KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread
 

Guys, I think we should relieve the other threads from our no-loss talks, cause others play the game differently than us and we shouldn't impose that mentality on them.

So, since people are already trying it, we can share some thoughts here. Since I started this, I will start I guess... So my observations are as follows:

- early game is the hardest, but no surprise there. The three troops you need to kill for the Spirit of Darkness are a bottleneck you must go though. I was kinda hoping there isn't one, but it is manageable (I just need to stop losing 1 imp to the Human troops, easy as that).
- Orc: Good damage, large numbers, but ultimately low-HP troops, so very hard to go for no-loss.
- Demoness: Good HP troops, Demons can summon, Demonesses can swap, but Imps are too dangerous to bring close to the fray, cause it takes very little to bring one of them down. Probably the best no-loss option.
- Vampires: you need to rely on Vampires to replenish themselves, but they can only do so much. I am quite sure if you get some decent spells at start, you might be able to deal with the enemies, cause worst case scenario, vampires are fast and can fly quite far. I am yet to get into the vampire leader seriously though.

Well, jump in guys, we can share and improve our tactics :)

Yeah, it will be all about those few early battles, later there are multiple ways to deal with stuff, there are no big boss battles etc.

I see people talking about 3 units (dwarf/elf/human army) and actually i had problem with other 3 units. Right after those 3 you have to clear another 3 at whitehill, it's where i gave up on no-loss and brute forced them with spiders, or can you skip those battles at whitehill and i missed that? After those 3 battles no-loss was pretty easy, whoever played any other KB game on impossible won't have any problems.

Demoness is definietly the best at start, late game i would guess vampire will be the king (I wanna to test how far you can push intellect with Archamge talent). Feel like orc is the weakest at the start, he has nothing going on for him. There is shop at his starting location with trolls, would be sweet if we had leadership for them :grin:

I was thinking vampire with lvl2 trap and trapper might have a shot, at those 3 battles but then again there are archers and mana will be a problem.

I'm gonna finish my current playthrough (lvl53) and go redo those early battles no-loss.

At Whitehill you need to take only one out of those 3 to progress on.

Orcs are extremely powerful - they just need to build some adrenaline and they trash the enemy. But then again, not an army to go for no-loss. I am totally gonna play them in the future though. They can get to wicked attack values, even the measly goblins. Their leadership requirements are relatively low, so you can amass a huge army of orcs. Combine their traits with the warrior ones and you can trounce everyone. They can go on an easy rampage, you just need to have means to replenish their ranks.

Then again, not an army to do no-loss.

There are paladins after the castle battle at portland so i guess even orcs will work fine from early stages of the game. Just the problematic resurrection, sometimes there might not be weak ranged or no retaliation creature to leave, while grouping for resurrection.

Best unit early on to get is demonologist, very good leadership ratio on summons, and not so bad heal/resurrect. If you get executioners it's pretty much free win.

Well, re-rolling the demoness, I managed to defeat the Knight hero for the first time. It was a glorious battle. Key to it was to just dump the imps in reserve and split the demonesses, effectively using 2 high HP troops to tank the enemy's "heals". I played this fight 3 times, and on all 3 times, there was a volcano on the battlefield, so it goes beyond saying that the more you keep the enemy around it, the better :) The 2x1 demonesses can swap troops around the battlefield as needed, preferably switching the Demon summoning with the Bowmen for an easy bowmen kill, as they suffer close combat penalties.

Whew. That was awesome. There does seem to be another Knight troop on the map, but it looks inaccessible. I am not the type of player to scream bug right away, so it might be a captured troop. Sadly, you can't kill it.

Yeah, its all about overcoming, what seemed to be impossible to do. It's the greatest fun for me in this series, still remember KB:AP/CW and doing necromancer hero(first island) at first visit, what a fight it was.

I don't know what Knight troop you are referring to, but if it's in any starting locations, or in dwarf territory you will get back there, and explore them fully.

It is on the intersection leading to the Catacombs portal in the Demoness' starting world. On impossible it shows as a "Strong" enemy vs your best lineup. There doesn't seem to be any obstruction that prevents you from fighting it, but you cant. Whatever... I can live without it :)

Yeah, I couldn't get to that trapped troop either, DG. I didn't see it as a bug.

I was completely stuck on those three Shelter battles, or more accurately on the Elven one. I retried this battle dozens of times and I just couldn't do it, so I started again and did the first 12 or so battles again (this is Impossible Demoness). This time I changed my skill tree usage so that I had level two Diversion (2 traps). I also have Chaos magic 1 but sadly I only have Fire Arrow (which you start with), Fear (no use here) and Chaos Blade.

I haven't re-done those 3 battles successfully yet, but one strange thing I noticed is that the Elven fight had less Fairies this time around. Last playthrough I'm sure there were like 89 of them, now only 49? I'm wondering if the game varies the number of troops depending on which battle you take first, i.e. it will be easier if you do the Elven one first?

EDIT: well, I won that Elven battle on my first try this morning! For this is a super difficult fight, with two stacks of Werewolf Elves, Fauns, Elven Archers and Fairies. I generally tried to get rid of the fauns first with Imp fireballs and Fire Arrow. I let the Demon spawn a unit on turn 1 and swap that for the Elven Archers. Once that stack is down to 3, the Demoness could charm it. The big problem was the Werewolf howl which caused my Imps to turn TOWARDS the enemy! I used the Demon to tank (obviously) and also to an extent the Demoness. I just managed it with the Cerebus on 9 HP, the Demoness on 10 (with bleeding that would have killed her) and the Demon on about 50 HP. Phew!

Sadly I have to go to work now!

Exactly. Troops are always randomly generated, so you may have a better roll the next time you play the game. I for one, won't mind less ranged units on the human troop. I just couldn't drop their numbers well enough before they could kill 1 imp. I have the 1 lost imp save, but... but... oh well. We will try again. I am also going for lvl 2 Diversion this time around.

That was also pretty much how KBWOTN no-loss play-throughs were made. Luck out vs less opposition on the bottleneck battle, and you are golden. GG.

EDIT: Allrighty, with lvl 3 Diversion (to achieve that you need level 5 and that requires you beating the Knight hero in Atrixus, which is a very tough fight) and some cunning planning, I am past the 3 guards. Demoness swapping/charming enemy troops when needed for the win. Feed the troops summoned by the Demon to the enemies by swapping their ranged units with it, drop the swapped ranged unit down to a low count, and charm them with the Demoness. Now use it against them :) Fun times. Haven't felt that since KBAP.

Yeah, I'm past those three guardians myself now. For some reason tonight I beat the Human and Dwarf stack first time. Then you can kite your way through the basement without fighting (Very Hard stacks of Snakes - ouch), take down the easiest looking stack on Whitehill, and then you're able to replenish your Imps/Cerebuses and head to Portland. I kited my way around Portland picking up everything and now I am up to about 1200 leadership on Level 6. The stacks around here are Slightly Stronger and above. Unfortunately I can't see any Demons/Demonesses anywhere, and no Paladins as yet. So I'll have to be really careful. The only unit of use (at Clarrisa's hut) is Evil Beholders. So this is still pretty much a Demon army for now with no way of resurrecting even a single troop.

Nice job guys, so you can skip those stacks at whitehill, how could i have missed that. You can go back to demoness starting location from portland and buy nice units there.

I am still trying to do something against those spiders. I see a light in the tunnel, but it sure is a bad fight. Baiting enemies in traps and evilns left by the undead spiders is key. I dropped their numbers to like 20 spiders before my demon tank died last time, so it should be possible somehow.

If you are talking about that one stack of spiders stronger than all the others, there is no need to do it right away, you can come back there from portland, and do it once you have bought units you want. On the other hand where is challenge in that;)

It is in the basement where you need to dig out 3 items. Killing the weakest stack and digging the items is easy, but I have certain doubts that I can come back to this place. Worst case scenario, I can skip those fights, I doubt the experience from them will be that crucial later on, and from all I hear, the game should open up soon.

Btw, careful with the Paladins, people. Their resurrection skills used to HURT Demons and Undead in KBAP/CW. The only character who can resurrect demons is the demonologist to my knowledge. Or of course, you with the resurrection spell.

Sorry don't remember anything like that, must have not been that difficult or possible to do later.

As of paladins they aren't normal paladins, they are dark paladins, and resurrect troops of the dark. Resurrection doesn't work on demons now, you have to do quest for it to work on troops of the dark.

Most interesting, thanks for the info :) So, you mean we have paladins of the dark who ress, we have dark knights and eviln... I am already getting quite a bunch of ideas in my head.

DG, I think you're right that we won't be able to come back into the basement later, but I figured that the xp wouldn't count for much in the long run so I skipped them. Plus, you know, really difficult fights!

zjazd18, I'll have a lookout for those Dark Paladins. They are in one of the castles on Portland, are they? I'm guessing I'll need to do some quests first.

EDIT: around this time you should get the first level of the Grand Strategian medal (20 fights), which is worth 200 leadership. Takes me up to 1450 now. If only I could find some Demons and/or Demonesses to buy...

Yeah, in the castle near the shore - Branigard. I think i had 20 of them there, then some at Inselburg, but really once you get recruiter deep in demoness skill tree you basically have unlimited supply of paladins.

EDIT: demons are in Atrixus (demoness starting location) you get there by going into catacombs at portland.

You were correct, it was easy to open up the new locations through the catacombs, so I pillaged Atrixus and found demonologists in the Demonologist hut which you can access through the flying platform in the main yellow picture-circle (or whatever that is). Now things are going much more smoothly.

