Shall we start a new high score/info thread? (Spoilers inside)

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Actually, it's a bit harder, at least in my eyes Lina had the chargers skill, which at good level provided enough rage and mana that could be easily converted into more mana. Here, the dragon can transform 25 rage into 25 mana at best. Still the phantom spell works wonder, as you so rightly say

Yeah, I also miss that Lina's chargers gave Rage as well as mana, plus there were more then one chargers. But at least the Dragon's skill can be used every round.

[DGDobrev]

Provided you have the rage

On normal, you can simply use the dragon to trample any enemy. The rage income is really wicked and you can use the War frenzy skill in the first round, combined with the multi-hit diving skill in every other round, thus seriously reducing the enemy strength. It's actually really nice that they didn't make the lava flow skill reusable in every turn, as that would simply be way too uber - you can still waste a cast to do it though

Well, in any case, KBAP provides a serious diversion from the usual KBTL gameplay. There are some griefs I have, and I can't bear to refrain from sharing:
(all of this said considering impossible difficulty)

like why the warrior is so overpowered once again, mainly due to the blood thirst skill, which allows you to retain enough rage, even if you wasted it all (mainly on mana for the phantoms), to start the next battle with a free dragon skill? In my eyes this puts him one step ahead of the mage (even with higher magic) because as you know, the constant exchange of blows provides rage, which can be easily transformed into tons of mana. 25 rage for 25 mana? No problem. How much did the phanton spell cost again? 25 mana at lvl 3? Wonderful!
Why the mage is so weak in the beginning and keeps this weakness for quite a while, until she can cast much better mass-hitting spells? Not to mention that stronger spells are found mainly on the islands with the hardest opponents...
why the paladin can finish the game with 100k losses and still not waste even a coin over what he has to? Scapegoat units (preferably with "always retaliates" trait) + Resurrection skill lvl 3 FTW

Well, I'm certain this will all be discussed when everyone gets the game

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Provided you have the rage

On normal, you can simply use the dragon to trample any enemy. The rage income is really wicked and you can use the War frenzy skill in the first round, combined with the multi-hit diving skill in every other round, thus seriously reducing the enemy strength. It's actually really nice that they didn't make the lava flow skill reusable in every turn, as that would simply be way too uber - you can still waste a cast to do it though

Well, in any case, KBAP provides a serious diversion from the usual KBTL gameplay. There are some griefs I have, and I can't bear to refrain from sharing:
(all of this said considering impossible difficulty)

like why the warrior is so overpowered once again, mainly due to the blood thirst skill, which allows you to retain enough rage, even if you wasted it all (mainly on mana for the phantoms), to start the next battle with a free dragon skill? In my eyes this puts him one step ahead of the mage (even with higher magic) because as you know, the constant exchange of blows provides rage, which can be easily transformed into tons of mana. 25 rage for 25 mana? No problem. How much did the phanton spell cost again? 25 mana at lvl 3? Wonderful!
Why the mage is so weak in the beginning and keeps this weakness for quite a while, until she can cast much better mass-hitting spells? Not to mention that stronger spells are found mainly on the islands with the hardest opponents...
why the paladin can finish the game with 100k losses and still not waste even a coin over what he has to? Scapegoat units (preferably with "always retaliates" trait) + Resurrection skill lvl 3 FTW

Well, I'm certain this will all be discussed when everyone gets the game

I breezed through the game on Hard as a Warrior, and I found that once I had upgraded the Might skills completely, I was getting so much rage that I could do Dive Dragon TWICE A TURN. (using the Wake Dragon Spell as well).

[DGDobrev]

Just a quick post to confirm my thread-starting post. There is no Gift spell in KBAP. There is also a new "Forgetfulness" trait on the Lake Fairies and the Dryads which, if successfully activated, strips their target unit of any spells or abilities he/she might have, effectively removing any option to use abilities with charges.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Just a quick post to confirm my thread-starting post. There is no Gift spell in KBAP. There is also a new "Forgetfulness" trait on the Lake Fairies and the Dryads which, if successfully activated, strips their target unit of any spells or abilities he/she might have, effectively removing any option to use abilities with charges.

No Gift in AP? So bye-bye Inquisitors? Or does Timeback make up for this?

