Beat Loki in < 10 Rounds

[ckdamascus]

Quite doable as a Soothsayer. No loss either and of course, Impossible mode.

Archdemon, Red Dragon, Black Dragon.

The problem isn't surviving, it is dealing enough damage to beat him in 10 rounds! Spell nuking, Ancient Phoenix, Depth of Thought (I never used this scroll before in any KB games and now it was finally useful!), and Fortune Scroll (again, never used it before until now).

Best part was when I won, and after the dialogue I hit F5, crash to desktop before it could save.

I did it again though and was able to save!

[camelotcrusade]

Nice work.

[dainbramage]

As a viking, my standard army worked. Berserkers, warrior maidens, paladins, archmages, horsemen. Killed loki as fast as possible, then left one axethrower stack alive (slow it so it doesn't switch to melee and suicide... had to reset when they did that the first time) and 2 gifts on my paladins let them res everything. Berserkers did most of the damage, and were helped out by mista's special, teleported whenever Loki switched ends, and given the extra turn by paladins whenever possible.

However, I did it at 56 whereas you're only 48. Were you rushing to loki for his rage skill or something?

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by dainbramage

As a viking, my standard army worked. Berserkers, warrior maidens, paladins, archmages, horsemen. Killed loki as fast as possible, then left one axethrower stack alive (slow it so it doesn't switch to melee and suicide... had to reset when they did that the first time) and 2 gifts on my paladins let them res everything. Berserkers did most of the damage, and were helped out by mista's special, teleported whenever Loki switched ends, and given the extra turn by paladins whenever possible.

However, I did it at 56 whereas you're only 48. Were you rushing to loki for his rage skill or something?

Ahhh that army sounds like fun! So, between warrior maidens for MEGA range res, and paladins cleaning up when "call to valhalla" inevitably fails, sounds like you can keep the berserkers numbers very high very easily!

I debated if I should use Gift or Phantom as a Soothsayer. I think Phantom is a "better value" but Gift is more potent if you specifically only need res. I finally have enough crystals to get Gift now. I definitely should experiment with the Rune tree more. I've mostly ignored it with both Viking and Soothsayer playthroughs.

Regarding level rushing, yes. I made the mistake of hitting Rage level 60 before getting Loki's skill with my Viking playthrough. Although right now my rage growth is so slow I'm not sure if I could get to level 60 rage anymore. I probably could if I equip rage items and change my army build a lot.

I think I could have beaten him sooner than level 48, as most of my damage is from the Ancient Phoenix. Maybe a good use of Flaming Eyes would let me achieve the goal at an even lower level.

Maybe that's a worthy cause for a second playthrough. Critical usage of key wanderer scrolls early on. I had my Raven learn nearly every Wanderer scroll but in hindsight maybe I should have saved them and just used them as needed. I'm not sure I have enough extra battles and crystals to use that many scrolls.

Perhaps it is a bit trite, but I hope to get most of the achievements. I'm still mid-way through but the only one I can't get is the "beating Giant spider in 15 turns". Were you able to do that? I'm suspecting the best way for the wizard to do it is with Summon Phoenix before the spider boss.

[dainbramage]

Essentially. First turn is lord of the north and if I'm lucky a followup of whatsername's rage or regina's messenger. That's 75% freeze and 80% burn on the majority of the enemy army, as well as a good 3-4k damage and a bunch of ice shards to slow their melees. Warrior maidens spear of wrath a target that I don't like (like skele archers). Archmages and inquisitors (which I use much more often than horsemen given how many undead enemies there are) also work on high-priority targets. Usually the berserkers wait and paladins give WMs or archmages the extra turn. Then at the end of the turn and start of the next berserkers get two turns which generally corresponds to 2 dead stacks. WMs revive anything that died, paladins and inquisitors can do the same. If there's a truly dangerous stack then paladins get parked in front of it with stoneskin and archmage shield, at which point they're essentially invulnerable (amusingly, 500 demons failed to kill a single paladin with a crit). So far everything's been pretty easy once I got this up and running. Most used spell is probably dispel (lol) for when I don't want my berserkers berserking any more. Actually on second thoughts it's stoneskin, but 95% of the uses are spam to get the medal.

I bumrushed the spider to kill it quickly for the achievement (berserkers and royals can take it down incredibly fast if you're not going for no loss), then reloaded and did it no loss, but no achievement. But I did it in something like 16 turns, you can probably get it down to under 15 without losses. Or you might need a lucky early AK scroll for that. I'm not sure.

As for the bird, the only thing I've had it write for me is AK. Before I found one I had a tactics treatise equipped instead. I've found everything's been pretty trivial once you get to greenwort. The tough battles are the two guys on the first island and the spider, and having wanderer scrolls then is entirely up to luck.

[ckdamascus]

Thanks for the tips! By the way, you do NOT need to equip the Raven to scribe Wanderer Scrolls (unlike Armored Princess).

