No Loss thoughts?

[Loopy]

Originally Posted by Sapher

May be i messed up a bit, so now i dont have enough runes for lvl3 magic The gift. Can it be a source of infinite resurrections? Recharge Soothsayers ability, then there is a spell, that gives runes and a spell that converts runes to mana. Would it work? Or i would run out of mana?

lvl 1 rune magic: Runic word gives 2 runes for 3 mana. Chargers costs 3 mana to convert 3 runes into 3 mana or rage each. Casting RW x3 and Chargers x2 costs 15 mana and will give you 0-18 rage/mana. Assuming 50/50 rage/mana chance thats spending 15 mana to get 9 back

lvl 2 rune magic: Runic word gives 4 runes for 5 mana. Chargers costs 5 mana to convert 6 runes that gives 4 mana each. RW x3 + chargers x2 costs 25 mana for 12 runes. 0-48 mana returned, or an average of 24 mana per 25 mana spent.

lvl 3 rune magic: Runic word gives 6 runes for 7 mana. Chargers costs 7 mana to convert 9 runes that give 5 mana each. RW x3 + chargerx x2 costs 35 mana for 18 runes converted. 0-90 mana returned, average of 45.

So you need lvl 3 rune magic to get past break even on average. Getting that before Ahriman requires lvl 5 and lots of might runes. Even then, getting enough crystal for lvl 3 runic word and chargers might be a problem. And even with lvl 3 rune magic you risk a bad run wiping out your mana battery completely (though you can compensate by using runes that your units bring into battle with them).

[baronm]

Whew, just got off island no-loss impossible with mage.

Was not easy.

I'm definitely not happy with the first island in this game compared to KBAP, they give you way too few options.

It seems like the enemies are actually easier, but you dont have nearly the resources available in KBAP early on.

PS how lame is it that the one decent ability available to you from any unit is the soothsayer take over ability which doesnt work on any of the undead which dominate the first island!?

Anyway...

There are three hard fights you have to beat to get off the island.

First is Ahriman.

Not sure why ppl had so much trouble with Ahriman, it only took me a few tries to beat him w/o any useful found spells and only rune spells lvl 1. I might have just gotten lucky tho. I used ancient bears, slingers, soothsayers, berserkers, and axe throwers. As far as i can remember his units arent really a threat just be careful, try to take out the archers early, and if you get lucky and his archers dont bash the slingers and he doesnt use poison skull it shouldnt be that hard. It will take a few tries tho, might be a good idea to use more bears instead of slingers tho.

Last hero of the three is pretty easy. I used basically the same setup as for Ahriman, except by that time i had lvl 2 rune spells. Ended up just one might rune short of lvl 3. 8-( The only useful spell i found on the entire island was a lifesaver here, i forget the name but it makes ice crystals on the field. Basically this guy has one very large stack and all the others are weak so i used the crystals to block and kite the large stack. Still took a few tries before i got him to cast poison skull on me only once, and on my soothsayers who didnt die from it. The only thing hard about this guy is that he seems to like to cast poison skull more than the others, maybe he has a smaller spell list so its more likely each cast or something.

Middle hero (Necromancer) is the hardest by a huge huge margin. If you manage to beat him no-loss don't worry about the last guy, he will be a breeze in comparison. Just a warning though, you shouldn't even bother trying (with mage at least) unless you're a masochist like me or get lucky on spells you find. Healing or Nature's Call would probably make this much much easier. The only spells i cast the whole battle were lvl 2 version of that circular ice damage spell w/e its called and 2 spare fire scrolls and a magic missile scroll. Used rage talent too every turn ofc. These things did almost all my damage. I tried many different variations of units before i beat him, but as well as strategy you need an absurd amount of luck to beat him so the setup i won with might not necessarily be the absolute best. I had ancient bears, berserkers, axe throwers, and soothsayers split into two stacks, 1 of 2 and 1 of 1. Was lvl 5 and ofc had the 20 no-loss battles leadership boost.

Anyone looking for advice on this fight the one thing that will definetely help is having at least 2 stacks of soothsayers for some tanking, but no matter what you do you'll need to be very lucky b/c the battle takes quite a while, his units are extremely strong, and a single unlucky cast of poison skull or scimitar will ruin your attempt. His units have bonus poison damage, nice hero bonus stats, and underground +50% def boost, so they way outperform their numbers. Suddenly just 10-15 skeletons are still a huge threat.

Was pretty epic when i finally won, after probably 40 attempts, the battle was going pretty badly, and i was sure i was screwed and about to start over, but i went one more turn just to make sure, and miraculously i got his last large stack of units, 12 zombies, to hoplessly chase my bears around to the opposite end of the map. Meanwhile the rest of my units were just barely able to deal with what was left. Heh. When the battle was over every single one of my units was deep in red hp, and a couple of them had like 3 hp each.

Ok, so the advice i would give to anyone attempting this, save yourself a lot of time energy and agony and asap when you make a new mage run around the island and try to see if you can find a healing or natures call scroll, as either of these would probably make this battle much less of an impossible ass-ache. If you cant' find one, you may want to restart, however, i can say after spending quite a few hours on just that one boss that it is possible to win without finding a single useful scroll, just dont expect to do it on the first try.

Or even the first thirty
;P

tl:dr

The necromancer's the hardest. Try splitting your soothsayer stack up for more tanking. You're better off if you can find healing or natures call, but i didnt have either so it's possible without.

