Well, my first game ended badly.
 

I'm playing a mage and I was going along well, clearing out the first island on normal difficulty and it was off to my second island. Upon arrival, almost all of the creatures I encountered were either Lethal or Impossible. I managed to kill off everything which was less than very strong, yet every other creature is still impossible for me.

I went off to have a peek at the 3rd island, but the situation isn't any better there, with nothing that I can kill. I'm not keen on having to sneak around the island and kite monsters in order to loot stuff which invariably should be taken at a later point in the game, so I'm stuck.

So, I'm either going to cheat, or I'm going to start again on easy, here's to hoping that I don't suck so much that I get stuck then too.

My first game is also a mage on normal.
2nd Island=Scarlet Wind, right? What is your leadership/level? Mine was 748/6 at the time, and most enemies conned between slightly weaker to very strong at the time, with a few heroes being lethal. I'm pretty sure "lethal" is the same as overpowering from the first game though, btw, so a mage who makes good use of her spells against the right combination of "lethal" opponents can get out unscathed.

It does look like this game might be a bit more challenging than the first (especially for a mage), but I personally like that.

Yes, each island will generally have harder stacks than the last, so it does become difficult as you go. Some general advice: you are rewarded for winning fights without losses with extra leadership. I think it is +200 for 10 fights, +500 for 30 (i.e. an extra 300) and +1000 for 50 fights. I counted 20 fights on Debir so if you can do them without loss, it will make Scarlet Wind that much easier.

On Scarlet Wind and Bolo there are stacks that are much harder than the rest. These are the map guardians and the bounties. I found I had to leave 4-5 of these until a bit later. So there will be some stacks on Bolo that are easier than the hardest ones on Scarlet Wind, and some on Rusty Anchor that are harder than the map guardians on Bolo etc.

Another cool trick is to get the first stone (stone of Hope?) without fighting on Bolo. You have to pick up something from the underground lair there and it is being guarded by a boss stack, but if you are sneaky you can say you want to fight and then dodge the stack when it runs toward you. Then it is a piece of cake to grab the thing (I forget what it is) and take it back to Debir. That's worth another 200 leadership, I believe. :-P

And of course, do not forget to USE the Amulet before returning it to the temple of Hope. It gives an additional 50 leadership.

As a Mage, you will be hard pressed to be sneaky and to pick off as many treasures, flags and maps before actually starting the fights. The Mage is the hardest to play in KBAP, but it is the most rewarding in the end when you get a lot of intellect and some cool spells. The mage is somewhat hard to start even on normal... You can imagine the problems you will have on impossible. I did a mage on impossible and I can tell that it's a hell in the first 25-30 levels. On normal, it will be hell up intil lvl 15-20 at most.

Kingdom for target spell !!.. i am strugling badly now ... everything would turn into breeze if i hard target so dorid guard could tank and repaerer repair him .. but i dont have .. I have clerad debir, scarlet island except heroes and map guardians and on bolo i killed some stacks but its hell hard, no losses is barely possible and its just normal difficulty ..

What class are you playing, Elwin? I am just about managing no losses with a Warrior, but I don't think I'd be able to do it as a Mage. I am up to 5000 leadership now (clearing Rusty Anchor) and I doubt it'd be more than 3000 with a Mage. :o

Mage of course :p the stone of hope is in that dwarf dungeon near that robot?

my army is now droid guard, droid repair, royal snake, royal thorn, inquisitor .. theats the best setup i can get at this moment. Its not that bad going but i am lacking target by much ... or paladins or royal griffins 2k leadership now

That isn't the actual stone but it's what you need to get the stone of hope. You can use the item to get +50 leadership before giving it back (I forgot).

I haven't seen Target yet, but there are plenty of Royal Griffins and Paladins on Verona.

Verona? well i havent seen that island .. i have only debir scarlet bolo and rusty ... after leting some minimal loses i am doing much better now :) Just got amulet(without fight :D)

Well, I hope you're both lucky guys, because in my last 3 playthroughs I got the Target spell once on level 31, once on lvl 35 and once past level 40 (from chest on the battlefield... sheesh!)... In only one playthrough I was lucky enough to find it on Bolo.

