[Far Horizon]

I'm really enjoying harder type, so I've decided to log my playthrough. I don't know if I'll post every stage, but I'll post a bunch ...

Today, I finished Isle of Avalon without too much trouble. I was able to divide into 3 groups and still hold my own, though a few times I had to use boots to save one group or the other.

The buffed angels were great - they replaced pushover units in the original game with units that severely damaged my wyrms, rock golem, witches, mages, etc. Even my dragoners took like 40 damage from banish (I guess white is the dragoner's weakness now?) I recruited two of them myself & look forward to seeing them in action next stage.

The flying dual dollmage + angel + cockatris units were probably the toughest units to beat, but the angels + knights units were a lot harder than I expected as well.

However, Gares was insane! I thought I handled the stage extremely well, but I could not beat Gares without resorting to tarots. In fact, I had to blow most of my tarot cards on him. I just could not hit him reliably at all, even with Warren(9) or my highest level Valkyrie (11). Once I spammed tarots, he went down quickly, but it highlights my need to develop better boss killing units soon.


Here are my favorite units so far (in my army):

...................... Witch
Rock Golem Shaman (or sometimes switch to Valk if healing not needed)
....................... Witch

Slow & steady, this unit can hold out pretty much forever, unless it comes up against white magic. Great for tossing in the center of the line and weakening up the enemy or for holding towns. It's been extremely tanky since the start, but once I got to lvl 5 and promoted 2 witches, the phantoms show up enough to do decent damage as well. So far the Rock Golem has been able to hit things a decent % of the time ... we'll see if that lasts.

Ninja
Silver Dragon Shaman (or sometimes switch to Valk if healing not needed)
Dragoner

This unit was amazing at level 7, as its entire front line had 3x attacks when almost no enemies had 3 attacks. It does very well against gryphons and doll mages (high phys res and high agility for the ninja) ... good thing since this mod is overflowing with gryphons and doll mages Silver Dragons appear to have much improved resistances, making this unit almost as tanky as the Rock Golem unit & it does more reliable damage.

The thing I'm missing most so far, is a huge nuke unit. Usually I power level a mage heavy unit, but I haven't been able to find an undead staff so far & Warren's unit is actually a bit behind at level 9. In general, the increased int of fighter types and the hugely increased resistances of units like clerics and angels makes wizards a lot less powerful. I also haven't found any items with more than +10 int, while I was able to buy a few boleas axes for +17 str ...

.............. Wizard
Wyrm Warren (Wizard)
.............. Wizard

Canopus's unit (level 13) is actually the closet thing I have to a power level'd nuke unit right now, but I am trying to only use it for cleanup or saving someone. It's also not that great against bosses, because mages hit the boss only once and witches are horrible against bosses.

.............. Canopus
Wyvern Mage
.............. Witch

[Archael]

Didn't Zombero say this was almost impossible?

I haven't played HARDER type yet, but coming from him thats fucked difficulty

Keep us updated of progress!

[Far Horizon]

It's definitely getting harder, but not yet impossible. We'll see I finished the Kastolian sea today & the kraken were indeed fearsome.

Toughest Enemy Units:
Kraken units: they have 3 Maelstrom's in the back row! I could not beat them on water & even if I held towns and let them come to me, I often lost a bunch of fights before I could kill them. The shaman in those units also were a lot better than my shaman They were healing for 38-42 when mine of similar level healed for 29-33 or so.

The mage + 2 rock golem unit also was a bit tricky to deal with: Quake was doing 40-60 damage and then the mage would do another similar amount to my forces Hit and run helped a lot there, since the golem and mage are so slow.

The dragoner + 2 red dragon unit was also quite tough, if not quite as ridiculous. The dragoner did 40+ damage to Lans and then did 20-30 damage to my previously impenetrable rock golem:O Without any hit-alls, it was just a matter of wearing this unit down though.

There was a double doll mage unit as well, but every town has at least one unit with good physical resistance, so doll mages are not nearly so scary now.

Overall Strategy:
I sent 5 sky units to the main island & then held the first island with 4 slower moving units, with one water unit in between. I meant to continue to push with the group on the mainland, but i ended up having to just hold onto the town and temple there until the enemy was defeated. I think this strategy worked quite well, once I adjusted to never fighting kraken in the sea.

I elected to hold my silver dragon tank unit out of this level, to try and prevent it from over leveling & the level was painful without that unit. I ended up using about 8 boots to port my rock golem tank unit between the two main fronts to hold towns when they were in danger of falling. :/ I thought all the wyrms I had picked up would compensate, but they were mostly under level, besides Canopus's unit.

My water unit did atrociously bad on this level, as they could not stand up to the Kraken. I had just acquired the mermaids on the isle of avalon & I hadn't advanced my octopus to high enough level in previous stages. Given there are only a few more sea levels, I might just abandon this unit and use sky units in the sea I'll try to level it up more on other levels ...

