KBDS Normal/Hard/Impossible No-loss thread

[DGDobrev]

It is in the basement where you need to dig out 3 items. Killing the weakest stack and digging the items is easy, but I have certain doubts that I can come back to this place. Worst case scenario, I can skip those fights, I doubt the experience from them will be that crucial later on, and from all I hear, the game should open up soon.

Btw, careful with the Paladins, people. Their resurrection skills used to HURT Demons and Undead in KBAP/CW. The only character who can resurrect demons is the demonologist to my knowledge. Or of course, you with the resurrection spell.

[zjazd18]

Sorry don't remember anything like that, must have not been that difficult or possible to do later.

As of paladins they aren't normal paladins, they are dark paladins, and resurrect troops of the dark. Resurrection doesn't work on demons now, you have to do quest for it to work on troops of the dark.

[DGDobrev]

Most interesting, thanks for the info So, you mean we have paladins of the dark who ress, we have dark knights and eviln... I am already getting quite a bunch of ideas in my head.

[Zhuangzi]

DG, I think you're right that we won't be able to come back into the basement later, but I figured that the xp wouldn't count for much in the long run so I skipped them. Plus, you know, really difficult fights!

zjazd18, I'll have a lookout for those Dark Paladins. They are in one of the castles on Portland, are they? I'm guessing I'll need to do some quests first.

EDIT: around this time you should get the first level of the Grand Strategian medal (20 fights), which is worth 200 leadership. Takes me up to 1450 now. If only I could find some Demons and/or Demonesses to buy...

[zjazd18]

Yeah, in the castle near the shore - Branigard. I think i had 20 of them there, then some at Inselburg, but really once you get recruiter deep in demoness skill tree you basically have unlimited supply of paladins.

EDIT: demons are in Atrixus (demoness starting location) you get there by going into catacombs at portland.

[DGDobrev]

You were correct, it was easy to open up the new locations through the catacombs, so I pillaged Atrixus and found demonologists in the Demonologist hut which you can access through the flying platform in the main yellow picture-circle (or whatever that is). Now things are going much more smoothly.

I will, however, eat my shorts if KBDS has the early KBAP bug where disbanding troops count as losses

[MattCaspermeyer]

I've been playing Demoness with the early access since the end of June (my brother, Dave, had gotten me Dark Side for my birthday).

Since this is about no loss, here's my spoiler alert. If you don't want the game spoiled then don't read any further...

SPOILER GAP
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
END SPOILER GAP

These strategies below have resulted in no loss.

While obviously some things have changed since then and the release, I've been able to do all battles no loss so far and am now level 59.

The keys are to use the abilities of your units to their fullest through the Whitehill battles as well as opting for damaging skills and medals (i.e. Trap was instrumental in all the battles through Whitehill). Also if you have spells, you should be using them every turn to either damage or slow the enemy.

You couldn't go to the other areas through the Catacombs when I was playing so you had to make due with the units you could get from your starting location. Plus there was no way to get Demonologists from Atrixus (this must have changed) and I honestly have not even seen one the entire game, yet.

Since I didn't play the other classes, I can only speak of the Demoness, but there are a lot of similarities between the other classes with respect to troop availability and what you should strive towards.

I also did all the Atrixus, Catacombs, Dragandor, Shelter, and Whitehill battles (every single one including the Knight that kidnaps the demon child, the big spider stack in the Catacombs, all 3 Shelter battles, and the 3 Whitehill battles) with just the paltry starting units of Imps, Scoffer Imps, 5 Cerberi, 2 Demonesses, and 1 Demon. When I was playing earlier, you had to defeat all 3 Whitehill stacks before the Shelter would replenish, not just 1.

Also, forget about getting any decent level 4 troops in quantity of your race until you get to Monteville (where they will be Undead). Those Evil Beholders that you get from the Witch in Portland are going to be your best units until you get to Monteville. I actually had Assassins that I got from Inselburg for a brief period of time.

My army consisted of Imps, Scoffer Imps, Blood Priestesses, Cerberi, and Evil Beholders for my Portland play and then I swapped out the Blood Priestesses for Assassins when I got them. Your main goal is to do as many quests as possible with kiting / minimal fighting and then get the maps to the other islands of Inselburg and Monteville.

