Surviving on Impossible

[Zhuangzi]

I'm up to level 11 now and slogging through Freedom Islands. I have cleared out the West, which is unusual because some of the hardest enemies are on the main continent. But they're gone now.

The Banner of True Faith was even better than I realised. It is 10 MIND runes, not Magic, so that really helped me with my green rune problem. As I'm concerned about money, I took Trophies 2 and Reserve 1. I've already got Trade 3, so hopefully money won't be a problem from now on. I've got about 160,000 gold but I had noticed that my money had plateaued. With 20% more gold after combat it must be a similar amount to what you get on Hard after fights.

Ice Snake 3 is such a wonderful spell at this stage. Not only does it deal over 2000 damage (including splash damage) at 15 Intellect, but it slows the enemies down as well. You just need some good ranged stacks to pick them off...

And I finally had a go at Sacrifice. I found 5 Royal Thorns somewhere and used Thorn Hunters to increase the stack from 5/14 to 14/14. Is this what I'm supposed to do with Sacrifice? I haven't got Hypnosis yet. Royal Thorns seem very nice but I haven't got any modifiers for them (I hear there is a Thorn Crown or something). Question about Sacrifice, if I increase the stack to beyond its cap it will revolt against me right? So what's the point of that?

[Sandsai]

Originally Posted by Namel

Started mage as well and took frog wife. My kids, first +scrolls, second +exp, third plus rage. Finally 4th was +defense so it wasn't that bad. I guess I have to try beating kraken early to get new wife. lol

I had to get Rina because I had two +scroll kids along with +10 mana and rage from the frog wife. So far doing pretty good with kids, +20% attack and +5% leadership so far.

[leo]

First up, about Sacrifice; You are using it exactly right. The idea IS to make a 5/14 stack of Royal Thorns to 14/14 for free and when they are not available anywhere else on the map . And yeah, there is no point in increasing them beyond your leadership - just focus on the next troop you want to raise numbers of .

Secondly, The Banner of True Faith sounds AWESOME. Where did you get to pick it up from?

Will post again on my progress in a bit.

[leo]

Impossible difficulty story so far -
Am at level 7 with the following stats:
4 attack
7 defence
11 int

1750 leadership. No great luck with leadership artifacts (have the same priest rope), infact, no luck with ANY kind of artifacts - I am hoping unlucky now = lucky later

Clearing some last darion quests, and readying myself for the turtle battle.


Had less luck with Feanora's children, I got a
+5% combat experience
+10 to rage
+5 to defence

The 4th baby is going to occupy the ring slot, so I am thinking if I should leave that open for Anya's (?) (the women unit booster) ring. Thank God for no scroll kids!

I have practically only used fireball myself, and also have chaos at lvl 2, with fireball upgraded (650+ damage on primary target). Have 60+ scrolls, from questing, none of which I am inscribing since I don't feel the need to use them just yet! This also means there has been no seller of awesome scrolls for which I need slots available. It also means I can max my alchemy before I start inscribing them en masse later .


Had much better luck with mind runes; trade is currently at lvl 1, but I am sitting on around 100k already, so I have some doubts about the merit of pumping more in trade.

Some lessons learnt for impossible difficulty. They'll work just as well on lower difficulties too:

- Dodging is practically a necessity. Had given up hope on Feanora since her frog buddies inside Netvill dungeon were guarded by an impossible necromancer and a very hard zombie group. In fact, I dont think I could have actually beaten them unless I was level 15+. The trick that worked for me was to lure the necro really far, and then lure the zombie just enough to pass safely before the necro returned. Don't even ask how I managed the return with that cage.

- Get the horsemen from the knight tent by luring the group guarding it away from it. They are invaluable at impossible difficulty. Combining well with inquistors, you will not lose any of them in battles.

- Sleem is WAY more useful than Zerock (the fire rock) and easier to get! Evil shoals ROCK early game.

- As a mage, you will anyway rely on magic for real damage. For supressing quest artifacts (they are easier to supress than regular artifacts at impossible difficulty), stay around a castle. Move all/most of your regular combat troops out into the castle slots, and fight using free dragonflies, spiders from eggs, cheap snakes from eggs, thorns from sprouts. Your aim is to survive, and you will LOSE troops to the nasty evil gremlins so free troop losses hurt less - They outlive their utility quickly anyway!

[Enarr]

Playing on Impossible w/ Mage. Level 10 and about to sail to Freedom Isle.

I kinda cheated (well not really) by starting over and over, while checking the items given in the first 2 castles. I was lucky enough to start with the Banner that gives 6 defense, 800 leadership and 10 mind runes after 50 vics, and a helm that gives 5 mana and 20% more dmg to spells. Unluckily, all the other items from other shops have really sucked . Dupes of +1 def boots and shields galore!