.................. Mermaid (8)
Octopus(7) Mermaid (8)
.................. Mermaid (8)

Boss:

I did not have as much difficulty with the boss, but then I made sure to get my mage and valkyrie units a few more levels this stage. It still took about six battles to kill the boss, but I did not have to use any tarots this time. It certainly helped that the boss is weak to lightning, so my valks could do a decent amount of damage. I still had a low hit rate on the boss, but not quite as bad as prince gares.

Army Changes:

After this stage, I decided it was a waste to have my highest level mage and best wyvern in a cleanup unit (see Canopus unit in previous post), so I made my new cleanup unit be:

Canopus Pumpkinhead
------------- Witch
Faerie ---- Pumpkinhead

All characters have luck between 62 and 70, so it should get a fair share of items It might have a lot more difficulty actually killing stuff, but then again stuff should be mostly dead. At first glance Pumpkinheads are horrible for a cleanup unit, but with a ton of physical fighters in my army, I end up cleaning up units with the back line mostly alive and the front line dead, often as not.

Now the wyvern and mage get some angelic company, in an attempt to create another nuke unit.

---------- Angel
Wyvern Mage
---------- Angel

[Far Horizon]

Crimes
I finished Diaspola today & found it to be of similar difficulty to the Kastolian Sea. No particular set of units were as tough as the kraken, but the ones that were tough didn't have as easy of a counter as "don't fight on the water".

I am really liking the elemental melee attacks for giants - it makes choosing a team to take them out a lot more strategic. At first I just sent one of my Wyrm units at the frost giants, but the 8 cold melee attacks obliterated my Wyrm & I had to send my silver dragon tank unit over instead (which of course tanked them like a pro). Before, almost all melee characters did physical damage, so it was simply a matter of which unit has the highest phys/str/agi. Great job on that

Toughest Units
Dragonerx2 + (not sure what else) units. These tore through most of my front line like butter, just like last stage. They were exceedingly resistant to charm/petrify as well.

Double Mage + Witch + 2 Ninja frontline. I got hit with 2 firewalls and 2 phantoms once by this unit. Crazy! Needless to say, I retreated before the ninjas did all their attacks ...

Princess + Knights. The knights were not very powerful, but the princess's starlight did quite a number on my evil units. I had to send a high ali unit or three to deal with these units.

Boss Fight
Norn was not so bad - I was able to get her without resorting to tarots. The titan in back was scary though, doing 60-90 damage to all. I had to retreat after each first round and do about 6 battles with my top 3 nuke units. I could have used a fool + a melee attack unit I guess, though her uber agi might have foiled that approach.

Army Changes
I also picked up the sentoul demon from the pasha event, so I ended up with an undead staff I already had an undead ring, so bingo! Warren is now a lich. With Saradin's pickup imminent (I'm doing that stage next) & Deneb recruitment to follow, my lack of high end nuke units is soon to be a thing of the past.

[Far Horizon]

Recruitment & Neutral Fights
I was so impressed with the silver dragon's performance that I decided to build up a red and black dragon. This was a bit tedious, since they need to level up without gaining alignment (and the black needs to lose 15+). I partnered them with level 10 valkyrie units with white weapons and had them go fishing for undead in Pogrom Forest, to guarantee the dragons could not get the kill. This had the amazing side effect of gaining the following items: blood kiss, undead staff x2, promote, joker and a few +attribute items. I hadn't ever abused Pogrom Forest this way before, but now I see the attraction

This endeavor lowered my rep a lot, so I went ahead and picked up Deneb as well, sticking her into Canopus's cleanup unit for uber luck.

I advanced a level 1 fighter to 5, knighted and then vampirized them with the blood kiss. I could have used Ashe, but I think the vampire class is so powerful that it doesn't need a special character to make it useful. It's more of a tank than a damage dealer anyway - I want Ashe to be dishing it out day and night, not sealed in a coffin half the time.

Updated/New Units
Norn's Unit:

----------------- Norn (Valkyrie)
Red Dragon Dragoner
----------------- Shaman

New unit for Black Dragon + newly promoted sorcerer

------------------ Ninja
Black Dragon Sorcerer
------------------ Siren

Full Moon unit (previously the sorcerer was in this group)

Werewolf Werewolf
Vampire Werewolf
Werewolf

Still have one undead staff waiting for Saradin I think I was able to regain enough reputation by going back and liberating cities I had left unliberated in the Kastolian Sea, Isle of Avalon and Diaspola, but it might be close ..

[Far Horizon]

The Wizard
I found the Balmorian Ruins to be significantly harder than Diaspola or the Kastolian Sea. Likely this is due to skipping Kalbian Peninsula, because I like to take Debonair there. I struggled a lot at the start of this level, because I was trying to advance the new black dragon and red dragon from level 9 ... 4 or 5 levels behind the enemy leaders. Once they caught up a bit and I switched Warren's unit into the battle, I was able to hold my own a bit better.

