KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[Zhuangzi]

Awesome, thanks so much for bailing me out of having to complete those absurdly difficult fights! The Phoenix, as expected, dominates the battlefield and won those 3 Shelter battles very easily indeed. So it seems that no losses is possible as Daert after all! But you will need Matt's save and the Phoenix scroll for sure.

Here's how you do it:

Kill Portland stacks, 3 of them, which are a bit harder than usual because you don't get Frozen Grasp in this save!

Ignore those Catacombs stacks, all of them! They would be very hard with only Poison Skull, so thank God it isn't necessary to do them. But VERY IMPORTANT make sure you pick up ALL 18 crystals. You will have 22 in total.

Go into Dragandor, ignore the Spider, pick up your lovely Phoenix scroll (x4!!) and talk to the king. Level up to 4. Now for the hard part. Like Matt says, you need Bibliophile or you won't have the crystals to Level the Phoenix up to Level 2. So you want go do Meditation, Bibliophile, Order 1 and 2 at level 4. Now you can JUST level up the Phoenix to Level 2.

Phew, that was the hard part. Now for the fun! Go talk to Bagyr and Neoline, fight the guard (don't waste the mana on this fight) and then fight the Captain of the Guard. It's very strategic how you win this fight. I've done this step by step.

1. Make sure you have 25 mana.
2. On turn one, open your spellbook.
3. Press the 'I WIN' button.
4. Win.

Same deal for the three Shelter stacks. In fact the Human one still managed to get one of my Vamps with their healing, so I had to regenerate the Vamp, but otherwise it was a complete walkover. The Dwarven stack NEARLY killed the Phoenix once ( ) but not quite. So I'm in the Basement and I don't expect it will be very difficult. The hardest thing now is waiting for my VERY slooooooow mana regeneration.

Thanks again, Matt!

EDIT: Okay, so I've finished the Basement (killed 2 out of 3, left the Snakes) and Whitehill (again, killed 2 of 3), so I'm up to Portland and, as we know, this is where the game opens up. I've done 12 fights and you could easily do as little as 9, I think, by this stage of the game. Daert's start is absurdly difficult (not as hard as Bagyr's!) and it's only because of the Phoenix that I was able to get through so easily. I think I've probably lost the motivation to actually continue with this game for now, but I may come back to it later.

tl;dr - use Matt's Phoenix save if you want to do a no-losses Impossible challenge as Daert.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Yay! The Phoenix is breath of fresh air, isn't it!

By the way, I think even if Bagyr got 4 Phoenix scrolls he might be able to do through the Shelter no loss - hmmm...

Very funny post by the way, @Zhuangzi!

I think almost all my fights were Phoenix 100% damage, Vamps 0% (slackers! ). I think the only fight where they joined in (after Portland anyway) was the Basement Snake stack.

I didn't even disband any of my troops and just tossed them in the Shelter / my Reserve when I was doing the real fights!

Well, since I've been struggling with doing all these no loss battles, I finally figured I'd go forward with the Phoenix since it is so much easier than the others.

Since I was such a dope and didn't realize I could go back to Atrixus / Tristrem when I played Neoline the first time through the Catacombs (I thought I had to get their maps first before it would allow me to return!) I've been wondering around both places and I'm amazed by how much stuff you can get for free! All this gold lying around and chests to dig here and there, dummy stacks to kite to get the goodies, troops that want to join, I'm like a kid in a candy store!

I got 12 Demons (not that big of a deal, I guess) and then in Tristrem there are 70 Shamans! Wow! Since my 2 Vamps have been playing all these no loss games, I figured I'd just have then sit in the Shelter, relax, and shoot the breeze with Neoline and Bagyr while I use all these free guys! I also bought 20 Demonologists while I was in Atrixus so that I have 3 Demons, 3 / 2 Demonologists, and 3 / 3 Shamans.

