No Loss thoughts?

[Zechnophobe]

Meant to ask, has anyone gotten Jarls or Maidens on the first island? That'd probably make no-loss completely doable right there, especially for a mage. Maidens are freaking amazing at this, and will only get better once you factor in phantom/gift.

As I sorta insinuated, I'm just playing through the game to start to get a feel for things. Looks like you can always get Jotun once you can fly, and they are decently tanky. I'm not quite sure how to go through the first island without losses, but 2nd island onward looks pretty doable.

Maybe get a bunch of 'call of nature' scrolls, and just spam them during the Ahriman fight to make him less likely to target your only units, and cheese the RNG? Sorta extreme, but I think it would work.

[Mystic Phoenix]

SPOILER

And there are two more fight to come. I was lucky and got three call of Nature spells which made he fight against Ahriman do-able - I only lost one berserker and might have been better in case I got snakes instead of 2x hyenas. But I'm quite sure you cannot win the next two battles without casualties (and I'm also quite sure someone will prove me wrong sooner or later ), so I said good-bye to a no-loss game for now.

[impy]

Well, I restarted the game 50+ times to see what the conditions are on the first island. Here are the observations :

Hunter sells always 2 x basic bears +wolves. Never spells, items, other units.
Runolv sells always wolves + soothsayers only. usually 1-3 potions of both mana & rage. Only twice I've seen him sell extra level 1 item, vampire stake I think. Also always sells 2 x spells, rune magic only.
Castle sells always slingers + vikings only. No spells. items vary, but are very low level. The best I've seen is helm +2 def, boots +2def (unupgraded spike boots), Shield +3def or berserker shield (better)
blacksmith sells always axethrowers and berserkers. No spells, 2 or 3 (rate) very low level items. Mind you, it can be level 1 items which can be upgraded later on nicely, i've seen staff of herbsage there for example.

Since slingers & wolves & snakes are weak, the line-up must be made from berserker, 2 x bears, axethrower, soothsayer, viking.

you cannot dig chests hoping for nice RNG, and there is no rage spell upgrade yet either. You cannot really buy spells apart from Runolv so you have to find them.
warrior char. needs 17 magic runes for either order magic (heal..) or distorsion magic (stone skin, slow..), but acquiring 17 off is nearly impossible.
The only means of healing for warrior char. is therefore soothsayers or heal scrolls.
The gift spell to recharge soothsayer only affects units 1-2 level ( at level 1). I have not played mage char. yet, but i guess you would need to upgrade rune magic to 2-3 (to affect soothsayers), which might be impossible on initial island.

I came close to defeating Ahriman as warrior which I played (att: 8,def:16, leader:775, 2 x nature call scroll) but so far nothing. Remember there is another nasty necromancer in the lair. I guess skald or mage are better suited for this.

That brings a question : what were the developers thinking? No-loss challenge in various forms has always been a part of Kings bounty community. I find it hard to believe it can only be done as result of some extreme RNG if at all. we'll see, game has been out only for 2 days..

[zjazd18]

Skald seems to be the best - song of helheim is pretty sweet against udead, and diversions made some battles extremly easy, when 2 archer stacks dont make a move on first round you know you won the lottery .

But yeah Ahriman seems to be only doable with heavy Call of Nature abuse. I think main problem is that you cannot level your rage spells from the start, which leads to doing dmg only from units who are mostly melee that get retaliated.

[Loopy]

Originally Posted by Mystic Phoenix

SPOILER

And there are two more fight to come. I was lucky and got three call of Nature spells which made he fight against Ahriman do-able - I only lost one berserker and might have been better in case I got snakes instead of 2x hyenas. But I'm quite sure you cannot win the next two battles without casualties (and I'm also quite sure someone will prove me wrong sooner or later ), so I said good-bye to a no-loss game for now.

I just gave up vs Ahriman and the next two bosses I no-lossed in a few tries without any special tactics. Maybe I just got incredibly lucky though. Restarting now since I want to find the way to beat this.

Originally Posted by impy

1). I have not played mage char. yet, but i guess you would need to upgrade rune magic to 2-3 (to affect soothsayers), which might be impossible on initial island.

Frankly Soothsayers are balls. Their resurrection spell is by far the worst in the game. You need rune magic just because Winter Dance and Magic Missile will be your only sources of damage.

