Fixing Starting Daert / Bagyr

[MattCaspermeyer]

Okay, by the way, I finished my Daert start through Whitehill no loss with the changes made above. The only fight I couldn't do was the big Spider stack in the Catacombs. I think you need Evil Book Level 2, but I was 1 Magic Rune short @level 4. So on I went and I was able to do all the other fights no loss through the first Whitehill stack. Since you can return here anyway, I don't think it is a big deal if you skip that stack.

It is more challenging than with 5 Vampires (obviously, I guess), but still fairly doable with skill.

It was fun to play the Female Vampires (I had not even really used them in my Neoline playthrough, although I had purchased a few from the Vampire Lady in Monteville).

Even though they have higher leadership, they are actually not as good as regular Vampires in small numbers because you can't use their Call ability because there are too few of them and the enemy has too many units. Also their Long Attack is really not very useful either and they can't increase their numbers if you lose one. The transformation into a cloud ability is useful, especially for getting an Evil Book close to the enemy.

Nonetheless, it is fun to play them this way and it is also neat to use the Cursed Ghost's Ghost Cry ability and their Life Steal is just enough to be useful even if they have low numbers. One thing weird, though, is that if you lose one, I haven't been able to get them to increase their numbers (something seems bugged here as I thought it used to work).

Anyway, I might do some minor tweaking to Daert / Bagyr, but for the most part, I think these are winning combinations. If the devs frequent the forums, I certainly hope they use this to patch the game such that both of these classes have a chance for no loss through Whitehill just like Neoline on impossible difficulty.

If there is no change, then like @DGDobrev said I'll package the files up and post them here.

/C\/C\

[DGDobrev]

Maybe they decided to remove the numbers increase for the Ghosts, as it was too easy to overgrow a stack and lose control. Might just be a new change specifically for KBDS, as we are expected to play those units. This is both good and bad at any rate.

Technically, it could be fixed by adding the option to grow till leadership cap, or starting battle numbers like the vampires.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Daert and Bagyr No Loss Impossible - Giving Them a Chance Mod

This mod is only for use with King's Bounty - Darkside.

Tired of scanning saves for the right spell combination to do Daert no loss?
Tired of having Bagyr using uncontrollable stacks of spiders and snakes just to survive?
Tired of the fact that Neoline has a chance at no loss impossible with any start, but Bagyr and Daert don't?

Now you can actually play impossible no loss with either Bagyr or Daert, while still being challenged and at least trying all the fights from the start through Whitehill! You also get to start with new troops so that you can get a flavor of them right from the beginning of the game and Bagyr can play like a Warrior and Daert like a Mage and you'll be having fun instead of getting frustrated!

This is a very small mod that implements changes to balance out Bagyr and Daert so that they have a chance at no loss just like Neoline on impossible difficulty level.

Installation Instructions (note that my base Darkside folder is located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\):

1. Extract the "mods" folder in this archive to: sessions\darkside\locations\ under you base Darskide folder (see above for an example of where it is located on my system) so that you have the following files:
   1. sessions\darkside\locations\mods\m_tristrem_start. embryos.loc
   2. sessions\darkside\locations\mods\m_vampire_start.e mbryos.loc
   3. sessions\darkside\locations\mods\hero.txt
2. Play the game! You should note that the starting scenario for Deart and Bagyr are now different, giving you new options and the chance for no loss on impossible difficulty!

Uninstallation Instructions:

1. Remove the mods folder from your sessions\darkside\locations folder (see above for where the base Darkside folder is located).
2. That's it!

Use at your own risk, but I sincerely hope you now enjoy playing as Bagyr or Daert!

If you have any comments or questions, please post them to this forum topic: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=228683

Thanks, and good luck playing this mini mod!

