GameFaq for King's Bounty V0.1 November 2000 V0.2 June 2013 Copyright 2000, 2013 Chris Lee (chclee@yahoo.com) Producer: New World Computing Requirements: You really need the manual, which you can find at http://www.mocagh.org/nwc/kingsbounty-manual.pdf Introduction: This was a pre-cursor for Heroes of Might and Magic (I, II, III). Previous to the game, Arech Dragonbreath and Urthrax Killspite conspired to dethrone King Maximus and seize his kingdom. Now, all the castles are held by the evil henchmen or a group of monsters. King's Bounty is a story of a general who is recruited by a kingdom to help find the Scepter of Power and thus restore the dying King and kingdom. Initially, the player must choose between one of four heroes: Knight Paladin Barbarian Sorceress Indeed, as the book suggests, the Sorceress is the hardest, but she has the most abusive potential for magical buffs (described later). Strengths/Weaknesses of Characters: Knight: has highest leadership, best initial troops, average magic, quick first advancement but slow advancement overall. He's the most all-well- rounded character. Paladin: slightly better in magic than a Knight, but will be weaker in leadership and slow advancement, good initial gold. He's a balance between Knight and Sorceress, but weaker than both. Barbarian: very fast advancement, highest leadership, terrible magic, low initial gold. Sorceress: does not need to learn magic, great magic, terrible leadership, low maximum income but good starting base commission, excellent initial gold. Must use magic to enhance all abilities. General strategies: Knight will use magic to enhance (supplement) his battle abilities and allow his troops to do a lot of damage. Barbarian will in general be using the brute strength of his armies, with some limited magic to beat down enemies. Paladin will use a lot of magic to both enhance and supplement his battle abilities, and this will help to lower overall death of troops. Sorceress will often use magic to boost her leadership, battle, and adventuring – all battle must be very planned. When you start the game, you can either select a character or load an existing game. If you select a new character, you get to give him or her a name and then you may select the difficulty. This will affect the number of days left, as well as how many moves per day. On the MAC version, there is only Easy, Normal, Difficult, and Impossible: DAYS LEFT MOVES PER DAY SCORE MULTIPLIER Easy 900 40 x0.5 Moderate 600 30 x1 Difficult 300 20 x2 Impossible 200 10 x4 In the PC/DOS version, difficulty does not affect Moves per day. Chart Table 1. Character Advancement ___________________________________________________________________ |TYPE / TITLE |VILLAINS|BASE |MAX SPELLS|SPELL PWR| BASE | | |CAUGHT |LEADER| | | COMMISSION| | | |-SHIP | | | /WK | |________________|________|______|__________|_________|___________| |KNIGHT | 0 | 100 | 2 | 1* | 1000 | | GENERAL | 2 | +100 | +3 | +1 | +1000 | | MARSHAL | 8 | +300 | +4 | +1 | +2000 | | LORD | 14 | +500 | +5 | +2 | +4000 | |________________|________|______|__________|_________|___________| |PALADIN | 0 | 80 | 3 | 1* | 1000 | | CRUSADER | 2 | +80 | +4 | +2 | +1000 | | AVENGER | 7 | +240 | +5 | +2 | +2000 | | CHAMPION | 13 | +400 | +6 | +2 | +4000 | |________________|________|______|__________|_________|___________| |BARBARIAN | 0 | 100 | 2 | 1* | 2000 | | CHIEFTAIN | 1 | +100 | +2 | +1 | +2000 | | WARLORD | 5 | +300 | +3 | +1 | +2000 | | OVERLORD | 10 | +500 | +3 | +1 | +2000 | |________________|________|______|__________|_________|___________| |SORCERESS | 0 | 60 | 5 | 2 | 3000 | | MAGICIAN | 3 | +60 | +8 | +3 | +1000 | | MAGE | 6 | +180 | +10 | +5 | +1000 | | ARCHMAGE | 12 | +300 | +12 | +5 | +1000 | |________________|________|______|__________|_________|___________| * Must learn magic to cast spells You must get troops to defeat enemy troops and castles. Table 2. Unit Stats ___________________________________________________________________________ |MONSTERS |SKILL|HIT PTS|MOVE |ATT |SHOT|COST|MORALE GRP| SPECIAL |CONT| |___________|_____|_______|_____|_____|____|____|__________|_________|____| |CASTLE | |Militas | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1-2 | | 50 | A | | C | |Archers | 2 | 10 | 2 | 1-2 | 1-3| 250| B | SHOTx12 | C | |Pikemen | 3 | 10 | 2 | 2-4 | | 300| B | | C | |Cavalry | 4 | 20 | 4 | 3-5 | | 800| B | | C | |Knights | 5 | 35 | 1 | 6-10| |1000| B | | C | |__________________________________________________________________________ |PLAINS | |Peasants | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 10| A | | C | |Wolves | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1-3 | | 40| D | | C | |Nomads | 3 | 15 | 2 | 2-4 | | 300| C | | F | |Barbarians | 4 | 40 | 3 | 1-6 | | 750| C | | A | |Archmages | 5 | 25 |Fly+1| 2-3 | 25 |1200| C | SHOTx2 | S | |__________________________________________________________________________ |FOREST | |Sprites | 1 | 1 |Fly+1| 1-2 | | 15| C | | C | |Gnomes | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1-3 | | 60| C | | C | |Elves | 3 | 10 | 3 | 1-2 | 2-4| 200| C | SHOTx24 | F | |Trolls | 4 | 50 | 1 | 2-5 | |1000| D | (1) | A | |Druids | 5 | 25 | 2 | 2-3 | 10 | 700| C | SHOTx3 | A | |__________________________________________________________________________ |HILLS | |Orcs | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2-3| 1-2| 75| D | SHOTx6 | C | |Dwarves | 3 | 20 | 1 | 2-4| | 350| C | | F | |Ogres | 4 | 40 | 1 | 3-5| | 750| D | | A | |Giants | 5 | 60 | 3 |10-20|5-10|2000| C | SHOTx6 | S | |Dragons | 6 | 200 |Fly+1|25-50| |5000| D | (2) | S | |__________________________________________________________________________ |Dungeons | |Skeletons | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1-2| | 40| E | | C | |Zombies | 2 | 5 | 1 | 2| | 50| E | | F | |Ghosts | 4 | 10 | 3 | 3-4| | 400| E | (3) | A | |Vampires | 5 | 30 |Fly+1| 3-6| |1500| E | (4) | S | |Demons | 6 | 50 |Fly+1| 5-7| |3000| E | (5) | S | |_________________________________________________________________________| KEY: (1) Living Trolls regenerate to full hit points. (2) Dragons are immune to magic. (3) Ghosts absorb creatures they kill; on the week of the peasant, they become peasants. (4) Vampires heal their own wounds equal to the damage they inflict. (5) Demons have a random chance of halving any enemy troop. This is around 10% regardless of troop and regardless of number of demons. CONT = Continent that you will usually find the lair; C = Continentia, F = Forestria, A = Archipelia, S = Saharia. There are occasionally some lairs that are unusually early in the game e.g., you may find some Druids in Continentia. Peasants and Sprites can't harm demons and dragons. This is a cool fact to note. Other notes: Frozen units cannot move. They cannot attack, unless there is a unit beside them. "Fly+1" means you can move anywhere there is an open space, and then either attack, shoot if applicable, move one space, or fly again. Shooters cannot shoot if there is a unit beside them. You may wish to judiciously put units beside the more powerful shooters (such as archmages or druids), as their normal attack is much weaker than their shots. You'll want to use this strategy a lot! You can only recruit castle units at King Maximus' castle, near Hunterville. Different units unlock based on your rank. Damage may wrap around on the Mac and DOS/PC versions if you have too many of one unit! (ARGH!) If you have over 400 archmages, it will do a tenth the damage or wrap around. Damage modifier table for skill level of attacker & defender (APPROXIMATE): Table 3. Skill difference modifier _____________________________________________________ |ATT \ DEF | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | _____________________________________________________ |1 |1 |0.55 |0.338 |0.226 |0.072 | 0 | |2 |1 |1 |0.445 |0.336 |0.2 |0.113 | |3 |1 |1 |1 |0.324 |0.33 |0.226 | |4 |1 |1 |1 |1 |0.446 |0.339 | |5 |1 |1 |1 |1 |1 |0.452 | |6 |1 |1 |1 |1 |1 |1 | _____________________________________________________ How Damage is calculated: (roll for damage * (number * (morale + artifact modifiers) * (skill based on unit) of units) modifier) So for instance, if I shot from Elves against Dragons, I would be rolling a 2, 3, or 4. Multiply that by the number of Elves. Then multiply by 1.5 (Normal Morale+Sword of Prowess or High Morale/No Sword) or 2 (High Morale and Sword of Prowess) or 1 (Low Morale+Sword of Prowess or Normal Morale+No Sword). Then the skill modifier depends on the skill difference. For Elves (skill level 3) vs. Dragons (skill level 6), it's approximately 0.226. For Giants (skill level 5) vs. Dragons (skill level 6), it's approximately 0.452. So if I want to know how many dragons my 6500 High Morale Elves possessing the Sword of Prowess could kill, it would be: Damage roll of 2 or 3 or 4 * 6500 Elves * 2 (Sword+High Morale) * 0.226 / 200 hp per dragon = 29 or 44 or 58 As the manual indicates for the size of the stack: Table 4. Descriptor and Size of Enemy Troop Stacks (from Manual) A few = 1-9 Some = 10-19 Many = 20-49 A Lot = 50-99 A Horde = 100-499 A Multitude = 500+ Table 5. Morale Effects (from Manual) A B C D E LEGEND : N = Normal H= High A N N N N N L= Low B N N N N N C N N H N N D L N L H N E L L L N N High Morale usually means you get +50% base damage. It is HIGHLY advantageous to have High Morale over Normal/Low Morale. Low Morale means you don't do as much damage, damage is halved (-50% base damage). It is highly recommended to have high morale for damage. You'll be far more effective. Game play: There are several elements of the game, divided into two categories. One is the metagame or adventuring, the second is combat. Metagame (Overworld) The character in the metagame may move around by boat (if you have a boat) on any water square, by foot (displayed by a mounted hero icon), or flying (displayed by a