How to kill Baal; mage on impossible

[KongMysen]

With frenzy 3 on a solo stack BK with the splinter cell, even a mage can kill most stacks with just one or two retaliation strikes on each stack. Once the attack stat reaches 100+ that is.

By waiting, you can usually get a chance to slip in and hit Baal even though there are lots of enemy summons. I never feared a loss in my mage game even though there where tons of summons at a time. Evlin, Stone Skin and Calm Rage can get the BK's at close to full strength always.
Only problem is the Arch Demons but Turn Back Time solved this issue for me. Without Turn Back Time, you have to rely on 2xEvlin but it should work almost as well.

I'm not sure why you can't kill fast enough? Maybe you're not wearing the undead leadership items or the Splinter? Or you didn't put points in Frenzy? Either way, try to search the forum for other posts regarding Baal. I think DGDobrev mentioned some way of provoking Baal to do his normal attack instead of the summon.

[ivra]

@jake21:
I had the same problem. With my standard lineup (paladins, inquisitors, archmages, trolls and emerald green dragons) I had no problem killing normal stacks or heroes. The only problem was Black Dragons and the fight against K'Tahu and Baal. I managed to kill Zilgadis using my standard lineup. The reason black dragons was a problem was that I never found Death Star in this game. So I had to kill them with Traps, my units, and a low level fiery phantoms.

I had a scroll of Call of Death when I was up agains K'Tahu. And that worked well. Black Knights even without any of the undead items made that fight easy. The contrast is huge. Using my standard lineup I lost 50% of the inquisitors, archmages and almost as much of my emerald green dragons in the first round, and I had to give up. But, by using Black Knights + Stone Skin (must always be on - the second it is without stone skin the battle is lost) + Eviln + Calm Rage + Mana Spring + Turn Back Time + Damaging spells, I manged to win relatively easy. It just took some time.

When fighting Baal, Black Knights were not an option since I could not gather enough of them, and since I did not have a Call of Death scroll. So I ended up using Cursed Ghosts, and it worked! See second paragraph of the third post here:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...204#post150204

[ckdamascus]

I am a little surprised, but I cannot win against Ktahu even with 290 black knights! (using flaming eye scroll and the helm + staff)

I am a level 54 mage with all the nifty spells. However, I do not have frenzy. Does frenzy increase attack rating over time? Should I be using hells' breath? My black knight's attack rating is merely around 62ish or so. How are you guys getting it up to 100+?

Stone skin works, but mark of death seems to counter it. If I had any phys resistance items, I probably sold them by now.

Eviln is strong, but it takes casting time and a turn from the black knights to recover. Not to mention most of the time, the enemies swarm over the bodies or the Tirex's will eat them before I could use them anyway. Maybe I am using eviln improperly?

I really could use the splinter of darkness by now, but I got moro too late, so I just killed him. Maybe I should just use royal griffons instead with insane buffs?

Seems pretty sad that my mage has a LOT of trouble against the bosses. I barely beat the gremlin boss by using black knights, but lost about half of them (simply no bodies to evilN back, and I was a bit too impatient in waiting for a summoning box just to evilN them back). Is it me? Or is that boss fight really tedious? Is there a faster/stronger way to womp these bosses? I don't mind good tactics, but I really hate tedious battles. Is it faster and more fun with a warrior?

I have already re-started a new campaign with the gift pack, but if I cannot figure out why I am severely losing now, I don't think replaying this is going to get me there.

[dashcunning]

I would say your problem is that you aren't playing to your strengths. Or you haven't built your strengths to support the style you are trying to play. Black Knights without splinter of darkness doesn't make much sense. You are missing out on 10 attack, 2 morale (+20% current attack/defense and +30% current crit), and unlimited retaliations. That's huge IMO. Black Knights are a good unit by themselves, but you didn't do the things necessary to make them a great unit. It's not surprising you are having trouble.

Frenzy increases a unit's attack by 2/4/6 for every enemy unit that is killed by your unit. Nice to have, but not that big of a deal. 100+ attack is pretty easy: 28 base attack, +14(50% undead bonus), +20(hero attack), +10(splinter of darkness), +6(nighttime operations), +7(power of darkness), +17(20% from morale) equals 102 total.

You shouldn't have sold resist items, they are some of the best items. Better than a few points of attack/defense/intelligence or whatever else you could put in that slot.

It sounds like Black Knights aren't a good fit and that you would be better off with units that take advantage of the equipment and skills you have. What units those may be can't be said without knowing what the skills and equipment actually are.

[ckdamascus]

Thanks for your response!

I agree. While a lot of people here seemed to survive without a few key ingredients, I think I put myself in the perfect situation where I am missing EVERY key ingredient. That's what I get for misreading a lot of different threads with different intentions.

