Getting My Ass Kicked

[MrBlister]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

It does give you +3 int. You can now take off the ring, and your int is the same as before when you had the ring. Now you can equip some +5 int item instead.

God bless you. I can't believe I didn't figure that out.

Well, in options you can set combat animation to fast. It isn't too bad with that setting on.

You are going to heaven for this.

Sacrifice hurts one friendly stack unit (can't be a summon), and a percentage of that damage is used to INCREASE your maximum unit numbers of another stack. Very handy if you need more of another unit.

Will this allow you to increase a unit beyond your leadership?

When you get more experienced, you will find the blue one? (+1 initiative to dragons) is probably the best one unless you are doing a very specific strategy.

Initiative is what determines unit order, right?

Don't forget support spells like Stoneskin, Phantom, and Target.

lol, I didn't want to do a review of all the spells I use, just the best ones. Though, I never use phantom. I'm using demonologists, druids, and rune mages mostly right now (have been for a while, actually), and they summon enough fodder for me that I don't do much summoning, unless it's the occasional phoenix or party-time dragon. But, I'll keep it in mind if it gets rougher as I progress more. And as far as target, I've used it twice, but it didn't seem to work against lvl 2 units that were more than 1 hex away. Haven't touched it since. I thought it would have been a great combo with kamikaze.

Also, you can cast spells that cost MORE than 20 mana as your second spell during a dual-cast.

I haven't actually leveled that to 3 yet. 15 mana seems to work out fine so far--there isn't any 20-mana skill that I need to dual-cast yet. I usually start out battles by buffing or silencing, then I cast a big nuke (almost always piranas).

Get level 3 Summoner Skill ASAP. Helps Phantom and Phoenix a lot.

I didn't think it woulda made a big diff. I'll skill it more now.

Get the Neatness Skill in the Mind Tree. Just get level 1. Buy up crappy low level items, and "destroy" them for magic crystals. The problem is, you are not playing No-Loss, so you don't have enough money to buy the cheap items.

What's playing "No-Loss"?

Sorry. Now your final score will be tainted since you cheated. Not sure if you care or not. It will say "Amelie the Cheater" in the end game.

lol, I definitely don't care. I gain no advantage at all by doing it, so I'm still having fun legit. I'm not like morally opposed to cheating in single player games or anything, I just want to beat the game legit for the most fun. Nothing sucks more than giving yourself a small advantage early only to have it snowball into a boring game later.

Magic Spring spell (distortion tree), is great if you have a tank that will soak up hits. Every hit it takes (including post effects) will net you more mana! So it can be used to restore mana if you can ensure you will get that unit hit a lot. (think ... demons summoned by demonologist).

I used this skill some early on, but haven't in a while. Mana isn't a problem for me anymore, so I don't like to waste a spell turn on something like that.

Chaos Dragon sucks man. Phoenix is a lot better for the mana and crystals. For 60 mana, you can cast so many better support/debuff spells that will net you FAR more damage, and have you take far less damage.

I'm totally sure chaos dragon is a terrible spell, but man, come on, he's such a baller. ^^

Don't forget poison skull and fear. If you have all level 5 units, you cast fear. Then cast poison skull and flaming arrow... the guy will take 2 post effect hits, and won't initiate an attack on a level 5 unit.

I'm not far enough along to only have level 5 units. I almost never use fear. Maybe I'll need to later on in the game. Remember, I'm playing normal difficulty.

If you have buffed up a unit with stoneskine and divine armor, and it gets hit by poison or burning effects, you want Dispel level 3 to get rid of poison/burning, but NOT your stoneskin buffs.

I'm not really playing with units as a source of damage; I'm relying mostly on spell damage, and my units to summon more units and keep my tanks alive. I mean, I would never use divine armor to start with--too expensive. I'm not far enough along that it's necessary yet. And the units I cast stone buff on are either cheap, disposable fodder I want to last a bit longer, or a tanky unit. In either case, I usually don't dispel anything from them. I use dispel almost exclusively to unsilence my mage units.

Ghost blade does not get any benefit from post damage effect. Flaming arrow or poison skull is much better since they will suffer from loss of morale, and take post-effect damage for 3 rounds.

You mean it doesn't apply a dot? Units I target with ghost blade are usually ones I want to take out quickly, like friendly gremlin towers, or a giant who I let get too close to my cuties. I sometimes cast poison skull on like a slow-moving group, like a truckload of paladins or something. But, usually I just avoid those guys until they're the only unit left, then I just plink away at them.

If you use Ghost Blade to kill phys resistance enemies, you should be using magic damage (inquisitor) instead. Or debuff the enemy with Pygmy (20 mana), or if they are a cyclops with Helplessness (6 mana).

I've never gotten much damage out of my inquisitors or my rune mages. The demonologists seem to deal good damage, though with limited range. And I never make many attacks with my back-row mages unless it's a longer battle, as they spend most of their time using their abilities, not making basic attacks. Never thought of trying to use them like an archer. I'll try it out I guess.

Level 3 trap AND trapping medal can be very good if you know your army composition will be a little bit weaker than the enemy. I believe my traps do like 5000+ damage, I get 3 of them for free at the start of battle (they are only level 2 though). The level 3 trap ALSO inflicts poison damage.

Damn, I'll have to give traps another try.

In hindsight, you are already doing a lot of what I am suggesting. I think the key problem why you are running out of mana so fast is ... because you are using very inefficient damaging spells or spells like Chaos Dragon.

lol, mana is less of a problem now. It is brutal though early game.

In Impossible Mode, damage by spells is really not that good.

Yeah, I can see how the scaling is limited. Happens in a lot of games. :/

Don't forget to abuse your Pet Dragon
Later on you will absolutely need

Ball of Lightning
Mystic Egg

I'm actually in love with mystic egg. I've been getting dragons and teradactyls out of it lately. It's such a party.

Thanks also for the other spell recommendations--I'll try them out.