hero on dragon). If you are sailing by boat, you can only move in any of the 8 directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) on a water square. What is helpful is that if monsters are 3 squares away (out of sight), they will no longer follow you (assuming you are not time-stopped). The only way to get to a new continent is also by boat. In the Sega Genesis version, monster units are somewhat real-time (not turn- based like the DOS, MAC, or C64 versions), so they are harder to lose/dodge. Moving by foot, you must move to an open square. If you move through desert, it automatically costs 1 day, unless you timestop. If you are timestopped, each time you move to a desert square (that is, a new desert square), your timestop counter will go to 0. In other words, you will have to cast timestop each time you move a desert square if you do not with to lose time. There are treasures which you cannot get unless you can fly (Saharia), and some where you'll either need the bridge spell or a boat. You cannot land on the grass square immediately south of the castle gate. The elements of the adventuring metagame is collecting treasures, visiting towns, collecting artifacts, and visiting castles (if possible). And if you are not playing a sorceress, going to the area immediately above the castle to learn magic. I advocate for exploring as much as possible without having to fight since many artifacts (Sword, Crown, Amulet, Ring, Shield) and better troops allow you to win the game more easily, as well, you don't have to carry a costly army around. King Maximus' castle does not have a name. But the closest town is HUNTERVILLE. As the book suggests, photocopy the charts to help you figure out which villain is in which castle, as well as what spell each town sells. You may also wish to research what armies each villain commands, but that's usually not necessary. Killing all enemy units is not necessary for winning, nor is capturing all the castles. Castles are important (as are henchmen) for your final score, and henchmen will give you pieces of the map essential for finding the Scepter of Order. Killing enemy units is useful for giving you gold as well as giving you time to buff up your army (e.g., I attack weaker unit stacks and clone the heck out of my army). Collecting artifacts The best part of metagaming is finding the artifacts. I would highly suggest that you find all 8 artifacts before you start fighting any battles (if possible). They will help you greatly in your quest. You will find the Ring of Heroism and the Articles of Nobility in Continentia. From what I've noticed, the Ring of Heroism positively influences random damage in your favor. You will more likely do more higher damage, and enemies will more likely do lower damage. The articles of nobility will increase the amount of commission you receive by 2000 per week. You will find the Shield of Protection and the Anchor of Admiralty in Forestria. The Shield of Protection halves the amount of damage you take from any enemy. The Anchor of Admiralty lowers your weekly boat rental from 500 to 100. You will find the Crown of Command and the Book of Necros in Archipelia. The Book of Necros doubles your spell capacity and the Crown of Command doubles your leadership (including any leadership bonuses received). In other words, if you become a Barbarian Overlord (from Barbarian Warlord), you will receive 1000 leadership instead of 500. Same goes with Treasure leadership bonuses. You will find the Sword of Prowess and the Amulet of Augmentation in Saharia. The Sword of Prowess adds 50% more damage (+50% base damage) when you attack, and the Amulet of Augmentation increases your present spell power by 5. So if you have high morale and the Sword of Prowess, you will do 200% of base damage. Collecting treasures As you go around, there are many places where treasures may be hidden. Treasures may be in the 8 forms. The first are mineral deposits, which increase your weekly commission. The second are a rogue band of monsters which offer to join your party. (These are useful for quickly grabbing to fortify a castle pretty cheaply.) The third are genies which may either increase your spell power or spell capacity. The fourth are lairs, which you may purchase followers. The fifth will give you a map to see the current continent completely. The sixth is the map to allow you to travel to the next continent. The seventh gives you some random spells. The final, and most prevalent, are amounts of money, which you may either keep and increase your current gold, or you may distribute to your followers and increase your leadership. (I slightly recommend the latter because gold is fairly abundant if you play this game correctly, although it really doesn't matter if use lots of raise control spells.) Getting magic If you are not a sorceress, at some point in time, you will need to learn magic. You may have to go along the path left