I ended up holding onto two choke points with 5 armies at each & sometimes using boots to warp ppl from one front to another. Even with 5 vs 2 or so odds, I ended up almost losing a town a handful of times. The great variety in elemental attack types this level also made it tricky to bring the correct units to bear. Luckily I had a lot of boots ..

Toughest Units
Paladin + Titan. These guys could tank, heal and dish out 2 massive hit-alls. The smite attack on paladins also destroyed any low alignment units I tried to kill it with. I ended up using hit and run to kill them ... otherwise the titan would almost kill the backline of my unit with just one battle.

2x Mage + Evil One + Black Dragon. Another well balanced unit. I had to hit & run until I killed one of the mages with directed attacks from high AGI units.

3x Nixie + Kraken. Even on land the 2x cold hit alls + the kraken's 3 attacks were painful. They were annoying to kill off, because they kept retreating into the water.

2x Firegiant + Muse. This unit destroyed my physical focused units. I did pretty well with Deneb's pumpkin unit though & Warren ripped them to shreds.

The eagleman units were also annoying. They were not as powerful overall, but they were much harder to hit & run, since the eaglemen all went first & focused their attacks on my weakest backline char


Boss Fight
Albeleo's pets were pretty much impenetrable (really looking forward to getting zombie dragon and rune golem now) & it was tough to survive a full fight with him intact. However, tossing Warren, a double muse unit, my hero and then Saradin at him did the trick w/out Tarots. A good thing, because none of those units were in any shape to fight a second time.

Army Changes
I was able to utilize the undead here to raise ALI/CHA for a few units and get them the right promotions. Warren has 2 doll masters for support now instead of 2 wizards and I promoted 3 valkyries to muses. Saradin is in a less powerful unit (fire giant front, ninja, demon back line), but with his instant promotion to sorcerer and higher int, he'll be fine.

This is the part of the game where I find the difficulty is quickly lowering, so I'm looking forward to a different experience here

Notes
Vampires and werewolves don't feel nearly as powerful as in standard, but that might just be because everything hits so much harder. Hopefully weretigers will balance it out with 4 attacks.

[Far Horizon]

The Lost Knight
This stage's difficulty was less than the Balmorian ruins, but still quite a struggle. I had to use about 8 boots to deal with the tougher units shoving all my forces back & the wide spread of the level.

Tough Units
The Princess + Siren unit gave me the most troubles, even though the front of the unit was almost completely useless offensively (3 Princesses). The Siren kept charming my back line while the princess's 70+ white hit-all meant I had to run for town after each encounter. The Princesses must have had crazy agility too, because I kept missing them All this trouble without the Princess even giving her followers an extra attack. This is definitely bugged (thank god).

The Eaglemen + Cockatris were also quite a pain, slipping behind me and going for some of the island cities ( I liberated a bit aggressively to keep from running low on funds). Fighting it with a high strength unit made the gale damage manageable.

The triple mage + 2 wraith unit was really rough on my lower AGI units, but some hit and run attacks helped them go down. The high level wraiths also were a great thing to farm ALI/CHA on

The Paladin + Evil One unit was tough, but I was able to out damage them both with Deneb's pumpkins and with my mage units.

Fenril
Honestly Fenril was a pushover after the previous bosses. She didn't have any hit alls and her pets were not nearly as threatening as the previous stage. She didn't dodge attacks as well as other bosses & she helped kill herself with her attack in the back row. Of course having 2 Sorcerer units and a Lich unit to throw at her could also make it a bit less challenging ...

Army Changes
Norn became a Muse thanks to killing 4 undead, Lans became a Paladin & Lyon became a Beast Master. I really like that its viable to keep Lyon & Gilbert as Beast Masters with the mod. It feels much more true to their characters Deneb also became a Siren, though her ALI keeps creeping up.

My existing silver dragon was better than Fenril's, so I stuck the ice queen dragoon into one of my weaker melee groups, in hopes of making that unit more viable.

[Far Horizon]

Thunderstorm
The Valley of Kastro level was almost easy, but then I should have done this before the Balmorian Ruins and Organa. In the usual difficulty I guess it doesn't matter & I picked up the habit of this order. Anyway, I sent most of my units top, with my water unit in the middle and a few flying units south of the river. This worked out well enough, though I still did have to use two boots items to avoid losing a city. This was primarily because I spread out to hold about 4 cities at once though. I also deployed my 10 lowest units of 15 total, to try and get them back even with the rest.

Tough Units
The Doll Master, Shamanx2, Wyvern was surprisingly difficult for its level. The Wyvern was tough as nails & the insane healing kept it alive forever. The doll master only did abut 50 damage to low strength characters, but with 2 hit alls that sent most units packing with almost dead back lines. It succumbed to concentrated targeted attacks on the Doll Master or units with multiple hit alls, however.

The Eaglemen + Cockatris units were also a problem. They were hard to hit and the Cockatris's hit all was deadly against the backline, even with its lower level. This unit was much easier to wear down though, without any healers.

Boss Fight
Ares was significantly tougher than the level itself. His high agility and significant hp enabled him to last quite a long time. I had to use 7 battles with 6 units and 1 tarot to take him out.

