KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[DGDobrev]

Yeah, I am seeing that myself. Ever since Matt and Impy started giving ideas what spells are best, I just started scanning saves for them, and this one looked best, so I posted it. I seriously thought it will be much easier than it is with the books.

The human stack indeed looks to be the biggest problem for Daert. I am still trying to fool them somehow, but I am kinda running out of ideas. So far 1 level 2 book and lots of poison skulls look the be the best option for me, but sooner or later one of those ranged stacks destroys my vamp.

I guess I need to try other spell combinations, maybe like demon portal. Phoenix looks to be the best option, but is still very hard to find a save that has it. Maybe I should just fall down to impy's strategy and try to do it with Magic spring only, but I really don't know how those 2 vamps can survive all those ranged attacks at once if I am forced to fly about in bat form.

I certainly haven't given up though. The is a way for Daert to do no-loss, it is absolutely clear now.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Glad that you did it, but here are some tips with the Evil Book strategy:

You may need to do an easy Catacombs spider stack or two to ensure that you get Level 5 Daert for the final stack whichever is tougher between the Elves and Humans to get more Mana (I actually had to do this in the Ball of Lightning strategy, too). It seems more likely than not that I end up a few exp short of level 5 and so I need to do at least one or two of the easy stacks in the Catacombs to push me over. You should be able to start with 36 Mana for the harder fight and with at least Level 1 Concentration you are no more than 4 rounds from your second Evil Book level 2. Level 2 Meditation is better than Level 2 Concentration and both cost 8 Magic Runes. Level 2 Meditation will get you 40 Mana. I was 2 Magic Runes short, however, in my Ball of Lightning playthrough when I got Daert to Level 5.

You also need to have 2 Evil Books @level 2 versus the Swordsmen / Guardsmen so ensure that your book stays away from them until you get that second Book because one level 2 Book is not good enough against both of them. It can handle a single troop, though, so place your Vamps' starting position to split them up (especially the humans) if you have to fight one to recharge your spell.

Both the Priests and Inquisitor's / Sprite's and Faun's damage is Magic (well half the Faun's anyway) and so try to get them to attack the book or if your book needs to reload its spell attack then attack them to recharge it.

In my test, I actually found the Human stack much easier than the Elven stack, but it just depends on how much they attack your Vamps versus your Books and the spells your Book casts. If it is casting Slow, for example, then use it on a fast troop. If it is casting Lightning then use it to cast on a troop for maximum damage, etc.

You also really need to have it be a damaging spell on its first cast, otherwise it gets way harder. A Poison Skull, Ghost Sword, Magic Axe, or Lightning works wonders on a first cast and this has to be cast on either the Elves or the Inquisitors. Position the starting location of your Vamps, change the time in the round when the spell is cast, etc. to get it to change if it is not good. Sequence of events is everything!

Lastly, remember the goal of your Evil Books for both stack types: 1) for Humans, once you get rid of the ranged troops, the fight is over and 2) for the Elves, once you get rid of the melee troops, the fight is over.

As a variant, you may decide to do 2 Points in Meditation and 1 in Concentration / Chaos so that you can do 3 Level 1 books (but in my experience this is not as good and requires 45 total Mana).

Anyway, glad you were able to do it!



/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Okay, I went and downloaded DGDobrev's save and I was able to defeat both the Shelter Elven (easier) and Human (harder) stacks using the double Evil Book @level 2 strategy.

I did defeat the 3 easy Spider / Snake stacks in the Catacombs such that when I defeated the Shelter Dwarven stack I was level 5. I put a point into Order to get me up to 36 Mana and was able to cast my first Level 2 Evil Book and then by splitting the Werewolf stacks it was able to work on the Werewolf and Sprite and then on round 5 as it was close to death I cast my second Level 2 Evil Book. The first one had taken the 8 Elves down to 4 and then only lasted another turn or two, but by that time, the damage had been done and the Sprites and Fauns were gone. My Vamps then helped take down the Werewolves with the second Evil Book as it had gotten the Elves down to 1. Starting placement of your Vamps made a difference between 1 dying and not.

As far as the Human stack, they were much tougher, but once again I split the Guardsmen and Swordsmen (moving towards the latter since they did less damage). I did have a fortuitous Lightning Bolt take out 14 Bowmen, 9 Priests, and 3 Inquisitors when my first Evil Book was about 50% health. This allowed my Vamps to switch to Bat mode and slap the second Evil Book right next to the group of shooters. After that I managed to take out the rest of the shooters and then my second Evil Book was able to take the Swordsmen and Guardsmen down to about 50% when it finally died. As I mentioned above, once the melee troops are the only ones left in the Human stack it is just a matter of time before your Vamps can slowly take them down and finish it. I actually probably could have done better as I forgot to cast Poison Skull when I had gotten 7 Mana and had let my Evil Book absorb 76 damage from an Eviln, which I was trying to get the Swordsmen to hit, but at this point it did not matter since there were only melee troops left.

