Part 52: Sanctuary Campaign, Map Four, Part Two

Nebiros has retreated to the northern Inferno castle. This is good for us, as it's far easier fighting him in a siege. Thankfully, no 300 damage a round in this castle, either.



Not to say the battle is exactly easy. Nebiros' creatures still hit hard, and we still have a large disparity in numbers. Our advantage is that his ranged creatures are Magic based, not Might, but they're still going to be dealing a lot of damage. Nebiros also holes up his Lilim in the castle, which is irritating.

We'll want to slowly whittle down his Lilim stack, since they're the more easily taken down of his two ranged creatures. The Breeder Mothers are annoying, but we thankfully outspeed them (thanks to our Kappa Shoya/Sacred Kirin) and can keep them tied down with Petrification. We're on a bit of a time limit here, as Nebiros will start moving his dangerous melee stacks out once walls get demolished. It is possible to keep them tied up even if that happens too early - Yuki-Onna can set up a bottleneck using Ice Shards, and you can also summon Elementals to blockade off holes in the wall (and use Mizu-Kami's Spirit Bond and Retribution Aura to deal more damage).

Incidentally, you'd want to do the opposite for a Might Irina and fight Nebiros out in the open, since you'd rapidly fall to his ranged attacks (especially since Irina won't be able to heal as well).



Your melee creatures will be stuck behind the walls, but what you can have them do is take out the occasional Gating attempts Nebiros will try. Kenshi/Kirin + Wanizame/Kappa/Mizu-Kami will take out a gate. This is fairly important, as you do not want one of Nebiros' super powerful melee stacks harassing your ranged stacks - they'll easily fall, not to mention they'll lose their accumulated Archery II bonuses. Nebiros will also send his Pit Lords out, since they can Teleport - your melee stacks can handle them fairly easily. (Hailstorm Aura + Crashing Leap easily wipes them out.)



Once Nebiros' ranged stacks are down? If you're lucky, the walls won't be down yet and you can fire away at Nebiros' melee troops easily (he might send his Cerberi or Demented out, but you should have melee units ready to ambush them as they come out). I end up leaving the Breeder Mothers for last after having essentially Petrified/Time Statised them all battle.



No perfect wins, but I'll readily take it. Mizu-Kami aren't that important anyway, they're just good for Spirit Bond and are kinda worthless in siege battles.

After that's done, we can access the subterannean gate behind the Inferno (or soon to be Sanctuary) town. We're technically not supposed to do this bit till much later in the game - it's a really tough fight.

But you know what? Screw safety. Irina can deal with anything.



No matter what dragon-god you worship, THAT is an unholy thing. Shalassa, give me the strength to destroy it!



Okay yeah that's kinda gross.

Click here to listen to the conversation!


Trust Shalassa, warrior. Trust your comrades; trust me. We have not come so far to die at the hands of a mountain of bubbling flesh.

Strong, you think you are. But I wield the power of Ur-Aazheel, Demon of Proliferation. I grow, multiply, feed, breed, ingest, spit forth...

I will break your mind, absorb your baby, feed it to my imps, sprew out a million copies of your child with my face...

Okay now that's just wrong.

All creatures can die. All creatures are mortal. And here, far from Sheogh, you are even more so. Shalasssssaaaaa!

Boss Fight: Breeder Queen

• Being a fat thing, the Breeder Queen has a whopping 100'000 Health. She also has a whopping Initiative of 55, and a ferocious Magic Power of 8750. However, she can't move at all, and is rooted in the middle of the (normal-sized) battlefield. She's also a gigantic target that's easily reached.
  
  
• She has two forms of attack. The first is an imp attack similiar to that of the Breeders. It can only be done on a target at least 3 tiles away, and it does a huge amount of Fire damage. The important note is that you can't prevent this attack by moving creatures next to her, as she'll still be able to shoot. The only way to prevent this attack is to have no creatures more than 3 tiles away (you can move shooters 2 tiles away from her so they can still shoot). You get an achievement if you beat her without ever getting a unit struck by this attack.
  
  
• Her other form of attack is a cleave-style move, where she'll basically turn in the direction of her target and swipe with her tentacles, hitting all targets in the attack's range for a buttload of Melee damage. There are two styles of the cleave, one which affects a smaller area (about one corner of her 'body'), and has no warning and a larger-hitting version (which hits for about half the perimter of her body). The latter version is usually only done for her second move, and has the targeted area light up with glowing tiles before her turn comes up, giving you time to move whatever creatures you can out of the way.
  
  
• She has all the usual Boss fanfare, getting 2 turns a round and being immune to Blind and Movement/Initiative decreases. She's technically subsceptible to Weakness, but Irina can't learn Dark Magic so you'd have to gamble on finding Scrolls in Marketplaces. She also has the usual traits of Demons, being vulnerable to Light (and being negatively affected by Heal) and having Fireproof Skin (though that's kinda worthless). Notably, she's also immune to the Kensei's Challenge. Like the Mother Namtaru, she also doesn't retaliate.

