King's Bounty: Warriors of the North

[tindrli]

There is another Katauri game in for some milking. I don't know if you guys know of it, but there's a Space Rangers 2: Reboot errr reboot to come out some time this year. It's labelled as Space Rangers HD.

yep.. we are waiting it .. for like.. an eternity..

 

[tindrli]

seems like warriors of the north is out

 

[Average Manatee]

Short Answer: Leadership. Mages get pitiful leadership, so your army is perhaps one fifth of that of a warrior, and one third of a paladin. You can shore some of that up with summoning spells though, but they tend to be expensive and not allow for dualcasting.

Mage leadership isn't that bad. IIRC its 100% leadership gain for warrior, 75% for paladin, 50% for mage. The bigger loss is in attack/defense points, which gives +3%/-3% damage respectively for each point compared to the attacker's stats up to a max of 3x normal damage attacks and 1/3rd normal damage taken at a 60 point differential. Warriors can usually expect around 20-30 extra in both attack and defense from skills, stats, and equipment, so thats a huge difference on top of the leadership.

Now, what mages CAN do to use their army is something like this: Take a good melee unit, ideally with base physical resistance. I'll consider Guard Droids since you can always get them pretty early and droids are by far the most imbalanced unit in the game. 20% physical resistance + 7% from medal + 10-25% from items (more is possible, this is what I would call average for mid/late game) = 37%-52% base physical resistance. Then you cast Stone Skin and this gets boosted to 77%-92% physical resistance. This ranges from being much better than a warrior stack to fucking invincible against almost everything in the game. Keep in mind that your defense reduces damage on top of this, even with your mediocre mage bonuses expect another 33% reduction or so. If that's not enough Divine Armor will give +50%ish damage reduction against ALL damage sources, though it will cost a ton and not last as long as Stone Skin. With your other spell for your first turn you use, say, Berserker, which adds +150% to the attack rating of the unit, counting both the unit's base stats and any stats your mage has, taking you from being 25 points below a warrior in attack to 25 points above them. If that's not enough, cast Hell Breath and multiply your damage by another 1.4x. Also cast Mana Spring on the second turn to both give the unit a defense bonus it doesn't need at all and give you +5 mana back every time it takes damage.

This also works marvelously for anything with Furious, which means you can just move your stack into the enemy units and watch as every one of their melee stacks attacks you for 50 damage then gets counter attacked for 50k and dies instantly. Royal Gryphons are superb, and Black Knights are insanely broken with the equipment that boosts them.

And yeah, otherwise, summons rock. Phantom with intelligence and the summoning boost can give you a duplicate of any stack you own at up to ~85%ish strength. Or double cast the 2nd tier phantom for 2 stacks at 70% strength. Did I mention the new unit can us all of their abilities again? You can phantom units that summon other units to summon a shit ton more units (which are still real units even if they come from phantoms). Against one of the bosses that summoned units every turn I simply covered the whole field in 5k Thorn stacks so nothing could come in. lols. Then you can abuse Paladins to AoE revive your units, give extra turns, and plain kill things. Inquisitors to spam your highest level dragon skills multiple times a turn. Archmages to mana shield shit everywhere for -50% damage, then spam their attack which reduces enemy initiative to one. Etc, etc.

Summoning spells that give leadership-based troops start to suck after a certain point, but the individual uber-units still kick ass. They get attack/defense bonuses from your attack/defense, your intelligence, then their base damage and health is increased based on both your intelligence and summoner skill. My end game infernal dragon had 3.5k health, 109/159 attack/defense, 60% crit and 700ish base damage per attack. Since that attack and defense is far beyond almost anything else in the game, you can consider him to have 10k health, 2k damage with a 60% chance to crit for nearly 4k. In addition to the special abilities, like always surviving the first lethal hit, regenerating 30% of it's health when under 10%, hitting multiple targets, lighting everything on fire, immunity to fire/magic/astral, 30%ish protection from physical, and transforming all killed enemies into juicy rage bonuses. Not going to win the game on it's own or be as impressive as a fully buffed well-placed phantom (though much better early game with lower leadership), but you can drop it right in the middle of the enemy on the first turn and by the time they've killed it your ranged attacks have killed off most of their force.

 

[Spectacle]

seems like warriors of the north is out

It is? Steam says it unlocks at midnight. Is it out early somewhere?

 

[Average Manatee]

I never finished it even though I liked it quite a bit. Main reason was having to backtrack two islands to find the one spot where I could buy a black dragon every single time I lost one. Waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much focus on finishing each find not just in great fashion but absolutely perfectly. So yeah, GREAT fan of the fundamental mechanics, but necessity of perfect fights/backtracking to buy a single unit whenever you lose one crushed it for me. Which is sad, because as I said I really liked the game.

I agree this is a PITA, they should give you infinite army storage slots. But once you get Sacrifice you can generate units for yourself in the field by sacrificing another. And you can in fact use any resurrection type ability to then restore the original stack.

 

[Jaedar]

Covering the entire battlefield with thorns certainly is hilarious.