I basically already have enough Crystals for Phoenix Level 3 and I only fought the Horsemen in Portland so far (although I did use a little Phoenix to whoop up on the Catacombs stacks and that Spider stack outside of Dragandor for a little payback from the other games ). I went with Bibliophile Level 3 since I was so short on Crystals in my Neoline playthrough and so just need to get to Level 7 to get Phoenix Level 3.

I'm wondering if Demon Portal is going to work better with Daert as the Leadership is close to my own right now as I bought that while I was in Atrixus, too.

By the way, I was wondering, does anyone know that if you talk to the two shop keepers in Atrixus does that start a clock on how long you have to rescue Pacca? The say she'll be executed in a couple of days so I was wondering if that is game days or it is just scripted and it doesn't matter. At any rate, I didn't want to chance it, although one of them sells some Executioners so I ended up not talking to either of them just in case since I won't be able to do Atrixus for a good while anyway.

So I'm back in the Shelter about ready to set out back to Portland. This time I'm going to use teleport unless I'm really low on gold instead of sailing all over the place, although I miss my Griffin Sails Ship - certainly beats the Checkered Sails one!

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

Definitely use Shamans in this game, then. I didn't use them at all in my Neoline game, but I'm up for something different. Demons are great too, of course. I kinda thought it would be cool to keep the Vampire theme as much as possible, but I suppose that will have to wait until Monteville.

The Pacca quest definitely isn't timed. I left it unfinished for most of my Neoline playthrough.

By the way, people on the Steam forum are complaining about Bibliophile being bugged - something, apparently, is 'resetting' the discount somehow? But they don't know what. So I would try to monitor that situation, or you'll end up using more crystals than you intended. It may be that it isn't worth spending more runes on Bibliophile for this reason.

Definitely teleport this time DG Dobrev and I both finished on day 23 as Neoline and he beat me by about 40 points, 2080 to 2040 or thereabouts. He did way more fights than I!

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Definitely use Shamans in this game, then. I didn't use them at all in my Neoline game, but I'm up for something different. Demons are great too, of course. I kinda thought it would be cool to keep the Vampire theme as much as possible, but I suppose that will have to wait until Monteville.

The Pacca quest definitely isn't timed. I left it unfinished for most of my Neoline playthrough.

By the way, people on the Steam forum are complaining about Bibliophile being bugged - something, apparently, is 'resetting' the discount somehow? But they don't know what. So I would try to monitor that situation, or you'll end up using more crystals than you intended. It may be that it isn't worth spending more runes on Bibliophile for this reason.

Definitely teleport this time DG Dobrev and I both finished on day 23 as Neoline and he beat me by about 40 points, 2080 to 2040 or thereabouts. He did way more fights than I!

Hah, I was the one who had the bugged bibliophile and posted it on steam. However, it might have been a one-off thing. Cost me about three hours of time as I had to reload.

It is working 100% now and it is pretty much mandatory for the vampire if you want to use nice spells.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Guys, I'm pretty sure it is only when you pick Bibliophile first as Daert.

I can repeat this (I had to go back to my Portland save because I've actually seen it before, but forgot about it) as if you pick it first, then Meditation, you won't get the rebate, but if you don't pick it first than you'll be fine.

I have Bibliophile @Level 3 and it is only 10 Crystals for Level 3 Phoenix when it should be 20.

/C\/C\

[DGDobrev]

Awesome Matt! Someone was bound to get the Phoenix eventually. Glad it was you, I gave up after scanning over 250 saves total. Congrats, I will have a go at it sometime as well. I still have no internet at home, so I have been amusing myself with scanning saves, but it wasn't to be. Then I remembered I haven't finished Divinity: OS, and ditched KBDS for a bit till I fool around with D:OS. Now I may be back to KBDS sooner than expected. Holy hell, huge congrats on the find.

EDIT: Ok, gave it a go. I expected it to be an easy going, but not this ridiculously easy. I think I lost only a single vamp to the human stack. Oh boy, oh boy... Phoenix sure rocks.

[Zhuangzi]

Yeah, that Phoenix sure does own the battlefield early on. I think Matt is continuing to play as Daert and has his Phoenix up to Level 3 early on.

