KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[MattCaspermeyer]

For me, after each battle I get at least 1 ArchDemon in my reserve slot and sometimes if I have a slot or two one or more additional troops. That's why I have so many ArchDemons in reserve.

It depends on which troops you summon, although, it seems like the description is not accurate with respect to how many you get. I remember having Executioners in my reserve slot and it seemed like I'd only get 1 or 2 even though I should have been getting more. I also seem to remember getting 2 ArchDemons every now and then.

The bottom line is that it should be adding units to your reserve slot, but I think they have to be summoned creatures (not sure why I'd get ArchDemons, though, unless it is counting the Demonologist spell - which I haven't used in a really, really long time).

Hmmm... does Phantom work?

/C\/C\

[DGDobrev]

Phantom works as it did in KBAP, on units of level 1-4, giving you up to 40% of their stack to control as a secondary unit for 3 turns (if it's not dead by then, it disappears). I use it on the Demonologists, as they are my do-it-alls right now: resses, summons, etc. Phantoming a Demonologist gives you additional res, another cannon fodder (summon), and 1 basic attack. What's not to like

read your post before. I was level 30ish when I got an Archie just like that from recruiter (Leadership was like 16k at that time). Interesting. Still looks completely random to me, and I don't get it to proc after every fight, or so it seems.

[MattCaspermeyer]

No - sorry I wasn't clear, I meant does Phantom count as a "summon" spell?

Probably not since you didn't get any Demonologists when you used Phantom on them.

I'm not sure why ArchDemons count as a summon unless it is because of the Demonologist spell.

So perhaps, you can't get any "Traitor" troops because they don't count as summons.

Hmmm... I guess you need to use Sacrifice, possibly with Hypnotize to increase non-summonable troops.

I wonder if anyone has gotten any Orcs or Undead via the Recruiter skill.

I've gotten many troops from the Call of Nature spell so you can get Royal Griffins, etc. I've actually disbanded a bunch because if you have open army slots, you'll just get some recruits whether you want them or not.

/C\/C\

[zjazd18]

Recruiter only works for troops that were used in battle, but if you put 2 units that you want in reserve slot and use them in battles you will be getting a lot of them. It also works as disadvantage if you want to fill up your ranks to max asap, and you may be already maxed at one unit, and recruiter keeps giving that unit to you in reserve slot.

What i did was keep 2 recruiter slot occupied with 2 units 1-1 stacks of the troops i needed the most. So that way, i was getting exactly what i wanted. When my army was full i would wait for level up, feel up the 2 units that i already had in reserve, dismiss them and split other 2 units into reserve with 1-1 numbers. My 5th slot was Dragon Riders and sadly you can't get them from Recruiter.

You can also get units that were summoned during battles, i was getting units from my necromancer raising dead ability that i never had in my army. So you can get black knights even without using them if you had necromancers or Call of Death spell i guess.

BTW anyone knows how to mod the game in the way that vampire starts with phoenix spell?

[DGDobrev]

I gotcha now. Yeah, Phantoming won't give you any extra troops. And I also get that I must find a way to incorporate the Darkies in combat so I can somehow grow them. I personally dislike sacrifice: it is way too risky of a spell, even though it works great with Trolls at night or underground, as you can potentially have a huge supply of ever-replenishing HP.

I guess I should find some easy enemies to kill this way. Sucks: it will take a very long time to grow a stack from 30 to max leadership this way. How about 2 stacks? Lol.

As for Phoenix? Don't we all wish. I hope the Russian buddies work on the game scanner as they did for KBAP. At least then you can scan your games and tell if you get the spell in the early stages of the game.

[Zhuangzi]

Finally finished that quest in Inselburg to get the king on the throne etc. What a pain in the ass! But there are 85 Dark Paladins there, which I'm very happy about because there were none in Portland at all. Until this point I had been struggling a bit with all four types of dragons (Red, Green, Black, Ice - not Bone ) and no fifth unit because I only had two Archdemons. The problem, as usual for KB games, is access to the units you want. There's nowhere to buy any dragons at this stage of the game, so I guess I will now stash those dragons and go back to level 4 units + Phantom + Resurrection, same deal as in previous KB games.

Having said that, the game is really enjoyable and I have to say that the first three islands are excellent in terms of map design, quest design, etc etc. I rarely felt like I was grinding for grinding's sake. On the other hand, Darenbam seemed pretty boring to me, reminding me of all those shitty Viking islands in WoTN

[DGDobrev]

If you have 2 Archies, or a well upgraded Orc Sword skill for the spirit you might wanna beat the dragon in Portland, and then do the quest to give him a princess. This will make him an ally and move him to the Shelter. He sells Red and Black dragons, and may have an egg or two to boot.

My game looks to be devoid of Dark Paladins, so I am growing them on my own. It also seems devoid of Knights, so I may go for Black Knights instead, as you can make those yourself from prisoners. This is bad, as I have opened all islands but 1. I hope I can somehow get more to spawn, cause I can't say I like fighting handicapped.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by zjazd18

BTW anyone knows how to mod the game in the way that vampire starts with phoenix spell?

That's easy! I am a modder after all!

