Stuck at Verona...

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by lauvhk

I understood the potential of single slot army back in my last and completed game in KB:TL. But soon after I realized that managing a full 5 slots army was actually far more challenging, that now I would refrain myself using single stack approach.

As for using level 4 unit, Elwin completes and documents somewhere on the forum an impossible (Paladin?) game by using Black Knight only. Remember though he does map kiting which might not be your soup.

Correct, but in a 7-day game this is a mid to late game tactic; unless of course you get Black Knights (earliest I've seen them spawn is Scarlet shipwreck) AND the Eviln spell early on.

[TemjinGold]

Originally Posted by jake21

Well for me I don't really need level 5 units; I need units that will create distractions (royal griffons, royal thorns, demologists, shamans...). A few key spells also help (not all of them but at least a few) (gift, fire rain, phantom, time back, ...)
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In my current 'hard' game up to (and including verona) I have had almost no luck with troups and spells. I didn't help my cause by vertically in damage spells skills but I in the end it probably was the best option simply due to lack of spells found.
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At the same time i started a normal mage (since the hard mage is such slow pace) and that game is utterly breeze not just due to easier skill level but before reaching verona (and verona was a gold mind once I started exploring it) I had royal thorns, royal griffons, demologists, fire rain, phantom, gift, ...
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This ignores items though in my hard game items haven't been that bad (I started with the +10 mind (banner) AND +10 warrior rune (sword); though it drained most of my cash) and found a +3int/stuff helm long with a +3 defense/+2 int shield.
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Still debating what to do with the guard. The elven guy is 4int but not sure 4int is all it is cut up to when compared with 700 leadership. Also the 700 ledership guy allows me to use better items.

That may be true on lower difficulties but distractions won't work for too long on impossible. My mage had a tad over 5000 leadership but the stacks I fought ranged from 10k on the low end to 40k on the upper end. I've pretty much stopped using Phantom because it's not cost effective--practically any one stack of the enemy's will one-shot a phantom stack I make that isn't of L5 units.

There isn't much luck involved in getting the stuff I'm using. The one thing I lucked out on is finding the Trap spell early. That was it.

Since you had trouble with your mage game and I won't have time to check out your save till tonight (as I'm at work), I can detail how I progressed in my current game as some of that might help you:

1) I picked the Green dragon. If you don't and still want Treasure Searcher as early as possible, the trick is to dismiss all of your starting units during the training and dismiss 4 of the 5 paladins you start with. Now do the first fight with dragon kick while having your paladin just defend and heal himself when needed. The second fight is trickier but if you kill the royal thorn with a few fire arrows to stop him from spawning more troops, the rest of the fight plays out the same as the first. If done correctly, your dragon should have just enough exp to level up after the two training fights. Then be sure to pick Treasure Searcher (it and Stone Wall will always come up at Level 2.)

2) Loot the first few islands you have access to but don't engage in ANY battles yet, even if you think you can win. If you are lucky, you will have access to Rusty from Bolo. Make sure to get the Stone from Bolo and use it plus turn it in. My mage had roughly 1000 leadership at this point after using and turning in the stone (I found zero +leadership items.)

3) Return to Debir. Sell everything you find that you won't use (sell any Wanderer Scrolls too except for may Call of Colossus if you get that; I was never lucky enough to find that scroll this early.) If you had access to Rusty, you should have somewhere around 55k gold now. This will allow you to buy a good starting artifact from Debir. If not, you will have roughly 36k gold. I've had games with both. Make sure you get and use Jimmy's Shark Tooth as well.

4) Distribute your talent runes. Ignore Order and Transmute for now. 28 mana starting is plenty if you don't screw up trap HP count and there are no useful Order spells for a mage in the beginning. Rush down towards Higher Magic (1) as that will help a lot with medal spam in the beginning. On the Might tree, try to get Rage Control (1). For the Mind tree, get Scouting 1 or 2, the thing under (forgot the name) to 1, and Learning as high as you can go. Learning gives Intellect so you'll eventually want it, so you might as well get it as early as possible.

5) Buy 1 full stack of Inquisitors. Travel to Scarlett and do the undead fight that leads to guaranteed Archmages (either 3 or 4.) If you split your stack into 3-4 stacks (so they can resurrect each other) using Trap as the killing blow for every stack, you should have no losses and 5 ticks on the trap medal.