of King Maximus' castle, and the place that teaches you is in a cave immediately above the castle. (5000 gold) Once you have learned magic, there are two spheres, combat magic, which you can only use in battle, and adventuring magic, which you can only use in adventuring. As mentioned before, if you have kept good records, you know where each of these spells are being sold. Table 6. Combat Spells NAME COST EFFECT Fireball 1500 25*spell power vs. 1 group Lightning 500 10*spell power vs. 1 group Turn Undead 2000 50*spell power vs. 1 group of Ghosts, Skeletons Vampires and Zombies Resurrection 5000 Causes units which died to become alive, at 20*spell power (you will still lose the points) Clone 2000 Multiplies units at 10*spell power for 1 group Freeze 300 Causes one group (preferably enemy) to not be able to move or attack (except if you have a group beside them) Teleport 500 Moves an enemy or friendly group to an open spot As you can tell, Lightning has the biggest "bang for the buck," and it is sometimes advisable to have a few lightning bolts to get rid of a few weaker units for less cost. Fireball is when you want to kill things faster. Turn Undead only works on Undead. Demons are NOT Undead! Clone is very cheap for getting very powerful units. For instance, buying 2 knights will cost 2000. However, if you have maxxed out your spell power, you will probably get more than 2 knights. Resurrection only revives dead units of a certain type, and will max out to whatever your original stack size was. Freeze is highly effective for pinning down one stack of shooters, fliers (except dragons, who are immune), and fast movers. It is also highly effective (although a little on the costly side – trading off game points for money) when you have one enemy stack left and you have some shooters left. Freeze the stack, shoot it to death. Very nice elf/archer strategy. Of course, freeze doesn't do much if you have a unit beside the frozen stack. Teleport is useful for putting an enemy troop far away or moving one of your slow(er) moving stacks into a strategy position. (I use this for teleporting knights when fighting Arech Dragonbreath.) Table 7. Adventuring Spells Instant Army 1000 create an army unit based on spell power and rank Town Gate 500 go to a previously visited town Castle Gate 1000 go to a previously visited castle Bridge 100 create a bridge for 2 spaces in any of the cardinal directions Raise Control 500 Raise Leadership by 100 * Spell Power (to a max leadership of 65000) Time Stop 200 10 rounds*spell power Find Villain 1000 Shows castle where current villain is in the contract Instant army is a great overall spell; it gives you a lot of units. Town Gate -Castle Gate combinations are highly effective for getting reinforcements and moving around quickly, as well as replenishing spells and visiting King Maximus. I find Bridge and Find Villain fairly useless after the beginning. Raise Control will temporarily elevate a spell caster's leadership until the end of the week or until you get a promotion from King Maximus. The maximum leadership is 65000. In conjunction of time stop, it gets abusive (you'll never really need more leadership!) As for Instant Army: The specific unit you get is determined by your class and advancement. Table 8. Units received from Instant Army ________________________________ |TYPE / TITLE |UNIT RECEIVED| |________________|_____________| |KNIGHT |Peasants | | GENERAL |Militia | | MARSHAL |Archers | | LORD |Knights | |________________|_____________| |PALADIN |Peasants | | CRUSADER |Militia | | AVENGER |Archers | | CHAMPION |Cavalry | |________________|_____________| |BARBARIAN |Peasants | | CHIEFTAIN |Wolves | | WARLORD |Orcs | | OVERLORD |Ogres | |________________|_____________| |SORCERESS |Sprites | | MAGICIAN |Gnomes | | MAGE |Elves | | ARCHMAGE |Druids | |________________|_____________| Defeating wandering troops As you move around, you will see various hostile armies peppered around the map. I usually like to save them for later in the game, for two purposes, 1) I can clone my own troops, or 2) for their gold. You also receive as spoils of war (roughly) 50% of the recruit cost for all units you kill. (The only caveat being that you get 5 for Sprites instead 7.5 and a bit less than the full amount for Johnny's troops.) Sieges At some point in the game, you may wish to take over a castle, and you will have to siege the castle. You must have a siege engine, which costs 3000 and you must buy it in a town. Although it says that there is a random probability it will break, I have never had one break on me. If you lose a siege (i.e., all your armies are defeated, or you give up), you must buy again before sieging a new castle. Battle Against the open armies (not in castles), all your stacks will be lined up on the left and all the enemy stacks will be on the right. You get first move/attack advantage, as well as spells. This is a huge advantage