Honorable good bye to KBAP- single green dragon challenge

[impy]

Time has come for impy to say good bye to KBAP, and wait for Crossworlds. To say good bye in some interesting way I came with this single green dragon challenge. After getting all the way to K-tahu with single black dragon, later with red dragon, it is now the weakest of dragon family who will take up the challenge. I still believe he can defeat any army in the game apart from Baal & K-tahu.
So conditions are set. Impossible difficulty, mage character, kiting allowed, army consisting of only one green dragon throughout the game, and, ehm, no invisibility spell (it is supposed to be a challenge not walk in the park)
Green dragon being weaker in all aspects than his brothers, game will be fairly heavily equipment dependable. When planning I had the following in mind:
Initiative (5) - get yellow pet dragon (+1), invest first mind runes to Adrenaline 2 (+1), late in the game Adrenaline 3 and Onslaught 1, in order to match archdemon speed of 9
Speed (6) - again, Adrenaline 2 (+1), belt of the victor (+1), that should do
Attack (53) - none, dragon will not do any serious fighting himself.
Defence (60) - Voice of the dragon 3 (+20%), belt of the victor (+50%)
Various equipment set-ups are needed depending on enemies:
Physical res.: Twinkling boots, slippery cuirass, Caution 3 late in the game
Fire res: salamander banner, fireproof boots
Magic res : chaos crown, magician cowl
Poison res: &%8*! Just slow bone dragons, avoid alchemists,kill frog quickly
High Intellect : when in need of dishing out damage quickly, ancient amulet, item s giving 4-5 intellect
High mana : elkonium,silver shoes.
Pet dragon : concentrate on ball of lighting, mystig egg, mana accelerator only
Companion : as an ultimate party - Elenhel, but fight with him at level 40 can be very dangerous, i will not take him until late game or desperate
Spells : Death star, demon portal, fear...
It would be also helpful if these boosters appear early in game : faith banner, gladiator sword, ancient amulet, ring of mind 2, pain skull
I restarted a game good few times in order to get favorable start and majority of abovementioned items appeared accessible. As an absolute must i considered ancient amulet, twinkling boots, belt of victor parts

Here we go
1) Kite. Usual and easy route is Debir, Scarlet, Verona, Umkas, Nameless, Shettera, unless scrolls are placed in funny way. This should do. Pick everything, do all the quests not requiring fighting, and you should be back at Debir around level 19.
2) Get to Rusty and collect green dragon from the cave
3) your first fight should be a pirate on scarlet who has a dragon in the army. In order to get Dragonslayer 1.
4) Invest magic runes in higher magic 3, concentration 3, mind runes in adrenaline 2 and work your way to Voice of the dragon, might runes i personally give one level to each pet dragon skill
5) Back to Debir and start. Brutally "abuse" game mechanics in order to get the medals out of the way and reap the benefits. you'll need them. So for the first 10 rounds cast 10 + 6 stone skins and just fly around, after round 10 start trapping. By the time you leave Debir, you should have 50+ hits on trap medal.
6) Continue the same through Scarlet and some Bolo fights until you get Trap medal 3, Guardian 3.
7) If you now have some magic runes spare, invest in Chaos 2 in order to boost ignitability probability. From now on cast 10 + 6 fire arrows and work your way through Bolo and Rusty. Get fire mage 3, battle alchemy 3 out of the way.
Fun begins in Verona!
Drop me a line if you get stuck. Take a look at the appetizers - my fight for Elon scroll in Verona

[axelle]

it's all very impressive and everything, just one thing, i suggest that you convert those 2~3mb bmp screenshots into 100~150kb jpg files.

http://www.faststone.org/

[impy]

Thanks for the feedback
It may look impressive, but it is down to breaking down all the components of the battle. Look at the battlefield - the centre is blocked for melee units, so they will very hard time to get to you. So you can leave them for later, and concentrate on ranged units.Shooters - magic dealers and physical dealers. Since dragon has higher magis res., you have to deal with bowmen first. So fear them for 3-4 rounds, repeat if neccessary. You have Concentration 3 = 8 mana/round + occassional pet dragon mana ball, so you can easily afford 2 x fire arrows or even fire rains per round to anihilate the shooters. Use fire arrow to ignite bowmen and bring their numbers down while under fear. Once shooters are down, poison skull cerberi, fire arrow others. Just fly around in the meantime. As you can see from 2nd screen shot it is all doable at level 23 or so while having only cca 60 mana starting pool.