Matt Caspermeyer

/C\/C\

This mod makes changes in the following files:

• sessions\darkside\locations\m_tristrem_start\m_tri strem_start.embryos.loc
• sessions\darkside\locations\m_vampire_start\m_vamp ire_start.embryos.loc
• sessions\darkside\ses.kfs\hero.txt

Here are the changes:

V0.1 - 2014-09-13

• m_tristrem_start.embryos.loc
  • Troops that will join Bagyr:
    • 12 to 16 Furious Goblins
    • 1 to 2 Veteran Orcs
    • 4 to 6 Spirit Talkers
    • 1 to 3 Catapults
    • 1 to 2 Shamans
  • Troll Shop:
    • Items:
      • 1 Neutral level 1 item
      • 1 Viking level 1 item
      • 1 Clay Bowl
      • 1 Trap
    • Scrolls:
      • 1 to 2 Stone Skin
      • 1 to 2 Berserker
      • 1 to 2 random level 1 scrolls of 1 to 2 each
    • Units:
      • Either: 6 Spirit Talkers, 3 Catapults, or 5 Orcs
      • Either: 3 Veteran Orcs, 2 Shamans, or 1 Orc Scout
• m_vampire_start.embryos.loc
  • Troops that will join Daert:
    • 2 Female Vampires
    • 2 Cursed Ghosts
• hero.txt
  • Bagyr:
    • Starting Army:
      • 1 Catapult
      • 2 Orcs
      • 1 Orc Scout
    • Spells:
      • Trap
    • Scrolls:
      • 1 Animal Call
    • Items:
      • 1 Wooden Breastplate
      • 1 Orc Warlord Helm
  • Daert:
    • Starting Army:
      • 1 Necromancer
      • 1 Cursed Ghost
      • 1 Black Knight
    • Spells:
      • Poison Skull
      • Stone Skin
      • Weakness
    • Scrolls:
      • 1 Frost Grasp
      • 1 Kamikaze
      • 1 Evil Book

Download the mod here and enjoy!

There is a newer version available here!

[matod4]

excelent work as usaly from you , do you plan also repair game/bug fixes/difficulty later game increase and add some content also? pls

[MattCaspermeyer]

Honestly, I hadn't thought about it that much, although I have been going through in my current playthrough with Daert / Impossible with the Phoenix save game I posted and I've been fixing things / making changes as I've come across them, even though the game has only been out for a couple of months.

I certainly feel that the developers have a lot more work to do, but I've learned from WotN and I&F not to hold my breath about them fixing stuff. So we may be stuck with fixing things ourselves, as usual.

For example, the Alchemist's Set doesn't show the number of victories, so I fixed that so that it now does.

I also didn't like the fact that Female Vampires are raised as Skeleton Warriors and so I actually went through and totally changed the Necromancy ability so that female troops can be raised as Female Vampires, light troops raised as their dark variants, and I tried to make the raise list more sensical (kind of like what I did in my H3B mod).

I added Fire Elementals to Demon Portal Level 1 (an omission for sure since it says level 1-3 troops) and Executioners to Demon Portal Level 2 (they are level 4 after all, so their omission must be an error, even though I think that goes all the way back to AP).

I also added more animals to the Animal Call spell (i.e. spiders, lizard troops (pretty much all level 4 and below since they are animals), even beholders since they are animals of a sort).

Changing the above makes the game more fun simply because you get to control many more different types of troops between Necromancy, Demon Portal, and Animal Call thereby exposing you to units that you might not normally play or use.

The overpower of Animal Call is also apparent, so I'll probably tweak the power of that once I get to a point where it seems like it is too much (early, it is actually not bad so adjusting it is tricky since you'll kill its early power and utility).

So even though I hadn't really intended to mod the game at this early stage (although I did plan to bring my H3B features to it eventually), I guess you can say that I'm on my way to modding / fixing Dark Side so post your ideas / observations and I'll see what I can do...

/C\/C\

[wyatan]

I'll have to try it out, should provide a nice challenge.

Now, a few observations.

