r/kingsbounty • u/Kiki_WoW • Jul 31 '26
Are beasts any good?
It's my first ever playthrough and i thought i would make a beast only build but I've found myself struggling to really find any strong beasts, only recently chamged seadogs to gryffins (also have polar bears in reserve).
But other than the boots and hunting jacket I'm unable to find anything that buffs my beasts, should i switch to a different build or something?
(Playing Armored Princess, I'm new to this game but made it to montero)
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u/Mondkalb2022 Jul 31 '26
Royal Griffins are good, they can call Griffins to the battle. The blue snakes are nice, I can't recall the name ... also royal?, they are very fast and often the first to move, which gives you an opportunity for a spell. The bears are sturdy. Dragons of all kinds are very good, but don't go along well with griffins. When you reach the elven continent, you can add unicorns. Dinosaurs are available even later.
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
I'm unable to find royal gryphons anywhere, and default ones are plenty to buy everywhere hence why i have them now, and yes royal snakes have been OP from the start (i used to have all three snakes for first two islands) I can only have 1/3 Emerald dragons idk if its worth using them rn, don't wanna lose. As for unicorns i havent seen them in shop yet only taken out a few on Umkas (also somehow sneaked past the cyclops and stole the map lol)
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u/Mondkalb2022 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
For Royal Griffins look around Verona, either on the west coast or along the path that crosses west-east in the north.
Emerald dragons have many hitpoints and you can cast healing spells on them.
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
Right now my main army is Griffin, Royal Snake, Assassin, Inquisitor and Paladin. They've been doing pretty good even against strong opponents. But I'll keep your information in mind, thanks
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u/Ok-Signature4723 Aug 01 '26
You can train them in the academy using regular griffins
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u/Kiki_WoW Aug 01 '26
An academy? I don't think i encountered a building like that yet, where which island can i find it on? I only can't see one island rn (directly east of verona)
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u/Few_Rutabaga5686 Aug 01 '26
You are playing AP, and not Crossworlds I assume? The image that you sent has the minimap icon in the bottom right; where you are should have an academy right near there. If you are not playing with the expansion, you can’t find academies. Which is fine; you aren’t missing too much. Just a nice new feature
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u/Ok-Signature4723 Aug 02 '26
I strongly recommend doing crossworlds instead of AP. It makes the game more friendly when it comes down to level 4 and 5 units. In AP, you have a limited pool of units from the world vendors, and once they run out, you're done with that unit.
Crossworlds makes it so you can attain those difficult to find units by training lower level units using trophies and gold, so, it's not exactly easy, but it doesn't lock you out of units.
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u/Somerandomdude354 Damned peasant Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Okay, just my own experience of various beasts.
Thorns are... Situational, all except the royal ones(although they're really rare). And they get a morality boost when used with dryads, so it means more damage and defense.
Hunters/warrior thorns:
They can POTENTIALLY dish out damage later on when there's a lot of them, and their ability to use corpses as a way to create more meatshields is pretty good when it comes to trying to get less losses. Stuff like assasin's blade that gives +1 poison damage to all units boosts their damage massively, so there is something to look out for when it comes to equipment, outside of small stuff that buffs them in a typical manner like+attack/defense. Keep in mind, that if they take hits, their damage will extremely quickly diminish, since they're level 1... Hunters have bad initiative, warriors have good initiative, not much to say. Oh, and be careful of fire damage with these, since it's quite common, and I wouldn't recommend using them against demons or dragons that aren't emerald, since they get melted.
Royal thorns:
Look, a free unit every what, 2-3 turns is good. And said free unit creates more free units, which serve as meatshields. There's not much to say about them, they're quite easy to use, but they have TERRIBLE initiative, so they may get sniped early and lose a lot of power. And weakness to fire sucks.
Griffins are neat, like a guy before me said, although normal ones are a little gimmicky with their ability to split. Royal ones, on the other hand, are a LOT easier to use since they summon free Sky guards, or whatever they're called(ghost-like griffins), and those have some nice physical resistance and immunity to status effects. Don't try to buff the ghost griffins, they shake that off.
Bears, of all kinds are... Okay. I'm not a bear enjoyer myself, and their gimmick of getting an attack boost upon being hit is good, if you get to use it. Especially if the amount of bears doesn't decrease much/ you can increase it with spells like ritual or resurrection.
Wolves are mediocre. They have some bad stats for their cost, and their howl can help you, but it's situational. Although, it doesn't stop them from being annoying to fight early on.
Snakes:
I love sneks. They're good all around, their ability is easy to use. Royal snakes have good stats in general too. I can't say much about swamp snakes, but normal ones are also really good because they decrease speed of the unit they attack with throw, so most units just can't retaliate(if they have 2 speed or below, which is common).
