Beating the game with no losses (Paladin)

[sector24]

Namel: That's very good to know. Fortunately I did not take leadership at level 12, so we'll see what I get. Overall my level ups have been fantastic, I took mana once, rage once, leadership twice and the rest have been attack and defense (mostly defense). I think I have a natural defense of 10 (from shrines and level ups), I'm at work and can't check right now. I'm going to start taking leadership bonuses now that they are more valuable.

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The fights against my own army will probably be the most interesting. Since I have a ridiculous amount of money I will probably buy 5 full stacks of units specifically for these 2 fights. My goal would be to pick all melee units that are easily nullified by spells and have varying rates of movement. Examples being:

Peasants: Casting weakness on peasants reduces their damage by 50%. They also have move 2 so I don't have to worry about them until late in the fight.

Fire Dragonflies: They have haste and the AI will use it on the first turn, so I should be able to focus all 5 of my stacks towards wiping out the Dragonflies on the first turn.

Ideally I'd have a movement 6 unit (Dragonflies) a movement 4 unit, a movement 3 unit, and three movement 2 units. That gives me the most time to focus fire one stack at a time. Spells like trap or slow can further split the speed of the units. With Phantom I can create a stack to eat the counter attack, and then focus fire with all my stacks. Of course this is all theory, I'll probably run half way around the world recruiting an army and then find out it doesn't work and have to try something different. But I think it will be fun nonetheless.

[Zhuangzi]

I'm pretty impressed by what you have to say about this game, sector24. Sounds like someone knows how to think things through properly.

I haven't actually tried the double image fight, but I would have thought a Mage can win it fairly easy using crappy units like Miners and Hyenas.

[Dorkus]

I beat the double with no losses. If you have a lvl 1-3 heavy army, it's a piece of cake. i had lake fairies, sprites, dryads, inquis, and emerald dragons. I nuked all the dragons with a couple ice snakes, then put everything else to sleep with my dryads. You can perpetually put everyone to sleep again and again using phantom image (ideally, first level, so it doesn't cost too much mana). My "double" enemy hero didn't even get a move because all of his units were constantly asleep....

[sector24]

I got +650 leadership at level 14, so I filled up on Inquisitors and Beholders, cleared out the Eastern Islands including Lucky James and Duke Sov. Surprisingly, the quest related battles are easier than the random armies that you need to clear to get to them.

So it was finally time to go back to the Orc Embassy and prove my manhood. I decided against using Cursed Ghosts this time and went with:

Beholders
Griffins
Royal Thorns
Royal Snakes
Inquisitors

I also used a charge from my mask of rage artifact (+20 rage) for the first time, up until now I haven't had to use any potions or anything. The problem with the above setup is that I don't get to go first so I couldn't lay down a trap. The enemy hero also had an annoying habit of using magic poleaxe on a different stack every turn, so I had a ton of resurrecting to do. However, I came up with devious and exploitative strategy.

I got the enemy down to 1 shaman, and let him keep his healing totem. Using my ample stacks of thorns, I put magic spring on one and attacked the shaman, who countered and I got my mana back. I could repeat this endlessly except sometimes the shaman would attack me back or use the axe dance and I would get an additional 5 mana. He would also heal himself to full every turn so I didn't need to worry about him accidentally dying. Endless mana loop to resurrect all my troops.

So I filled my rage and mana before I finished off the shaman, bought my own stack of shamans and went into the basement for some fun. This is the fight with the stack of 1400 fire dragonflies. Again, I lost a couple units from every stack, so to generate mana in this battle I used my beholders to put the dragonfly stack to sleep turn after turn, put a poison cloud on them, and then put my mana springed (sprung?) thorn stacks inside the cloud. You gain 5 mana every time they take poison damage, so your mana spring is guaranteed to pay off in full. This is another exploitative but very necessary strategy for the hardest battles.

So now that I have Royal Thorns and Shamans, it's time to go sink all the pirate ships and make the oceans safe for mass murdering heroes like myself.

[Shd]

Sector24, good luck in your adventure to complete wo looses...