The Breeder Queen is generally meant to be fought much later on this map. She hits very hard, enough to take out tens of Kirin in a single attack, not to say the least of what she can do to other units. Her cleave is the worst part, as the damage it does is impressive and it's more likely than not to hit multiple targets, making healing even more difficult. You won't be able to move all your creatures out of the way in time, as her larger cleave is done as her second action so your Kirin/Kensei/Kappa will have used up their turns. She has a lot of health to tear through and her defenses are pretty good. Even getting the achievement sounds hard, as you'd have to move everyone up close, and thus in range of her cleave, and spread them out around her so they don't get massacred en masse.

Ideally, you'd have to come up after taking over and converting a few other towns, rapidly build up your growth, then come back and hope that you can take her down quickly, or that you found a lot of Weakness scrolls.

Or... you could just break her over your knee effortlessly.

Watch me humililate this boss! (Youtube via Polsy)


Not the full battle, but you can imagine how the rest of it goes.

Okay, so... what was that? Well, the Breeder Queen's AI is retarded, but we'll get to that in a second. Let's talk about setting up the strategy.

First, we deploy only two stacks - Sacred Kirin, and one other unit of choice. Mizu-Kami or Kensei are both valid choices, due to their Initiative. Mizu-Kami and Kensei speed tie with the Breeder Queen with Ambush, and outspeed her with Ambush and any +Initiative ring. I recommend Kensei, as Four Waves works well in this prolonged battle, allowing the Kensei to attack over and over again, and they also work well with Heroism. Mizu-Kami also work decently, especially if you have a Shrine of Celestial Waters boosting Water Magic. Their ability to Soak also means Irina can deal a bit more damage with Lightning Bolt. I don't really recommend Kappa Shoya due to their low Movement (they can't get a good angle to Leap on her, either).

During the tactics phase, we set up the Sacred Kirin on one end, and your Mizu-Kami/Kensei on the other. Your Kirin have the first move, so they move up to one corner and Hailstorm Aura her. On your second unit's turn, we Petrify our Kirin, then move them to the opposite end of the Breeder Queen and attack.

And that's it. The Breeder Queen's AI registers the Sacred Kirin as the most dangerous threat, and continously wail helplessly on the immune creatures, who just Defend. Meanwhile, Irina and your second unit wail on her. But wait, Petrify usually only lasts 3 turns (unless you're playing a Tears/Magic Irina), and has a 4 turn cooldown. So it seems we'll have to take some damage.

But not quite, thanks to the abusement of Wait. On the Kirin's 3rd turn of Petrification, where making almost any action would remove Petrification, we Wait. This preserves the Petrify till the end of the round, when which we just Hailstorm Aura for some free damage. Then at the start of the next round, we Petrify them again...



And repeat till dead. You'll also get the achievement this way, and it's hilarious beating her so early in the map. Of course, the more Sacred Kirin/Kensei/Mizu-Kami you have, the faster you kill her. Irina's huge Mana pool means you're never really in danger, and you always have Meditation.



And we get a Tear of Asha for our efforts. Sweet!

We also get the last piece of the Prophet set, the Robe of the Prophet, but I don't equip the full set and prefer to stick with the Emerald Yumi Bow instead.



Ahhhh! That's one horror that Ashan can live without!

Blessed be Shalassa, whose strength was with us today.

Shalassa!

Wind and wave!

Amazing. Before I kill Gerhart, I'll have to admit to him that there was one thing in his duchy more repulsive than he is.

Irina! Falcon and Wolf troops are leaving. Look!

I'm not sure exactly what it means, but I think that the Red Haven faction is supposed to clear our or lose some of their Heroes or something. I never really noticed it.

Either way, that was only the mid-boss of this map! Back to more killing.



We're ready to start expanding now, so we can start with that neutral town. There's an entry to it just a little east of our starting territory. It also holds some mines, stat boosts, Stables and a Elite building, so it's well worth plundering it. As for the town itself...



One second, swatting off Red flies. Anyway...

Hah! Who are you? What do you want?

I am Irina, once of the Griffin duchy and now daimyo and warlord of the Naga. I come for justice against your duchy.

If you come for war, you'll find that we learned it in the woods.



...Guys, this is embarassing. We'll make it a swift death, don't worry. It's the least we can do for your apparent balls of steel, staring down a Naga army like that.



Oh, hey, level cap. I suppose we could train Katashi now instead, but... ehh. She's one of the better secondary Heroes so I'll use her to fend off invading Heroes, but that's it.



We can also claim that Inferno town everyone keeps squabbling over. It's an annoying fight due to the stupid Altar of Destruction but I still manage to get away with a perfect win.



And we get ready to start seeing more Haven Heroes. Their army strength rapidly jumps at this point and we start seeing more Magic Heroes, so they start getting very irritating. But luckily they don't invade very often and Irina can still pull off perfect wins against them.

You! Wife of our duke, a lady of the realm... what are you doing invading our towns and killing our people?

You have a very limited view of who and what is worth defending. The Empire bartered me to a rapist for political ends; my apologies if the lessons you taught me were not the ones you intended.

You babble without reason. You are an enemy of Elrath now, and his wrath will be terrible.

Let him line up, then. He's third after Gerhart and the Demons.



And the Inferno's final town is just kinda sad. They only have a Basic Fort!

And the demons are gone. We'll finish off the Haven next update, and go a-Wolf-hunting.