Surviving on Impossible

[Zhuangzi]

Awesome stuff Leo - this will be fun. You are right about me being hesitant to use Sacrifice, I completely missed it in my first game and in the second I tried it once, and sent my troop into a murderous rage for being over cap. So I don't know how to use it effectively. But I will try when I find the spell.

Things are going very smoothly so far (day 2 - level 4). My strategy at the moment is very simple. Three ranged units (Thorn Hunter, Archer, Priest), a stack of Swordsmen who usually do nothing but occasionally deliver a coup de grace, and most importantly a stack of 4 Horsemen. Horsemen are VERY strong in the early game which is probably why they aren't really supposed to be available, except by the trick of getting past the king's tent guard that someone worked out weeks ago. I think there are 13 Horsemen in the tent so I need to make sure I don't lose any.

I am still spamming Fireball at this early stage. This is a great strength of the Mage, who starts with Fireball without access to Chaos magic as yet. All I do is fireball whatever looks weakest (it's great on Thorns - they take double damage from fire) and then attack strategically with the Horsemen. And the Priests are perfect for Blessing/Healing the Horsemen. With this strategy, and only taking on enemies that are listed as Slightly Weaker or below, I have virtually ZERO losses. Sometimes against a somewhat harder enemy I will lose a couple of archers or a swordsman. And I am up to 25,000 gold already which is a lot for this early stage. There is plenty to do in Darion while you are still weak, and I know the continent so well now that I know which enemy stacks and locations are too hard for me.

This is great fun.

[ThyrsaM]

Great story again, keep us posted.

I think I still don't know how sacrifice works, will have to look into it when I finally get the spell.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Awesome stuff Leo - this will be fun. You are right about me being hesitant to use Sacrifice, I completely missed it in my first game and in the second I tried it once, and sent my troop into a murderous rage for being over cap. So I don't know how to use it effectively. But I will try when I find the spell.

Things are going very smoothly so far (day 2 - level 4). My strategy at the moment is very simple. Three ranged units (Thorn Hunter, Archer, Priest), a stack of Swordsmen who usually do nothing but occasionally deliver a coup de grace, and most importantly a stack of 4 Horsemen. Horsemen are VERY strong in the early game which is probably why they aren't really supposed to be available, except by the trick of getting past the king's tent guard that someone worked out weeks ago. I think there are 13 Horsemen in the tent so I need to make sure I don't lose any.

I am still spamming Fireball at this early stage. This is a great strength of the Mage, who starts with Fireball without access to Chaos magic as yet. All I do is fireball whatever looks weakest (it's great on Thorns - they take double damage from fire) and then attack strategically with the Horsemen. And the Priests are perfect for Blessing/Healing the Horsemen. With this strategy, and only taking on enemies that are listed as Slightly Weaker or below, I have virtually ZERO losses. Sometimes against a somewhat harder enemy I will lose a couple of archers or a swordsman. And I am up to 25,000 gold already which is a lot for this early stage. There is plenty to do in Darion while you are still weak, and I know the continent so well now that I know which enemy stacks and locations are too hard for me.

This is great fun.

I'm about to start a thread cause i'm going out of my mind here without having a resurrect or hypnosis spell at LEVEL 22!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't read all your threads of course but are you aware of the hypnotise/sacrifice of enemy units to replace your own tactic? I'll assume you have but basically you hypnotise one of the enemy then sacrifice it to replace your own lost units as you go along

[Shd]

About Hypnosis...

Don't look only at scrolls sellers. There are artifact which gives you hypnosis when you will win "keepers". An that artifact is not "rare" (especially if your have lvl 22 ).

[leo]

As it turns out, I never got the hypotize spell in the last run of the game at Mage-Hard, so I am not sure if it works in combination with sacrifice.

I did however use Druids to convert animal troops using their tame ability, and then sacrificed them for the double joy it provided. There were three drawbacks though:
- I could only convert low level creatures (I think 1-2 or 1-3) and I had to thin the troop before I could convert it
- The ability works only on animals and that too not all creatures with that "paw" sign indicating animals
- The druids soon turned out to be not very sturdy survivors, and for the most time I was resurrecting the druids themselves. Basically they outlived their utility.

On this note, the beholder hypotise and the demoness charmed creatures did not allow me to sacrifice them. If someone has another experience, do share - maybe I was doing something wrong.

Sorry, I don't mean this to become a sacrifice thread. I think Zhuangzi has a great thread going for Mage-Impossible game experience, and I am keen to contribute to it, and learn from it.

[Namel]

I have absolutely no experience with difficulty beyond normal but here is couple strategies that might work.

