Champion of the Arena thread

[Zhuangzi]

So I started a Hard Mage game to have a look around, and I like what I see so far. The guild business seems interesting, and there's plenty of stuff to do with the Bounty Hunter missions as well. But with the Mage, I've got such low leadership that the first Bounty Hunter mission seems too difficult presently.

I did manage to beat the turtle without losses though. Here's how I did it.

Royal Snakes, Demonologists, Undead Spiders (which weren't used), Beholders, Repair Droids. Not the best team but I had nothing better.

The Mage has a Demon Portal scroll which is very useful, so I learned Chaos I and scribed it. Fire Arrow 2 is also nice early on.

The strategy for the turtle is pretty simple. Spawn Demon Portals near the turtle, first of all being the square directly in front of him. This is important. Hopefully your portals will get you Imps, but if not it will be Cerebuses. Imps are better because of no retaliation. The Demonologist can spawn some Demons as well. You need to make sure that you always have a unit directly in front of the turtle, as he'll always attack this square if it's filled. Also, NEVER attack from the back corner squares as he'll do a mass attack in response. Bad. The Royal Snakes were useful here because of no retaliation, and the other ranged units just keep hitting the turtle for low damage. You can also use a Calm Rage scroll to get some more mana for Fire Arrows (only 5 mana - useful here). So hopefully you've got some Imps whacking the turtle, plus your snakes, and some ranged stuff. No losses is easy here, meaning that you will get the Grand Strategy medal (+200 leadership).

I really want Demon Portal 2 for the extra leadership, but currently I am 3 Might Runes short....

[DGDobrev]

The turtle is as easy as in King's Bounty - the Legend. I tried it with all classes on impossible and one and the same tactic works all the time.

The Knight you start with - your tank.
Archmagi - for Magic Shield (in all my games there were archmagi, necromancers and druids in the shaman tower, so I can only assume they are always there)
Demonologists - for damage and summoning
Druids - for damage and summoning
Any unit, preferably ranged - I had beholders, elves, and whatnot available.

The idea is that all of the units have high HP and can take an initial hit from the turtle. It will slow all of them in the first round (guaranteed), which makes things a bit harder. However, there is still a way around it. Put your knight in the middle of your lineup, so that the distance between him and the turtle head is the shortest. Have your Druid summon a bear and be ready to move it as close to the turtle's head as possible, using his run ability.

Now you'll take a mass hit, but that's nothing to worry about thanks to the high HP of your units - as long as it is the only such hit you'll take. What's more important is to move the bears in front of the turtle's mouth, even if this means using the Archmagi's Telekinesis ability to gain an extra hex. The Knight will move 1 square and should be right behind them - if he's not, have the bears defend till he gets there or till they die.

Have the turtle kill the bears and have the knight take their place (use "wait" if necessary). After this has happened, the battle is won, as now things get very simple.

Knights get healing from the hero + magic shield from the archmagi and all they do is defend. As a mage, you can do Magic Spring + Wait + Defend so that you don't lose a charge and gain more mana than you spend - this way you get 10 mana, which is equal to magic spring cost + 1 healing, in essence, gaining a free heal, which frees mana for an occasional flaming arrow. The rest of the troops will slowly drop the turtle's HP and that's it

The question is what do we do afterwards. I have a feeling that a bounty should be next, but doing that without a loss will be quite a challenge. 1c definitely made the game harder this time - well worth the money paid for it, as it will provide us with lots of hours of enjoyment.

[rancor26]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

The turtle is as easy as in King's Bounty - the Legend. I tried it with all classes on impossible and one and the same tactic works all the time.

The Knight you start with - your tank.
Archmagi - for Magic Shield (in all my games there were archmagi, necromancers and druids in the shaman tower, so I can only assume they are always there)
Demonologists - for damage and summoning
Druids - for damage and summoning
Any unit, preferably ranged - I had beholders, elves, and whatnot available.

The idea is that all of the units have high HP and can take an initial hit from the turtle. It will slow all of them in the first round (guaranteed), which makes things a bit harder. However, there is still a way around it. Put your knight in the middle of your lineup, so that the distance between him and the turtle head is the shortest. Have your Druid summon a bear and be ready to move it as close to the turtle's head as possible, using his run ability.

Now you'll take a mass hit, but that's nothing to worry about thanks to the high HP of your units - as long as it is the only such hit you'll take. What's more important is to move the bears in front of the turtle's mouth, even if this means using the Archmagi's Telekinesis ability to gain an extra hex. The Knight will move 1 square and should be right behind them - if he's not, have the bears defend till he gets there or till they die.

Have the turtle kill the bears and have the knight take their place (use "wait" if necessary). After this has happened, the battle is won, as now things get very simple.