I will, however, eat my shorts if KBDS has the early KBAP bug where disbanding troops count as losses :D

I've been playing Demoness with the early access since the end of June (my brother, Dave, had gotten me Dark Side for my birthday).

Since this is about no loss, here's my spoiler alert. If you don't want the game spoiled then don't read any further...

SPOILER GAP
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END SPOILER GAP

These strategies below have resulted in no loss.

While obviously some things have changed since then and the release, I've been able to do all battles no loss so far and am now level 59.

The keys are to use the abilities of your units to their fullest through the Whitehill battles as well as opting for damaging skills and medals (i.e. Trap was instrumental in all the battles through Whitehill). Also if you have spells, you should be using them every turn to either damage or slow the enemy.

You couldn't go to the other areas through the Catacombs when I was playing so you had to make due with the units you could get from your starting location. Plus there was no way to get Demonologists from Atrixus (this must have changed) and I honestly have not even seen one the entire game, yet.

Since I didn't play the other classes, I can only speak of the Demoness, but there are a lot of similarities between the other classes with respect to troop availability and what you should strive towards.

I also did all the Atrixus, Catacombs, Dragandor, Shelter, and Whitehill battles (every single one including the Knight that kidnaps the demon child, the big spider stack in the Catacombs, all 3 Shelter battles, and the 3 Whitehill battles) with just the paltry starting units of Imps, Scoffer Imps, 5 Cerberi, 2 Demonesses, and 1 Demon. When I was playing earlier, you had to defeat all 3 Whitehill stacks before the Shelter would replenish, not just 1.

Also, forget about getting any decent level 4 troops in quantity of your race until you get to Monteville (where they will be Undead). Those Evil Beholders that you get from the Witch in Portland are going to be your best units until you get to Monteville. I actually had Assassins that I got from Inselburg for a brief period of time.

My army consisted of Imps, Scoffer Imps, Blood Priestesses, Cerberi, and Evil Beholders for my Portland play and then I swapped out the Blood Priestesses for Assassins when I got them. Your main goal is to do as many quests as possible with kiting / minimal fighting and then get the maps to the other islands of Inselburg and Monteville.

You will then be able to do more kiting and complete some quests to get the Mage for the shelter. Once you do that, focus on getting a Scroll of the Colossus and get yourself either 1 Red or Black Dragon or ArchDemon. Once you do this then focus on defeating the Dragon in Portland. The Dark Human troops are not available until you finish the Portland quests so you can forget about getting Dark Paladins until then.

For me, though, by the time I had Portland finished, I had defeated the Dragon and the 1 Red Dragon I used to defeat the Dragon was enough to make the game significantly easier.

Getting the healing spell is obviously a top priority since you can't resurrect level 5 troops and you'll need to get the dark version of heal to heal your ArchDemons as needed. Empathy is also a very good spell to get to keep damage to your level 5's to a minimum and protect you from Geyser / Armageddon. By the way, the description for Empathy is wrong - it can tie an Ally to an Enemy as well as an Ally.

You will also have the opportunity to get Scrolls of the Colossus and then you should try to get yourself ArchDemons. Once you get them, you can use their Volcano skill and ranged attackers will always attack the Volcano to destroy it. This is huge! For a while I had 2 or 3 ArchDemon stacks with a few Red and Black Dragons and sometimes Green Dragons and you can pretty much defeat most stacks with this group of troops.

Then once you get Dragon Riders, the game is pretty much over. They summon random dragon stacks and, here's the kicker, the skill is largely affected by your leadership and not the number of Dragon Riders in the stack. So I basically had two stacks of ArchDemons evenly split and three 1 Dragon Rider stacks and I was summoning like 7500 Leadership worth of Dragons at first. This is more than enough to defeat most stacks. The Dragon Riders are 100k gold each + 1 Princess, but I essentially have played almost the entire game with just 3 Dragon Riders and two ArchDemon stacks.

Also you will find the Call of Nature spell is seriously overpowered once your leadership gets in the 15 to 20k range. I am able to summon level 1-4 units with about 40k leadership now. They mow through everything and if that is not enough, summon another 40k stack next turn. Slap Mana Spring on them and you'll be able to recharge your mana for the next battle.

I've actually been a bit bored with it, since it is a bit tedious defeating stack after stack of "invincible" enemies this way. Put out the volcanoes, summon some dragons, use Call of Nature and repeat.

I also find the power of Bleeding, Freezing, etc. to cause way too much damage - the Dark Clot skill can literally cause several thousand damage to each affected stack each turn, depending on how large the stack is. The larger the better.

The only things to look out for are:

1. Heroes with Geyser / Armageddon (I think I've counted 5 so far - use Empathy to split the damage to another troop)
2. Rarely, Elf Hunters will move before your ArchDemons (so you'll need an artifact with -1 enemy initiative or you'll have to put some more points into the Warrior Onslaught skill

I'm hoping to finish the game in another couple of weeks - I don't have much time to play during the week so it is mostly on weekends.

So pretty much the challenge of the game is through Whitehill and then after that you shouldn't have much trouble. I do find some of the early quests interesting, but you get Dragon Riders before any of the other new units for the most part (it took me forever to get the Spy and they are lousy), the Amazons are neat, but once you get ArchDemons / Dragon Riders the other troops just pale in comparison to the power of that arrangement.

Hopefully they have made enough (or will continue to make) improvements to make the game better since I started back at the end of June. I actually really like the Dark units of each race (WotN / I&F should have done this), but it would be nice to change their abilities to be darker instead of being just the same.

I also (except for Call of Nature) continuously find both the Spells and Rage Skills to be lacking. I am maxed out with rage and have no problems being close to max rage at the end of a battle since there is really only 1 direct damage rage skill. The Vampire Rage skills are really hard to use since they damage your own troops. I'm hoping some rebalancing of spell power will help with the spells as I pretty much only use Call of Nature, Heal, Empathy, and Magic Spring. Orc Shield is really good for Black / Blue Dragons / Dragon Riders since they are immune to magic.

For one really large enemy stack of werewolves I used just 1 stack of ArchDemons + Invisibility and Dark Clot. That was probably when I was level 35 or so.

So if you can do no loss through Whitehill you should be able to do no loss through the entire game with just some slight variations of your army makeup once you get ArchDemons and later Dragon Riders..

/C\/C\

Thanks for that, Matt. I will be referring to your post as I get further into the game :)

Me, I kited around Atrixus and got some Demons (13 wanted to join me!) and some loot. I also thought I'd buy a Fireball spell for 5000 gold. Now I need to upgrade Chaos Magic past level 1. Another devious trick is to go through the portal to Tristem. There's an invincible troop right there that can't be kited, but now that I have the Tristem map I can sail there and kite my way around, right? :-P

Seems our games are running similarly, mate :)

I opted against kiting the Portland guardians, cause they aren't that powerful anyway. I am using Scoffers, the starting 2 Demonesses (can't find any more), Demons, Demonoligists and Evil Beholders. I am getting um... re-used to the old KBAP tactic of kiting enemies into traps, as I have 4 at any point on the field, and I am not far away from a 5th. Swapping the best enemy archer unit is doing wonders too. Especially since I always try to swap them for a demon-summoned creature with a trap right behind it, lol - if you don't kill the ranged unit yourself, it will move a hex back and fall into the trap. Fun times :)

I haven't moved on to the other 2 islands, Inselburg and Monteville. I might do some scouting to see which ones provides better options.

Wow! That's a ton of Demons! I was stuck with 1 Demon and 2 Demonesses for so long that when I finally was able to recruit them I was like forget it!

It is interesting that they now allow you to go through the portals to the other areas at the beginning as when I started, once you went to the catacombs, you could not go to any of the other places until you got their maps.

I couldn't even return to Atrixus because I was wanting to defeat the Knight that stole the demon child and it wouldn't let me go back. So then I just loaded an earlier save, rolled up my sleeves, and came up with a strategy to no loss him.

If memory serves, that fight got my another level and allowed me to do the big spider Catacombs stack and also made one of the Shelter or Whitehill fights easier.

That's nice that you were able to get a Demonologist (or more?) as I could have used some during my EA playthrough. And you're right that once you are "trained" by the 3 shelter fights and the 3 Whitehill fights you should be able to do most of the fights on Portland with your paltry squad.

That's how I felt, anyway, when I went there, although I did run around at first checking out getting better troops (Evil Beholders) and grabbing leadership flags, etc. to get more troops (at least Imps, Scoffer Imps, and Cerberi as I was stuck with just 1 Demon and 2 Demonesses).

I only got the first level of the trapper skill and with the Paladin (Spirit) skill I got 4 traps as the enemies start to get stronger where it is a lot harder to get them to die when they hit a trap. I think I'm like 10 deaths from getting to level 2 trapper, but I've way surpassed its usefulness.

Well, I hope you guys have fun and enjoy it. I do think it is better than WotN (I got I&F, but never played it) as I got tired of fighting Undead troops by about the time I got to Greenwort. After Guildford shows his true colors, I thought it would have been nice to see Undead variants of humans, dwarves, and elves and we now have them in DS! :)

/C\/C\

To me, traps are not for killing - I use them to hinder the enemy. If enemy falls into a trap, it can't hit you, and if it can't hit you, you are one step closer to winning the fight without losses. Simple as that :)

As for the demonologists, well, if that demonologist demoness in Atrixus had no demonologist troops, I would have had her change her profession :D But then again, no Call Collosus scroll for me yet.

