My attempt at getting the highest score

[McSwan]

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

I'm doing a similar attempt (no-loss/level 60/7 days) with a warrior and I find it faster to add droids (guard droids and 2 repair droid stacks) than attempt to solo fight the enemies with dragons. You have to go Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Verona-Rusty-Debir initially for this though.

I had the extreme fortune of getting a bunch of call colossus scrolls (1 dug at Debir, 1 dug at Scarlet, 1 duplicate navi map at Scarlet, 1 dug at Bolo) and used one at Scarlet to get a red dragon to clear all enemies there (except for rob cuttlefish cave) and used another one at Bolo to get a black dragon.

Even with a black and red dragon, battles were either easy+long or hard+long. Filling up the 3 extra slots with the droids sped up the battles and made them a lot easier because:

1) droids draw enemy and hero attacks, and can tank big time since you just repair them

2) droids are mobile, with repair droids at movement 5 and guard droids at movement 3; very easy to keep them alive and they help pick up chests

3) droids have high phyisical and poison resistance

4) you can Sacrifice the droids to top up your other troops and just use their repair to bring back lost units; I believe you could even Sacrifice 1 repair droid stack to top up the other repair droid stack, replenishing itself whenever you get more leadership

5) the repair ability of repair droids is even more overpowered than what Eviln does for undead; it has a repair per leadership ratio of 85% to repair another stack of repair droids, 82% to repair guard droids; and this is a RELOAD ability ; this makes the 30% level 3 Eviln weak by comparison

Having fast and easy battles allowed me to reload fights until I got good chest rewards from the 3 dug chests per battle; I usually reload until I get runes/crystals/wanderer scrolls. Case in point, I have dug up 18 wanderer scrolls out of 176 chests.

I cleared Bolo of all enemies using the setup black dragon/repair droid/guard droid/repair droid/red dragon. Currently just arrived at Verona. Once I have enough mana to power Eviln I will replace the black and red dragons with bone dragons and black knights, further making the attempt for no-loss easier.

I haven't played mage, but you might want to give droids a try. Given that you have taken out the guard at the Montero bridge, you might want to reload from a save game from your Montero visit and get droids there.

I think the repair droids will work well with a warrior game, although there are some battles I think might be untankable, and you have to use kiting tactics that the guard droid will struggle with. When I hit Bolo I'll grab a couple of droids, and see if I can make a new red dragon.

The chest idea is pretty good. You could drink a potion of rage before a battle and open 3 chests and see what they are. Then reload without drinking the potion and I think the chest remain the same ? If you spawn a 1 new thorn, I think you'd get 3 new random chests. I'll have to try that tactic. Arg! - 3 or 4 reloads before every battle?, but probably worth it to maximise ancient knowledge scrolls/ runes.

Elvin level 1 only heals 10%, on 1 bone dragon it's worse that level 1 heal.

[KongMysen]

The chests changes in each battle. Regardles of using an egg or not.

You cannot sneak peek with higher magic, Awaken dragon and a rage potion.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by McSwan

I think the repair droids will work well with a warrior game, although there are some battles I think might be untankable, and you have to use kiting tactics that the guard droid will struggle with. When I hit Bolo I'll grab a couple of droids, and see if I can make a new red dragon.

The chest idea is pretty good. You could drink a potion of rage before a battle and open 3 chests and see what they are. Then reload without drinking the potion and I think the chest remain the same ? If you spawn a 1 new thorn, I think you'd get 3 new random chests. I'll have to try that tactic. Arg! - 3 or 4 reloads before every battle?, but probably worth it to maximise ancient knowledge scrolls/ runes.

Elvin level 1 only heals 10%, on 1 bone dragon it's worse that level 1 heal.

I only replay battles that are both easy and fast (around 7 turns to finish). You could change the position and resulting chest contents by "inspecting" the chest position at different times. For example:

Try 1: start of battle, use dragon dig ability to check where chests are
Try 2: move and complete action of 1st unit; on 2nd unit's turn use dragon dig ability to check where chests are
Try 3: move and complete action of 1st unit; move and complete action of 2nd unit;on 3rd unit's turn use dragon dig ability to check where chests are

When inspecting, you don't even need to immediately use the dragon dig ability; the inspection "locks" the position of the chests, and resulting contents.

