KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[MattCaspermeyer]

Okay, I think you need to practice on the Human fights in both of your saves first.

Believe me, you won't believe how much easier they are to do than the Elven stacks.

You may find that with both Elves and Humans placing both Vamps in your leftmost slot will work the best for you.

Doing this ensures that the Werewolves by the Fauns move to the their right (your left). For the Humans, it won't matter as the Guardsmen will go down one path and the Swordsmen the other.

You actually can stay in Vampire form for both Human fights until the melee troops are basically right on you. It is very important that the Priests do not Heal and kill both of your Vamps. Losing one is okay - don't sweat it, it's easy to regenerate on the Guardsmen / Swordsmen later.

For the Humans, cast the first Level 2 Kamikaze on the Priests and then the second on the Bowmen. Then use Poison Skull / Frost Grasp Level 2 on the Inquisitors.

By the time the melee troops are upon you, careful waiting, moving to escape, and then being second (after the Inquisitors) will allow to escape in Vampire form and then the Priests and Bowmen should be dead by the time you need to transform to Bats with just the melee troops and maybe an Inquisitor or two left. Finish them off with a Level 1 damaging spell and then BatCycle the melee troops saving up to cast a Level 2 Kamikaze on them to make the BatCycle go faster.

Practice on that Human squad until it is easy (do both in both games so you get good practice).

For the other game with the Sprites, believe me, this is easier than the Lake Fairies as the extra Werewolves are mostly irrelevant (so long as you don't forget that you can't use your Vamps to kill them). You do have 9 Elves, so only worry about getting them Diverted (I guess if you Divert both the Elves and the Fauns, that is a bonus).

Position your Vamps in the leftmost spot so that the Sprites and Werewolves go the right (your left) path. You need to cast at least 2 Kamikazes on the Sprites and Werewolves (that are closest). You'll eventually work your way away from them on the right side, switching to Bats to escape. On round 3 you'll have to work on the Elves with Poison Skull Level 2, but be sure to save enough Mana to cast another Kamikaze on the last stack of Werewolves (if you can cast a third Kamikaze on them on round 3 instead of Poison Skulling the Elves do it, but you'll just have to see how it goes).

What makes both of these fights difficult is that the 9 Elves can Double Shot kill (barely) one of your Vamps on round one. If the above does not work, you'll have to Poison Skull the 9 Elves on round one so that they do not kill a Vamp on round two. But, this delays your Kamikaze's, although this worked for me with the Lake Fairies.

Sequence is everything for these fights as well as subtle positioning of your Vamps to get units to use more action points, you may have to experiment with who you put the Kamikaze on first. As a note, there are situations where Kamikaze will make troops skip their turn. Something to do with casting it on a higher initiative troop, so you may find that you need to do this thereby causing lower initiative troops (maybe just one) to skip their turn, but be careful because more likely than not, it causes troops to separate when you want them bunched up for that kaboom! I've seen this happen a lot, especially in the Basement when I'm trying to defeat those guys.

Good luck, maybe I'll try the other Kamikaze game later...

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Rejoice, my friends!

The Phoenix has arrived!

You can skip all the Catacombs fights (but be sure to get all those Crystals, though), skip the stack in front of the gate in Dragandor and just run to the Ore Cart. Get Level 4 Daert and let the fun ensue!

I finally got another elusive Phoenix scroll (4 of them!!!!) and am posting the save here. I actually got one with one of my Daert modded games, but never used it since I went Chaos in that game.

There is one note to be careful about with Phoenix, and that is the fact that the Bibliophile skill is bugged. If you pick it first, it will not give you the Crystal rebate. So make sure you pick it second at least, or last if you're really worried. I had forgotten about this and was short on Crystals when I was in front of the Inn and was like - doh! So I had to go back to my Portland save and pick Meditation first.

You should only need 8 and 13 Crystals for Phoenix Level 1 and 2 so if you see 10 and 15, then that means Bibliophile is not working if you picked it. You should find 18 Crystals (the max!) in the Catacombs, plus the 4 you start with gives you 22 with one left after you get Phoenix up to Level 2.

You'll be amazed how easy all the fights are, and you might only have to think a little bit in the Basement with the Snake stack. Otherwise, even the Whitehill fight will be super easy and you can actually relax and honestly reply to the Spirit of Darkness and say:

"Yes, it was not difficult."

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

Awesome, thanks so much for bailing me out of having to complete those absurdly difficult fights! The Phoenix, as expected, dominates the battlefield and won those 3 Shelter battles very easily indeed. So it seems that no losses is possible as Daert after all! But you will need Matt's save and the Phoenix scroll for sure.

Here's how you do it:

Kill Portland stacks, 3 of them, which are a bit harder than usual because you don't get Frozen Grasp in this save!

Ignore those Catacombs stacks, all of them! They would be very hard with only Poison Skull, so thank God it isn't necessary to do them. But VERY IMPORTANT make sure you pick up ALL 18 crystals. You will have 22 in total.

Go into Dragandor, ignore the Spider, pick up your lovely Phoenix scroll (x4!!) and talk to the king. Level up to 4. Now for the hard part. Like Matt says, you need Bibliophile or you won't have the crystals to Level the Phoenix up to Level 2. So you want go do Meditation, Bibliophile, Order 1 and 2 at level 4. Now you can JUST level up the Phoenix to Level 2.

Phew, that was the hard part. Now for the fun! Go talk to Bagyr and Neoline, fight the guard (don't waste the mana on this fight) and then fight the Captain of the Guard. It's very strategic how you win this fight. I've done this step by step.

