What should I do first?

[herbiehanx]

Just started the game and picked my green dragon, playing as 'paladin' with normal difficulty. Thing is, almost every enemy is marked as 'lethal' and because I don't have much 'leadership' yet, I can't add more troops to beat them. What should I do first? Sail with the boat and collect stuff, or try to avoid enemies on the main island (there's a cloak fellow with huge troops blocking my way though)?

Edit. Never mind, I managed to beat the enemy and now exploring the island.

[tiamats4esgares]

Hi! Welcome to KB:Crossworlds, glad you're playing the game! :) One of my favorite games of all time.

I'm not saying you should restart you game, but one neat little trick you could have done is place your starting units in the castle before doing the tutorial, because they replenish them afterwards. Then you'd have double! But it's no big deal if you didn't.

You start off with only 3 units, and you can have up to 5. Plus, you gained some leadership from the tutorial so now you should be able to hold more than they gave you. You could buy more Swordsmen or Bowmen if you want. Inquisitors are also good. Peasants are not. You want units that have a lot of health so they don't die as easily. Your Peasants will die like crazy. Inquisitors should last for a while (AND can revive units if they die).

Your healing spell is also only useful if they have a decent pool of HP to heal. What I mean by this, for example, is Bowmen have 34 health. They can get hurt 33 and you can still heal them. Once they get hurt 34, however, you'll lose a unit. This can't be healed by the spell Heal (or by Priests), but CAN be healed by Inquisitors (though don't expect much in the early game, and it's only once per battle).

Some units you have available to you will be random, while others are fixed (like Bowmen and Inquisitors). So I can't know 100% what you have and tell you "X unit is good and X unit is bad" but I can give you some guidelines.

You might have access to Rune Mages, but you can't use them yet as they are 2000 leadership!

In addition to Inquisitors, Swordsmen, and Bowmen, other units that are useful right now could be Assassins or Witch Hunters.

Goblins and Orcs are a little confusing to use but feel free to try. Orc Trackers are pretty good, as are Goblin Shamans.

Robbers, Dragonflies, Devilfish, Thorn Hunters, and Thorn Warriors are bad because they're low on health. If you're out of gold and desperate, though, you can use the green sprout things in your inventory for some free Thorn units. If there's too many and it's above your leadership, put them in reserve and then back in one of your 5 main slots; it'll automatically only put what you have leadership for.

Later on, Thorns will be useful to upgrade to Royal Thorns with trophies, but you need to save up trophies first. Speaking of trophies, the first thing you do should be to go to the Military Academy and beat that first easy battle. This will give you access an item that gives increased EXP and gold, as well as lets you start earning trophies. (Royal Thorns are probably THE best early-game unit, and will be useful for a very long time.)

Also feel free to buy any equipment you see in the shops for increased ATK, DEF, Leadership, etc. Remember many items you can only have 1 of, so pay attention to that (like only 1 helmet for example). Don't worry about buying scrolls yet as you won't be able to learn them until you put some points in the Magic tree.

This should all be enough to get you started. I've heard people describe King's Bounty as like "peeling an onion" and that's a good metaphor. You need to go around and get what you can without fighting, and fight only the fights you can win. If you can't beat someone yet, try to avoid them. Save often, too. Make sure to save before each battle.

You don't have to, but to make things easier you can use the boat to go around exploring the island. If you find a map, you can even go to other islands. On the opposite side of the island from where you start are 2 Devilfish roaming around. They are incredibly weak, and good for you to get some easy wins on. You may be able to find more units and items from the tower near there, and find other goodies on the ground too to help you out before you start any "real" battles.

Don't feel like you HAVE to, but if you do make it to the second island (Scarlet Wind), there's a house out in the water in a corner of the map that has Engineers, Alchemists, and Droids -- all of these make great early game units. (Engineers are my favorite unit in the entire game. They are awesome! They are 380 leadership, and yes, you can get that much before you even start you first battle hehe.)

Also on Scarlet Wind, you'll find Jimmy Kraud. Talk to him and make sure to say the nicest things to everything he says. If you do, he'll give you an item that gives more EXP and gold. It's Regalia, though, and you can only equip one. So make sure to take him with you so you can give it to him. If you end up wanting to switch companions later that's perfectly fine as there's virtually no loss to ditching him. He can also equip a second weapon, a second pair of boots, and a second armor.