Compared to Ball of Lightning I'll say that it was a bit easier, but all these strategies (except for maybe the Phoenix which is very easy @level 2) are fairly dependent on finding the right sequence of events.

By the way, I did a little experiment and Runes given during levelups are dependent on the area. I used the "levelup" cheat when I was in Portland to level 5 and I had enough for Meditation Level 2, Concentration Level 1, and Chaos Level 2 when I was level 5; however, since I made level 4 in Dragandor and Level 5 in the Shelter the Runes given were then different and I couldn't get Meditation Level 2 so that's when I went with Order Level 1. Note that I could have also gotten Diversion if I wanted instead of Order Level 1, but I never tried that strategy to see if it was better or not.

If you can get Meditation to Level 2 when Daert is Level 5, then all these strategies are a lot easier when you start with 40 Mana instead of 36. To have a chance, though, you should probably take out the 3 easier Spider / Snake stacks in the Catacombs to give yourself a chance of reaching level 5 after defeating the Dwarven stack.

/C\/C\

[Snow11]

I'm glad you made it Matt.

In my game I even got 1 magic rune from a chest in the fight before the black gate but at the end I was still 1 rune away for lvl 2 Meditation.

Anyway, with 36 mana and your strategy I'm sure it can be done with not too many tries.
Even with 34 mana and enough tries I think it's doable with evil books, however this is a huge problem for me since my pc is so slow that it takes literally 5 min every time I try to load the last save.

[DGDobrev]

Awesome, Matt, congrats

I think you can only hit meditation 40 if you get lucky with the rune/level giveaways. I think there are 3 or 4 combinations, and if you luck out with a good one, you can get twice the max amount of magic runes for the mage, but since the game selects a random line of those 3 or 4 combos, there is no way to be certain.

[MattCaspermeyer]

By the way, since it is possible to get any spell, I'm wondering if Calm Rage would push you over with just Poison Skull. I have not tried this strategy, but if someone gets Calm Rage from the Ore Cart maybe they could try it out and let us know if it will work since they'll be able to convert that early Rage into Mana for more Poison Skull casts.

Hmmm...

/C\/C\

[Snow11]

I think that calm rage won't be a good idea because the biggest problem you have is how to make enough dmg on the rangers before the melee force you to go in bat form. Without book of evil or other summon to slow them down it takes them 3 rounds to reach you and with 36 mana you can cast poison skull r2 the first 5 rounds.

In my game I managed to clear all 3 stacks in the castle's basement which was really hard but at least I didnt have to rely on insane luck.
The first stack against the spiders I used the battlefield to tank them. There was a close spot in the corner where i left my vamps, then I cast r2 Book of Evil next to them so that thay could be attacked only by one stack. Since the spiders dmg is poison the book could tank 3 stacks for fairly long time, enough to get mana for second book.I think it lasted for 8 rounds because at least in 2 rounds I had 2 books on the field.

The second fight against the 3 big stacks of snakes was the hardest. I had to make the book to tank and dmg the royal snakes alone so that it wont die in 2 rounds. I used 1 scroll of magic shackles when thay were close to avoid the snake bite, and 2 slow scrolls on the other snakes. Once the royal snakes were dead I got enough mana for second book to reduce the numbers of the red snakes and after that it was easy.
After the second fight I finally got to lvl 6 and with r2 Concentration and r1 Diversions the third fight was much easier.

Then the real challenge comes in whitehill where you have to kill at least one of the guards and each of them have like double the size compared to the human guard in Shelter, while you are still with your good old 2 Vampires

So I used rage pot for 10 rage before the fight.
The first round the inquisitors skipped their turn thx to diversion which is good becouse thay were the strongest range and the other 2 already wasted one of my vamps. Then I used the jelousy skill from blackie on the 1 big stack of melee and thanks to some bug thay remained red even after the statue disapeared. That way slaughtering all the mean priests and archers for me After that it took me 230 rounds to finish the guardsmen.
Thanks to this bug it all went fairly easy which is good because i didnt want to start all over again with phoenix spell.
Whithout the bug I dont think it was slightly possible to win any of the fights with my setup of 34 mana. May be with 40 mana and 2 rank2 books from start and alot of luck it would be more possible but those rangers were really scary.