KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[Snow11]

It's true that phoenix is very powerfull in the beginning but because it's not affected by your leadership it's power start to fall behind after middle/late game.
At my lvl, ancient phoenix have 500-1k dmg and less then 4k hp which means that it can get killed from 1-2 hits if i'm not carefull with him. In comparison the animals from call of nature not only have more dmg but their total hp is more then 30k no matter what lvl the animal is.
Not that i'm complaining how overpowered call of nature is but it's certainly one of the skills together with the halfing talant that make the game alot easier and faster to play.

[DGDobrev]

I actually am going to try to do the One Black Dragon only challenge without using halving for as long as I can. I wonder how that will work. If I see that I am getting summarily trounced, then I will change stuff around. I will, of course, keep plenty of runes at the ready to do so

EDIT: I know for a fact that Impy did it, but he is a much better tactician and much more patient and considerate than I am...

[impy]

DG, thank you for your kind words. I am just a normal guy who likes sweets
I personally did not use halving skill in my playthrough - see screenshot at level 75, pretty much end of the game. Whole game I followed my old approach which I believe made me a better player - I only spend runes when there is no other way forward, not when I want to. During game I simply did not feel I needed to spend practically any runes in might tree. Apart from very early access to Atrixus etc. I also defeated properly every scroll guardian before progressing. You can guess why - truth to be told level 3 Nature Call is extremely powerful, and this challenge is actually a bit easier than good old KBAP attempt.

Now interesting thing DG, we played solo Black dragon in KBAP + Gift bag (remember that?) environment, but never actually done in Crossworlds. The problem is astral damage from newly introduced orc race, however there are new interesting spells ( gizmo ...) That is what I am playing at the moment.

[ckdamascus]

I'd speculate that halving is probably a suicidal build or painfully slow one for mages because you simply don't have enough runes to get enough happy rage control.

You sort of need enough rage for decent "jealousy" skills and there aren't enough might runes for you to max your magic tree (which is far more efficient for you anyway thanks to the Archmage skill).

At least, this is from a perspective of a non-targetable core unit+ nuke spells and disposable summons approach.

More troops is more liability especially for the lackluster leadership mage.

[edit] oh wow, noticed impy still has so many might runes. I wonder where all of mine went? I'm guessing still in the mage tree as I have like 90 spirit runes which I don't plan on using.

[DGDobrev]

Ok, Impy, I don't even want to ask how many double-calls of nature you can do with those 346 mana... Whew. And sure I remember the gift bag bonus content. It had some really nice items. Then again, I never tried the 1BD challenge in crossworlds, I just played the new stuff. You should have better insight there.

What I am noticing at the moment (level 27), is that you can easily do the fights one after the other with minimal downtime. Calm Rage is awesome, and if you have a spare double cast at the end of the fight, double calm rage will give you full mana easily. If the Demoness play-through can be compared to Daert's, then all I will be using are just a few of Blackie's skills: Jealousy, Orc Strike and Orc Shield. I think Orc Shield will be very useful, as it absorbs a decent amount of damage and this will be a good way to keep the solitary dragon alive awhile longer. We will see. I am still in the early game, where fights are a breeze with Phoenix + Call of Nature.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Ok, Impy, I don't even want to ask how many double-calls of nature you can do with those 346 mana... Whew. And sure I remember the gift bag bonus content. It had some really nice items. Then again, I never tried the 1BD challenge in crossworlds, I just played the new stuff. You should have better insight there.

What I am noticing at the moment (level 27), is that you can easily do the fights one after the other with minimal downtime. Calm Rage is awesome, and if you have a spare double cast at the end of the fight, double calm rage will give you full mana easily. If the Demoness play-through can be compared to Daert's, then all I will be using are just a few of Blackie's skills: Jealousy, Orc Strike and Orc Shield. I think Orc Shield will be very useful, as it absorbs a decent amount of damage and this will be a good way to keep the solitary dragon alive awhile longer. We will see. I am still in the early game, where fights are a breeze with Phoenix + Call of Nature.

Be wary of not letting your rage skills grow if you take the calm rage approach too much. I'm only level 57ish but I'm always worried I need stronger rage skills like the orc shield and jealousy.

[impy]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

Ok, Impy, I don't even want to ask how many double-calls of nature you can do with those 346 mana... Whew. And sure I remember the gift bag bonus content. It had some really nice items. Then again, I never tried the 1BD challenge in crossworlds, I just played the new stuff. You should have better insight there.

What I am noticing at the moment (level 27), is that you can easily do the fights one after the other with minimal downtime. Calm Rage is awesome, and if you have a spare double cast at the end of the fight, double calm rage will give you full mana easily. If the Demoness play-through can be compared to Daert's, then all I will be using are just a few of Blackie's skills: Jealousy, Orc Strike and Orc Shield. I think Orc Shield will be very useful, as it absorbs a decent amount of damage and this will be a good way to keep the solitary dragon alive awhile longer. We will see. I am still in the early game, where fights are a breeze with Phoenix + Call of Nature.

Well, well, if 346 mana looks impressive, I dug out the save at level 79, just fooling around shelter before hitting the final battle and came up with - 492 mana.. With scroll Magical Flow it comes to 522mana. I think even 346 was too much, because Transmute skill works a bit differently now, you also have winds of Magic. But I did play with summons only, not with direct damaging spells really. This could be an idea for another challenge - something like 100% or close damage by spellbook, I think we actually done this in Crossworlds, right?
One of the reasons I did not spent points in Might tree is absolutely overwhelming amount of Rage boosters in the game, bit unbalanced possibly. I had 75 potions of rage left at the end and i was playing specific challenge rather than standard gameplay.

[DGDobrev]

Yes, we did it on KBCW. I dug up my old screens and I have 80% book damage, cause I abandoned the 1 BD challenge on lvl 43 and switched to 1 stack of Black Knights + Eviln. Well, Call of Nature and Demon Portal weren't working the same way as they do in KBDS now. I don't even recall using them so extensively, cause they did not provide sufficient amount of troops - and the ones you got could only survive a few hits, so you were much better using Gift + Paladins than wasting so much mana on Call of Nature, for example.