No losses Imp Mage high score help

[Petwin]

nameless: treasure of jack albatross to scarlet

I found the parrot always on Rusty Anchor

[Elwin]

no, cuttlefish is not counted as quest. I mean the quest you got on nameless to dig the treasure in graveyeard next to chapel on small island, not the talking doors

[Petwin]

Having a lazy day at the office, I gave this a try. It's a well known mathematical problem called "The Traveling Salesman". Unfortunately, I'm no mathematician and can only use my common sense.

"KBAP travel quest" is a breakdown of what Elwin wrote. I'm not sure I have all the quest items correct (1=start, 2=task, 3=collect reward, but not always). I think that the challenge of the Island and the location of the navigational charts are things to be taken into account here.

"KBAP travel time" is my solution to for least amount of travel time. It's 93 hours.

No fancy pictures, just excel. Feel free to comment and I will update. If someone can make better looking attachments, feel free to do so.

[Elwin]

There are mistakes in pathing - u have to get back in demenion and temple of joy, message from the dead, grimoire of darkness and with tresure of jack albatross.

also in sum up u have to get back to reha and after that to verona.

[Amidamaru86]

Great work Elwin +1 for you

I was finnaly able to get/make up/use the ultimate no loss strategy for a mage with the dragon experience working as I intended so here it goes:

With this strategy you CAN TAKE EVERYTHING (doesn't matter if it is lethal/invincible)

PRE-REQUISITES:

- Inquisitors (at least 1 unit)

- Tanking unit (Royal Griffins work the best, will use them as the example, red dragons work fine too but will get you lower dragon experience *will explain later, other high hp unit - your choice really but it all triggers your dragon experience gain)

- Turn Back Time spell

- Phantom spell

- Sacrifice spell (optional, but saves a lot of time)

- Calm rage spell (optional, but can save a reload of a battle)

- at least 30 mana

- a bit of logical thinking

- only use units which can be ressurected by the inquisitor (no thorns), undeads can be ressurected by a speciffic spell, but don't know if it works on bone dragons.

- Mana accelerator

- Higher Magic (optional, but helps a lot)

- At least 3 ranged units

- Stone Wall (the strenght of stone wall depends on your level, but from 1000 HP is gets the job done)

STRATEGY

1) Turn 1 - (cast magic spring - the spell which gives +5 mana when the unit is stuck on griffins and stone skin, if the army isnt too overpowered - won't destroy your griffins in turn 1, magic spring/stone skin may be skipped) the enemy may attack you first with a spell/arches, don't worry, just send your griffins to their army trying to block enemy archers, but not far enough to end the Royal Griffin turn (leave 1 action point left), and use the Royal Griffin ability - Summon Angelic Guards (the name of the spell is probbably different, but the spell summons a unit)

2) Turn 1 - the enemy may move, depending on their initiative - they will always choose the closest way of attacking your army, so they will go for the tank if there is enough space. You on the other use your ranged units to attack theirs (starting with enemy archers/melee units which skipped your tank and went for the ranged units = furious goblins tend to do so, because they have a very high initiative), don't worry if they do that. With the last unit in your army (if you have enough rage, use a attacking ability, the ones with 1 turn rest are preffered if you have a low mana pool = 30-40 mana)

3) Turn 2 - the enemy may cast their spells/attack the tank/move their high initiative units towards your ranged army). Look how many Royal Griffins are left, if the amount is less then half, and you know they will die when the enemy attack them cast Turn Back Time on them (try to maximize the time when they are closer to the enemy, so if you know they wont die unless 4 units attack them, and after the 3rd unit will attack them your unit will move, then use Turn Back Time when your unit will be moving). If you know they wont die at turn 2, just press wait on one of your units and let the enemy units move, then cast Turn back time.

3) Turn 2 - Depending on your mana pool/rage use either Mana accelerator (have at least 30 mana for Turn Back Time) or a offensive ability, and attack with a ranged unit (remember that 1 unit of your army may have to 'wait' for the enemy to move first.

4) Turn 3 - starting from now the enemy should be weakened a lot, this is the time where you either replenish your mana with magic spring/mana accelerator, and send your Royal Griffins at the enemy (just repeat the previous steps) or start to ressurect your army if any other unit then Royal griffins were killed by the enemy, and the enemy is pretty much dead.

5) RESSURECTION: Turn 3+ - the way to ressurect your army: let your enemy if he is a hero use all their mana, kill everything except 1 stack of units - lower the number of units in that stack to like 10 or 1 even (the lowest number you can get), and block them with Stone Wall, if that unit is a ranged unit, lets say 1 bowman, you don't need the wall


6) RESSURECTION: Turn 3+ - once the unit is pretty much dissabled, use phantom on your Inquisitors, and with them use the +rage ability/ressurection. Convert the rage into mana by mana accelerator if you do not have enough mana to cast phantoms again. Repeat, repeat and repeat untill the army is fully ressurected, you can add sacrifice to restock your army without buying units here.