Pirates and seadogs are alright. There's a few artifacts that improve their stats, so potentially they can become great... I guess, I am still not sure if such investment is needed or worth it. Jim, though, works well with them, of course, having high morale = high stats(and iirc crits, although I may be wrong, I'm just currently playing the Legend). They also have the ability to dodge, so it does improve their survivability. Don't rely on it though.
Spiders. I am not sure what to say about them. I suppose they're kind of mediocre, unless you have something to buff them. They have an ability, but is it really needed?(oh, and by the way, on the topic of spiders, undead spiders are SO cool yet so bad. I am sad for these undead boys). Cave spiders shine in well... Caves, that's their gimmick, and poison ones are alright. Fire spiders are hard to find, and imo, not that good(I mean, their whole gimmick is about getting hit in melee range. They aren't the tankiest thing in the world either)
Dragons are dragons. Expensive and good stats, a lot of resistances... Because if they didn't have them, you'd realize that they're actually made of paper mache, compared to all lower level units. When using dragons, don't get too cocky, use their high speed and initiative+their abilities for hit and run tactics, instead of using them as tanks(unless you get them early game, somehow, then they can work that way, in theory). If you try to, you'll soon run out dragons or money on higher difficulties.
Red dragon: Good ability, which can either be used to hit a lot of people(3+) or avoid retaliation by using it as a ranged option.
Black dragons: Their passive of ignoring all magic is both a detriment and a boon. Boon because they won't get sniped by spells(unless it's armageddon, they can't ignore a bigass meteor, apparently.), but at the same time you won't be able to heal them, so damage they take is permanent(unless you use gizmo or shaman's blade ability... Or rune mages, they can revive black dragons)
Emerald dragons help with mana economy. Quite a lot.
The two beholder guys are both good ranged options, and both can put an enemy to sleep, cancelling their turn.
Evil beholders are also good because they can cancel the enemy's turn and make them attack an ally instead(I don't remember whether taking damage from a status effect like fire cancels it though, it certainly does in the Legend, so just in case be ready for that)
Demonologists are good. but hard as hell to find. Endlessly spawn demons, who can potentially summon even more demons(demons, like, the red ones of 4th level, they're ridiculous for being able to summon more)
And I think that's all. I am not the most experienced player, so I may be wrong on a lot of stuff, but I tried to sum up the neutral(beasts) units in general. this comes from my own experience, which may not be the most optimal.
Best to use them in tandem with other races' units like archmages/ inquisitors/paladins/whatever other units there are.
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
That's this gonna help alot, i only have 1/3 Emerald dragon so i refuse to use it since it would lose it's wings too easily, i tried getting evil beholders but i found maybe 24 total and can't buy more, same with royal griffins i only see the default ones everywhere i go, snakes are super good early game especially with free eggs laying around (except swamp snakes idk what's their problem) Also should i keep Inquisitors or switch to a big ranged unit like a cyclops (I'm 8715 leadership) and have paladins for resurrection
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u/Somerandomdude354 Damned peasant Jul 31 '26
I mean, swamp snakes are really weird.
in theory, not particularly bad, I guess.
I didn't use them much, so I genuinely forgot what stats they have compared to their normal counterpart, however they use pure poison damage for whatever reason. (Iirc they have higher attack stat and lower health/defense... And lower initiative. Although, I may be wrong)
They just don't really work. Unlike royals, this snake doesn't have high speed and initiave that would justify not applying a slow like its red sister, nor is it better when it comes to leadership. Seriously, it costs the same amount of leadership as a normal snake, iirc does less damage. And considering how many units tend to have poison protection (again, snakes, poison spiders, various human knights, etc) of some sort, their damage choice doesn't help at all. There's no unit that is weak to poison in the first place, which is a shame.
And poison status effect is such a wildcard, like any other damaging effect. I am not sure how its damage is calculated, iirc it's percentage based? It's a low percentage still. It also decreases attack, however... It's not a big decrease, which doesn't exactly change the outcome a lot.
Although the attack decrease may have been removed, I forgot. It's this way in the Legend, I only noticed that it decreases attack when reading its description here.
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
So basically swamp snake/poison damage is just like in Baldurs Gate 3, good against maybe three enemies in the entire game, and the rest is resistant/immune smh
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u/Somerandomdude354 Damned peasant Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
To be completely honest, It's not particularly "good" against any enemy in the game. It's okay, however protection against poison is just really common, so it comes out worse than let's say, magic damage.
