Surviving on Impossible

[Dorkus]

In the early game, leadership is close to useless. You should win all of your fights with intelligent spell usage, and with mage towers replenshing mana instantly, there's no reason not to do this at all. It's the fastest way to win battles, and it takes no losses.

At the end of the game, the difference of a few hundred leadership literally has no impact. On the other hand, attribute modifiers scale pretty well. I agree with you somewhat that defense is not all that useful. The stacks in the late game are so big that you need to minimize the number of times you are struck. And if you're not being hit, then there's no point in defense. But attack is still mildly useful, as it will help you focus fire on a single stack and wipe it out, with spells, in a single turn. Three points in attack is +10% damage. That's not jaw dropping, considering 1 point in intellect does ~+11% damage to spells. But it's nothing to sneeze at.

I also disagree with you about rage. Rage is incredibly useful, not always for killing stacks -- although maxed underground blades, blackhole, and soul drain are good for that. It is useful for crowd control and support. Ice thorns can delay melee stacks for two turns. THe stonewall can delay them for one. Timeback can effectively delay an entire army for a turn -- just send in a big stack on a suicide run, absorb all the blows (perhaps casting kamikaze on that same stack), then timeback to get your unit back to full strength. Glot's armor, with a bit of investment, can allow you to cast armageddon TWICE without taking any losses. Chargers can essentially duplicate the effect of the most overpowered item in the game (devourer of fury), and improve the efficiency of the somewhat cheap invisibility tactic that can allow you to go through the entire game with no losses, at least if you can find invisibility early.

Unfortunately, for the mage rage does not build up quickly. ANd inquisitors that are useful in the early game simply don't cut up, as damage dealers or rage builders, in the late game. Especially if you are going to build up black hole and/or soul drain, you need some serious rage. Seven roasted rats help, but I would take rage/mana over attack/defense any day of the week, and certainly over leadership too, at least until lvl 10-15 or so.

Intellect and mana are fairly straightforward. These are the bread and soy butter of the mage, and well worth investing in. If you have a big mana pool, you can pull some pretty crazy stuff -- such as the double armageddon with glot's armor first turn. In sum, my ranking would be the following for early game:

Intellect
Mana
Rage
Attack
Leadership
Defense

Starting at around level 15, I would say:

Intellect
Leadership
Mana
Rage
Attack
Defense

[laffwis]

Originally Posted by Dorkus

In sum, my ranking would be the following for early game:

Intellect
Mana
Rage
Attack
Leadership
Defense

Starting at around level 15, I would say:

Intellect
Leadership
Mana
Rage
Attack
Defense

ok thanks for the suggestions, it's obvious that you need intellect and mana as a mage, but i still don't get the part with rage? if you don't invest in rage, you will probably reach 30-40 rage until end game (from my previoius walk throughs) and most of the rage skills only use about 20+ rage.

so actually you need maybe let's say 30 rage to have a little surplus and during battle it will replenish anyway?

or do you mean you want to use potions and fill up the rage before going into battle? then let's say you have maye 50-60 rage and it's full so you can use more powerful skills more often since gaining rage goes slowly?

but then again there are not so many potions to fill up the rage before battle.

i'm not sure if black hole is that usefull, since the max. damage is only about 1100 or something and for that you need - compared to sould drain, which indeed is maybe the best skill IMO - far more rage.

as we're talking about soul drain, to what extend shall one expand that skill? 20 %, 30, or 40 %? for 20 % you only need 5 rage (which means you can for sure use that skill every turn when maxed out; as a mage) and for 30 % 20 rage (maybe only every 2 turns?). i never expanded to 40 % since i think the proportion between damage and needed rage is not effective. but again, if considering the big stacks, maybe it could be worth to expand to 40 %?

could anybody clarify this, please? thanks

[Zhuangzi]

Using Rage as a Mage is not that important, IMO. I know Dorkus disagrees. I agree that Time Back and Soul Drain are very important, but I don't think I picked Rage as a level up choice in the entire game and I still had 55 rage by the end, which was quite enough.

