King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

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Effidian
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Effidian »

Turin Turambar wrote:Warriors and paladin have less flashy skills in the talent tree, but remember there is something you aren't not seeing there: the average leaderhip won by them is better than with a wizard. So they depend more of the armies.
I understand they can have bigger armies. But that is only when you choose the Leadership option during level up right? There are no other hidden leadership bonus are there? During level up, I feel it is a waste to choose Leadership until level 20 or so. This is because only Leadership scales as you level up. At level 2 you might get the option of 120 Leadership or 1 defense, at level 20 it might be 1200 Leadership or 1 defense. So 1 defense is worth the same the entire game. 120 leadership at the end of the game is nothing. Unless the leadership bonuses you get from getting promoted by the King are different for each class, then I'm not sure how much different army size would be. My Mage had over 19000 leadership at the end of the game, and I think I only chose leadership during level up twice. What is the ending leadership of a Knight or Paladin?

My problem is looking at the warrior tree, I know I won't be using several of the skills in that tree, including one of the warrior only skills. I'll list my problems with it, and maybe I'm just interpreting them wrong.
  • Training: Only applies to Human troops.
  • Iron Fist: Only applies to Human troops.
  • Dark Commander: Only applies to Undead.
  • Bowmen Commander: This is okay, but a large part of my Mage game I didn't use any "archers". I had ranged units, but they weren't archers.
  • Preparation of Combat If this wasn't only the first turn, it would be really great. However, during the first turn the armies are usually crossing the battlefield. Maybe combined with Tactics 2 it could be useful. But even against red and black dragons, they use fire, so this doesn't work against them.
I just don't use Humans or Undead, there seem to be much better units out there. Maybe with Tactics 2, I could drop a stack of Knights close enough that they'd be effective. But the Undead cause moral problems, and I'm certainly going to want Shamans...

As for the Paladin, a lot of the skills revolve around gold or xp gain. Neither of which I had a problem with. I wouldn't want to hit level 30 too far before the end of the game, because I hate hitting the level cap. On Impossible gold would be more of an issue, but I could always take those skills as other classes if I need them. Anyway, here is my issues with Paladin skills.
  • Trade: Increase gold you get for selling items.
  • Trophies: Increase amount of gold from combat.
  • Glory: The leadership increase is fine for the beginning of the game, but really should have been a percentage. 500 leadership is nothing by the end of the game.
  • Learning: xp increase
  • Diplomacy: This seems so situationally useful that it wouldn't be worth it.
  • Tolerance: Removes morale issues with undead and demons. This might be useful to mix and match some of the more powerful undead/demon units with your normal army. I'm not entirely sure, and again it wouldn't be useful for most of the game.
  • Light Keeper: Undead and Demons aren't even half the game.
  • Inquisition: While this would be nice, you can easily refill your Inquisitors using Sacrifice.
  • Holy Anger: See Light Keeper.
So as a comparison, here are the skills I found lacking in the Mage tree:
  • Necromancy: Actually, this skill is kinda useful, but I had to list something here... :)
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Sponge
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Sponge »

Can somebody please explain the effects of Morale? I have a mixed bag of troops and my humans are showing LOW morale. I also just bought a nice jacket but noticed it's NEUTRAL. What does it all mean?! thx
Arkon
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Arkon »

Sponge wrote:Can somebody please explain the effects of Morale? I have a mixed bag of troops and my humans are showing LOW morale. I also just bought a nice jacket but noticed it's NEUTRAL. What does it all mean?! thx
Morale gives either bonuses/penalties or nothing to your troops attack, defense and crit chance. Neutral morale means no bonus or penalties, positive morale means bonuses and negative morale means penalties.

Item morale is completely different. let's say you have an item that has race:elves and has a morale rating. Fighting against elves while the item is equipped will lower the morale of the item. If the morale hits 0 it is useless unless you fight an insanely tough fight to supress it. Fighting against an army of non elves while wearing the item and having elves in your own party will raise the item morale as long as it hasn't hit 0.
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Gwen
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Gwen »

I know there is a way to take notes on the map but I can't seem to get it to work. I bring up my map, right click to bring up a place to enter text, do so, and then when I go back to my map I can't see my notes nor any icon that shows there were notes.