I saved up 60k gold asap for that banner and then it was real smooth sailing from there. Saving up that 60k took a lot of dodging and luring to get treasures/gold/scrolls from really hard mobs. I only fought weak monsters so I would have next to zero losses. Like the above poster, Fireball's my main spell.

I specced my mage for the long haul. I got 1/3 in both the exp/gold talents and then 3/3 trade talent because I know gold will be the main issue late game. Especially since I've been really unlucky with scrolls (No sacrifice and resurrection scrolls yet). After 3/3 trade, I was rich , sold off many scrolls and items I hoarded.

Main army : Nothing out of the ordinary. Good ole Royal snakes, Priests, Archers, Inq, and Horsemen/Polar bears. Ran out of horsemen so Polar bears. I just hope there will be some sweet units in Freedom.
________
easy vape

[Zhuangzi]

@ Leo, that sounds like a good idea about holding onto the scrolls for now. You also get a better deal on them when you put a point or two into Trade (if you are going to). I am just worried about money basically.

The Banner of True Faith was in the building next to King Mark's castle, the one with the tournaments etc. I think this is what Enarr picked up, except that it is +4 defense, not plus +6 (I will have to check this). I hadn't seen this before so I was very happy, not only with the Mind runes but with the massive 800 leadership. I have decided that Mages really do need to work on leadership as a high priority. This is so you can have bigger stacks of ranged units. I think mine is about 6000 now at level 11.

In my two previous games, I had no luck with Feanora, so I went with Mirabella and loaded up on Sea Dogs and Pirates. With the pirate belt and the pirate flag you get from the Coastal Brotherhood, as well as the bonuses you get from Mirabella, Sea Dogs especially become killing machines. And they are cheap. So I would ditch Feanora in your circumstances and go with Mirabella for now. IMO Anga's Ring is most useful in the Elven lands due to the female units there (Lake Fairies, Dryads, Sprites). I don't think there is a single female unit in Kordar

That Horsemen trick IS invaluable early on. With Priests blessing/healing them those 13 Horsemen in the tent lasted a LONG time.

@ Enarr, sounds like you got the Banner of True Faith too. One thing that annoyed me about Freedom Islands was the lack of ranged units available. I don't like to go back and forward from Darion to Freedom Islands because I am thinking about my high score, so I usually use whatever is locally available. If you don't like Feanora's kids, I would try to kill the Kraken/Lucky James fairly quickly in order to get Mirabella. You also get the pirate flag when you do a fed ex quest between Eastern Islands/Coastal Brotherhood (the 'wife's weight in gold quest). Then you can use Sea Dogs/Pirates.

[sector24]

One trick I used to avoid going back and forth was to get the reserve skill. I put extra Inquisitors and Royal Snakes in my reserve slots, and then dumped them at the castle in the Freedom Isles. Not sure how viable that is for a mage though, especially if you spent your mind runes on other stuff.

[Chaosti]

On my first time through the game. I started at impossible difficulty with a paladin.

I'm currently starting the elvish isles
I've been using this setup:

archmage, inquisitors, shamans, gryphons, evil beholders (now dwarvish cannons since the beholder blind seems to be good only vs level 1s)

General strategy has been to run the gryphons forward, wait, shield them with archmage, bless them, and let them retaliate against the enemy while casting resurrection a few times.

From what I'm reading, I guess I should of gone mage with sacrifice Never even knew sacrifice was that useful haha.

[Zhuangzi]

That sounds like a good strategy anyway, Chaosti. Maximum respect for going for Impossible for your first game. Griffins are great for retaliation, especially if you get the -30% leadership banner. Sounds like you are going fine.

I was annoyed at myself for using up the 13 Horsemen, as I wanted to Sacrifice something to get a full stack of them, and then I realised that I had parked 4 of them in King Mark's castle! So now I have 33/33 I love Horsemen. They are up there with Griffins as the best melee units.

I forgot to mention before that I found a lame exploit in Freedom Isles. This is related to the Bob Devis quest, for which you get the pirate halberd and some cash. I don't like the halberd but it's worth 20,000 gold if you have Trade 3, so I usually take that and give Devis the money. But I discovered today that you can get the halberd, sell it around the corner in the castle, then go back to Bob and tell him you'll keep the money (i.e. give him the halberd) and I get 'quest completed.' Lame or what?

[dli2k3]

I'm also playing a mage on impossible, I'm lvl 10 and started killing things on Freedom Islands. For the turtle, I found by accident an easy way to defeat it by sacrificing the useless beginning units. I had 2 royal thorns at the swam and brought them into battle with the turtle due to their high hps and I found out that the turtle would always attack one of the units in front of it. So by using the germination ability on the thorn, I generated some thorn which can use the plantation ability to grow other thorns and each new thorn gets the plantation ability again, so in the end, I had like 10 thorn units, some of the with only 1 thorn planted in front of the turtle and each time the turtle kills one, I grow it back...In the mean time, I just blast it with ranged units and spells...