[clinek]

yea it could work up until the final bosses but you cant kill them with just one dragon. What do you plan on doing once you get to k'tahuu or baal? you will be killed the first round. IF you get the right items to allow for enough physical damage resitance and you have your medals maxed out then you could possibly survive an attack from k'tahuu but there is no possible way you could survive a sword attack from baal. How do you plan on killing the bosses? Also, how do you plan on surviving an attack from 20 archdemons when fighting demonion or baal? since you cant cast invisibility, you will have too many problems. If you could explain how you plan on beating the bosses with one green dragon, i would be amazed.

[axelle]

Originally Posted by impy

Thanks for the feedback
It may look impressive, but it is down to breaking down all the components of the battle. Look at the battlefield - the centre is blocked for melee units, so they will very hard time to get to you. So you can leave them for later, and concentrate on ranged units.Shooters - magic dealers and physical dealers. Since dragon has higher magis res., you have to deal with bowmen first. So fear them for 3-4 rounds, repeat if neccessary. You have Concentration 3 = 8 mana/round + occassional pet dragon mana ball, so you can easily afford 2 x fire arrows or even fire rains per round to anihilate the shooters. Use fire arrow to ignite bowmen and bring their numbers down while under fear. Once shooters are down, poison skull cerberi, fire arrow others. Just fly around in the meantime. As you can see from 2nd screen shot it is all doable at level 23 or so while having only cca 60 mana starting pool.

have you tried one team of ancient vampire or vampire (almost equally good where ancient vampire is faster but vampire has a better damage/health ratio thus more blood-sucking power), here is a SS from KBTL...impossible, level 15 mage, 91 regular vampires...



even if the opponent has only 1~2 living troops, you can usually leave them till the last and suck all the casualties back...the only downside to this strategy is against ALL-UNDEAD or ALL-PLANT teams, but that's why you always carry a big stack of repair droids with you, 1, you can sacrifice them to make new vampires when your leadership increases, 2, you can demolish those tough cookie anti-vampire teams easily with 2 droids as most of them do physical damage.

[clinek]

does that really say "turn 481"?

[axelle]

Originally Posted by clinek

does that really say "turn 481"?

yes...

simply because in KBTL, spells and burns/poisons do a fixed amount of damage...so it took me quite a while to kill those large stacks. it's really all because i was only level 15 yet wondering around in an area that shouldn't be reached around level 25...i let 2 teams of imps hit on mana-spring'd vampire to generate mana while killing the big stacks that couldn't reach me with magic-pole axe...

however in KBAP, burns/poisons do a PERCENTAGE-based damage, so any stack shouldn't take more than 10 fire arrow/poison skull to kill.

[Zechnophobe]

That battle has more turns in it than some of my entire games I think .

All melee army, basically, or I'm sure that would have simply not worked. Though if you have rage for timeback perhaps. Hmm. Been a while since I played TL.

[Metroplex]

impy, once you've finished with this latest challenge of yours and while you wait for KB: Crossworlds, give Disciples 3 a try, it's really good!

[impy]

Hello, thanks again for the feedback. Regarding how to beat bosses, i'm not sure if it is a good idea to tell you, since there will be nothing left for you to discover (although there may be better tactics than mine). Few tips then as a preparation for the boss fights and very end
a) bosses are to be dealt with at the very end of the game, level 53+, after everything else is killed, money spent on extra runes etc. etc.
b) dig & save wanderer scrolls for bosses only and if struggling then Reha or top end heroes as well. some may seem insignificant, but they're not. Example : flaming Eyes increases leadership, so what, you only have 1 dragon. But it increases the strength of mystic egg. Critical hit scroll is for your summons etc.
c) apart from investing in bulletproof skills & spells, save crystals and runes. Crystals you can always spend in battle when pushed, spending runes limits your strategy. Example: I am currently level 37 with green dragon and have 40+ might runes. Why? I still do not know whether to go for Anger 3 or Caution 3 or Onslaught. I won't do anything until
certain
d) do not underestimate your dragon. With 42% phys. resist (10% + medal + twink.boots + slipp cuirass) and stone skin you only receive 18% phys. damage further reduced by 2/3 because of super high defence (140+), that is only 6% phys. damage! So if 150 cyclops attack you doing 70dmg it will be reduced down to 630 dmg and you will survive the attack. Similar with magic attack etc.

