Knowing when to cut your losses with a (no losses) run. Mage Build (hard)

[Gards]

So I can't free Creiston Mines without losing a unit. I'm Mage and he's sh*t. Intellect is 12 and im lvl 16 ffs..Horrible RNG this polaythrough.
My only attacking spells are fire arrow and fireball, poison skull. I have "fear" maxed out. My intellect is appauling, it's the same as my defence stat WTF seriously. Feel like ive wasted my time haha I love the game though, always have.

My main units are Giants and Cyclops (four of each) but at this stage of the game at least one of the units dies. I can heal the Giants, no problem. The cyborgs are a massive pain in the arse. Neither unit is good at attacking and as I say, ONLY got weak spells maxed out...

Gizmo heals the Cyclops when he feels like it and there are too many massive armies to deal with! Bloody Beholders!!!!! The AI has SO many ranged units in the army I can't shut all of them down with "fear". Sorry Tom Digor. It's not going to happen on this run mate...

[Dog of Justice]

Attacking spells should be relatively unimportant for a high-difficulty no-loss run. Instead, you should be looking to set up increasingly powerful and flexible resurrection loops. The hardest battles are typically won by finding a way to not get wiped out before you start resurrecting faster than you're taking losses. The "level 5 units" strategy of not taking losses in the first place can work at the beginning, but it never scales through the midgame; this isn't about "horrible RNG".

In particular, Gift + Inquisitors is often available very early, and it's frequently possible to leave one enemy troop alive at the end such that they keep hitting a stack enchanted with Magic Shield (giving you the mana to cast Gift as many times as you need).

[Gards]

Originally posted by Dog of Justice:

Attacking spells should be relatively unimportant for a high-difficulty no-loss run. Instead, you should be looking to set up increasingly powerful and flexible resurrection loops. The hardest battles are typically won by finding a way to not get wiped out before you start resurrecting faster than you're taking losses. The "level 5 units" strategy of not taking losses in the first place can work at the beginning, but it never scales through the midgame; this isn't about "horrible RNG".

In particular, Gift + Inquisitors is often available very early, and it's frequently possible to leave one enemy troop alive at the end such that they keep hitting a stack enchanted with Magic Shield (giving you the mana to cast Gift as many times as you need).

I had a single stack of green dragons trying to liberate creiston mines and we did haha I put the dragons on a tile where only 1 unit could hit them at a time right at the top of the arena.

im now lvl 26 using BDs or GDs or both depending on the army opponent. I usually play as warrior or paladin..Mage is fun but I still have no resurrection spell or Royal Griffins. RGs mean "phantom/time back/phantom" etc so I've been using Demonic portal plus Spring to get mana. "Invisible" on GDs sometimes. I haven't been able to kill Karador without losses yet. His army has 10 units

[Dog of Justice]

Karador is a strong candidate for most challenging battle in the entire game, so there's no shame in getting stuck there for a while! You might not be able to get away with a single-stack army here.

Royal Griffins are great in Armored Princess/Crossworlds, but The Legend is before their time. You may want to look more closely at Inquisitors, which became weaker in Armored Princess/CW but generate unlimited Rage in The Legend. (Granted, Inquisitors work better with the warrior than the mage class, but I'm pretty sure they're still good enough for what you need to do.)