What am I doing wrong? I need the NOTES!
Gwen
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Gwen »

Sorry, I meant I LEFT CLICK.
Effidian
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Effidian »

You should just be able to left click, type in some text, press enter to close the text input. And the marker should be there. No idea why that wouldn't work.
Gwen
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Gwen »

Welp, the magic word is "enter." Didn't do that. God you have no idea how happy you've made me. Thanks!
EddieA
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by EddieA »

An expansion has been revealed, called "The Princess". Worthplaying has the details. It looks like they've paired up with Disney, as that adorable alien Stitch is apparently in the game.

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Brain
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Brain »

This game is totally addictive! I've been playing non-stop for the past few days. Fortunately I'm not working at the moment - oh yeah!
Get this game now if you haven't got it.
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lch
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by lch »

EddieA wrote:An expansion has been revealed, called "The Princess".
Here's the russian preview page for it: http://www.kingsbounty.ru/princess/" target="_blank
BigBoneTone
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by BigBoneTone »

Thanks for keeping this thread alive. This game has been on my radar as I am a HOMM addict and will play anything from that universe. I am currently in the clutches of Fallout 3, but hope to get to this asap. And now there is already an expansion? Bueno
"Only a jackass quotes himself" Big Bone Tone
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

It took me a while to get around to buying this game but I always knew I would get it one day and I finally got around to it on Friday. I'm not sorry I did. I'm just sorry it took me this long. I have not been able to tear myself away from it for 3 solid days. Each night I've pried myself from the game around 3am only to stagger to the PC the next morning to continue. I'm sure my wow guild is wondering what the hell happened to me for the weekend instance runs. This thing is soooo addictive.

What a game! This is my GOTY by far. it's not even close. Nothing I've played in years has had this kind of hold on me. If you even remotely like the HOMM, AOW, MOM type of games, do yourself a favor and just get the damn game. You won't regret it.

I'm amazed and saddened that there hasn't been more continuing buzz about this game. I want them to make expansions. Sequels. Lots and lots of them. Yes, it's that good.

I loved the HOMM series and this is sort of like that, but not really. The game world is huge. The graphics are awesome. The gameplay mechanics are spot on, I'd say. Unlike the HOMM games, there's just one big campaign. But it's not really a campaign, it's the whole game. It's more like a rpg such as Baldur's Gate or maybe Divine Divinity in that it has a whole world that you quest in. The world is huge and there's a lot of quests. The quests are particularly nice and one of the main things that's different from HOMM games. HOMM quests are pretty simple but in this game range from simple to pretty complex. Some of them have 7 or 8 steps to complete. Most of them are a whole lot of fun.

I thought I would hate the real-time movement aspect but, imo, it adds a lot to the game with out really detracting from turn-based aspects. It's fun to try to time the patrols of uber stacks or hero stacks so you can run in, grab the goodies they're guarding and then run away with them hot on your tail (they only chases you a short distance).

Unlike a lot of these games the pace of hero advancement is fairly slow. In three solid days of play I'm up to level 9. There's a lot of customizaion in the 3 skill trees and you'll have to make some hard choices on what things to get.

I like what they've done with tactical combat. it looks similar to the HOMM combat but feels different. Small changes make big differences. The leadership limits on troop stacks is a good mechanic I think. it keeps the battles very competitive. I also like the fact that units can move a few hexes, wait, then attack. This makes a huge tactical difference, especially for ranged units. If you park a melee unit next to archers, the archers can take a step away to get range then fire. nice. The spirits of rage also add a very interesting mechanic. It's like having a few extra big spells you can call on when your rage gets high enough. It's saved my butt a few times.

It would take a full review to do justice to this game. There are so many nice things in it. I love all the little animations and nice touches on the graphics (the crypts and undead areas are just awesome). There are no HOMM5 awful cutscenes and the game text is very well done. The whole thing is very polished and smooth. I've hit no bugs or problems at all (playing with the most recent patch). I've just finished the main Freedom Isles quest so there's still a lot to see and do.

