Insane Difficulty: Calimari Navy Video Playthrough - Insane Difficulty

Stage 27 - City of Xanadu

The Tier 4 dragon squads are definitely a challenge to defeat. I think the key is to take advantage of their ability to only do 1 type of damage. Luckily Kraken have high fire, cold and black resistance, so its a matter of tossing in the right little guys to back them up. Liches work pretty well, since they also are strong vs those 3 elements & can do the reverse elemental damage to the dragons. Halloweens work well to drop them down from 400 hp & can tank all but the Ruby Dragons pretty well. I thought the Vampire + Tigermen would work out really well too, but the Tigermen did not work that great against Ruby & Platinum dragons. 3x Vampire + Kraken would be pretty spectacular though.

I did not use it for all that long, but I really enjoyed my 2x Sylph + Yushis + Kraken unit this stage. The Platinum Dragon + Kraken + Monk unit also tanked a bunch of white damage from enemy Sylphs.

Hmm that's interesting. I never considered the fact that you could just get Hikash to basically kill himself. I might have to give him Blade instead. <_<

It is his 5th attack at least, so you have to really be persistent to see it

I spent some time catching up lower level creatures by killing Frost Giants in city of Xanadu. Now no one (useful) is lower than level 20 & most are 24-26, with a few 27 & 28. I reorganized my entire army, putting in mostly my lowest level characters, except for a few key groups (full white, full black, full fire, low sky princess group, etc). The goal is to get 50-60 characters to level 27 or 28 by the end of the next stage (second to last stage). If I can do that, then I think I'll be ready for the end game.

I also will have to decide how to spend my ~800K goth. Likely it will be split between cure all, boots & revives to spam during the last stage ... it is tempting to buy +str or +agi (I have a merchant) but at 180K+ each, I think I'm better off with healing. I also need to decide which characters to give all my accumulated +stat items. Likely it'll be whichever characters are most needed for destroying Diablo.

I think I have a much better plan for dealing with the mini-bosses in the last stage this time ... tailor making a few units to deal with each (like flying for the quake boss). Last time I had 0 of some classes & 1 of some others, but this time I have a lot more variety (except in large beasts) so I should be quite a bit more flexible in the last stage.

Will the anti-Quake unit still have an octopus? If so, that poor octopus... It's good that you have a plan, though.

So, what do you think about sniper units like that Eagleman group as far as the new retreat mechanic? Generally, you can't retreat until after one of your characters is dead, which is rough. On the other hand, you can tell that a unit has snipers going in and make sure you only fight that unit with a durable leader (which was kinda the point of these units: to force some formations out of the player that have non-mage leaders), and in those cases, that leader should either survive or be able to take enough damage to run away. So I am a bit conflicted.

Addendum: That Lich-paletted Gold Dragon is the sexiest thing I have ever seen.

Addendum the 2nd: It would actually be pretty funny to have a boss that takes 1 damage from everything except his own Ianukis. Ideas, ideas.

I have a few ideas for the anti-quake group, which will include my 3rd nixie* (the first two have to be in the princess units) Here is my current, though I have toyed with devils & such as well. I want to keep the super sylph + Yushis unit together to do white damage to some of the predominantly black groups I'll be up against.

The Raven Man would actually be in front of both the Seraphim and Nixie - just having a little trouble getting it to appear that way. The Platinum Dragon would be in the back.





*For some reason quake misses Nixies, but not Krakens. It should just not be usable in the water, but that's likely a huge pain.

I think the Sniper AI units are great. It really makes you look ahead & plan ... or pay big time. They are definitely all doable, if you made a flexible army. Its a great feeling to take 1-10 fire damage from 3 Raven Men all focusing fire on your own Raven Man with a fire charm.

I do really like the "inky black" gold dragon. It looks nicely corrupted by the Lich's presence.