I read somewhere that Timeback is now a spell, so level 5 units are now more viable for a no-casualty run. Could somebody post the translation of this spell, from levels 1 to 3?

Looks like they royally screwed my favorite class, the paladin. I like playing no-casualties, and if the class-specific Resurrect ability still counts as casualties... then it just turned from overpowering to useless for me.

And it seems that they even took out Runic Stone...

But paladin is still the fastest way to max Learning though, and I do hope it still starts with a Resurrect scroll, which I believe is the class' greatest redeeming trait.

[DGDobrev]

No Gift, quite right. If there was the gift spell, anyone could do a no-loss victory really easy by simply gifting the paladins over and over. However,, you can master the summoning skill, which, together with Phatom, nets you 3/4 of your paladins stack as a phantom with resurrect ready to use at the cost of 25 mana. So don't worry Things are not as grim as they seem

Timeback compensates to an extent. It acts the same way as in KBTL, so if you had already used the skill in this round, you can return the unit to the previous one and it will have it. However, the next round, it won't have it if you time back it again, pretty much as it was in KBTL. Besides, Time Back costs 30 mana to return a unit to a previous state, while Phantom is only 25, so Time Back is only useful to recover huge losses on a single stack.

Quite right about the runic stone... no more runic stone. However, there is a new rune giveaway system. In this system there are 4 lines of rune giveaways. The game starts at a random line,and after the game hits the last line, it goes back to the first one it picked. As such, in each 4 levels, each char gains:

Warrior: 24 Might, 16 Spirit and 8 Magic runes - total is 48 (12 per level)
Paladin: 12 Might, 24 Spirit and 12 magic runes - total is 48
Mage: 8 Might, 16 Spirit and 24 magic runes - total 48 again

As for the ress scroll... The Pally doesn't have it anymore. It is replaced by a seemingly worthless peacefulness scroll. Still, the paladin can do a lot of no-loss battles with the skill Resurrection lvl 3 (when only 1 stack suffered casualties) - they just won't count as no-loss in the end result

As for the learning, you're right. The Pally can level up pretty quickly this way. There is a guaranteed Shark Tooth item that gives 5% XP and 5% more gold in battle on the second island when you take your first Sword Bearer as a companion (or whatever they'll call it, like the wives in KBTL) with you, you just need to pay him some courtesy and get amazed by his feat of saving a girl from a shark. You can also restart a few times to get the DEGosh's manual (+5% XP, can spawn in the first area) and start off with a decent +XP per battle. That means 20% + 5% +5% = 30% more xp per battle which is really nice. There are other items that give XP as well, but they're not that easily accessible as these 2.

EDIT: So... I made a small calculation concerning the max +XP per battle (something I really like as well)
Marshal's Memoirs - +5% XP per battle
The Hand of Necropolis - +10% XP per battle, +2 Attack, + 2 Defense, Living (Morale falling by 1 after each battle, rising by 1 if there were Humans or Elves in the opponent's army)
Shark Tooth - +5% XP per battle, +5% gold per battle
Learning skill - 20% XP per battle

So, maximum is +40% XP per battle. That's a really nice boost, there is no doubt about that Holy anger no longer gives +XP when fighting undead or demons though. It gives a fixed amount of rage and mana each time your unit hits a demon or an undead instead.

[melwin]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

EDIT: So... I made a small calculation concerning the max +XP per battle (something I really like as well)
Marshal's Memoirs - +5% XP per battle
The Hand of Necropolis - +10% XP per battle, +2 Attack, + 2 Defense, Living (Morale falling by 1 after each battle, rising by 1 if there were Humans or Elves in the opponent's army)
Shark Tooth - +5% XP per battle, +5% gold per battle
Learning skill - 20% XP per battle

So, maximum is +40% XP per battle.

OK so I started a new game as a pally and this is what I got after some "kiting" :

2 x Hand of Necropolis + 2x10% XP
Level 1 Treasure hunter + 3% XP
Shark Tooth +5%XP
Level 3 Learning + 20% XP
Total ----- 48% XP

I still didn't have even one fight ( not counting the tutorial). I'm wondering what will be the max level I'll achieve with this char??

