Little bit of everything..

[impy]

There aren't many threads for KBDS yet, so I thought I start a new one. By the way, thumbs down for not having dedicated folder for the game on the forums, it's been out for almost 3 weeks.

Allo,allo, now listen very carefully, I shall say this only once
1) tell us what funny, plain odd or even highly embarrassing you've done during your first playthrough. The internets, they can take it.
2) tell us what you do not like about the game, not necessarily gamebreaking or illogical, maybe just personal preference. You never know, devs might act upon it.
3) tell us something about yourself. (have we not done this before?)
4) interesting observations?

I guess I start myself.
1) After getting to Portland for the very first time, I completely forgot about Catacombs. So I have worked my way through Portland no loss with the troops from here only, kind of bemused with poor selection of spells, units. It wasn't that easy actually. Only when I reached level 20 or so, after reading forums I was like - hmm, where are those demonologists, demons etc. everyone talks about? And it dawned on me..I also remember my first attempts at Whitehill, somehow I forgot I just been given Blackie, and was bashing my head how hard it was.
2) medals are kind of odd. Many of them are simply bonuses which will kick in after some gameplay, without your active participation - collect crystals, cash, prisoners, princesses etc. Quests length and also game length could have been a bit shorter - keep it fresh. I think KBAP done it all almost perfectly. Also, open world please right from the start. Why go through the same battles every time? It is about self imposed challenges anyway. But I have serious problem with this - follow me please : start a new game, skip all unnecessary battles, arrive at Shelter level 4. Fair enough, lose some troops with 3 guardians & Whitehill, get to Portland. Get everything you can from Atrixus, Helvedia etc., at the end ideally get Archdemons in Helvedia, and also enough leadership for 1. Immediately one archdemon with Jealousy will defeat Monteville & Inselburg scroll guardians, and also archdemon with Orc Strike will defeat black dragon. If you find some decent leadership item in the process, you will have after just 9 fights in new game 1 black dragon, 1 red dragon, 1 archdemon, demonologists, demons. Without any exploits or cheats. What's this ?! Too much, too tempting, too early. It is like upon starting a new KBAP game you get an access to Shettera..
3) Well, shocking news - my real name is not Impy. I am 36 now, and I am going to give it one last shot to get into porn industry..just kidding. I am originally from Slovakia, but live in London for the past decade. my hobbies are chess, bodybuilding and mountain walking - crazy combo I know.
4) I did not get this spell in my games yet, but I see in Matt's screenshot a Ball of Lightning. It looks like identical copy (name and look, don't know the mechanics) of Ball of Lightning from Diablo3, my at the time favourite spell with Demon Hunter.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Impy - love it!

1) Just like Impy, I totally forgot about the Catacombs because it said come back to this later. I thought that meant that you had to get the map for the place to be able to "come back to it later"! I didn't realize that you could go to Atrixus and get Demons and Demonologists after you returned to Portland. So instead I muddled with Evil Beholders and then added Assassins to my Imps, Scoffer Imps, Blood Prietesses (replacing them with the Assassins when I got them), and Cerberi. This was all during early access at the end of June and it made for a slow start, but I guess that's the way it goes and it was fun playing different troops!

2a) There are a lot of things about the game, actually that I'm not a big fan of, but most of it occurs after you get Dragon Riders. They are:

