droids are NOT overpowered:-)

[impy]

Hello everyone,

haven't played kings bounty for many months..But since it is such a brilliant game one has to come back. Just like coming back to heroes of might&magic back in the old days right?

Similar to my lowest level challenge I was toying with the idea how quickly one can actually finish the game. In the other words, what is the minimum number of fights one has to go through in order to finish the game.

The only compulsory fights are:
Stone 1 - received at the beginning - fights = 0
Stone 2 - Bolo underground - fights = 0 (kite)
Stone 3 - Montero bridge - fights = 2 = montero bridge guardian + defeat Hagni
Stone 4 - Tekron temple of sorrow- fights = 2 = defeat outer guardian + defeat stone guardian
Stone 5 - Verona capital - fights = 2 = defeat Marquis + defeat Demenion
Stone 6 - Uzala - fights = 1 = defeat Rakush
Stone 7 - Reha cave - fights = 3 = 1st champion of arena + 2nd champion of arena + defeat K'tahu
Stone 8 - Elon mirror tower - fights = 3 = defeat Uchkuk + defeat Shenobi + defeat Gremlion
and the last - Greenwort - fights = 1 = defeat Baal

That's total of 14 compulsory fights.
As you can see from screenshots, it can be done.
Any questions drop me a line
Impy

[ckdamascus]

I hoped to never play this game again, because I get too addicted when I do.

I think the first and foremost question is.... how?

Droid split? I figured that there would be situations where entire droid stacks might perish.

Naturally, a lot of flying around to evade enemies.

Was it very hard or tedious?

[Fatt_Shade]

If no1 else is going to say this, i guess i must take that task on myself : Impy you my man are insane (joking But seirously where do you get this ideas ???

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Droid split? I figured that there would be situations where entire droid stacks might perish.
Naturally, a lot of flying around to evade enemies.

Not sure why would entire stack perish ? Since droids have 3 -leadreship% items and can get them to 55 leadership per Repair droid, even with his `low` 26K leadership they can make formidable army, same goes for Red`s, as low as 1400 leadership. It is posible, but as you said - WHY ???

[impy]

Thanks for the feedback boys.
I'm gonna sit down in the evening and write some sort of a guide.
And yes, you got that right - droid split.
As for the red dragons appearing in my army, they were merely a product of mystic egg in one fight. On the side note, I know from experience that with black dragons only you can fairly early defeat montero bridge guardian and tekron temple outer guardian.
Was it hard? It is relative. Newbies will find KB generally hard, casual players will find no loss hard and so on. But there were some nail biting moments - fight with gremlion with only 23% of positive magic resistance, praying that Ktahu will not summon too many armies of gorguanas etc.
Was it tedious? Not really, although fights tend to take longer. Idea is to play defensively and bite enemy bit by bit and rise attack via frenzy. Then you go for a kill.
See you later

[Fatt_Shade]

Seeing this kind of play`s and tactics, one has to wonder : does that repair droid have same stats as those in my game Did you moded them to have zeroing-in ability, or something like that ?
Nontheless good job with this playthrough Impy, you realy get some weird ideas and get ppl on this forum thinking is there anything that truly is `impossible` in this game ?
I might found one such thing, but it must wait on developers making some kind of multiplayer in KB2 like Hot-seat, or anything via Lan 1v1.
My impossible chalange goes :
1) go online,
2) find Impy,
3) defeat him
To make things a bit interesting, you`ll have 10 more lvls , and all dragon army, against his Plant stacks

[impy]