Bagyr

- While it's nice to give the Orc Scout a whirl, there's a whole quest line dedicated (and a late one to boot) to designing and enabling that unit.
If it's available from the start, the game stops making sense in that regard.
Not that it really matters, but well, just sayin'.
- Also regarding the "quest integrity" aspect, the troll shop should still sell trolls. Sure you can't buy them at the start, but when later on you're told that a family of trolls lives there, it rings a bell. While if there were no trolls for sale, the player might go "uh ?" instead.
Minor nitpick, I know.
- I would swap the spell distribution: Stoneskin and Berserker in the spell book, Trap and Nature Call at the shop.
The reason is that Stoneskin and Berserker are both "mainstream" for the warrior class (support spells) and in-character for an orc, while Trap and Nature Call present alternate strategical approaches. So those should be an option at the player's discretion, not an "imposed choice".
- There are two medals that require casting a few spells a lot of time, I believe one spell from each selection should be made available to the player from the start (either by picking spells from both lists, or by editing the medal spell lists to include the new spell selection).

Daert

- Same observation concerning the female vampires as for Bagyr's orc scout.
(Although that quest line is pretty silly in the game, since female vampires clearly already exist).
- On my first playthrough, I got the feeling the game was trolling me: you get Poison Skull as a damage spell... while most of the initial opponents are poison resistant!
Furthermore, Poison Skull is not really in-character for a vampire.
So I'd ditch it.
Frost Grasp would be more "vampirish", and I believe it's a spell that gets little love anyway (well, by me at least, lol). So I'd make that the spellbook spell instead of just a scroll.
- Kamikaze is an interesting tactical spell (and also one that's not getting much use I believe), and it's been proven to be enough to beat the shelter fights (although that's tough), but again, not very "vampirish". Call of Death would be more thematic (although its tactical usefulness here, especially for no loss, is doubtful).
- Same observation as for Dagyr concerning the medals.

[ckdamascus]

Gave it a whirl since my "give myself some fairly ridiculous troops" option failed to result in a no loss. Couldn't quite do it since the elves still do some pretty ridiculous damage. Not sure if you tested it yourself and found some strange way to beat it. If so, I hope it isn't one of those really narrow set of options to do it.

Maybe we should try to figure out why demoness or vampire works. They actually have nuke spells or a useful tree (for the sake of the early battles). Demoness has diversions which gives her traps AND a very strong summoner unit early on. She also has a nuke so this gives her a very good chance. Vampire has nukes and a special unit that can restore all HP and it is fast enough to kite a fair set of units. Also with the right spell and proper usage of his magic skill tree, he can really turn the tide.

Orc has, at best, in the might tree has onslaught for initiative which is only useful if you could actually do meaningful damage early game. You simply don't have enough leadership to hit that minimum threshold of useful damage. Nevermind that if you go straight for onslaught, you will miss out on the more useful rage tree abilities later.

Orc magic is pretty bad since he has the lowest starting mana and no way to even have it recover mid battle. Even if you got the trap trophy after wasting tons of time, it will hardly be of much use. 2 traps per battle then the snore fest of waiting a few minutes to let your rage disappear and mana go back up.

Orc needs a LOT more units or better spells to have a good chance to start with some variety. I went in with a demon, dark paladin, orc veterans, and shaman and still failed. I'll admit though the starting orc units was a great surprise with tons of variety and potential but without a solid tank or two, it simply doesn't hold up.

Anyway, what's all this talk about using "out of control" units? Will it still count as losses? (guessing it will) also if they are the last units remaining, does combat end?

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by wyatan

I'll have to try it out, should provide a nice challenge.

Sounds good - hope you enjoy it!

Originally Posted by wyatan

Now, a few observations.

Bagyr

- While it's nice to give the Orc Scout a whirl, there's a whole quest line dedicated (and a late one to boot) to designing and enabling that unit.
If it's available from the start, the game stops making sense in that regard.
Not that it really matters, but well, just sayin'.

I tried it without them, but simply put, Bagyr needs a unit that can summon troops. The only Orc troop that can do that is the Orc Scout. I realized that you do get them later in the game as part of a special quest, but I figured giving you one or possibly two at the very beginning wouldn't hurt, although I haven't seen the text to the quest line to see if it seems very inconsistent.

