| General Advice | Tactics | Scenery | Treasure | Levels | Underworld | Secrets | Enemies |
Hints, Tips and random scrawlingsGeneral AdviceDon’t be afraid to retreat, if the quest is going badly you should retreat if you have gained a good amount of experience or found the treasure chest. The death of a hireling isn’t important unless they carried items, however, you want at least one non-item carrying character to survive in case you find a new item you wish to equip. Archers can’t harm undead (skeleton, bone soldier, crypt king etc.), however if fire blade is cast on them they can then cause harm to their foes. Also, life blade will allow them to cause double damage to the undead (but make sure you don’t shoot any zombies whilst using life blade). If a unit has Life Blade cast on them they can heal other members of the party, if they can hit them. So to be able to heal a defence 7 character you need a Life Bladed character with +2 (or more) to hit. Life blade allows characters to have 1 LB more than they start with, so you should (if the enemy aren’t about to attack) heal all your characters before you start exploring (note that you can’t hit yourself with life blade, so, unless you have 2+ life blades, the person with life blade is dependant on conventional healing). All traps are one shot, after they are triggered they are no longer a danger. The exception to this is the treasure chests, if the trap on a treasure chest kills the person who triggered it then it’ll still be active for the next character who steps on it. Traps can do 1 or 2 LB damage, if the character is lucky though he will disarm the trap (giving the message trap disarm). Items can give percentile chance to find and disarm traps. Remember though that the traps are likely to only be doing 1 LB damage each, so a 10% Find Trap means that out of every 10 LB you would lose from traps, you only lose 9 LB. Obviously this is therefore less useful than a life item unless you’re walking into lots of traps… There are two types of enemy, underling and boss, the underlings always move BEFORE the boss, so in most cases the boss is the last to appear for battle (that’s what underlings are for!!) You can retreat at any time in your turn, so it’s best to do it at the end. Move and attack with all but one of your characters so that you can get some more kills and then retreat before the enemy can fight back. In the first three levels there is one treasure chest and you gain an item for killing the boss. In the four final levels there are two treasure chests (and you gain the third item for killing the boss). TacticsSome characters are more useful than others in certain situations: (The names used below are a general reference and not a specific character, so ‘archer’ refers to archers, bowman, (elf) scouts, sentries, trackers, hunters and anyone else with a range 3+ weapon) Archers need to be careful in the caves levels and look out for enemy archers in the form of the goblins, a lowly 1 attack with +0 to hit may seem an empty threat but with 5 or 10 of them hiding behind a pair of orcs they suddenly become much more scary. If you are lucky enough you may find a ‘far’ item, putting this on a short/long bowman means that he will be able to shoot at enemies that are 6 away, when they can only shoot 5 (knight leaders with crossbows automatically have this advantage). Scouts (people with ‘Find Trap’ ability) are usually too weak to take many attacks from enemies, but without them even defence 7 characters need to watch their step. The best way to use scouts is to move past a fighter to check for traps and then use the rest of their move to move back behind them (see below), this is easier with a move of 6, and impossible with a move of 3
Fighters are the front line men, 6 defence as a minimum, preferably 7 to avoid lucky strikes from orcs and with a close range attack to hit the enemy back. A good fighter should be virtually immune to the enemies’ attacks whilst being able to kill them in one round. Mages come in two distinct camps, the offensive and the protective: Offensive mages come with plenty of attack spells, incinerate for killing tough foes, flamejet, blaze and nova for middle enemies, anguish for those pesky archers, curse for the really tough enemies and so on. The obvious problem with mages is how to ship them to the centre of the enemy without them dying. In caves this is very tough as a trio of archers can kill most mages from the darkness, in crypt and temple the mage can be provided with a fighter escort until the time comes for him to run ahead and unleash havoc before dropping back and letting the fighters clear up the remnants. The easier mages to use are protective, they come with healing spells, mist armours and life blades, the former can be used as a pit stop as the fighters strike out from the starting room and then come back to heal, the second can be used to upgrade fighters to defence 7 tanks and the later can be used to follow the main fighting at a discreet distance and heal where necessary. Lastly there are the tunnelers, only available to dwarves (from the ‘normal’ parties) these little fellows have low armour (though, being dwarves, they are still tough to kill) have low attacks (again, this is comparative) and a range of 1. They do, however, have tunnel ability. Tunnelers can be used to bypass obvious traps (the corridor with 3+ doors in it for a start), offer aid in narrow tunnels (so the fighters can advance faster) or even provide defensive locations to strike from (only 4 enemies have a range of 2+, so if you can attack diagonally into a room the occupants can’t attack back!!). They can also scout around doors to see if there are enemies lying in wait. SceneryDoors and barrels are impassable, you can attack them and gain a few experience but they are more useful as defensive barriers. It is important to realize 2 things about obstacles before you start using them, 1) Enemy archers can fire over barrels, but they can’t fire over doors. You may think you can’t either (what with the far side being blackness) but