit Lina is too high lv(for a mage) while my mage nearly have no chance to use due to low rage increase rate of Impossible and Mage.

And why would i have cheated Gold, that i didnt use? Especially since you can see from the Screenshots, that my Losses where extremely low. Also if you are not using Lina enough that doesnt mean everyone is. And the Crystal and Rune values are normal, everyone can sum theirs up and the end and compare.

Here is my Strategy:

Very important: Do not travel and if you have to try to travel shortly before 7am to cut down on traveling times.

Also try to sneak and get all Runes, Banners, Chests and Gold without fighting. This helps you build up before you have to actually fight.

I kept my 15 start sprites hoping to get Sacrifice before i hit the Elven Lands, but that was only possibly through sneaking into the Demon world (passing a Hero and a stack right in front of the portal) In the end it wasnt worth it. Because unless you are lucky enough to get Sacrifice alot earlier you will be able to recruit Fairies from the Elven lands anyway.

For the start i used Fireball alot. This is where all my Magic damage comes from. Upgrading spell power whenever possible. But that started to not be enough and the last major Battle using alot of Destruction Magic was against the Kraken, to get my first and only Wife (I needed another weapon slot very early)

The most important switch of Strategy was to get Giants at all costs by sieging the Castle in the Mines. After this alot of fights became a breeze with "Target" and Shield from Archmages on my Giants most encounters where straight forward with minor losses. This used to be the Strategy until i hit the elven lands. Getting Lina soon and upgrading her Charges ability so i would get 5(3 Rage, 2 Mana) Charges with 8 each. This is another 16 Mana every 4 rounds. And the moment you get Gift and have enough Inquisitors its easy to resurrect fallen troops, even Giants. Some battles became very tedious. Leaving one stack and spamming Charges every 4 rounds to get enough Mana to keep that stack slowed and also Gift my Inquisitors when there was enough Mana.

When i felt ready i assaulted the Demon Castle to advance to the Elven Lands. At this time i also sneaked into Demon world and got Issharas Whip (extremely important), some runes, money and Banners. I also got Sacrifice there. In the Elven Lands i hired both Sprite types. If there is not enough of one type just fight an easy Upgrade Battle and use Sacrifice + Gift + Charges. I also replaced the Giants with Green Dragons here, which act as another Mana recharger. At this point i had the Archmages (for Shield and minor damage + crowd control), the Inquisitors for Initial Rage to Drain Rage and Resurrection, Green Dragons for Mana and as a Meat Shield with Target and both Fairy types as major damage dealers with the Ruby and the Whip.

At some point when stacks become to large to have the Dragons act as bait i replaced the Archmages with Dryads. Getting better crowd control and a good damage dealer (now having 3 units benefiting from Ruby&Whip). The damage these Sprites do dwarfes anything i could do with fire magic, besides i needed to use my spells as crowd control now (sleep, sheep, slow, target, Stoneskin) I did not cast a single Phantom Spell in the game.

This setup ended up being far superior than most stacks and i had basically no losses breezing trough the Elven and Dwarfen lands.

[MajorS]

Difficult battles:

Karador(?)

My Green dragons where not good enough of a tank for his troops. So i equipped the -30% leader for Griffons Regalia and stocked up on Griffons (54 leader for 90 health, flight and unlimited retaliation)

In the first round i sheeped his Necros(bad AoE) and let his troops destroy some of the Fortifications. Next round i cast Target and Stone Skin (had just gotten 2x cast) and Shield(Archmages) on my Griffons (Giving them like 70-80% resistance) and put them in the middle of the advancing army drawing attention from 6 directions. After that it became somewhat easy. The Necros will attack your Griffons damaging their own troops. The Griffons also hit everyone that hits them and the Fairies fly around and kill the troops without fear of being attacked (thanks to target). Just be carefull of Hypnosis (when your Griffons 'out') and Fear on your Fairies.

Troops with Black Dragons:

Those are a pain in the but, because my Fairies deal only minor damage to them. For those i got a stack of Paladins that stayed in reserve and would replace the Green Dragons. I also hired Undead Archers because the benefit from the Whip alot and are very dangerous with Dragon arrow. Just make sure they can actually shot and are not blocked.

Haas:

Almost completely swap of troops. Knights + Paladins (Good resistance) + Unicorns (Good damage against the demons and fair Hitpoints), Ancient Ents (very good tank for cheap and they start in the middle already so low speed is not an issue) and Lake Fairies (those that dont have Fire Weakness). I also was lucky to have 2x Dragon Slayer Sword (one from Arena one random). I start the battle with Black Hole, Mass Speed and Mass Dragon Slayer. The next two rounds i use one of my spells to further bless my troops and the other to counter Haas spells. This was a very brutal battle, but the dragons fell like flies thanks to the 2 swords and extra damage from slayer. The rest was just slaughtering (beware of Hypnotise, keep a Dispell ready)

Once again if anyone wants i have a bout 60 MB of savegames from all stages of the game.

[MajorS]

And never use transportation from the Dwarf Capital to Human Capital. Always run. Its boring and annoying but its alot faster game time wise.

[Zhuangzi]

Yep, I believe you. I wasn't saying you cheated, simply that I wasn't sure how to cut it down to 24 days. I would have thought it possible to complete the game this quickly on lower difficulties by avoiding several fights. My Impossible game took 36 days and it would have been even longer (maybe 40-42) if I had cleared out everything.

I haven't tried the Giant tactic you describe here, but it sounds good. And it looks liked I guessed correctly with the Sacrifice - initial Sprites/Lake Fairies tactic. I think we agree that these are best units for damage in the game. Criticals of up to 20,000 are quite possible with 20,000 leadership.

So well done!

[Amamake]

Well, the quickest way to get to King's Castle is to die. This could cut a day or two from the statistics.

[MajorS]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Yep, I believe you. I wasn't saying you cheated, simply that I wasn't sure how to cut it down to 24 days. I would have thought it possible to complete the game this quickly on lower difficulties by avoiding several fights. My Impossible game took 36 days and it would have been even longer (maybe 40-42) if I had cleared out everything.

I haven't tried the Giant tactic you describe here, but it sounds good. And it looks liked I guessed correctly with the Sacrifice - initial Sprites/Lake Fairies tactic. I think we agree that these are best units for damage in the game. Criticals of up to 20,000 are quite possible with 20,000 leadership.

So well done!

I must say, that my strategy would actually work with any class. The warrior would benefit from another 6000 Leadership. In a way its kinda sad tho how overpowered some combos are. Just equip another +1 damage item and the Fairies get another 30% damage increase. More different damage types would also help with Dragons. I guess next try is Warrior on Impossible . Makes picking a wife easier too, since the Warrior already comes with 2 weapon slots.

But probably not anytime soon. Maybe shortly before the expansion comes out to refresh my memory

[Zhuangzi]

Yes, my next game will be Impossible Warrior too. That's as soon as I finish Vampire: Masquerade Bloodlines.

Oh and I've still got The Witcher: Enhanced Edition to play. I can't seem to get into this - presumably it gets better after the prologue. So far it seems like a fairly lame hack n slash game.

[JudgeMan]

OH it's definitly not a plain lame hack n' slash. The prologue and act1 sure are a bit less fun (act1 still has some very cool moments) but once you get into the city it's pure fun up until the credits.