Yep you got it! It's just that you can't increase the medal without actually killing the stack so that's why I've pretty much been stuck at just 4. You really got to work to get the trapper skill up - been that way since AP.

Yes - you're fired! ;-)

I think that must be a new character since I never saw her - unless you're referring to Pacca. I forget her profession. Nice to hear that they added some Demonologists to Atrixus at the start. I tend to be a fan of summoner troops and probably would have enjoyed it more with a Demonologist or two at the start.

As far as Scrolls of Colossus are concerned, don't worry, you will get one once you find a mage for the magic department (he's in Inselburg). If you're really lucky, you'll swap out a navigation map for one before that.

/C\/C\

Wow, i really wonder how you did those 3 fights at whitehill Matt, I quickly assumed those were impossible to do. But at least you confirmed that there were 3 fights necessary before release. So next challenge is to do beginning with Orc class.

I'm level 60 atm (rushed learning) my pet is 60 (full level) and still have 2 island to do, and helvadia, and i guess those final fights at whitehill. Game is pretty boring atm, all i do is summon dragons from dragon riders, summon demons with demonologists, summon more demons with demons ;-) and watch summons kill everything, if fight is going slow i raise dead with necromancers for more damage. Wanted to swap out demons for archdemons but if they died i had no way of resurrecting them, so i scratched that idea.

At the moment planing my vampire play-through, have already prepared save with trap spell. If anyone wants the save, pm me no battles were played just got trap from talking to witch, and it took some reloads to get one.

Well, Matt, this NPC is very easy to miss. You know there are a few flying platforms in Atrixus. One of them leads to the traitor guy you need to eventually kill. There is another in the (middle?) of the map where the yellow circle-not-quite-pentagram thingy is, the area with the inn and the demon who had his son captured. If you take this flying platform, you will be taken to a small flying island where another Demonologist Demoness lives. She sells 4 spells in my game (Volcano, Armageddon and 2 weaker ones) + Demons and Demonologists.

Could have easily missed her out myself.

Wow, I need to check this out. I love Demonologists.

In my game I have been able to grind my way through Portland now, killing everything on that island except for the fight against the 1 black dragon. Not sure how I can no loss this yet. So I'm off to Inselburg and Monteville for some goodies, then Atrixus to try to pick up some Demonologists. Then more grinding, I guess.

40 no loss fights done so far.

EDIT: yep, it's just like DG says, if you teleport to Atrixus you start on that yellow circle thingy, and there's a platform just off there which takes you up to the demonologist guy, Verdelet. He has 140 Demonologists, Volcano, Armageddon etc. So now I am very pleased with my team of Demonologists, Demons, Cerebuses, Scoffer Imps, Imps with my measly 2 Demonesses in reserve.

I am progressing well so far. Tristem is a great location to open. Just go through the catacombs, poke your nose into Tristem (you will most likely aggro units on very narrow pathways, so you cant go past them), then go back into the catacombs. This is enough to open it as a location. Use Blackie to port you there - you won't regret it. I snagged 70 free orc Shamans, which seem to be quite OP. Thanks to adrenaline, their skills are available every round. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is broken, cause I have never played the orcs in the OOTM campaign that introduced adrenaline.

So right now I am sporting 2 Green Dragons (bought eggs), Demonologists, Necromancers, Shamans and Demons. Good times :)

Well you guys are set for the game now, there won't be any big obstacles anymore.

I'm trying Vampire now, and it's pretty much impossible to do anything no-loss. Demoness start is so much stronger than other classes. Even with trap lvl 2 and trapper there isn't enough damage to deal with all the stacks. With one more level i could possibly get diversion. Only way i see this working out is witch giving phoenix spell :grin: Anyone have done it, or only demoness is impossible no-loss viable?

Hmmm... I think they must have added that, because all the platforms were broken (i.e. not working as the human invaders had really trashed the place) and there is nothing in the central yellow circle for me at least at the beginning of the game except for that big gate you can't go through.

Yah, it was tough, but the two side stacks were weaker than the middle stack when I played and so I ended up doing the side stacks first. I think the first one I was level 5, but defeating them got me to level 6 and allowed me to pop back to the shelter and get a few more Imps / Scoffer Imps. My army was 18 Scoffer Imps, 1 Demon, 5 Cerberi, 2 Demonesses, and 28 Imps. Then I was able to get 3 more each of Imps / Scoffer Imps for the other two battles.

You basically have to use the Demonesses to swap their big shooter stack to your Demons with the Demon's summoned troop (and you use that troop to attack a secondary shooter if there is one near where you were swapped) and then once you take them out, the other troops are either slow so try to get them to walk onto a trap (you'll note that I have 4) or you can have your Demons absorb damage until they are down to about 30 or so life and then the Demonesses swap will be reloaded by that time and then you can have your Cerberi / Demonesses absorb the rest of the damage. I'm not joking about maxing out the damage absorption of all 3 of those troops, getting them down to 30, 20, or even fewer hitpoints. Also, under no circumstances, allow Bowmen to use their Cold Arrow on your troops (forget about no loss if that happens) or Priests / Inquisitors to use their "Healing" on your troops (if you've whittled them down a bit you might survive a "Healing" attack).

I've attached pictures of the 3 Whitehill stacks (in the order I defeated them) so you can get a feel for what I was up against compared to what you may have faced.

I actually have to find Verdelet for a quest and had no idea where he was - now I know he's in Atrixus. I've kind of been saving it for last as I have three islands left and then Helvedia and Atrixus.

Of the three islands, they are Aralan, Oakarland, and Galenrim. I have Aralan probably about 75% completed, Oakarland about 50% done, and Galenrim probably about 50% as well.

Actually in Helvedia, I was having trouble with the Demon troops believe it or not when I first went there about 10 levels ago (stacks of 43 ArchDemons would Fire Rain my single Dragon Rider stacks, but now that I've finally been able to max out my Dragon Riders I have 13, 12, and 13 in each stack so I'm ready for a rematch!).

By the way, be careful if you face Royal Griffins with dragons because they do either 1.5 or 2.0 times damage to dragons. That was a major ow! the first time I came up against that! I've also used it to my advantage with Call of Nature and I think I had a stack of 120 or so single-hit kill 43 Green Dragons!

By the way, the Armageddon spell is back to only damaging non-magic immune enemies and Dragon Riders are magic immune so it can't hurt them. I forget which games have it that way, but I know at least TL is that way, whereas I think they changed it in WotN where it even affects magic immune enemies.

At the rate I'm playing it'll probably take me a couple of weeks to finish the game no loss...

/C\/C\

Wow! You couldn't use that strategy before, as they didn't open until you got the map (or perhaps it was getting quests later as I could only go to Dragandor from the Catacombs at first).

If you have 2 Green Dragons, you should be able to defeat the Dragon in Portland.

Sounds like you're doing well!

/C\/C\

Hey everybody

I just played for an hour of two and I really like that you can start as a demoness or vampire with awesome troops.
But then I entered Whitehill and Portland and i was surprised that the islands were so empty, there's hardly anything to pick up.
Are the other island better or did the developers not have enough time to finish the game ??

Matt, the platforms are indeed broken at first, they open up after you visit Atrixus the second time after you free the Spirit (you can get there through the Portland catacombs in the graveyard). I recall seeing 2: one leads to the demonologist guy (wasn't a girl, my bad), and the other to the demon traitor you need to eventually kill.

Whitehill is completely empty, nothing to loot at all, which I admit is very strange. Not so Portland though, that should be full of enemy stacks and loot.

You know, I guess I got so caught up in doing the quests from Portland and onward to check back in the Catacombs to see when they'd open up the passages back to Atrixus, Portland, and Tristem and I could have gone back via the Portland portal as you mentioned.

You know what's funny, is that I actually went through that portal back to the Catacombs through the Portland portal, but must not have thought to check to see if the travel restrictions had been lifted!

So I guess I kind of forgot about checking, but that means that with Blackie you should be able to kite around Tristem and Atrixus and get a lot of goodies to aid in your Portland and beyond efforts.

Verdelet's units would have made Portland so much easier! Oh well, I guess I did it the hard way! :)

I'm not sure if you can kite around the units guarding the Troll / Ogre shop in Tristem, but if you could get to that shop, you'd get those units pretty early as well. The Shaman by the shore sells the new units (I think they are called Orc Shamans or something like that). They have Empathy, which is a really important spell for deflecting damage to another unit (and like I mentioned before, you can pick an enemy troop).

I guess, though, that none of this helps with the Shelter and Whitehill battles, but it is still great to know!

/C\/C\

53 fights done now, Monteville is about 50% complete. The chokepoint for me now is that Black Dragon on Portland. I know I will have to kill it soon but with no resurrecting troops other than the Demonologist, I don't think it can be done without a level 5 unit.

Ah i see, 4 traps, but still that last stack looks vicious.

You can skip this fight for later. At Monteville in one of the castles guy gives 2 or 3 wanderer scrolls for free. Call of colosus or dragon of chaos will defeat that fight easily. Also you can abuse trap but it's kinda lame memorizing where dragon will land.

My update is as follows mage/vampire cannot do no-loss impossible start, there isn't enough beef or damage to do guardians of light.

90 fights in, same lineup: 2 Greens, 2 Reds, Demonologists, Shamans, Demons. If I had a 3rd Ranged unit, I would use it: the demons are pretty much a mop up squad for anything that gets close to my rangers. At Inselburg now, fighting anything I see.

