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| Adventure mode All you want to know about adventure mode (may contain SPOILERS) |
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#1
10-23-2008, 11:53 PM
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About needing weak enemies around the place, I had this problem too because I tend to clear everything out methodically. I need easy fights to use Sacrifice on Peasants to replenish my expensive units. Then I realised that I habitually leave the neutral Griffins on Griffin Island in Arlania alive. But you can turn them hostile by stealing their egg from beneath them. That's a pretty low thing to do, but if need an easy fight...
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#2
10-24-2008, 07:56 PM
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More good luck, I found 10 cyclopes at the castle in Creiston Mines, so I was able to finish up that stupid quest for the rare animals and replace my royal thorns against fire based enemies. I think it's amusing that it costs 5000g to buy a cyclops and the reward is 4000g.
 The dwarven lands are severely underwhelming after cutting my teeth against pirates. Most fights are "match" or "slightly weaker" which I guess makes sense because not every player would take the time to kill every single army they came across and do every single quest. So it seems I'm overleveled for this area. I have used the lull to level up Lina, I summon her at least once every fight, although I think I've had some back luck on the actual level up bonuses. Twice, I've had the option to increase either the ice ball's offensive or defensive stats. So basically my level up had to be applied to the ice ball no matter what, and the rage cost went up. It costs 30 rage now which is too expensive for what it does in my opinion. Thankfully Gizmo is still only 12, and I can always use chargers which basically trades 6 rage for 4 mana. The boss in laboratory 44 was also very easy. I used my royal thorns to summon thorn stacks, which summoned more thorn stacks, and I used my shamans to drop totems on the outside hexes, until I had filled the entire battlefield. If the boss decided to summon allies but there aren't enough hexes open, it just skips its turn. So basically royal thorns = free pass on this fight, and the 6600xp puts me just short of level 17. I think this fight needs a boost. At a minimum, if the summon allies action isn't possible the boss should attack, but I think possibly the boss needs a 3rd type of attack to prevent the royal thorns exploit. Perhaps spitting webs on everyone causing mass slow (so it's harder to raise all the thorn stacks), or spitting poison on everything causing a 3-round poison debuff. I don't know, something. I mean at least the Kraken could hit multiple stacks each turn so it was pretty much impossible to fill the screen with thorns. This boss was not challenging at all. Going to keep poking out the eyes of beholders and cyclopes over the weekend and see how far I get.
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#3
10-27-2008, 01:03 PM
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Traveling further into Dwarven territory I was able to finally find some Evil Beholders to replace my normal ones, and Giants to replace the Cyclopes. Giants can be healed with the Shaman's Axe Dance, and with my intellect I can heal 360hp for 2 mana which is a big improvement over the Cyclopes which could only be healed with Gizmo. I also found 4 Sacrifice scrolls buried under some tracks in Lower Hadar so I promptly dived into the Gremlin Castle and using the fights there to generate unlimited mana while I maxed out my stack of Royal Thorns. Giants are now one of my favorite opponents.
Since they use their Earthquake ability every other turn, you are guaranteed to get your mana back from Mana Spring, and at level 3 it lasts 5 turns so you are guaranteed to make at least 10 mana out of every 5 you spend. Also since Giants have 900 hp each, they are not prone to accidental death. So in order to create the Mana Spring loop I had to whittle a stack of Giants down to just 1, and leave my Royal Snakes and Inquisitors inside the field of a totem of life. The Earthquake damage was not enough to kill 1, and at the beginning of every turn the stack was healed. However, it takes 40 mana to create 2 Royal Thorns, so this was a fairly tedious process. Unfortunately I cleared out all the Giants and my favorite enemy has been replaced by dragons and demons. These guys are seriously difficult for my army of relatively low HP units. The Royal Thorns are actually better than Evil Beholders here, but I have to put Glot's Armor on them to keep them alive, which reduces my damage output. Still, the dragons love to burn my summoned thorn stacks and that keeps my important units alive. I have cleared Ardan's Peak and am prepared to storm the underground there, I have cleared the Gremlin Castle except for the last three armies guarding the dragon eggs (those are listed as overpowering) and there's one area in Taron Mines I decided to skip because the armies there were a tad too difficult.
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#4
10-28-2008, 04:35 AM
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Seems like you're doing really well there. Could you give us another update on your paladin? Stats and leadership. Also what was your early game (levels 1~9)strategy? Did you take any leadership points? I am trying mage on hard now and took my first leadership points at my last level up. Consequently, I have good basic stats ATK 7 DEF 8 INT15 MAN70 RG 46, but leadership is only 3600. I am finding most of the fights in the Eastern Islands really tough and although i have lots of cash, there are no leadership arties anywhere to buy....?
Also regarding the mana loop:~ Am i doing something wrong? When i cast mana spring it only seems to last 2 hits/attacks, not 2 turns (or 3 on level 2)????
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#5
10-28-2008, 11:09 AM
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I am playing a paladin on impossible now and get through most of the battles with no loss or slight loss. However I was stuck on storyline battle on undead territory. I believe these storyline battles are the most challenging ones for OP's "no loss" quest unless he has good equipments/wives etc.