If a game like this doesn't do well, then truely PC gaming is doomed. I hope it's selling well. It deserves to be a big hit. If you've been like me, thinking that you'll get to it one day, don't wait. Buy it!
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
Jeff V
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Jeff V »

ColdSteel wrote:I'm amazed and saddened that there hasn't been more continuing buzz about this game. I want them to make expansions. Sequels. Lots and lots of them. Yes, it's that good.
They used insulting DRM that chased away many prospective customers, including me. Yes, it's that bad. :x
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

Jeff V wrote: They used insulting DRM that chased away many prospective customers, including me. Yes, it's that bad.
The game uses SecuROM which is pretty standard for most games now so I'm not sure what you mean. I got a box copy with the DvD at BestBuy, installed it, and created a GameJackel profile so I don't need the CD in the drive to play. No muss, no fuss.

If you are talking about the digital download versions which may use the SecurROM "phone home" option crap, I don't deal with that since I prefer to have physical media in hand so I can install the game 10 years from now if I want to.

I hate copy protection and the recent trend toward limiting installs as much as anybody. If that's your issue then just buy the boxed version and you don't need to worry about the limited install stuff.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
Butterknife
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Butterknife »

I bought the boxed version, and after installing the patch I couldn't get the game to recognize the DVD. I uninstalled and reinstalled, did not apply the patch, and the game has run just fine. DRM is so lame.

The game is really great. It was the only game I got for Christmas, and I played it for a week and a half straight (a lot for me). It will really grab you if you like HOMM or RPGs in general. I was very pleased with the game. The only reason I have set it aside for now was that the difficulty was beginning to ramp up to the point of it being too hard for me.
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

Yes, the HOMM games tend to be on the easy side and this game does ramp up the difficulty of battles quite a bit from that. It's a real challange which I like. I just hope it doesn't get too tough to continue. I'm playing a mage and that has helped. Ressurection FTW.

I'm in the dwarf mines now and finally found a source of beholders. At last.

Does anyone know if you can eventually recruit Evil Beholders? Those things are just... evil. I want.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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Lordnine
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Lordnine »

I flew through a good section of the game as a mage relying on my spell casting ability. Now I’m in the undead area and I am hitting a wall. I just can’t keep my troops alive during a fight against hordes. About the only tactic that is working for me now is to invest in a stack of gryphon’s and run away from enemies while my mana and rage regenerate. If it wasn’t for the Ice Lady and her contraptions I wouldn’t win any fights at all. Am I the only one who is having this problem?
Stridergg
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Stridergg »

Does anyone know if you can eventually recruit Evil Beholders? Those things are just... evil. I want.
Yes, you can. It all depends on the random seeding in the begining of the game. I found Evil Beholders pretty early in the game (in the castle of the oldest frog brother after completing his quest line). OTOH I am about to go to Dwarves but I still don't have Resurrection spell that you have and that spell that makes enemies attack my tank (I had it in my previous game I scrapped).
If it wasn’t for the Ice Lady and her contraptions I wouldn’t win any fights at all. Am I the only one who is having this problem?
I am not that far in the game yet, but I find that when you hit some area that is too difficult for you, usually there are some enemies/areas that you left behind. You should go back and level up a bit on them. Stuff like the castle in the Sawmp's graveyard, tournament in the capital, Kraken in Eastern Isles, pirate ships, castle south of the capital's zone where you are looking for a portrait, upgrading living items, etc.

Also a lot depends on your army layout, spells and how you use all this during the fight. As a mage, I usually invest heavily in ranged units and also get a strong tank unit (lots of health, lots of defense, like shaman in early-mid-game). It also helps if your ranged units can help you control the flow of the battle - beholders make enemies skip their turn, archmages slow them down, so do shamans and druids (through the use of totems and summoned units). Same goes for spells and rage abilities. Once I kill their archers, I start using stuff like Trap (stops them and deals damage) and Wall (stone rage spirit's spell). And of course Scragg's armor ability (as well as Archmages' shield and Magic Source and Stoneskin spells) helps my tanks to tank better.

So my strategy atm is to kill their archers quickly and then stall them for as long as possible to allow my archers to kill them off. Once they do reach me, I force them to melee my high defense armored tank (that's why I miss that spell I mentioned above), while archers (and spells) continue pestering them.

