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Wraithform gives the target "weapon immunity". This raises a unit's defense to 10 against creatures not using: magic, mithril, or adamantite weapons. Three points here: 1. The defensive bonus is not that great. A defense of ten will only block about three damage on average. 2. Any opponent with the "alchemy wizard skill" (such as Jafar) will have ALL of their units with at least magic weapons. Moreover any town with an alchemists guild will create units with at least magic weapons (and mithril or adamantite if near those mineral deposits). 3. Heroes that live long enough will typically have defenses well over 10. Wraithform IS USEFUL however in that it makes units (heroes in particular) non-corporeal. The major benefits of this are that the unit is immune to the web spell ("common" nature spell, also used by giant spiders), the cracks call spell ("uncommon" nature spell), and gains both the water walking and pathfinding ability. Normally water-walking and pathfinding is an ideal way to get around however, non-corporeal units cannot benefit from magic roads. If however, the non-corporeal unit simply travels with a corporeal unit, then they CAN use magic roads. |
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#2 | ||
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Apr 2005
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Posts: 8
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The no spell book route can certainly be tough going. You start on the myrran plane with a myrran race (trolls or dwarves make good selections for this particular setup). You won't be able to cast any spells to help your units in combat (except for dispel magic and disenchant area...). It is true you can find spell books in nodes and some lairs, but those tend to be tougher fights. Moreover while you can START researching the spell of mastery relatively soon, you won't necessarily finish any sooner than you otherwise would. The research cost of EVERY spell that you RESEARCH (not trade for or find) is subtracted from the research cost of the spell of mastery. So the more spells you research PRIOR to researching the spell of mastery, the less expensive it is when you finally do research it. That being said, if you want to try the game casting very very very few spells, this is a good way to do it. Some things to keep in mind: The difficulty settings. Successful tactics at one setting may not be successful on another. The nodes and lair fights will become progressively more difficult as you go from "intro" to "impossible" settings. Also while the AI does not necessarily get better they certainly get more bonuses as the difficulty setting goes up: At the impossible setting enemy wizards get several advantages. They start with more initial "picks". Meaning they can start with more spellbooks and special abilities (like alchemy, or archmage, or conjurer, etc). Moreover their "picks" are not bound by normal selection rules. For example, normally you'd need 1 or more spellbook in chaos, nature, and sorcery magic in order to select the "nodemaster" pick. Also, if you've played much on the impossible setting you may wonder how they can afford/feed their vast armies (usually of spearmen or something equally silly... but they DO have a lot of them). The enemy wizards get large "bonus" multipliers to their gold, food, and mana incomes. Spellbooks give you 1 "powerbase" each (the powerbase is just the total of all of your magical "income" from shrines, temples, nodes, certain races (dark elves, draconians, beastmen, high elves), and mineral deposits (mithril, adamantite, and the crystals found in deserts), volcanoes you've raised also add 1 each. The enemy wizards get something like 4 times that for each. This is why it is usually a good idea to keep nodes out of the hands of enemy wizards (the benefit to you is great, but what it takes away from them is greater still). Warp node (a "rare" death spell) is particularly useful in this regard. Particularly when you can "explore" the planes with the earth lore spell (a "common" nature spell). I am captain typo (Vebose = Verbose) such is life. |
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#3 | ||
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Los Angeles, United States
Posts: 16
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![]() <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MoM_Junkie_Vebose @ Apr 8 2005, 09:31 AM) [snapback]92344[/snapback]</div>
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#4 | ||
![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Recklinghuasen
Posts: 1,906
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![]() <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Szaemon @ Aug 10 2006, 03:16 PM) [snapback]247752[/snapback]</div>
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[/b][/quote] Simply, look here - Dirty Little Helper All you need yet is a hex-editor and some basic knowledge with it. |
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#5 | ||
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Los Angeles, United States
Posts: 16
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#6 | ||
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Apr 2005
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Posts: 8
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Chaos, Death, Nature, and Sorcery. All have at least one "direct" damage type of attack spell where increased mana into the spell (generally) yields more damage. Death's is "life drain" although adding more mana supposedly affects how well a target can "resist" each point of life drain. Chaos has "fire bolt", "lightning bolt", and "fireball" (doom bolt, and warp lightning cannot be "increased" in effect by adding more mana) Nature has "ice bolt" Sorcery has "psionic blast" (darn you Jafar, that's the 5th hero you've killed today) Life drain unlike the others has the interesting property of bringing "Normal units" (not summoned units, like hell hounds, or sky drakes. And not heroes) killed "mostly" through life drain back from the dead to serve in your army. This spell is very useful, especially at the lower difficulty settings. And especially when used against weak normal units in enemy/neutral