The "Jolly Sailor" Tavern (which you are right by when you get to Scarlet Wind) will also have a really good early-game unit at random. It could be a Demonologist, Royal Gryphon, Cyclops, and I think maybe even Royal Thorns or Paladins. There's a lot of options here. Some of them are more leadership than others so you may not be able to use them yet.

Speaking of Royal Thorns, they are 380 leadership (Same as Engineers). They also only cost 170 trophies to make so once you have enough, yeah, do that. Once you get to 380 leadership, you're set, trust me lol.

The skeleton on the small island near Scarlet Wind (with the cemetery) is also pretty easy to kill and the building behind him sells Archemages which are a good unit if you know how to use them.

Sorry for so much info. I guess it was probably a lot. Hope it helps!

[herbiehanx]

Thank you so much for detailed info! I just cleared the starting island without fuzz, only in the last (optional) undead garrison I had some casualties. Really liking the game so far!

One question: is it ok to spend few points to other two skill trees besides the 'paladin' one, or should I focus solely on it? I kinda already spent some runes on mage and warrior tree, because I thought few extra attribute points/leadership might be good in the beginning.

[tiamats4esgares]

Congrats on beating the first island!

Yes it's perfectly fine to get passives from the other two trees. You'll want to be well rounded. If you only spent points in the paladin tree you would end up with a ton of extra might and magic runes, so may as well use them.

For the other 2 trees I would focus primarily on rage, leadership, order magic, and distortion magic.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Originally posted by herbiehanx:

Just started the game and picked my green dragon, playing as 'paladin' with normal difficulty. Thing is, almost every enemy is marked as 'lethal' and because I don't have much 'leadership' yet, I can't add more troops to beat them. What should I do first? Sail with the boat and collect stuff, or try to avoid enemies on the main island (there's a cloak fellow with huge troops blocking my way though)?

Edit. Never mind, I managed to beat the enemy and now exploring the island.

The first time you unlock an island you should go there and take everything you can without a fight, it helps a lot.
You could experiment a bit too with units but some of the best are:
Marauders, inquisitors, paladins,cyclops and evil beholders, this is what i use a lot. You can replace cyclops later with a level 5 of your choice or something with damage.
I started playing on impossible and most kiteing for the first 3 islands.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3nYnHvyp9Yo&list=PLq7wBqfieZx8n243BWlDaDraaXQsY5HX4&index=1

Dont be afraid to restart the game if you feel like you made mistakes. Try to focus on geting the chests achievments and battles without losses. Also use all items and skills and give more exp and gold, this will allow you to explore more of the game(units, artefact combinations etc)

You will have to use spells too so dont waste a lot of crystals until you max out the skill for reduced cost(-45%).
Another fun thing is to remember where you can recruit units and always have equiped the item to get trophies.

There are also set items that make you op, like the ice set that slows down the enemy

[tiamats4esgares]

Evil Beholder is another unit that can be found at the Jolly Sailor Tavern! Lots of good units there.

My recommendation for a tier 5 that you replace Cyclops with is Red Dragon. Any dragon is good though but I like red the best!

[herbiehanx]

One more question. Is it normal that troops with 'neutral' morale go rogue or get frighten in every battle? I have two stacks of archers who I can't control at all because of that. My other troops are monks. inquisitor and griffins and they have better morale and don't cause problems.

[tiamats4esgares]

Originally posted by herbiehanx:

One more question. Is it normal that troops with 'neutral' morale go rogue or get frighten in every battle? I have two stacks of archers who I can't control at all because of that. My other troops are monks. inquisitor and griffins and they have better morale and don't cause problems.

No. They are doing that for another reason, not morale. The least likely option is you're against something that fears them, like wolves, beholders, demons, or devil fish.

More likely, it sounds, is you don't have enough leadership. This could happen if you maxed out how many you have based on your leadership, then took off equipment giving you leadership. If you look. You'll see a fraction over 1 like "11/10" or whatever showing how many you have vs how many you CAN have. Also there's a little red mark on them to indicate this.

So yeah if you have too many for your leadership, then they go berserk until that number drops back down below your leadership.

[herbiehanx]

Yeah it is the leadership as I upgraded some troops into archers. and didn't realize I might get too many. Thanks!