1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\sessions\dar kside (there is no space there in "darkside", I'm not sure why the forum is adding a space there as there isn't one in my actual text)
2. In there you will find ses.kfs - copy that file to somewhere else on your hard drive (this file is actually a ZIP file)
3. Extract the contents to a subfolder where you copied it ("ses" is s good name - I use 7Zip and you can right click on ses.kfs and it will have "Extract to ses\" as an option)
4. Go to the subfolder where you extracted the files and open HERO.TXT in Notepad
5. Find "hero_mage {" section towards the bottom of the file
6. Find the "start {" section under hero_mage {
7. Find the "spells {" section under start {
8. Add "spell_phoenix=1" to that section of code (valid spell names are in SPELLS.TXT). Be sure you spell it properly, otherwise game will crash when starting a new game!
9. Save HERO.TXT and exit from Notepad
10. Copy HERO.TXT to either:
    1. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\data\mods (you'll need to make the mods folder under data as it does not exist normally) - this will affect all sessions (but Dark Side is the only session right now; however, in the future there may be more than one session)
    2. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\sessions\dar kside\mods (once again that space in "darkside" is not there and same as above - you'll need to make the mods folder) - this will affect only the Dark Side session (and not other sessions if you have them)

That's it!

By the way, I couldn't resist looking up what the recruiter skill does, here is the ignore list (from ADDON_ARENA.LUA):

local unit_ignore = ",dragon_rider,horseamazon,clown,powerman,ork_scout,priestes,blackdragon,bonedragon,dragon_ice,greendragon,reddragon,vampires_cloud,girl_with_flower,ice_minion,subturn_handler,digged_brontor,infernodragon1,infernodragon2,infernodragon3,"..
    "dummydoll,movingsphere,phoenix,phoenix_young,phoenix_old,griffin_spirit,gobot2,evilbook1,evilbook2,evilbook3,ram,orb1,orb2,orb3,lava_golem,lava_golem1,lava_golem2,lava_golem3,lava_golem4,lava_golem5";

So it looks like you should be able to get anyone not in the list above. I'm not sure why "ork_scout" is in the list, but whatever.

If you have a Necromancer and they Raise Dead, then the following additional units can be added to your army (they are added without any skills so long as the Necromancer is in your army (the Necromancer is not a pawn and its belligerency is 1, i.e. human):

if name == "necromant" then addUnits(3*size*lead/100, {"skeleton", "archer", "zombie", "zombie2"}); end;

Also, I've briefly gone through the code and it looks like the enlister (Recruiter) skill selects a random troop from your army slots and then cycles from that number forward, wrapping around as needed. So for example, if it picks 4, it will add 4, 5, 1, 2, 3 in that order per restrictions. It also goes last in the code and so if you have items / the Puppeteer skill, they will populate the list first and then it will add units from the Recruiter skill. If a unit is added to the list from Recruiter and the list has 4 or more entries, then it won't add any more units (so in the example above, if you had 5 units in the list already, it would add your army from slot 4, but then that would be it).

Since I had just Dragon Riders (in the exclude list) and ArchDemons as the only troops in my army and since I had ArchDemons also in one of my reserve slots, it would always select the ArchDemons (since that was the only troop in my army that it could pick that was not in the ignore list and it adds at least one - this was even with having Puppeteer and summoning troops from the ArchDemons and Call of Nature spell). If I also had a spare reserve slot, then one of my summoned units would go there.

So if you want to recruit troops of a certain type, having them in more than one slot will increase your chances of picking them and as @zjazd18 mentions, putting a unit in the reserve slot will effectively force it to pick that troop, but only if they are added to the list with the above restrictions. If you don't have the Puppeteer skill, then you should be able to have 4 out of your 5 troops in your army and to the list; however, if you have a Dark Knight in reserve and they are in unit slot 3 and it starts at 4 (cycling to 3 last), then they won't be added to the list. Putting them in 2 army slots guarantees them being added to the list and since you have an army in reserve it should then pick them. At least, that's what it looks like the code does.

By the way, I was confusing the Puppeteer skill with the Recruiter skill as the Puppeteer skill allows adding of summoned units to your army. Here is the code that adds them to a table that serves as a list of possible candidates to add to your army:

table.insert( tab_verbovka, { l = math.floor(size*lead*skill_power_puppeteer/100), n = name } )

Note that the function will floor so if you don't have enough leadership and it is less than 1 it will be 0. "tab_verbovka" is the list of possible candidates to add to your army.

With respect to Phantomed units, as long as they are temporary and not pawns and their belligerency is 1 then there is the possibility of adding them via the Puppeteer skill. As far as I can tell, Phantomed units meet this criteria (my only question mark is their belligerency, but I think it is 1 since that means they are controlled by a human). So I think the Puppeteer skill is another way to grow your army via the Phantom spell. Someone will have to try it and let me know if they are able to get Phantomed units added to their army via Puppeteer.

From what I can tell, the above seems right with respect to how I think the code works. The only way to tell, though, is by running it through the LUA debugger. I don't have the time right now, but I may try to do this in the future...

/C\/C\

[zjazd18]

Damn, Matt dropping some knowledge on us. Thanks for the information, but i went ahead and used magicbook cheat to have some fun with vampire. BTW using that modification would cause to get "cheater" at the end of the game?

I'm completely positive that it is impossible to do early game as vampire without better spells than the ones you get from first quest(i'm talking no-loss impossible ofc).

[MattCaspermeyer]

I don't think mods will show as cheater, just cheat codes.

I have not tried Orc / Vampire, but people on the Steam forums said they did both classes no loss impossible during EA.

/C\/C\