Elwin, I wish you tons of good luck, because I know how a mage starts the game... Even on normal it's really hard.

Currently mine problem is no losses medal .. i can win my fights easily but by sacrificing 1-2 units .. just a little but it almost cant be avioded ;/ Enemy always chooses target to give me loses ...

Perhaps that's the most irritating thing in KBAP. When the AI finds out that it loses the battle, it makes sure that you get at least 1 casualty.

Yes, just played the battle for 10 min almost won .. and bah one repairer down .. cant be ressed or smg it makes me mad ... and battles with those droid constantly repairing themselves are long ..

Can a droid repair itself or only other mechanical units? Any good uses for them? So far I'm finding them to be mediocre shooters at best.

Just other droids. They aren't very useful IMO.

About the subject of this thread, I just had to replay a hero battle 3-4 times because he kept using Fire Arrow (one of THE most annoying spells for zero losses).

Yes, for no losses in the hero fights it's best not to have any low HP or low level creatures and to make sure you wait until after the hero's turn each round b4 you cast so you can use the dispersal spell if your units are poisoned or burning!

Elwin, you may have no choice but to kite away the Verona map guardian and see if you can pick up the Target spell there. I think it's almost impossible to do no losses without it!

Yesthere are few stacks of those droidsi should use word eachother ... they are not good at damage but their repair helps ma a lot and i dont have any better unit available ...

Still, everyone should be careful with the Target spell in the early game. Sometimes it is possible to lose more units of your tanking stack than you can resurrect.

As a mage, I managed to finish the early game on impossible in 2 ways - one with a lot of stealing (all the way up to Reha, then back with the lizards) and one with a party of Paladins, Knights, Inquisitors, Archmagi and Demonologists. After you get about lvl 25-30, the game will be much easier because you will be able to better protect your stacks even against impossible enemies. As a mage, you will be seeing a lot of those.

Well... the only problem IS to get up to that level...

This post contains some spoilers so if you don't want to, stop reading now ;)
Hi, I'm playing for a mage too, since I've been playing for him in KBL, I choose him again :). I'm lvl 10 now and I can advice this. I've been using a full army of best units I could find but then I realised it's not neccesary. First of all get a Cyclop(s) on Bolo, here is http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6...2211423881.jpg where you can find them, it's easily to get them and secondly as a mage I've learned Transmute skill ASAP to recover +7 or +10 mana back after every fallen foe/ally, I prefer foe :-P. On the Cyclop I cast Avenging Angel, Stone Skin, etc., that's up to you. This strategy worked so far better then full stack of army. With one, soon two Cyclops I don't loose any unit and you don't need to replenish your army either. I know this strategy won't last forever but so far so good :)

Thats not spoiler i know that place, but i never liked cyclops and i do not see how it can make me no losses?? I have tank and its droid guard, repairer can repair almost full stack ... its enough, but enemy atacks what he wants ...
one shooter atacks my repairer kills 1 and bah .. losses ... i need something atracting enemies like target spell ... thats all

It could be a spoiler for someone because you can get a lvl 5 units early in the game without a fight. If it's not clear from my post, then I put it this way. You simply fight only with one Cyclop so you won't lose any unit. If you lose that one, you've lost the battle :-) With a proper tactics/spells you can beat normal/lethal enemies. At least you can grind like that most of the normal fights and get the medals = more leadership, then you can buy whatever units you want and switch again to full army = traditional way of playing.

Interesting. But i am doing well on my tactics .. Just cleared scarlet island and got Verona map ! hope i find some nice stuff there^^ ONly richard left he is weak to me but he burns my royal torns ;/

Try to do the battle without them. You are not bound to use 5 units all the time :) It worked for me a couple of times.