if you know how the enemy fights. Generally, you will want to kill his most dangerous units first, danger being defined by 1) demons, who may half your stack, 2) other fliers, 3) shooters, 4) creatures with high move and damage (especially ghosts). Creatures with higher damage generally should destroy first or freeze. One sometimes useful maneuver is to freeze a front-line unit and his back units will get trapped, unable to move. Magic The stronger your spell power and spell capacity, the more you should be using magic in general. Only one combat spell can be cast per round, so carefully plan your attacks. However, freeze and teleport always work the same way regardless of spell power. Ideally, you want to give your shooters as much time as possible, as well as using magic to kill other stacks – for instance, archmages, giants, and elves should all shoot to kill one enemy stack if possible, and then use fireball to kill another stack, or freeze or teleport the enemy stack away. Contracts You must have the contract for a known villain to be able to turn him in for money. Otherwise, if you take his or her castle, he or she will escape to some other castle. Fortifying When you destroy all enemy units, you will receive a certain amount of money determined by what creatures you have beaten, and whether you had the contract for a criminal. You will need to fortify the castle with a minimum of one troop (even one peasant) for you to hold the castle. At the end of the week, if it is not fortified, you have a random chance of losing the castle, and a random group of monsters will now inhabit the castle. Instant army and/or castle/town gates are helpful. (e.g., town gate to Hunterville, grab one peasant, castle gate back and drop off the peasant) Winning You really don't need all pieces of the map to win. You will the centerpiece to reduce the number of days required to search, and enough pieces to be able to see the map. Suggested game play Phase I. Exploration I like to play the sorceress. She doesn't have permanent abilities quite as high as the other classes, but she can temporarily pump up her abilities much better than the others with time stop and raise leadership. As soon as I start, I dismiss all armies except sprites (or whatever is the cheapest army), and I rent a boat. I explore as much as possible, avoiding any conflict. I'll pick up any treasures, and artifacts, visit towns and castles. I occasionally use timestop to allow myself to pick up some treasures guarded by monsters. I also go through the desert in Continentia so and pick up all the treasures and also visit castle Azram so I can castle gate back. I carefully note where each villain lies and what spells are sold at which towns, and buy some extra timestops if possible. As soon as I've picked up all the treasure I can, and have the two artifacts and the map to Forestria, I go to Forestria. Repeat, and also for Archipelia. Saharia, I change my strategy slightly. I visit castle Uzare first and pick up treasure thereabouts, and then I go to the middle and try to pick up treasure. I'll also try to find either a dragons', demons', archmages' or vampires' lair, buy a few (even sometimes just one), and then finish my exploration of Saharia. If I have enough timestops, I'll just cast them and buy as many dragons, demons, and archmages as possible, grab all the treasures and artifacts, and visit castles Spockana and Zyzzarzaz. If I'm playing a sorceress, I'll usually find just one flying unit and go around, visit the castles and towns, pick up treasure and artifacts, then new week, time stop and gather archmages and then giants (since giants can't fly)... then I'll begin phase II: The War Campaign! It is debatable whether to spend as much time as I do with the lower income (you get +250 gold per week per castle that you garrison, plus more gold with higher rank). However, the Sword of Prowess and more powerful units, especially Archmages, make your early battles much easier. As well, it is only possible to get a highest score if you use a ton of magic and have morale group C units (early on you can survive with Elves and Druids, but archmages do make your battles much easier). Phase II. The War Campaign Now that I've got my army, I'll want to kick some butt as quickly as possible. I'll split the campaign into 5 subphases in order of difficulty. Also, I tend to have two combinations of armies: Combination 1 ("Morale Group C Shooters"): Archmages, Elves, Druids, Giants. Max army = 250 Archmages, 330 Druids, 1083 Giants, and 6500 Elves. (You can make more archmages and druids, even up to 360 of each, but you don't need that many. Besides, you risk having the damage wrap around.) This calculation is based on the maximum number of Giants and Elves you can have, plus a number Druids that kill around 110 Vampires in Arech's army, plus the number of archmages with high morale to kill all 100+ demons in Arech's