Hikash just needs black resistance and he is pretty much there

Yeah, that unit should do well against Luvalon, I'd think. Though he might give the Seraphim a pounding with his ranged attack (I don't remember what tactics he is on).

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Ah, yeah, thanks for reminding me. That is a bug. Mermaid/Nixie are in a place that used to be occupied by air units, and apparently the Quake-dodging part of being an air unit is still there (the code probably just checks for their class ID *grumble grumble*). I wouldn't worry too much, though. If you weren't doing a water run, that Nixie would just be another Seraphim or a Devil instead.

It would be an interesting strategic tilt to, say, have Quake fail in water and do extra damage in mountains. I'll have to think about that. Though that change would be a pretty big commitment for something fairly minor. It should definitely be low priority, at least.

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True, but I find an enemy that can only be killed by black attacks equally amusing.

I'm leaning more towards using my Ruby Dragon now against the Quake grouping ... I might want my Platinum Dragon to fight the Seraphim unit. If Luvalon does target the squishies, I'll just have to make two flying units and rotate them or something.

I finally killed Endora (uploading video) & am redoing all my groups for the last stage. It is interesting how some of the groups are really good at killing monks (like the quake group). I might only deploy 4 monks in my initial 10 units (but use more vs the stage bosses I'd think).

Stage 28 - Zetegenia

Some serious blitzes here, with enemy hard hitters like fire based sniper units (Raven Men + Ruby Dragon) or 3x Sylph units showing up at the same time multiple Gares units were assailing the base.

I stuck by the base the whole time, which at least spread out the enemy waves & gave me more time to heal between them. That's another good reason to give more bonus for liberating, to give more reason to not just turtle up like this.

Good to see Sylphs are still broken as shit! How many tarots do those monsters have?

Lawl at the green Hulk eagleman.
Devil palette Evil One = baller.
Pink robed Liches = fabulous.
LOL @ the troll ass octopus. "You want me to hit the Titan right? I'm gonna hit the Titan."

Endora ain't no scrub. Maybe it was a mistake not to include her in the final stage.

Would you be able to send me a copy of your save prior to the last stage?

I don't know how many tarots the Sylphs have, but definitely they were not there for all of the tarot madness. I think I put them into action when my creatures were about level15 ... but I didn't use them regularly until they hit Sylph class.

Endora is definitely not a scrub, but I also didn't exactly have a bunch of level 28 Dragoons, Dragon Masters, Generals or Samurai Masters. I had worked all level on building up other classes instead.

I sent you a save state in pm. I don't think my saved ram is up to date, but I can get that if you need it instead.

It was definitely a strong showing for Endora, but this makes me think on her attack rotation, and others like Hikashe, Rashidi, etc. After doing w/e damage we can to one of them during a battle, no one's gonna stand there and eat their last 4-6 attacks, right? Then, what's the point? It's almost like a spell in an RPG or MMO that no one ever uses. In a way, they're already strong enough, but it seems like they're getting cheated...by pretty much anyone that fights them. I'm not suggesting no running at all, but maybe there's a way to condense their attacks so they get their damage in around the same time that we do. Not *all* of it, but more.

The single target dragon breaths are str-based, btw. So that's why they were fair game vs. Endora.

I did about 3 days of the last stage so far ... now I am holding my own pretty well, without using healing items, but it was ugly at the start. The biggest issue was that I tried to fight in the water ... but it just takes too long to get back to base and heal, so I got caught again by more the moving bosses. Sitting on the base worked better, except for my top tier dragon + kraken units which I fly around.

I do have to sit and take some of Hikash's attacks (after the Titans are dead anyway), because my units are as mobile as a rock while he's high sky. Otherwise he just gets away and will heal. I suppose most armies won't suffer from that drawback, though.

Also, dragons are flying but get hit by Quake In retrospect, I should have expected this ... since they were not originally fliers. So I changed my "anti quake" unit to be:





I wish I had more devils though - they have higher physical defense, to take the second/third round attacks (I can't run away due to dodging all quake damage & the cap).

