Spirit of Rage exploit **minor spoilers

[Lari]

My goal is to train lina and the reaper as fast as possible.
(i don't care too much about the other two spirits, they are just very useful in the first part of the game, but later all u need from them is stone wall, poison cloud level 1 and glow's armor)

If you are not interested in formulas/in-depth explanation, just jump to *** .

From the fan manual, i got this formula, that tells how the xp are assigned to rage spirits

TotalExp = (BaseExp * К + KiledUnitExp) * (SkillK * ClassK) * EnemyStrengthK * HeroSpiritLevelK

we want to max out as many variable from the formula, as we can.

1.1 base exp. about this we can just use an already upgraded skill, wich will grant more xp per use.
1.2, K, the times other than the first one that you call a spirit in a fight, he will get a bonus/malus to xp gained, and that variable is set as "CurEnemyLeadership / CurAllyLeadership " and we have a cap at3 -> so we want to call the spirit of rage WHEN the opponent has nearly 3 times our troops ldrs
1.3, KilledUnitExp, if the rage kill something there is a bonus to xp, The_total_Leadership_killed * 0.018, this bonus is capped in relation to the level of rage spirit. This amount is added to base exp but still this sum can't go over 3 times the base exp value of rage spirit ability used. Formula for cap is : Experience_LevelSpiritLevel+1 – Experience_LevelSpiritLevel / (SpiritLevel/5+2). ie. at level 6 on normal it will be 150/3.2 = 47.
We want on the field a lot of ldrs for opponent, or very little ldrs for us; and troops than can't hit/reach our troops (to keep the fight going as long as we can)

2, couple of factor based on class/ability... so obviosly fighter with level 3 spirit master will level up faster than a mage without levels in it...
We can't operate on those variables

3 EnemyStrenghtK, there is another bonus/malus that depends on EnemyLeadership/(HeroLeadership*5). This variable is capped from 0.5 to 2.
We want this to be 2, so it basically means that with a full army we have to go against an army without heroes, that is rated exactly very strong, no more, no less.

4 HeroSpiritevelK, last variable is HeroLevel/SpiritLevel, and as you may have noticed, while fighting, and leveling up a spirit, he will not actually gain his level till the end of fight. this is capped to 3 too.
We want to have 3 times the levels of our spirit of rage at the beginning of combat.



*** So here is what i thought : have our character at level 15, and both our spirit of rage at level 5.Let's get as many levels as we can on rage drain for the reaper, and as many as we can on lina's charges. we will expect to have level 3 on both (here i would cheat, save, fast level up them from level 1 to level 5, then reload, till i found the best choices to get more levels on both those abilities). That will mean 30 exp per use for Lina, and 14+ some for the dmg, for the reaper (let's say it inflict 400 dmg, we would expect like 5-6 more xp points, still the cap will be 52). note : we are not interested in lowering rest time.

Now we have to buy 1 full slot of something fast and strong, griffin or archdemons or cursed spirits to say some, and :
- 4 full slots of expendable troops and search for a "very strong" opponent
- less slots of expendable troops and go against the same opponent from above (that will now be marked as overwhelming or fatal, cause we have less ldrs of troops; note : in the formula at point 3 doesn't matter our actual lead, but the total lead if we had all 5 slots full)

During the fight we want :
- the expendable troop to be hannilated, and to kill all the ranged or fast troop our opponent may have
- to go to the point were we have a few fast units alive, and the opponent has like 3 times or more troops alive (ldrs compared), better if low level troops, slow and with no-use abilities.

At this point we want to run indefinitely, avoiding combat, cycling calling charges and rage drain. we can even use spells to slow down opponents / fear them, due to lina's charges.

