Tip: Dive Bomber Tactic

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by ganjatron

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I need some good tips on how to use Kamikaze. With the "Destroyer" mage skill, this has become hands-down the most damaging spell in my spell book and the mana efficiency is great.

Kamikaze 2165-4330 damage to all surrounding enemies for 15 mana! But the problem is getting the enemy to surround my suicide squad for maximum efficiency. By contrast, my often used damage spell is Fire Rain, and it does 2525-2885 damage in the same range (7-cell area) for 20 mana. That alone is awesome damage-to-cost ratio, but Kamikaze is way better... but too random.

So any kamikaze tacticians here want to lay out a good strategy? I also have Higher Magic x 3 so I can cast twice per battle. I usually create a phantom of my green dragon, and set kamikaze on it 1st round. Then send the dragon in (I pick the dragon because it is a unit in my army regardless of this strategy, and it has good enough speed to go plant itself right in front of the enemy army.) This works out ok, but I could easily just cast Fire Rain twice and have a better damage output. I've also tried demon portal x 2, then kamikaze x 2 in the second round. I might try out this griffin strategy, but is there any viable way to do this without wasting a spell, or wasting a slot with griffins?

Split one griffin, kamikaze on it, send it in, and kamikaze an enemy that may die for domino effect is something I may try today.

Basically, Kamikaze is great for Phantomed or summoned units, like the Dryad's Thorns for example. I would have thought the best way to get it surrounded is to Phantom a Griffin , which might give you 50-100 Phantomed Griffins later in the game if you have level 3 Phantom spell. So you send your original Griffin into the middle of the map, Phantom from it and send the phantomed Griffins straight into the enemy before they have a chance to move at all. If there are no ranged units in the enemy stacks, you might be completely surrounded. I have had some success with Kamikaze like this but ultimately I found it more straightforward to use Fire Rain.

Fire Rain - basic spell for massed forces. 2 per turn for 3 turns with Higher Magic x 3. 120 mana needed or even less if you have the mana regeneration thingy.

Ice Snake - for lone enemies or those resistant to fire (demons, dragons). Very useful spell.

Armageddon - especially against somewhat weaker stacks, but lots of them (say 8-10 stacks) and especially against large groups of Black and Red Dragons.

Ghost Blade - later in the fight or against creatures with good resistance (eg Cyclops). Only costs 10 mana.

I would rate all of these above Kamikaze.

EDIT: and I am wondering just how useful dragons are, especially Bone (useless) and Green (not the best). I think a Mage can use hordes of cheap stacks more efficiently. In the land of the dead, I had big stacks of undead spiders, skeleton soldiers and ghouls. I just spammed Armageddon and Fire Rain and cheaply filled up my stacks after the fight. You can't use Armageddon if you have expensive units like dragons.

[Kosiciel]

I'm level 23 mage, in elven lands, and still no Phantom... so can't even use kamikaze this way.

[ganjatron]

Well, at best I guess it is a situational spell. It's a shame because it does the greatest damage. I had a battle with a "impossible" opponent which had a stack of 4 Black Dragons and 5 Black Dragons which I wiped out with one Kamikaze (Black Dragons which are Immune to magic.) Situational though, because when you hover you cursor over an opponent after selecting a spell, the pop-up box shows exactly how much damage and units you will kill. If I am able to kill a unit with 1 Fire Rain spell, I will cast kamikaze before doing so. In my example, I cast Kamikaze on Thorns which was in the cell right next to the dragons. Then I cast Fire Rain, watched it die, watched it explode, watched 2 adjacent stacks of Black Dragons die.

The reason I don't like to use Phantom is because it's a spell, and therefore a waste of a cast. Summoning may be an option, but I can only summon plants which are slow as hell. I've used the necromancer to raise units from the dead and cast kamikaze then, which seems ok, but again too random - and besides, I ideally want to do the damage before they move, not after I've killed some units.

Griffins still seem like a good option, but splitting a stack of 100 griffins makes 2 stacks of 50. You cannot just pull one griffin out of the stack to be your suicide squad. Like the OP says, you need to bring a stack of like 2 griffins which is too much hassle. Zhuangzi, like you said, it's just more staightforward to use Fire Rain and I will only use Kamikaze when the situation deems it and will give up on creating some strategy to force its use.

By the way, I hate Bone Dragons, but Green Dragons are awesome IMO. Since they do melee damage, have high init, high speed, good amount of hit points, mana leech, 2-cell attack, they are my dragon killers. Red and Black are kinda useless when fighting demons and their fire resists, but green dragons still have their uses.

[Fargol]

Originally Posted by jenivida

what about Kamikaze with griffins and the target spell

Exactly. Once you can cast two spells per turn, it gets even better.

Someone suggested just fireballing; but I've found that the same things get boring over and over. I like variety; I personally don't think Trap is very good (it's very situational, and almost any damage spell is better) but I use it just for fun.

I put a lot of scrolls in my spellbook and upgrade generously just for variety, and maybe that'll hurt me later on when I run out of crystals, but meh I'll just *cheat* for crystals and I'll still be able to sleep at night

[Quikpik]

I played around with this tactic in the Dwarven lands as a Paladin and it is just lovely.

Turn 1 - Phantom on Griffins, at level 3 I get about 40 of them. Send them into the fray
Turn 2 - cast Magic Spring on summoned Griffins, I am usually back to full mana by the end of the turn
Turn 3 - cast Kamakaze and kablam.

Now I just need higher Chaos magic to upgrade that spell.

[Zhuangzi]

Yep that looks very nice. Griffins really are the best shock troop in the game with the possible exception of Horsemen. And Magic Spring is a fantastic spell - much more useful that Stone Skin.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

I think the Kamikaze spell is very "un PC" will all the terrorist attacks going on!

Cheeky buggers the game devs weren't they ha ha

goodnight