I think you might have a chance of getting rune magic 3 if you manage to get to level 5 before Ahriman, which will require Gifted Warrior ASAP. Has anyone been level 5 before him? You'll still need good Might rune drops though.

As for non-mages: Godspeed.

[Razorflame]

Originally Posted by impy

Well, I restarted the game 50+ times to see what the conditions are on the first island. Here are the observations :

I came close to defeating Ahriman as warrior which I played (att: 8,def:16, leader:775, 2 x nature call scroll) but so far nothing. Remember there is another nasty necromancer in the lair. I guess skald or mage are better suited for this.

That brings a question : what were the developers thinking? No-loss challenge in various forms has always been a part of Kings bounty community. I find it hard to believe it can only be done as result of some extreme RNG if at all. we'll see, game has been out only for 2 days..

Well my observations are a bit more different

Save for the fixed things ofcourse

What i noticed what that LEADERSHIP doesn't really matter for the first island
U will get to level 4-5 in no time which will give almost any char the 620 leadership for the 3 soothsayers(which is the only semi decent u can get on this crappy island)

the point is on the starting island there are barely any HIGH level creatures to buy or units that have high HP which leaves u to get Ancient bears/soothsayers/beserkers and axethrowers and throw in some extra fodder .

you will only get 2 Ranged units. (slinger which is total crap and the soothsayer)
forcing u to get at least 3 melee stacks which is forcing u to get healing or w/e to get your melee units not dying

and the rage amulet is also quite crap with it's 70-80 damage

Which all leads to getting ORDER magic ASAP (esp for pala and warrior)
and in some games that is near impossible the ways to get to the magic abilities requires ALOT of magic runes t.t

as for beating ahriman there are quite some options i believe


1. scroll of nature and pray his damaging spells go to your summoned shit
2. healing spell (for damage , since u can damage undead with healing spells and it does decent damage for 3 mana)
3. using 2 stacks of bears ancient and normal one for tanks(and use HIBERNATION to the max) the tricky part there is the damaging spells which are a total pain in the ass.

4. U can let 1 UNIT die the soothsayer can revive one of any stack so long the HP isn't in the yellow
5. BE VERY LUCKY with the RNG and get a summon phoenix or death call spell(which i highly doubt is avaible i've only seen level 1-2 spells so far


and as for optional things u can do to max out your spell input
5. FIGHT every battle but only if there a chest in that battle that u can get! so maximing your chest find and item/gold/runes/crystals

and other than that it is quite impossible to kill ahriman xD with the crappy unit selection u have to choose from and the limited space from which u travel from


But i will find a way and post it here when i beated this boss xD

[namad]

on the first island you get enemy heroes that cast poison skull on turn1 and deal 200damage to something before you even get to act!


when people talk about no lossing though do they just mean no lossing all the non-boss non-hero fights? or even those too?

[Bhruic]

No loss means just that, never losing a single unit in your entire playthrough.

There are tricks you can use to avoid the poison skull - or mitigate it. Basically the AI will do the exact same thing every time under the exact same circumstances. So what you need to do is keep trying different things until you find a situation where the AI - as an example - casts Helplessness instead of Poison Skull. This is accomplished by varying your attack order, attacking different units, etc. Pretty much any time you perform an action that requires a random number to be generated, you'll alter what the AI will do.

If the AI has the unit with the best initiative, and casts Poison Skull right away, you have less options, but one thing you can do is alter your unit positions. The AI casts the spell on the position, not the unit, so if you swap in your toughest unit (Soothsayers in this case), you can often survive a Poison Skull without a loss.

[Loopy]

Even then, there is a lot of praying that the spell doesn't get cast on the wrong unit mid-battle. Summons can help, but you'll need to burn scrolls for that.

Gift can give soothsayers extra revives, but you'll need to both heal and gift, which is very expensive if cast from mana. Not sure how many Gift scrolls can show up.

[namad]

Originally Posted by Loopy

Even then, there is a lot of praying that the spell doesn't get cast on the wrong unit mid-battle. Summons can help, but you'll need to burn scrolls for that.

Gift can give soothsayers extra revives, but you'll need to both heal and gift, which is very expensive if cast from mana. Not sure how many Gift scrolls can show up.

I had one gift scroll show up on my first island, but before I went back and bought it.... the store STOPPED EXISTING WTF>>> no fair! i thought stores never stopped existing randomly without warning in the king's bounty series oh well