Dark Side - first impressions

[zjazd18]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

A couple more hours in...

- Not sure how I would go about no losses. I am losing small amounts of troops on every battle playing as a Demoness. It's great being able to go back to Shelter to replenish units that I've rarely ever used in KB games before, such as Imps and Scoffer Imps.

- The frenzy mechanic for Demons seems pretty OP/broken to me. The Cerberus has a 'Leap' attack now which allows it to attack the length of the screen without being able to be counterattacked. Because of frenzy I'm ending up being able to use this practically every turn. That's pretty ridiculous and will make the Cerebus an excellent unit.

You can go into catacombs in Portland and go back to demoness starting location (now changed) and buy some better no-loss units. I bought there demons and demonologist, maybe even you will be able to find executioners. Imps are poor man's royal snakes , i used them both successfully on Portland.

There is spell that reduces cooldown of abilities, so demons can spam their abilities like crazy. Also there is spell that add charges to abilities, so we kinda have Gift spell back. So there will be some ridiculous combos. I'm not even searching for them, as I'm disgusted enough by halving talent.

EDIT: Minor spoilers - In terms of ridiculous stuff, check those dragons out. One of the abilites is summoning other dragons. , i guess I won't be needing red dragons:

[DGDobrev]

You two are making me rub my palms in expectation. The game unlocks tomorrow and I am jumping in it right away. Just finished another XCOM EW Classic/Ironman, so I am all good for it now

[zjazd18]

Ridiculous stuff update. What is possible with ogres :

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by zjazd18

Ridiculous stuff update. What is possible with ogres :

Holy Christ, that attack is absurd.

[DGDobrev]

This is amazing. I wonder if they are keeping the old damage formulas. The KBAP & CW formula was as follows:

Damage = TroopCount * random (MinUnitDmg; MaxUnitDmg) * (1-Resistance%/100%)

Damage modifier = (1 + (Attack - Defense)*0.3), and if it was more than 3, it automatically goes down to 3. In this case, that 1300 attack doesn't mean all that much.

TotalDmg=Damage*Damage modifier

Edit: If not, these ogres can kill a stack of Black Dragons in a swing, sheesh.

[zjazd18]

Yeah, most definitely it's still capped like that. Anyways stone skin made their dmg manageable, also it's possible to dispel it.

Which brings me to another point, attack seems completely useless in this game. Mostly because of halving talent (i hope they change it somehow), what's the point of having high attack when you can destroy half of the troop size having 1 attack, that also make resistances of enemies redundant.

I'm pretty far in the game now, and haven't met one enemy that would require me to reload to get done no-loss. I basically destroy stacks so fast it's not even funny, there are 2 rage spenders that deal % dmg, one 20% other 30%, then add units doing 50%. It's get ridiculous(sure it's only 15% but believe me it happens very often). So if you want challenge definitely skip that talent.

Post damage effects (burning etc) are still extremely strong and annoying so i recommend getting Shield of Rage in warrior skill tree, as it's impossible to dispel them.

Creation spell gives 4 charges to your unit special abilities for 16mana, i don't have to explain how ridiculous it is. I fought one champ that cast geyser every turn i just stood there in circle resurrecting everyone with my paladins. At least with phantom you could eventually run out of mana, impossible with creation efficiency.

Seems they run out of ideas and quests decrease in quality the further you go in the game. Also i would love quest log manageable by location, sometimes there are so many quests active at the same time it's hard to keep up with all the stuff.

I'm definitely enjoying the game, but I'm player that seeks challenge and at this point there is none. I'm meeting equal in strength stacks on impossible, so the sheer power isn't there and amount of ridiculous new combos make it even easier.

Had one crash with error so far, other than that was pretty smooth ride. Haven't tested turn back time, as someone mentioned it causes problems.

[DGDobrev]

The halving talent was based on leadership vs leadership. Is it still so? Or is it a chance ability? If it's based on leadership, it immediately means that halving on Impossible will happen very rarely - usually after a troop has been already damaged to some extent.

The no-loss game tends to run this way in all KB games. It is much harder to do it in the beginning, and once you get your fave lineup going, you are golden. There are still some armies that can provide some challenge, but it is usually not that hard. I am glad it is the same here. As for challenges, no worries. Impy will eventually buy the game. Look for his posts.