6) Buy all the archmages you get access to. Split them into stacks of 1 and put all your inquisitors back into 1 stack. Now go back to Debir and do every fight. Have the mages spam Magic Shield every chance they get and have your hero, dragon kick, and inquisitors kill stacks with trap. When you get down to 1 stack that you can control, start spamming Stone Skin instead (to build the counter) till Turn 10. Then trap the last remaining stack after Turn 10. Wait for your mana to fully recuperate before each fight. This "army" is good enough to clear out all of the non-hero fights on Debir and half the stacks on Scarlett with no losses on impossible if you lay your traps right and plan. By this time, if you were diligent in trapping and grinding guardian angel medal, you should easily have Trap III (I got this after fight 22 this time) and Guardian Angel III (this one goes fast since your counter rises by like 20 or more each fight.)

7) Once you have those, switch to spamming Oil Mist for fire mage. You now have a couple of choices. If you have a Leadership item, you probably have around the 1900 needed for a Green Dragon. You can go grab the free one on Rusty then. If you don't and Bolo sells Cyclopses, you should have enough leadership for 1 of those. Either way, your goal is to get yourself to 1900 leadership to use that Green dragon. With it, use 4 shooter stacks (archmages, inquisitors, plus whatever else you have that's good) with the dragon and combined with trap, you should be able to exterminate up through Rusty (go in order.) If you're having trouble, build up Mystic egg and make sure to get Summoner (3). This will open up Verona.

8 ) Once you get to Verona, do the fight that blocks Montero, then loot both Verona and Montero. Of note in Montero is the Abyss quest because the reward I believe is always an artifact called "Living Book" (since he mentions it in his dialogue.) This item gives +2 Int and +20% to demon portal and call of nature. It also gives you a scroll of demon portal for 1 crystal (which I needed as I couldn't find this spell.)


There's usually at least one place in Montero that carries trolls. If not, cyclopses work just fine. In fact, they are better than trolls in daylight as they have more resist and I've never needed to heal either. Pretty much any L5 unit works though I don't like Giants as I consider them hugely overpriced in gold and leadership. I didn't find black dragons till I killed Odim in Verona (and that place only sold 2.) You now have everything you need to terrorize Verona and beyond with just 1 L5 unit.

As you can see, very little of this requires you to luck out in getting something.

Edit: Forgot to mention. Jimmy's 700 leadership seems great at first but it's actually pretty terrible considering that you'll reach 10k or more leadership by mid-game alone. If it were percentage based, it'd be worth something but wasting an item on him for a static 700 seems like a waste. I much prefer to drink the thing myself for 150 so that I can take Elenhel instead.

Edit 2: Wow, I just realized I remembered something wrong. The Abyss quest is in Tekron, not Montero. Though the Tekron map is not guarded on Montero so you should still have no trouble getting to it.

[Arilian]

I did almost exatly the same with my impossible mage

Though i had access to 3 kind of dragons and archdemons mid game (lvl20) and time stop (25) so i used red+emerald+black+archdemon.

For harder, anti.hero fights i did put 2 stack to reserve or even 1 to a castle and fight with only one, but for normal stacks the bigger army ensure faster victories. It does not have any advantage over "real time" time saving but it was important to me

[basis]

Thanks to TemjinGold, loreangelicus, jake21 and others for sharing your strategies. I have to admit, I am overwhelmed, both by the complexities and to some extent the terminologies used. Another reason why I might be having trouble is because I decided to play my first KB game as a mage instead of something simpler... yeah I didn't even play KB:TL, so i may have missed out on some earlier 'known' strategies.

But ok, I learned a few things and that is map kiting to open up new areas that normally wouldn't be available, and thus looting those islands while evading their guards. Then when I am stronger, return to tackle those challenges.

But I have a few questions, where does one get the Green dragon units on Rusty? I don't recall ever seeing them, or are they where ZigZag is guarding (one of the boss fights)?

Also I didn't realize traps are that useful. I thought you could only cast 1 at a time and yet use that to block a unit's path? I find that rather amazing actually, wouldn't the unit deliberately walk around it? Or how does one spam enough traps, especially in battles where there are no obstacles?

As for my current mage's spells, I have probably all the regular ones because I recklessly learned all the scrolls And yes my play style was one of a brute force mage, going for offensive spells (Fireball, Pole Axe, Fire arrows, pain mirror, ) rather than others that TemjinGold mentioned (Fear, Magic Spring etc). I certainly don't have Demon Portal and don't recall seeing any merchant that sold that scroll. I think one of my other problems is knowing how to effectively use these 'non-offensive' spells and with which type of units or against which type of units. For instance, I was under the impression not to use Magic Spring because if a unit dies, then I'll loose the no-loss battle count. So in my mind I would think "what's the point of buffing a unit and letting it get hit where there is a possibility of a unit death"?