7) CALIBRATION - you have to know what each unit can do - for instance a brack dragon can fly straight to your archers, demoness can teleport your inquisitor etc. try to prevent that by magic/good placement of units. So lets say a demoness will cast teleport on your inquisitors, cast magic shackeles on them before they have a chance (mass shackes are great when the enemy army consists of demoness and imps), main enemy damager does too much damage to your tank - place a trap between your Tank and the enemy or slow him as much as you can, or add an archmage to your army and shield the tank, or other example - enemy assasin's - put a trap behind your tank. Having problems with dragons ? - try positioning your units (not the tank) close to each other an enclose them with stone wall (in other words cluster them together, so 2 sides will be facing a edge of the screen and place a Stone Wall so it will block the neighbouring cells - the dragons will attack your tank and wont attack the Stone Wall)

8 ) TANK DIES - it can happen, don't worry its not that scary if you think for a while and have inquisitors. Basically what happens when a tank dies is, that enemy melee units go for your archers. What you need to do is - look which unit of the enemy army is the most dangerous/troublesome, and block it with everything you got (trap/slow/summon animal etc), and ressurect the tank with inquisitors (even when he will die again, just do it so the most dangerous unit won't move too close to your ranged dps). Repeat the steps with ressurecting the tank and try to put traps between him (the tank) and the enemy units - this will save you a couple of turns, which helps a lot, and your ranged units are still doing damage to the enemy. Remeber to to use mana accelerator/phantomed inquisitors + rage ability, its a life saver, and also remember that a phantomed unit can serve as a tank (even if just for a turn or two)

The plus side of this that your tank is getting most of the damage while ranged units do the damage, even if he dies - he can be ressurected later.

What is important in this strategy:

- You used a offensive ability with the dragon at turn 1-3 - why is that ? you had plenty of rage cause of Royal Griffin counterattack ability which is basically a enemy killer/rage builder and it gives the best possible dragon experience gain.

- Ressurected the whole army

- You never will have to buy new units (sacrifice)

- Can be time consuming if you only ressurect with a inquisitor, so it is a good idea to put a paladin also

- while your tank is getting pretty much most of the damage, the ranged units are constantly attacking the enemy,

- you can take invincible and don't worry about the losses (but don't let the inquisitors die)

- This strategy starts to be effective at level 12+, provided you have found the necessary spells already.

[Zechnophobe]

I, uh, think you are overstating the effects of this. Yes, the strategy of using a resurrect loop can regain as many lost units as you want, that isn't the same as being always effective. For instance, a Demon army:

Archdemons
Demonesses
Imps
Demons
Red Dragons

A fairly normal army in Shaterra is very likely to swap your inquisitors into the front lines. Even if not, Achdemons will dominate them, and will teleport accross the map to do so. You also seem to think that your stack of Royal Griffons is doing enough damage to the opposing 'invincible' army to actually kill it before you run out of mana/rage... not necessarily true. What if one main stack is a horde of Royal Snakes?

Anyhow, for 'no loss' games you have three different strategies you need to be ready to do:

1) Resurrection Plan (a way to get all units you lost back at end of combat with a weak enemy left over).
2) A Damage Plan. (A way to kill the enemy force, or get them into position for step 1.)
3) A Survival Plan. (A way to make sure you are still alive while doing step 2, so you survive to step 1.

For example, the Single stack of Black knights survives by having very high resistance to damage innately, and more with spells. They do damage because of increasing rage and being a pretty good stack to begin with. You resurrect them by turning all enemy dead stacks into Eviln, and just walking over one to replenish significant amounts.

You have only provided that step 1 above.

[Elwin]

amidamaru check this thread : http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=11666

[Amidamaru86]

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

A fairly normal army in Shaterra is very likely to swap your inquisitors into the front lines. Even if not, Achdemons will dominate them, and will teleport accross the map to do so. You also seem to think that your stack of Royal Griffons is doing enough damage to the opposing 'invincible' army to actually kill it before you run out of mana/rage... not necessarily true. What if one main stack is a horde of Royal Snakes?

Anyhow, for 'no loss' games you have three different strategies you need to be ready to do:

1) Resurrection Plan (a way to get all units you lost back at end of combat with a weak enemy left over).
2) A Damage Plan. (A way to kill the enemy force, or get them into position for step 1.)
3) A Survival Plan. (A way to make sure you are still alive while doing step 2, so you survive to step 1.

Zech this is where you calibrate, so lets say a demoness will cast teleport on your inquisitors, cast magic shackeles on them before they have a chance (mass shackes are great when the enemy army consists of demoness and imps), main enemy damager does too much damage to your tank - place a trap between your Tank and Royal Griffin or slow him as much as you can, or add an archmage to your army and shield the tank, or other example - enemy assasin's - put a trap behind your tank. The plus side of this that your tank is getting most of the damage while ranged units do the damage, even if he dies - he can be ressurected later.

[Elwin]

but u have to rember that shackless have leadership limit, big stacks on impossible wont get shackled

[Amidamaru86]

Yup, but as far as I remember from my warrior on impossible, there werent many stacks high enough to resist magic shackles, and always you can kill some of them before they have a chance of moving.

I still have some ideas which I want to test in this strategy, like for instance can you summon angelic guards on a phantomed Royal Griffin or summon demons with a phantomed Demonoligist, will definetely post them later.

One more question, will bump the post if nobody will reply in the next ~12 hours. So the experience gain is based on the enemy deaths, rage consumed, and the ability itself, but what I can see is that the egg ability gives a decent amount of exp - does anyone know if the exp gain of that ability is based on the number of enemy units/number of turns taken ? or any ideas how to check it ?