Laffwis, with soul drain it depends how much rage you have and how many other rage spells you like to use. I settled on 30% drain for 25 mana (I think) because 40% needed 50 mana, which was a little too much for me. But 40& would be nice.

And I disagree that Leadership isn't important too. I think it is very important to work on throughout the game, especially on Impossible, as the enemy stacks are already much bigger than your own. I worked on Leadership whenever I could and was able to raise it to 20,000 by the end.

Basically, Leadership (20,000), Intellect (33) and Mana (140) are your most important things as a Mage. Attack, Defense and Rage are less important. You will get all three of those from Targets/Training Dummy/Shrine of Rage anyway, Rage especially if you visit Demonis early. I would like to have raised my Attack higher that the measly 15 I had at the end, but I found a LOT of Training Dummies throughout the game, and had over 25 Defence.

[Eldritch]

30% Soul Drain takes 30 rage which was my maximum with also no level up choices for rage in that insane battle for Xeona I fought at lvl 20 on hard difficulty and it makes you feel funny when you kill 30% of that 500 strong scoffer imp stack you paralyzed for two turns with dryads lullaby. That was a LOT of imps out of the picture.

I didn't lose a lot in that battle but I wonder how it would be like at lvl 20 on impossible.

[Zhuangzi]

Xeona was the hardest battle in my Impossible game at level 19, so yes, it can be tough. In fact it was the only time I had to reload and try a new strategy.

[Dorkus]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Using Rage as a Mage is not that important, IMO. I know Dorkus disagrees. I agree that Time Back and Soul Drain are very important, but I don't think I picked Rage as a level up choice in the entire game and I still had 55 rage by the end, which was quite enough.

Laffwis, with soul drain it depends how much rage you have and how many other rage spells you like to use. I settled on 30% drain for 25 mana (I think) because 40% needed 50 mana, which was a little too much for me. But 40& would be nice.

And I disagree that Leadership isn't important too. I think it is very important to work on throughout the game, especially on Impossible, as the enemy stacks are already much bigger than your own. I worked on Leadership whenever I could and was able to raise it to 20,000 by the end.

Basically, Leadership (20,000), Intellect (33) and Mana (140) are your most important things as a Mage. Attack, Defense and Rage are less important. You will get all three of those from Targets/Training Dummy/Shrine of Rage anyway, Rage especially if you visit Demonis early. I would like to have raised my Attack higher that the measly 15 I had at the end, but I found a LOT of Training Dummies throughout the game, and had over 25 Defence.

There are plenty of rage fountains. But no rage statues that I can recall. If you have 40 max rage, you're not even going to be able to get a black hole off to start a fight, much less pull a black hole then continue spamming rage abilities for the first few turns.

I played one impossible game with 60 max rage at the end, and another with around 100 (with a +10 rage kid, 7 roasted rats, and a little luck with rage statues), and it was a big difference. Being able to cast max black hole (80 rage) to start off every fight is incredibly nice. Being able to cast black hole, then spam diversion abilities before the opponent can even get a strke in, is even better. Once your opponent is down to the last stack, moreover, with a strong enough ice ball you can simply leave the last stack alive and use chargers and the fury gathering ability until your mana and rage are back to max for the next fight.

Also, I did not say leadership was unimportant. I said it was unimportant in the early stage. The difference between 20,000 leadership and 19,000 leadership is not significant. The difference between 40 rage and 80 rage is.

[Zhuangzi]

From memory Dorkus there was a Rage Shrine in Kordar (maybe Ardan's Peaks), one in Demonis and one in the Land of the Dead. These shrines add 5 rage permanently each, but I know that all of the shrines etc are randomised in the game.