Game has sure opened up. I like where it is going.

Zhu, the Black dragon in Portland is easy if you leveled up your companion's Orc Sword basic skill well enough. If you have, just gulp a rage potion and unleash. Necromancers might help, as they drop the Black dragon's HP down to 800 with PLAGUE, making it possible for Blackie (or in my case Doncho, cause I wanted my lil dragon who gave me the signature back) to drop it down in a hit.

If everything's ok, this battle can be over on round 1.

ok thanks :)

I've gone a different way so far: Carrius Marrius or whatever his name is in Monteville gave me a Call of Colossus scroll for completing a quest (not fighting this other woman?), so I waited until I was up to 3000 leadership and bang, 2 Archdemons. Man, those guys are seriously overpowered. I killed the dragon with an Archdemon only army but the bigger battle by far was the King of Portland. I had the rest of my team (Demons, Demonologists, Necromancers, Cerebuses) but the issue was the two stacks of Priest of Light and one puny archer stack! I had a lot of trouble with this (level 11 I think) but eventually I figured it out. One stack gets converted by the statue rage skill, one gets the Fear, and the third gets pounded with everything else. Fight took 16 turns but by the end the map was full of Demons and Ghosts etc. :-P

I'm ready to say this: this is the best fun I've had with King's Bounty since Armored Princess, and that was back in 2009 or so!

Aaaaaaah, I so wanted that Call of Collosus scroll!!! And I never got it, maybe cause I traded my 3xRes scrolls for the dark variation of it. Worst thing is, I have never ever gotten to using it. Bummer.

I haven't beaten the king of Portland yet, but I am in no no hurry. He is slim pickings with this squad, mainly because of the new teleport spell. I love it. NO more island to island sailing!!!

Hit level 17. Maxed Learning (+30% XP) and max Order Magic for Level 3 dark Ress. I still have tons of runes to decide what I wanna do. The Lord perk sound really nice, and it costs a shitton of stuff. We will see.

Good times :D

(Good times translation: Lots of fun = Impy, get the freaking game, get playing and start concocting challenges!!!)

Steam name is DG Dobrev, btw. Invite me, everyone's welcome.

Demoness early now loss strategies
 

@Lordwiki PM'd me asking how I defeated the knight that stole the Demon baby.

I thought I'd post here how I did it so that everyone struggling with this battle can benefit.

I've attached our starting armies so that you can see what I was up against and compare it to your situation.

This was a tough fight!

As you can see I only had 5 Scoffer Imps, 2 Blood Priestess, 1 Demon, 2 Demonesses, and 9 Imps vs 12 Guardsmen, 73 Peasants, 18 Bowmen, 72 Peasants, and 145 Peasants. I only had 15 Mana and Fire Arrow for my spell and so I cast it 3 times (once each turn) and that was it for that. I was level 2 and had Power of Spirit and Diversion at Level 1 in the Paladin skill tree for 1 trap.

The key for me, was to prevent the Bowmen from using their Cold Arrow attack because once they do you won't be able to do no loss.

You can use the Imps and Scoffer Imps to work on whittling down the Peasant stacks with their Fireball.

The Demonesses need to move one hex forward to protect your Imps as well as block the Bowmen from escaping and then swap the Demon troop with the Bowmen. The Blood Priestesses also need to move one hex forward for the same reason and then you can use their Bleeding skill on a stack of your choosing. One note about effects like Bleeding: it does more damage the more units there are in an enemy stack. Keep that in mind for selecting a stack to use it on.

You can use the Demon's Run ability to run away from the big stacks, you can use their Bloody Pentagram to increase the morale of your troops, and summon a stack that is going to be used to keep those units away from your troops. Use them to take advantage of that one trap on the battlefield as well.

With this in mind, you should have no trouble whittling down the Bowmen until your Demonesses can Charm them. You should then be able to use the Bowmen's Cold and Fire Arrow abilities on the enemy while marching the Bowmen forward so that they can be used as a meat shield to protect your Imps and female warriors if needed.

Depending on how long you can keep your summoned troop alive, use them to be the first attack and let your Demons attack without the troop being able to retaliate. This will make those stacks more manageable. Your Demons are going to have to absorb a lot of damage in the end, but try to do this until your summoned troop is killed.

Don't forget about the Scoffer Imps' Sneer ability - it can be instrumental with protecting your Demon troop from an inopportune strike. Use the order of movement of the enemies to block each other so that it takes them longer to march down towards your troops / prevents them from attacking your Demon and his summon.

Position your Imps so that their strike and return ability allows them to attack the enemies without the enemy being able to move forward and hit them. That no retaliation is key for whittling down tough stacks.

Remember that the AI attempts to move as close as possible to your troops while still being able to attack. They will never move without attacking or using a special ability (unless something prevents them) so you can use your Demon and summoned troop to prevent them from moving forward towards your softer troops (and you can use them to run further away for another Demoness swap down the road).

You may need to have your Demon troop absorb a ton of damage where they are down to only about 20 to 30 health, but you can also let your Demonesses (and Cerberi if you use them) absorb some damage, too.

Lastly, don't forget about your recharging abilities as you may need to use swap to move an enemy far away and another summon from your Demon troop later will really be key.

This is essentially how I did all the tough early battles, by the way, including this one, the big spider stack in the Catacombs (I also attached a picture for that battle), the 3 Shelter fights, and the 3 Whitehill fights (I used Cerberi instead of Blood Priestesses for most of the other battles).

You can see that you are maximizing your unit abilities, using traps, and trying to keep the most damaging enemies away from your soft troops. Your high hitpoint units can be used to absorb damage so that they only have 20 to 30 left. Lastly, you need persistence - I kept trying and you can get a feel for the tipping point of a battle.

Good luck if you're struggling with these early battles and keep these strategies in mind!

:-)

/C\/C\

Very good tactic, Matt. The game forced me to try something else though... I did it by ditching the low-HP imps completely, as the enemy hero was "healing" them all the time and there was no way to prevent them from being killed. Instead, I split the Demoness stack in 2. This allows for more swaps around the battlefield, thus allowing you to kill stacks of archers safely, and get your troops out of the fray if necessary.

I love this fight. Makes you really think and get creative.

The knight is rather easy fight, but that big spider stack is indeed very difficult. I guess it all depends how game rolled your enemy stacks. Demoness start seems so fun, and well put with starting troops and stuff you can do. Vampire has vampires, zombies, ghosts, and both skeletons - like there is no hp in compassion to demoness troops. Matt did you manage to do guardians of light with vampire ? I guess that should be nice challenge for Impy.

That is an excellent tactic, DGDobrev, and one that I had considered, but fortunately I was able to get by with the Imps / Scoffer Imps since they are your only ranged troops for Demoness. I don't remember all the details of that fight, but I guess I was lucky that he didn't heal my Imps to where they died (if he used the heal spell at all - I just can't remember as that was two months ago!).

Nonetheless, having another Demoness does have the advantages that you state, the only downside is that you won't be able to charm as high leadership troops as you could with 2 Demonesses, but the extra swap is probably worth it in the end.

Yah, I guess game variability makes all the battles pretty personalized for your playthrough. That's why I've posted the starting pictures so that at least you can see how different the enemy stack is from what you're facing and also give you a feel for what is doable.

I've only played Demoness and have just finished Oakarland and Aralan, but all the comments here have me itching to try the other classes, at least through the Whitehill fight. But I'd really like to finish my current playthrough before I restart with another class...

It sure sounds like Orc and Vampire are much harder, although with Vampire at least Ghosts and Vampires can life steal. With Orc and Demoness, you don't have any healing whatsoever.

Does Orc get the Goblin Shamans (or whatever that new unit's name is) or at least 1 Shaman at the start? If you had one Shaman like the Demoness has 1 Demon that would be huge. Too bad for Vampire they don't give you 1 Necromancer. Seems like that would balance out the other classes as you get 2 level 4 troops with Demoness you should at least get 2 level 4 troops with the other classes as well.

Oh well, I guess that's part of the challenge! :)

/C\/C\

Phew, I'm up to 102 fights without loss now, meaning I get the third level of the Grand Strategian medal. I hit the wall a bit at about fight 90 in Inselburg. My team, which I really liked, just wasn't doing it anymore. It consisted of Demonologists, Necromancers, Archdemons (only 2), Demons and Demonesses. This is a great team for spawning units and playing havoc with the enemy, but it's a bad team for keeping everything alive with no resurrection ability.

So, level 5 units it is...

My new team consists of ALL level 5 units in Black Dragons, Reds, Greens, Archdemons and I just got 3 Ice Dragons out of a second Call of Colossus spell. So I think I should be better able to keep everything alive. The next problem I expect will be poor access to more dragons. I have 2 Red Dragon eggs but that's it.

You got Archies? Grats. I didn't.

My Call Collosus scroll gave me trolls, which was great news. I was very hyped up about the idea of trying to play with Dark Paladins + Phantom, as I am so used to that playstyle, but I wasn't meant to be. Not yet at any rate.

Neoline DG is level 27, 140 fights in. My lineup consists of Red Dragons, Giants (had to ditch the Green Dragons cause I have no way of replenishing them) after the dwarf castle fight, Demonologists, Shamans, and Trolls.

I am very interested to find out how do you get to Galenirim. I have a bad feeling it has something to do with that baloon, and you need silk from spider eggs for it. Well, I had like 200, and I sold them cause I didn't know better. Now I need 100 more, and have like 60 of it.