Some hints from my mage (impossible, 0 looses):

1. Dont count on necromancy talent (if nothing is changed then ressurected units by talent is counted as "killed")
2. Be careful to not overupgrade spells/SR skills (sacrifice, time back etc.). I made such mistake, so in my opinion Sacrifice must be lvl 1, time back - up to lvl 2-3 units... But anyway, it is heavily depending on your gamestyle and Paladin one will differ from Mage one
3. All lvlup upgrades must be aimed toward tactic you will use against dragons (Because when you will get dryads from elves till dragons fights will be "piece of cake").... Just you must know what to do, if there will be 3-4 stacks of them with about 10 in each (there Mage tactic will not work, so i suppose i cannot help you much ).
4. Dont dismiss armies (not sure if it can hurt in straight way, but it really helped me in some fights when i got forest spirits (15 from mage strating army multiplied by hypnosis+sacrifice) before reaching elflands), just put them in garrisons.
5. Always have enough money to completly change your army. I needed to change it at least 5-6 times.
6. Dont expect "high" score at the end, because AFAIK its based on time spent (not killed/loss koeficient), for example mine was less than 800 when i played wo looses.
7. And last one... If you want to make such game interesting - dont use cheating tactics like greens+invisibility etc...


P.S. Killing turtle without looses is very easy. Just block her head with melee unit (cavalry will suffice). In such case she will not use AoE damage spell and knockbacks.

P.P.S. Killing "old double" is easy if you using dryads+ring+gift.

P.P.P.S. Beware of undeads, but as Paladin it can be more easy that as Mage

P.P.P.P.S. Most hard part will be dragons, i suppose... But, who knows...


Good luck and keep us informed of your progress

[kennec]

this is good reading.


anyone have tips for a paladin against unded hordes of ghosts and skeleton archers and legions of vampiers.

[sector24]

The most important thing to do when fighting undead is to use the right damage types against the right enemies. Ghosts have 50% physical resistance, skeletons and bone dragons are resistant to projectiles, etc. Typically the ghosts are the highest priority for me because they have high initiative (cursed ghosts move before my royal snakes so I can't cast first) and they have movement 4. I can usually trip up vampires with a death totem, and the bone skeletons die in droves after the ghosts are gone. So a generic undead fight (abandoned castle for instance) goes like this:

Turn 1:
Ghosts rush me, I have my royal snakes wait. I put Holy Anger on my beholders and they blast cursed ghosts, or the biggest stack of ghosts or skeleton archers if there are none. My shamans put a death totem in the back to waste the vampire/skeleton turns. Royal thorns summon a stack of thorns, I put Mana Spring on them, and then my royal snakes lunge at the cursed ghosts.

Turn 2: The cursed ghosts will either attack the summoned thorns (I get my mana back) or my inquisitors and I'll lose a few but the cursed ghosts will nearly kill themselves. Royal snakes attack the cursed ghosts in such a way that the regular ghosts are forced to attack the summoned thorn stack. If that's not possible, I have my shamans put a totem of life down so that the summoned thorns + the totem block the ghosts from getting to the snakes. Inquisitors and Beholders hit the skeleton archers. The battle is all but won at this point. The vampires are 2 turns away from hitting anything because they went back to kill the death totem, there's maybe a stack of ghosts and 1 or 2 crippled stacks of skeleton archers.

You can use the healing spell for direct damage against undead. It has a very efficient damage to mana ratio. If you can't take out a stack of cursed ghosts halfway through the 2nd turn, the enemies might just be a little too tough for your current leadership level. There are also some undead specific artifacts such as the silver rapier (+30% damage to undead) and silver chain )+1 intellect, -2 defense to undead). I found 2 silver rapiers in the Freedom Isles, I can't wait to marry the demoness so I can wield them at the same time.

[sector24]

I finally finished the Freedom Isles, my character is level 15 and I have 5700 leadership. 11 Attack, 22 Defense, 10 Intellect, which I feel is pretty good at my level. Sleem is level 22 and Zerock is level 17. I let my underground blades get a little out of control, it costs 37 rage (although it pretty much wipes entire armies off the board).

I am finding that I made some choices that I regret concerning my character. First, I took Rockfall when I should have skipped it, and I even upgraded it once because my other choice was to increase the stone wall's life to 300 (and increase the cost by 5 rage). Two wasted levels probably won't make a big difference in the long run though.