[FromWisdomToHate]

Just finished 1st island with no loss on impossible with viking. Got lucky with treasures in combat and around the island and got 7 call of natures

My main dmg dealers were ancient bears and berserkers which are my favourite because of berserkers shield.

.....and now to explore the world

[MattCaspermeyer]

You won't believe this, but I'm literally 2 Leadership shy from getting a 3rd Soothsayer. Could use that 1% form Jarl now...

Now that I know that I need to defeat Uladar to get off the island, I'll see if I can come up with something...

/C\/C\

[Razorflame]

LMAO

unlucky with the ldrship flags haha

[Fatt_Shade]

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

You won't believe this, but I'm literally 2 Leadership shy from getting a 3rd Soothsayer. Could use that 1% form Jarl now...
Now that I know that I need to defeat Uladar to get off the island, I'll see if I can come up with something...

I remember similar run, but in end game score first time i play KB-AP i read lost of pointers and strategy and since i already did KB-tL decided to go for high lvl run in the end had all quests , pet dragon 60lvl, some 11 days played, upgraded all items to max beat all enemy(some 360 battles, 84 enemy heroes and so on) and was 1 experience point less then 63lvl. I had 1799999 (or something) and 63lvl is on 1800000 End game score i`m looking at screen and cant believe what happened

[Loopy]

Originally Posted by baronm

Not sure why ppl had so much trouble with Ahriman, it only took me a few tries to beat him w/o any useful found spells and only rune spells lvl 1. I might have just gotten lucky tho. I used ancient bears, slingers, soothsayers, berserkers, and axe throwers. As far as i can remember his units arent really a threat just be careful, try to take out the archers early, and if you get lucky and his archers dont bash the slingers and he doesnt use poison skull it shouldnt be that hard. It will take a few tries tho, might be a good idea to use more bears instead of slingers tho.

Units aren't really a threat? 3 stacks of skeletons with 40 in each, able to bone gate and easily take out anything that isn't soothsayer? 2 large stacks of decaying zombies, vampires, ancient vampires, and a necromancer? He easily had double the army strength of the other two bosses, which practically melted after my first two spells, while Ahriman's army still has 2/3rds of its strength left.

Did I just get a really bad spawn on him or something? Because he has 7 stacks of units who are all able to kill any unit that isn't a Soothsayer the first time they attack, and Soothsayers will lose about half their health. I can't see how people who talk about just using heal are doing this. Pretty sure Warriors/Paladins aren't able to stack THAT much defense more than a Mage.

EDIT:

Heh, loaded up a second game to check his variance. Here's what I'm seeing:

Original game:
113 skeletons
55 skeleton archers
29 decaying zombies
6 vampires
2 ancient vampires
1 necromancer

1356+770+1160+480+360+200 leadership = 4326 leadership total

New game:
46 skeletons
28 skeleton archers
15 zombies
11 decaying zombies
3 vampiers
2 ancient vampiers
1 necromancer
552+392+450+440+240+360+200 leadership = 2634 leadership total.

This is a HUGE difference. This is a 65% increase in the strength of units. Since difficulty isn't a linear increase (In the new game I could kill half their force with my first spell), this is at least a 3x disparity in difficulty due to the random spawns. Which when no-lossing is then more like a 5-10x increase in difficulty due to how much more difficult it is to avoid deaths.

Bottom line: It may be best to scan savegames for enemy size rather than items. I don't have any Call of Nature scrolls in my original mage game, but if I did I would trade every one of them for reducing their stack sizes by nearly 50%. Seems a bit odd that with the first island clamping down and offering no randomization at all in units available and very little in items that enemy stack sizes should display such variance.

[zjazd18]

Originally Posted by Loopy

Did I just get a really bad spawn on him or something? Because he has 7 stacks of units who are all able to kill any unit that isn't a Soothsayer the first time they attack, and Soothsayers will lose about half their health. I can't see how people who talk about just using heal are doing this. Pretty sure Warriors/Paladins aren't able to stack THAT much defense more than a Mage.

Well as Pala u can have 4 Soothsayers which is nice aoe dmg giving u mana and rage from then throw in nice placed aoe rage spell u can really reduce his stacks from range, add slingers - they are a bit of gamble and will be main reason of additional reload but they also do aoe dmg. Dunno how it is for warrior/mage but really with call of nature any class should be able to do it.

[ihira]

I'm just wondering how you guys are going to no loss the 'first no rage allowed real boss'.
Like if its possible at all.

I'm playing Warrior on hard and a huge casualties is inevitable for me.
good luck.

[coRex]

Originally Posted by ihira

I'm just wondering how you guys are going to no loss the 'first no rage allowed real boss'.
Like if its possible at all.

I'm playing Warrior on hard and a huge casualties is inevitable for me.
good luck.

i play warrior on impossible and i guess there is NO way that you play no loss against this boss... because his counterattacks do ridicilous amounts of dmg to melee AND ranged...
so i changed my team to some "lower" creatures, because i dont want to loose my good units.
snow bears, sea dogs, did a very good job with some buffs.

once you get to the other islands from kings bounty the legend no loss will become VERY easy, even on impossible...

just go with rune mage, royal griffin, inquisitor, paladin and Soothsayers
with this combo you can get HUGE amounts of spawned creatures - use them to block and rezz with pala and inq if you get some ranged hits or skeleton "teleport" hits...

if you want a more dmg combo you can change pala to a good ranged (acutally i have royal thorns in my lineup for even more creatures and ranged dmg). but without a pala you have to bee VERY careful with your creatures!