King's Bounty (DOS, 1990): How to beat Arech Dragonbreath without Instant Army (1st attempt)

🎮 : King's Bounty (DOS, 1990)
🧠 : Impossible?
🔧 : DOSBoxShow more

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Bosses in this video: Magus Deathspell, Urthrax Killspite, Arech Dragonbreath.

If you have at least one town where they sell the Instant Army spell in the given game, there's a reliable way to defeat the final boss Arech Dragonbreath on the first try: https://youtu.be/E9DZUWPz4b8. However, this is possible to implement even without using this spell.

First, before you even fight Magus Deathspell, Urthrax Killspite and Arech Dragonbreath, get some strong army of 4 different types and leave one slot unfilled for army units of another type. Personally, I often hire Archmages, despite the fact that their morale is easy to decrease, since they usually make a lot of damage even with the low morale, in addition they can both fly and shoot. Also, it is recommended that you only recruit those army units that can fly — it will make the process of cloning and growing your army easier in future. In my case, these are the strongest types of flying army, i.e. Archmages, Demons, Vampires and Dragons.

Next, find a dungeon with some Ghosts that you can buy, preferably at least 25 of them, which is the maximal amount of Ghosts you can get in one newly discovered dungeon. Important: find out how many Ghosts you can recruit from the following sentence: "You may recruit up to [value]", be sure to do this before leaving the dungeon. It makes sense to write down the value on paper or some device in order to not overpass your Ghost limit in future fights and battles. In addition, it's better to have as high leadership value as it is possible, because the higher your leadership, the more ghosts you can afford.

Then, go to any town where you can find Clone spells and to another one with Teleport spells and learn some of them. You should be able to return there once you run out of these spells. Find some local/regular strangers to fight; in case you run out of them, you will be able to switch to visiting different castles with groups of monsters. Every time you face an enemy that has Demons, be sure to either kill them or freeze them with the Freeze spell, so that they will not kill half of your units of a certain army type in one round. Keep fighting until you find an enemy with such type of army which units can only perform an M1 move, they must not be able to move any faster, shoot or fly. When eliminating the rest of enemy units, teleport your Ghosts to them and attack those that your Ghosts can "eat", these are weaker enemies like Peasants, Sprites, Orcs etc. They increase the number of Ghosts in your army when the Ghosts kill them in large quantities without the enemies being able to respond too harshly. Keep cloning Ghosts and others, e.g. Archmages, unitl you get say 3K Ghosts.

Finally, once King Maximus sees that you can afford a horde of units of the same army type, he will let you do the same regarding all the types of army that you can recruit in the castle. Get several thousand of each type of army until you have the maximum number of slots (5) filled. That is it! Now your army is strong enough to beat the biggest villain Arech Dragonbreath.

Some more tips for successfully completing this mission:

1. Be sure to buy the ability to cast spells at the beginning of the game, as this way you will be able to collect significantly more money before the final battle.

2. Once you find The Book of Necros, it is preferable that you do not garb it until you collect as many treasure chests as possible, including those in deserts of Saharia, as some chests contain spells that can increase your max # of spells. This is because the book doubles your spell memory, so in the moment of picking up the book the more your max # of spells is, the better.

3. The same goes for The Crown of Command — it is preferable that you do not garb it until you collect as many treasure chests as possible, as some chests contain money that can increase your leadership if you spend it on the army by pressing B. The crown artefact doubles your leadership.

4. Try to use Time Stop as much as possible. It will save you a lot of time and prevent various monetary losses that often lead to the collapse of some parts of the army.

5. Use Town Gate and Castle Gate to navigate between towns and castles respectively. This way you will avoid losing TIme Stop duration and money, especially when going to other continents.

6. When fighting Magus Deathspell, be sure not to allow your Ghosts "consume" too many of his Peasants, in order to keep your army under control.

7. Use Archmages to clone them, Ghosts and other army units by "trolling" M1-only-moving enemies, such as Trolls, Gnomes and Peasants, as shown on 9:54.

8. Never let the number of your Ghosts exceed the number of Ghosts you're allowed to have. Otherwise they will get out of control and turn against you. In that case they might be even more difficult to fight than Arech Dragonbreath himself.

9. Every time you find a treasure chest with money, try to spend it on your army by pressing B. This way you will increase your leadership, and therefore, will be able to afford more army units.

10. Take care not to completely lose your Time Stop duration by walking through the desert or going to another continent by boat, otherwise not only will you risk loosing money or/and army, but also your Ghosts may turn into Peasants.

11. In the battle with Arech Dradonbreath, try to block flying enemies by approaching them and protect your shooters from them. For this reason, it is better to leave the top slots of your army for marksmen.

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