King's Bounty: Warriors of the North

[Azira]

Level 5 medal of trapper is a gamechanger. Yes, it feels cagey setting up mobs to die from traps. But +3 traps from battle onset, with +150% damage? Sweet... Invest in intellect and distortion magic, and you can deal 4000+ damage when your mage is his late twenties, levelwise.

 

[cvv]

Level 5 medal of trapper is a gamechanger. Yes, it feels cagey setting up mobs to die from traps. But +3 traps from battle onset, with +150% damage? Sweet... Invest in intellect and distortion magic, and you can deal 4000+ damage when your mage is his late twenties, levelwise.

Meh, I think the condition is the whole mob unit has to die from the trap which sucks.

Did that once, in AP I think, and never again. Yes, the reward was pretty fucking amazing but it was immesurable p.a.i.n. to get there.

 

[Azira]

You just need to kill the last of the mob with the trap spell. You can soften them up with other attacks beforehand no problem.
Mind you, to get to rank 5 of said medal, you have to lather, rinse, repeat the offing og mobs via traps 350 times in all.

Current playthrough, I got there shortly after battling Runorm (after the mainland, I usually bee-line for the freedom isles and grind there. It was on the second freedom isle map I finally killed monster stack #350 with traps).

 

[Aothan]

there is at least always some benefit to developing early skills in the other class skill trees with surplus runes, and I should have been clearer with my use of specialisation since my use of the Paladin/Skald class draws upon accessible skills from the Warrior or Mage areas accordingly. That said, I think all the classes can be played in a pure specialised fashion, probably with the Warrior firstly, then the Mage and to a lesser comparable extent the Paladin (I don't recall the Viking equivalents). There are ways to play the game with little challenge and pure specialisation which probably favours the Skald's improved leadership but I find those playstyles too mundane for my interests

and speaking of vikings, just experienced my first devastating loss against what first looked like a manageable encounter only to discover 60 odd Berserkers arrayed against me. If I were a little more attentive the challenge would have dawned on me in advance (already being familiar with how easily Berserker units can halve armies) but found out after one of my frontline units were quickly decimated. Which left me in an obvious pinch since my current early-game tactics rely on mobilisation around the front with Griffons concentrating on units that have used their counter-attack or otherwise sending them into the ranged or casting units when opportune. Regrettably those tactics don't work too well against Berserkers, which are highly effective against most other (early) melee types for any equivalent trading of attacks. I'm also not a fan of using concentrated ranged attacks, although I am curious to see how powerful the ranged Thorn units might become with the new level system.

 

[Azira]

I don't get people going for a no-loss playthrough. I'd just get aggravated. How do you handle the boss fights? The spider in particular?

 

[GreyViper]

You know what it reminds me? King's bounty Crossworlds Red Sands Mod and that's not a bad thing.

Expansion Description:

One of the most ambitious expansions for King's Bounty: Crossworlds. The development team along with dedicated game fans from the community put their knowledge and talents together to create an astounding expansion that will provide players with a new gaming experience in addition to many more addictive hours of gameplay. New faces, new opportunities, new features and new adventures await you in Teana!

Features:

- A new large-scale adventure in search of the mythical homeland of the Lizardmen, along with many new places to explore.
- More than a dozen new quests that provide valuable insight in the history of the Lizardmen.
- A new race of Undead Lizardmen!
- A new system of recruitment with units being able to gain experience and develop themselves further with levels.
- New unique characteristics for each race.
- A new, unique familiar that can be called in battle, gain experience, and can develop their skills.
- Lots of new characters and dialogues, including many former allies and enemies!
- 30 new and modified items and item sets.
- 15 new units.
- 5 new companions.
- Ability to upgrade your medals up to the 4th level, and much more ...

I did kind of expect a new campaign, but no it modifies the old one. So new game it is, but hey some of the old DLC items aren't unlocked in this version, but the game is stable compared to old WN. It just made me rage when hour or two game play is gone due ctd and no auto save.
It kind of shows they are committed to this game unlike some others. So mostly and the sound track is awesome as always.

 

[Jaedar]

I don't get people going for a no-loss playthrough. I'd just get aggravated. How do you handle the boss fights? The spider in particular?

Massive cheese typically.

If you go to the official forums there's probably some sort of guide/aar around.

 

[Azira]

Meh. It would probably mean I would end up not enjoying the game and not finishing. It's cheesy enough to chase Level 5 in the medals.

 

[Average Manatee]

No-loss generally revolves around some summoning and repeatable resurrection. Also stacking resistances up to 95% (and you thought the trapper medal was OP...).

Bosses in particular tend to have very predictable AI that you can force to attack a given summon or tank.