Army Changes
Aisha and Rauny joined the cadre of Muses (5) and my Black Dragon advanced up to Zombie

Rauny was tossed in with a leftover Wyrm, Knight and Pumpkinhead. I'll reorganize that soon enough though.

I have a 71 ALI L12 Wyrm and a 100 ALI L13 doll master So off to kill some helpless things I guess ...

[zombero]

Fun stuff! You've made it pretty far. Though the last stage would definitely be the most difficult part of a harder type playthrough... good luck! Sadly none of the recruitable bosses could be made too terribly hard, because they join you with the same stats after the stage, fortunately there aren't many recruitable bosses.

[Far Horizon]

The Paladin
Muspelm was a bit harder than the Valley of Kastro, mostly because it is so easy to get knocked off the edge defending certain cities. I had to make sure and keep a mix of flying and non flying units at each city & start the non flying units marching outward to avoid them getting killed off.

I found a world card first city (without any save/loading), so I made the most of it by letting my cities be taken and recapturing until my rep was down to about 70/100. Without the need for infinite goth, I think boosting stats via world card is the best use for excess reputation. I did save/load a bit there to get +stat cards for my lost rep.

I worked on advancing a few units that were behind & otherwise had a pretty easy time. The central lake was a good place to catch retreating units with my Octopus unit & catch up a few levels.

Tough Units
The 2x Siren, Monk with 2 Faeries in front was a huge pain to take out. With a combination of stuns/petrifies,heals and their huge agility, it was hard to keep their hp going down. They typically did not do that much damage to me, but they did huge damage occassionaly when 3+ phantoms happened in the same fight.

The Raven man/Demon back line with Wyvern + Raven man front line unit was extremely hardy & agile, taking a lot of time to do significant damage to. My reformed Rock Golem + 2xAngel+ Shaman unit did extremely well against it though. As did my Red Dragon unit.

Slust
Slust wasn't too much of a problem. With his lower agility (compared to other bosses anyway) he did not dodge attacks very well and succumbed to a slow wearing down of his hp. His dragons were quite hardy on defense, but the dragon in back was only able to do 50 damage or so to all ... not that bad after dealing with dual siren units.

Army Building
I finally returned my water unit to relevance, advancing it 3 levels to 14 & getting my Octopus turned into a Kraken.

Notes
I'm not able to upgrade my L16 Rock Golem into a Rune Golem. I don't see any other requirements listed, so I'll see if it works at L17 or 18 I guess. I also can't upgrade my Werewolves to Weretigers yet (L16) but I'm not sure what level I need to be.

[Far Horizon]

zombero, on 14 May 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

Fun stuff! You've made it pretty far. Though the last stage would definitely be the most difficult part of a harder type playthrough... good luck! Sadly none of the recruitable bosses could be made too terribly hard, because they join you with the same stats after the stage, fortunately there aren't many recruitable bosses.

Thanks! I hope I can make it that far. I imagine City of Malano and Shangrila will be a lot harder ... not to mention Analia/Antajl.

I didn't realize the stats are the same for recruitable characters when they are bosses. I've been quite lucky the last few stages then, since 3 of 5 were recruitable I'll be sure to come prepared for Baron Apros.

[Far Horizon]

I revisited some stages today & fixed some alignment issues. With the plunder from Muspelm I promoted Saradin to Lichdom and Aisha won the Princess pageant (she has the most +stats from tarots of the named female chars and her unit is one of the few with 5 characters, so will benefit more from it). Hopefully Deneb will forgive me

It was a pain, but I managed to lower my last Pumpkin Head's alignment enough to make it into a Halloween as well. Thankfully he'd level'd up enough to lose a few alignment for killing undead.

[Far Horizon]

The Prince
I sent all my flying units in a spearhead toward the pair of city/temple just inside the walls, except my opinion leader liberation unit, which liberated all the cities behind that spearhead. I had to boots in a few of the slower units to hold the town/temple just inside the walls, but once the bulk of my forces camped those two locations, the stage was very manageable. I sent my 3x Nixie + Kraken unit around the right side, liberating, but the enemy generally declined to go attack them.

A few flying units did come after my opinion leader when he skirted to the far left of the map, but I was able to cut them off with a few of my flying units from the center of the map. I was very pleased with my Vampire + Werewolf unit this map - they seemed far more useful at night than in some of the previous stages ... but then there were lots of high alignment units to beat up at night. They particularly tore up the 3x Samurai Master backrow + 2x Paladin front row and the Paladin + 2 Titan units.

Tough Units
Princess
Monk -------- Titan
Princess

The pair of white hit alls decimated my low alignment units & the titan absorbed a ton of punishment from my melee heavy units. I had a number of fights where the Monk healed the unit for more than my Muse + front line could damage them. To beat this unit, I needed concentrated hit alls like my Lich + 2x doll master unit or I had to equip a high alignment unit (to tank the princess) with fire and/or black weapons to kill the titan in a reasonable time frame. Hit and Run did not work particularly well due to the princess's extremely high agility.

