KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[Zhuangzi]

Matt, in that game I left the two hardest Catacombs stacks, which meant I was just a few points short of Level 5 by the time I hit the Shelter and defeated the Dwarves. I am trying the other Kamikaze save instead in the hope that it will prove easier. I don't know how you or anyone else manages to whittle down those huge stacks of spiders in such a small arena. I can manage all but two of them. I guess I will try again! I am wondering whether I ought to prioritise Diversions 2 somehow. I don't know if it's possible to get Diversions 2 and Chaos 2 by level 5...

[MattCaspermeyer]

I'm not gonna lie: this battle with the Elves pushed me to my limits, in fact I had essentially given up and was going to post here in the forum that I didn't think it was possible.

However, I went back at it again and I was able to do it!

First and foremost thanks to Frost Grasp, I was able to do the 3 easiest Catacombs stacks and the Spider stack in front of the Dragandor gate. These fights will give you enough exp to get to Level 5 after defeating the Dwarven Shelter stack.

Everything had to fall into place right with the Elven stack fight - one misstep and you'd die.

I also had to resort to a tactic that I don't like to use, but the Diversion skill's effects change if you save the game, start the fight, reload, immediately save again, start the fight, reload the newer save, save again, and start the fight - if the troops that you want get Diverted, then you reload the older save when trying it again. If not, then you load the newer save and repeat the above steps until the troops that you want to be Diverted are affected and then proceed to use this save game as your basis for trying to defeat the Elves.

This was actually the first time I used this strategy to do a fight no loss.

So with this strategy, I was able to get the Elves and Lake Fairies Diverted on round 1 and the 4 Werewolves stack killed themselves on the trap. You can't get any better than that! After this, finding the right sequence was exceedingly difficult, but I took the Elves from 9 -> 6 with Poison Skull Level 2 on round 1 (so that the Elves could no longer kill one of my Vampires at the start of round 2), and the Fauns from 13 -> 2 with Poison Skull on round 2 (and then the Poison took them down to 1). On round 3, this is the key, I used the Kamikaze scroll since the Lake Fairies have the Dispel ability. By this time, on round 3 the 12 Werewolves and 108 Lake Fairies were a hex away from my Vamps and so I had to transform to Bats, but you have to wait until everyone does their turn so that you can take advantage of your Bats getting full health on the transformation. On round 4, the Lake Fairies dispelled the Kamikaze on them, ending their turn and allowing my Bats to escape. So then I cast Kamikaze Level 2 on the Werewolves before they began their turn and then ran away as far as I could. The Elves were down to 5 at this point due to the Poison and the Fauns at just 1 were pretty much irrelevant at this point. I then had to position my Bats to get the Lake Fairies to position themselves so that they'd take a route that would allow my Bats to keep escaping. I then took the Elves from 5 down to 1 with a Poison Skull. On the next round I had to use Frost Grasp to damage the Lake Fairies so that they were small enough after the bomb went off not to hurt me too much. I then positioned my Bats so that I could get the Lake Fairies and Werewolves to be adjacent and 1 hex away when the bomb went off. It took out 8 Werewolves and the Lake Fairies were down to about 44. I was also able to transform back to Vampires and I still (luckily) had 2 left (they were probably down to 5 hp when they regenerated). They were able to regenerate and stay at 2 as I then used another Kamikaze scroll on the Lake Fairies and then another on the Werewolves, which were still at 4 units. Unfortunately, the Werewolves transformed on me canceling the spell, but I was able to take them down by regenerating Mana and using a Level 2 Frost Grasp on them leaving 1 left. I then had enough Mana to cast a Level 1 Frost Grasp later to finish them off and the rest was history!

I probably tried this fight 50+ times to get the sequence right!

The key to this fight was to Divert the Elves and Lake Fairies on round 1 because without this, there is simply no way to do it. The next key was using the Kamikaze scroll saving me 5 Mana (I had been casting it @Level 1 since I knew the Fairies would dispel it, but I really needed that 5 Mana to cast Frost Grasp @Level 2 on the Fairies later) so that I could take the Elves from 5 down to 1 and use Frost Grasp to kill about 20 Fairies (using the scroll left me with me exactly 7 Mana for me to cast it @Level 2 on the exact round that I needed it).

As you can see, everything had to fall into place, with most damage being at least above average and sometimes even close to maximum (especially to take that pesky Faun stack from 13 down to eventually 1 unit).

I then did the Human stack, which was actually pretty easy since you just cast Kamikaze Level 2 on the Priests (13 of them) and then the Bowmen (18 of them) on the next turn. Two casts of either Poison Skull or Frost Grasp took the Inquisitors down to 1 or 2 and then I finished them off with another spell (@Level 1). At the end of round 3 the first bomb went off, and then the second on round 4 killed the remaining Priests and Bowmen. Lastly the Guardsmen and Swordsmen are severely damaged with another Kamikaze at Level 2 and then I whittled them down the rest of the way as they were the only troops left.

By the way, it is better to get Concentration Level 2 rather than Meditation Level 1 for the Kamikaze strategy, because you only get +6 Mana with Meditation, but over a 20+ round fight you'll actually regenerate enough Mana for at least 2 extra spell casts (you'll essentially regenerate 27 Mana compared to just 12 or 13)! With this I only had 28 Mana at the start of the fight.