1. Make sure you have 25 mana.
2. On turn one, open your spellbook.
3. Press the 'I WIN' button.
4. Win.

Same deal for the three Shelter stacks. In fact the Human one still managed to get one of my Vamps with their healing, so I had to regenerate the Vamp, but otherwise it was a complete walkover. The Dwarven stack NEARLY killed the Phoenix once ( ) but not quite. So I'm in the Basement and I don't expect it will be very difficult. The hardest thing now is waiting for my VERY slooooooow mana regeneration.

Thanks again, Matt!

EDIT: Okay, so I've finished the Basement (killed 2 out of 3, left the Snakes) and Whitehill (again, killed 2 of 3), so I'm up to Portland and, as we know, this is where the game opens up. I've done 12 fights and you could easily do as little as 9, I think, by this stage of the game. Daert's start is absurdly difficult (not as hard as Bagyr's!) and it's only because of the Phoenix that I was able to get through so easily. I think I've probably lost the motivation to actually continue with this game for now, but I may come back to it later.

tl;dr - use Matt's Phoenix save if you want to do a no-losses Impossible challenge as Daert.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Yay! The Phoenix is breath of fresh air, isn't it!

By the way, I think even if Bagyr got 4 Phoenix scrolls he might be able to do through the Shelter no loss - hmmm...

Very funny post by the way, @Zhuangzi!

I think almost all my fights were Phoenix 100% damage, Vamps 0% (slackers! ). I think the only fight where they joined in (after Portland anyway) was the Basement Snake stack.

I didn't even disband any of my troops and just tossed them in the Shelter / my Reserve when I was doing the real fights!

Well, since I've been struggling with doing all these no loss battles, I finally figured I'd go forward with the Phoenix since it is so much easier than the others.

Since I was such a dope and didn't realize I could go back to Atrixus / Tristrem when I played Neoline the first time through the Catacombs (I thought I had to get their maps first before it would allow me to return!) I've been wondering around both places and I'm amazed by how much stuff you can get for free! All this gold lying around and chests to dig here and there, dummy stacks to kite to get the goodies, troops that want to join, I'm like a kid in a candy store!

I got 12 Demons (not that big of a deal, I guess) and then in Tristrem there are 70 Shamans! Wow! Since my 2 Vamps have been playing all these no loss games, I figured I'd just have then sit in the Shelter, relax, and shoot the breeze with Neoline and Bagyr while I use all these free guys! I also bought 20 Demonologists while I was in Atrixus so that I have 3 Demons, 3 / 2 Demonologists, and 3 / 3 Shamans.

I basically already have enough Crystals for Phoenix Level 3 and I only fought the Horsemen in Portland so far (although I did use a little Phoenix to whoop up on the Catacombs stacks and that Spider stack outside of Dragandor for a little payback from the other games ). I went with Bibliophile Level 3 since I was so short on Crystals in my Neoline playthrough and so just need to get to Level 7 to get Phoenix Level 3.

I'm wondering if Demon Portal is going to work better with Daert as the Leadership is close to my own right now as I bought that while I was in Atrixus, too.

By the way, I was wondering, does anyone know that if you talk to the two shop keepers in Atrixus does that start a clock on how long you have to rescue Pacca? The say she'll be executed in a couple of days so I was wondering if that is game days or it is just scripted and it doesn't matter. At any rate, I didn't want to chance it, although one of them sells some Executioners so I ended up not talking to either of them just in case since I won't be able to do Atrixus for a good while anyway.

So I'm back in the Shelter about ready to set out back to Portland. This time I'm going to use teleport unless I'm really low on gold instead of sailing all over the place, although I miss my Griffin Sails Ship - certainly beats the Checkered Sails one!

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

Definitely use Shamans in this game, then. I didn't use them at all in my Neoline game, but I'm up for something different. Demons are great too, of course. I kinda thought it would be cool to keep the Vampire theme as much as possible, but I suppose that will have to wait until Monteville.

The Pacca quest definitely isn't timed. I left it unfinished for most of my Neoline playthrough.

By the way, people on the Steam forum are complaining about Bibliophile being bugged - something, apparently, is 'resetting' the discount somehow? But they don't know what. So I would try to monitor that situation, or you'll end up using more crystals than you intended. It may be that it isn't worth spending more runes on Bibliophile for this reason.

Definitely teleport this time DG Dobrev and I both finished on day 23 as Neoline and he beat me by about 40 points, 2080 to 2040 or thereabouts. He did way more fights than I!

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Definitely use Shamans in this game, then. I didn't use them at all in my Neoline game, but I'm up for something different. Demons are great too, of course. I kinda thought it would be cool to keep the Vampire theme as much as possible, but I suppose that will have to wait until Monteville.

The Pacca quest definitely isn't timed. I left it unfinished for most of my Neoline playthrough.

By the way, people on the Steam forum are complaining about Bibliophile being bugged - something, apparently, is 'resetting' the discount somehow? But they don't know what. So I would try to monitor that situation, or you'll end up using more crystals than you intended. It may be that it isn't worth spending more runes on Bibliophile for this reason.

Definitely teleport this time DG Dobrev and I both finished on day 23 as Neoline and he beat me by about 40 points, 2080 to 2040 or thereabouts. He did way more fights than I!

Hah, I was the one who had the bugged bibliophile and posted it on steam. However, it might have been a one-off thing. Cost me about three hours of time as I had to reload.

It is working 100% now and it is pretty much mandatory for the vampire if you want to use nice spells.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Guys, I'm pretty sure it is only when you pick Bibliophile first as Daert.

I can repeat this (I had to go back to my Portland save because I've actually seen it before, but forgot about it) as if you pick it first, then Meditation, you won't get the rebate, but if you don't pick it first than you'll be fine.

I have Bibliophile @Level 3 and it is only 10 Crystals for Level 3 Phoenix when it should be 20.

/C\/C\