Baron Apros
I suppose the new Siren/Witch class owes its attack to Baron Apros. He severely injured a few of my units, but I was able to take him out without using any Tarots. Now that I have two liches, a sorcerer, a princess and a gaggle of muses, it seems boss fights will be a lot less hassle.

Army Changes
I advanced my Red Dragon to Brass and my Silver to Gold & now they seem considerably more sturdy. I'm not sure I like the elemental breath attacks, as now I can't choose which element they attack with by equipping a weapon. I also advanced my Rock Golem to a Rune Golem - still my strongest defensive character by a fair margin.

I came back to the stage to get another book of the dead ... so I guess it's time to upgrade my Sorcerer to a third Lich.

My werewolves are now level 18 after racking up the kills this level, but I still can't make them weretigers. Maybe at level 20.

[Far Horizon]

Cloud City
The name made me think of Star Wars & the stage does have its own Darth Vader and evil empire ... but similarities break down after that. I rushed the right side with flying units, sent my Kraken + 3x Nixie unit into the central lake and my slower units advanced around to the left while my leader liberated all but the two towns near the enemy base. My Kraken unit finally caught back up (level 16 by end of stage) and held its own in the central lake, a spot I ended up holding out in for quite awhile.

The enemy spread out sending units at the central lake, as well as around the left and right, so I had to hold three different cities and deal with a few units escaping from those theaters as well. Most of the difficulty came in defeating the units that escaped without weakening my defenses of the three main cities too much. Positioning was also important, to allow my units to retreat from battles without getting knocked off the island .

Many units here had considerable weaknesses to a specific element (mostly ice and white), so equipping the right weapons for tough fights made a huge difference. The undead units went down really quickly as well, since about 80% of my units include a healer or a muse who can be turned into a healer.

Notable Units
Evil One
Evil One Slyph
Evil One Devil

No hit and run here! The Slyph went first every fight & the Devil was usually not too far behind. However, white weapons completely destroyed the Evil Ones, so I was able to wear this unit down in about 3-4 fights. Still, this was by and far the hardest unit for me to handle this level.

Brass D Monk
------------ Brass D

An extremely sturdy unit that sometimes healed itself for more than I hurt it, until I started equipping cold weapons just for fighting it. The low agility of the dragons and the monk also meant that it was easy to hit and run (though not needed with cold weapons, unless my unit was low in health).

Doll Master Lich
Doll Master Lich
---------------- Lich

An amusing unit, squandering tons of potential ... but the Lich's front row white attack still did decent damage against my evil units & 4 hit alls is nothing to snear at. This unit did very well against my lower strength/phys groups, but melee units with white weapons ripped the Liches to shreds & then the next unit was able take out the Doll Masters.

The Rune Golem + Devil unit (I don't remember what else it had ... Raven men maybe?) was also a bit tough, primarily because it took forever to kill the Rune Golem, no matter which element I tried ... these things are so much better than the standard golems! Units with hit alls or directed attacks were able to kill of the back line to isolate the Golem though.

The 2xDoll Master + Halloween unit also packed quite a punch against full health units, but it died pretty fast as well.

Gares
I kept all my units in for fighting him (and swapped my Kraken unit out for my Princess unit), expecting a huge challenge here, so I was a bit surprised that he went down without Tarots. Still, it did take about 8 fights including some white magic from a princess unit and from my 2xangel unit.

Army Changes
I advanced my first Dragoner to Dragon Master & the directed strength based cold attack was incredible vs Brass Dragons this level. I also ended up with my first Evil One, which combined with a Zombie D, was able to tank the enemy dark attacks quite well.

Best Stage Moment
Discovering how much damage a Rune Golem does to Evil Ones, with the Brunhild equipped. (strong tactics and taking 1 damage from the Evil Ones in return)

[Far Horizon]

Snow Field
I'd expected this stage to be rather easy, since I did it vastly out of order like the Valley of Kastro. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the enemies here scaled up to level 18 and provided a healthy challenge for most of my units. Warren's 6 hit all unit still severely weakened most units, but not without having to return to a town for half a day's healing.

The enemy came in a very concentrated line, except for a few water and sky units up the eastern sea coast. This resulted in my forces concentrating together, rather than spreading out as much as previous stages. I probably would have had an easier time laying back and fighting in the plains/forests instead of being so aggressive and pushing immediately into the snowy area, but it worked out overall.

I was quite pleased I splurged on 5 boleas axes earlier, because they were essential for my front lines wrecking the many Ice Giants and Gold Dragons in this stage. Other than judicious switching of fire weapons, the main strategy for this stage was to just hold up and let the enemy come to my forces at Entel Stand (town midway in snow area).

Notable Units
3x Muse + Ice Giant and 2x Muse, Monk + Ice Giant. These two units were a huge pain to take down unless I equipped fire weapons to eliminate the Ice Giant quickly. Massive hit alls did wreck their back line, but the Monk unit was able to draw that out to multiple fights. Gold Dragons seem to have really high resistance to lightning, so I fought them quite a bit with my Gold Dragon unit.

