KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[Snow11]

I think that calm rage won't be a good idea because the biggest problem you have is how to make enough dmg on the rangers before the melee force you to go in bat form. Without book of evil or other summon to slow them down it takes them 3 rounds to reach you and with 36 mana you can cast poison skull r2 the first 5 rounds.

In my game I managed to clear all 3 stacks in the castle's basement which was really hard but at least I didnt have to rely on insane luck.
The first stack against the spiders I used the battlefield to tank them. There was a close spot in the corner where i left my vamps, then I cast r2 Book of Evil next to them so that thay could be attacked only by one stack. Since the spiders dmg is poison the book could tank 3 stacks for fairly long time, enough to get mana for second book.I think it lasted for 8 rounds because at least in 2 rounds I had 2 books on the field.

The second fight against the 3 big stacks of snakes was the hardest. I had to make the book to tank and dmg the royal snakes alone so that it wont die in 2 rounds. I used 1 scroll of magic shackles when thay were close to avoid the snake bite, and 2 slow scrolls on the other snakes. Once the royal snakes were dead I got enough mana for second book to reduce the numbers of the red snakes and after that it was easy.
After the second fight I finally got to lvl 6 and with r2 Concentration and r1 Diversions the third fight was much easier.

Then the real challenge comes in whitehill where you have to kill at least one of the guards and each of them have like double the size compared to the human guard in Shelter, while you are still with your good old 2 Vampires

So I used rage pot for 10 rage before the fight.
The first round the inquisitors skipped their turn thx to diversion which is good becouse thay were the strongest range and the other 2 already wasted one of my vamps. Then I used the jelousy skill from blackie on the 1 big stack of melee and thanks to some bug thay remained red even after the statue disapeared. That way slaughtering all the mean priests and archers for me After that it took me 230 rounds to finish the guardsmen.
Thanks to this bug it all went fairly easy which is good because i didnt want to start all over again with phoenix spell.
Whithout the bug I dont think it was slightly possible to win any of the fights with my setup of 34 mana. May be with 40 mana and 2 rank2 books from start and alot of luck it would be more possible but those rangers were really scary.

[MattCaspermeyer]

You may be right about Calm Rage; however, I was thinking if you got a good Distortion Scroll from Clarissa then you could put 1 point in Bibliography and then there may be a possibility of getting Distortion to Level 3 when you reach level 5. You can at least get it to Level 2, but not sure if there are any level 1 / 2 Distortion spells that would work well with Calm Rage.

Anyway, just another thought to try to vary the starting strategies for Daert.

Great job, by the way, with the Basement and Whitehill stacks!

I didn't have as much trouble as you had with them - the Spider stack was easy as you mentioned, and I did put a point in Diversion which really helped with the Royal Snake stack. The key there was to get the Royal Snake on the Evil Book and the Swamp Snakes and normal Snakes after your Bats. I was then able to cast my 2nd book 4 rounds later and they both ganged up on the Royal Snakes and took them out. In the meantime, the Snakes had moved to attack the two books and then they took him out, too. Lastly, the Swamp Snakes engaged the books and then was able to beat both of them but since I was down to just Bats versus 1 stack I just cycled them down and finished it.

The other snake stack was about the same - I was able to get two Swamp Snake stacks after the Bats and the rest went after the Evil Book. It is very important, by the way, to work on the normal Snakes first because of their Stun ability. So once again, I was able to get my 2nd Evil Book when the 1st was down to about 1/3 health and then the two were able to gang up on the normal Snakes and take them out. The other 2 Swamp Snake stacks had been split where the weaker stack was on my 1st book and the stronger on my 2nd. I did this while whittling 3 of the 4 Swamp Snake stacks down such that when both books were dead I was able to use the Bats to keep attacking all but the strong Swamp Snake stack (while that stack kept being blocked by the other snakes) such that I killed all the other stacks (the Bats' Life Steal kept them close to full health) and just the large Swamp Snake stack was left. At this point, I performed the cycle and slowly whittled them down and finished it.