Sometimes, however, I need to adjust this strategy. If I can't kill off the enemy archers quickly, I teleport my tank to them and fight plays out completely different.

Stats/gear-wise, I prefer Int/mana/defense, since it helps my strategy the best IMO. And of course you should take "use magic two times" talent, as well as upgrade the useful magic spells as much as possible.

Then again, it's one of the games where you can screw yourself up by making a lot of wrong choices throughout. I heard it's pretty difficult to do so though.

Awesome game, my personal GOTY as well.
Stridergg
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Stridergg »

Oh and one more thing. If you are having troubles with undead, maybe you could consider investing into anti-undead units like Monks(?) and Inquisitors, as well as getting rid of the units that rely on poison/mind control, etc.
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AWS260
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by AWS260 »

I just started this over the weekend, and I'm really enjoying it. I loved the original King's Bounty (I can still visualize the animation of the 2D archer sprite), but for some reason I could never get into the HOMM games. King's Bounty: The Legend is bringing back the love.
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Cremator
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Cremator »

One way of getting around not having the Resurrect spell is to use a unit that grows when attacking (Cursed Ghosts) and then use the spell Sacrifice when the stack is too big and you lose control. I keep a reserve of 50+ Cursed Ghosts as when I win the easy battles, I stockpile the ghosts that are beyond my control. Having Dark Commander is a must if you want to mix in non-undead troops as well.
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Lordnine
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Lordnine »

Stridergg wrote:Oh and one more thing. If you are having troubles with undead, maybe you could consider investing into anti-undead units like Monks(?) and Inquisitors, as well as getting rid of the units that rely on poison/mind control, etc.
Oh it’s not actually undead units that cause a problem, well except for necromancers. I hate those bastards. It’s when my stacks of 40-100 units go up against their stacks of 400. One dragon that is immune to magic can take down my whole army in a couple rounds.

As for leveling up I’ve cleared every area that I know of prior to that one.
Stridergg
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Stridergg »

Oh it’s not actually undead units that cause a problem, well except for necromancers. I hate those bastards. It’s when my stacks of 40-100 units go up against their stacks of 400. One dragon that is immune to magic can take down my whole army in a couple rounds.
I found Fear spell to be more and more useful as I progress through the game. Obviously, it won't help you against the dragons, but it works beautifully against hordes of low level (1-3) units. At rank 2, it prevents an enemy stack from attacking any higher level stack for 3 turns and it costs 10 mana. As far as I know, it doesn't matter how big the enemy stack is, although some units are immune to it. I locked hundreds of imps out of the combat for the duration of the fight yesterday and it was great.

BTW this is the kind of spell that is very useful in its scroll form. It will have rank 1, so only 2 turns duration, but still very useful and saves you a lot of mana during the longer fights.

"Use magic 2 times in one turn" talent is extremely useful, but that's kind of given for a Mage.

As for Dragons, I only encountered 2 so far - one red and another one I don't remember - so I don't have much experience with them. :) I do know though that there is a spell called something like "Dragon's Killer" that at rank 1increases stack's damage against dragons by 30%. Should be very useful. You get it from the quest where you need to shutdown 3 magic shrines in the zone east of the capital (I think quest rewards are not randomized).
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Lordnine
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Lordnine »

In most fights now I’ve discovered that if I can’t kill two full stacks of something in the first round I’m probably going to lose. I have a maxed out lighting spell that I can cast twice a round which does this quite well but after that everything becomes very difficult. I usually turn to my level 3 healing spell as my main damage dealer after my mana runs low.

Dragons and Necromancers are the biggest problem because the first can fly the length of any map and attack multiple targets at once while the later can resurrect enemies endlessly. I regularly run into two stacks of 5 or more dragons in a battle now.
Fear I haven’t really tried but I’m not sure if it will be terribly valuable against undead and magic immunes.

Making matters worse I’m running out of “good” units to hire so I’m often stuck filling my army with filler like fairies.
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

As a level 12 mage my usual strategy now revolves around royal snakes and the Phantom and Kamikaze spell spells at level 2.

