General impossible difficulty (no loss)

[Chase]

Hey again, some of you might remember me from when I did this in TL as I had a decent thread going.

I noticed The Rider's post a few weeks back and I decided to give imp mage no loss a go again myself.

It is just insane. Im having a way harder time in AP then I had in TL. Its at the point where I just travel all over the place to see if I can score a kill on anything. Ive reached Verona and Ive cleared out the first 3 islands and most of rusty except 4-5 mobs/heroes.

My army consists of Arch mages, Inqs, Royal snakes, Trolls and Royal Griffins. My general tactic is to crowd control stuff for as long as I can while I tank stuff with my Trolls. I havent gotten resurrection or any half decent damage spell yet so it hurts.

Just like when I did this on TL I only made 1 game and never prescouted nor will I use the savegame editor. Not because I see it as cheating, I just like to play with what I get and make the best out of it.

But it seems a lot harder then it did in TL. Im not saying thats a bad thing, but I dident expect it to be so hard.

What normally ruins my day is ranged units. They tend to swap around and shot at random things in my army. The second my royal snakes and my inqs have taken a loss in the same fight its time to hit that good old f8 key.

At level 14 I have 14 intellect and 8 defense. Ive also gotten higher learning rank 1 so I can drop two rank 1 traps in the start to stop melee runners.

I spent 5 hours playing the game last night and I killed a total of 4 armys in Verona.

Btw, I HATE to kite the mapscroll guardians, its beyond tedious.

Anyone have any insight as Im actually considdering just making a warrior and be done with it. Right now Im playing close to exactly how I would play a warrior due to lack of decent spells. Except that with a warrior I would have more troops and my pet would do more damage.

Any input is welcome.

(love the AP so far in general)

[ender]

You can get first stone quest done in Bolo mines (easy to kill or kite droid hero) and you have paladins.

Or try to go to Montero. If you have some wanderer scrolls use those to fight bridge guardian.

[Chase]

Originally Posted by ender

You can get first stone quest done in Bolo mines (easy to kill or kite droid hero) and you have paladins.

Or try to go to Montero. If you have some wanderer scrolls use those to fight bridge guardian.

Done it.. Got 10 paladins.. I can get both hypnosis and sacrifize but I dont have chaos rank 2 yet so cant make me more paladins.

Ill give the guardian a shot. Ive kited all the way up to him anyways to loot and check the dwellings.

[Zhuangzi]

Actually I think no losses is easier in AP than in TL, even as a Mage. I am up to 159 battles without loss in my Impossible Mage game, and while it hasn't always been easy, it is certainly doable.

For me the keys are high intellect (over 40 for me at level 31), maxed Summoner ability for Phantomed Paladins (up to 81% now), as high leadership as you can possibly get (about 13,000 at level 31) and a few other things. I am using a team of Paladins, Inquisitors, Knights, Giants and Archmages. The Giants and Knights aren't essential, and in fact the Knights rarely seem to get into the action at the moment. Horsemen could be used instead. It's pretty simple. Sometimes I use Stone Skin + Target on the Giants on turn 1 (plus Archmages' Magic Shield) if I think I will absorb too much damage from ranged units. If that isn't necessary, I use Trap (I have the Trapper medal 3 and over 7000 damage on a level 3 Trap), or also Fire Arrow/Fireball. The baby dragon is mainly used for Mana Accelerator. So you smash the enemy but leave one pitiful unit left (preferably a ranged unit that won't get itself killed) and arrange your troops in a ring around the Paladin. This doesn't work for the Giants (or any other level 5 unit), but that's okay, as that's where the Inquisitors come into play. If you need more than one resurrection on the Giants, you can Phantom more Inquisitors. So it might take two or sometimes three Phantomed Paladin stacks to return all stacks to full health, and then ZAP! I hit the remaining stack with the Archmages.

[ender]

Even 10 paladins are good for ress (don't know your leadership, but probably you have space for max 20 paladins).

Imp mage noloss is hard and battles tend to take more time.

[TemjinGold]

For me, the key to impossible mage has been:

1) Pick up everything you can from Debir, Scarlett, and Bolo (if Rusty Map is unguarded on Bolo, then Rusty too) before fighting ANYTHING (except the 2 fights in the tutorial.)

2) Grind medals from the very start.

Don't worry about Battle Academy as much since that one goes REAL fast once you get Red Dragons. (Before that, my units/spells don't make much use of it anyway.)

Trapper is extremely easy to get to Level 3 if you are patient (mages need patience more than the other two.) I got mine after fight 28.

To get the physical resistance one, make the first fight you do the undead fight on Scarlett that is blocking the guaranteed Archmages. Bring only a full stack of Inq to that fight. You will get either 3 or 4 Archmages. Break them into stacks of 1 (if you got 3, make your last stack whatever you want.) Now hit the battles on Debir. Inq + random stack (if you have it) weakens enemies just enough for hero + dragon kick to kill with traps. Archmages spam Magic Shield every other turn. When there's only 1 enemy stack left, have hero switch to spamming L1 Stoneskin. Do this till Round 10 (drag out the fight if you have to.) If you were lucky enough to find 4 Archmages, you will get 20 to the counter per fight just from their Magic Shield alone.