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#6
10-28-2008, 01:42 PM
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Travelingoz: Buffs tick down every time your character takes an action. So take the Inquisitor's Holy Anger spell for instance. If they cast it on themselves, it immediately loses 1 turn duration because they apply it to themselves, then their action is concluded and the duration decreases. Much better to cast it on something that hasn't moved yet. You can stall the duration by waiting instead of defending, so it's quite often a good move to have your Royal Snakes wait, then buff them, and then they take their action at the very end of turn 1 and the beginning of turn 2.
How this applies to Mana Spring is that the duration goes down by 1 every time you are hit AND every time your unit takes an action. At the lower levels, Mana Spring doesn't last very long so it's hard to get a lot of mana out of it. At best, you put Mana Spring on a unit, attack with it and get counterattacked to refund the cost of the spell, and hopefully someone attacks you. Then it's gone. But at level 2 and 3 the duration increases to 4 and 5 respectively so there's some real potential to gain a lot of mana. My favorite is still to put a stack of summoned thorns in a poison cloud, because you are guaranteed the full return on your investment. As for levels 1-9, I didn't do anything different than what I described in the first post. I also didn't take any leadership bonuses from leveling up until level 12 or so. For me the first 14 levels or so were the most "tactical" because I was frequently fighting strong or very strong opponents, but Darion is also the easiest continent so there's the most opportunity for strategy to pay off. When you get to the later levels the game is much more "brute force" because some stacks are just too big. I remember fighting a stack of 70 demons, it took at least 6 turns of all of my stacks focusing on them before I brought them down. I guess tossing totems and stone walls in the way is still strategy, but not like it was in the early levels. As a mage on Impossible you may need to start taking leadership bonuses sooner, especially if you can't find Fire Rain. Either that or spend your early runes on the Glory skill. I will look up my current stats and post them today. I can say that I don't feel like I have particularly good equipment. Having read about some of the items other people have found, I think I'm missing out in that department. Here's what I'm using (from memory): Some Intellect Helmet (+3 INT, +1 Defense) Pirate's Halberd (+3 Attack, +5% gold, from quest) backup: Silver Rapier (+30% damage to undead) x2 backup: Adherent's Staff (+2 INT, +10% lightning damage) backup: Pilgrim's Staff (+1 INT, saving the upgrade battle as a rage booster) Slippery Cuirass (+2 Defense, +10% Physical Resistance) Ogre's Sandals (+2 Defense, +1 Move for Giants and Ogres) General's Baton (+750 Leadership) Battle Shield (+2 Defense, +1 Attack) Some Round Stone Artifact (+4 Defense, you can trade Magic Crystals for Stoneskin scrolls. I got it from the zombie in the Marsh, not sure if it's random or not) backup: Silver Chain (+1 INT, -2 Defense to enemy undead) Anga's Ruby (+300 Leadership, GIRL POWAH++) I do not have a wife yet, mostly because I don't have any artifacts that I feel like I "have to have" but don't have slots for. I probably should have married Feanora early in the game, but since I didn't I'm just going to wait for the demoness in all her dual wielding glory. The undead lands should be much easier with 2 Silver Rapiers. Also, another mana loop for fighting keepers. Originally I was of the philosophy that the friendly gremlins (brown) needed to die first because they continued to summon units. However, now I feel like the evil gremlins (red) should die instead, and you should hold a brown gremlin hostage to summon an endless supply of units for you to use Mana Spring on. As long as your army is strong enough to take control of the fight, the small # of allies one gremlin tower can summon will not be strong enough to beat your endless supply of summoned thorn stacks. However, I still can't upgrade my archmage's staff or baton without taking losses so I obviously need more practice. Edit: Added Battle Shield, changed Colonel's Baton to General's Baton Last edited by sector24; 10-28-2008 at 03:56 PM.
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#7
10-28-2008, 03:55 PM
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My stats at level 18:
9100 Leadership 13 Attack, 23 Defense, 11 Int Ok, back to story time. Instead of pushing to Castle Bogacho and weaving around the overpowering heroes, I instead went back to Darion to restock my troops. While I was there I absolutely creamed Archmage Rezo (it felt great) with a Geyser + Underground Blades on turn 1. My reward was 14 more Inquisitors. I also killed Big Pato in the arena, and upgraded my baton from the lowest level up to General's Baton (+750). The extra 650 leadership puts me at 9100 which didn't change the enemy army status (still overpowering) but I am a little bit stronger. More importantly, my army stacks are above the enemy demonesses charm capacity so I should be able to clear some of the tougher demon armies now without taking ridiculous losses.
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#8
11-26-2008, 02:29 AM
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#9
11-26-2008, 03:37 AM
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Next to the turtle, the spider fight is probably one of the easiest in the game. Another strategy is just to attack it with one or two stacks of ranged/no retal troops and let the other take care of spiders. Since you kill the spiders every turn, it's gonna try summoning new ones every time and meanwhile you're just pounding and nuking it, it falls quickly on any difficulty.
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#10
11-22-2008, 12:53 AM
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Hybrid Mode