First I married the frog princess and ignored her so that she turned back into a frog. Sure, I lost the +3 intellect bonus but I gained +100% to attack by snakes. Awesome! I also bought the artifact that gives +1 to snake initiative and speed. My stack of 97 royal snakes is always the first stack to move so I move them almost halfway and pause with one move hex left. Then I use phantom on them and summon 30 more royal snakes in the hex in front. Those now have the highest initiative and can move the full amount of distance the original stack can, but they start almost halfway across the battle field. With lunge that means they can reach the enemy units, especially ranged units, on the first turn before they get a shot off.

Now, the phantom spell only lasts 3 turns so on the next turn I cast the suicide bomb spell on the phantom stack. The bomb goes off when the last snake in the stack dies so I move them right into the middle of a group so he's surrounded on all sides. If they don't attack him I can wait until their last turn, move them right where I want them to hit the most hexes (attacking a stack if I can). As soon as the last move/attack is done, the spell ends, the summoned snakes die, the bomb goes off right in the middle of the pack. Sweet, sweet carnage. I lose no troops at all with the stategy and they wreak havoc.

Meantime, I have rage built up so that I can cast the Orb spell and park it right next to other casters. The AI tends to want to focus on killing it so that saves on my main troops too. When the orb health gets low, yep, I cast the suicide bomb spell on the orb as well so that when they kill it, it takes a bunch out with the aftermath explosion.

Meantime my original stack of 97 Royal snakes are moving around decimating the remaining mobs along with my beholders which are attacking the lower level troops to put them to sleep for a turn. If there's a particualrly nasty stack, or they're all low level, I use the beholders and the fear spell and they never get a hit in. If there are choke points I mix in the trap spell as well to create bottlenecks.

I also have some cursed ghosts as a stack which I use as shock troops again the tough stacks. If their numbers get too low i hit the lower level troops to build the numbers back. If I get too many, I just keep moving them to one of my two reserve spaces (the other is used to store reserve royal snakes).

I also use ancient bears but they're only really useful on long fights or fights with really tough stacks. I've used them to take out the gremlin towers when upgrading my equipment.

I actually like the tactical battle options of this game better than the HOMM games. They're more fun and creative and much more balanced. With HOMM, once you build your hero up some you just steamroll everything. Not true with this game. I have been humbled many times just as soon as I started feeling a bit uber.

It's fun reading about everyone's strategies and I've gotten some great ideas, especially from Stridergg. So thanks for that. :D
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

Boy, crystals have become very scarce now. It's tough upgrading all the spells that I'd like. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the skill that reduces crystal use by 50% until I was already level 8 so that hurt.

I now have dwarf cannoneers and Orc shamen in my army. Both are awesome. I also found some evil beholders finally. I spent yesterday evening just upgrading my two rings to gold items and my cloak of wizardry to the top level for a big mana pool improvement. Fun fights. The wizard mantle now has morale (it's neutral). I can upgrade it to 'good' for 6 crystals but unless the crystal supply dramatically improves later in the game, that ain't happening. Does anyone know what the effect of morale on items is?

I'm level 14 now and in the dwarf lands. Life is good.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
Stridergg
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Stridergg »

IIRC, if the item's morale goes below Neutral, the item stops giving you its bonuses. Morale goes down when you kill enemy units of the item's race and it goes up when you kill enemies while having units of its race in your army. You can also fight the item's guardians to subdue the item, i.e. make its negative morale into neutral.

The game randomly seeds reinforcement units and scrolls on the map, which also forces people to use different strategies. I haven't had Kamikadze spell up until my last playing session, now that I have it, I am thinking on how I can use it, thanks to ColdSteel for some ideas. One very useful spell that I found recently is Hypnosis - you kill enemies with an enemy unit, soaking all the retaliation damage as well. BTW, try to get all the chests during the fights, you can get some very useful spells there (of course most of the time it's just useless money, oh well).

What I really like about the game is how it forces you to think and change your strategy depending on what kind of enemy and friendly units you have, as well as the spells. Most of the time, I just use Rain of Fire and kill them all off. But sometimes I get enemies that are resistant to fire or that have huge stacks that I can't kill off in the first round. And that's when all the sneaky spells like Teleport, Phantom, Hypnosis, Fear, Blind, etc. come into play.