 

[tindrli]

Bros, i dont know if im doing something wrong nor i remember my past playthroughts and i need your help.
Im replaying GOG Orcs on the march v 1.3.1 (6171) as a MAGE currently level 15. My problem is that my Mage has only 45 points of mana pool and only 16 points of maximum RAGE.
I just cant remember is that normal, am i missing something and how the hell i increase those stats coz now, ej. with my dragon at level 14 i can barely use his attacks coz they cost more than i can collect. and with chaos and order level 2 you can probably imagine how many offensive spels can i cast in one battle(read offensive 2 spells & 1 slow) i looked at skill tree and i dont see any skill that significantly increase Mana or rage.

any suggestions?

 

[Azira]

Yeah, I remember it as normal. To raise your mana- and rage-pools, you need to invest skill runes in the proper skills.
It's not like the original Kings Bounty where your mana and rage pools grew larger with each levelup. Spending towards the proper skills is important now.

 

[tindrli]

ok, i saw that rage control skill that increase rage +10 for every level, but i cant find any skill that increase mana beside Meditation which is +4 and thesis which is + 7 but its a last level skill so i cant expect to raise that one till level 20 at least...

shit .. its not funny to battle with lethal or very strong knowing that i can throw 3 spells per battle

 

[Average Manatee]

There are +max mana and +max rage stuff on the map, along with items and consumables. It's all random generated though, so your game may be poor in the beginning.

Mana Spring (spell) and Transmute (skill) both give you huge mana. Mana Spring in particular is basically infinite mana when combined with Target, or simply flying/summoning a unit right next to the enemy on turn one so they are always attacked. Throw a Stone Skin ontop and the unit will last forever. Transmute can also give infinite mana with units that have reusable summons, but summons dying give only +1 mana per level IIRC so it's kind of slow.

Also the Paladin has a skill that gives +mana and +rage every time you hit an undead or demon. The catch is that multiple hits count multiple times, and it doesn't have to be an enemy target. I remember spamming undead/demon summons next to the enemies while my casters with multi-hit attacks slammed both the enemy and my summons at the same time, generating like +10 mana and rage multiple times per turn. I was pretty much spamming the dragon face-pound attack every turn, he managed to level twice in a single battle from all the experience.

Until you get all that fancy stuff, simply be economical. Defensive abilities like Stone Skin are absurdly powerful if you can get 80-95 resistance to physical and simply have a strong unit beat the fuck out of everything (melee units that can retaliate multiple times per turn are excellent for this). Ohh and if for some reason you missed it, the dragon can be upgraded to drop mana items. He'll be pretty helpful in the beginning.

 

[Aothan]

I typically use personal rules to balance game mechanics or playstyle, which is often warranted to avoid 'beating' a system that all too readily allows for excessive power-gaming (almost by default these days). For the game at hand I've thought about incorporating the use of a physical dice to better adjudicate some of the actions my units can take in response to particular scenarios, such as how likely Griffons will support Royal Griffons over following more practical tactics. I know that sounds odd but game systems tend to be open to easy exploitation and just as I find its preferable to superimpose rp contexts on the mechanical design of games it is also wise to implement personal balance requirements in addition to organise playstyle around rp concepts.

regarding mana resources, from past experience I believe there are regeneration skills available in the mage skill tree, not sure what they were previously named but in Fire and Ice the skill is called "Concentration". Depending on level between 2 - 8 mana is regenerated per round. I'm fairly sure a similar skill was available in Warrior Princess and most likely earlier games as well.

I came across the Griffon's Banner (or rather "Griffin" according to the in-game spelling) which gives +5 to all Griffon units as well as 20% less leadership requirements, it was a timely find at the start of the game for the thematic element of my units. I also just rediscovered the Royal Griffin's call affects associated elven units such as Unicorns, and thus maybe Ents and Fairies. Fairies offer a lot of interesting possibilities with different units, and speaking of mana usage the Sun variant has a spell that generates mana, whilst also having comparatively powerful attacks, but they are entirely susceptible to any concentrated damage and also look more than a little quirky. That said, I'm now seeking out a location for Paladin units since they tend to be all-round effective and a basic choice for taking on large Undead encounters which seem to be more common and frequent than I recall from the other Kings Bounty games. Also yet to come across any Dragons which are always a stable choice for just about any army type, but alas I won't be using them with my Griffon's Banner and Griffon focused army, and for like reasons will have to dispose my Chaotic Dragon scroll.

 

[cvv]

Guise, anyone playing the Ice&Fire addon yet?

Anyone having trouble with the new island? Whenever I try to fight the Lizardman dude guarding an entrance to a Lizardmen cave my game crashes at various points during the battle. Thought it's because the various mods but it happens even after I removed them.