Nonetheless, if you read through all my posts in this topic, you'll note that I tried it with all the other Orc Level 4 and below troops, but that wasn't enough. The only other route to go would be to give him a non-Orc summoner. Seems very unfitting to me so that's why I ended up adding the Orc Scout.

The Troll Shop does present an option to provide him with some non-Orc troops, but I wanted him to be able to do it with Orcs only since Neoline and Daert can do it with their race's troops.

Too bad Orc Hunters aren't in the game any more as they would have been a good choice instead of the Orc Scouts and not changed the flavor of the later quest.

As an aside, why aren't the new Crossworlds Orc troops in Dark Side?

Originally Posted by wyatan

- Also regarding the "quest integrity" aspect, the troll shop should still sell trolls. Sure you can't buy them at the start, but when later on you're told that a family of trolls lives there, it rings a bell. While if there were no trolls for sale, the player might go "uh ?" instead.
Minor nitpick, I know.

No worries - this part hasn't been changed (he still sells 1 Troll at the very beginning and note that I only affected the starting Tristrem map, not the one you return to).

Originally Posted by wyatan

- I would swap the spell distribution: Stoneskin and Berserker in the spell book, Trap and Nature Call at the shop.
The reason is that Stoneskin and Berserker are both "mainstream" for the warrior class (support spells) and in-character for an orc, while Trap and Nature Call present alternate strategical approaches. So those should be an option at the player's discretion, not an "imposed choice".
- There are two medals that require casting a few spells a lot of time, I believe one spell from each selection should be made available to the player from the start (either by picking spells from both lists, or by editing the medal spell lists to include the new spell selection).

Tried it with the way you suggested at first (read my earlier posts) and it had very little to no impact on helping Bagyr do no loss.

Playtesting with Bagyr was very important here and unfortunately I came to the conclusion that he needs: 1) Orc Scout for summoning of Wolves and 2) Trap spell so that you can get 3 Traps with Level 2 Diversion + Level 1 Trapper Medal. I tried a lot of other spell combinations that made sense for a Warrior / Orc and they simply were not viable with only 10 to 15 Mana for no loss.

It is not possible to get a spell school (i.e. Order, etc.) @Bagyr Level 5 (I think he needs to be about level 7 or 8 before he has enough magic runes to get a spell school) so you have to give him a spell that can be cast at the beginning of the game that is actually useful to him and the only one that really helps is Trap through the Diversion / Trapper Medal route.

Due to this, it really makes no difference between whether he starts with Scrolls of Animal Call, Stone Skin, and Berserker or he buys them. I went with Stone Skin and Berserker as purchased spells since the sum of them is cheaper than one Animal Call scroll (his start scroll), thus saving him a little bit of money. Don't forget there are also 2 more level 1 scrolls that he can buy from the Troll Shop so he might also get Whirlwind, which I think is a good Orc scroll.

Originally Posted by wyatan

Daert

- Same observation concerning the female vampires as for Bagyr's orc scout.
(Although that quest line is pretty silly in the game, since female vampires clearly already exist).

I don't think this one is as really any concern since you can go purchase them by going to Monteville (i.e. no quest needed to get 10, although you need a quest to get more than that). It adds to the game flavor by starting with them and you get exposed to the only new Undead troop right away.

Strangely, they are not as good as regular Vampires (at least for the early game since their numbers are too few to use their ability that disables an enemy and they can't increase their numbers if one dies).

Originally Posted by wyatan

- On my first playthrough, I got the feeling the game was trolling me: you get Poison Skull as a damage spell... while most of the initial opponents are poison resistant!
Furthermore, Poison Skull is not really in-character for a vampire.
So I'd ditch it.

Poison Skull has always been one of the obvious Undead level 1 spells going back to The Legend. It is the only offensive spell cast by the Undead Statue in arenas so it totally fits giving it to an Undead Mage at the start of the game, even though all the enemies are resistant to it as you mention.