Hello,
thank you for assumption that I would be any good in PvP
I do not use any modded units.
Sorry for delay in producing a guide. here we go:
first, there are only 14 fights in total,so you have only 13 fights to maximize hero level, pet dragon level and work on medals. In the other words, lots of preparation is required.
1) KBscanner.
I'm not sure if starting any new game would do the job. But it has not been tried. I can honestly say i checked about 40 saves and then picked the best one. What i was looking for: physical res - twinkling boots, cuirass, leather dress, scaly set. Magic res - crystal ball, magician cowl, chaos crown, mirror shield. All three droid leadership reduction items, mana items - elkonium, portrait of queen of ice. painskull for increased rage. And as dream - Belt of the victor. Just having scaly set, droid reductions and belt of victor at the same time would probably require going through hundreds of saves, so i gave up on the belt. Now, at the beginning I was not aiming for 14 fights only, but 14-20, so if some artifact appeared in kb scanner it was good enough for me. As the game progressed and I noticed it might be possible to achieve absolute min. of 14 fights I gave up on the goodies which were results of the fights. This way I "lost" twinkling boots, mirror shield and royal hammer. So, if you're going to try this challenge yourself, make sure the items you want are not inside castles or results of quests requiring fighting. The equipment i had you can see on the screen-shot.
2) skills, spells.
Might. Quickdraw is of most importance, you want to go pretty much first every round, to recover damage, cast spells, run to safety etc. Frenzy is a way to raise the attack against bosses. Nightime operations is cheap and powerful. Make sure you play every battle at night. Now the rest in this order- resistance 3, caution 3, revenge 3, heroism 3, onslaught 1
Mind. Neatness 3. After you collect all the treasures around teana and some easier battles, use money to buy level 4-5 items to get runes by destroying them. (if you get crystals, reload) Glory 3. Before Baal fight invest in Holy anger 3
Magic. Distorsion 3, Order 3. push towards concentration 2, definitely have concentration 3 by the time you fight gremlion
Spells - stone skin 3, magic spring 3, calm rage 3, pain mirror 3, turn back time 1, divine armor 3, teleport 1. I hardly cast anything else.
3) Stats. Intellect not needed, Attack not needed (use frenzy to increase), massive defense. Rage is enough 55, for calm rage to work efficiently. Mana - would help but around 60 was sufficient - magic spring.
4) Beginning
Start game, skip training. Now kite all teana apart from Montero (first access to montero is only via bridge). I consider myself far from brilliant kiter but i managed. The easiest route seems to be: debir, scarlet, bolo, rusty, verona scroll on scarlet, umkas scroll on verona by the bridge to Bristol, nameless scroll on umkas by the owl, free sheterra scroll on nameless. Back to rusty, easiest is the scroll guarded by army not far from Zig-Zag or whatever his name is, one by the dragon cave is manageable as well. That should hopefully guarantee Tekron+Dersu. Back to Verona, behind the big lighthouse is the easiest Elon scroll. On elon there is easy Reha scroll somewhere between castles. Get Uzala scroll on usually Dersu. Of course, position of scrolls may vary On all maps collect every leadership rod, free treasure, dig treasures. Idea is to have at least 80 collected treasures before you start fighting, so you get treasure hunter 2 = +5%experience. Collected money from treasures will be used for buying equipment and later for buying items and destroying them for runes. Do all the quests not requiring fighting. Example being - Reha: deliver papers to Degosh, get memory grass, get that nasty soup, get +5rage, -1intellect from it as well, get rune from Red stick. When everything is done, you should be around level 25-26. Spend the runes, get the equipment. Since you would want to start those difficult fights later with maxed rage, buy all rage potions, also dwarven beer, toadstool liquor and plan ahead depending on how many you have. Get the spells, get the droids. Now, if you managed to come across 3 x ancient knowledge scrolls, use them from the very beginning, there is only 14 fights in total to do.
5) Pet dragon. I picked pink one for +5mana. Only improve Ball of lightning, mana accelerator and possibly mystic egg
6) Droids