I can't wait to get some lvl 5 creatures in my army, I am a little bored with my Royal Snakes. :)

I found a lot of magic crystals in dwarven mines, but still not enough to use them left and right. After seeing the requirements of updating some of the spells to lvl 3, I decided to hold on to them and use as little as possible.

Oh and I noticed that on my Mage I had a lot of red and green runes just sitting there, so I got quite a few Warrior talents yesterday - very useful! And one more tip - the Orb hits harder for every hex it travels before the hit, the damage grows really well. And you can use shaman's totems to block enemy's shooters! :)
Matrix
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Matrix »

Hmm, anyone else playing on hard? it seemed fun for a while, but now i am level 13 and it seems every fight i lose 1/4 to 1/2 of my troops . Which means i need to go back and restock way too much. To those who is not playing on hard, it is 70% dmg for me and 130% dmg for enemy. While it does make for some fun tactics, i am finding now as i get higher level, that every battle becomes a tactical master piece and i still lose way too many units. I am playing mage, so i can dish out up to 2k dmg per turn, problem is , enemy can dish out a lot in return. I wont even go into bosses, i have to be way higher then them to even have a shot. It might be because i am also at eleven lands, i just got here, and almost all stocks i am fighting says very strong. I might need to go back to dwarwen lands and level up a bit.

PS: it seems i was hitting a bit too high areas for my level, at least for hard difficulty, i went back to dwarwen areas and it seems a lot more matched losing only few units per fight. Reserve slots is a must. If anyone havent gotten them, i strongly suggest getting them, they are great for some go to units or reserve units.
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Stridergg »

You definitely went too high. IIRC I am lvl 16 and I just finished clearing Dorfland, still working on that Gremlin Castle though, lots of exp there btw. I am playing on Normal though, but if anything, playing on hard should require (and allow) you to get even higher before going to elves.
While it does make for some fun tactics, i am finding now as i get higher level, that every battle becomes a tactical master piece and i still lose way too many units.
That's the reason I didn't go with Hard mode. :) There are so many fights, if I had to spend any longer fighting each of them than I do on Normal, I would never finish the game. Even on Normal, I am still not sure if I am going to finish it - it's enormously big.

Besides, I like having "WTF am I going to do now?" moments from time to time, but not every time I fight :)
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

I haven't finished the gremlin castle either. I'm level 18 and partway through the elf lands. I've pretty much cleared all the dwarf areas and the underground sea area up to Demonis.

There's an area with a locked gate in the starting elf zone. How do you get the key to open that? Where do you go?

I found 2 necklaces of firestorm and maxed out the desctruction skill so I find I'm relying on rain of fire a lot now and hardly use Phantom except on tough fights. I can do about 3800 damage per pop with RoF. I've also been playing around some with the Doom spell lately. On really big stacks those crits work wonders. The book of evil spell is fun but seems kind of limited in utility. It does make a nice blocking stack. I wonder if you can use Sacrifice on it? Hmmm.

I have 6 green dragons now which I've mixed in with my evil beholders, shamen, cannoneers and royal snakes. With ressurection, I rarely lose a single unit these days in elfland. I have to be careful with the dragons though because I can't rez level 5 troops. Next I want to find some red dragons and try them out.

That undead area is another thing entirely. I stuck my nose in there and did fine until I ran into armies with stacks of black dragons. Ouch. I won a few battles but was losing so many troops on the ones with the dragons I figured I'd level up some more and come back later. I'm not much looking forward to Demonis either because of all the fire resistance there. I need to experiment with other tactics and maybe swap out some troops for that.

I have been amazed at how large the game is and how open it is. I've been playing it just about every waking moment for 2 weeks when I'm not at work and I'm still not nearly done. I think I might have to put this up there in my top 5 games of all time. We shall see if I still feel the same after I finish it. So far it's just an awesome, awesome game. I hope the expansion is this good.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
Matrix
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Matrix »

Yah i went back a bit to dwarf land and sea islands, and certanly things ran much smoother. I still havent seen resurectin or rain of fire, against demons the Ice dagon is great, i use it more then fire ball vs most.
units. Loving shamans though, really versatile and their totems seem to agro big time, so its nice to use for bait. Mass bless is also one of my favorites, just got doom and certainly can see how that can come in handy. Ice ball is fantastic. Paladins aka horseman are surprisingly crappy, they dont seem to do enough dmg compared to their high ledearship. Found them and most other humans units pretty disappointing.