Originally Posted by wyatan

Frost Grasp would be more "vampirish", and I believe it's a spell that gets little love anyway (well, by me at least, lol). So I'd make that the spellbook spell instead of just a scroll.

Frost Grasp is the perfect starting spell for Daert due to the units in the Catacombs. Fortunately, it is easily added to his casting repertoire before even getting there since he starts with a scroll.

Poison Skull is actually just as good if not better suited for early Portland than Frost Grasp due to higher damage potential and lack of resistance of opposing troops. Since you'll be level 3 by the time you are finished with Portland, you'll then be able to learn Frost Grasp for your Catacombs run, so starting with Poison Skull and then learning Frost Grasp seems like a natural progression (although there is no denying having Frost Grasp only would work well, too).

Originally Posted by wyatan

- Kamikaze is an interesting tactical spell (and also one that's not getting much use I believe), and it's been proven to be enough to beat the shelter fights (although that's tough), but again, not very "vampirish".

This may be true, but we really don't know anything about Daert's background, so who knows, he could have been experimenting with explosives as a mage and it is a great way to get you to experiment with a spell that is hardly used in the game (or any King's Bounty game for that matter). Giving it to you as a scroll at the start seems like a great opportunity to allow players to experiment with this spell.

Originally Posted by wyatan

Call of Death would be more thematic (although its tactical usefulness here, especially for no loss, is doubtful).

This was my exact thought process, too, but Call of Death simply costs too much Mana / is not powerful enough at the beginning of the game to really make a difference. I really, really tried to see if that spell would be of help since it seems perfect for Daert. Unfortunately, it just does not help through the Shelter fights and it is also redundant with the Necromancer's ability who can use it more effectively. If it actually resurrected troops, then that would be huge, but it doesn't.

So all-in-all, I think the changes I made to both Bagyr and Daert capitalize on their play styles and give you a flavor of all the new Orc and Undead troops at the beginning of the game, just like Neoline gets Fire Elementals and Blood Priestesses very early (the new Demon units).

The game is actually still very challenging such that you may end up skipping the big Spider stack in the Catacombs, but you at least should try that stack. I was able to do it with Neoline in my original (unmodded) Impossible playthrough and Bagyr was able to do it with this mod, although it was very, very hard. Daert was also able to do it with this mod as well. So mission accomplished!

I also think the spell combinations for both are very well suited for Warrior and Mage playing styles keeping in mind the Mana pool available to each character early, which is a significant constraint on the viability / utility of various spell / troop combinations.

Perhaps there is a way for Bagyr to do it without Orc Scouts, but I haven't found the combination, yet, while sticking to Orc-only troops.

Thanks for your comments - give it a try and post back here with any new thoughts / insights!

/C\/C\

[jahes64]

Hi MattCaspermeyer
And many thanks for creating this fix. Orc and Vampire class were horribly unbalanced in the game i couldn't no-loss win the prologue with them without your fix (mod).

I tried both versions. First version was hard since you had to completely rely on diversion skill and hope for lucky placement of its trap and use trap spell which is weaker. It was hard but i managed to do that difficult spider stack (the one that is sitting in middle of some eggs) after many reloads. But second version is excellent, i was able to beat everything with orc class no-loss (on normal difficulty).

One thing though, one of the quests always give leadership with average amount of ~20, could you fix it so it always give us no less than 25 leadership? Else we can't always buy all available troops (lvl 5 units excluded of course) without some restarts.


But Vampire is still unbalanced. I couldn't beat that big spider stack at the catacombs and was forced to leave it alone. Human stack at the shelter was marked as deadly and was so difficult to win no-loss.
At whitehill first stack was marked very strong, second was marked dealy and the third was marked as INVINCIBLE. I made through the first two stack but as far as i see the third is not do able no-loss. And this is on normal difficulty, we are supposed to be able to them no-loss on impossible difficulty, right?

I have attached my save which is from gog version of the game. Btw, GOG version is on v1.5.1048.1751 if that counts. Probably gog is behind steam .