army. Combination 2 ("Power"): Dragons, Demons, Archmages. Possibly as well (later) vampires, giants, and/or knights. This army is expensive but very powerful. It is possible with the Sorceress, Paladin, and Knight to be able to defeat all villains up to and including Urthrax Killspite without losing a single troop; you just have to use a lot of Morale Group C Shooters (combo #1) and Freeze spells. (And time stop and raise control.) Freeze is best on high move units (Cavalry, Barbarians, Nomads, Pikemen, etc.) Usually the strategy is to Archmage shoot the stack with the most hit points, Druids shoot the second most hit points, freeze the highest move stack, have Elves and Giants pick off other stacks. Repeat until done. I will post first a table with Morale Group C Shooters for suggested army and spells to tackle each villain, and then I will post a general guide for non-Sorceress classes to tackle villains (which was from the previous version of this FAQ). I would also suggest tackling Auric and Nickolai before Makh. Table 9. Minimum Army Playthrough for Sorceress (High Morale+Sword) _____________________________________________________________________________ | VILLAIN | ARCHMAGES | DRUIDS | ELVES | GIANTS | SPELLS | LEADERSHIP| _____________________________________________________________________________ | Murray | 2 | 3 | 7 | 3 | NONE | 180 | | Hack | 3 | 3 | 10 | 5 | NONE | 300 | | Aimola | 6 | 4 | 15 | 5 | NONE | 300 | | Baron Johnny| 6 | 6 | 25 | 5 | Freeze | 300 | | Pirate Rob | 6 | 6 | 64 | 5 | Freeze | 640 | _____________________________________________________________________________ | Caneghor | 14 | 6 | 64 | 5 | Turn Und. | 640 | | Moradon | 14 | 6 | 64 | 5 | Freeze | 640 | | Barrowpine | 15 | 21 | 75 | 5 | Freeze | 750 | | Bargash | 15 | 38 | 75 | 5 | Freeze | 950 | | Rinaldus | 16 | 38 | 232 | 5 | Freeze | 2320 | _____________________________________________________________________________ | Ragface | 25 | 41 | 250 | 40 | Turn Und. | 2500 | | Makh | 36 | 50 | 1000 | 100 | NONE | 10000 | | Auric | 32 | 60 | 250 | 50 | Freeze | 3000 | | Nickolai | 32 | 63 | 1000 | 50 | NONE | 10000 | | Magus | 69 | 78 | 1000 | 503 | Freeze | 30500 | _____________________________________________________________________________ | Urthrax | 113 | 78 | 2213 | 503 | Freeze | 30500 | | Arech | 228 | 165 | 6500 | 1083 | NONE | 65000 | _____________________________________________________________________________ SUBPHASE 1. Non-villain castles These are fairly easy to take over, so you should just take them over as quickly as possible. SUBPHASE 2. The first 5 henchmen The first 5 henchmen (Murray the Miser, Hack the Rogue, Princess Aimoila, Baron Johnny Makahl, Dread Pirate Rob) are all relatively easy to beat up. Especially the first two should be pushovers if you have archmages, dragons, and demons or 3+ stacks of shooters. Murray the Miser typically has 30 wolves, 50 peasants, 25 peasants, 30 peasants, and 25 militia. Hack the Rogue has 10 nomads, 30 militia, 20 militia, 60-70 peasants, and 40-50 peasants. Princess Aimola has 70 sprites, 50 sprites, 20 skeletons, 20 zombies, and 6-10 ogres. All character classes should be able to upgrade to the next class after this. The Baron is a little trickier. You may want two groups of shooters (not just the archmages). Beef up your army with your new status, and perhaps get elves or giants (or both). You can rearrange (reorder) your armies in castles. You'll want archmages and giants/elves in the back, so this means slot #1 and #2. Baron Johnny Makahl has 30-40 wolves, 20 orcs, 10-20 archers, 2 trolls, and 6-10 dwarves. Dread Pirate Rob has a little stronger army (2 groups of 50 militia, 10 archers, 10 elves, 5 barbarians), and if you are strong enough, the same elves/druids/giants/archmages combination still works. Use druids on the militia, archmages on the barbarians, fireball/freeze the archers, and use the giants and elves on the elves (and if you kill the elves, shoot at the last group of militia). Then it's pretty easy. You get the idea. Basically, use fireballs and archmages to take out stuff or freeze to delay and allow your shooters a chance to kill them second round. You may sometimes wish to add druids and/or giants, and sometimes I play around with elves. Generally, you want the strongest armies and keep enemies away. As soon as you have captured enough villains, go up levels. It will increase your leadership and your spell power/spell capacity, the latter is the most important thing for Sorceress. Town Gate to replenish your spells. Don't forget to fortify. The first five henchmen are very easy, and you should not have to lose any troops if you do this correctly. You may decide to start using Clone (as it's cheaper and faster to clone archmages than buying them). You can use the random armies lying around as fodder to clone your army. Don't let them get out of control though! SUBPHASE 2. The next four henchmen The