You will then be able to do more kiting and complete some quests to get the Mage for the shelter. Once you do that, focus on getting a Scroll of the Colossus and get yourself either 1 Red or Black Dragon or ArchDemon. Once you do this then focus on defeating the Dragon in Portland. The Dark Human troops are not available until you finish the Portland quests so you can forget about getting Dark Paladins until then.

For me, though, by the time I had Portland finished, I had defeated the Dragon and the 1 Red Dragon I used to defeat the Dragon was enough to make the game significantly easier.

Getting the healing spell is obviously a top priority since you can't resurrect level 5 troops and you'll need to get the dark version of heal to heal your ArchDemons as needed. Empathy is also a very good spell to get to keep damage to your level 5's to a minimum and protect you from Geyser / Armageddon. By the way, the description for Empathy is wrong - it can tie an Ally to an Enemy as well as an Ally.

You will also have the opportunity to get Scrolls of the Colossus and then you should try to get yourself ArchDemons. Once you get them, you can use their Volcano skill and ranged attackers will always attack the Volcano to destroy it. This is huge! For a while I had 2 or 3 ArchDemon stacks with a few Red and Black Dragons and sometimes Green Dragons and you can pretty much defeat most stacks with this group of troops.

Then once you get Dragon Riders, the game is pretty much over. They summon random dragon stacks and, here's the kicker, the skill is largely affected by your leadership and not the number of Dragon Riders in the stack. So I basically had two stacks of ArchDemons evenly split and three 1 Dragon Rider stacks and I was summoning like 7500 Leadership worth of Dragons at first. This is more than enough to defeat most stacks. The Dragon Riders are 100k gold each + 1 Princess, but I essentially have played almost the entire game with just 3 Dragon Riders and two ArchDemon stacks.

Also you will find the Call of Nature spell is seriously overpowered once your leadership gets in the 15 to 20k range. I am able to summon level 1-4 units with about 40k leadership now. They mow through everything and if that is not enough, summon another 40k stack next turn. Slap Mana Spring on them and you'll be able to recharge your mana for the next battle.

I've actually been a bit bored with it, since it is a bit tedious defeating stack after stack of "invincible" enemies this way. Put out the volcanoes, summon some dragons, use Call of Nature and repeat.

I also find the power of Bleeding, Freezing, etc. to cause way too much damage - the Dark Clot skill can literally cause several thousand damage to each affected stack each turn, depending on how large the stack is. The larger the better.

The only things to look out for are:

1. Heroes with Geyser / Armageddon (I think I've counted 5 so far - use Empathy to split the damage to another troop)
2. Rarely, Elf Hunters will move before your ArchDemons (so you'll need an artifact with -1 enemy initiative or you'll have to put some more points into the Warrior Onslaught skill

I'm hoping to finish the game in another couple of weeks - I don't have much time to play during the week so it is mostly on weekends.

So pretty much the challenge of the game is through Whitehill and then after that you shouldn't have much trouble. I do find some of the early quests interesting, but you get Dragon Riders before any of the other new units for the most part (it took me forever to get the Spy and they are lousy), the Amazons are neat, but once you get ArchDemons / Dragon Riders the other troops just pale in comparison to the power of that arrangement.

Hopefully they have made enough (or will continue to make) improvements to make the game better since I started back at the end of June. I actually really like the Dark units of each race (WotN / I&F should have done this), but it would be nice to change their abilities to be darker instead of being just the same.

I also (except for Call of Nature) continuously find both the Spells and Rage Skills to be lacking. I am maxed out with rage and have no problems being close to max rage at the end of a battle since there is really only 1 direct damage rage skill. The Vampire Rage skills are really hard to use since they damage your own troops. I'm hoping some rebalancing of spell power will help with the spells as I pretty much only use Call of Nature, Heal, Empathy, and Magic Spring. Orc Shield is really good for Black / Blue Dragons / Dragon Riders since they are immune to magic.

For one really large enemy stack of werewolves I used just 1 stack of ArchDemons + Invisibility and Dark Clot. That was probably when I was level 35 or so.

So if you can do no loss through Whitehill you should be able to do no loss through the entire game with just some slight variations of your army makeup once you get ArchDemons and later Dragon Riders..

/C\/C\

[BB Shockwave]

Wow, 23 pages. I guess you guys must be really, really "hungry" for TBS games that you play this really flawed subpar expansion for such a long time. Me, I went back to playing Crossworlds, and recently, Etherlords II. So much more enjoyable without unbalanced maps and units.