 

[Average Manatee]

Covering the entire battlefield with thorns certainly is hilarious.

Did I mention that I had Whip of Pain (+1 fire damage), Assassin's Dagger (+1 poison damage) and Crown of Blackthorne (+100% thorn damage)? Takes Thorns from 1-2 damage to (*2+1+1)=4-6 damage each. Also hilarious, especially with a high crit rate.

 

[tindrli]

seems like warriors of the north is out

It is? Steam says it unlocks at midnight. Is it out early somewhere?

i dont use steam but our russian friends are posting D links all over the net

 

[Spectacle]

Probably only the Russian version then, the English version uses Steamworks DRM so it won't be cracked until it's released on steam.

 

[Spectacle]

Aaaaand the release time just got pushed back 20 hours by Steam. nice.
:kwanzania:

 

[Monocause]

I'm going to demo it, but I'm pretty sure I won't like it much and ditch it after a couple of hours. The enjoyability of combat is outweighed by tedium of elements like recruitment system and repetitiveness of many encounters.

 

[Jaedar]

Game is certainly out, I am playing it right now.

 

[Average Manatee]

Interesting things so far:

Vikings are an entirely new race of new units, which is nice. I was expecting them to be composed of various neutral units. Looks to be nice stuff too. Warrior maidens get a reloadable resurrect, but it only works on units lost in the last 2 turns. Jarls look like they will mop the floor with their skill that causes AoE fear, boosts their morale, and lets them still use their turn.

Skald (Paladin) now has the highest leadership (250 start), while Viking (Warrior) is next (200 start) and Soothsayer (Mage) is still last (150 start). Skalds have a unique tier 2 skill that lets them use a Song before battle that offers troop bonuses. There's also other nice things, like a skill that gives both +crit to yourself and -crit to enemies, persuasion which now looks to reduce ALL morale penalties greatly, and Reserve which lets you add troops from your reserve force mid-battle if you lose some. Sounds like they will be quite competitive compared to AP and especially TL.

Vikings looks absolutely killer with Absolute Rage. 50% chance to receive +25% attack when hit, chance of scoring critical hits in counter attacks +100%, critical hit damage +50%. That's just insane, should more than make up for the leadership loss once you get it. It also looks like Rage abilities will be more specifically for Vikings rather than stuff every class can use well, as Vikings get very large bonuses to damage, cooldowns, freezing enemies who are hit, and chance to reuse skills.

Soothsayers get an entirely new line of magic: Rune Magic. Aside from Rune spells, certain viking units get runes that can apply specific attack/defense/luck buffs in battle (rune magic adds to this). The Artificer skill that lets you break down items is now a mage skill, and apparently lets you craft items, which should be interesting. Also "creation" now boosts all non-combat spells while destruction boosts all combat spells, both at the end of their lines. Interestingly creation also boosts spell duration, which is probably overkill for mages and unreachably hard to get for most of classes.

Only complaint so far is that the English localization looks to be a bit... off. At least for skill descriptions and such, the dialog still looks good (and better written than most other games). Nothing major, just be prepared for a handful of new, innovative words and some grammatical incongruencies.

 

[IDtenT]

Sounds sweet. With what did they replace the dragon? I quite liked the box of rage.

1C always has lulzy localisations.

 

[Average Manatee]

Copied the mana regeneration script from Crossworlds over to Warriors of the North. Download here: http://www.2shared.com/file/bBgJygJL/textgen.html

Put in sessions\addon folder. Hover your mouse over the clock to regen your Mana to full and lower your rage as if you had waited. Not sure if the calculations for rate of mana/rage regeneration still work correctly but it doesn't really matter since 99% of the time you'll go to full mana and zero rage.

Sounds sweet. With what did they replace the dragon? I quite liked the box of rage.

1C always has lulzy localisations.

You are your own rage machine. Boxes are for pansies and dragons are for women.

Rune magic is cool so far. Magic Missile is like a Fire Arrow that does 1.5x-2x damage to mages. Runes themselves are nice. Berserker who goes berserk + attack rune + counter counter attacks does a lot of damage with a very high crit rate.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i absolutely loved the first, as much as i despised armored princess. didn't even bother to try crossworld.
i'm unsure about this. should i try it or is still more and more and more and more of the same?

 

[IDtenT]

Copied the mana regeneration script from Crossworlds over to Warriors of the North. Download here: http://www.2shared.com/file/bBgJygJL/textgen.html

Put in sessions\addon folder. Hover your mouse over the clock to regen your Mana to full and lower your rage as if you had waited. Not sure if the calculations for rate of mana/rage regeneration still work correctly but it doesn't really matter since 99% of the time you'll go to full mana and zero rage.

But aren't you cheating the end game score?

 

[Grunker]

Eh, is this an add-on like Crossroads or a new campaign? With the new classes I mean?

 

[zerotol]

I am guessing its a standalone with a new campaign?

 

[Average Manatee]

The classes are just renames of the old ones with slightly different skill sets. It is a stand alone campaign.

