[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by zjazd18

Anyways now you are free to go and figure out start of Vampire or Orc. Maybe it's possible to do it without alternating starting troops/spells.

Well I played about 4 hours last night with Vampire, no loss impossible.

It certainly is significantly harder than Demoness.

Portland is a lot smaller than Atrixus with respect to what you can explore before you have to go through the portal to the Catacombs.

You guys are right, the starting army is really lame - 11 Skeleton Archers, 5 Decaying Zombies, and 2 Ghosts. You then pick up 2 Vampires and 5 Skeletons. You can then buy more Decaying Zombies and Skeletons in the Zombie shop before you go to the Catacombs.

Starting spells are Poison Skull and Slow and you get a Plague Scroll.

I couldn't even do the first Catacombs fight without having to ditch everyone but the 2 Ghosts and Vampires and that fight took a long time for me to no loss it because of the Thorn Warriors.

I decided to skip all the other Catacombs fights and just work my way to the Shelter to see how 2 Ghosts and Vampires would fair. You can do the Black Gate fight with just 2 Vampires separated into 2 stacks by putting them in one of the corners so it is 2 stacks of 1 Vampire versus 3 of the Dwarven troop stacks. I also had Poison Skull and it reduced the stack sizes so that the Vampires could handle them without dying since they regenerate.

I then went on to the shelter and a single stack of 2 Vampires can no loss the Dwarf Shelter stack if you turn them into Bats and then kite around the map whittling them down and using your Poison Skull, but it took over 100 rounds. I took a stab at the Human and Elf stacks and a different strategy would have to be used (the Vampire Bat kiting strategy won't work with them).

So I'm not sure how much more effort I want to put into no loss Vampire - I'll probably go back to my save in the Catacombs and try to defeat the other spider stacks, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get another level out of it when defeating the Dwarven Shelter Guard stack later.

I was really hoping that I could get Chaos Magic Level 2 and pump up my Poison Skull spell, but I was a Might Rune short at Level 3. I need to get to level 4 to be able to get Chaos Magic Level 2 and when I went ahead, I ended up putting 2 levels in Concentration to get me more level 1 Poison Skulls per fight (that's 21 extra mana for 4 additional Poison Skull casts during a 15+ round fight).

I'm not even sure if level 2 Poison Skull will do me much good.

So that's where I am, I'm not sure how much more I want to try before I switch over to the Orc to see if he can fare any better.

It may be possible with fights with lots of living creatures to go with more of an army if you can resurrect your troops via the Eviln, but I don't understand the mechanics of how it works. It seems like if the Vampires kill a living (non-plant) troop there is a good shot at getting Eviln to appear, but not so much with the other Undead troops.

I'll probably have to look into the code to see how it works.

I did get Magic Shackles from the Clarissa quest, but that spell doesn't seem like it is going to help me very much at the beginning of the game.

By the way, the reward for Clarissa's quest is either a level 1 or 2 Distortion or Chaos Magic Scroll so it is possible to restart the game and get one of the following spells as a reward for this quest:

• Distortion:
  • Level 1:
    1. Blur
    2. Haste
    3. Precision
    4. Slow
    5. Stone Skin
    6. Time Shift
    7. Whirlwind
  • Level 2:
    1. Berserker
    2. Flammable Oil
    3. Magic Shackles
    4. Magic Spring
    5. Pain Mirror
    6. Snow Storm
    7. Trap
• Chaos:
  • Level 1:
    1. Chaos Missile
    2. Fear
    3. Flaming Arrow
    4. Frost Grasp
    5. Poison Skull
  • Level 2:
    1. Chaos Weapon

So that's what we've got to work with playing Vampire as far as another possible starting spell since you get it after just one fight.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear if anyone who's trying Vampire can no loss through Whitehill with the original released (V1.5.1047.1747) build as someone mentioned here that you used to start with 2 Necromancers and Ancient Vampires during the EA.

As an aside, I could see giving the Vampire some additional low level spells to help during the early game - he starts with only 3 spells (Poison Skull and Slow and Plague as a scroll); whereas, the Orc starts with 4 spells (Slow and Haste and then scrolls of Berserker and Fear). Why would a Warrior (Orc) start with more spells than a Mage (Vampire)? Seems strange to me. The Paladin (Demoness) even gets Hypnosis, a "Level 5" scroll. Seems like there needs to be something done for a starting Vampire - I could see Evil Book being a good scroll to give to the Vampire at the start of the game (it is just a Level 3 scroll - same as Plague).

I think if I were to try to help the Vampire's starting situation, I would swap Plague for Evil Book and give that a try since they are the same level of spell.

/C\/C\