• I don't think you should be able to go back through to Tristrem and Atrixus until you've visited them. This would mean getting a map for Tristrem and getting to Atrixus through Helvedia (which is strangely how I played). This would prevent the Blackie teleportation exploit to get around guards that are meant to prevent you from getting access to certain troops too early.
• The unit AI is absolutely terrible. Why would a ranged troop target the ArchDemon's Volcano if it is not even in range to hurt them?
• What's the point of amping up the Leadership of the enemy troops if you have a 15% chance of halving a stack with each attack? This ability works incredibly well with mass damage attacks as has been pointed out.
• I kind of got bored with the game once I got Dragon Riders. I felt that most of the fights after that point were pretty much academic and I actually took a week off twice during my 2-month span of finishing the game because I needed a break from it.
• I currently do not like the starting conditions of either Daert or Bagyr compared to Neoline. I'm glad I played Neoline, first, because so far she is the most fun through Whitehill for doing no loss. Daert is so hopelessly underpowered such that you have to get rid of all his troops but the Vampires if you want to try to do no loss and hope for a spell that you don't start with to the save the day for the Shelter, Basement, and Whitehill fights. I actually posted what I think is a great starting troop / spell combination for Daert that is way more fun here. Perhaps it needs more tuning, but it beats creating saves and scanning them with the save game scanner to see if you have a chance at no loss. Bagyr seems to start similarly with a fairly hopeless bunch of units. I'll post more about observations in this regard, later.
• There is one medal (the units that you need to dismiss) that is not possible to get in the game.
• What is the point of not being able to dispel Bleeding, Freezing, Poisoning, or Fire? The Dispel spell is now essentially useless in the game. Bleeding can be removed with Healing, but not if the troop is Magic Immune.
• What is the point of having the above effects causing damage based on the size of the stack? I realize this mechanic has been there since AP, but this causes several thousands of damage when the stacks are big, even with low damage from an attack. I actually have a much better system in my H3B mod where these effects are based on initial damage, then halving each round as the effect wears off. I could cast Dark Clot and use Invisibility to essentially have enemy stacks sitting their doing nothing as the cold just ate away at their health causing several thousand hitpoints of damage to each stack based on how many units were in their stack.
• Most of the enemy heroes in the game are terrible. Their only utility is in amping the experience return from the enemy troop complement so that I can level up more quickly. Anyone who's played my H3B mod knows that the hero fights in that mod are some of the most challenging of any of the KB games because I actually devised a system for their abilities and bonuses that give them unique abilities.
• The improvement quests are really lame. +1 point to a statistic and only for that race? They should be to all dark races and neutrals and the attack, defense, and krit should be a lot bigger bonuses. As it stands, the only one mildly useful is the res all and it is barely helpful for only one race.
• The two shelter units from the circus guy are completed too late to be of any use. They also seem like they are not very good units and I never even tried any of them because of this.
• Some of the areas seem mysteriously incomplete. Whitehill has been mentioned, although this does seem okay to me. But Aralan also seems a bit sparse (there's only a couple of troops on the whole island, although a lot more do appear over the course of going through the quests there). Okkerland seems like there is not much there, either.
• Some of the quests are not possible to complete since spell scrolls are not guaranteed at the shops.
• I could probably continue, but these are my biggest gripes. Overall, I do like the game more than WotN (I do have I&F, but haven't played it, yet).

2b) Even though Impy didn't list this, I think it is only fair to list what you like about the game, so here is what I like:

• ArchDemons after so many iterations finally kick major bottom!
• Dragon Riders are awesome!
• I kind of have a love / hate relationship with the above 2 units since once you get them, the game is essentially over, but I do enjoy their abilities.
• 3 Different starting characters with a converging story. I really enjoy that!
• Sexy Neoline walking around half naked through the entire game! I thought that it was hilarious that someone posted that their wife didn't like that and he changed her to Bagyr on the map!
• We finally get to be bad! I think it's also hilarious that someone said they wouldn't play the game because they don't play evil due to their religious beliefs.
• There are some fun and interesting new spells such as Empathy, Chaos Breath, Time Shift, and Hex.
• I love that Kamikaze now works on enemy troops (well I guess this change occurred in WotN) as the spell is now more useful!
• I like that we have more Demon troops like the Elementals and Blood Priestesses (although the Elementals are kind of useless).
• I like more female troops! Here's to the aforementioned Blood Priestesses and Female Vampires, Amazons, Novices, and dark variants of the Elven female troops! Now if we can only find that elusive female Dwarven troop!
• I love the dark variants of the Human, Dwarven, and Elven troops! I think WotN would have been a lot better if you had to fight some Undead variants of these troops as it would have broken up the monotony of that game. There does need to be some differentiation of their abilities from their light variants where warranted, though. Also I think light troops such as Priests, etc. should be raised as their dark variants.
• For the most part, I really enjoy a lot of the skills in the game. I think it was a great idea to add +Mana to the Spell School skills as I had often considered that in my modding.
• Even though some of the quests are the boring go here, go there, etc. for the most part the quests are interesting and I really enjoy the "you have to figure some things out for yourself" part.

3) My name is basically my forum name: Matt Caspermeyer, I am 45 years old and live in Phoenix, Arizona and am an avid hiker and mountain biker as well as modder. I previously created a mod, Hyperion, for the Emperor of the Fading Suns game and you can tell from my H3B mod that I created for The Legend that I used to love playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and was a big fan of the heroes in that game. As a whole, I do enjoy both turn-based and real-time strategy games such as StarCraft, Sins of a Solar Empire, King's Bounty, Diablo, and Majesty to name a few. My favorite game of all time is Star Control II. I do have a keen eye to inconsistencies in games when I play them and if they are too great then I get bitten by the modding bug! Does that make me a little like Spider-Man?

4) To Impy's Ball of Lightning - doesn't it just look like the Pet Ability in AP / CW? I wonder if there will be a King's Bounty - Light Side as a sequel to this game. Hmmm...

Well, now someone else's turn!