I picked hard cause i normally find normal difficulty too easy and i am pretty good in tactic and strategy, well i got what i bargained for, it certainly isn't walk in the park. Its a mixed blessing, since even almost any army that including weaker then mine, can give me problems, especially with ranged units and when i fight stronger and bigger then mine, it really becomes a chess game, since one wrong move can mean me losing way too many units.
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

Yeah, one of the nice things about this game is that it isn't easy, even on normal they don't baby you. Because there are stacks way higher than your level mixed in randomly in all the areas you have to use some discretion. The leadership mechanic they use is brilliant imo because it keeps the battles balanced throughout the entire game. None of this running around crushing armies once you build up your hero like in the HOMM games. It keeps the tension up. It also really a pretty good exploration game, which is something I like. What's over that next hill? The world they build is really nice.

I may take a shot at it on hard the second time thru, now that I know how to get off to a good start and what skills to take/avoid. I think a Paladin would be very fun to try.

One thing I do hope they improve on is the quest log. I wish they'd at least say what zone the original questgiver is in to remind you where they are. I often complete a quest and then think, now where was that guy located again?
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
Matrix
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Matrix »

Just hit 19. Biggest thing that made a difference, was Fire storm and Higher Magic, once i got firestorm, all of a sudden things got much easier. It seemed almost instant difference. Since firestorm does dmg to everyone, unlike dragon or fireball. I still not sure cold steel, how you running 3800 per cast even with 2 necklaces of fire, since i do have one neclace and my destruction magic is maxed out, plus my int is pretty high but my dmg is i think at 2200. The only reason i could see, is that -30% dmg that game gives for Hard difficulty. But even with that, it made a huge difference, since before i had to target units on priority basis, while now i can blanket cast dmg. Just got my level 2 Higher magic (level 1 mage huge difference as well), will see how it will go. Finlay having fights where losing only few units is normal, it was getting tiresome losing large chunks of the army.

Few tactics that worked well: Hypnosis, got it to level 2, great way to get read of units and draw agro.

Doom- Critical strikes work wonders, trully great for level 2 and 3 stacks. Working on getting it to level 3, so i can cast it on lev 4 units.

Mass bless is obvious choice. Working on getting my weakness to level 3, but crystals are in very short supply.

Higher magic, at level 2 will allow me start getting some buff and debuff spells aside from mostly dmg spells.

For the Rage casts, fire is most useless to me. Water is occasionally useful, and was very useful early on. Water shield seems to be buged, my units stop moving when i cast it one them.
Water is usefull, i like littler robot, and ball, ball especially, its great for massive killings of units. Death is hands down best, rage drain + life % destruction + Mass dmg spell. (and i think back in time thing means they recover all hp of previous round, havent experimented with that skill yet, since i just got it to a point where it can affect level 3s, and problem is, all my units are level 4 or 5).

Favorite unit so far: Shamans
Runner up: Emerald Dragons
Special Mention: Ent (heavy tank + ranged attack, very nice)

Suggestion to anyone who wants to start on Hard, make sure you enjoy long battles that rarely end quick , and usually require a lot of planing in advance. Loss of units is pretty big, even when the dmg is just accidental. 2 Reserve spots is almost a must since loss of units is very quick. Dont fight with boss monsters till you higher then them, preferably much higher.
galaril
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by galaril »

Does anyone know when the expansion "Princess ...." is due out for this and what it is adding to the original?
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by AWS260 »

galaril wrote:Does anyone know when the expansion "Princess ...." is due out for this and what it is adding to the original?
From a recent interview with the developer:
GB: Are you still on track for a Q1 2009 release in Russia? Have you started making any plans to publish the expansion in Europe or North America yet? If so, when?

Dmitry: We plan to release Armored Princess in Russia in spring 2009. But the localization for other territories will take some time, so the game will appear there later.
The interview also includes some details on new features.
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ColdSteel
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ColdSteel »

Yes, some great information in that interview. Including these items that caught my eye:
GB: Many fans have expressed interest in at least a basic editor to be able to extend the replayability even more. Are there any plans for one in the future? If indeed one is in the works, what sort of timeline might we expect for its release?

