How to deal with Gremlion ?

[jake21]

Ok which troups did you use on him: This is what I am trying and 1/2 my army is dying before the first round (this is on mage/hard):
shaman (ok), forman (suck), paladin (ok), canoner (suck), cataput (so-so)
(there are no knights available)
items are magician cape, singing dagger, nicklace of firestorm, ring of mind, shaman skull, fire bracelet, golden boots, fools cap, dress of mages, scale shield, diploma a in anti-magic, dragon chain (there are no physical resitance items available)
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attack 27 defense 25, int 51 level 55 leadership 28,808
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I have 2 million coins so i can replace troups as needed. I was going to use lizards because I have sinigng blade but it kills morale in the group and only good lizards seem to be those giants and those digger things.
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suggestions ?

[Hayte]

I found nearly all of the boss fights difficult as a Mage until I went from a 5 stack army to a 1 stack army. Because of infinite retaliations and area damage, you can lose a tonne of units that you won't be able to replenish.

With a 1 stack army, you only need to worry about mitigating damage and replenishing 1 stack. I no lossed all the bosses recently on Hard using either 1x stack of Red Dragons and in a few instances 1x stack of Black Knights.

First things first:

1) Stoneskin is king. You can make almost any unit stack take peanuts in damage with Stoneskin III + Divine Armor III but the latter is expensive so it makes more sense to use Paladins or Black Knights + Stoneskin III only since they have good physical resistance. To get more physical resistance you want to get items like Twinkling Boots and Scale Set if they are available. It just makes things easier if you have them but I wouldn't say they are necessary unless you play on Impossible or something.
2) Right click your units on the battlefield to see how many turns of Stoneskin you have left as well as other buffs. When it gets to '1' you need to recast Stoneskin or the next turn you are going to take mega damage.
3) Exploit Calm Rage and Magic Spring. You can get pretty substantial mana gains long after you stop regenerating mana each turn. Cast these whenever you see the opportunity but Stoneskin always comes first.
4) If using Black Knights you can resurrect them using Evlin. If using Paladins you have Resurrection Spell, Phoenix and Phantom Paladins.
5) You will need high maximum mana and intellect. The more the better. I found 110+ mana and 50+ intellect to be ideal. You can use a Wanderer Scroll for +30 mana and +10 intellect over maximum if necessary.
6) The reason why you need loads of mana is that you are going to use screen clearing spells to nuke summoned creatures from friendly gremlin towers and k'tahu. This also creates corpses for Evlin. The best spell to use is Black Hole which you can get from doing one of Dark Mistikus's quests - the Grimoire one I think. It is not listed as a reward, so you will just see 2 scrolls appear in your spell book. Black Hole will also do fairly significant damage to the boss.

Gremlion:

This is doable with no losses using a 5 stack army but only if you have high magic resistance (Diploma in Anti-Magic, Cape of Wizardry, Crown of Chaos etc) and at least 1x stack of Paladins or Black Knights. You set the Knights on Gremlion, cast Stoneskin every 4 turns, resurrect to replenish losses over time which should be low because of high physical and magical resistance. Every other unit stack can be aranged in a circle to knock down towers when Gremlion spawns one.

If you 1 stack this with Paladins or Black Knights, use the same types of items but ignore the Gremlin towers. Use Haste on turn 1 to quickly get to Gremlion and start wailing on him. When you get surrounded by units you will occasionally want to wail on them, but not kill them. They form a wall between you and the other enemy stacks so you can use them as protection. If you use Black Knights you will eventually want to replenish their numbers so you will want to cast Black Hole and create a tonne of corpses and free space to use Evlin.

For Paladins, its probably better to just let all the summoned baddies build up and weaken the adjacent enemy stacks but not try to kill them. Eventually you will kill them through retaliation but the idea is to buffer yourself.

K'Tahu:

It may take 40+ turns but you will eventually kill the boss with no losses. K'Tahu is harder than Gremlion but I found him pretty easy using 1x stack of Black Knights. I always attacked on his non shielded arm side since his retaliation does no damage. I tried his shielded arm side but I still took a fair bit of damage and spread over 30ish turns, it eventually lowered my Black Knight count despite using Evlin where available. It became more difficult to maintain high damage with less and less units and at some point it reached a critical point where it was doomed to failure.

If you attack his non shielded arm, he will switch sides alot so you need to occasionally squeeze a Haste in between Stoneskins, Black Hole to clear the screen, and bullrush the other side. So you need to calm rage/mana spring whenever you can. If you miss an opportunity things will go badly for you.

I no lossed K'Tahu in something like 40 to 60 turns with 139 Black Knights. I was level 46 or 48 (I forget which), had about 130 mana, 60 intellect and 15 attack (!) after Wanderer Scrolls. I only had 1 item that gave physical resistance (Twinkling Boots, no Scale Shield on this run I'm afraid). I had Crown of Chaos, Cape of Wizardry and the Anti Magic Diploma so I had huge magic resistance when I needed it.

Black Knights were doing something like 10,000 to 16,000 damage per hit, once they build up Rising Fury. I believe a Warrior can get much much higher damage by virtue of having much higher attack and loads more leadership and then -x% undead leadership items like Black Helmet and Staff of the Acolyte. I've heard 60,000+ damage hits on Gremlion which ends the fight in less than 5 rounds? Either way, if you have the right items and you have more levels and leadership than I did, then you can do it much much faster and will find it easier on Impossible.