Me, I don't have the motivation to continue with Daert right now. I will come back to it though. Right now I'm playing Wasteland 2, which is basically a modern sequel to Fallout 2. Having a lot of fun with it.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Yah, so far Phoenix is super easy - I did the ol' kiting to Helvedia trick to pick me up an Arch Demon to take on Oncologon (or however you spell his name), but I want to play different units this time, so no Arch Demons for me the rest of the game (well, unless I get them from Demon Portal)!

In fact, I think I'm going to see what I can do about limiting my use of level 5 troops to maybe just Bone Dragons since I'm Daert and maybe the Orc and Neutral non-dragons (like Trolls and Cyclops).

So far I've been having a ton of fun with Demonologists and Shamans and was able to complete all the Portland quests very easily. The Shamans work really well with troops that can't heal early in the game.

In fact I was amazed at how effective the Shamans are as I was able to defeat the two "weak" and "very weak" (mislabeled) humans stacks for Lucia using them with the Ancient Phoenix (I still had 1 Arch Demon and 1 Red Dragon to go with two stacks of Shamans and 1 Demonologist stack when I did these fights).

I briefly tried Vampires / Ancient Vampires with my Necromancers, Demonologists, and Shamans, but they were mostly sitting there doing nothing and since you can get them from the Necromancer's Raise Dead, I ditched them and got me some Dark Mages (neat!) and went back to Tristrem and got me some Catapults.

So now my army is Demonologists, Shamans, Dark Mages, Necromancers, and Catapults. We'll see how long that lasts, but I actually had fun with the Catapults in my Bagyr experiments so I figured it should be fun.

I actually might go all ranged until the Ancient Phoenix starts to lose its power, but right now, I've actually been casting it at just level 2 sometimes due to level 3 being more than what I need for some of the Monteville fights.

I figure I'll eventually need to replace the Catapults with a level 4 troop, but I don't have any other level 4 ranged troops available right now. I could go with Dark Horsemen for a ground troop as there seems plenty in Portland, but with the demon summons and raised dead with the Phoenix there's no sense in needing a melee troop right now since I can produce them on the battlefield.

I've also been using teleport a lot so far and the only time I think I'll not use it is when I have to sail to a new island like I did with Monteville. I guess if I really wanted, I could kite from Helvedia to Inselburg.

I'm really amazed at the number of places you can go with kiting and teleport.

/C\/C\

[ckdamascus]

It's amazing how the devs addressed some old issues I had, including how mages have way too much downtime between fights due to slow mana regeneration.

Anyways, I hate how long it takes to do some of the battles. Summon storm / shaman totem delays are enough for me with the Neoline build.

I'm just doing the old fashioned solo black dragon + Armageddon. Tried using female vampires + chaos gifts but that's actually way worse and mana intense.

Some battles are a little tricky (black + ice + red dragon fights) but so far having a VERY fast run since the big battles are done much faster now.

I can't wait to do Bagyr's run since the "orc warrior" has some very nice high damage mods that work well with orc units. Although I loathe having to resurrect against stupid geyser spells and insane stacks of doom. Ah wells.

[DGDobrev]

I gotta admit I also pressed on with Matt's save. I also got Phoenix Level 3 very early, which made the whole Portland (including the pure chick) a breeze. I didn't go to Helvedia at all. I did go to Atrixus, however, and picked up some Archdemons, Demons, and Demonologists, and then some Necromancers from Monteville. I did beat the dragon with that setup (Plague rocks vs Blackies) and gave him the Portland princess. I am just a few hundred leadership short and I will start the good old "How far can you go with 1 Black Dragon" challenge just for fun. Impy's post really hit my good old KBAP soft spot.

There are some awesome items in Matt's save: I am well over 100 mana on level 8 because of them. That's just amazing. All I can say is, thanks Matt, for giving me the urge to do another play-through. It will surely be a great one. Just... a few hundred more leadership...