Optimization Discussion - Legend of the Invincibles

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MarvinToran
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Optimization Discussion - Legend of the Invincibles

Post by MarvinToran »

The Wesnoth forum discussion on this campaign is absolutely bonkers and has mostly troubleshooting in it. I want to talk about reasonably (not min maxing, but possibly farming items) obtaining an optimal unit. I’m new to the campaign and trying to gauge how best to proceed.

Gear: Is arcane resist really important? It seems like some units have enough easy stats that if you can stack arcane resist they have no weaknesses.

Is there a near final build with craftable items that just trumps everything?

What are the irreplaceable support items for people like leaders or bestowing backstab?

Units: assuming you want less units but better ones which are good? Are poacher or elf units good candidates for item maxing because of their good base attacks for multipliers?
Whiskeyjack
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Re: Optimization Discussion - Legend of the Invincibles

Post by Whiskeyjack »

In the first post of the LotI thread, you can find links to a number of resources (e.g., available items). You can also find a link to this page, where some people eternalized some of their coolest units. Note that because of changes and nerfs some (or all) of these units might not be build-able like that anymore.

Now to the strongest unit: This somewhat depends on your definition of "strong" - do you just want the highest damages possible? A unit that is unbeatable? A unit that can solo levels by themselves?

I am pretty sure, on hard difficulty (stronger enemies, weaker items) there is, if at all, only one very specific setup left that could achieve this (and needs a lot of work): You take a prophet via knight line with Dark Dragon Legacy (who should wear The Unstoppable and probably some strong crafted items for spear/sword; not sure anymore if there were any other specific swords and spears...), give it a Tome of Ancient Liches, let that unit die. Then you build your new Lich by giving him at least one Book of Magical Swordplay, a crafted Soul Render touch weapon, a crafted Deflector of Light, taking lots of AMLAs and stacking arcane penetration in every slot you can without sacrificing defenses (you probably need at least one crafted The Godless and one crafted The Scourge of All Living).

This way you can build a unit with ca. 100 arcane penetration, usual damage at least 80/6 on melee and much more on ranged, leech (your most important defensive tool) for both melee and ranged, all resistances >= 70, and a lot of cool and important special effects (immune to poison, immune to slow, darkens severely, etc.).

If I find the time I might look up a save file with that unit.

PS: technical support is probably the wrong sub-forum for your topic. :)

Edit: meant Prophet via White Mage line - this is necessary so that he can pick up a mace on the way.

Edit2: You got me thinking about an optimal unit again and I totally missed that this is not what you were looking for :lol:

To at least answer some of your questions:

1) resistances: depending on the difficulty you play on, it is not so easy to achieve enough resistances in the later chapters - you have to sacrifice offensive power to slot in strong defensive items. Arcane resist is indeed one of the most important, because its harder to come by in quantities that all your units are protected and there are some very heavy arcane hitters in the campaign.
I'd say: on easy, you don't need resistances, you can actually build units offensively only with healing (especially suck(X), absorb(X), and leech). On medium, you want to get at least 70% resists on fire/arcane/ice and 60% on the physicals for front line units. On hard, even 80% sometimes isn't enough without other means to support your unit (e.g., conviction, healers, illuminating/darkening etc.).

2) final builds heavily depend on the unit you are building, its legacy, and the way you are building it. I don't think there is the one optimal solution (the Dugi's items from crafting might be mentioned, but those are explicitly meant for people grinding, because in normal play you will hardly get that many black pearls).

3) Royal Diadem is very important and any item that has shielding (e.g., Iron Armour of the Friendly General) can negate the drawback of Warlords Rule which is important for offense. Also: penetration is really important for damage later on, having units with strong frail tide (or the magical pendant, can't remember the name right now) can circumvent having to build specific penetration items for every unit. But beware: if it wasn't fixed, the first value to apply is also always the final one. So if you have a unit with frail tide(10) next to an enemy, your hero with 50% impact penetration will actually do less damage when he arrives later.