 

[Average Manatee]

Ahriman is a damn stone wall to anyone trying for a no loss game. Not a fan of how limited you are on the first island.

 

[Monocause]

Ahriman is a damn stone wall to anyone trying for a no loss game. Not a fan of how limited you are on the first island.

Why would you be trying for that? Sounds totally masochistic. Anyway, if you're really stoked remember that the soothsayer healing spell works as a limited resurrect - but I don't see what's the point. You'd be wasting incredible amounts of time switching troops to counter heavy hitters, spellcasters etc - and I doubt that's doable at all considering that there probably will be boss fights.

Anyway, it's funny. Seems like each and every KB is an improvement over the old one. The fifth installment will probably be so good that I'll actually manage to finish it without getting bored. Flight is a nice bonus as it saves travel time immeasurably; sstill, I'm kinda annoyed that combat animations are still rather slow, I'd prefer to be able to turn them off completely or speed them up to a blitz.

Seems like the warrior is the most boring class to play now, though the skald's songs are a bit underwhelming too. The game claims that you'll learn new songs, but I think that's a leftover from some by gone plans; at least no it doesn't seem like there's any new songs to be learned there. Most of the songs are unusable because they focus on giving you elemental bonuses, and there's simply not enough creatures with elemental resistances/vulnerabilities to make it worthwhile. Coupled with how much undead you're facing it turns out that I use the last, anti-undead song all the time, for other occasions switching to that Jotun one that grants your units bonus to attack and defence at the cost of initiative.

Skald-specific skills aren't that great too. I think I'll be switching to a mage.

Game started crashing on me often after reaching the second island. IDK if it's the case of a buggy game or a buggy "demo" version.

 

[Average Manatee]

Ahriman is a damn stone wall to anyone trying for a no loss game. Not a fan of how limited you are on the first island.

Why would you be trying for that? Sounds totally masochistic. Anyway, if you're really stoked remember that the soothsayer healing spell works as a limited resurrect - but I don't see what's the point. You'd be wasting incredible amounts of time switching troops to counter heavy hitters, spellcasters etc - and I doubt that's doable at all considering that there probably will be boss fights.

Because it's a challenge? Was totally possible on impossible for AP and TL.

Soothsayer's resurrect sucks major balls. 16 HP per soothsayer, and it's halved when resurrecting (so 8 HP per Soothsayer for all intents and purposes), at a cost of 240 leadership. In comparison, Paladins resurrect in an AoE at 24 HP per Paladin, at a cost of 220 leadership.

His other skills are pretty bad too. Loki's Touch? Great, that will work after I've killed 80% of an enemy stack. Ice Storm? Great, a skill that does what Necromancers do for free on every attack, except with -2 damage on the main attack, another 50% less damage on the AoE, and won't curse all of them (reducing attack/defense by 35% and critical hit rate by 50%).

Seems like the warrior is the most boring class to play now, though the skald's songs are a bit underwhelming too. The game claims that you'll learn new songs, but I think that's a leftover from some by gone plans; at least no it doesn't seem like there's any new songs to be learned there. Most of the songs are unusable because they focus on giving you elemental bonuses, and there's simply not enough creatures with elemental resistances/vulnerabilities to make it worthwhile. Coupled with how much undead you're facing it turns out that I use the last, anti-undead song all the time, for other occasions switching to that Jotun one that grants your units bonus to attack and defence at the cost of initiative.

Skald-specific skills aren't that great too. I think I'll be switching to a mage.

Yeah, after seeing the Skald songs I'm left saying: meh? Would be nice if they leveled with you or something.

Skald is clearly gunning for a high-crit + morale build, since they work so well together. The trouble is that the Viking unique skill is insanely good for crits, and it's a straight line to persuasion so Vikings can still benefit from morale in a mixed lineup very well. Skald does still have higher leadership, but I don't think it stands up to warriors at all.

 

[wormix]

The price tag of $30 seems quite high, I'll likely wait till it's at least 50% off.

How does the difficulty scale/spikes in this compare with the previous two games? I liked TL vastly more than CW. I can see the merits of different enemy composition when it comes to strategy, but it felt like the enemy battles in CW were randomly generated, not to mention the units that became available.

In TL you're presented with a moderately sized first island which you're free to explore. After quite a bit of playing you can go to the next island (pirates) and the difficulty ramps up. This difficulty spike occurs pretty much any time you go to a new area, but the areas themselves are large. In CW the first islands you go to are all quite small, but the difficulty still goes up between each of them.

I found this frustrating rather than challenging, especially as the first islands you visit were pretty boring. It got better later on (I got up to Montero) but I never finished it.

For reference I never played AP when it came out, so I only know of the game with the Orcs expansion.

 

[HardDeck]

How does the difficulty scale/spikes

Just the beggining fo the game i found a shield +1 and it had an upgrade +2 so i clicked it, not knowing better, i was teleported to a realm to fight the guards of the shield and was obliterated, had no chance. Should probably leave the shield +1 for now.