Boss fights.
Have demon portal, Summoner 3, living book ready. That way you can bring in cca 15000 hit points = 40+executioners for 30 mana at estimated intellect 60++. Don't forget with belt of the victor they will have extra 50% defence, that is what we call meatshield!
1) spider. No direct damage so protection of your dragon is your only concern. Fly to a corner, cast portals around you. Once protected, have a drink, and finish spider first with any spell you like. Replenish portals if necessary.
2) frog. slightly more annoying due to spit but vulnerable to fire. Tactics the same. hide in the corner, surround with portals, use fire balls, help yourself with Fire bow + necklace of fire something for ultra strong fire arrow if low on mana
3) gremlion. yes, gremlion is easier than driller. Make sure you have 95 magic res. = chaos crown, magician cape, some Elon regalia etc. Gremlion summons up to 5 towers, magic damage dealers are not a problem. immediately kill summoning towers, i think they have 11000+ hit points with death star + fire arrow. That is why you need to save double spellcasting for these moments. Cast fire arrow, occassionaly heal dragon, use calm rage. If gremlion brings in too many summoning towers, restart.
4) driller. Have stone skin on all the time, in case get nastily hit. Stay back, keep casting demon portals a lot. When you summon archdevils, stone skin them and use them to bash driller. All other summons just defend and eat up driller's attacks. Driller has a higher probability to attack 2 creatures standing in the row, so make sure you have some useless summons standing in the line, and never anything in front of the dragon.
5) baal. cannot comment. Yet..
6) ktahu. Bad news. You CAN survive his first attack and he IS defeatable. I come close to defeat him, but you need huge pile of luck and i was not willing to try it many times. Maybe later. So here we go. Ktahu attack 102, damage 3000-4000 physical. Has initiative 12 so you must survive his first attack before any spellcasting. Your defence will be 130+, which is certainly achievable looking at my current game, and without sacrifying any slots for defence items. Your maximum phys. resistance you can hope for is: 10 (start)+7(medal)+15(tw.boots)+10(slipp.cuirass)+5( leather dress)+5(crystall ball) = 52%, further enhanced to 66% with Caution 3 in the first round. After all the precise calculations (see info thread) his damage will be 512-683, which you will survive. Even taking off "slot wasters" - leather dress + c.ball will change his damage to 636-849, which is OK. Now i just copy and paste what i already wrote in another thread
i) first round : survive ktahu physical attack. It is doable as i mentioned earlier. Heal, stone skin, hide in the corner where dragon can be attacked by 2 creatures only.
ii) ktahu summons units. preferably 2 units of hayterans. Point is, that the whole battle with ktahu would be very long 40+rounds. Eventually the whole screen will get filled up with lizardmen summons. After killing ktahu one has to kill them all as well. My idea was to let hayterans which cannot reach dragon to lay eggs and have half a screen filled up with low numbers of hayterans, which can be easily killed by a few fire rains at the end.
iii) dragon stays in the corner. Ktahu's attack does about 250dmg. So every 5 rounds cast stone skin, every 3 rounds heal spell. In between fire arrow to ktahu, occasionally calm rage or magic spring.
iiii) once lower on mana, save mana for stone skin, start using scrolls for damaging ktahu - my scrolls alone could do 70000+ damage!
iiiii) this strategy works perfectly, got ktahu down to 80000 hit points and started to dance around my pc. But then the inevitable happened. Ktahu summoned gorguanas (again). Not a danger damage-wise, due to my 95% magic resist, but double damage for 2 rounds ability. That immediately brings ktahu damage to 500/round. I killed them easily the first time while i could cast two spells /round. When it happened again, after turn 30,I was effectively forced to cast heal every round and at some point 10000 death star to eliminate gorguanas. But then I could not heal or cast stone skin = game over. The only way to go then, is not to use up those 6x 2 castings/round at all, and save them only for the moments, when gorguanas appear. But it's gets soo messy.
so if you really get lucky with low gorguana summons or play super carefully for many turn it can be done

p.s. i am aware of Disciples. Do you remember ugly fat useless creature in Disciples2? It was called IMP, and that's where my nick comes from