In the skill tree I took 3/3 Glory which in retrospect was too expensive for what you get. 500 leadership sounds like a lot when you're level 8, but at the higher levels, the leadership bonus from a level up dwarfs that. I would have preferred to have spent the might runes towards onslaught so dragons don't tear me a new one on the first turn. I have had serious problems getting might runes in my game, although magic runes are abundant so it's not that big a deal. If I find enough might runes to get what I need by the time I'm fighting big stacks of dragons, then it will probably turn out to be nothing.

In the mind tree I have 2 Order, 3 Distortion, and 2 Chaos, and I'm not really sure what to do with my mind runes from here. I would like to get the last 2 points of concentration, not that I need the mana but it does make all the fights easier if I had it. I have fire rain and ice snake as my primary damage spells, but I regret using the magic crystals on Ice Snake because the damage is awful for a Paladin and the freeze effect isn't high enough. It probably won't matter, but we'll see. I still haven't found Hypnotize, Phantom, Phoenix, Sacrifice and a few other useful spells.

I feel like Paladins need to be very careful about spending their mind runes because everything in that skill tree is so expensive, so I can't really afford to make a mistake. I need to decide to either go for the spell damage skill at the bottom of the tree, or get concentration and extra mana. I'll probably hold onto them until I reach a point in the game that I can't continue.

Going back to Darion was fun, the abandoned castle was a breeze, the undead castle in the marsh was challenging but not frustrating. I beat the gorgon in the arena which was a real pain due to her incredible initiative. I am now regretting not leaving more enemies alive in Greenwort, I have 2 arena battles to go and no one to build rage off of. I guess potions will have to do, but it's much easier to drag out an easy fight than it is to use the few consumables that the game provides. I have only found 2 rage potions in the entire game so far. I haven't tried the level 15 fight. I'm sure I could win, but probably not without losses. The archmage's staff is also best left for later.

As awesome as royal thorns are, they are becoming quite a liability against enemy heroes. Their fire vulnerability ruins me when the opponent has alchemists, dragons, fireball or flaming arrow. Since I don't have sacrifice or time back I have to reload the fight if I lose one. They're still great for 90% of the fights in the game, but I really need to find a replacement soon. I will be heading into the mines tonight, so we'll see what they have to offer.

[Zhuangzi]

About needing weak enemies around the place, I had this problem too because I tend to clear everything out methodically. I need easy fights to use Sacrifice on Peasants to replenish my expensive units. Then I realised that I habitually leave the neutral Griffins on Griffin Island in Arlania alive. But you can turn them hostile by stealing their egg from beneath them. That's a pretty low thing to do, but if need an easy fight...

[sector24]

More good luck, I found 10 cyclopes at the castle in Creiston Mines, so I was able to finish up that stupid quest for the rare animals and replace my royal thorns against fire based enemies. I think it's amusing that it costs 5000g to buy a cyclops and the reward is 4000g.

The dwarven lands are severely underwhelming after cutting my teeth against pirates. Most fights are "match" or "slightly weaker" which I guess makes sense because not every player would take the time to kill every single army they came across and do every single quest. So it seems I'm overleveled for this area.

I have used the lull to level up Lina, I summon her at least once every fight, although I think I've had some back luck on the actual level up bonuses. Twice, I've had the option to increase either the ice ball's offensive or defensive stats. So basically my level up had to be applied to the ice ball no matter what, and the rage cost went up. It costs 30 rage now which is too expensive for what it does in my opinion. Thankfully Gizmo is still only 12, and I can always use chargers which basically trades 6 rage for 4 mana.

The boss in laboratory 44 was also very easy. I used my royal thorns to summon thorn stacks, which summoned more thorn stacks, and I used my shamans to drop totems on the outside hexes, until I had filled the entire battlefield. If the boss decided to summon allies but there aren't enough hexes open, it just skips its turn. So basically royal thorns = free pass on this fight, and the 6600xp puts me just short of level 17.

I think this fight needs a boost. At a minimum, if the summon allies action isn't possible the boss should attack, but I think possibly the boss needs a 3rd type of attack to prevent the royal thorns exploit. Perhaps spitting webs on everyone causing mass slow (so it's harder to raise all the thorn stacks), or spitting poison on everything causing a 3-round poison debuff. I don't know, something. I mean at least the Kraken could hit multiple stacks each turn so it was pretty much impossible to fill the screen with thorns. This boss was not challenging at all.

Going to keep poking out the eyes of beholders and cyclopes over the weekend and see how far I get.