if you can see beyond the door you can fire beyond the door too! 2) The enemy won’t intentionally attack obstacles, they can destroy them with spells however! Fortunately it’s usually bosses who have spells so you have time to plug the gaps before the enemy come rushing through. When you have finished a particular fight it may be an idea to remove ‘safe’ obstacles for the experience (‘safe’ referring to obstacles that aren’t blocking off unexplored sections). TreasureThere is no secret to magic chickens (unless Random has some amazing secret that no-one knows), feast on them and you gain 1 experience. There are also other birds that give 100 and 1000 experience. You can’t gain an experience level through eating birds (so, if you have 3999 experience and you eat a magical peacock, you will still have 3999 experience). If a weapon does not have a letter associated with it (L or R) then it is a two handed weapon, two handed weapons are generally not as good as a pair of one handed weapons (with the exception of ranged weaponry, which is all two handed). Jewels, Rings and Gems have no powers and are therefore completely worthless. It is only items with attributes associated that are useful (such as a "rock ring" or "luck gem"). Very occasionally you may find spell items with spells unavailable to wizard and elf spellcasters, these are "advanced" spells and are, on the most part, more powerful versions of the spells available. Advanced Spells in Basic PartiesHell Blade, the same sort of use as fire blade, except that an enemy hit by a fell blade loses 1 To Hit and 1 Defence (if you attack with a fell blade and miss with every die this effect won’t happen though). If you are amazingly lucky and somehow find two hell blades put them on different characters, the effects aren’t cumulative on 1 character (though any monster can be reduced to 1 defence and +0 to hit with enough hits). Note, somehow that doesn’t seem clear. If a character has two hell blade spells cast on him he still only inflicts –1 To hit and –1 defence, though in the next attack he’ll inflict a further –1 to hit and –1 defence, also another character with fell blade would also weaken an enemy, also note that you can’t get defence below 1 or to hit below 0 A character cannot have more than one different type of blade on him, so if a character has hell blade cast on them, followed by life blade, they will lose the hell blade. Thorn blade doesn't count for this (it just boosts your damage) I'm not sure about all the combinations though... Skull, This evil spell (as in a spell which does evil damage, and not a reference to how good it is) halves the LB of a single enemy unit within a range of 3 (round fractions down). This spell is quite powerful in later parties, but on your basic elf or knight party the highest Life Blood enemy you'll meet only has 10 Life Blood (and he's actually immune to spells), the highest you can effect has 8 LB (the Griffon in Temple level 2), therefore this spell will, at best, do 4 damage, and it'll only kill an enemy who's on 1 LB. Freeze, this spell does 5 damage to an enemy in an adjacent space, which is enough to kill any underling except the Trolls and Ogres outright. However, it also "freezes" the enemy in place so they can't move (which is a good thing, considering that Trolls, Ogres and bosses can damage anyone). This is a good spell to have in multiplayer as well (where the opponent is likely to have a large damage capability). LevelsEvery 4 levels you gain a new area to fight in:
Every 5 levels your leader gains a bonus depending on your party, wizards gain a new spell, knights gain an extra 10 command, elves gain +1 To Hit at 5, 15 and 25 and a spell at 10 and 20, dwarves gain an attack at 5, 15 and 25 and an extra LB at 10 and 20. At levels 10 and 20 you also gain new troops that you can hire, these are often more expensive but come with great attributes (such as the elves gaining a ‘duellist’, a hard hitter with adequate defence (soon boosted through mist armours) and find trap ability). UnderworldThe Underworld, being the last level has some special rules, and the normal rules take on a new light: Victory or Death: This is the final battle and there is no retreat (well, the button is still there but you die when you try to run), the only way to win is to beat the boss. Demon spells: With the exception of some weak enemies (skeleton mages, bone casters and slimes), magic casting has been limited to the bosses, not here. Every single enemy has spells, most of them powerful
Survival of the fittest: Due to the way the enemies target the weakest characters you can use cheap archers and such to absorb ten or more curse spells (which have no effect beyond the first) whilst your high defence characters are ignored. Boss moves last: This may not seem to be useful, but the boss casts dispel on the first turn (as do the acolytes and necromancers), so the last dispel to be cast is his, and therefore you know exactly where he is (until he moves, but it’s a start!) Low defence vs Life Blade: If your fighter has been cursed that means that you can hit him with Life Blade just as well as they can hit him, so in a corridor you can be using two or more life bladed archers to keep him on full health. "I have dispel/resist evil": That means you’re invulnerable to those spells, but they are smart, and will quickly resort to melee attacks. "I have dispel/resist evil and defence 7": wow, none of the hirelings can harm you (though, if your def. 7 isn’t your general they can just go for him instead). Also note that the traps can kill lone players easily and the Treasure Keeper can still harm you. "I have a leader with dispel/resist evil, defence 7 and find trap": Why are you reading a help file for??? It’s easy to complete with that!! (Just keep your leader safe). "I have a quake spell, die necromancers!!": Dang, I don’t want to take you on in M.P., Quake is a nasty spell! :-) "I have a leader with resist evil, find trap, hell blade, quake, defence 7, wound and tunnel": Okay, now you’re making it up! Secret parties |