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

No Gift in AP? So bye-bye Inquisitors? Or does Timeback make up for this?

I read somewhere that Timeback is now a spell, so level 5 units are now more viable for a no-casualty run. Could somebody post the translation of this spell, from levels 1 to 3?

Looks like they royally screwed my favorite class, the paladin. I like playing no-casualties, and if the class-specific Resurrect ability still counts as casualties... then it just turned from overpowering to useless for me.

And it seems that they even took out Runic Stone...

But paladin is still the fastest way to max Learning though, and I do hope it still starts with a Resurrect scroll, which I believe is the class' greatest redeeming trait.

You will own this game like you owned TL, don't worry. Instead of using Gift, you will use the Paladin unit (not hero) which is an uber-tank that can resurrect all the units around it. I didn't think of using Phantom on the Paladin and thus increasing my resurrection power, but that sounds like a great idea. The timeback spell is very nice too.

For a Warrior, I had gotten into the habit of casting Mass Haste on turn 1, rushing my knights right into the heart of the enemy to absorb hits, and then casting Timeback on them at the end of turn 2 (i.e. no losses). Royal Griffins probably do this just as well, especially with their instant retaliation, but in general they are a bit weaker than the Knights defensively.

Calinda did it with zero losses - I can see zero losses with a Warrior quite easily. In fact, guys like you have inspired me to try for zero losses in AP as well.

[DGDobrev]

Zhuangzi - nice habbit. I've gotten used to it as well. The next habbit I picked up was to use teleport on the paladins that will put them right in the middle of the enemy lines. That works well with 1 tank + 4 ranged units though. With Dual-tank (Knights + Paladins in my case), things are different and Mass haste is better.

I also wrote to give the info on the time back spell. I sort of missed it during my last read of loreangelicus' post. So, here goes:

Time Back
lvl 5
Enemies can use it: No
cost: 50 000 gold

A unique spell which folds (commands is the direct translation) time. It returns the selected unit to its condition in the beginning of the previous round.

Lvl 1 - Works on targets lvl 1-3
Lvl 2 - Works on targets lvl 1-4
Lvl 3 - Works on targets lvl 1-5

Cost: 30 mana, al levels
Cost to improve: 10/20/30 crystals

This is the translation. It is not affected by any items, attributes or equipment. Some spells that have direct damage, duration, and so on are affected by intellect and other items. Haste and slow are a simple example, there are boots that add 1 turn to the duration.

As for the 0 losses, I agree that it's entirely possible. The 2 battles that will present some challenge are Zilgadis (the tower gremlin boss) and Baal (final boss). Zilgadis can be beaten up with relative ease - once he's down, leave one friendly gremlin tower while you're resurrecting the troops with Paladins + Phantom. I personally did it with 1/4 losses on Red/Black dragons, Paladins and Knights (and so decided to leave it like that since I had to return to Verona to restock anyway) with 2 tanking units next to his left and right feet, because the gremlin is like this:

Gremlin boss (Zilgadis)
1 spot 2 spot Middle Spot 3 spot 4 spot
RH RH RH & LH LH LH

RH is right hand, LH is left hand. Any hit that requires a RH retaliation hits every unit in the RH squares. The same goes for the left hand.

Baal is a different story. Stock up on mana items, especially if you're a warrior or a paladin (you can't summon the dragon here to transform rage into mana) and utilize them. After you're done, have baal summon a wave and kill everything but the imps. Bill Gilbert's forces should be dead by then (at least on impossible that is), which will allow you more than enough time to use phantoms to recover the lost units.

Those should be the hardest battles. I didn't bother doing a no-loss victory - although I think 232 no-loss out of 282 battles is a good example that it can be done. Calinda proved it already, so there's plenty of enjoyment in the moths to come with various challenges

EDIT: In the worst case scenario, I will try to translate the most important portions of the Russian guide. However, I will need some info on the English translation of the skills, spells, etc. I can guess, but people may get confused. So we'll see what happens

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Just a quick post to confirm my thread-starting post. There is no Gift spell in KBAP. There is also a new "Forgetfulness" trait on the Lake Fairies and the Dryads which, if successfully activated, strips their target unit of any spells or abilities he/she might have, effectively removing any option to use abilities with charges.

