Red Sands Mod/Add-On Discussion - potential SPOILERS

[ckdamascus]

Hey there, does anyone want to discuss the new units and items they found?

There is a lot more stuff that I heard about, but I am only documenting what I have directly seen.

New Familiar - Asmodeus
You get a new item that seems to only fit in your right hand. While equipping it you will lose 15% leadership and 15% base mana and gain 1 defense, however you get to summon a beholder familiar (summon) called Asmodeus in the beginning of the battle.

He has quite a few abilities, can level up, and if he dies, it does not count against your losses. However, if he dies, he will need about 5 rounds of fighting for him to revive on his own, or you can fork out 3 crystals to instantly revive him. (It is a very good deal to restore him if you lose him).

This definitely makes the early game much smoother since a properly levelled up Asmodeus opens up a lot more strategic opportunities. He is fairly tanky relatively speaking.

He levels up based on "doing" things. So, he can level up his attack, defense, or his three special abilities

- disintegration ray
- teleport lightning aura
- undead healing/restoring

If he levels up 3 different "things", he gains a level (extra HP), and he gets more attributes that you can customize. Some of them include +10% resist to all elements, +7% physical resist, +3 to all beholderes in the army, able to counterattack twice, +1 speed, etc.



New Units So Far
Fire Mage
Looks like an archmage but has a lot of burning skills.

Orc Sabateur
Can hide/invisible, ambush units, walk through traps. Supposedly synergizes with Assassins.

Mystic
One of the new beholder units, can hypnotize on attack, gains benefits from runes, can go into trance mode for better attacks AND for vampiric mode which can revive fallen mystics.

Gorgon
Another new beholder unit, can petrify OR poison on attack (this is wickedly awesome), can summon twice on charges, can hex/curse

Ritualist
Shaman unit, but undead. Has ice prison, shock spell... only saw him as an enemy.

Ice Dragon
Emerald dragon but immune to magic, chance to slow on hit, able to shoot a dream of ice (like red dragon icy equivalent)... any empty cells turn into ice shards. Very good to create quick wall-offs. They actually have very good stats which makes them highly resistant to poison and physical attacks.

New Race Modifications
Humans now have a chance to get a "second attack".

Supposedly, now when demons kill stacks, it leaves behind a "rage" ball that can heal and restore talents.


New Levelling System
Seems pretty good. Now, my split up inquistor stack can level up like mad. The stat boosts seem helpful. It isn't clear to me if this will lead to imbalance, but the developers insist it will not.

One interesting tidbid is that when a stack levels up, it seems to restore/reset their talents.

General Progress
Using a Mage, blind build style. Since I don't know the new units and items that well, this probably makes sense.

Just added Assassins and Paladins into the mix. Of interesting note, since levelling up CAN increase your base critical hit percentage, this makes morale even MORE important. It also makes me wonder if Assassins + Orc Saboteurs will be especially dangerous. Also, levelling up can infer a lot of extra bonuses. My red dragons get about +20 attack and +20 defense. This is the sort of thing that MIGHT make assassins viable especially with the damage bonus. Throw in the morale boost, and Assassins will easily be doing 100% criticals in no time.

My new army is
Asmodeus
Paladin
Assassins
Red Dragons
Rune Mage
Archmage

I usually cast Phoenix early on to start it off. A lot of resurrection options, so I don't feel quite as hampered. I'll see how it plays out. Once I get teleport, I think there will be a LOT of mayhem with those Assassins.


Closing Comments
I think this opens up the chance for a new set of units to do "no-losses". Asmodeus will definitely smoothen out the early game so it requires less luck and more tactics in impossible modes. I wonder if Level 10 Peasants have a shot now... hmmm.

Side Notes
Once I heard humans all have a chance to do 'second attacks', I immediately thought, wow, this will make those Rune Mages even more sick. Once I get enough slots for dual, or triple rune mage stacks, I can only imagine the sheepy mayhem that will occur.