As for Eviln, it shines mid to late game; the more leadership you have the better it works. At 30,000 leadership when you have 200 black knights (at 150 leadership each) that is a total of 32,000 HP at 160 HP per BK. 10% of that is 3,200 HP, so level 3 Eviln at 30% is 9,600 HP or 60 BKs resurrected.

The Resurrect spell for the living cannot compare to the power of Eviln for the undead. Even Heal (while admittedly efficient) can't compare, and there is the point that it can't bring back lost units.

[McSwan]

Yep, it does appear that you can "sneek" peak the chests. You just need to be clever about it using the above technique.

I'm very keen on getting some black knights. It still takes a while to bring down huge stacks with just 1 dragon, like 190 paladins.

[loreangelicus]

The problem with doing solo unit fights (black knights excluded) is that you don't generate enough rage, probably just enough to do the 3 treasure digs. This also means you don't get to level up your pet dragon too much.

For tough enemies like paladins/dragons/etc. the pet dragon ability Ball Lightning and Eviln are quite useful. These two attack options take out a percentage of the enemy stack, no matter what defense or resistances they have.

[McSwan]

"The problem with doing solo unit fights (black knights excluded) is that you don't generate enough rage, probably just enough to do the 3 treasure digs. This also means you don't get to level up your pet dragon too much."

Yeah, you'd think that, but my play style makes my dragon level fast, atm the moment I'm level 19 and my pet dragon is 20. I went hard on order magic, so I send my dragon in, and put on guardian angel, then heal the red dragon after most turns with 1 mana. Guardian angel seems to make a fair chunk of rage, it's like 5~6 free attacks. All the hitting, zapping, healing etc makes rage gen. fairly good.

Free Dragon egg units I usually try to send to there death, and they can sometimes pay there rage cost, I even occasionally cook them with my red dragon to get the rage happening. I usually go the ball of lightning though.

My big issue right now is ancient knowledge scrolls, I've got none . and the save game scan says there are none available. The replay the game to get better chests things give me more scrolls, runes, etc, but still no ancient knowledge scrolls. I wish could do that with wanderer scrolls that you "swap" when you have the continent map.

I just got +50% to XP from items +learning skill atm, so maybe that will help, but i suspect I have to find a lot more ancient knowledge scrolls. I have found about 15 wanderer scrolls so far, so it sux that none are ancient knowledge.

[loreangelicus]

You probably always play mage? A paladin game I started (and stopped when I realized his ultimate resurrection skill does not support no-loss run) had the pet dragon at level 22 when the paladin was at level 15. Same with the warrior game I have right now, level 17 warrior and level 21 pet dragon. But leveling the pet dragon is not really that big of an issue, unless a level 60 pet dragon is also one of your target goals.

Oh no... for a game that you want to target level 60/high score you should really use the KBScanner to make sure that you have at least 3 ancient knowledge scrolls being sold or as treasure pick-ups. Then pray that you get at least 3 more from duplicate navi maps and dragon dig. If you have read other posts, ancient knowledge scrolls are critical for a high level and high score run. And there is absolutely no guarantee you would get them in great supply.

It would be very frustrating to be in the mid to late game and still not know if you could reach level 60 simply because you don't have enough AKs. As painful as it may seem, I would suggest restarting the game. If you do restart the game, I suggest making sure you have 3+ ancient knowledge scrolls and 2 hand of necropolis at the starting islands (in my game, I got them both at Verona).

[McSwan]

I started again, this time with 6 AK scrolls that can be bought. However, I didn't get "call colossas spell" or the undead summoning spell, so have to clear creeps with just a green dragon, which are a fair bit crappier than the reds.

[Nightingale]

How do you get dragons that early in the game besides the quest in rusty that gives green dragon only? Don't tell me you load till you have a save game that gives you a call colossus spell.
IMO , you guys aren't really going for a challenge when you actually tweak the game with a savegame scanner and knows exactly where to get what. Thats just one step from using cheat codes. Even the multiple reloads to attempt to get a rune or wanderer scroll from dragon chests is kinda extreme and almost felt like cheating.

[Metathron]

How do you get dragons that early in the game

By stealing navigational charts is another way to do it.