I actually thought the Whitehill stack was fairly easy - there was 1 stack of 79 Swordsmen and 23 Priests to go with the Inquisitor and Bowmen stacks! The key here was to cast Jealousy such that the 23 Priests became the jealous troop. By the way, I know how that bug you mentioned works: If a stack is controlled by Jealousy and they step outside of the range of the Statue (which happens a lot with ranged units), then they will remain under its control and as long as they are not within the range of the Statue when the spell expires, they'll stay under its control. So I had this work to great effect as the Swordsmen took out the Priests. I was then able to get my Evil Book up to his Inquisitors and Bowmen and by the time the Swordsmen had gotten to my book I cast a second. The two books easily took out the remaining Bowmen and Inquisitors and then the Swordsmen was able to take out both books, but by that time their numbers were in the 20's and then I did the "BatCycle" to finish them off! It took about 50 rounds. I probably could have done better if I had used Orc Strike twice on them instead of the stupid Necromancer ability, which is not very good in my opinion. I also had 1 Vamp killed by the Inquisitors that moved first at the start of the fight, but then the Bats Life Stole their way back up to max health when just the Swordsmen were left.

I also had forgetten to equip the sword for all but the Whitehill battle (not that +1 Attack would have made much of a difference).

Overall, this strategy is quite a bit easier than the Ball of Lightning which really requires you to BatCycle troops in virtually every fight!

I also didn't get level 6 until after I had defeated all the Basement stacks and completed the quest (which shows how variable the experience gain is because I also did the 3 easiest stacks in the Catacombs). I also had 36 Mana and didn't pick any skills when I leveled up to level 6 and so I had 1 Might, 8 Spirit, and 7 Magic Runes that I didn't use. I figured I'd see if I could do it as is and if I couldn't then I'd look to a skill for help.

So far the verified winning no loss strategies are: 1) Ball of Lightning and 2) Evil Book. Both situations require the spell level to be 2.

I know for a fact that Phoenix Level 2 will work because I was able to do it with Phoenix Level 1, but in my experimental game. I also got Demonologist and Avenger to work in my experimental game, but Avenger is pretty tough due to the fact that you have to let units strike you. This is all through the Shelter fights. As far as the Basement is concerned, I don't think Avenger will help you there so you're going to have to kite those stacks and just dig up the artifacts. Avenger has a shot at working on the Whitehill stacks because you just got take out the shooters.

By the way, in all my tries so for with the latest build (V1.5.1047.1747) the middle Whitehill stack is the easiest.

Also, if you go Order you should have enough Might Runes to boost your Rage - this is what I did for Ball of Lightning and it allowed me to use Jealousy twice and use the Rage Abilities more often which is a huge help in this fight.

Lastly, I just invented a new KB term: BatCycle! This means to whittle slower troops down via your Bats as you essentially move about the battlefield in a circuitous manner, thereby guaranteeing no loss!

/C\/C\

[Snow11]

BatCycle! I like that and I use it alot even after the whitehill. Right now with 26 bats and few spells it's alot of fun I didnt even pick up the Demonologists or any other units, I wanna see how far I can go only with vampires and hopefully with ancient vampires if I get some.

As for the whitehill fight, when I did it I didnt know that you can do only 1 fight. So I gathered all 3 close to each other and was planning to keep 10 rage and most of my mana for the second fight, and do the same for the third fight.
However without saving rage or mana it could indeed be much easier even without the bug.

About other spells that will work for no loss strategy I think that Demon Portal r2 will be beast. With r2 the spawned demons should have more then 1400 leadership and if you get executioners thay will eat everything like it's a piece of cake

[MattCaspermeyer]

I gotcha on the Whitehill fight - taking all 3 out would be a lot harder since you'd want to chain fight them like you were setting up to do and attempting to conserve Mana.