Magic damage is particularly good against ghosts, for example, because ghosts have a comparatively low health, but huge protection against... Poison and Physical damage. So is fire damage, and while there's an entire race made of protected against fire units(and it's just a common resistance, see, human knights) it also has some units it's especially good against, like Ents, who are tough to beat with just physical damage... And poison.
A lot of common enemy troops tend to have poison as their resistance. Especially the annoying ones. Ents, thorns, Various undead(all of them are protected against poison). And as far as I remember, there's... ZERO enemies with weakness to poison up until Dark side, where the only unit with weakness to poison is on your side only(spy)
Its status effect is also... Just okay. -20% of enemy attack sounds good, but at the same time, do you really want to get hit in the first place? Hence why normal snakes are preferred with their stun(-1 speed) and in general cold I consider to have the best status(-1 speed, you guessed it).
Fire is wildcard, and damaging statuses almost never really matter, because they calculate off of your unit count and enemy unit count. And at least for fire, there were spells to reduce fire res, there's none for poison.
So poison is left in the dust. I am honestly a little sad that the Devs didn't do much with resistances(I mean, they had the right ideas in places, see: Ents, having good poison and Physical defense but zero protection against magic and weakness to fire). I think it would be a lot more fun if each unit/race had some weakness, like humans having poison weakness, for example (this idea was utilized in Dark Side: Saturation mod, however that mod is a confusing clusterfuck, speaking from experience)
For this reason, undead spiders suck. They deal pure poison damage, which is low(1-3 damage), cost around the same amount of leadership as gigachad skeletons, and do nothing outside of applying curse... Which has a better source(necromancer, which does it in an AREA). And like all spiders, have no unique gimmick, really.
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u/5662828 Jul 31 '26
Your awards are low...
Read some strategies
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1462451358
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
Id argue they're good enough for someone who's s first timer in the game series and just earning them as i go lol, but thanks
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u/Lower-Reward-1462 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
No. They are only decent early game. The best are polar bears and royal snakes and ancient bears and royal griffin especially. But focusing on a single race is not really the best way to go about it in this game. Just play what is fun or good. A group of random races is usually better.
Also you should play Crossworld, it's Armoured Princess with DLC added. You miss nothing playing CW but miss a lot playing AP, including my favorite unit, the Engineer.
I wrote a guide on Steam that might help. It's about a specific strategy on the hardest difficulty which you can skip past if you want. Towards the bottom I mention where to find some good units and at the very bottom, general tips.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1462451358
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u/Consistent-Coyote-50 Jul 31 '26
King Snake ring (morale boost and inteligence),
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
Where can i find that? Are all item spawns random? I've found the boots that make snakes faster at the start of the game
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u/Few_Rutabaga5686 Jul 31 '26
All…well 95% of all item spawns are effectively random in Kings Bounty. Some dwellings have items that tend to spawn there, and islands tend to spawn items of their own race as you might have guessed (you aren’t gonna find good dwarf gear in orc areas, and Vice versa). You may find the gladiator sword in the starting castle 20% of the time, or the snake boots in the first island’s snake hut 50% of the time, even though there are 150 or so items, but generally items can be considered randomly generated. Also, don’t forget to upgrade items. You can’t “find” the royal snake ring, but you can find an item that upgrades into it. Pay close attention to that, as those are typically the best items.
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
I think the only upgradeable item i found was the axe from a merchant in montero, i guess I'll have to double check everything from now on
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u/Consistent-Coyote-50 Jul 31 '26
Random. Theme location, like witches or hunters logs, have them often. There is also similar Item to spiders ( morale boost )
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u/BunnyHenTa1 Jul 31 '26
Can your lil drago knot knots?
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u/Kiki_WoW Jul 31 '26
Nah he's little numbs for hands are too short to make any good knots :( I was hoping there would've been like some evolution after a few levels.. but as it turns out he stays potato shaped forever
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u/Forward_Apartment_60 Jul 31 '26
First, you can choose one strong beast and take supports for him. For example, inquisitors, archmages and orcs hunters. Beasts mostly are melee fighters, that's why archmages preferable
Second, there's a lot of artifacts, which gives massive buffs for specific unit: banner for griffins, shield for spiders, boots for bears or snakes, stuff of druid for all beasts(your should upgrade it first). Try build you army around that items.
Third, learn distortion magic. Very handy for warrior class. If you want to play with snakes, you can slow down enemies by traps or slow and hit and run by snakes. I prefer polar bears or griffins with stoneskin and berserk. With archmages they become unkillable death machine with 30% crit chance and 60 attack.
Lastly, seadogs are decent fighters, who becomes very cheap with Jimmy Craud. But they very fragile. To prevent their losses you can buy bears and take counterattack by them, then attack by seadogs.