I will try to share my mage's skill set: sorry for the large image sizes

[basis]

my spell book

[basis]

my current map of verona, and yes I did beat the fight to Montero but loss a few units there.


and the other maps I have.


and here's my current 'army' which I do have space for more because my leadership grew while I was off exploring Montero.


well i welcome any further suggestions that'll help me learn new ways to defeat the challenges in this game. I get all cautious when I start seeing all the mobs with the words 'Lethal' and above.

[TemjinGold]

Hey there, thanks for the detailed images!

The way I've built a mage is to always focus on Distortion 3, Summoning 3, Chaos 3 and Higher Magic in that order. For artifacts, I focus on Int, mana, and mana regen stuff. For my dragon, I focus on getting Mana Accel up to make up for my loss of Concentration (I left it at the 2nd highest level, which nets me 19 mana for 16 rage as I find that much better than 25 for 25.) Since Demon Portal 3 costs 35 mana a pop, the couple of points a round that Concentration gets me is peanuts (I eventually get this skill but not till after I've gotten all the spell upgrade ones and Higher Magic first.)

Distortion is the single strongest school by far. My Level 3 trap does up to 5500 damage and poisons while my Level 3 Fireball (regret getting this) only does 2900. With Stone Skin Level 3 and Mana Spring Level 3 (+15 defense!), my Demons/Executioners that I summon can defeat stacks that are 3-4 times stronger than it even though my mage's attack/defense are a crappy 5/1.

My personal opinion is that I find Glory to be a complete waste of runes. Due to my playstyle, I rarely use full leadership to begin with (I'm running around with 1 troll when I have over 8k leadership.) The Attack point in Might is a waste too. 1 extra attack is not worth the 4 red runes you need to spend for a mage due to how few of those you get to begin with. Instead, they are put to better use on Dragon Training and more importantly, Anger (this is important to get rage for Mana Accel.) Holy Anger is also a waste of runes in the beginning (though this is a great skill for later) mostly due to how infrequent Demon/Undead encounters are then. I usually go after Learning 3 as soon as possible with my green runes instead (+xp should be get early or not at all really.) Since they give Intellect, I will get this eventually but the nature of learning is that you benefit from it more if you get it early. Neatness is invaluable to a mage (Level 1 will suffice for a while) due to the crystals you'll need to upgrade your spells. Plus Absolute Balance is the easiest way for a mage to gain rage.

For spells, Berserker is amazing at Level 3 on demon portaled units. You're gonna have them attack AND die anyways, why not add a crapload of damage in the meantime? On my 35 Int, Berserker 3 adds +144% (so the unit does two and a half times normal damage) for FIVE rounds and it only costs 8 mana.

As for your army, I do wonder what the paladin is doing as he seems to be the odd man out. Here's why:

1) You don't have Phantom and your Distortion is at Level 1.

2) The only units he can resurrect are your Archmage and Inquisitors.

3) Your dragon is pretty mobile and I imagine your main tank. That means your slow paladins probably don't see a lot of action.

Your effectiveness would go way up if you replace the paladins with a shooting stack (Evil/Normal Beholders if you can get them due to their sleep attack or Demonologists if you're that lucky.)

[lauvhk]

The cave where Zigzag is guarding/patrolling is the place where you can find the free Emerald Green Dragon, but first you need to complete the Sohaty quest (asking for pirates, robbers and bowmen, 50 each) in order to obtain the key. He is found near the coast outside the cave.

Seeing that you have summoner 2 and order magic 2 I guess you mostly cast Call of Nature and Summon Phoenix?

@loreangelicus

Speaking of Undead, what about Ancient Vampire? They probably serve better than Black Knight in early game but lack the damage resistance to sustain later on. Same for Black Knight though in terms of availability. The chapel in Scarlet Wind is the earliest place that offers sale on one level 4 undead unit in random and the quantity is only in single digit.

[Zechnophobe]

Basis,

Another option, uses your scroll of the wind to Summon Dryads. Dryads are immensely powerful for mages, as they fit the control style that they use. A lot of early battles will allow dryads to buy maybe an entire turn via lullabye.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by lauvhk

@loreangelicus

Speaking of Undead, what about Ancient Vampire? They probably serve better than Black Knight in early game but lack the damage resistance to sustain later on. Same for Black Knight though in terms of availability. The chapel in Scarlet Wind is the earliest place that offers sale on one level 4 undead unit in random and the quantity is only in single digit.

Yes, I actually got 9 of them there at that location, and used them to kill most enemies at Scarlet. But on my impossible paladin game I couldn't use them to tank against melee-heavy "invincible" enemies (hero army of Hector Norbu), even with Eviln support. Thankfully, I lucked out with a Call Colossus and used it to get a Red Dragon.

But you are correct, without Eviln ancient vampires are indeed better than black knights early in the game because they can go bat-mode and "resurrect" themselves.