/C\/C\

[DGDobrev]

I love this thread too

1. I have done several dumb things in my first play-through. Let's see:
- the first ever stupid thing I did was during the shelter fights, when I had everything perfectly laid out, with the Demon tanking the werewolves. Then I see that I can plainly finish the fight no-loss if I throw a Scoffers fireball at them, just slightly damaging my already severely damaged demon. So I say, whatever, just do it. BAM! Crit, everyone dies, including the demon. Battle won. I wanted to eat my shorts afterwards.
- I went through like 30% of the game completely oblivious to the painter in Monteville. So I was like "what the hell is that and where the hell he is", until one of the later quests said I should go to Monteville and talk to the painter. It was a huge facepalm.
- this I've done since KBTL... I love destroying a perfectly laid-out plan with a single misclick or a stupid decision.

2. What I don't like:
- the AI isn't exactly stellar. It sure compensates with numbers on impossible, but you can fool entire stacks into doing exactly hat you want.
- the AI of summoned units is completely danger-unaware. Your summoned units immediately adopt the "walk on traps" hobby. This actually makes traps more of a hindrance after a while, than a boon. After a certain pooint of the game, I was just begging the enemies not to suicide on my traps, cause I didn't need any more.
- like everyone, I dislike how the three different characters are not thought out as equals. While I can understand the reason behind it - different playstyles (orcs are all-out berserkers with huge numbers thanks to lower leadership/hp ratios, demons are tough as they were since KBTL, and the Undead excel at hindering the enemy), it makes for an uneven start for all. It wouldn't have hurt to test a bit and come up with decent starting lineups. I can't say I like the idea of fishing for phoenix or something similar before I can even allow myself to start a game.
- I think that some skills need a huge overhaul to either balance them a tad or make them more enticing. Halving is the first thing that comes to mind. I think the percentages should be something like 3-6-10, rather than going on 15, as it can be exploited. If you're lucky, even on Impossible you can halve a stack that beats your attacking stack's leadership 3 to 1.
- I dislike the shelter fights bottleneck. It is unfair to Bagyr and Daert big time. They could have avoided that when designing the game. I thought at first that it was the devs' idea of discouraging us from doing no-loss playthroughs.
- I think the final battle is a bit underwhelming. While I really like the animations and the arena, if the spirit could have more HP and the stacks he summons could grow in leadership as the fight progresses, it would have been much better and more intense.

A quick note of what I like:
- the pen and paper approach to quests. As soon as I realized that the quests in KBDS are nothing like KBAP, and started taking notes, the game became much easier to me. That still didn't save me from lots of running around though.
- I like the diversity of the enemies.
- I like how the world is completely open to you, as it was in KBAP. You can still steal maps, run around, visit some higher level areas and then return and start playing for real. Nice.
- I like how they added teleportation and made us revisit the previously completed islands. In KBAP there was little or no reason to go back to an island to finish something.
- I like how some enemy heroes go absolutely berserk and start throwing armageddons when you start getting the upper hand. Makes it very challenging to do no-loss.
- I like the added variety of female troops. I really itch for another girl power-style play-through.
- I both like and dislike the fact that you can't easily cure/dispel conditions (burning, freezing, etc.). I like it, cause it makes the battle more challenging, but I dislike it cause the only way to react to it seems to be Turn Back Time, which makes the Dispel spell a worthless waste of crystals.

3. My name is Dobri Dobrev, I am originally from Varna, Bulgaria, now living in Essen, Germany. I am 33, working in the nightshift at a hotel. I have gold and bronze medals in chess (won quite some time ago), play football now and then, but usually busy myself with a good game or two before the next shift at work. I really like HOMM3 and their clones - hence my love for this franchise. Other games I really enjoy are XCOM, Skyrim, Civ5, Orcs Must Die 1&2, and just like Matt, the Majesty series.

4. Observations: I saw tons of Easter Eggs in this game. It was fun just poking your nose in Tristem and then having Blackie port you there at a safe location where you could go on a thieving spree. I enjoyed how KBDS doesn't take itself seriously at some points (for example, the Elvish poems, I loled at those bel-mel-liel etc. lines).

I really wonder where will they go from here. I would love to see a more open world + same type of in-depth quests in a new setting. I really think 1C is getting back on the right track with the franchise, they just need to open their horizons a tad more.

[Zhuangzi]

1. Not sure if I've done anything embarrassing, but I've frequently lost concentration at the end of a battle and had an enemy stack take a couple of kills from me, only for the counterattack to finish them off and end the battle. Reload

2. The game is too long for my liking. I still think AP had the best length. I'm up to 320+ fights now and the end is still not in sight. Also, although I really liked the design of the first three islands, some of them were quite boring such as Bear Butte and Amazonia (admittedly the DLC island). Also, what's with the absurd fire/bleeding/poison damage? Don't get me started on how bad Dispel is now...