towns. Undead troops don't heal, but don't have any maintenence costs. They DO however reduce unrest in towns (just like all normal units) by 1 unrest for every 2 normal units. If you end combat with 9 units (the maximum you can have at any one "tile") then any undead units won't show up. Just like you won't get any "prisoner" heroes from lairs to join you if you have 9 overland units at the end of combat. The hero I mentioned earlier is actually a "champion" that you can either summon with the summon champion spell or might come around and ask to be hired if you have high enough fame. Although he won't do either if you don't have at least 1 death spell book. His normal name is Ravashack and is a "necromancer". He is similar to the hero Malleus in that he ALWAYS has the arcane power skill (a nice feature for caster types). As already stated, he also has the life drain ability at a range and in melee (although his melee attack is normally pretty pathetic). If you somehow manage to get Ravashack early in the game he can create large armies instantly out of the dying enemies in the neutral and enemy towns. While by no means the most powerful hero in the game, he is certainly entertaining and fun. The "monsters" or summoned units with the life drain ability are Demon Lords, Death Knights, and Wraiths. Demon Lords and Death Knights are both "very rare" (level 4) death spells. So they normally aren't summoned until later in the game. But wraiths are a "rare" death spell (level 3). So if you begin the game with 11 death spell books you could select them as a starting spell. Wraiths are basically ideal for conquering neutral towns. (and converting some of the enemy troops there into loyal death units). BTW spells are grouped into 4 levels for each type. Level 1 or "common" spells are the most common, least expensive to research and cast, and in general the least powerful. Next is "uncommon", "rare", and "very rare". Their are 10 spells of each type at each level. So... their are 10 common death spells, 10 uncommon death spells, etc. etc. Just as their are 10 very rare nature spells... or chaos Depending on what you select for your wizard during game setup, you can start with vastly different numbers and strengths of spells. Ten spell books of any one type of spell book will guarantee that you will have research access to ALL SPELLS of that type. So why take 11 books in any one type? Two reason mainly... With more than 7 books in any type, spells of that type cost less to research and cast. But also you can begin the game with ALL of the common spells for that type, two uncommon spells, and one rare spell. This is an excellent way to get an idea of what spells are like for each of the spell books. If you take less than 10 spell books for a particular type, you are not guranteed to be able to research all of the spells of that type. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. You can also trade for and find spells (of any level) if you have even 1 book of a particular type. Some fun starting selections: Take 11 life spell books. Choose "true sight" and "prayer" as your uncommon spells, and choose "Torin" as your rare spell. (this is particularly nasty if Torin has both "agility" and "lucky" skills). Take 11 sorcery spell books. Choose "flight" and "phantom beast" for your uncommon spells, and choose "invisibility" as your rare spell. Flying invisible heroes are very difficult for most enemies to attack. This works well for ranged magic type heroes. "Spell lock" is also nice for those pesky "dispel" and "disenchant" spells cast by opponents. Take 3 chaos, 2 nature, 3 sorcery, artificer, runemaster, node master. You start the game with create artifact spell. And more importantly can create artifacts for a profit. (actually any combination that uses the "runemaster" and "artificer" picks will allow you to do this). If you make a sword that costs 100 mana to create, you can break it on the anvil for 200 mana. Once you get a hero (any will do really) you can boost them up with some crazy artifacts. |
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#7 | ||
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Apr 2005
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Posts: 8
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Dark elf priests are powerful to be sure. But one could argue that beastmen priests are better because they have twice as many hit points and only one less magic attack strength. As such they tend to be a little more durable. (enemy wizards tend to target priest/shaman/magician/warlock units with direct damage spells. At only 4 hit points for the typical priest unit, this can mean a short combat career). When playing dark elves keep in mind that they grow "very slowly" meaning they have a -20 per turn growth rate. If you want to take full advantage of their 1 "magical power" per population point (the highest in the game, followed by draconians, beastmen, and high elves, which all yield 1/2 point per population) be sure to plant your settler units in favorable growth rate areas. Choose areas with rivers if you can. And plains if you can't. Stay away from mountainous areas and deserts if you can. (those towns will grow very slowly). Also spells like "change terrain" (nature; uncommon), "gaia's blessing" (nature; rare) and "stream of life" (life; rare) are all great ways to improve growth rates in towns. For areas that contain "powerbase" generating minerals (mithril, adamantite, quork and cryx crystals). I like to place dwarven settlers if I can (whether they are my "home" race or not. Dwarven towns grow slowly as well, but a well placed dwarven town can easily generate 10 mana per round as soon as it grows to 1 population. Where it would take a dark elf town many many many turns to reach that mana output. And a miner's guild built in a dwarven town will increase their bonus even more. (no I can't spell Verbose consistently) |
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#8 | ||
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Last edited by arete; 27-10-2009 at 07:01 AM. Reason: html, spoiler |
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#9 | ||
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Join Date: Apr 2005
