[MattCaspermeyer]

I'm not gonna lie: this battle with the Elves pushed me to my limits, in fact I had essentially given up and was going to post here in the forum that I didn't think it was possible.

However, I went back at it again and I was able to do it!

First and foremost thanks to Frost Grasp, I was able to do the 3 easiest Catacombs stacks and the Spider stack in front of the Dragandor gate. These fights will give you enough exp to get to Level 5 after defeating the Dwarven Shelter stack.

Everything had to fall into place right with the Elven stack fight - one misstep and you'd die.

I also had to resort to a tactic that I don't like to use, but the Diversion skill's effects change if you save the game, start the fight, reload, immediately save again, start the fight, reload the newer save, save again, and start the fight - if the troops that you want get Diverted, then you reload the older save when trying it again. If not, then you load the newer save and repeat the above steps until the troops that you want to be Diverted are affected and then proceed to use this save game as your basis for trying to defeat the Elves.

This was actually the first time I used this strategy to do a fight no loss.

So with this strategy, I was able to get the Elves and Lake Fairies Diverted on round 1 and the 4 Werewolves stack killed themselves on the trap. You can't get any better than that! After this, finding the right sequence was exceedingly difficult, but I took the Elves from 9 -> 6 with Poison Skull Level 2 on round 1 (so that the Elves could no longer kill one of my Vampires at the start of round 2), and the Fauns from 13 -> 2 with Poison Skull on round 2 (and then the Poison took them down to 1). On round 3, this is the key, I used the Kamikaze scroll since the Lake Fairies have the Dispel ability. By this time, on round 3 the 12 Werewolves and 108 Lake Fairies were a hex away from my Vamps and so I had to transform to Bats, but you have to wait until everyone does their turn so that you can take advantage of your Bats getting full health on the transformation. On round 4, the Lake Fairies dispelled the Kamikaze on them, ending their turn and allowing my Bats to escape. So then I cast Kamikaze Level 2 on the Werewolves before they began their turn and then ran away as far as I could. The Elves were down to 5 at this point due to the Poison and the Fauns at just 1 were pretty much irrelevant at this point. I then had to position my Bats to get the Lake Fairies to position themselves so that they'd take a route that would allow my Bats to keep escaping. I then took the Elves from 5 down to 1 with a Poison Skull. On the next round I had to use Frost Grasp to damage the Lake Fairies so that they were small enough after the bomb went off not to hurt me too much. I then positioned my Bats so that I could get the Lake Fairies and Werewolves to be adjacent and 1 hex away when the bomb went off. It took out 8 Werewolves and the Lake Fairies were down to about 44. I was also able to transform back to Vampires and I still (luckily) had 2 left (they were probably down to 5 hp when they regenerated). They were able to regenerate and stay at 2 as I then used another Kamikaze scroll on the Lake Fairies and then another on the Werewolves, which were still at 4 units. Unfortunately, the Werewolves transformed on me canceling the spell, but I was able to take them down by regenerating Mana and using a Level 2 Frost Grasp on them leaving 1 left. I then had enough Mana to cast a Level 1 Frost Grasp later to finish them off and the rest was history!

I probably tried this fight 50+ times to get the sequence right!

The key to this fight was to Divert the Elves and Lake Fairies on round 1 because without this, there is simply no way to do it. The next key was using the Kamikaze scroll saving me 5 Mana (I had been casting it @Level 1 since I knew the Fairies would dispel it, but I really needed that 5 Mana to cast Frost Grasp @Level 2 on the Fairies later) so that I could take the Elves from 5 down to 1 and use Frost Grasp to kill about 20 Fairies (using the scroll left me with me exactly 7 Mana for me to cast it @Level 2 on the exact round that I needed it).

As you can see, everything had to fall into place, with most damage being at least above average and sometimes even close to maximum (especially to take that pesky Faun stack from 13 down to eventually 1 unit).

I then did the Human stack, which was actually pretty easy since you just cast Kamikaze Level 2 on the Priests (13 of them) and then the Bowmen (18 of them) on the next turn. Two casts of either Poison Skull or Frost Grasp took the Inquisitors down to 1 or 2 and then I finished them off with another spell (@Level 1). At the end of round 3 the first bomb went off, and then the second on round 4 killed the remaining Priests and Bowmen. Lastly the Guardsmen and Swordsmen are severely damaged with another Kamikaze at Level 2 and then I whittled them down the rest of the way as they were the only troops left.

By the way, it is better to get Concentration Level 2 rather than Meditation Level 1 for the Kamikaze strategy, because you only get +6 Mana with Meditation, but over a 20+ round fight you'll actually regenerate enough Mana for at least 2 extra spell casts (you'll essentially regenerate 27 Mana compared to just 12 or 13)! With this I only had 28 Mana at the start of the fight.

If you don't get Lake Fairies, but rather Sprites, then the Elven stack is significantly easier (I had Sprites in my test) as they only move 4 and can't dispel your Kamikaze's. You simply cast Kamikaze once each on the Sprites and 2 Werewolves and they should almost all be dead after all the bombs go off and then just work on the Elves with a Poison Skull / Frost Grasp or two and you're good to go!

I sure hope the other save game has Sprites instead of Lake Fairies because this was even harder than the Ball of Lighting!

I haven't done the Basement or Whitehill, yet, but the Elven Shelter stack is so much harder than those, I'm not worried.

By the way, I repeated the fight to take some screenshots - I probably don't need to use the remaining 2 Kamikaze scrolls as they can't hurt me any more towards the end.

/C\/C\