NO target on verona(at least what i snekad and i sneaked most of this isle) but paladinds in numbers around 200 in light hosue, quite hard to sneak but did and around 300 royals on barbarian tent. Not bad could be worse.
Now gonna expirement with various teams
So i got both droids inquis royal thorns snakes griphons and paladins. lvl 10 leaderdhip around 2,5k pretty nice i think. :p


Jesys christ this burning on AI heroes is still messed up like hell ... That Richard the cruel makes me mad .. he hits paladin wfor 70 dmg with flaming around but burns for 150 WTF??!!! I do not even do a half of that dame with burning as a mage with medals ...

Well, some heroes have "medals" as well. It is irritating, but you kind of have to live with it. Let's not forget that the paladins have only 10% fire defense. Knights have 30% and Horsemen have 20%.

At least it isn''t like the out of the box russian version with the messed up burning/poisoning. If he hit your paladin for 70, he would have probably burned for 600+.

I might restart with warrior or mage cause i'm stuck with Paladin and going nowhere fast :(

I just can't avoid losses. Only 9 paladins can join my army but the stacks on the 3rd,4th are all lethal more or less.

Well, try to keep it up until you get level 3 resurrection Skill. You will have no problems afterwards.

I just see how unbalanced classes are ... my bro is playing warrior .. he got dive skill and he just kills everything with it, even lethal with no loses and even thinking ... with mage i have to do insane crowd controly and evry battle last veeery long ,, geeez ... I am thinking like i am playing comleplty higher difficulty than him but indeed both are on normal :}
To compansate that dive power i would have to have geyser.fire rain 3 ... which is impossible so early on the game ..

I have not come across Resurrection and i've visited the first 3 islands..I though he was supposed to bloody start with it grrrrrrrrr :-P

Yeah, I need Resurrection too. Can't see it (or Target) on Verona. I will agree that Warrior seems easier so far. They really improved the Might tree this time around.

In the game description it says Paladin has resurrect ability, so where is it?

OK, sit back and read carefully.

There are 3 (!) resurrections in this game. One is an SKILL, the other is a SPELL ,and the third is an ABILITY.

The Resurrection SKILL is a Paladin-only skill. It allows the paladin HERO to resurrect up to 100% of a fallen stack, even if it has been completely destroyed. As such it has great use if you go for scapegoat units - meaning units, that the AI will target and they can die at will, while no other units suffer casualties in the end, after all the resurrecting has been done. Generally, that is a "no-loss victory with casualties" that will come back to life after the battle. Note, that the battle itself will not count as a no-loss, but it will be a no-loss for you.

The Resurrection SPELL is another thing. It has low chance to spawn on verona (the castles mainly) and higher chance to spawn on dersu, umkas, uzala, elon, shatterra, nameless island, reha. It can also appear in a chest on the field of battle and from the treasure searcher dragon ability.

The resurrection ABILITY is available to a few units - Paladins, Inquisitors, Demonologists, Gorguanas. Each of these unit's resurrection ability has its restrictions.

So keep digging and hope for the best. The game is random and you never know where this spell will hide. The best thing you can do is to do everything possible to find it - searching the islands and digging up chests.

EDIT: Fixed to clarify.

thx for the explanation, I know the difference between a spell and an ability btw. Paladin hero starts without the resurrection spell and the paladin's (creatures) don't resurrect plants, machines yet say they do.
Look, something is clearly not right here. My Paladin HERO has no resurrect spell like he did in KBTL, fine..make it so that he is totally useless, not my call. Even worse, I finally get some Paladin creatures only to discover that their ability only resurrects themselves and no other surrounding unit. This can surely not have escaped the game devs attention.

Great :)

I realize it's sort of hard to understand it - I myself had some trougbles grasping it. The general rule of thumb is:

Heroes (Warrior, Paladin, Mage) have skills
Units have abilities and some may cause post-effects (burning, poisoning)
Spells have (or don't have) effects

This is how I remembered the terms :)

And please read the explanation in the other topic, because this is NOT A BUG.

I just found target from a field salvage.:)
I also just got phantom from salvage.