So THAT's why I haven't found that spell yet. You can use Time Back for a similar effect, though. Bummer though that I have now gotten the map for all continents and checked all buildings and picked up all scrolls, and no Time Back spell yet. Hopefully some quest or liberated castle will give it to me.

Dryads are even more dangerous now with this "Oblivion" (I guess the translator mistranslated "Obliviousness"), don't ever let your paladins near them... But, it's Sprites who have the skill as well, Lake Faries have Fairy Dust.

I have given up zero losses with Warrior - without the Resurrection spell (which I got only after some though battles) I could only do that if I used Paladins in every fight, as well as Droid Guards and Engineers, and cast Phantom a lot. Frankly I wanted to try out all the new units and the new abilities of old ones, not use Paladins trough the full game (an all-dwarven army with the III. level Wind Axe of Elements was extremely effective, but now that I have gotten to Reha on Level 31 I am playing with Lizardmen - bummer that I have not found any good items for boosting a Lizard army).

Even so I have only lost units in 4 battles so far: 8 Assassins and 1 Paladin when defeating Hnagi (good tip for that battle: bring Royal Griffins and summon Heavenly Guardians. Hnagi will always cast Hypnotize on them as she can only has that spell on Level 2, and the Ghost Griffin's spell absorption will cancel that immediatly.) and 1 Foreman and 10 Miners in another battles.
Now that I have Resurrection on Level III I can avoid further losses - my only Level 5 unit is the Tirex and Tirexes can heal very easily by eating corpses.

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

Looks like they royally screwed my favorite class, the paladin. I like playing no-casualties, and if the class-specific Resurrect ability still counts as casualties... then it just turned from overpowering to useless for me.

And it seems that they even took out Runic Stone...

But paladin is still the fastest way to max Learning though, and I do hope it still starts with a Resurrect scroll, which I believe is the class' greatest redeeming trait.

Frankly, I don't care what the game counts. I still consider those resurrected units as no losses. Maybe a later patch will confirm this. It's easier to keep track of your 'no losses' count by checking the "Grand Strategist" medal, even after you reach third level it will count your no loss battles.

Runic Stone is not needed because in Montero, near the palace, in the dwarf treasury you can swap runes. They give 2 for 5, 6 for 10 and I think 8 for 15 runes of a different type.

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

EDIT: So... I made a small calculation concerning the max +XP per battle (something I really like as well)
Marshal's Memoirs - +5% XP per battle
The Hand of Necropolis - +10% XP per battle, +2 Attack, + 2 Defense, Living (Morale falling by 1 after each battle, rising by 1 if there were Humans or Elves in the opponent's army)
Shark Tooth - +5% XP per battle, +5% gold per battle
Learning skill - 20% XP per battle

So, maximum is +40% XP per battle. That's a really nice boost, there is no doubt about that Holy anger no longer gives +XP when fighting undead or demons though. It gives a fixed amount of rage and mana each time your unit hits a demon or an undead instead.

Don't forget about the Medal "Treasure Hunter". It's very easy to get to Level 3, and gives you +3, 5 or 7% experience in battle on Levels I, II and III (you have to find 40,80 and 120 chests for this - both adventure map and battlefield chests count, so use the Dragon skill "Digging").

Holy Anger also greatly lowers defense of Demons (by 15 on max) so essentially it still increases your damage.

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

As soon as I get my hands on the English version, I am going to try for zero losses on Impossible Warrior. Yep, a few of the boss battles will be a unique challenge, but I'm sure it can be done. One of the good things is that the game is a bit shorter (less than 300 battles) so I shouldn't get so impatient.

I did around 90 no losses battle with the Warrior (on Normal though) but it is tiresome, because it only works if you ALWAYS have Paladins in your army (you can also go with Level 5 units and use Droid Guards and Engineers for punching bags, the Engineer has the most powerfull resurrection ability in the game but it only works on mechanical units). But as I said, it gets tiresome after a while - I want to try out the new units, especially the Lizardmen, and I don't want to haul around the Paladins with me. I will do a no lossess game on impossible with the Paladin or the Mage - with the Warrior it reduces the enjoyment of the game.