My attempt at getting the highest score

[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.

[DGDobrev]

There is a workaround You can modify the digging in battle. Simply reload a number of times and check for chests after a unit has moved - this gives you 5 different digouts per turn, provided you use 5 troop army. Surprisingly, this produces some wondrous results. For example, I'm halfway through Scarlet with the Warrior and managed to dig 3 depth of thought, 1 Song of the Wind (hello hayterrants!), 1 Call Death (dug in the training fights - hello Mr. Bone Dragon), 2 Titan's Sword, 1 Titan's Armor, 2 Flaming Eyes and 1 Call Collosus (on Debir, unused yet because I have only 1300 leadership). The rest of the fights I settled for a rune of a random kind (with preference to mind and magic ones).

I know it's a lot of restarting, but if you want to squeeze out the most of a game, one must compromise

[McSwan]

Lol, I've done that quite a bit already, but I've just increased the number of runes, the wanderer scrolls just haven't been appearing.

[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.

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by Nightingale

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.

If you use it "to know exactly where to get what", then I agree with you. But if you just use it to guarantee the existence of Ancient Knowledge scrolls and XP items, then that is a different matter altogether. This is because that unlike the original game KBTL, in KBAP you NEED an abundance of AK scrolls to ever hope of reaching level 60. If you happen to just play a random game without guaranteeing at least 3 AK scrolls and some XP items then you are most likely to hit level 57-58 max, even if you kill all possible enemies and solve all possible quests.

So would you go through 20+ hours of playing time on a random game that most likely would not net you your primary goal? I personally cannot; between family and work I haven't even finished the singular game that I started last January (am at Nameless atm and will remain there till mid May, when a project contract I'm doing finishes).

As for reloading battles to get better "drops", try it first. Unlike the use of the KBScanner, the results of this "tactic" is random so only people with a lot of patience/fortitude/time could do it. I have good patience, little fortitude, and very little playing time, so I quit doing it after Verona.