The only problem with Demon Portal level 2 is the randomness. When I tested it, I kept getting Imps / Scoffer Imps (I think once I got a Cerberus) and since the total Leadership of two Level 1's exceeded a single Level 2 then it was better to go with two casts @level 1; however, as you mention, if you can get a single Level 4 unit, then the fight will be easy - I just wasn't so lucky. Going with Chaos Level 1 will ensure that you have Meditation Level 2 at Daert Level 5 (4 if you're lucky) for 2 Demon Portal level 1 casts.

I would not pick higher than Level 1 Chaos until you defeat the Dwarven Shelter stack so that you can either pick Meditation Level 2 or Chaos Level 2 as the situation is warranted for the Elven and Human stacks. Give yourself some flexibility so that if you are lucky and can get a Level 4 Demon troop then go that route. If you can't then go with more Mana.

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

Finished at last! 133 hours later and I'm finally done with my Impossible Demoness No-loss game. I found it challenging in the early game and then again from about fight 120-180, but after that it was very easy and as others have mentioned the final fight is a walkthrough. You'll need Teleport 3 to do it though (at least the way I did it).

Level 74, 131 quests with about 3-4 I couldn't be bothered finishing including the Demon lords of Helvedia. 451 fights which is at least 20-30 less than I could have done with all the various pointless upgrade fights I had available, but I knew the xp wouldn't add up to much so I didn't bother.

Basically I used Dark Paladins, Demons, Wizards, Demonologists and Dragon Riders for the last 100-200 fights, but I swapped the Dragon Riders for Executioners for the final fight. My Wizards have ended up doing an absurd 41% of my total damage due to insanely overpowered Halving ability. With Fortune's Smile my troops were doing about 90% crit at the end.

In the final fight I just used Teleport 3 every turn to put one of the tanks in a corner, which would do about 10k damage per whack. Then all I had to do was time it so that there were some junk enemy units on the battlefield when I killed the Spirit (dwarves) and then I could Phantom + Resurrect to my heart's content.

I really enjoyed King's Bounty Dark Side but I doubt I'm game for a second run-through anytime soon (famous last words!) Hopefully the devs will patch it so that the other two races have a chance at no-losses, else it'll be Matt's mod. I thought that this was easily the best KB game since Armored Princess. My only complaint is that is so loooooooooooong, but I loved the Shelter concept and a couple of the late islands, especially Aralan, were as much fun as the first three islands which I thought were probably the best. For a game with 450 fights I didn't feel like I was grinding pointlessly very much. Sure there were a few bugs and I did get some CTDs very occasionally and having to reload a frozen battle from time to time, but overall it is very stable.

This is a real return to form for the King's Bounty series after the mediocre Warriors of the North. Well done, devs! That was the best $25 I ever spent.

[DGDobrev]

Good job, mate, good job I am very glad you enjoyed yourself. As you said, that's the best 18€/25$ we ever spent on a King's Bounty game, albeit a huge time sink. The devs really went balls to the wall on content with this one, improving many aspects of the game, adding branching quests, where decisions actually matter. We sure can't complain.

I am also not so keen on a run soon, cause I am moving to another city and I will be quite busy + I may not have internet for a while - we will see how long, depends on how quickly the company that installs it reacts. Could be just a few days, could be a week or two. I still have internet at work, so when I'm doing the night shifts, I will be lurking around, checking on Matt's progress. That guy can think really constructively and there is much sense in his ideas.

[Zhuangzi]

I had a try at Daert and managed to get to the Shelter using the 2 Vampire trick. I also managed to destroy the Dwarven stack (no ranged units) by running the vamps around and hitting the enemies with their last move of a turn. Took 109 rounds. But I can't seem to do anything at all about the Human or Elven stacks, not like this. Ridiculously tough. I only got money out of the Ore Cart so all I have is Poison Skull. I put two points in Concentration but it isn't working.