Seraphim Samurai Master
Ravenman Samurai Master
Ravenman

The combiniation of Jihad + 4 directed fire attacks often lead to early retreats or a death amongst the backline, even for higher alignment units. I had to Hit and Run a few times to weaken the unit first, then take out the Seraphim to remove the main threat of the unit.

Doll Master Rune Golem
Rune Golem

Quake did up to 120 damage to low alignment low phys characters (witch) during the day. I used my Vampire + Werewolf unit at night to counter them ... which resulted in Quake doing more like 25-50 damage.


Samurai Master
Princess Gold Dragon
Samurai Master

Starlite + 2xIainuki could have been devestating to any back line character, but the unit seemed to always attack the strongest character. Fighting them with a large beast with high strength (dragon, wyrm, etc) made Iainuki do only about 50-60 damage, with 25ish going back to the samurai master.

Figaro
Figaro was quite a challenge to damage - he dodged most attacks that weren't from a character with boosted stats like Norn & Debonair never hit in two fights. It took about 12 fights and 4 or 5 characters biting the dust, but I was eventually able take him out without tarots.

Army Changes
I fixed my second dragoner's alignment, so she was able to advance to dragon master My werewolves are still not able to advance to weretiger though at 19. I tried using all my promotes as well (didn't save) and even at level 24 I couldn't promote them to weretiger. I'll try to get a few level 1 fighters killed by weretigers in AntanjylI guess. Here are my active characters:

Female Humans

• 8 Muses (sometimes switch to monk/shaman when needed)
  
• 2 Monks
  
• 3 Shaman
  
• 3 Siren
  
• 2 Dragon Masters
  
• 1 Princess
  
• 1 High Knight

Male Humans

• 3 Liches
  
• 1 Mage
  
• 3 Doll Masters
  
• 1 Ninja Master
  
• 1 Evil One
  
• 3 Samurai Masters
  
• 2 Paladins
  
• 3 Beast Masters
  
• 1 High Knight
  
• 2 Generals

Demi-Humans

• 1 Vampire
  
• 4 Werewolves
  
• 2 Angels
  
• 2 Eaglemen
  
• 1 Slyph
  
• 1 Demon
  
• 3 Halloweens
  
• 3 Nixie

Large Beasts

• 1 Gold Dragon
  
• 1 Brass Dragon
  
• 1 Zombie Dragon
  
• 1 Cerberus
  
• 1 Cockatris
  
• 1 Fire Giant
  
• 4 Wyverns
  
• 1 Kraken
  
• 1 Rune Golem

[Far Horizon]

Imprisonment
An interesting map, with strategy city/ies near the enemy base. I rushed a bunch of units at the central swamp & some others at the mountains to the mid eastern portion of the map while my opinion leader's flying unit liberated all the cities.

Thankfully the enemy split to attack the three "front" towns I was holding, two just north of the swamp and the temple hidden in the mountains. The varied terrain also split up the enemy quite a bit, letting me take their attacks at worst 2 or 3 units at a time. I still needed to use a few boots to save an overwhelmed city or two.

The enemy had far fewer undead units than I recall in standard, which is probably good for balance in hardertype with the emphasis on monks/shaman. In the daylight hours I would chase enemies with my low sky princess unit & my rune golem + 2x angel unit & at night I relied on my Zombie Dragon + Mage unit and my Fullmoon unit. My 3xNixie + Kraken unit also was very effective at catching flying units over the water on the west side of the map.

Notable Units
Seraph Evil One
Monk ---Evil One
-----------Evil One

An interesting unit with the huge discrepancy in alignment, but that did mean it was effective in either day or night. I tried to get my fullmoon or Zombie Dragon unit to fight them at night, when the Seraphim would be weakest and my evil characters would tank the Evil One's black attacks regardless.

My high alignment Nixies actually did tons of damage to the Evil Ones during the day as well. I suppose they are weak to cold since they use flame magic.

Phantom Evil One
Sorcerer Evil One
Phantom Evil One

I tried to catch this unit during the day with my high alignment units, but it still dealt them severe damage. My monks only healed me once as well, since they needed to use one healing to kill the undead ... which lead to early retreats in many cases. It was completely inneffective to try and take out the front line or the phantoms & then kill the Sorcerer the next battle, since the Sorcerer would recruit Evil Ones in the field as well as Phantoms! I also put a few Samurai Masters and Wyvern in the back row to kill the leader off quickly, which made the unit easy to cleanup.


Siren --- Zombie D
Zombie D

Very high success rate with charm! I had to retreat a few times because she charmed my monk & was healing for more damage than I was dishing out. My fullmoon unit did fairly well against them though, with the high black and phys resistance.

