Impossible, Mage - No unit loss.

[Elwin]

Well i didnt try on impossible but my normal mage had fare rain 7k+ same for ice snake i think it could harm even on impossible ^^

[Chase]

Originally Posted by Elwin

Well i didnt try on impossible but my normal mage had fare rain 7k+ same for ice snake i think it could harm even on impossible ^^

Yeah thats around the damage I do on impossible. I rely on nuking down whatever I can before it touches my units. That seems like the best overall strategy. But at the same time it helps to have the "hit and run" units that sprites, dryads and lake spirits are.

All in all I feel that Ive found the best balance by going mental on int.

[Quelthos]

I was able to defeat Karador at level 24 with only a stack of 5 black dragons.

Karador Setup

Karador Midway (No Crystal, No Mana)

Karador Victory

You can see I have a lot of damage modifiers, from my helm to the two firestorm artifacts to level 3 Destroyer. So I opened the fight with two max level armageddons, which reduced my stack of dragons to 1 and wiped out all necromancers, ghosts, skeleton archers, and all but 2 bone dragons. I used Time Back the next round to raise my stack of dragons back to maximum. From that point on it was a combination of a level 2 fireball (since my fire damage was so amplified), a level 3 healing spell (can't beat 1 mana), the dragon's special ability and just flying around the map to avoid getting hit.

On the left and right sides of the field are squares where only one creature can reach you, so I would take turns there with Glot's Armor as another means of avoiding damage. I used Charges to get some extra mana back as well. I used a second Time Back later in the fight as a means to kill the crystal.

[DGDobrev]

I would surmise that this is not impossible, otherwise the XP from the combat would've been more.

[Quelthos]

The difficulty is on impossible. I have only invested in a 10% bonus to XP from combat, so that might be why it seems low to you.

[Elwin]

I just compared hes screen to my win against Karador on hard and can say it IS imposssible, i had less exp and was level 25 and amount of exp is higher too

[DGDobrev]

Then that's an interesting playthrough. You've gotten pretty close to the maximum boost to all fire spells. 2x30% Fire spells, +20% from the Prismatic helm - that's a pretty nice boost. The belt is also invaluable. The only thing coming to mind that you lack is the flame necklace (+15% Fire), but you do have better ones.

You also seem to have been taking mostly mana and int upgrades and few leadership upgrades. In any case, the game's been pretty kind to you - in 4-5 mage playthroughs from normal to impossible, I never had such strong item setup. I think it's very rare

[Elwin]

I had very similiar in mine first game

[Quelthos]

I've actually discovered that Armageddon is not fire damage and is not boosted by those artifacts. That was probably done with the intent of not being able to use armageddon with black dragons and have immunity. So I had pretty much thrown away two slots. Ironic, given that finding those artifacts is what encouraged me to try the idea.

I've kept using the strategy, though; it's much faster than using the elf army and I more easily take out packs of dragons. I'll be curious at the end to see how my damage statistics play out.