I am also wasting a lot of time going back and forth, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. I don't know how the quests go yet.

So far so good. I am quite enjoying this :)

I'm at final boss atm, level 73, 450 fights no-loss (haven't done any item upgrading fights) so you get rough idea how long the game is. Still have like 10 quests to do but I'm gonna pass on them as I'm quite burned from the game. Last fight seems fun, but nothing spectacular, just adds spawning I need to replace my dragon riders as there is unavoidable damage, so they are no good for no-loss approach.

Galenirim is pretty late game location like 50s or so, and you get it from the maps. The baloon quest is important tho, as it leads to your ability to fly, so definitely look out for those spider eggs.

Lucky for me, in this playthrough, I didn't bother picking up all those spider eggs in the Catacombs. I guess I'd better go back there and start picking. :-P

450 fights? Christ, this is going to take a while then. DG - where do you get those Dark Paladins? Haven't seen any yet.

Wow! I'm only level 65 with 447 no loss fights, but I have fought every artifact upgrade battle so that's maybe why I have so many more fights for such a lower level.

By the way, some of the Gremlin Towers have 60 to 70k hp!

I know what you mean about being burnt out - I've been a bit bored with it since about level 50, but I guess I'll finish as many quests as I can to be thorough.

I did have 6 Scrolls of Ancient Knowledge and just started using them so hopefully I'll be getting a lot of experience for these last batch of battles. I just need to dethrone the Galenrim King and then I'll just have Helvedia and Atrixus left.

By the way, why don't they show the Wanderer Scrolls active any more on the right side of the screen? Did they not have it in WotN / I&F, either? It'd be nice to know which of my Wanderer Scrolls are active as in AP / CW.

/C\/C\

Dark Paladins become available after you complete the Portland quests of dethroning the current leader.

As an aside, be sure to pick up on the spider eggs, etc. when you see them as you never know when you might need them in the future.

Some quests do provide you with them - there's a quest in Aralan where you need to bring someone 1 Spider Egg, 1 Dragonfly Egg, 1 Griffin Egg, 1 Thorn Seed, and 1 Ent Sprout. I was wracking my brain as to where I had seen a Griffin Egg, when I realized that they placed armies on the island for you to fight to get each item. In fact each item was a quest item that you couldn't use.

/C\/C\

Exactly, I got Dark Paladins when dethroned the portland king, but they were only measly 14, when I could command over 40, so it makes very little sense to use them, unless you feel very comfortable with the sacrifice spell. So I opted out of using Dark Paladins for the time being.

Working my way through Tristem now. There we have 2 maps I want :) Both guardians count as deadly, so it is a challenge.

Yea i have more late game battles, and less early ones from item upgrading etc. I fought most of my battles with 10%exp bonus from items, and ofc learning maxed asap. Once you pop AK and do these late game hero battles levels will fly like crazy. Last 3 battles at whitehill gave me 3 levels so yeah it's pretty ridiculous. Still miscalculated my AK scrolls and have 2 left, so go spend them while you can, just save 1 for these last battles.

Those towers have huge hp but no damage from what I've seen. There are some quests with battles with them and they were doing like 200dmg lightning with no ricochet. So definitely the ones spawning more troops are more annoying.

Yeah that must be a bug with those wanderer scrolls not showing up remaining duration. Kinda annoying but at least they work ;)

Still haven't killed last boss, gave up at turn 50ish and boss still had like 3/4 of hp remaining. Will do it later as I got into Pillars of Eternity beta, and man did i love baldur's gate series.

EDIT: Realized something while writing this post, went to try it out and boss went down on first try. Won't spoil it for you guys, if someone cant beat it pm me, but strategy wasn't really creative or anything.

Congrats :)

The game really opened up for me now after I got the 2 Tristem maps. So I went on an explore/steal spree, and opened Galenirim, Bear Butte, Sandy and Amazonia. Being able to port between islands is amazing, as you need to finish a lot of cross-island quests.

I think I have only 2 undiscovered islands now, and I will get those 2 eventually as well. At level 30, my lineup is Archdemons, Demonologists (+Phantom, it's amazing), Shamans, Trolls and 4 Reds. Still looking for something to sub the Reds with... I think I saw cyclopses somewhere. They will sure pack a punch from range till I find something better.

Sadly, still no luck with the Dark Paladins.

Thank you.

Have you been to Inselburg? I got my paladins from there(shops around castle) and some from Portland castle (20 or something like that).

Haven't seen them anywhere else and their numbers are really low, but Recruiter skill in demoness tree really kept me fully stocked on paladins.

Inselburg has none. I have gotten 14 from the Portland castle, and checking the shops in the same area, saw 15 more. So that's a grand total of 29. I think I saw some more on Sandy, but I also found a lot of Archies and Trolls there, so I will be ok for the time being. The shamans shine in a level 5 setup, and Demonologists + Phantom can res level 5 units easily.

Eventually, I would love to get more Dark Paladins, though, cause I want to use them is a similar setup as yours. I kind of envision my late game with Dark Paladins, Knights or Dark Knights, Executioners, Demons and Demonologists. Level 5 units become a pain to resurrect after a certain level, as the enemies grow quite powerful, so level 4 army, as in KBAP, looks like the way to go.

@zjazd18 is right about the Paladin Recruiter skill - I've been using it for almost 200 fights and have been using it to keep my ArchDemon stacks maxed out.

I have 183 ArchDemons in reserve with two stacks of 20 and 19. I've probably recruited 193 of them.

I think, though, they changed the recruiter percent from 6 to 3% of your total Leadership; My ArchDemon Leadership is 1170 now (due to bonuses) and I have about 44k Leadership and 3% of that is 1320. It seemed like you needed to have enough Leadership for at least 1 troop for it to work so it is better used with level 4 and below troops. Since it was 6% before, I was able to start recruiting ArchDemons around 25k Leadership or a touch higher.

So you should be able to max out your Dark Paladin (or whoever else you'd like) stack, once you get it, pretty easily. I don't think it works with Dragons, though, and certainly not with Dragon Riders (I think these troops are not available in any normal shops, only special ones) as I have never gotten any of those troops from it.

/C\/C\

Question: after my main lineup has filled up, will recruiter start increasing the reserve troops? So far it hasn't happened. I am looking at 30 Dakries and 10 Knights for like 10-15 battles now.

For me, after each battle I get at least 1 ArchDemon in my reserve slot and sometimes if I have a slot or two one or more additional troops. That's why I have so many ArchDemons in reserve.

It depends on which troops you summon, although, it seems like the description is not accurate with respect to how many you get. I remember having Executioners in my reserve slot and it seemed like I'd only get 1 or 2 even though I should have been getting more. I also seem to remember getting 2 ArchDemons every now and then.

The bottom line is that it should be adding units to your reserve slot, but I think they have to be summoned creatures (not sure why I'd get ArchDemons, though, unless it is counting the Demonologist spell - which I haven't used in a really, really long time).

Hmmm... does Phantom work?

/C\/C\

Phantom works as it did in KBAP, on units of level 1-4, giving you up to 40% of their stack to control as a secondary unit for 3 turns (if it's not dead by then, it disappears). I use it on the Demonologists, as they are my do-it-alls right now: resses, summons, etc. Phantoming a Demonologist gives you additional res, another cannon fodder (summon), and 1 basic attack. What's not to like :)

read your post before. I was level 30ish when I got an Archie just like that from recruiter (Leadership was like 16k at that time). Interesting. Still looks completely random to me, and I don't get it to proc after every fight, or so it seems.

No - sorry I wasn't clear, I meant does Phantom count as a "summon" spell?

Probably not since you didn't get any Demonologists when you used Phantom on them.

I'm not sure why ArchDemons count as a summon unless it is because of the Demonologist spell.

So perhaps, you can't get any "Traitor" troops because they don't count as summons.

Hmmm... I guess you need to use Sacrifice, possibly with Hypnotize to increase non-summonable troops.

I wonder if anyone has gotten any Orcs or Undead via the Recruiter skill.

I've gotten many troops from the Call of Nature spell so you can get Royal Griffins, etc. I've actually disbanded a bunch because if you have open army slots, you'll just get some recruits whether you want them or not.

/C\/C\

Recruiter only works for troops that were used in battle, but if you put 2 units that you want in reserve slot and use them in battles you will be getting a lot of them. It also works as disadvantage if you want to fill up your ranks to max asap, and you may be already maxed at one unit, and recruiter keeps giving that unit to you in reserve slot.

What i did was keep 2 recruiter slot occupied with 2 units 1-1 stacks of the troops i needed the most. So that way, i was getting exactly what i wanted. When my army was full i would wait for level up, feel up the 2 units that i already had in reserve, dismiss them and split other 2 units into reserve with 1-1 numbers. My 5th slot was Dragon Riders and sadly you can't get them from Recruiter.

You can also get units that were summoned during battles, i was getting units from my necromancer raising dead ability that i never had in my army. So you can get black knights even without using them if you had necromancers or Call of Death spell i guess.

BTW anyone knows how to mod the game in the way that vampire starts with phoenix spell? :-P

I gotcha now. Yeah, Phantoming won't give you any extra troops. And I also get that I must find a way to incorporate the Darkies in combat so I can somehow grow them. I personally dislike sacrifice: it is way too risky of a spell, even though it works great with Trolls at night or underground, as you can potentially have a huge supply of ever-replenishing HP.