Fire mage can be grinded the same way (~16-18 per fight) by abusing Oil Mist on easy fights. Since that spell does no damage, you can keep spamming it two per round on the battle field till round 10. Use one L5 stack and start the fight with Fear.

3) With a mage, sometimes less is more. Don't feel obligated to fight with all 5 stacks after you finish grinding the Magic Shield medal because that can actually make things harder. If you are going for no loss, the difficulty in that is only as much as your flimsiest stack. Using fewer stacks also means your dragon levels up much faster.

Using these tactics and more, I've never once had to use paladins and I generally dump Inq once I get L5 units (like that free Green Dragon.) Nothing wrong with using what's there, it's just playing completely defensive and ressurecting everything at the end just isn't really my style. Though I'm sure I might need to consider them for the last leg of the game to maintain no-loss.

[Zhuangzi]

Sounds like Temijen has got some good advice there. Some general advice for the Trapper medal:

- Obviously you need to find the Trap spell first! I think I had already played about 30 fights before I found it, but I could have looked harder.

- Archmages are great for their Telekenesis ability. Put a trap down and drag a weak stack onto them.

- Leave Crushing Blow at level 1 (it's not much use as a direct damage ability anyway) and use it to knock weak stacks onto traps.

- Then of course put traps between you and the enemy. The one that works best for me is when you have a weak enemy that can die from a trap, you can place a trap between it and your troop, and if it can only reach that troop and attack on the same turn it WILL step there.

I think I had Trapper 3 by 80 fights or so. I was averaging two per fight from 30-80. And the great thing about it is that it increases your trap power and places three traps on the battlefield (but they are only level 2 traps), so even if you never place a trap after that, it will be valuable for the rest of the game.

[Chase]

Thanks for all the advice. As soon as I found a call of colossus scroll that gave me 2 black dragons the game got a lot easier. I cleared out Verona and most of Montaro now. Found the navi chart to Shaterra unguarded in the mines under Montaro so I went there and picked up everything.

The problem initially for me was that I didn’t have any offensive spells and no resurrection. I had to rely solely on spells like haste/slow/trap/stone skin and with the low mage leadership that makes it hard as nails at times.

At Shaterra I got Fire rain, Icy Snake, Death Star, Resurrection and red+black dragons. The game just got a lot more fun .

My army now is: 3 Black dragons, 3 red dragons, 5 Giants, 7 Trolls and my last spot is either Shamans, Paladins or Cyclops. I haven’t used inqs since level 10 or so and paladins rarely fit into my setup right now. I know that 5 levels from now this is not a viable setup as I sometimes lose a level 5 unit and have to reload. But I stacked defense so far as those are the items I seem to be getting. Up to 21 defense and 20 intellect (And I’m trying to stack intellect)

Its not a revolutionary play style, but it certainly isn’t the one I had planned for. Initially I wanted to do the human morale army thing with Knight, pally, Inqs, Royal Griffin and Perhaps Arch mages, but we will see. I personally hate the fact that paladins move so slowly, but it makes them awesome for support.

Now I just send in my red and black dragons while I put a rain of fire on top of my black or red dragons. (Whichever dragon the hostile mobs gather around) And follow it up with some lightening love from my pet dragon. This added with the giants stomp ability makes for some fast wins.

Having a blast right now, but as soon as they are able to kill my black dragons the first turn I'll be in trouble with this lineup .

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by Chase

Thanks for all the advice. As soon as I found a call of colossus scroll that gave me 2 black dragons the game got a lot easier. I cleared out Verona and most of Montaro now. Found the navi chart to Shaterra unguarded in the mines under Montaro so I went there and picked up everything.

The problem initially for me was that I didn’t have any offensive spells and no resurrection. I had to rely solely on spells like haste/slow/trap/stone skin and with the low mage leadership that makes it hard as nails at times.

At Shaterra I got Fire rain, Icy Snake, Death Star, Resurrection and red+black dragons. The game just got a lot more fun .

My army now is: 3 Black dragons, 3 red dragons, 5 Giants, 7 Trolls and my last spot is either Shamans, Paladins or Cyclops. I haven’t used inqs since level 10 or so and paladins rarely fit into my setup right now. I know that 5 levels from now this is not a viable setup as I sometimes lose a level 5 unit and have to reload. But I stacked defense so far as those are the items I seem to be getting. Up to 21 defense and 20 intellect (And I’m trying to stack intellect)

Its not a revolutionary play style, but it certainly isn’t the one I had planned for. Initially I wanted to do the human morale army thing with Knight, pally, Inqs, Royal Griffin and Perhaps Arch mages, but we will see. I personally hate the fact that paladins move so slowly, but it makes them awesome for support.

Now I just send in my red and black dragons while I put a rain of fire on top of my black or red dragons. (Whichever dragon the hostile mobs gather around) And follow it up with some lightening love from my pet dragon. This added with the giants stomp ability makes for some fast wins.

Having a blast right now, but as soon as they are able to kill my black dragons the first turn I'll be in trouble with this lineup .

That's why I always cast Mass Haste on turn 1. You need level 3 Distortion for this. Best 10 mana you'll ever spend.

[Chase]

That would indeed make the human comp more viable .

Perhaps I should look into maxing defense on this mage for the level 5 tanking that I enjoye so much right now. How hard is it once you reach levels 35-50? Do you think that I have to pick up int for spell pain and go for a more "normal" setup?