Unless special circumstances do not separate the 2 droid armies. since you will be swarmed by enemy stacks, you may have difficulty to get them together again for repairing. Once surrounded, droids cannot fly. Yes you can use teleport etc., but mana is scarce, other spells are needed. If there are no strong magic dealers, position droids in the corner, sit back, enjoy his physical res. coupled with stoneskin and rise attack via frenzy. At some point, usually at attack level around 100, you become so strong that you can go out and demolish the opposition. If there are threatening magic dealers, they have to be dealt with immediately - gorguanas, shamans etc. Cleverly position balls of lightning to reduce their numbers, use pain mirror etc. First round move droids to middle of battlefield towards the enemy lines to lure melee units. Second round fly in with droids to force magic dealers into close combat. Here is the something i successfully used in majority of the fights - call it : Impy's 4 round wonder : First round - stone skin, Second round - stoneskin on the other stack. Third round : Magic spring. Forth round: preferably magic spring on the unit which gets more attacks or other spell - time back, calm rage etc. Fifth round: stone skin on first stack again. Stone skin - droids have 20%phys res, scaly 20%, axe of ice 10%, some items + stone skin = 95% phys. res. This way even K'tahu will do ridiculously low damage. Another point of stone skin is +40% defence. Top it up with +15 defence via magic spring, and droids will have 70++ defence and therefore level 1-4 units will do very limited damage. I cannot stress enough the importance of magic spring. Since it many turns to rise up attack by killing enemy stacks, you must make sure you have constant mana flow for 50+ rounds. Only ways are calm rage, magic spring and at the beginning concentration skill. As a rule of thumb - ignore phys. damage dealers, they will only do insignificant damage. Kill them at the end. Only exception can be - you can kill such stack in one hit guaranteed and raise attack via frenzy, or these units stand in the way to your primary target or represent specific danger - Ents and their entangling ability etc. Also, in every battle, make sure you leave as the last enemy standing a unit which has difficult time to get to you = shooter or low speed. So you can repair your droids without interruption and then finish the enemy off.
7) fights in order of difficulty:
a) Montero bridge. I do not recommend casting stone skins here. You WANT to receive damage to get rage and develop your dragon asap. Delay the end of the fight so use pet dragon to the maximum. You will easily gain 6+ dragon levels after this fight. If you get crappy options replay the battle.
b) Outer temple of sorrow guardian. There are only pure phys. damage dealers involved here, so it shouldn't be a problem. Again, work on your dragon, stay in the corner at the beginning, later come out to get hit more.
c) Hagni. Now fighting Marquis may be easier, but defeating Hagni gives you wings and access to Axe of Ice. Fight with Hagni will be very long. Make sure you use -stone skin-stone skin-magic spring-magic spring combo all the time. The only awkward units are gorguanas and alchemists. Stay back and shoot for few rounds to lure the enemy melee units, then fly in to force gorguanas into melee (which is physical). Keep casting lighting balls all the time. What helps here is to cripple goshas so the number of summoned gobots can be easily killed and your attack grows quickly via frenzy. after getting the wings collect the rest of goodies across Teana. Lure the continent scrolls guardians out and fly in to get those difficult-to-get-to wanderer scrolls. Put together Axe of ice, which is by far the best weapon. First pillar = kite, second and third = just fly in and touch it.
d) Marquis. After surviving initial fire balls there is not much else. Marquis loves to cast dispel which is annoying and ruins your mana flow. Try not cast spells for several rounds ( and if so - from scrolls without using mana) and avoid enemy, that way he'll ends up casting his very expensive mass bless.
e) Tekron stone guardian. Depending on enemy army composition this can be very easy fight or very difficult. You cannot change the initial enemy army composition but restart if summoned units are a pain to deal with - dragons etc.Ignore the enemy stacks and immediately destroy summoning tower(s). After that go after nasty units - alchemists etc. Leave the phys. damage dealers to the end.
f) Reha champion of the arena 1. This guy is pure physical damage dealer and should be a pushover, if it wasn't for his killer stacks! It is not uncommon for him to have 1300+ gorguls and two armies of 600+ hayterans. First immediately cast lightning ball on one stack hayterans hoping to shock it and slow it down. Cast stone skin on one droid stack and leave him a bit forward to lure the enemy. The unprotected stack runs away to the corner. Make sure there is no direct line between you and hayterans, they would fly in for their critical attack. Once you survive first round and have stone skin on both droid stacks, it will be much easier. Keep casting lighting balls to bring down those brutal stacks. Stay in the corner with both droids and use my spell combo. One important thing to remember here. You cannot leave as the last stack standing here those hayterans. They would fly in, get killed and ruin your repairing. Make sure you do not kill gorguls completely and leave them. Eventhough they have speed 8 and get their turn before droids, slow them down in those last few rounds.
I'm getting tired here folks, so i continue over the weekend