Ravenman Paladin
Ravenman Paladin
Ravenman

This unit was rough if I had anyone in the backline who was hurt: the Ravenmen would focus 6 infernos on them. However, 3x Nixie + Kraken ripped this unit to shreds with ice storm. At night, the frontline went down in a hurry to my Zombie Dragon or anyone equipped with black weapons.

Omicron
Omicron didn't have the dodging ability that made Figaro such a challenge, but he still severely wounded a number of my units. It took about four fights, but in the end he simply could not stand up to my princess unit. I might have to avoid using that one too much.



Army Changes
I dropped my 3rd Halloween to make room for Yushis, in a unit that now looks like:
Wyvern ---- Rauny (muse)
Paladin --- Yushis (angel)

[Far Horizon]

I've been out of town a bit away from the 'net, so I had some time to finish off a few stages & am just now compiling it all ..

Angel
Shouldn't this stage really be Imprisonment and the last stage Angel? Regardless, Galf's land of imprisonment is a stage I've been looking forward to for awhile. I've been wanting to try and get some weretigers & see if my units can stack up against tons of Vampires, Liches, Tiamats and Zombie Dragons.

For all of that anticipation, this stage looked pretty straight forward from a strategy perspective. I took the middle city in the lake & did my best to hold it with 7 units while I had some flyers head up north to take and defend the hidden temples and cities north of the mountains. The wide area of the northern range made it very difficult to defend all of the cities, but I needed them to avoid going broke ... so I ended up using a fair # of boots. This was further complicated by the first line of defense being entirely made up of temples, so I could not boot directly to them. This caused me to plan further ahead and shift more units up north, with 2-3 for the middle two temples & I decided not to liberate the western most temple for awhile to avoid being spread even thinner. If I did it again, I would probably not liberate any of the temples until the end.

I also painstakingly setup 4 fighters (three level 1 and one level 2) to be killed by weretigers repeatedly until they turned into weretigers themselves. I did this by using boots to send the fighter unit wherever the weretigers were & then booting them to a city near a temple to revive them all. Better yet, later in the stage some of the weretiger units attacked the temples to the north, so I could just keep the fighter unit near those temples.

Notable Units
----- Cerberus
Lich
----- Tiamat

This unit caused quite a bit of trouble to all my units. Yes, it was very weak to my angels and princess, but it did so much damage that I usually had to retreat early & it always took 3+ fights to kill it. Anytime this unit was headed to a lightly defended city (or worse temple) I had to plan ahead and have 2-3 units present to fight it. I had my best luck using my Vampire + Werewolf unit with holy swords, as wrong as that is thematically

Halloween
Lich ----- Zombie Dragon
Halloween

Another rough fight with the combination of hit all and half-hp attacks. I used some hit & run against it, but the Lich and Halloween both had decent agility. I did have better luck fighting them with 5 small units, to avoid the Halloweens doing 150ish damage to a large dragon/wyrm/etc.

Sorcerer Halloween
Halloween Halloween
Halloween

The agility of this unit was even setup to enable 4 Halloween attacks and then a Sorcerer magic hit all Then repeat for another round ... which devastated most of my units. I ended up using units with 2+ single target attacks to focus fire the Sorcerer and run away, repeating until he's dead. Then it was safe to kill the Halloweens, though that still meant a unit lost most of its hp.

Samurai Master Vampire
Samurai Master Vampire
Samurai Master

This unit could have done crazy concentrated dmg (all attacks are single target) but the tactics were always strongest, so they typically spread the damage around instead of killing one or two of my characters. With white weapons, the vampires were easily disposed of, even with their hp drain healing them. Wvyerns fared very well vs Ianuki, as they would have enough hp to attract two hits and take minimal damage (40-60) with high phys/str or dodge with high agi. Other large beasts did fine at tanking but not as well at dodging.

Monk ------- Weretiger
Weretiger-- Weretiger
Weretiger-- Weretiger

An extremely well built "bruiser" unit that self-heals. I decided to make a unit like this myself, even though the enemy weretigers were not that strong. They just didn't seem to do that much damage for some reason, even at night.

Galf
Galf + Lich backline was daunting, but my dragon master did 3x 60+ damage to him I hadn't considered that strategy for a boss fight before, but it seems like one of the best characters to use against casters. Particularly those weak to ice ..

Army Changes
I had forgotten to go visit Omicron's stage afterward, so I went back and found an undead staff. I also received one as a random drop in the stage, so I promoted my last Mage to Sorcerer and then fixed the alignment of a Doll Master to promote to Mage and Sorcerer as well (3 Lich 2 Sorcerer 2 Doll Master now).

I leveled up the weretigers to 16 (put them in a party with a cleric and let the cleric kill undead in pogrom then antalia) and they look like they'll be only slightly better than my werewolves. This is mostly because of the massive # of tarot bonuses I've gotten from world cards, but I suppose the werewolves also started as level 5 werewolves instead of level 1 fighters (about 10 str, 5 agi better). Ironically, I also received a Fullmoon stone this level, but my hero is now level 18. A level 16 recruited weretiger was sadly slightly worse than the ones I advanced from level 1/2 fighters and slightly more expensive. The weretigers are also significantly more expensive than the werewolves.