Cost is 5 crystals per scroll and you can feed it thorns to speed up the scribing. I think it takes about 10 battles (without thorns sprouts).

[Xargon]

Good to know about feeding the raven thorn sprouts

About Loki: Berserk is very effective here; I found that it gives a big damage boost (far greater than using offensive spells), and defense is not really a problem with Loki. Of course, you have to be using lvl 4 (or below) units, and will probably want to include some archers which get parked on the side and shoot the spawning vikings (so the berserking unit in front of Loki does not get distracted). Teleporting may be necessary as well.
The berserker talent (15% chance for double damage) would probably be nice here as well. In my current playthrough, I got it after maxing out the entire magic talent tree, trading runes with that dwarf, buying some runes and breaking down items (i.e. on Iceland), but it might be nice to get this earlier, if possible.

[dainbramage]

Originally Posted by ckdamascus

Thanks for the tips! By the way, you do NOT need to equip the Raven to scribe Wanderer Scrolls (unlike Armored Princess).

Cost is 5 crystals per scroll and you can feed it thorns to speed up the scribing. I think it takes about 10 battles (without thorns sprouts).

Ah. Did not know that. Well damn, that's a silly wasted exp/1k leadership+morale. Meh, first playthrough isn't meant to be perfect anyway.

Originally Posted by Xargon

Good to know about feeding the raven thorn sprouts

About Loki: Berserk is very effective here; I found that it gives a big damage boost (far greater than using offensive spells), and defense is not really a problem with Loki. Of course, you have to be using lvl 4 (or below) units, and will probably want to include some archers which get parked on the side and shoot the spawning vikings (so the berserking unit in front of Loki does not get distracted). Teleporting may be necessary as well.
The berserker talent (15% chance for double damage) would probably be nice here as well. In my current playthrough, I got it after maxing out the entire magic talent tree, trading runes with that dwarf, buying some runes and breaking down items (i.e. on Iceland), but it might be nice to get this earlier, if possible.

Berserk I don't think is worth it compared to good old heroism or frenzy if you're a mage and short on might runes. +6 attack is +20% damage, and much more reliable. But it's great for a viking who's got plenty. In particular, that and absolute rage lets berserk berserkers with berserker proc (oh Katauri, you need to come up with some more diverse names) hit upwards of 40k on Loki (it'd be 50k if Valhalla's messenger actually worked...), so with some luck you can have him dead after about 5 turns. However there's no reason to waste turns hitting the summoned stacks. Using Mista's ability you can control berserk units, and honestly it's much more useful than any of the others (christa's and regina's are only useful for the medal, you can get rage from potions or chaining from a previous fight, and speed and initiative aren't very good when the arena's full of traps), and the summons will kill themselves through retal if loki doesn't.

Loki seems to have extremely high defence (my berserkers weren't reaching their 3x damage until a few frenzy boosts kicked in, and I had something like 46 attack from my hero), so I don't think tier 1's are a great idea. Berserkers and ancient/polar bears (they'll just about always have their attack boost) are probably the best choices offensively to take him down quickly.

[ckdamascus]

I always need to play a couple of times to fully 'min' 'max' the game the way I'd like to!

I am learning new things even now! That is what I love about the game. Tons of flexibility and different options. Are there overpowered strats? Sure, but you can make do without using them. I suppose the overall main strat is the same, but that's really the same for every video game.

I JUST finished the "50 battles without spellbook" achievement as a mage. I didn't think I could do it with the same army. Good thing I kept a LOT of weaker stacks around.

I hope I can still get the 10M gold achievement. I only have 3M gold right now and there are only like 2 more islands. I wonder if I should start wearing those +% gold items or not.

I am also mildly worried I won't be able to hit level 70. Maybe I should start making some Ancient Knowledge Scrolls. Plus the final achievement of NOT using a spellbook to defeat the last boss makes me think I have to use a "cheap" rune mage build with paladins to win.

That said, supposedly in Loki's description he is "immune to fire". Well, thank goodness he wasn't since I was dropping flame arrows and fire rain all day on him. He IS resistant though (maybe 20-30% resistant). Not sure if he had physical resistance though. No matter. His defense was no match for my 350 attack Ancient Phoenix.

Yah, Polar Bears is what I used to take out the Giant Spider too. The game really allowed a lot of different items.

[Fatt_Shade]

@ckdamascus
About checking boss resistances just open spell boo and pick some fire spell and place cursor on boss and compare dmg listed in book, to dmg listed before casting spell. And you`ll know resistance to that type of dmg.
For physical check with magic axe spell (example) , posion = poison skull ofc, magic dmg = lightning , astral = death star / black hole , cold = some cold dmg. Dmg done this way is purest, because spells dont take defense of unit in consideration.
For unit dmg this resistance would be even more reduced due to attack/defense ratio.