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As for why your hero got smashed by a great drake... that isn't that surprising. Great Drakes normally have a fire breath attack of 30 and a melee attack of 30. (when at a chaos node, as they often are, the node's aura will boost their attacks by 2). You may also notice (if you happen to right-mouse-click on a great drake in combat) that they are +3 (plus three) to hit. The default "to hit" for all creatures in the game is 30%. A +3 to hit creature is 60% "to hit" (yeah each +1 is actually 10 percent. and yes, I know it is a bit of a silly combat system). So...... The short version is that a great drake (not at a chaos node) would do (on average) : Fire breath: 30 * 0.6 = 18 damage. Melee damage: 30 * 0.6 = 18 damage. For a total of 36 health in damage. (this is why you normally don't want to thumb-wrestle great drakes. Shoot them from far away. And unless your name is Torin, don't fight them in melee). So invulnerabilty would subtract 2 points from each attack. Making the total (on average) damage done by a great drake 32. This is enough to crush almost every hero easily. As an aside, (yeah I can ramble forever) defense works in the same way that attack does. If your hero has a defense of 10, he/she will on average block about 3 health from every attack. (10 * 0.3 = 3.33...). The default "to hit" for DEFENSE is the same as the default "to hit" for ATTACK. Very few things modify this defensive "to hit" (essentially how effective each of those little shield icons are). The "lucky" ability (that halflings and some heroes have) is one. The prayer spell (an "uncommon" life spell) is another. [/b][/quote] Doh. I read the sky drakes as great drakes. Still the math is similar. Only they have a 20 melee attack (also at +3) and a 20 lightning breath (only the lightning breath is armor piercing unlike the great drakes). not at a sorcery node: breath 20 * 0.6 = 12 melee 20 * 0.6 = 12 subtract 2 from each attack (from your heroes invulnerability) leaves 20 damage (on average). Still a lot, and half that is armor piercing (meaning your hero can only "defend" with half of the number of shields that he/she has) If the drake didn't have to move more than one move (of its 4 total) to attack you, it would be able to attack twice in one round. (for about 40 damage minus your heroes defense). Depending on which hero it was at demigod level and which artifacts they were carrying... and the random rolls... it could have gone either way. But I think the crux of it is that invulnerabilty does not work quite how you thought it did (by completely removing attacks). Last edited by arete; 27-10-2009 at 07:03 AM. Reason: html |
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#10 | ||
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![]() Okey, some things to correct here, as I noticed that during playing the game (and I used to play it maaany times
Life-Leeching 1. First of all, if a unit or a hero has a life-leeching ability (artifact, skill), the increased chance to hit REDUCES the chance to leech the life (thus also reducing the chance of killing an enemy completely with life-leech). Therefore are the Deathknights and heroes not so good to have this ability - little use of it then, as they have good chance to hit. And the better the chance to hit is, the less the possibility to leech life. 2. Second, the ranged attacks DON'T leech life. No, they don't. I tested that many times, especially on Ravashak when he still was weak and had little chances to hit. Didn't work. Also doesn't work with the Demonlord. (This is a bug) 3. Third, ANY unit can be raised from dead through life-leeching. I was able to have a colossus killed with the wraiths once, and I had him after as an undead unit. But, a summoned unit turned to undead state costs additionally 0.5% of mana to their normal mana cost. Thus useless on summoned units, they're better as non-undead then. Also it works on heroes. Oh yes. Got to love this unique Lifepriestess hero when she passed away with help of the wraiths early in the game. But the during the combat summoned units can't be raised from death after the combat ends. No way. Tried that with Air Elementals and Earth Elementals. Enemy can have them, but players not (this is a bug). Invisible Units / unexplored terrain 1. Any invisible unit CAN be seen by computer enemy. You have to think, the computer enemy is the computer that runs the game, and as such he knows and sees everything in the game. Yes, the computer enemy players should behave as if they wouldn't see the invisible units, but they don't in this game. They can see and attack invisible units on the map, just that they "can't see" them in combat (at least that works). 2. Also, the enemy computer players don't need the map / player revealing spells (Nature's Awareness, Awareness, Earth's Lore) as such, they can see every player and every place on the map at once. Just think on Jafar, when he casts his Floating Island near your starting city, should be known to everybody, is a common event. He doesn't have any units near your city, neither does he have any terrain-revealing spells cast. So this is also the awareness-cheating of the computer. Heroes with chance to hit Some heroes have that skill that increases their chance to hit (forgot the name) additionally. Now, if you create an artifact for them that has the maximum possible bonus value to hit on it and the hero has this chance-to-hit increasing skill AND the hero has a high level like Demigod AND the hero is a melee attacker only - they very often won't hit the enemy anymore. This seems to be also a bug of the game, in that with this combination the chance to hit of a hero goes over into a negative value because of the too high number. How to negate it? Don't add the chance to hit bonus to an artifact for this hero. Should be fine then (was then for me). With that said, there are many more bugs in the game, like the game crash on casting the Chaos Channels Lycantropy spells sometimes. Or also that the volcanoes converted to mountains and further by the Change Terrain or that very rare Nature global spell spell stop to produce mana. A pity there was no additional patch for that, but this is how the game will remain now seemingly forever... |
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