 

[Azira]

I'm playing it. I've experienced crashes randomly, not consistently, and usually several hours apart. Don't know if it's a memory leak, but it feels that way.
Taking down the lizard dude didn't cause a crash for me.

 

[Average Manatee]

The units-leveling-up thing sounds like a really bad idea. There's no good reason to discourage players from trying new unit combinations, and units hardly need new bonuses. The major content mod for Armored Princess added stuff like that and I couldn't bear to play it with how OP your units became. How does it actually work out in game? How much improvement are we talking, and how long does it take to get a new unit up to speed?

 

[cvv]

The units-leveling-up thing sounds like a really bad idea. There's no good reason to discourage players from trying new unit combinations, and units hardly need new bonuses. The major content mod for Armored Princess added stuff like that and I couldn't bear to play it with how OP your units became. How does it actually work out in game? How much improvement are we talking, and how long does it take to get a new unit up to speed?

I agree completely, just wanted to post exactly that. Once units cross the lvl 5 threshold they become very OP, my maxed Slingers could monster most fights single handed by this point (if you count in Berserker and almost 40 % crit chance).

But it was such a damper then when I tried to replace them with Bowmen or Hunters, it seemed the new guys didn't do any damage at all. So yeah, it's very bad idea times two.

 

[Average Manatee]

So anyway, compare the features list of I&F listed two pages back with this for the Red Sands mod of KB:AP/CW:

Features:

- A new large-scale adventure in search of the mythical homeland of the Lizardmen, along with many new places to explore.
- More than a dozen new quests that provide valuable insight in the history of the Lizardmen.
- A new race of Undead Lizardmen!
- A new system of recruitment with units being able to gain experience and develop themselves further with levels.
- New unique characteristics for each race.
- A new, unique familiar that can be called in battle, gain experience, and can develop their skills.
- Lots of new characters and dialogues, including many former allies and enemies!
- 30 new and modified items and item sets.
- 15 new units.
- 5 new companions.
- Ability to upgrade your medals up to the 4th level, and much more ...

Looks like the new expansion is mostly re-purposed modder work. Will not-remove-from-inventory accordingly.

 

[tindrli]

Crap Bros, this is starting to piss me off.. im playing GOG-s KB Crossworlds GOTY and i just had a battle of my life. Lethal Shit and everything and after almost a 15 mins of battle it was 40 more less paladins and few royal snakes vs everything else i had and the game crashes...all started just 2 days ago, i attacked some orc shamans and game freezed. i alt tab it and there was that "SUX" error giving me something "found:add_blog_shaman_trophy_spent_2" icon "so choose Ignore and there you go.. i started to have crashes in 70 % of battles ... does anyone know a solution coz i never saw a game where developers care less about people that bought a god damn thing..

 

[Azira]

When I get that sort of popup, I just click "retry". Most times the game continues without a problem.

 

[Aothan]

much as Cvv says, the newly introduced levelling system does not take into account the game's general lack of balance, as such the effect accentuates the degree to which the game's challenge becomes undermines. A similar problem can likely be found with units already known to be quite strong, for instance Thorn Hunters (well I don't exactly know but presume they count) which don't really need any further advantages to their ranged potential. Heavily armoured units may even pronounce this effect since their capacity to endure damage means they can already be supported in a variety of ways, and the additional armour values are just going to make them practically immune to a lot of standard encounters. This comes back to what was mentioned before about applying one's personal rules to ensure balance and challenge, whilst these additions don't strictly undermine the game's fun they do further emphasise those aspects which detract from the greater potential of the game gradually becoming more challenging and personally involving. Still enjoyable for the type of game it is nonetheless and there is always room for the player to adjust challenge and playstyles as they see best.

 

[tindrli]

When I get that sort of popup, I just click "retry". Most times the game continues without a problem.

now the problem is that there is no message of any sort.. just fucki9n CTD


btw.. someone did a hell of a job

http://www.aurelain.ro/HeroScreen/

 

[Aothan]

the Skald's Tactics skill works much better than what I first assumed, rather than simply permitting changes to the original starting area the skill makes it possible to place units up to two squares ahead. This is practically a full turn for some units, with early initiative and speed bonuses from the Eddas skill, and if deemed appropriate the use of a Haste spell, typically slow units can reach advancing units within 1-2 turns.

 

[Azira]

Ran into a weird bug.
At some point, the monster hunt quest ran into an endless loop. After each and every combat, Van Tallinn would contact me, congratulate me on killing the final monster in the quest, and reward me accordingly. The reward can be destroyed using the artifactor skill and will yield either 6 crystals or 2 random runes.
It meant that runes became a non-issue. Reached l72 as I finished the game. Not sure what triggered this bug.