If you don't get Lake Fairies, but rather Sprites, then the Elven stack is significantly easier (I had Sprites in my test) as they only move 4 and can't dispel your Kamikaze's. You simply cast Kamikaze once each on the Sprites and 2 Werewolves and they should almost all be dead after all the bombs go off and then just work on the Elves with a Poison Skull / Frost Grasp or two and you're good to go!

I sure hope the other save game has Sprites instead of Lake Fairies because this was even harder than the Ball of Lighting!

I haven't done the Basement or Whitehill, yet, but the Elven Shelter stack is so much harder than those, I'm not worried.

By the way, I repeated the fight to take some screenshots - I probably don't need to use the remaining 2 Kamikaze scrolls as they can't hurt me any more towards the end.

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

Crap, well done. I have tried and tried but I can't seem to do either of those fights currently. I am playing the other Kamikaze save so my stacks are different. I may have to restart AGAIN with your game.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Okay, finished up the fights through Whitehill no loss with the 4 Kamikaze scrolls in the Dragandor Ore Cart save game.

Some of the Basement stacks were a little tricky, but once you figure out which unit is going to be in the middle when that Level 2 Kamikaze goes off, you can really optimize the damage output of that spell.

By the way, Level 2 Diversion is possible @Daert Level 6. In this game, the exp was lousy as I needed to kill all 3 Basement stacks and complete the digging quest to get to level 6.

Whitehill was a little tricky because the easiest stack ended up not being the easiest and so I switched to a harder stack. With the harder one, I used the Jealousy feature where a ranged stack that runs away from the Statue stays Jealous after the Statue disappears. That made it really easy.

Overall, this was easier than the Ball of Lightning strategy except for the Elven Shelter stack, which has been by far the toughest no loss fight I've done so far with Daert and these save games.

I sure hope the other Kamikaze save game has Sprites because then it would be a lot easier.

By the way, I think we need some more options about what Daert says back to the Spirit of Darkness for when we defeat the Shelter Guardians:

Spirit of Darkness: "Daert, did you kill the Guards of Light?"

Daert:

1. "Yes, it was not difficult."
2. "I will come back soon with a report! (Leave.)"
3. "Yes, it was so easy that I'd like to take on the Light with just 2 Vampires and no spells for the next 500 fights!"
4. Are you freaking kidding me? What the holy @#$% was that?!
5. I bet if Neoline drew the shortest straw it would have been easy!

I'd really like to hear what you would say to the Spirit of Darkness after completing Daert no loss through the Shelter!

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

A couple of things for anyone else crazy enough to try this (I haven't finished the final two fights yet)...

1. You MUST be level 5 by the time you defeat the Dwarven stack, the first of the Shelter stacks.

2. By level 5, you've spent your runes on Diversions 1, Concentration 2 and Chaos Magic 2. You'll have about 4 Mind and 4 Magic runes to spare. This is so that you can have a pool of about 50 mana for each fight, you can cast Level 2 Kamikaze and Frost Grasp, and you have one trap on the field (and a chance for troops to lose their turn, which as Matt explained, you'll have to abuse to get through these last two fights).

3. You need to do 10 fights to get up to Level 5 by this stage. These are 3 on Portland (easy), 3 in the Catacombs (quite hard - all but the two biggest spider stacks), 1 Spider in Dragandor (very hard), 1 when you get Bagyr/Neoline (very easy), 1 Captain of the Guard (quite easy now that you are level 4) and the Dwarven stack in the Shelter (easy but time consuming).

4. All of these fights are using just 2 Vampires. You could use the Ghosts as well to draw enemies away on certain fights. You will have to learn how to use Vampires optimally, which means learning exactly when to move and transform them. The great strength of Vampires is that they regain ALL hp when they transform, so it's very important to learn to use the Wait command strategically.

5. Having said all of the above, I've been banging my head against the wall with this over the past couple of days.

[DGDobrev]

Good job guys, good job You are lining up the stars and planets for poor Daert like expert tacticians. I don't know if I feel masochistic enough to try this myself, but I do know I will have a go at it sometime in the future.

[Zhuangzi]

I can't do this! I am up to these two fights on BOTH Kamikaze games and I can't manage either stack in either game. Very sad.

The amount of reloading and resaving you need to do to get those particular troops diverted, geez. I guess if I got the EXACT two troops diverted (Elves and Lake Fairies) I might be able to do it, or not.

The other Kamikaze save is easier in some ways and harder in others.

9 Elves -------------------- 9 Elves
12 Werewolves----------- 13 Werewolves
108 Lake Fairies --------- 83 Forest Fairies (okay, that's better!)
4 Werewolves ------------ 13 Werewolves (ouch!)
13 Fauns ----------------- 10 Fauns

So yes, I can see that the Forest Fairies are easier (and slower) BUT you can't force them to skip their move by dispelling, and with the extra stack of Werewolves, christ.

And the other fight...

10 Guardsmen ----------- 12 Guardsmen
13 Priest of Light--------- 15 Priest of Light
18 Bowmen -------------- 21 Bowmen
7 Inquisitors of Light ----- 8 Inquisitors of Light
19 Swordsmen ----------- 12 Witch Hunters (and they dispel the bombs!)

I have tried various tactics on all four fights. I have tried to get two troops diverted through laborious save scumming. I have tried splitting the vamps or keeping them in a pair. I've even tried loading up with ranged units and hoping to get lucky with what their ranged units shoot at.

Nup, not working, not ever.