That said, I am a high level mage, so I wouldn't have expected to hit attack 100ish easily, but I thought I read some mages here were able to do so.

I have around 63 intelligence before the wanderer scroll, and nearly every nifty spell. I have plenty of money so I can swap to any other troop fairly easily. The only unit I don't think I recall seeing in my game is archdaemons.

I do not have any special attack items / combos / sets. I just have mana items, int items, etc. I pushed more towards defense if anything. I have maybe 23-28ish defense.

I was under the impression that there are just certain combinations of troops that could do well, regardless of equipment. Mind you, I am a mage, so I figured some of that gear isn't quite as important, I mean things like raising archer critical% and such, not the physical resists.

I am loathe to go with paladins, knights, royal griffons with some phantom mania assault. But I even wonder if that team could survive.

[dashcunning]

Mages with good Black Knights is doable, you just have to ration your magic runes so you can trade them for might runes. Do you really need level 3 order magic? Or summoner? Honestly though, if you want to do a single stack Black Knights game, you should just go warrior as that's most suitable.

Personally I'm not a fan of attack spells, others will disagree, but I just don't find them particularly effective. Therefore, I can't speak with much experience as to what would work well for your high intelligence build. In my mage impossible game, I was doing the phantom royal griffin thing until I lost interest.

[ckdamascus]

Well, I was trying to "salvage" my game and I heard people say "ooh, you don't even need splinter, just 130 black knights and eviln, and you instant win!"

So, I don't have a particular love for black knights. As an aside, in my new game (impossible mage again) with the gift bag mod, I almost have splinter already (level 20).

I was sort of pushing for voice of the dragon with this mage, but I have not committed the runes yet. I really like dragons, but wow, this requires a TON of runes.

Would you say one point in frenzy, with splinter will make my black knights a real killing force? This is an insurance policy in case I go through the whole game again only to realize "oops, I did it again": I can't beat the big bosses.

I didn't realize frenzy gives you an attack point per kill. The description made it sound like it gives you a mere +3 attack. This seems like the summoning bosses are really asking for it by 'feeding' the black knights especially with unlimited retaliation.

I don't think I need the Power of the Undead either. Am I correct in that splinter + one point in frenzy should nearly guarantee victory in case my other plans fail?

[dzeris]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

I do not have any special attack items / combos / sets. I just have mana items, int items, etc. I pushed more towards defense if anything. I have maybe 23-28ish defense.

I was under the impression that there are just certain combinations of troops that could do well, regardless of equipment. Mind you, I am a mage, so I figured some of that gear isn't quite as important, I mean things like raising archer critical% and such, not the physical resists.

I am loathe to go with paladins, knights, royal griffons with some phantom mania assault. But I even wonder if that team could survive.

Singing Dagger. +5 attack, +15 rage, +15% damage by allied lizards and +20% damage to K'Tahu.
Miner's helmet. +20% attack in the evening and at night.

Items matter.

When I fight bosses in normal level, two strong stacks attack boss from different sides and other three deal with summoned creatures. If there are no summons, units with remote attacks attack boss. If boss relocates, closest attack unit attacks him while main stacks walk to boss. Dersu Kumatu goes down in two turns (paladins and griffons). Driller spends first two incarnations retreating and does not have time to summon repair droids. Main problem with K'Taku - summoned tirexes.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by dzeris

Singing Dagger. +5 attack, +15 rage, +15% damage by allied lizards and +20% damage to K'Tahu.
Miner's helmet. +20% attack in the evening and at night.

Items matter.

When I fight bosses in normal level, two strong stacks attack boss from different sides and other three deal with summoned creatures. If there are no summons, units with remote attacks attack boss. If boss relocates, closest attack unit attacks him while main stacks walk to boss. Dersu Kumatu goes down in two turns (paladins and griffons). Driller spends first two incarnations retreating and does not have time to summon repair droids. Main problem with K'Taku - summoned tirexes.

Normal level as in normal difficulty? I am talking about impossible with no-losses until the gremlin boss. I believe you have taken my comment out of context, and I don't know if you play a mage.

Hitting intelligence levels which are divisible by 7 gives you an additional 15% spell damage. Unless you are suggesting melee is better than magic damage in impossible boss matches, which might be the case since I cannot nuke out a bosses's HP in a non-stop volley without running out of mana.

However, in normal difficulty due to the bosses lower HP, I could easily use anything and win.

That said, I did use the singing dagger, it didn't really help but it wasn't obvious to me if it helped my spell damage.

Also, I am using the staff which lower undead leadership requirements by 15%. Your suggestion would reduce my black knights by about 30.