4) Good units to stack on: In my experience both elvish Archer lines are very good. Elvish Sorceress needs a lot of items and AMLAs but then handily overtakes most other units. The elvish healer can get healing up to +34 (might be 32) and is way better than other units who normally can only reach +16 (I think Legacy of Light and Lethalia/Ephraim can get up to 24!?), but doesn't need that many items. If you have strong spell items, all three mage lines can be built to be very useful units. Despite not having a ranged attack, the Swordsman line is quite good. Because they need less experience and can, therefore, get more AMLAs Efraim and Lethalia are quite good units to stack as well. Ancient Liches (especially when you build them via Tome of Liches, which allows a unit to relearn its Legacy after death) are the strongest player unit in the game IMO. Dragon Riders can also become quite powerful units or good all-rounders (can be built from knights).
But with the amount of items in the game you are just not guaranteed to get specific items until very late in the campaign and having a well fitting Legacy can also strongly improve a unit - so building around what you have (and possibly retiring a unit if its legacy doesn't fit) is probably the better way to go for the first few chapters.
Last edited by Whiskeyjack on December 2nd, 2019, 3:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Optimization Discussion - Legend of the Invincibles

Post by Pentarctagon »

Moved to Strategies & Tips.
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take one down, patch it around
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Mathemagician
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Re: Optimization Discussion - Legend of the Invincibles

Post by Mathemagician »

I've found that the single most important thing in LotI is to maximize your resistances. Your units won't die easily if they don't take damage. The other thing I really like is slowing attacks - the ring of iced veins is great! To that end, my favorite units to max out are
  • duelist wizard (silver mage advancement) - best resistances in the game, plus absorb(3) from AMLAs
  • dwarvish hero (dwarvish lord advancement) - second best resistances, and good damage
  • dwarvish protector (dwarvish sentinel advancement) - good resistances + steadfast, which AMLAs to adamant
  • demilich - better resistances than most undead, and the movement costs are great
Though the duelist wizard's low damage prevents it from being a truly awesome unit. Other units I like to max out are the elvish seeress (magical attacks all around!), champion bowman (bow attack becomes focused) and elder mage (high damage, plus the doom attack is great for Beelzebub).

I disagree about Dugi's gear in part 2. It's not that hard to get enough black pearls if you smash a bunch of gems and gear. Last time I played part two, I crafted my first Dugi's Ward in chapter 8.

If you don't mind being a bit cheap, you can really max out some units with the extra weapons trick. If you give a spearman a spear, then advance it to swordsman, it'll keep the spear. The damage and weapon specials won't have any effect, but resistances, defenses, moves and abilities will. Soul hunter is good for this (+10 fire/cold and murderlust). This works for any weapons that disappear on advancement.
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Whiskeyjack
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Re: Optimization Discussion - Legend of the Invincibles

Post by Whiskeyjack »

Mathemagician wrote: December 13th, 2019, 8:43 amI disagree about Dugi's gear in part 2. It's not that hard to get enough black pearls if you smash a bunch of gems and gear. Last time I played part two, I crafted my first Dugi's Ward in chapter 8.
Of course you are theoretically able to craft at least the wards, but I always craft multiple Marrowwrends and/or Soulrenders and possibly other items that need black pearls. It seems more efficient to me - so I won't have leftover pearls until late in chapter 9. :D
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dolan
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Re: Optimization Discussion - Legend of the Invincibles

Post by dolan »

Yo, hope you're enjoying the campaign. One thing that took me a while to notice was that Legacy of Kings, and the Tome of Bards all stack. So if you get 3 or 4 units with these upgrades and they stick together, they're basically starting out with really high damage and resistances, if you can combine that with time of day bonuses, and leadership. Then you could be looking at around +125% dmg( 75% LoK, 25% Leadearship, up to 50% tod), and +60%res (4 people) without any gear. Have fun!
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