Knights get healing from the hero + magic shield from the archmagi and all they do is defend. As a mage, you can do Magic Spring + Wait + Defend so that you don't lose a charge and gain more mana than you spend - this way you get 10 mana, which is equal to magic spring cost + 1 healing, in essence, gaining a free heal, which frees mana for an occasional flaming arrow. The rest of the troops will slowly drop the turtle's HP and that's it

The question is what do we do afterwards. I have a feeling that a bounty should be next, but doing that without a loss will be quite a challenge. 1c definitely made the game harder this time - well worth the money paid for it, as it will provide us with lots of hours of enjoyment.

Thanks for this strategy i might actually try to play champion of the arena without cheats now but i still have a lot of difficulties when it comes to K'tahu and driller... kraken is pretty easy though atleast if u have red dragons which i did get from demons guild and as a mage demon portal helps A LOT. As a warrior champion of the arena campaign looks very hard.

[Zhuangzi]

Well, DGD, I'm certainly not thinking about no losses at the moment. Hard is hard enough at the present time. I was having terrible trouble with my Hard Mage game - couldn't beat the big spider or the first Bounty mission. Got close to killing the spider but always overwhelmed. In earlier KB games you would just go away and level up for a while, but here?

The solution, as it turned out, was to die.

If you die in the Bounty hunter mission, you are reborn as part of the Undead guild. Then of course you have access to some awesome units like the Black Knights, Necromancers, and Ancient Vampires. There's a follower that buffs the undead too for a mere 5000 gold. Needless to say, I went back and did the first Bounty fight easily, and then the Spider in like 6-7 rounds too, losing on 2 Black Knights and 6 Skeleton Archers

So I am Undead this game.

[DGDobrev]

COOL!!!

This might turn out to be a new tactic - become undead - because right now, I can't see a way to win the next battle without losing a unit - the bounty puts you against a hero who has 2 stacks of demonesses, who easily swap your weakest units right into the heart of the enemy army, which equals a lot of lost units.

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

COOL!!!

This might turn out to be a new tactic - become undead - because right now, I can't see a way to win the next battle without losing a unit - the bounty puts you against a hero who has 2 stacks of demonesses, who easily swap your weakest units right into the heart of the enemy army, which equals a lot of lost units.

Yeah I can't see any way of doing no losses here, DGD. Unlike earlier KB games, you have few fight options, and they're all quite hard.

[DGDobrev]

That is so.

I have tried the turtle with Warrior on impossible. It can easily be won without losses even without healing. All it takes is to work carefully and plan carefully.

I used this lineup:
Demonologists
Archmagi
Druids
Assassins (put near one of the legs and hack away)
Beholders

These generally can withstand the initial turtle attack, unless it hits very powerful. If they do, then you surely won without a loss. Put the Druids in the middle, so that the bears they summon get to the turtle quickly and shield them.

Now all you need to do is keep 2 bear stacks up (one tanks, one walks around it, so that it doesn't fall asleep and subs when the main tank dies). I am worried that multiple stacks may provoke the turtle to do the mass attack - so take it slowly and the win is in the bag.

[DGDobrev]

Double post time, bringing some new info.

Dying is not a good thing... It does give you a lot of undead units, but it also cuts any access to human/orc/elf/dwarf recruiting and quest completion, as well as any items and spells that may spawn there. So for example, if Eviln is supposed to spawn in one of the orc buildings, and nowhere else, you may find yourself with absolutely no option to resurrect your beloved black knights/bone dragons and do a no-loss or minimum loss victory.

Once again, the Troll is an awesome unit. They can spawn pretty much everywhere - dwarven lands are a good spot for them. If you manage to lay your hands of some, a lot of victories are in the bag (spider, frog at night, several bounties).

Also, be aware that allying with the humans alienates the demons. You can still fix it though - by paying 50k gold. It sounds a lot, but it isn't, if you spend it carefully. Get everything you need from the humans/orcs/dwarves/elves before going for the undead army and you'll be just fine. The undead army also has a chance to spawn a number of Black Dragons as well, which will win a few bounties without a loss and with complete ease.

In general, trolls/black dragons is the key to victory on many occasions - if you lay your hands on some, you need no other armies. If you get some +% resistance items, they are wonderful to have as well.

And here's a nice little troll after the spider battle on hard

[axelle]

i got the game, where do you get champion of the arena mini-games?

[mare911]

Any tips how to defeat metamorph guy?
I am unsure about AI behavior there, is it guarantied that he will transform units from weakest to strongest always, or transforms are random?

Anyway, in my game, i got some funny sized black dragon stacks against me check out pic below