General impossible difficulty (no loss)

[ender]

Even 10 paladins are good for ress (don't know your leadership, but probably you have space for max 20 paladins).

Imp mage noloss is hard and battles tend to take more time.

[TemjinGold]

For me, the key to impossible mage has been:

1) Pick up everything you can from Debir, Scarlett, and Bolo (if Rusty Map is unguarded on Bolo, then Rusty too) before fighting ANYTHING (except the 2 fights in the tutorial.)

2) Grind medals from the very start.

Don't worry about Battle Academy as much since that one goes REAL fast once you get Red Dragons. (Before that, my units/spells don't make much use of it anyway.)

Trapper is extremely easy to get to Level 3 if you are patient (mages need patience more than the other two.) I got mine after fight 28.

To get the physical resistance one, make the first fight you do the undead fight on Scarlett that is blocking the guaranteed Archmages. Bring only a full stack of Inq to that fight. You will get either 3 or 4 Archmages. Break them into stacks of 1 (if you got 3, make your last stack whatever you want.) Now hit the battles on Debir. Inq + random stack (if you have it) weakens enemies just enough for hero + dragon kick to kill with traps. Archmages spam Magic Shield every other turn. When there's only 1 enemy stack left, have hero switch to spamming L1 Stoneskin. Do this till Round 10 (drag out the fight if you have to.) If you were lucky enough to find 4 Archmages, you will get 20 to the counter per fight just from their Magic Shield alone.

Fire mage can be grinded the same way (~16-18 per fight) by abusing Oil Mist on easy fights. Since that spell does no damage, you can keep spamming it two per round on the battle field till round 10. Use one L5 stack and start the fight with Fear.

3) With a mage, sometimes less is more. Don't feel obligated to fight with all 5 stacks after you finish grinding the Magic Shield medal because that can actually make things harder. If you are going for no loss, the difficulty in that is only as much as your flimsiest stack. Using fewer stacks also means your dragon levels up much faster.

Using these tactics and more, I've never once had to use paladins and I generally dump Inq once I get L5 units (like that free Green Dragon.) Nothing wrong with using what's there, it's just playing completely defensive and ressurecting everything at the end just isn't really my style. Though I'm sure I might need to consider them for the last leg of the game to maintain no-loss.

[Zhuangzi]

Sounds like Temijen has got some good advice there. Some general advice for the Trapper medal:

- Obviously you need to find the Trap spell first! I think I had already played about 30 fights before I found it, but I could have looked harder.

- Archmages are great for their Telekenesis ability. Put a trap down and drag a weak stack onto them.

- Leave Crushing Blow at level 1 (it's not much use as a direct damage ability anyway) and use it to knock weak stacks onto traps.

- Then of course put traps between you and the enemy. The one that works best for me is when you have a weak enemy that can die from a trap, you can place a trap between it and your troop, and if it can only reach that troop and attack on the same turn it WILL step there.

I think I had Trapper 3 by 80 fights or so. I was averaging two per fight from 30-80. And the great thing about it is that it increases your trap power and places three traps on the battlefield (but they are only level 2 traps), so even if you never place a trap after that, it will be valuable for the rest of the game.

[Chase]

Thanks for all the advice. As soon as I found a call of colossus scroll that gave me 2 black dragons the game got a lot easier. I cleared out Verona and most of Montaro now. Found the navi chart to Shaterra unguarded in the mines under Montaro so I went there and picked up everything.

The problem initially for me was that I didn’t have any offensive spells and no resurrection. I had to rely solely on spells like haste/slow/trap/stone skin and with the low mage leadership that makes it hard as nails at times.

At Shaterra I got Fire rain, Icy Snake, Death Star, Resurrection and red+black dragons. The game just got a lot more fun .

My army now is: 3 Black dragons, 3 red dragons, 5 Giants, 7 Trolls and my last spot is either Shamans, Paladins or Cyclops. I haven’t used inqs since level 10 or so and paladins rarely fit into my setup right now. I know that 5 levels from now this is not a viable setup as I sometimes lose a level 5 unit and have to reload. But I stacked defense so far as those are the items I seem to be getting. Up to 21 defense and 20 intellect (And I’m trying to stack intellect)

Its not a revolutionary play style, but it certainly isn’t the one I had planned for. Initially I wanted to do the human morale army thing with Knight, pally, Inqs, Royal Griffin and Perhaps Arch mages, but we will see. I personally hate the fact that paladins move so slowly, but it makes them awesome for support.

Now I just send in my red and black dragons while I put a rain of fire on top of my black or red dragons. (Whichever dragon the hostile mobs gather around) And follow it up with some lightening love from my pet dragon. This added with the giants stomp ability makes for some fast wins.