I guess I should find some easy enemies to kill this way. Sucks: it will take a very long time to grow a stack from 30 to max leadership this way. How about 2 stacks? Lol.

As for Phoenix? Don't we all wish. I hope the Russian buddies work on the game scanner as they did for KBAP. At least then you can scan your games and tell if you get the spell in the early stages of the game.

Finally finished that quest in Inselburg to get the king on the throne etc. What a pain in the ass! But there are 85 Dark Paladins there, which I'm very happy about because there were none in Portland at all. Until this point I had been struggling a bit with all four types of dragons (Red, Green, Black, Ice - not Bone :) ) and no fifth unit because I only had two Archdemons. The problem, as usual for KB games, is access to the units you want. There's nowhere to buy any dragons at this stage of the game, so I guess I will now stash those dragons and go back to level 4 units + Phantom + Resurrection, same deal as in previous KB games.

Having said that, the game is really enjoyable and I have to say that the first three islands are excellent in terms of map design, quest design, etc etc. I rarely felt like I was grinding for grinding's sake. On the other hand, Darenbam seemed pretty boring to me, reminding me of all those shitty Viking islands in WoTN :-P

If you have 2 Archies, or a well upgraded Orc Sword skill for the spirit you might wanna beat the dragon in Portland, and then do the quest to give him a princess. This will make him an ally and move him to the Shelter. He sells Red and Black dragons, and may have an egg or two to boot.

My game looks to be devoid of Dark Paladins, so I am growing them on my own. It also seems devoid of Knights, so I may go for Black Knights instead, as you can make those yourself from prisoners. This is bad, as I have opened all islands but 1. I hope I can somehow get more to spawn, cause I can't say I like fighting handicapped.

That's easy! I am a modder after all! :)

1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\sessions\dar kside (there is no space there in "darkside", I'm not sure why the forum is adding a space there as there isn't one in my actual text)
2. In there you will find ses.kfs - copy that file to somewhere else on your hard drive (this file is actually a ZIP file)
3. Extract the contents to a subfolder where you copied it ("ses" is s good name - I use 7Zip and you can right click on ses.kfs and it will have "Extract to ses\" as an option)
4. Go to the subfolder where you extracted the files and open HERO.TXT in Notepad
5. Find "hero_mage {" section towards the bottom of the file
6. Find the "start {" section under hero_mage {
7. Find the "spells {" section under start {
8. Add "spell_phoenix=1" to that section of code (valid spell names are in SPELLS.TXT). Be sure you spell it properly, otherwise game will crash when starting a new game!
9. Save HERO.TXT and exit from Notepad
10. Copy HERO.TXT to either:
    1. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\data\mods (you'll need to make the mods folder under data as it does not exist normally) - this will affect all sessions (but Dark Side is the only session right now; however, in the future there may be more than one session)
    2. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Darkside\sessions\dar kside\mods (once again that space in "darkside" is not there and same as above - you'll need to make the mods folder) - this will affect only the Dark Side session (and not other sessions if you have them)

That's it!

By the way, I couldn't resist looking up what the recruiter skill does, here is the ignore list (from ADDON_ARENA.LUA):

So it looks like you should be able to get anyone not in the list above. I'm not sure why "ork_scout" is in the list, but whatever.

If you have a Necromancer and they Raise Dead, then the following additional units can be added to your army (they are added without any skills so long as the Necromancer is in your army (the Necromancer is not a pawn and its belligerency is 1, i.e. human):

Also, I've briefly gone through the code and it looks like the enlister (Recruiter) skill selects a random troop from your army slots and then cycles from that number forward, wrapping around as needed. So for example, if it picks 4, it will add 4, 5, 1, 2, 3 in that order per restrictions. It also goes last in the code and so if you have items / the Puppeteer skill, they will populate the list first and then it will add units from the Recruiter skill. If a unit is added to the list from Recruiter and the list has 4 or more entries, then it won't add any more units (so in the example above, if you had 5 units in the list already, it would add your army from slot 4, but then that would be it).

Since I had just Dragon Riders (in the exclude list) and ArchDemons as the only troops in my army and since I had ArchDemons also in one of my reserve slots, it would always select the ArchDemons (since that was the only troop in my army that it could pick that was not in the ignore list and it adds at least one - this was even with having Puppeteer and summoning troops from the ArchDemons and Call of Nature spell). If I also had a spare reserve slot, then one of my summoned units would go there.

So if you want to recruit troops of a certain type, having them in more than one slot will increase your chances of picking them and as @zjazd18 mentions, putting a unit in the reserve slot will effectively force it to pick that troop, but only if they are added to the list with the above restrictions. If you don't have the Puppeteer skill, then you should be able to have 4 out of your 5 troops in your army and to the list; however, if you have a Dark Knight in reserve and they are in unit slot 3 and it starts at 4 (cycling to 3 last), then they won't be added to the list. Putting them in 2 army slots guarantees them being added to the list and since you have an army in reserve it should then pick them. At least, that's what it looks like the code does.

By the way, I was confusing the Puppeteer skill with the Recruiter skill as the Puppeteer skill allows adding of summoned units to your army. Here is the code that adds them to a table that serves as a list of possible candidates to add to your army:

Note that the function will floor so if you don't have enough leadership and it is less than 1 it will be 0. "tab_verbovka" is the list of possible candidates to add to your army.

With respect to Phantomed units, as long as they are temporary and not pawns and their belligerency is 1 then there is the possibility of adding them via the Puppeteer skill. As far as I can tell, Phantomed units meet this criteria (my only question mark is their belligerency, but I think it is 1 since that means they are controlled by a human). So I think the Puppeteer skill is another way to grow your army via the Phantom spell. Someone will have to try it and let me know if they are able to get Phantomed units added to their army via Puppeteer.

From what I can tell, the above seems right with respect to how I think the code works. The only way to tell, though, is by running it through the LUA debugger. I don't have the time right now, but I may try to do this in the future...

/C\/C\

Damn, Matt dropping some knowledge on us. Thanks for the information, but i went ahead and used magicbook cheat to have some fun with vampire. BTW using that modification would cause to get "cheater" at the end of the game?

I'm completely positive that it is impossible to do early game as vampire without better spells than the ones you get from first quest(i'm talking no-loss impossible ofc).

I don't think mods will show as cheater, just cheat codes.

I have not tried Orc / Vampire, but people on the Steam forums said they did both classes no loss impossible during EA.

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Phantoming with Puppeteer? You got it, as soon as I can afford the runes to get it. I will post my findings here as necessary. Any way to grow Paladins or Knights is welcome as I still can't find any more than what I have. I personally prefer Knights to Dark Knights, as the Knights start off with great morale, which means more damage, while the Dark ones need to fight a bit before they accumulate the extra attack bonus. It was so easy with the good old Splinter of Darkness item in KBAP/CW, but so far I haven't seen it show up in my game. It might still be in, though.

EDIT: Yeah, I am a big idiot. But of course Inselburg has lots of Dark Knights and Dark Paladins - I just wasn't looking where I should have been. After you create the Twilight order on Inselburg, all kinds of shops open around the castle, selling all kinds of goodies - but I was squarely not paying attention to that. In the castle was also the Amulet of the Twilight order, that for a whopping 88k gives you 20 mana, +2 Morale of traitor Troops, and a freaking -20% Leadership to traitor troops. Holy hell - 163 leadership Paladins and 119 leadership Knights. Where has my head been til now?

You know, I was going to ask if you had hooked Leo up with Julia and checked around the castle, but thought you had.

Oh, and one thing about the Recruiter / Puppeteer is that the units have to be there at the end of combat for them to be added.

Phantomed troops are usually gone by then, so you'll have to make sure that they are there at the end, otherwise they don't count.

The function "army_update_postcombat" is run at the end of the fight and so it only surveys the battlefield at the end, so if you summon troops and they die, then they don't count either, and for that matter, if you have a stack in your army that is killed then they don't count as well.

Keep that in mind...

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My observations exactly. I was able to get all kinds of demons, executioners, cerberi, imps and dark paladins, as I usually use them for a phantom-res tactic close to the end of the fight.

Allrighty, so it does work, we just need to make it work :)

EDIT: Ok... while I understand why the devs wanted to make burning, poison, cold, etc. more viable, this is kind of ridiculous. Since when we can't remove those conditions? Dispel is like the worthless thing ever now.

Finished the game on normal with demoness, it was fun, you really improved the quests now.
I managed to break camilla's quest, SPOILERS to follow:
i killed 6 dwarfs, and when i got back to camilla's island she already had all 7 as ghosts. Killed them, killed her, and after that when i met the last normal dwarf and killed him the quest remained at kill camilla, but she was dead so the quest remained as unfinished.
SPOILER END
For those wanting to replace the reds and other lesser troops, get the Dragon riders from your blackie, they are expensive but gold is abundant, and they rock, without being OP, i usually orc shield them in all fights because they are so hard to get, and limited.

Just for reference my setup for the demoness: Archdemons, Demons, Demonologists, Dragon riders and Shamans, first four spam summons, especially with phantom archies, and the shamans distract with totems or heal all with axes, they can heall all living troops, even dragon riders, which is really useful.
With demoness using Demetrius class III, heirloom sword, and Burning cloak to reduce the leadership costs for demons an Archdemon is down to 510 leadership, so i can pack a whole lot of them.

Well i was telling you earlier about shops around castle on Inselburg. :-P

Shield of Rage gets rid of post damage effects, it's second best talent in might talent tree in my opinion.