Obviously I would prefer 80 Rage to 40, but it depends on what you aren't getting instead. Admittedly I tended to ignore the ragebox a little towards the end, but I still used it for Glot's Armor and Reaper's skills. It's basically a matter of opinion as to whether Leadership or Rage is more important to a Mage, as it would seem that both strategies work. Toward the end when offered Leadership it was over 1000 being offered, so it's probably more than just the difference between 20k and 19k overall. Plus, my strategy involved massive stacks of Sprites, Lake Fairies and Dryads, which are very powerful. You just can't discount the damage 2000+ Sprites can do in a single hit. I have seen 1800 Sprites do 18,000 damage (I think 10 damage per Sprite must be the highest damage they can do on a Critical). Because nothing retaliates against Sprites, I used Glot's Armor on them a lot to decimate massive enemy stacks. Say I hit the enemy for 8000 damage, no retaliation. Then I cast Glot's Armor on the Sprites and the enemy stack attacks my Sprites, breaks the bubble but does no damage, and then the Sprites retaliate for 6000 damage. These aren't criticals either.

I should say that I always have Anga's Ring equipped. Best item in the game, IMO.

[Infiltrator]

Except that units don't retaliate when they are under the effect of glot's armor..

[Zhuangzi]

Yep, I thought they retaliated when the Glot shield is broken, but it's not the case. It's still very useful though.

[Dorkus]

Originally Posted by laffwis

ok thanks for the suggestions, it's obvious that you need intellect and mana as a mage, but i still don't get the part with rage? if you don't invest in rage, you will probably reach 30-40 rage until end game (from my previoius walk throughs) and most of the rage skills only use about 20+ rage.

so actually you need maybe let's say 30 rage to have a little surplus and during battle it will replenish anyway?

or do you mean you want to use potions and fill up the rage before going into battle? then let's say you have maye 50-60 rage and it's full so you can use more powerful skills more often since gaining rage goes slowly?

but then again there are not so many potions to fill up the rage before battle.

i'm not sure if black hole is that usefull, since the max. damage is only about 1100 or something and for that you need - compared to sould drain, which indeed is maybe the best skill IMO - far more rage.

as we're talking about soul drain, to what extend shall one expand that skill? 20 %, 30, or 40 %? for 20 % you only need 5 rage (which means you can for sure use that skill every turn when maxed out; as a mage) and for 30 % 20 rage (maybe only every 2 turns?). i never expanded to 40 % since i think the proportion between damage and needed rage is not effective. but again, if considering the big stacks, maybe it could be worth to expand to 40 %?

could anybody clarify this, please? thanks

If you don't touch rage at all, you should still end up with 50-60 rage, assuming you get some rage statutes and buy all the roasted rats.

with the mage, rage will usually NOT replenish at a speed that you can use it consistently, IF you are fighting smart. Rage goes up most when you're trading blows with the enemy. If the point is to use rage to avoid trading blows with the enemy, or eliminate stakcs before trading blows can even occur, you are not going to be building much rage in fights, other than from the fury gathering ability. This is when your max store comes into play. If you go into a fight with near max fury, you can get off a few abilities in the first few turns, pop a fury gather, then use another ability, in the first four turns.

Black hole does max 1500 damage and according to the fan manual, and my experience, scales damage by LEVEL, not morale. Level 5 units receive 50% more damage, meaning max 2250 damage against all level 5 units. It's also worth noting that it does ASTRAL damage, which no unit in the game, including black dragons, can resist. Again, this is invaluable for thinning out stacks without being forced to trade blows.

The money spots for soul drain, in my opinion, are 20% and 40%. You cannot get the first rage cost reduction without moving to at least 20%. And 20% of a stack for 5 rage is well worth the cost. It's a useful ability to have for those moments when your rage is depleted, and you need an offensive ability. On the other hand, I think 40% is much more useful because in practice, when your rage is depleted, you'd rather use the fury gathering ability. 40% also is worth more than 20% twice, since a second 20% attack will not only take a few turns (and prevent you from using other abilities), but also reduce the stack less on each successive use.

Again, however, the key point is that rage is invalualbe on impossible, if properly used in a support role. If you are going to try to kill off all opponents using rage, it's not going to work. But if you use it strategically to stave off enemy advances, protect your own troops, refill your mana coffers, etc. it serves a very important function. But it can't serve that function if you don't have the stats to use it....