next 4 henchmen (Caneghor the Mystic, Bargash Eyesore, Prince Barrowpine, Sir Moradon the Cruel) are a little harder. You will start taking losses unless you use Combination #1. With Caneghor, it will be useful to remember that if you put a unit (I use dragons) beside them, they cannot fireball. E.g., fly in dragons, and attack archmages. As sorceress, you'll want to level up again at King Maximus' castle. Build up the army a little. I usually have at least 7000 leadership at this point, so I'll get 200+ archmages and 200+ druids. Caneghor has 256 sprites, 10 ghosts, 10 knights, and two groups of 4 archmages. Alternately, you can turn undead/freeze on ghosts and shoot the rest. Sir Moradon has a lot of pretty mobile units with many hit points. Combination #1 works best against these guys. He has 105 militia, 20 archers, 20 pikemen, 15 cavalry, and 15 knights. Don't forget that you can't shoot if the pikemen are beside you. Prince Barrowpine is your next enemy, and as he has a horde of Sprites (306- 312), you may want to use dragons and/or demons or freeze with combo #1. Prince Barrowpine also has 30-34 elves, 30 archmages, 12-14 druids, 30-42 pikemen. At this point, all classes should have moved up to their second advancement (second highest rank). Bargash Eyesore is your next opponent, and he has 5-6 giants, 150 orcs, 23 ogres, 10-16 trolls, and 90-100 wolves. IMHO, Combination #1 is still best. At this point, you may have lost your first unit. If not, you're doing well! SUBPHASE 3. The next 5 henchmen The next 5 henchmen (Rinaldus Drybone, Ragface, Auric Whiteskin, Mahk Bellowspeak, Czar Nickolai the Mad) are getting increasingly difficult. Using Sorceress, you will probably need 1 turn undeads or freeze each for Rinaldus and Ragface, and do them back-to-back, they're the easiest of this group. I don't like fighting (melee) demons because of the possible halving factor. Combination #1 is your probable best bet. Rinaldus Drybone: 500-525 skeletons, 100-105 zombies, 30 ghosts, 12 vampires, 7 demons. Ragface: 600-625 skeletons, 200-205 zombies, 50 ghosts, 27 vampires, 10-11 demons. I suggest doing Auric before Mahk, as Mahk's dragons and giants are actually a tad tougher than Auric and Czar Nickolai. Auric has 300 gnomes, 40 barbarians, 20 giants, 104 nomads and 724 peasants. If you're a sorceress, you'll want to upgrade to Archmage. Build up the army again. At some point in time, you'll want to spend a lot of money on Clone spells and build up to "the maximum army", which is 6500 Elves, 1083 Giants, and usually like 360-400 Archmages and 360-400 Druids. (Usually I go for ~360 so that the damage doesn't wrap around, although you only really need around 227 High Morale archmages.) Czar Nickolai has a lot of Castle units which are painful. Prepare to lose units if you don't have Combo #1. You'll need a pretty large army. Nickolai has 35-50 archers, 100-125 pikemen, 80 cavalry, 60 knights, and 5-6 dragons. Usually freezing the cavalry works best (they move the farthest). Mahk has 30-36 giants, 5-6 dragons, 36-40 ogres, 200 orcs, and 200 gnomes. I usually do archmages shoot giants, druids shoot orcs, and Elves+Giants shoot Dragons. To kill all the dragons, you would need either a minimum of (a) 266 Giants (16k leadership) or (b) 1328 Elves (13280+ leadership) or (c) some mix thereof like 1000 Elves and 100 Giants. SUBPHASE 5: The final 3 henchmen. The last 3 henchmen (Magus Deathspell, Urthrax Killspite, Arech Dragonbreath) are a pain in the butt. You will just need to use superior numbers or Combo #1. Magus Deathspell: 31 demons, 50-55 vampires, 100 archmages, 500 gnomes, 5024 peasants. Freezing the archmages is the key here. Urthrax Killspite: if you don't use Combo #1 -- it's painful. Using combo #2, bring in knights this round. (That is, Dragons, Demons, Archmages, Druids, Knights.) Urthrax has 51 demons, 10 dragons, 200 cavalry, 250 knights, 60 archmages. Again, freeze the cavalry. Arech Dragonbreath: 101-103 dragons, 25-27 dragons, 25-27 dragons, 100-103 demons, and 110 vampires. For the Barbarian and Knight, it is far more challenging. Barbarian suggested army: Archmages, Druids, Giants, Elves, Barbarians Knight suggested army: Archmages, Druids, Giants, Elves, Knights/Barbarians You can also use Dragons, Demons, Archmages, Giants, Knights or Vampires. A freeze or 2-3 Turn Undeads on the Vampires + lots of resurrections is also not a bad idea. There are only two stacks that are affected by magic/archmages, so you may as well freeze one of them so the archmages can wipe them out in round 2. CHOICE OF UNITS IN FIGHTING ARECH: Vampires vs Knights: Vampires have an automatic resurrection factor (they heal their wounds for the damage they do). The bad thing is that they don't do very much damage. (Vampires do 3-6 and have 30 hp; Knights have 35 hp and do 6-10. Both are skill level 5.) Vampires also all non-undead troops to low morale, so that's even worse than