I would love to be wrong about vampire start but i tried many start/spell combinations and there is couple things that are unavoidable. For example there is not a single unit that can survive ranged attack from elfs in elf guardian of light stack. So only luck with diversion could possibly prevent that to happen in first round. Fights against spiders/snakes in catacombs are very hard as well if stack has thorn hunters they always attack skele archers so you have to bench them and they are only source of reliable damage.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but even with magicbook cheat only way to some battles was phoenix - not even level 1 could cut it, had to be level 2.

Currently I'm on portland already and having lots of fun, with huge spell selection from the beginning it's really refreshing. Only restriction i put on myself is that spells from scrolls are not allowed.

You did, but I did not realize what you meant - I thought you mean all the inns and bullshit. Keep in mind that I am playing the game for the first time :D

Then again, I feel in a profoundly commanding position now. Battles fly by, and all I need to worry about is to avoid losing a single knight or demonologist. It is also absolutely ridiculous how much attention the AI pays to stuff like totems and volcanoes. With an Archie and/or a Shaman, you can keep at least 1 enemy troop occupied at the same time.

Shamans shine in KBDS, mark my words. You can use them for so many tasks, it is absolutely ridiculous. I have never liked a unit so much since the Paladins in KBAP. Shamans plant totems, heal your level 5s, act as mop up for any troop that shows up close to your rangers.

Also, I have grown to like the Wizards. In Battle Trance, they can halve enemies like nobody else, provided their leadership is higher. My current setup consists of Archies, Demonologists/Dragon Riders/Wizards, Dark Knights (give an extra attack to a Battle Tranced Wizard is OP), Dark Paladins and Shamans/Wizards. It takes a bit of babysitting to keep the low-hp troops safe, but they sure hit like a ten ton truck. Teleport is a great spell to have along this squad too, as you can put a Knight right up the ........ of the enemy and have them execute their circle-swing attack for HUGE damage. And then port them back for ress and recuperation. So satisfying... haven't felt so good since KBAP.

You captured the feel of this game, it just feels good, and i might be wrong but some of the stacks at the end seemed to be generated lvl up according to your lvl, which is great. I finished at lvl 72 i think and some stacks were still shown as strong, with huge numbers in them, which was delicious with my half.

I just feel that impossible can rock the no-loss game, as it has been since KBAP. It is an exhilarating experience. Every battle counts. Paying attention counts. Knowing your stack size counts. Knowing what you can do vs various lineups counts.

I feel kinda reborn :D That is what KBAP/CW used to thrive on. And of course, all maps open in KBDS now. Lets see what the future has in store for us. I really wanna try the Dragon Riders before I swap them out for lvl 4s, like Executioners. Those guys are amazing with Stone skin and Mana Spring.

I've purchased the game and tried a few different starts so far on vanilla vampire impossible. It is possible to get your Chaos Magic up to lvl 2 at lvl 4 if you're lucky with might runes at level up, but you simply won't have enough time, with one cast per round, to be able to CC/kill all the Black Gate Guardian's troops before they get close enough to start inflicting losses on your army. And this is only possible if you open some snake eggs as your necro army cannot deal any significant damage to the enemy. I defeated all of the armies in the catacombs, except the one that has tons of fire spiders by using a stack of snakes, but the red snakes simply have too low HP and once 1 dies......... I seem to remember that there was a way to change the result of the opened "container", if you could manipulate/get green or even blue (royal) snakes or spiders from those eggs, I do believe it's doable with the right spells on vanilla. For example, if you got Chaos Arrow and Snow Storm from the tree stump and Clarissa, and some lvl 2 or 3 snakes or spiders from containers.............
From many restarts, Clarissa will give you a LVL 2 scroll, like Magic Shackles from time to time, so I guess getting Phantom from her is "theoretically" possible......

Farthest i've gotten without cheat was beating black gate guardian using level 2 trap, trapper medal, and diversions level 1.Also with that setup it's possible to beat dwarf guardian of light as he has no ranged units.

Those eggs only give red spiders, and cave spiders, tried alternating them and simply nothing else comes out.

I've tried searching steam forums, and didn't see anything about impossible no-loss. Only impossible with loses, and abusing uncontrollable stack of spiders. If someone managed to do it, definitely didn't brag about it.:grin:

I restarted game many times, and best spell i saw was trap. Even if you get phantom it's too weak early on.

If you could get snow storm and trap....... it may be possible to create a "choke point". But as you say, how do you deal with the ranged troops when all your army has such low HP........:rolleyes: Perhaps a 'fair' mod would be allowing your vamp to start with 2 necromancers. Problem being, you would still have to be lucky enough with runes to get Chaos LVL 2 AND Distortion LVL 1...........I have also got Magic Spring" from Clarissa, but your army doesn't have any 'meat shields" or summons so that's useless too........ sigh
Impy! Where are you??????????????

So what do you all think about giving the Vampire 2x necromancer and 1x black knight to start? Would that be "kosher" ????????

That would be awesome, but is it hard to mod something like that? As Matt proved, giving phoenix spell at start is pretty easy to do so i would go with that approach if i were to start over.

The starting army is 2 lines above the starting spell list in HERO.TXT. Note that you can change your starting Leadership and give yourself a Bone Dragon! You can give yourself more runes, gold, etc. - they are all there under the heading for the hero type you wish to change.

Note that the unit names for your army must match their ATOM - look in SPECIAL_PARAM.TXT and you'll see a bonus for "sp_lead_all" that is close to the top of the file. All the official ATOM names are listed there and you can put whatever you want in HERO.TXT - you can even expand it all the way out to 7 units (from 3) if you'd like, just make sure you terminate it properly (i.e. no | is needed at the end, just the unit name, "|", and number).

Once again, a misspelling here or improperly specified army list will crash the game when starting anew so just be careful and make backups of everything.

By the way, it'd be nice to use the Demoness as a template and devise a fair starting army for the other classes if they are underpowered or don't get any good units from their starting location. I have not played the other classes, so I don't know what you can get...

So who's equivalent to 2 Demonesses and 1 Demon for Orc / Vampire? Maybe you can even toss in 5 Cerberi for comparison between armies you should have by the time you get to the Catacombs with all 3 classes.

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There is no equivalent. You start with skeleton archers, zombies, and ghosts. Then from the beginning (no fighting) you pick 2 vampires and skeletons. That's all, there is shop but it has same troops - skeletons and zombies. So there is no compassion in term of quality of the troops. Orc is pretty weak as well but i don't remember what he had, as i had no desire to play that guy. Necromancers and Black Knight would definitely even things out, but still not sure if it would cut it.

I played the game from the first week of early access as a vampire, Daert at the start had 2 necromancers (on the side note his attack does more damage than it should do) and I don’t remember how many ancient vampires (they have +100hp and can regenerate), but it was breeze on impossible without losses from the get go. If you could get even 1 necromancer at the start that would change the game enormously, he has 3 rise dead, that alone would keep enemy units busy for most of the battle.

Bagyr has access to Veteran orc, regular orcs, hyenas and goblins (and by access I mean to pick them up, no buying), since I’m writing this from work I can’t check exactly the name of them, however they have only 10HP! that I remember, any dwarf farts and he dies. He definitely needs shaman to keep him alive since there is no other way to keep him healthy.

Wow, there does seem to be quite an imbalance between starting Demoness and Orc / Vampire.

Okay, I'm down to the final boss fight! 509 no loss battles in and I'm level 74.

I've been basically playing my "no res" party since level 30 or so of just ArchDemons and Dragon Riders.

I've tried a couple of fights with the boss and so far it is hard to prevent damage (about 4K worth in one shot from the big boss) - I've tried just Dragon Riders a couple of times, just ArchDemons a couple of times, and both together.

I'm a glutton for punishment, though, and I'm going to see if I can try to do it with just that group of units. I used up all my Ancient Knowledge scrolls, but have 10M gold. So I guess I could fight the Golem in the Shelter (@500K a pop) and try to get to level 75, not that it would make that big of a difference.

I do have a scroll that gives you -20% Leadership so I'm going to use that one and then I forgot that I have at least 1 each of all the other scrolls (or can go buy them) so that I should be able to go in with +10 Attack, Defense, and Intellect, +15% Critical Hit, +30 Mana / Rage (I guess I need to learn Calm Rage) to max out my hero's stats.

So we'll see how it goes, if I can't win with no loss using that group, then I have plenty of money to go buy other troops...

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Hurray!

I basically just went with what I had and just went with a single stack of 43 ArchDemons and was able to finish off the big boss!

I didn't even use any Wanderer Scrolls.

If any one wants to know strategy, let me know.

510 total no loss victories!

I posted pictures of the victory, my final score (only 600, oh well), and my combat statistics for the game so you can see what I used. I tended to still sail around a lot, so that's probably why it took so long (I was being cheap to save that gold - since I ended up with 10M I guess I should have taken advantage of it more).

I didn't finish all the quests, but most of them had to do with stuff in the Shelter (and the descriptions aren't clear how to finish them such as Engineering Department or Military Department). The only other quest I couldn't finish was to bring 3 spells to the Shaman in Bear Butte, but I only got 1 of the scrolls as the other two never appeared in my game (or I didn't know where to find them).

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Grats Matt. Judging by how fast the boss fight ended i'm guessing u used similar strategy to mine. How come you spend 96 days, have you traveled a lot by boat or what? I ended at day 19 and was really careless about optimal travel route, although i'm used to abuse pause button like crazy from doing speed runs in previous games.

