Stronghold campaign - Shatter Dark or Luck?

[maltz]

I just stepped into mission 2, so please correct me if I am wrong about what's coming ahead.

I heard that Shatter Dark would be useful later in the mission, where you fight Necromancers who can puppet master / frenzy your stacks. At Expert level you get one less turn of frenzy and shorter puppet master. The problem is one turn of frenzy still hurts a lot, and puppet master is still doing considerable damage.

How the alternative here - Luck, Magic Resistance & Barbarian's Luck? Let's say if you can gather the entire Lion's set, get some lucky artifact so you can reach some very high luck, say +9 like Orlando. That would add up to 45% magic resistance, plus 15% from its prerequisite - 60%! Isn't it quite nice? Plus Luck is a great skill for daily neutral stack fights.

I haven't seen anybody bringing this up before. Any thoughts? Thanks.

[Omega_Destroyer]

I'd go with Shatter Dark. It will pay off later on. Trust me. I swapped it out and regretted it.

[Elvin]

Barbarian's luck gives magic protection, not resistance and I'm not sure it gives bonus above 5 which is the effective cap. Anyway I did not mind getting shatter dark because there's a memory mentor in the last mission.

As for the necromancers I charged them with warmachines and they had no chance. Flaming arrows and triple ballista was my most effective skill with Gotai's insane attack.
Still shatter dark was needed against the final academy town.

[Omega_Destroyer]

*SPOILERS*








I think for the very last campaign mission, Shatter Dark is extremely useful for the last seige. It sucks being hit round after round with Dark spells.

[maltz]

All right thanks.
After chekcing manual v3.0 indeed the maximum effect of morale & luck is still capped at 50%.
So the max. magical proof (I guess proof means resistance?) for barbarian is 40%. This is still not too bad.
Maybe we can pick it in addition to the Shatter Dark skill?

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I went with shout, attack, leadership, defense, luck.

That gives you Might Over Magic, Protection, Magic Resistance, and Barbarian's Luck. Shatter skills not needed. Your spell power should be high if you are visiting all the power ups and collecting the set artifacts.

GOW

[Omega_Destroyer]

I had Luck and the magic resistance skills from it, but lucky for me, the enemy had the staff of Sar-Issis. I was not a happy camper.

[AngelEyes]

I took on the siege battle with Expert Shatter Dark and it wasn’t easy at all. The enemy hero cast Frenzy and Puppet Master on my troops ad infinitum.

If I’m reading the manual right, Expert Shatter Dark reduces 4th and 5th level spells by one mastery level. As far as I can tell, though, Frenzy and Puppet Master are exactly the same on Advanced and Expert mastery levels. (Actually, it looks like the only high-level spells affected by Expert Shatter Dark is Vampirism and Curse of the Netherworld) So no help there. Maybe if had the Detain Dark perk, it might have helped some…

As an aside - after considering all the high-level spells for all schools - I think Expert Shatter Dark is the least useful of the “Shatter” skills.

I think if I had to do this one again, I would have gone the Luck > Magic Resistance route equip my hero with as many magic resistance artifacts as I can. At least then, I would occasionally get to use my Earth Daughters!

[tb5841]

If I remember rightly, Frenzy lasts for two turns instead of one at expert level, and Puppet Master can't be used on level 7 units without expert dark magic. So they're not quite the same...

[maltz]

I have got Barbarian's Luck and so far I have never seen any significant rate of magic resisted. I wonder whether it is bugged?

Or magic proof actually means magic damage reduction? The same term "magic proof" is also used in the Dwarven King artifact set. If you wear 2 you get 40% magic proof. However, while I have it on I receive much less damage from an ice bolt.

A fixed ratio of damage reduction hardly qualifies as "luck"...

Anyways, I wonder whether one gigantic stack of Untamed Cyclop + 6 x 50 Chieftain stacks + Triple Flaming ballista can do the trick here. Gotta try it myself.

[Elvin]

Yep it's reduction. And being 5% per point of luck it's not that significant but with 5 luck it's not bad.

[maltz]

That's a really bad use of word. X-proof actually means X-resistant.

[maltz]

I actually got both Luck and Shatter Dark, but...
Please see my replays for the last two battles of c2m5:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/featur ... final1.sav
https://www.celestialheavens.com/featur ... alaric.sav

This is total madness.