Cursed ghost (normal ghosts might work too) If you have stack of 10+ cursed ghosts they suck enemy life and generate more ghosts. In normal I quickly make more and more ghosts never needing to buy any more. If you go over leadership limit you will lose control but at least for me they never turn hostile to me. I think units only go hostile if they are a lot over leadership. If you got sacrifice you can use that whenever stack goes over limit and gain control and replace some died units. Or just use about 80% of max strenght of ghosts and keep rest in reserve.

Another tactic that should make at least start easy. As soon as you are able to go kill turtle. That gives you extra leadership for rank. After that you can go to pirate islands, buy boat and sail around all the islands and gather leadership. money and scrolls. After that come back to finish normal stuff. Should cut your losses a lot since you have very strong army.

[travcm]

It seems to me like wasting runes on trading and trophies will just weaken you in the long run. I had millions of extra gold (w/o any points in trading or trophies until the end, when I had more mind runes than I could spend) on impossible with my Mage. If you are real concerned about money, you can just incorporate Marauders into your army.

Your starting army should probably be Archers, Priests, Inquisitors (if available)/Evil Eyes, Horsemen/Royal Snakes, Archmagi.

The problem with impossible is that you will have to spend a ton of time trying to sneak by everything to pick up rewards before you have a chance at killing it. Technically, you can get Demon Gate as soon as you have access to the Dwarf area (by sneaking around in the Demon world).

One big piece of advice is to save most of the easy, low exp battles for later on when you have the skull (essential) and other items that are activated by # of battles won.

[phoenixreborn]

I just want to jump in in defense of the warrior and improved rage box.

I have no idea about the strains at higher difficulty levels but I will talk about how it was on normal.

Early the shoal was pretty solid, mid-game the underground blades attack was doing enough damage to destroy a high percentage of enemy units. End game I had 111 rage and had developed soul kill enough to halve an enemy stack each turn for 70 rage (1 turn of rest).

So it can work well. Rage potions are not expensive and the ale worked for increasing rage levels.

In addition after I cast the rage spell I still have a regular spell per turn also. You can have at least one magic skill up to level 3.

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks for the input guys. I will definitely try the Hypnotise/Sacrifice combo but there is a part of me that is wondering why I should spend my spells fiddling about like this when I could just nuke the enemy. But we'll see.

About leaving trading and trophies alone - well, I am undecided. I do know that Mind runes are a big problem for a Mage, they just don't seem to be as prevalent as Might runes on the adventure map. I know some people might have millions left over on Impossible but I only had 500,000 left at the end on my Hard Mage game, and I've relied on Trading 3 in the past to get full value from selling items. I had to put a point into Glory which was annoying because it's quite expensive. But I am thinking that I might not bother with Order Magic at all - I barely used it in my last game. Basically, I have played this game without using Resurrect/Sacrifice at all, and then read about other players who seem to use them all the time.

About heading into other areas quickly and leaving easy enemies alone, I will consider this. In terms of not losing many troops, I think I am coming to the end of my ability to do this effectively with my Fireball 1/Horsemen charge. I got to level 5 no problem but there are plenty of enemies in Verlon Forest who are going to take some troops (i.e. money) off of me. I just got Magic Pole Axe from a quest, but I would prefer to get Ghost Blade before killing the big turtle. I don't think I can avoid Order altogether but I think I might only put one point into it.

But the idea of picking up everything that can be looted in Freedom Islands is a good one. There are heaps of things you can get there without fighting at all. Obviously it will be necessary to kill the Kraken and King James in order to get to Kordar at all.

Then I will see if I can get into Demonis to find some Demon Portals.

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Originally Posted by travcm

It seems to me like wasting runes on trading and trophies will just weaken you in the long run. I had millions of extra gold (w/o any points in trading or trophies until the end, when I had more mind runes than I could spend) on impossible with my Mage. If you are real concerned about money, you can just incorporate Marauders into your army.

Your starting army should probably be Archers, Priests, Inquisitors (if available)/Evil Eyes, Horsemen/Royal Snakes, Archmagi.

The problem with impossible is that you will have to spend a ton of time trying to sneak by everything to pick up rewards before you have a chance at killing it. Technically, you can get Demon Gate as soon as you have access to the Dwarf area (by sneaking around in the Demon world).

One big piece of advice is to save most of the easy, low exp battles for later on when you have the skull (essential) and other items that are activated by # of battles won.

The what? Do you mean the Orc artefact you get when you meet the Orc Sharman the 2nd time round in the Elven islands?