Spreadsheet of Useful Equips with Minor Location Spoilers

[Helios]

Points, taken! Thanks, Vulture. I definitely should have had the baton in italics. This spreadsheet is definitely slanted toward my list of racial-playthroughs, so I put the Full Helm in italics even though in a normal game, I'd never want it, but if I'm stuck with an all-melee army like I eventually plan to be with "The Outcasts" in my topic in the W/P/M forum, then I'm going to need some defense. (I don't know that watching melee units dying en masse will be much fun, and if that's *9* more playthroughs away, I don't know that I'll have the patience for restocking troops constantly.

So, if you were just playing a typical Impossible TKB game, I gather that trying to boost some stat other than Def would be a good idea on as many slots as possible, even on armor? That's been my typical approach, too, as avoid damage altogether is far superior than taking hits.

Do you see anything off the top of your head that you think needs to be in italics? I already need to revise this as I didn't see the glaring typo in my heading of all places.

[Vulture]

I'll look into that at some point. At the moment I can't be arsed, quite frankly xD Kinda lazy.

But yes, any stat is superior over defense. Even with a strong melee setup. Well, on armor you rarely ever have a choice. My last Warrior character wore two sun cloaks (Zombie Rina has an armor slot) Cloak Of Wizardry is an option and for a mage I don't think there's a way around Dragon Cloak.

Btw restocking isn't an option. Sacrifice and Time Back/Ressurrection are. No losses :>

[Helios]

Really? I'm surprised to hear that you wouldn't consider defense even for an all melee team.

And I don't see how I wouldn't have to do at least some restocking of troops as the races degenerate into worse units without having Inquisitors for the endless Rage during those late game battles with thousands of troops. Perhaps I still have more to learn about tactics, though? I thought Inquisitors + Lina's chargers was the only way to reliably achieve no losses when there isn't a no-retaliation enemy unit left!

[Madstrike]

Very nice. I dont see any symbols though, you mentioned to classify them as to what part of the game u can find them. Maybe thats a problem with open office?(I dont have excel), also u just separated them into different colors for sets right? Im only on my first playthrough of the game, and I have played AP, before, once, so Itll definetly help newbies like myself.

[Helios]

@Madstrike: Thanks. I was just suggesting adding those symbols as shorthand to each player's specific save-game scan, since many of the equips won't necessarily appear regularly in the same spots, e.g. you might get a pain skull from the Dwarven Necromancer which would be pretty early: "*" , or you might get it for beating Karador: "X" late-game. BTW, the one thing the KBScanner is completely unreliable about reporting is the item you will get from killing Zombie Noric, so I've discovered.

And yes, the colors simply denote set items except for the gray color listed under Melee/Outcast/Dwarf equips--those just jumped off the page to me as useful to those units (and no others!).

[Vulture]

Well, you can't really go endless anyway because after Round 20 your mana reg stops entirely.
As an alternative, if you don't have a no-retal unit left you can always
a) hypnotize them (with a Demoness at best, it's on a 2-round cooldown), cast magic spring on them, put poison cloud over them
b) get Ancient Vampires in humanoid form and do the same, placing them next to that unit. The Ancient Vampire will regenerate after each turn and not lose a single unit.
c) get Vampires in Bat form and do the same only leaving the final blow to the Vampire so they can drain life up. Just make sure it's no plant or undead ^^

About the defense: why is it surprising ? You need insane amounts of defense to make a noticeable difference at such high costs (atk, int, ldr instead?) that it never pays off.

[Helios]

Those are some good ways for Demons and Undead to regenerate. But I would guess that having to rely on the Hypnosis spell in other race situations wouldn't be very profitable for its high mana cost, making a long series of resurrecting either take a really long time or not possible.

Looking at the base defense numbers of units does make loading up on defense boosting items pretty pointless, especially if an enemy hero is involved. And it does make the most sense to be inflicting, rather than worrying about taking damage. I imagine with an all-melee army that one could somewhat minimize the hits taken even as counter-attacks if one sent out a phantom to take the first hit, and then mob the unit with every available unit. It would still be tough to do without Dryads putting half an army to sleep and dealing with 8 stacks of units. I suppose defense buff spells are probably more useful than hero defense could ever hope to compensate for.

It's the sort of dilemma that makes me think certain wives just aren't viable at all. Even on an all Dwarf run with the Mithril shield equipped to lower leadership requirements, I see Xeona being more useful for the two weapon slots than Gerda with a morale boost. Maybe I'm underselling the morale, but only one point boost doesn't seem to make up for her terrible equips (she's obviously built for a tanking approach). It's too bad the wives weren't more universal in their equips so that their morale or other boosts were more viable.