3. I'm 33 as well, same age as DG. I'm an English teacher here in Perth, Western Australia. My kids are 7 and 9 and they've grown up watching me play KB Like DG, I love XCOM (original and remake) and like Impy I think Star Control 2 is one of the greatest games ever. I basically love TBS games.

4. This is definitely the best KB game since AP. I love the Shelter, I like the Princess concept and most of the areas are done well. I like the fact that there's less grindy areas like the endless Dwarf areas in some previous KB games. Dragon Riders are ridiculously OP though.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

- I think that some skills need a huge overhaul to either balance them a tad or make them more enticing. Halving is the first thing that comes to mind. I think the percentages should be something like 3-6-10, rather than going on 15, as it can be exploited. If you're lucky, even on Impossible you can halve a stack that beats your attacking stack's leadership 3 to 1.

Doesn't matter what % you put it at since the game is pseudo random, not truly random.

Even if they did weighted averages to make mass-hitting units too powerful, there is a combination you could unerringly trigger a halving.

Hate to say it because I rely on halving a lot with my zany build, but the problem is halving itself. It SHOULD not halve. They need to change it completely. Maybe make it so the enemy is weakened and takes 1.5X dmg on the next attack (like old fashioned criticals) or guarantee a bleeding debuff?

[impy]

Heey, who do we have here, another dinosaur

dear ckdamascus, now that you're here, do not hide behind complicated expressions and formulas and please fill out the questionnaire before commenting

I see you guys mentioning other games you consider pure gold. I loved HMM3 the most - surely you played Vengeance is mine, Unleashing the Bloodthirsty, maybe The Lone Knight, The Uprising custom maps or Eternal Love campaign to name the few of the best. For me, it has to be fantasy world. Things like Pantzer General do not appeal to me, but just change it to Fantasy General, and I'm in. I guess "scientific" explanation to this would be that after long day I like to switch off completely and enter some unrealistic world with logical rules & elements in it.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by impy

1) tell us what funny, plain odd or even highly embarrassing you've done during your first playthrough. The internets, they can take it.
2) tell us what you do not like about the game, not necessarily gamebreaking or illogical, maybe just personal preference. You never know, devs might act upon it.
3) tell us something about yourself. (have we not done this before?)
4) interesting observations?

Fine fine!

1) It would probably have to be me about to do a no-loss battle against undead and I misclicked and landed on an eviln, destroying 9 archdemons. It was my last turn too.

2) a) EvilN able to revive enemy undead stacks a bit too strong. It is like a terrible land mine and without massive summon units, you can't diffuse them without risking the enemy grabbing them and becoming super strong.
b) Halving is a bit too strong but in some ways I feel it is necessary for my mostly level 5 and orc shaman army.

3) I am a KB Hack. I gave up my king's bounty warriors of the north : fire and ice run when I couldn't beat spider boss with no loss. (all because the rage eater doesn't work on boss fights!)

4) I like the new metamorph and spy units but haven't gotten a chance to use them yet.

[Fatt_Shade]

Looking at this tread it all looks logical like many things impy brought to game, but you simply ask yourself `How come i never thought it?`

1) Playing tutorial missions after years of KB in depth strategy and discussions, planing new impossible no loss builds. It looks just so noob like now

2) and 40 i`ll skip for now, since i havent tried KB-DS yet. Work is killing me

3) Pleased to meet you all. I`m Halkic Asmir from Belgrade, Serbia. 33, tech support for local internet provider. In spare time hobbies are hiking, and latin/american dancing Love KB, HoMM series. And sadly had to admit i had seriously developed addiction to Dota 2006-2010 , but i`m 4 years clean now

[impy]

World is indeed quite small.

Back when I was around 12, Impy's family went camping in summer to the seaside of Burgas in Bulgaria. It happens to be stone's throw away from Varna, right DG? I think we actually went shopping to Varna, 'cause it's the biggest city around.
Back when I was 18, my brother and I, we went to former Yugoslavia, to the beaches of Croatia, see Plitvice lakes etc. and I'm pretty sure we traveled through Serbia parts as well.
Now, at 22, I took a year off uni, and went to America, Ohio. Eventually we bought a car and travelled across USA, including Grand Canyon, which Matt might know, not sure here,is in Arizona.
I have not been in Australia, but years ago, when I was renting this flat with bunch of other folks, cockroaches suddenly appeared and everyone panicked. The only guy who remained cool was this guy from Melbourne, who simply stated, these things are a lot more common in Australia.
The only person who did not say much about his whereabouts is ckdamascus, so I think it is safe to assume that he either needs to keep a low profile, being either illegal alien or member of secret services, or he is a high ranking official somewhere, possibly even president of some small exotic country. If that's the case, get us a good job CK!

[DGDobrev]

True, about 130 km, which isn't that far away, really. Really nice, impy, I am glad