Having a blast right now, but as soon as they are able to kill my black dragons the first turn I'll be in trouble with this lineup .

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by Chase

Thanks for all the advice. As soon as I found a call of colossus scroll that gave me 2 black dragons the game got a lot easier. I cleared out Verona and most of Montaro now. Found the navi chart to Shaterra unguarded in the mines under Montaro so I went there and picked up everything.

The problem initially for me was that I didn’t have any offensive spells and no resurrection. I had to rely solely on spells like haste/slow/trap/stone skin and with the low mage leadership that makes it hard as nails at times.

At Shaterra I got Fire rain, Icy Snake, Death Star, Resurrection and red+black dragons. The game just got a lot more fun .

My army now is: 3 Black dragons, 3 red dragons, 5 Giants, 7 Trolls and my last spot is either Shamans, Paladins or Cyclops. I haven’t used inqs since level 10 or so and paladins rarely fit into my setup right now. I know that 5 levels from now this is not a viable setup as I sometimes lose a level 5 unit and have to reload. But I stacked defense so far as those are the items I seem to be getting. Up to 21 defense and 20 intellect (And I’m trying to stack intellect)

Its not a revolutionary play style, but it certainly isn’t the one I had planned for. Initially I wanted to do the human morale army thing with Knight, pally, Inqs, Royal Griffin and Perhaps Arch mages, but we will see. I personally hate the fact that paladins move so slowly, but it makes them awesome for support.

Now I just send in my red and black dragons while I put a rain of fire on top of my black or red dragons. (Whichever dragon the hostile mobs gather around) And follow it up with some lightening love from my pet dragon. This added with the giants stomp ability makes for some fast wins.

Having a blast right now, but as soon as they are able to kill my black dragons the first turn I'll be in trouble with this lineup .

That's why I always cast Mass Haste on turn 1. You need level 3 Distortion for this. Best 10 mana you'll ever spend.

[Chase]

That would indeed make the human comp more viable .

Perhaps I should look into maxing defense on this mage for the level 5 tanking that I enjoye so much right now. How hard is it once you reach levels 35-50? Do you think that I have to pick up int for spell pain and go for a more "normal" setup?

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by Chase

That would indeed make the human comp more viable .

Perhaps I should look into maxing defense on this mage for the level 5 tanking that I enjoye so much right now. How hard is it once you reach levels 35-50? Do you think that I have to pick up int for spell pain and go for a more "normal" setup?

I haven't really tried hanging on to the level 5 units after level 30 or so, but I'd say it would be very hard or impossible to keep all of them alive against massive stack enemies. You can't cast Stone Skin on them all. I would think that you would have to use Inquisitors, and even then you will have your work cut out for you. But I could be wrong.

I get the idea that Intellect is much more important than Attack and Defense (for a Mage, I mean). Of course you need Attack and Defense to be on par with enemy heroes, but I had 25 Attack, 25 Defense and 50 Intellect at the end of my Impossible Mage game and that worked fine. So I would probably persevere with your current strategy for a while, but try to boost Intellect any way possible. If it gets too hard to keep them all alive, use Inquisitors. If that's too hard, you can play the 'vanilla' way - Paladins to resurrect level 1-4 units.

[Arilian]

I am also trying mage impossible now and it works fine so far, i have already been at montero shattera and the demoen world at lvl 15.

I am using Beholders+Evil beholders + Red dragons as a tank with order 3/dis 2. ATM
1 mana heals full the dragon so if there are at most one stack of archers i can beat impossible stacks for now.

The Two beholder stacks are very important as they can disable and kill the low level units while the dragon tanks the high one.

For the last two spots i either use paladins (agains heroes as i do not have resurrect)
demonologists (summoned demons creates a lots of rage) or assasisn (because they are cool)


I have 20 int ATM and trap 3 medal + trap arctifact. My traps do about 1k damage. Is this increases only by the Int or character LvL or if i upgrade to dis 3?

I like the Avanger Shield spell a lot, is is currectly doing a bit less than 1k damage, but 6 times. It also seems to trigger the Medal achievement 6 times, but i am not sure about this - i will check.

I really fear that on high level mage will be significantly harder than the warror.


To the OP: I think AP is easyer for No losses than KB:TL was.

[Urbz]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

That's why I always cast Mass Haste on turn 1. You need level 3 Distortion for this. Best 10 mana you'll ever spend.

Aye and/or teleport. This spell seems to be a bit under-rated but can also help quite a bit, level 1 already allows you to move 4 spaces which is not too shabby

[Elwin]

well i only use teleport when i have it at level 3 .. on my last game i didnt found it at all ;p