For Hikash I am using Halloweens + directed attacks to rip through his Titans (equipping power shields on the Halloweens and black swords on the front line). Then it's just a matter of mass melee with black weapons.

Once I make the movement changes, I may not find it so necessary to have so many high sky generals. I was playing a little of the last stage myself, and it's kinda awkward that Luvalon is high sky and thus will most likely run into your high sky units... with his Quake unit. Though I'm pretty sure I did it to be nice to non-flying units as they didn't need any extra hate.

Thanks for the info on Dragons/Quake. I'll be sure to get that fixed as well. Those are some pretty interesting units, glad to see Halloweens get some use. I've always found them to be underrated (not great, but not bad) and in my hack I improved them significantly, so I think they are pretty potent force. I even sent a page-long email to the author of houseofwacks.com like... god... 7 or 8 years ago making a case for why Halloweens deserve better than a "D-" rating, but he never did change it haha.

I assume you're leaving animations on for this stage? That's another issue I need to look into fixing...

Hikash is definitely the biggest pain for me - so I'm glad I found the Halloween method of getting rid of his helpers. Even after killing his Titan helpers, he still packs a huge punch & it takes forever to kill him though

I am slowly building all my groups up to level 30-31 & then I need to make some controlled strikes to get each of the bosses. For Gares, he is weak to white magic, so pretty sure I can take him with 2 level 31 white magic groups, though it might need a few battles for each of them.

For the other bosses, I think I'll need quite a few more groups to defeat them ... I might convert my hero to a high sky unit and then use summons to zerg the boss & then bells to get back to the base in time to defend it.

I am mostly leaving animations on, though I've turned them off accidentally once or twice.

Stage 29 - Temple Shalina (part 1)

I reconfigured my groups and level'd them up until I had 2 white back line groups ready to go. These flew off to the enemy base to take out Gares. There are many repeated fights, so the boss fight can be found at 2:57:11 if you want to skip ahead.


I'm currently reworking units again to get a bunch of Samurai, Dragoon, General, Evil One, Dragon Master units at 29-31 & then I'll rush them at Rashidi while holding the base with 5 other groups.

So I decided not to use summons and zerg Rashidi, but its taking a long time to get into position to do it. Maybe I'm playing way too conservative ... but I'll get there eventually

Sounds like you're having a painful ole time over there~ Good to see the last stage is as fearsome as ever. Seemed to be some points of noticeable frustration as well, heh. It seems you figured out why Hikash was doing so much damage. As to Randals: He doesn't really have super high mdef, he just has really high magic evasion (and normal evasion). So he can be damaged (inconsistently) with just about anything. He also has really high hit rate with ailments.

What kind of item and goth reserves do you have for this stage?

I used my 800K to buy about 40 heals, 40 all heals, 15 revives and 15 bells. I should have purchased 10 summons too. With only 2 summons, I can't pop in and out at will. I have about 10 heals, 10 revives & 30 all heals left. Maybe 12 bells.

I have fought enough that I find items and sell them for $ too ... or get tired of having a full inventory and sell some stuff. I have found 2 bloods, a dragos, a crown, 2 fullmoon stone, some beasts, sunshines and moonbeams.

The frustration is mostly that it takes so long, with the movement speed of kraken in various parts. With a normal army, this would be so much easier .. particularly chasing down wounded mobile bosses. In earlier stages, I could just camp & clear the waves in the water ... then go for the boss when they are done. This time, they don't finish. At least not yet ... if its not infinite, there's always a chance I could finish it at this rate. I think I've fought between 10 and 20 of most units, though after 20 I tend to lose count.

I just beat Rashidi & I decided to back off ... rather than splurge all heals and try to kill Diablo with the same 5 melee based units & elemental damage weapons. I might have been able to do it, but I'd rather regroup and get the right units for taking him down. I took some inspiration from one of your princess units to do more ranged damage to Rashidi too