Exp gained will be : base exp (so around 30 for lina, and 14 for reaper) * 3 (maxing out point 1) * x(point 2 depends on class skill, range 0.5 to 1.3) * 2(from point 3) * 3 (from point 4)
18x * 30 for lina -> from 270 to 702
18x * 14 for reaper -> from 126 to 327
This amount is every 5 rounds, rinse and repeat a couple of time , then finish your opponents off.
Meanwhile, if u happen to have too much rage, you can still call one of the other 2 spirits, and give them a good boost. (this will happen, cause lina will use 20 and give 8 back, and the reaper will gain 15, so +3 per use is expected)

level 20, a good goal for me, is 5500 xp more than level 5, so it's like 17-45 uses for reaper, more or less, really depend on character/skill. They are still a lot, but while in control, it will be fast.
I am more prone to see it 17 times, meaning a warrior with level 3 master rage skill, than 45.. cause a mage doesn't need spirit rage so much, really.
At impossible level , it will be 17*1.3 = 22 times, not so bad.
Any suggestion for what kinda of units to pick? and for opponents to look for? at level 15 we will be in the dwarves lands, close to demons too.
Any idea if it will really works? i will try it out as soon as i get back home, if anyone will test it in the meantime, please post the results!.
Any opinion?

[Keneth]

I had no trouble leveling up Lina or Reaper quickly in a normal manner, don't see why you would need any elaborate minmaxing for a few extra XP. Even if playing on impossible you should never feel any need to level them up faster unless you're trying to max all abilities at the same time. But hey, whatever works for you.

[Lari]

I had finished the game a couple of times, and both times, i ended up having lina and the reaper, around level 22-23. At that level they were good, but on my third run i thought i like to bring them to level 30 , so i wanted some extra fast xp and if i could have them as soon as i get them, it 'll make my life even easier later. I know i could easily cheat their level, but i like the challenge to do it for real. Your level in the end were higher than mine? in case, what skill do u use the most? i usually use 1 time back and 1 charge/gizmo per encounter, and it wasn't enough.

[Keneth]

I was level 30 at the end with Reaper at lvl30 and Lina at lvl28. I usually used Soul Draining on the first round to get rid of the most heavy stack, usually followed by timeback on the second round to restore the troop that took the most damage in round one. During the fight I usually dropped an Iceball or two to soak some of the damage and an occasional Gismo. At the end of the fight I used chargers and rage drain a lot to replenish enough mana for resurrecting (was a bit obsessive about losses). Played a warrior, so I relied more heavily on Spirits than a mage would.

[Lari]

Played a warrior too, but i didn't relay so heavy on spirit of rage. Probably my bad, but usually the battles ended by turn 3-4, never use soul drain a single time, not even black hole (so not taking the dmg xp bonus at all), my troop just inflict enough damage; target on the first round, and time back on the second one, give me a few losses at the end of battle, if none and i didn't care too much about them anyway. No doubt that u reached level 30, u made an heavy use of them (which probably is the right strategy for warriors) I also liked to have high rage, to max out crits chances/dmg, so i was a little greedy on using rage demanding abilities.

[Keneth]

You're telling me, I overupgraded my soul drain and it ended up costing me 70 rage per use, was waiting for that last rage reduction upgrade all the way until lvl30 but it never came. <_< Luckily I had +50% rage from the baby and +50% rage from Pain Skull (which was 2 enemies short of being upgraded at the end of the game by the way, waste of bloody artifact slot) so getting enough rage to cast it didn't prove that much of a problem. Black hole is useless though.

[Lari]

Haahaha the game really should have to say you when you take the last upgrade
70 for 50% is really costly, 35 for 40% is kinda better, a shame also that you can't undercast a spirit of rage like u can with spells, would have been a nice feature!

[Keneth]

Yeah, I would have loved to use lower levels of the abilities sometimes, but there's a lot more than 3 levels so you'd need a lot of buttons or a new menu for it.

[Lari]

TESTED SUCCESSFULLY
with a mage level 14 (8K ldrs) and both the spirits at level 4, charges and drain at level 3. Level impossible, without any rage exp ability, for 10 minutes. I went as far as round 50, getting 3 level for reaper and 5 for lina. Tested against a "strong" (55K) enemy, went in battle with just a stack of 40 griffons, killed ranged and fast units with magic, left 12K units alive with speed 2. 16 griffons lost in the process.
The most annoying part was collecting the spheres from Lina, mostly because on my pc they tend to disappear (just graphically) from round 25. (that is also why i left after 50 rounds)

[Keneth]

It's not just your computer, animations start disappearing around round 25 for a lot of people. Quite annoying when you want those damn chargers and you can't see where they fall.