Anyways now you are free to go and figure out start of Vampire or Orc. Maybe it's possible to do it without alternating starting troops/spells.:grin:

Well, I am also taking my sweet time traveling a lot by horse and such, mainly because I don't know the quests yet and sometimes I spend in-game hours running here and there... In any case, KBDS sure has tons of quests: Matt has 134 completed vs the 86 from KBAP, so we get like 50 more quests here. Awesome, I was looking for that number :)

Congrats Matt, I just hope I am able to beat the final boss as easily as you managed.

with my demoness i had 138 completed quests, 7 unfinished and 3 failed (sometimes you have to choose), but in my orc run i found some new quests that i skipped with demoness by simply killing the target (like the damaging steel + luring castle guard)

Yah, I guess, I like to sail around a lot! I was being cheap and saving the teleportation costs, but I ended with over 10M gold so I guess I had nothing to worry about.

I'm think of starting a what's your favorite boat thread! I posted a picture of the boat I ended with - love them Griffin sails! :)

Yah, here's my incomplete quest list (2 failed - I picked Marie Everhart over Skewbite and Blackbeard (hey! Didn't he look like Blackbeard from Pirates of the Caribbean now that I think about it?)):

Enlightenment (couldn't find Berserker or Battle Cry scrolls in my game)
Improving the Dark unit's Critical Hit (this quest is only a small improvement)
Improved Attack (this quest is only a small improvement)
Sabotage Media (I went back to him before Whitehill and there was nothing to do)
Improved Defense (this quest is only a small improvement)
Dragon Riders (not sure how many more princesses I need to finish this one)
Engineering Department (not sure how to complete - do I need to fight the Golem once?)
Military Department (not sure hot to complete - do I have to bring him a ton more prisoners?)

So those were the ones I didn't finish - between Krit, Attack, Defense, and Res All, I picked Res All. I guess I had enough artifacts to do another but +5 Attack, Defense, or Krit seemed like no big deal.

Anyone know how to complete Sabotage Media, Dragon Riders, Engineering Department, or Military Department?

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For military department i think at 10000 prisoners quests progresses forward. Also i don't think there are enough great artifacts to complete all of the Improve stats quests.

I'm sure you'll be able to do it!

By the way, keep an eye on your spell power as your Intellect goes up in the game because I was quite surprised by how much the spell power of certain spells increased.

By the way, I think the first challenge is "no res" party!

I never used any resurrection abilities the entire game!

Not any units that had resurrection abilities like Dark Paladins, Dark Inquisitors (is that their name?), Demonologists, (are there any more?) and I never even used the Resurrection spell. We are the Dark after all - death and destruction should be our game! ;)

I can also see the "no archies" (no ArchDemons) challenge!

I really enjoyed playing them as they were finally awesome level 5 units. I had improved them in my H3B mod for TL (they had an "Amalgamation" ability where they could cast a random spell on enemy troops that could either Sheep, Pygmy, or Blind), but I think (even though they are overpowered due to the AI focus on Volcanoes) the devs got them right for the most part. They should be able to summon troops, send down Fire Rain, and cause Volcanoes to appear from the ground! :)

I, for one, would be sad not to be able to use them in a game! :cry:

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Wow, well done on you guys for having completed the game no loss already. You are way ahead of me. This game is a massive time sink. Apparently I've logged 71 hours already (about 12 were pre-release) and I'm only up to 160 fights and level 30 or so.

Like DGD said, getting those maps on Tristem are really important to opening up the rest of the islands. The others mainly seem kiteable. I've used a whole heap of different units looking for a combo I really like, but currently I'm using Dark Paladins, Dark Knights, Wizards, Archdemons and either Red Dragons or Executioners. Just killed the king in Baraz-Gund or however that's spelled.

Tell me about the time sink... The way I am looking at it, to complete this game properly, you have to log like 150 hours in a single campaign. 81 hours in, 230 fights, level 42, and I don't know if I am even halfway. Seems we play similarly with Zhuangzi, my lineup is Paladins, Knights, Archies, Demonologists and Wizards. These freaking wizards... I don't know how helpful they will be in the late game, but there are no better halvers right now.

Working on clearing out Neoline's home. Lots of trash and meat, you know :P Spoils the whole sulfur paradise.

Challenges will be fun, but they will have to exclude dragon riders as well, no halving, no paladins and it's good starting point for a challenge.

At the moment I'm trying to do sick damage army. What i have in plan is fairies with chaos breath, female bonus items, +1damage items, breakthrough in magic skill tree for magic resistance shred. Dunno what the rest of party will look like, but i think paladins and archmages will find their spot. But I play really slowly this time around, like few battles a day, so it will take a long time before anything starts to shape up.

Yeah the game is very long, and i felt bored at the few last levels, but really it's quite expected tbh.

It took me 214 hours and literally just over two months to finish my game (I started June 23rd and finished August 28th)!

It took me 250 hours to beat WotN and there was one battle (where you play the Elf hero) where I couldn't do no loss. This was from June 4th, 2013 through November 29th, 2013 (although I was modding and played some other games through that playthrough).

So you can see that I tend to be a very slow player.

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Well I played about 4 hours last night with Vampire, no loss impossible.

It certainly is significantly harder than Demoness.

Portland is a lot smaller than Atrixus with respect to what you can explore before you have to go through the portal to the Catacombs.

You guys are right, the starting army is really lame - 11 Skeleton Archers, 5 Decaying Zombies, and 2 Ghosts. You then pick up 2 Vampires and 5 Skeletons. You can then buy more Decaying Zombies and Skeletons in the Zombie shop before you go to the Catacombs.

Starting spells are Poison Skull and Slow and you get a Plague Scroll.

I couldn't even do the first Catacombs fight without having to ditch everyone but the 2 Ghosts and Vampires and that fight took a long time for me to no loss it because of the Thorn Warriors.

I decided to skip all the other Catacombs fights and just work my way to the Shelter to see how 2 Ghosts and Vampires would fair. You can do the Black Gate fight with just 2 Vampires separated into 2 stacks by putting them in one of the corners so it is 2 stacks of 1 Vampire versus 3 of the Dwarven troop stacks. I also had Poison Skull and it reduced the stack sizes so that the Vampires could handle them without dying since they regenerate.

I then went on to the shelter and a single stack of 2 Vampires can no loss the Dwarf Shelter stack if you turn them into Bats and then kite around the map whittling them down and using your Poison Skull, but it took over 100 rounds. I took a stab at the Human and Elf stacks and a different strategy would have to be used (the Vampire Bat kiting strategy won't work with them).

So I'm not sure how much more effort I want to put into no loss Vampire - I'll probably go back to my save in the Catacombs and try to defeat the other spider stacks, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get another level out of it when defeating the Dwarven Shelter Guard stack later.

I was really hoping that I could get Chaos Magic Level 2 and pump up my Poison Skull spell, but I was a Might Rune short at Level 3. I need to get to level 4 to be able to get Chaos Magic Level 2 and when I went ahead, I ended up putting 2 levels in Concentration to get me more level 1 Poison Skulls per fight (that's 21 extra mana for 4 additional Poison Skull casts during a 15+ round fight).

I'm not even sure if level 2 Poison Skull will do me much good.

So that's where I am, I'm not sure how much more I want to try before I switch over to the Orc to see if he can fare any better.

It may be possible with fights with lots of living creatures to go with more of an army if you can resurrect your troops via the Eviln, but I don't understand the mechanics of how it works. It seems like if the Vampires kill a living (non-plant) troop there is a good shot at getting Eviln to appear, but not so much with the other Undead troops.

I'll probably have to look into the code to see how it works.

I did get Magic Shackles from the Clarissa quest, but that spell doesn't seem like it is going to help me very much at the beginning of the game.

By the way, the reward for Clarissa's quest is either a level 1 or 2 Distortion or Chaos Magic Scroll so it is possible to restart the game and get one of the following spells as a reward for this quest:

• Distortion:
  • Level 1:
    1. Blur
    2. Haste
    3. Precision
    4. Slow
    5. Stone Skin
    6. Time Shift
    7. Whirlwind
  • Level 2:
    1. Berserker
    2. Flammable Oil
    3. Magic Shackles
    4. Magic Spring
    5. Pain Mirror
    6. Snow Storm
    7. Trap
• Chaos:
  • Level 1:
    1. Chaos Missile
    2. Fear
    3. Flaming Arrow
    4. Frost Grasp
    5. Poison Skull
  • Level 2:
    1. Chaos Weapon

So that's what we've got to work with playing Vampire as far as another possible starting spell since you get it after just one fight.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear if anyone who's trying Vampire can no loss through Whitehill with the original released (V1.5.1047.1747) build as someone mentioned here that you used to start with 2 Necromancers and Ancient Vampires during the EA.

As an aside, I could see giving the Vampire some additional low level spells to help during the early game - he starts with only 3 spells (Poison Skull and Slow and Plague as a scroll); whereas, the Orc starts with 4 spells (Slow and Haste and then scrolls of Berserker and Fear). Why would a Warrior (Orc) start with more spells than a Mage (Vampire)? Seems strange to me. The Paladin (Demoness) even gets Hypnosis, a "Level 5" scroll. Seems like there needs to be something done for a starting Vampire - I could see Evil Book being a good scroll to give to the Vampire at the start of the game (it is just a Level 3 scroll - same as Plague).

I think if I were to try to help the Vampire's starting situation, I would swap Plague for Evil Book and give that a try since they are the same level of spell.

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