KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[MattCaspermeyer]

The strange thing about all this is that two Vamps can do everything but the Elven and Dwarven stacks (well skipping the two hardest Catacombs and the Dragandor Spider / Snake fights).

If you read back in this thread, you'll see where I posted several different strategies to do this, but all rely on the spell you get with the Ore Cart in Dragandor.

I'll re-summarize them here. I've put two to actual practice through Whitehill no loss (including all the stacks except maybe the big Spider stack in the Catacombs):

• Ball of Lightning (exceedingly hard, but doable).
• Evil Book (kind of hard, but doable).

The Evil Book was from DGDobrev's save, although since I've gotten a save game of my own with Evil Book (note that you must get your book to level 2), but I haven't gotten any of the other spell combinations legitimately that I tested via the "magicbook" cheat to see if they would work; however, they are:

• Phoenix (super easy - I did it with the spell at level 1 (harder, but way easier than the two above), and getting it to level 2 is cake and a level 2 Phoenix will tear everyone up).
• Demonologist (not as easy as the Phoenix, but easier than Evil Book; however, I did do it when I was able to cast one after another (level 1) since I had 40 Mana in my experiment - getting 40 Mana is easy, though, because you only need 1 point in Concentration, 1 in Chaos, and you should have the runes to get two points into Meditation when you are level 5 (maybe level 4 if you're lucky), which hopefully you are when you fight the Elves / Humans - also level 1 is better than level 2 unless you are super lucky and get a level 4 unit (I did it with two stacks of lowly Imps) so save your runes until you have to fight the Elves / Humans and then decide your path as I think you need Bibliophile to get Demonologist to level 2 due to limited Crystals).
• Avenger (about as difficult as Ball of Lightning or even harder, perhaps, but all the ranged troops get decimated as they attack you and you may need to augment this with Time Shift (you sometimes get this from Clarissa or the Hidden Cache) for a low cost extension of the spell) and you also augment this strategy with your Poison Skulls (this time you need 2 points in Order and with Meditation that is only 3 skills so you should have extra runes for other skills, possibly including at least level 1 Diversion). You also probably want to use those Might Runes to bump your Rage up for the Whitehill stack so you can cast Jealousy at least twice.

Of these 3 that I have not tried in a "real" game, this is through just the Shelter. However, all but Avenger seem doable through Whitehill as well, whereas with Avenger it may not work with the Basement stacks because you have to be struck (although you can kite those troops and skip them so it doesn't matter). The Whitehill fight is actually easier than the Shelter Elven / Human fights because of Jealousy.

I was thinking that it may also be possible to use Calm Rage with your Poison Skull if you got that spell, but have not tried it. I have tried many other spell combinations, but nothing else has worked so far.

Note that if you go the Order route (i.e. Ball of Lighting / Avenger then you should try to get at least level 1 Diversion since you should have the runes for it). Also, you don't need anything special to defeat the 3 easiest Catacombs fights, just use your Poison Skull - they are hard, but good training for using your Vamps effectively. If you do this, you should be level 5 after defeating the Dwarven Shelter stack, making the Elven / Human stacks much easier (if you skip those 3 fights, then you may have to do one of both of the remaining stacks @level 4, which is much harder).

Although you need the right strategy to win with these methods, the chance of getting one of the above spells is exceedingly low. So that's why I started the other thread to talk about changing the game since I think any game should have a chance at no loss if you employ the proper strategy and who wants to be starting new games and scanning them with the save game scanner to be successful?

By the way, has anyone tried Bagyr? If you think Daert is hard, try him!

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, I'll use the save game scanner and get myself a save with Evil Book in the Ore Cart. That's where I'm going to find it if anywhere, right? And other than that I'm just using two vampires running around the map in vampire mode, right?

Yeah, Bagyr. My save with him is no further than Captain of the Guard.

EDIT: sigh, I don't think I know how to use the scanner properly, unless there's a new scanner specific to Dark Side. Whenever I try to run the scanner it says Scanned Files: 0

Can someone either explain what I'm doing wrong or send me a save with the Evil Book? The saves are in My Games and the loc_ses file is in the steam directory, right?

[DGDobrev]

This is the post you need: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...63&postcount=4

The guy explained it rather well, I have been using his way of scanning for now, and that's how I found the Book of Evil save.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Right, and see this post for what to search on and note that is DGDobrev pointed out here it is "dragondor.embyro_13" with a "." instead of an "_" as I had originally remembered.

That is also right about the 2 Vamps, although you can pop your Ghosts and Zombies in your reserve if you'd like instead of disbanding them.

I have a save with Ball of Lightning if anyone is interested in trying that out...

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

I found another spell combination that will work - Kamikaze level 2. Coupled with Poison Skull level 2, this spell combination could actually possibly be the second easiest that will work (behind Phoenix).

When I did my original pass through the spells, I had neglected to notice that Kamikaze now works on enemy troops. So I did the "magicbook" cheat and it can work wonders on the Sprites and Werewolves. You may lose a Vampire as you run around the battlefield awaiting the 3-turn delay, but once it goes off - BOOM! It took out half of the 77 Sprites and halved a Werewolf stack - ouch! Then the next round the next bomb finished off the Sprites, Werewolves, and Satyrs. The third round (with the other damage) took the last Werewolf stack down to 4. That was very good use of 30 Mana.

On the Humans, it took out 11 Priests and half the Bowmen! And then the other bomb finished off the Bowmen. Two Level 2 Poison Skulls took out the Inquisitors and then I just had the Swordsmen and Guardsmen left.

This is fairly easy to do.

I didn't even get Diversion Level 1, but it may be possible when you reach level 5 to be able to get Diversion to Level 1, which will make it even easier or go with skills to give you more Mana.

I just got a savegame with Kamikaze, so if anyone wants me to post it let me know (I haven't even started playing it, yet).

So if you get a savegame with this spell, then give it a try!

/C\/C\

[Zhuangzi]

Thanks to both of you for the help. After MUCH stuffing around I finally have the scanner working on the five save files I created. Sadly, 3 seem to give gold, 1 Cold Grasp, and 1 spell_reaction, whatever that is? No Evil Book or Kamikaze. So if either of you wants to PM me a savefile with either or both of those spells in the Ore Cart, that would be much appreciated!

EDIT: did another 10 - 6 gave gold, 1 Fire Arrow, 1 Fireball, 1 Hunter Armor, 1 other spell which I've forgotten

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Thanks to both of you for the help. After MUCH stuffing around I finally have the scanner working on the five save files I created. Sadly, 3 seem to give gold, 1 Cold Grasp, and 1 spell_reaction, whatever that is? No Evil Book or Kamikaze. So if either of you wants to PM me a savefile with either or both of those spells in the Ore Cart, that would be much appreciated!

EDIT: did another 10 - 6 gave gold, 1 Fire Arrow, 1 Fireball, 1 Hunter Armor, 1 other spell which I've forgotten

I gave up and just modified the starting troops to give me two ancient vampires and two necromancers.

Praying for the perfect saved game AND enemy spawning with less than normal troops (I always had 8 elves which would one shot my vampires before I could react) is not my idea of KB fun.

It also means you are completely forced to a single or tedious path.

Just go to the original ses.kfs file, back it up, rename ses.kfs to ses.kfs.zip, extract to ses.kfs folder.

Edit hero.txt

Refer to
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...4&postcount=84