general tips n tricks for new players

[oody]

Here are some general tips for starting out you might find useful regardless of your army or choice to Map-kite:


------------------------------- IN BATTLE --------------------------------
Battle Tip #1) Press ALT to so you can see the order that units will move and when you mouseover an enemy unit you will be able to see how far it can move!!

Battle Tip #2) Defending and killing with retaliations seems to build more rage than killing as fast as possible.

Battle Tip #3) Slow and Fear are really really useful spells. Try slow on large scary stacks of enemy melee.

Battle Tip #4) Stone Skin and Healing are great for keeping your army alive.

Battle Tip #5) Prolong battles until round 10 by leaving a small group of archers (any ranged attacker) - at least until you have the Guardian Angel and Fire Mage/equivalent medal (see #5)

Battle Tip #6) Use as much rage and mana as you can to maximize medal progress and dragon exp:
Rage => always 3x Treasure Searcher for Treasure Hunter (exp) medal - you can get combat scrolls, wanderer scrolls, runes, and crystals too!
Rage => Use as much as you can, your dragon gets experience from using abilities, but try to end battles with plenty of rage to keep momentum!
Optional w/Concentration Talent => idle your army until your mana is full (or round 20) so you are ready for next battle!

Battle Tip #7) Traps are incredibly powerful
Spell => Trap to finish their last units. Have troops defend next to enemy archers and they almost always will move away to get a no-retaliation attack

Battle Tip # Farm Medals early and often:
Spell => (mage) Flaming Arrow for both Fire Mage and Battle Alchemy medal -until your next flaming arrow will end their final stack of archers
Spell => prolong battle and spam Stone Skin for Guardian Angel medal until round 10




------------------------------- ON THE MAP-------------------------------
Map Tip #0) Quicksave(F5) before every battle you fight, NPC you talk to, or (quest) item you use! The game creates 3 quicksave slots (brilliant) and loading back is as easy as pressing F8 if something goes awry.

Map Tip #1) Do the 'Tutorial' Test at the start. When you get the 5 Paladins, DISMISS your trashy start troops so you get 2 'free' No-Loss Victories towards the Strategy medal. Your trashy start troops will be reset at the end anyway.

Map Tip #2) At least for the first island, fill all your free slots with single inquisitors for holy rage spam. This will guarantee next to unlimited rage for treasure searching and dragon exp. For example, I could have used a troll and 4 single inquisitors for 12 casts of Holy Rage per battle!!! (wish I had thought of this earlier!)

Map Tip #3) When you have rage at the end of a battle, quickly move to the next fight so it is not 'wasted' If there are no more battles nearby, blow your rage in battle by digging up altars, making pointless walls, dragon crushing their final group, etc

Map Tip #4) When there is a difficult encounter you want to save for later, try to also leave a weaker "rage building" enemy nearby. Or see #5.

Map Tip #5) Purchase any item you see that is upgradable. These are essentially "rage building" potions that can be destroyed for crystals later on even if the stats are useless to you. You also get gold, exp, and opportunities to progress on medals during the encounters. I also purchase every rage and mana potion I see, they are very cheap and can be useful.

Map Tip #6) Try using Quest items when you find them, some of them will give you bonuses as documented elsewhere in these forums.


------------------------------ HERO TALENTS-----------------------------
Hero Tip #1) Mind Tree -> Learning 3/3 is for everyone! Glory is strong early game, but I prefer to focus mind runes into Learning.

Hero Tip #2) Might Tree -> Training and Anger 3/3 is for everyone, Rage Control is great too!

Hero Tip #3) Magic Tree -> Concentration 3/3 is great early on for Mages, but Transmute costs many fewer magic runes for Warriors and Paladins and gives ridiculous amounts of mana!

[Newbie1234]

Great post!

[Zechnophobe]

Transmute is much stronger than concentration, and can be bought more cheaply.

Glory is the best skill you can get in the first 3 levels.

[oody]

Transmute and Glory are indeed fine talents.

Transmute is much easier to obtain for a Warrior or Paladin than Concentration, but doesn't return mana as consistently.
On my mage I simply don't have the Might runes to spare for Transmute, and in my brief test, it returned zero mana when I killed a stack with fireball.

Glory is great if you need that extra leadership early on and can spare the mind runes.

Edit: Huge annoying wall of rambling text removed.

All-in-all I think KB:AP ironed out some of the kinks from KB:TL, like rage input based on max rage and other things I can't think of right now because I haven't slept much lately!! :0 It's a fun sequel, and often reminds me of the original King's Bounty PC DOS game from my youth!

[jake21]

One of your tips is to extend combat to over 10 rounds; why do you want combat to last past 10 rounds ?

[oody]

I'm sorry for the confusion:

I only extend battles to 10 rounds to maximize rage usage and get the initial medals. Trap kills will count at any round also, so it is an excellent way to finish battles until you have the medal. Once I've finished the "first 10 rounds" medals, I only prolong battles by defending to maximize rage usage or sometimes to let concentration fill my mana pool for the next battle.

[DGDobrev]

You should note that only the battles on impossible can easily go over 10 rounds without skipping rounds for medal requirements(and that is boss/hero battles). On normal, for example, battles rarely go over 5 rounds.

Otherwise, I quite like your suggestions

[Arilian]

I do not like glory. They eat up a lots of runes and they are not needed as i always run around the first few islands and start with 1k+LDS anyway.

Concentration is great early for mages, it is way more easier to get medals even if the spells are weaker.

Less is More - with mage you probably do not need 5 stack of units. Try get a good lvl 5 unit, if you are out of luck you can get an Emerald Dragon wihouth fight for sure. (rusty anchor where you need 50/50/50 troops for the bandit)
If you get at least order 2 +heal it will never die, no loss victories garanteed and you have an easy way to get medals.

Until you have 1900 LDS for the dragon it is indeed a good idea to start woth 5 inquisitor, however i think it is best to go to scarlet get the archmages from the small island (hopefully 4) and spam shield with them. Very eays and early medals garanteed with this method. You can also push troops into traps...

Later with a mage I have found the best way to kill is to use fog+fire rain.
Less is more is still applied - if you use 2-3 stack of dragons in mid game it is like the enemy do not have melee units as they never get them. You can easy outheal ranged and enemy heroes so no loss also granted by this. Make sure you have enough mana/regen.

[Omghalsasi]

@oody:yeah great tip for the tutorial! Dvide the 5 paladins u get during tutorial in each of the available slot then keep on granting turns to ur fellow paladins and resurrecting them!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 no loss victories even on impossible !

[Zechnophobe]

You don't need to divide them, a single stack is fine. Probably won't even need to cast resurrect even.

One thing to note: For all of those people saying that they don't need glory because they have 1k leadership already because of map kiting, I think you are missing the point. The point is that for people who do not kite maps, either because they don't want or don't know to, it is much better advice to spend a few early runes on Glory to make up for the harsh leadership scenario early on.