Lucky !

[ivra]

Started a new no-loss impossible mage game and want to try to play it as quickly as possible (using the 102 hours route). But I was really struggling in the beginning. In Debir I had to give up the fight against the undead castle. Since I will return to Debir this it not a problem. Moved to Scarlet and managed to do a few battles there. The problem was that those battles drained me for all my mana and rage. This means that I had to wait, or wander around until the mana recovered a little. Due to this waiting so far I am currently in the evening of the first day in Scarlet. But then I got lucky A map I picked up that I already had gave me Call Collossus. Since my leadership was just above 1100 it was enough to get me a troll. The first time I have used trolls actually. They are wonderful as tanks. Now I think I can do all the battles in Scarlet without waiting at all between them. The game turned from frustrating to me being 100% in control

Another thing that is positive with this game is that there were two Novice's Dresses in Debir. I bought one of them and the other must wait until I return. These dresses upgrades to Dress of the Magess (+800 Leadership, +4 Int, +30% crit with archmages). I am looking forward to getting both of them

[loreangelicus]

Congrats on your start! Call Colossus from the duplicate Bolo scroll in Scarlet does change the game a lot, especially on impossible.

You should be able to completely do a single pass of Bolo and Rusty with this advantage, saving you even more time.

[ivra]

Scarlet was a blast! It was nighttime and my single troll did a great job all by itself I am now on Rusty and that is a different situation for sure. It is daytime! Hordes of Sea Dogs manage to kill my troll in two or three attacks, and even quicker if they crit. It is early in the game and I have only got Distortion 1, Order 2 and Chaos 2. So I am actually struggling in Rusty. My Heal spell does not recover the all the lost HPs. But since I have to return to Rusty anyway I can let some of the fights wait. Actually about half of them... I am now leaving Rusty heading for Verona to pick up the King's Bride quest before I go to Bolo. I should be able to do Bolo in one go. This means that I cannot use the optimal route, but an alternative that takes at least 7 more hours, but that's ok.

There are at least two reasons to go to Rusty before Bolo. First, I can buy 50 robbers and 50 bowmen in Debir and bring them to Scarlet where they can wait in Ariannas castle. Then I buy 50 pirates, head to rusty and deliver them right away to Sohaty. Now my reserve slots are free again. The second is that Bolo will be easier if I do some fights in Rusty and maybe even a few in Verona before going to Bolo. The route is Debir - Scarlet - Rusty - Verona - Bolo - Debir - Verona (this is the time when you do Montero and Montero Underground) - Dersu. The start of optimal route is Debir - Scarlet - Rusty - Verona - Bolo - Debir - Dersu. It is almost identical, but it means that you need to do Verona+Montero before Bolo. In my current game I find that impossible. An alternative route is Debir - Scarlet - Bolo - Rusty - Verona - Debir - Dersu. This takes the islands in the correct order from easy to hard, but some of the toughest fights in Bolo can be really hard that early in the game. That is why I like going to Rusty and Verona before Bolo.

I won a battle I really should not have won in Rusty. It was against 600 Sea Dogs, way to many for a single troll in daylight, at least without the Teleport Spell. But I found a way. My setup was 1 Troll, 11 Inquisitors, 4 Archmages, 5 Paladins and 2 Griffins. I used the two griffin eggs I found to create them in order to try to lure the sea dogs away with them. (And yes, I have far less units than my leadership allows for. I could have doubled the number of units for all of them with my current leadership. I got the paladins in Scarlet by the way - guess that was a lucky strike as well...) There was a log in the corner of the battlefield. I hid my Inquisitors and Archmages behind it and behind my Troll and Paladins. There were also a Hornet's Nest in the battlefield on the opposite corner. I think the AI likes my griffins far more than my troll and paladins. I could place my griffins 2 or more hexes away from the Sea Dogs. They always advanced towards my griffins, so long as they could not reach my troll and attack it. So I managed to keep them away so that only one or two stacks attacked my troll and paladins at a time. Also, the Hornet's Nest did a lot of damage, I believe more than 50%. By using the mobile griffins to direct the movment of the sea dogs and the shield of the archmages on my troll, I managed to pull it off without any losses. I had time for a few flame arrows now and then, but mostly I used heal to keep the troll and paladins healthy.

[ivra]

This game does a quantum leap forward when you find the Phantom spell! Now it is possible to recover from much greater losses than before. This is especially critical when fighting heroes. They tend to cast some damaging spells that I cannot recover from with only the resurrection capabilities of my units. I think the Phantom spell is the single most important thing you need in order to have a no-loss game. In this game I found it in Verona (just a quick stop to start the King's Bride quest). Doing all the battles in Bolo (on my route to Debir) was no problem. I needed the Phantom spell to recover from the losses I got when fighting R14-Gromozeka and Rake Yavik (Barbarian Hall of Fame quest).

[pavned]

Anychance that you see what a certain map will give as a wonderer scroll before starting the game, meaning with KBscanner or is it all random again?

[DGDobrev]

It's pre-set at startup, but it cannot be determined with KBScanner. So if you manage to get a call collosus on scarlet or bolo, you may consider yourself lucky Otherwise, a restart may be the prudent course of action if you don't want to kite...