Yay!
 

Haha! Got it down today using black and white unicorns, elven archer, sprites and dryads, equipped the ring that gave +3 to all stats for she-fighters. Had to reload a couple of times to get a good opener.

In the round that I won, 1900 sprites went down 300 after 1st turn due to skelie archers' crits but a nicely placed Time Back saved the day. Grind down the bone dragon with unicorns while waited for Karador to hammer down the barricades. Used the consecration spell to make a breakthrough and fought my way in. Black Hole and Underground Blade used consecutively pretty much sealed the deal.

Reward: 4.4k exp and some gold

Good luck to all who are still struggling, this one sure was tough.

That was the hardest fight in the game with the possible exception of the final fight in the game. So you should be in the clear now. :grin:

I finally whacked him. I'm not sure it is the hardest per sey. I'm level 23 and there are still a lot of wandering armies in the area that I can't touch (mostly the ones with black dragons). So I just avoid them. I guess globally I hate fighting black dragons and necros.

This fight is heavily unbalanced. The first time I was at karador's place I was level 13. The previous main quest the enemy was 'Slightly weaker'. Beteween this main quest, and beating karador.. you need to gain at least 10 levels in order to beat it. This is why it's unbalanced =). At least 2 other main quests should have been in beteween, because meanwhile I stopped playing because it's so incredibly boring to be fighting armies with NO purpose at all. Just the TINY exp.... I need quests to keep me busy, and quests that pay 130 exp aint worth it. Another little comment, doesn't seem that helping the tree of life and change the tree of death changes anything in the fight with karador. I at least expected it to weaken his forces or the crystal.

The randomness completely massacred my character. My stats are puny, the only thing that keeps me going are some good items. I'm a level 22 knight with 7 atk, 14 def and 9 int. This is with mostly stat boosting items equipped.

There is so much wrong with this game when I start to think about it.. all minor things, but so many things. The fact that you get about 100 leadership when leveling up when a low level, OR +1 stat.. But once you're level 20 you gain 1000 leadership... OR +1 stat... Catch my drift? Not saying it should give +10 stat.. but it should at least scale along.

Most things are pretty obvious, such as overpowered keepers, by the time you can defeat them, the upgrade is often insignificant.

The randomness is too random. Even though at some points some stuff isn't random, all this stuff is useless anyway... Such as the miners lantern.

The skills.. Don't even get me started. Am I the only one who thinks pretty much EACH skill tree is rather useless? Only in combination you can build a somewhat effective char. Nighttime tactics completely useless, night time takes 1/10 as long as daytime. Frenzy.. The hardest to get knight skill.. And the most useless one as well. Healing skill.. useless. Diplomacy... pure waste of runes. Skills such as iron fist quickly become obsolete. The exp skill is ok.. but way too expensive to be useful. Hell, the best skills are the ones available from the start.
My biggest problem with this game is that leveling up changes nothing. If you couldn't defeat an enemy at level 15, you still won't be able to at level 16, nor level 17. Only by exploring and looting you become stronger... Leveling does nearly nothing in comparison.

Then of course some bugs that ruin it even more. Mostly having to do with wifes. Mirabella crashes your game... Elven chick can't have kids.. Ugh.. Kids.. Yep, kids also pretty much ruin the game. All due to randomness.

I won by simple endurance. I repeatedly nuked enemy units with Fire Rain, watched them get resurrected, and nuked them again, while steadily bleeding my unit numbers. Kharador ran out of mana and by ~turn 15 every enemy unit was dead, at which point I could simply Fire Arrow/attack the crystal.

Probably not the most efficient way to win, but it did work.

Mage 24

A5/D15/I28

LDR ~14000, not 24000 :D

God.. those are pro stats. No wonder im being screwed over. 18k leadership as a lvl 22 knight, and that with plenty of leadership items, and completely explored every single area except demonis(half explored). On top of that I don't have the pro spells, cuz im a knight... My character is weaker in every single way imaginable. Randomness for the loss.

Complain much? :rolleyes:

95% of the skills in the Mage tree are worth having.

I propose that you make a game and we will see....

About some of the minor problems you encountered .... Ppl play the game on normal and they will learn how to play it, and when they will try to play on Impossible they will know its simply better to tak +1 stats in the beggining instead of 100-200 leadership.
If you want you can take leadership if not, dont. You can finish the game in many ways. But i guess only th few that mastered the "minor things" as you say it will complete the game on impossible lvl.