Dmitry: We are currently discussing that, maybe the editor will be available for every gamer, but we are not sure for now. Actually we are thinking about the way to give it is to advanced players only, ones that can create a good extension. We consider that to be the best option.
GB: You've mentioned that KB's role-playing system will be improved upon in Armored Princess. Can you elaborate on this a bit? What steps have you taken to make the expansion feel even more like an RPG?

Dmitry: You can upgrade your hero to level 50 and beyond now. The hero's skill tree will be changed and updated. We'll introduce a reward system giving additional bonuses to the character. You can make contracts as in the original King's Bounty game, which allows you to gain double rewards for winning a battle and killing enemies. There will be the opportunity to fly on Pegasus.
GB: In the press release, you mentioned contracts, headhunting, and hirelings. Can you give us a few details about each of these new features?

Dmitry: Contracts are a type of quest that can be completed as they were in the original King's Bounty.

Assistants and mercenaries are all called armor-bearers in our game. You can hire them and get additional slots for weapons and some special bonuses. These replace the slots and bonuses received from wives in The Legend, so there will be no possibility to have children.
GB: How many new items, spells, and other abilities do you intend to add in Armored Princess? Can you share a few examples with us?

Dmitry: There will be 10 new spells, lots of new abilities and talents for different creatures, and about fifty new items. For example, using a Rage control spell you can turn rage into mana and by using the Zlong spell you can summon the clot of death that can flow into a creature and harm it. You can also summon a star which has rays that can kill all the living beings on the battlefield.
GB: How difficult will it be to transform our horse into a Pegasus? Will the ability to fly make it easier to evade groups of enemies and perhaps even allow us to move to areas previously only reachable by boat in the original game?

Dmitry: After the hero finishes the appropriate quest he receives the ability to transform the horse into Pegasus. The hero can use this ability to avoid unwanted battles, and to get to previously inaccessible places. It is clear that it gives much more freedom in movement to the player, which he can use at his own wish. It will be also much easier to steal a chest from stronger enemies.
GB: Are we still going to have access to Zerock, Sleem, Lina, and Reaper in Armored Princess? Will there be any other uses for Rage in the expansion?

Dmitry: No, they will be replaced by a real pet – a tamed dragon called Drago which will not sit in the casket. He will always be represented on the battlefield and act interactively to all of the occurrences happening.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by Toe »

I picked this game up last week. Absolutely love the graphics and music/sound. The whole run-back-and-get-more troops thing does get a little old though and I am only level 7 heh. I try to stick to just killing weak and very weak stuff to avoid constant trips (normal difficultly). I started with the warrior class and I also the Might skills are a bit on the boring side with some rather crappy choices. Overall though, a fun game and worth picking up especially since you can find it on the cheap.
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ScubaV
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by ScubaV »

Yeah, I'm playing on normal and I'm very picky about letting zero/very few troops die, especially since so many of the good ones seem to have a rather limited supply. I've just started poking around the dwarf lands at level 13-14 and aside from the very beginning I've done a lot of saving/reloading and running past mobs to do quests. A strategy I just thought of, and used on a particularly hard fight, is when gold becomes plentiful to just garrison your army you care about and replace them with a bunch of units you don't plan to use often anyway and burn them up on fights you are guaranteed to lose soldiers.

Edit: I've also noticed that when an enemy unit and your unit have the same initiative, they always get to go first. This is especially annoying when they have a ranged unit with the highest initiative so you can't burn them down with spells/rage abilities first. The final ability in might (+initiative on your first turn) would be awesome for this. Sadly, as a mage it's tough to get the necessary might/mind runes when I want to enhance my magic abilities first.
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by persself »

ColdSteel wrote:One thing I do hope they improve on is the quest log. I wish they'd at least say what zone the original questgiver is in to remind you where they are. I often complete a quest and then think, now where was that guy located again?
I add notes on the map as I meet and receive a quest from NPC.
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persself
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Re: King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

Post by persself »

ColdSteel wrote:There's an area with a locked gate in the starting elf zone. How do you get the key to open that? Where do you go?
It's part of the main quest....you will get there eventually. :wink:
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