knights (you'll end up losing more units). Barbarians vs. Knights: Barbarians are skill level 4 and morale group C but have 40 hp. Knights are skill level 5 but morale group B (reducing the army to Normal morale) and have 35 hp. Barbarians effectively become a speed bump or are good for absorbing the retalliatory hit. You will lose less numbers for Barbarians, but you do have to clone to get enough Barbarians to be a speed bump (minimum 250 or more). Barbarians are not there for the damage (1-6 * 2 * 0.339) is going to be less than Knights (6-10 * 1.5 * 0.452). If you are looking for the highest score (Sorceress is easiest, Paladin is able to do this and Knight with lower difficulty), you can fight Arech Dragonbreath with 250 Archmages, 1083 Giants, 6500 Elves, 1 Barbarian, and 1 Nomad/Gnome (or other morale group C troop). Note that Giants go before Elves. The 1 Barbarian and 1 Nomad are sacrificial stacks, speed bumps for Arech's big dragon stack. The play goes: Round 1 1. Freeze Horde (101+) Demons - on the outside and back 2. Archmages shoot Horde of Vampires (killing all) 3. Giants shoot Many (usually 26) Dragons (83% chance of killing all) 4. Elves shoot Many (usually 26) Dragons (killing all) 5. Move Barbarians beside Horde (101+) of Dragons, not touching demons, but don't attack 6. Move other sacrificial stack to Dragons, not touching demons, don't attack Computer moves 7a. Horde of Dragons kill one sacrificial stack 7b. Bad luck scenario (1 in 6 chance): your giants didn't kill a small dragon stack. Remainder of small stack kill your second sacrificial stack. 8. Demons are frozen Round 2 9. Archmages shoot Horde of Demons (killing all) 10a. Giants shoot large stack of Dragons. 10b. Giants shoot small stack of Dragons, killing all. 11b. (Ignore if you have the second sacrificial stack) Teleport Giants next to remaining large stack of Dragons. 12. Elves shoot Large Stack (Horde) of Dragons 13a. Pass for the sacrificial stack if it still exists Computer moves 14a. Dragons attack second sacrificial stack 14b. Dragons attack Giants, Giants retalliate Round 3 14. Archmages wait or pass 15a. Giants shoot Horde of Dragons 15b. Move Giants 1 square away and shoot Horde of Dragons. 16. Elves shoot Horde of Dragons if necessary There is a 1 in 10.8 chance of only losing 1 follower. You had to kill the entire small stack of Dragons with Giants in round 1, and then shoot 44 or 48 with the Giants and 54 for the Elves. The breakdown of this strategy is: 9.3% you'll only lose 1 follower 74.1% you'll lose 2 followers 16.7% you'll lose a lot of followers (a lot of Giants, up to 31) As the Knight gets Knights equal to his spell power when he casts Instant Army, his most cost-efficient path to victory is to use a ton of raise controls and knights (and resurrects). Unfortunately Knights reduce you to normal morale and you have to use a first round teleport to put the knights into position (so your shooters would have to focus on Vampires, Demons, then small dragon stacks). There is a way to lose no units but you can only do this with the Sorceress and either Normal or Easy difficulty. Use the above army with 380 Druids and one sacrificial stack in the 5th slot. When it is the the 5th slot's turn to move, give up your army if you kill off both small dragon stacks. Only save if your Giants and Elves each eliminated one small dragon stack such that the 100+ dragon stack is the only stack left. Cancel boat rental and wait until end of week (W) to build up a massive bank account, and then rebuild to 1083 Giants and 6500 Elves, and you now a 1 in 9 chance to win with no losses (i.e., must shoot 44 or 48 dragons with the Giants and rest with the Elves). WINNING When you recover everything, then you must look at the map and dig at the right place to recover the Scepter of Order. You receive a score based on castles and villains captured, artifacts found, and subtracting the number of followers killed. The exact score is 500 points per villain, 100 per castle garrisoned, 250 per artifact, minus 1 per follower killed. Take the sum, and multiply by 0.5 for easy, 1 for normal, 2 for hard, and 4 for impossible. The maximum possible score would be 52396 (Impossible, only 1 follower killed). Lowest score is 0. THANKS TO: * Chris Jones for his FAQ, wicked7630@hotmail.com http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/577442-kings-bounty/faqs/7416 * the Mac / DOS manual here: http://www.mocagh.org/nwc/kingsbounty-manual.pdf * Henry at Genesis Project Online, for the Sega Genesis version of the manual: http://www.genesisproject-online.com/Genesis/I-k/king/king.html * Lucien McMahon a.k.a., Thuryl, placozoan@yahoo.com.au for his ideas and Let's Play: http://lparchive.org/Kings-Bounty/Update%201/ * Vitaly at openKB, driedfruit@mindloop.net * Shrine RPG, where you can find maps of the 4 continents: http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/genesis/kingbounty/maps.shtml