About the wife bugs that you dont like...there is a fix for mirabella if it crashes for you. Dont know about the Elven wife as i never tried her due to her regalia slots. Personally i found 2 regalia items in my whole game and 2 of them were crappy.

About the randomnes... tbh that makes the game interresting.
Randomness in wifes. - its like plaing casino. You play becouse you want to win the grand prize :) That would probably be the +5 stats or +20% stats. You cant bare the lose? Simply dont gamble and just put items in those slots. Its just a way of making the game so much more interesting. NEW FEATURE that never been seen before...and you whine about it. Nobody tells you to have kids. They give you an option and you whine...you dont need to have kids.

About your view on Skill tree:
I finished the game on a Mage, and the MAgic tree was fantastic. Thatnks to it i was almost able later with the right items and right tactic kill grps with 2 rounds of spells only. There are many ways of playing your caracter. Depending what kind of tactic you want. What kind of Race you planning to use as your monsters. Items + Skill Tree + Different monsters + Randomness of items + randomness of available monsters to you... tactics... This makes this game Fantastic. Usually when you finish a game you just put it back into drawer. But in KB you can try to play few more times thanks the RANDOMNES.
I finished the game on a mage. Now im planing to play Paladin on Impossible and i will play only thanks to the randomness. Becouse if i were supposed to do all the same , have all the same items , fight all the same mobs, use alll the same mobs with the same tactics that i did on the MAGE i wouldnt simply play the game again. Randomnes is supposed to make you play all the 3 characters and thats to the time spent on the game to simply love it and buy the next expansion.

You seem to think i'm saying this game is horrible... Just becuase im stating a couple of flaws.

I love the game. It's unique, has many never seen before features and original spells(Unlike most games). But if I had to state all the good stuff along with the bad stuff I wouldn't be able to finish typing that if I had a full day.

The randomness has simply screwed my game.. And i'm not one of those people who is going to replay a 40+ hour game(On which I spend 30+ hrs so far), because the randomness doesn't randomize the game.. just the units, spells, items etc. The quests will be the same, the gameplay will be the same, cept for some minor things. Perhaps if I were to replay this in a couple of years. People playing the game on normal intend to play it on normal, and at least be able to finish it. Not have a 40 hour training campaign so they may make a succesfull char on their 2nd run.

Compare PHJF's mage to my knight. I'm level 22, under 18k leadership. 7atk 14def 9int 70 mana.. The only thing I got going is my 118 rage, which is rather useless as 70 would be plenty atm. So he's 2 levels higher, and probably twice as strong... Don't tell me this wouldn't piss you off if you were in my shoes.

Playing the demo really made me think a knight would have alot more leadership. Short term this is true. Long term... well it's proven above. Due to randomness, my knight has less leadership than a mage of comparable level. Doesn't this seem the slightest bit wrong?

The kids are fine, but if I were to get a +4 scroll kid.. I would want to be able to reload, to get the chance on a different kid. Not have my game once again be screwed because I know my kid is gonna be useless, thus I will never have it(Limiting my options). If you're playing blackjack and you keep losing.. At some point you're gonna move to another table no? And currently I can't even get kids with the elven chick.. Gotta dump her =). As for the regalia's.. My best one would be +4 def, +700(or 800) leadership, -1 morale to allied undead. Pretty good if you don't have undead in your army.

I agree about the mage, the magic skill tree is the only one with some good skills, the other tree's have crappy-decent ones. For as far as I can tell, this game is created to be played by a mage. There's a few quests that are intended for mages, while there are NONE specifically for knights or paladins, and they can get just as much leadership as any knight, while being able to cast more powerfull spells, have almost the same skills and... Also proven above, have decent(in my case better) atk/def stats.

I'm currently trying to put together a she-fighter army. Perhaps that will give me the edge with Agna's Ruby(Possibly the best item in the game, if used correctly - while being completely NOT random, like many of such 'major' rewards). But the only really worthy units i've found are Demonesses. Any suggestions?

Edit: Hell, I just noticed I have less than 16500 leadership and I didn't change any items or anything. 16.5k knight vs 24k mage... *sigh*