[Far Horizon]

I don't have a lot notes from my assault on the Tundra or Fort Allamoot, so I'll be brief.

White Nights
This stage was mostly about flame weapons & making sure high alignment units fought the slyph units. Mizal did a significant amount of damage, but she was not too hard to take down herself.

Notable Units
beast master slyph
slyph ice giant

slyph gold dragon
slyph dragon maste

The slyph units destroyed my weretiger unit and any other low alignment unit, even at midnight.

princess samurai master
titan samurai master

This unit did not fair as well vs my low alignment units (at least at night 1 starlite was tankable). The weretiger unit did particularly well tanking the samurai and the titan. Of course, if the princess bonus wasn't broken for the enemy, it probably would have fared quite a bit better ..

dragoner
seraph wyvern
dragoner

This unit provided nice change of pace with the fire based tank instead of ice. Particularly if you equipped a ton of units with boleas axes and forgot to change them out!

[Far Horizon]

The Empire
A very wide stage with water, so there were many routes to defend. I sent my Kraken unit southward, my flying units mid and some land units to the top. This worked out fairly well, as it took forever for the enemy to cross the desert by their base.

Notable Units
samurai master ninja master
sorcerer ninja master
samurai master

Apparently sorcerer can recruit ... ninja masters on the field, which made it necessary to kill the leader first and then deal with the remnants. There was also a similar sorcerer + raven man unit that was not quite as difficult, but more mobile.


lich rune golem
rune golem

This unit was definitely the hardest to put down. The rune golem quake did 100+ to back line mages and then the lich added 2 more hit alls. To make it worse, all three characters have extremely high defense and few weak points, so it took quite a long time to kill them off.

Gemini Twins

• Crazy # of hit-alls, destroyed my squishy units
  
• Decent dodging ability, but no front line buffer ... so they were fairly easy to wear down with retreats
  
• My opinion leader's unit had ridiculous str/int from liberating pretty much every city, so I was able to tank them and do good damage
  
• The stage did not end immediately with the leader's death, but after ending the fight in a defeat (the second brother was barely alive), the stage did complete.

[Far Horizon]

Dragon Rider
Fogel's flying isle was notably different in that the south half of the isle was only tenuously connected to the north half of the isle & requires a rather long, winding route to traverse by land. Given this & the lower # of towns in this stage and my dwindling supply of goth, I did not deploy all 10 units. Instead I deployed 7 flying units (4 wyvern, 1 cockatrice, 2 eagleman) and Fenril's land unit.

This stage also revealed why the ulitmate dragons are so much better in this mod than standard (well, at least one big additional reason - I already knew about the stat/attack changes). I'll have to reconsider my choice of taking only 1 of each dragon type now ... though I do like that Wyverns can be equipped with elemental weapons.

Notable Units
dragon master wyvern
wyvern

Focused 6 elemental single target attacks on the leader ... which devestated any squishy back row leader. Changing the leader between fights worked wonders!

dragon master platinum dragon
platinum dragon

Holy flying dragons! A bit of fire weapons and using a unit without weakness to cold does the trick though. Halloweens did a number on them & petrify from Deneb was highly effective as well. They did rip through a number of my units even so, usually requiring 2-3 units to lose most of their health before they were defeated.


Monk
Lich Wyvern
Monk

Extremely resilient unit with two powerful damage dealers. The Wyvern is neutralized by using a high phys front liner with an ice weapon, but the Lich is going to do a lot of damage regardless. Deneb + Canopus uber agil unit was able to hit and run before the Lich or Monks could go though ..

dragon master ruby dragon
ruby dragon

dragon master tiamat
tiamat

Very similar to the platinum dragon unit above, with the different elemental damages. I found the Tiamats to be the worst: their 3x acid attack did significantly more damage to me than the similar ruby/platinum dragon targeted elemental attacks. That might just be the elemental resistances of my units though.

rune golem
princess
rune golem

Potential for ridiculous damage. I fought them at midnight with my hero's unit (uber str/int from tarots) and my cockatris was able to petrify both golems, one before it got its quake off. My other units did not fare nearly as well. My princess + monk unit couldn't even fight them, because the two golems would take out 1-2 characters with the double quake following starlite, even with the monk's healing.

raven evil one
raven evil one
-------- evil one

This unit was a pain if the raven men focused fire on a back row character, but otherwise could be taken pretty easily with white/ice weapons. My lich/etc double hit all units also out damaged them fairly easily.

Fogel
Fogel was not particularly difficult, but then he is the last recruitable boss, so I didn't expect him to be as tough as the Gemini Twins. He still managed to hurt some back line casters quite a bit & his escorts were a decent threat as well.

Army Changes
For now I put Fogel into a new unit with the Silver & Red Dragon that came along with Fenril & Slust (they are both much better than Fogel's dragon). I might mix things up and replace a few wyverns with those two dragons ... we'll see.