As i noticed you had those wolf riders removed from second version of the fix, because you are supposed to get them after forming a special order later on.

As i understand same thing goes for female vampires. In my demoness play through after i convinced that female scientist to go to the shelter, i went to the shelter and chatted with her. There was a line regarding these female vampires. Something like "i met a new sort of vampires which were female", which starts their quest. I had to bring 10 female vampires to her, so she could "copy" them. Alas i accidentally deleted the save in question and my quicksaves were overwritten when i played other races.
So i think they should be removed and replaced by other units, since it is not right to have them when you never saw them before and are supposed to make these "new" female vampires through that quest.

Also they are not anything special, their "long attack" is pointless when their base attack is of no retaliation sort, and you have to beat the enemy hard before you can you their "call" ability on them and on top of these, they can't regenerate their numbers.

So i think ancient vampires are good replacements.

Now other two classes have decent troops with lots of variety but Vampire only has four different sort of troops. Demoness has blood priestess which is able to resurrect your units and give you free units out of thin air, with their sacrifice ability (at first you are limited to resurrect low level units because their numbers are too low). And orcs have shamans which are able to heal your units every turn. But undeads can only resurrect by picking Eviln which is dropped randomly and is not reliable, so we should have maximum number of normal and ancient vampires.

A single black knight is no where as good as a single demon, because the demon can counter everyone that attacks him and also gets additional turns when he is attacked, which means he can inflict lots of damage and accumulate additional rage for you. It is not as good as a single veteran orc as well since veteran orcs after a few hits can gobble rage potion and counter anyone as well, also they counter enemy counter attacks which is pretty good against no retaliation enemies plus they can evade enemy attacks (and on top of that, they can run everywhere if you get enough adrenaline and run multiple times, which is good when you are going to defend a weak ranged unit), but what can a single black knight do other that their one-time "run" and weak ranged attack?
I think their number should be added to maximum, so they can hold stronger stacks back for a while longer.

And those cursed ghosts are not of any real use against fire arrows and ranged attack of inquisitors and the fact that their soul drain ability is bugged and makes them unable to resurrect dead units, adds to their uselessness. i always had to keep them on initial spot, because the further they go the more effective enemy ranged units become, and in close range they always use fire arrows and kill cursed ghosts easily. Also they have low hp.

Also since undead army only has necromancers as their ranged units, with no ranged special talent and it is not easy to reach ranged units of the enemy with melee units, their number should be maximized.

I am not sure, but a few skeleton archer could help to bring big spider stack at the catacombs.

Undead has too few leadership, so why not maximum every unit to even things?

Btw, since you improved Orc's leadership from 200 to 250, it would be nice and neat to improve undead's leadership from 180 to 200 and demoness's leadership from 270 to straight 300. 180 and 270 are strange numbers and don't go with 250.

Hope you can fix everything that is mentioned above and give us a new and better version.

-- Edit --

And one thing in regard to shelter stores:
Demon shop sell all lvl 1-3 troops, if you could make orc and undead stores to sell all lvl 1-3 troops that would even things in that aspect.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Unfortunately, I have no time to perform any changes to the mod due to all my time being consumed on another project.

I'm not sure if you're using your spells correctly for Daert.

Frost Grasp and Kamikaze are very effective against the spider stacks and don't forget your Evil Book.

The starting units will bring you to the Shelter without any issues (I played a couple of times on impossible so normal should be cake) as long as you grab all the crystals and get your Evil Book at least to level 1 (if you get it to level 2 even better).

Note that you may have to skip the big Spider stack in the Catacombs - no biggie you can always fight them later.

Evil Book is your key to winning most battles and any troops that you find dying easily against the shelter stacks stick them in your garrison / reserve. Check the no loss posts here for other information to help you with your strategy (I have quite a few in the impossible thread where I was able to do no loss Daert with the original game files if you got a certain spell from the Ore Cart by the Dwarf castle).

Good luck - keep trying!



/C\/C\