King's Bounty Unit Analysis Extra: Gremlins


Gremlin Towers are odd units all-around, with lots of special-casing effects, so many I'm quite certain I'm not actually aware of the full list. The game also doesn't provide much information when you right-click on them, just their current and max Health, which makes it even more of a pain to figure this stuff out, which is further compounded by how they don't actually have rigid stats in the first place. In addition to the obvious Health variability, their Initiative varies (And annoyingly even if you use Alt to activate the turn order display it won't include them for calculating turn order, not even by having a conspicuous gap in the turn order on the regular units), the Evil Gremlin's damage on their retaliation varies, and the strength of their spells vary, both in terms of the Spell's actual Level and also in terms of the Intellect-style boost they get.

That said, their Magic resistance is 80%, and they have 20% Poison resistance, with no protection against Fire, Physical, or Astral damage.

In The Legend, their Health is derived by totaling up the Health of the non-Gremlin units, applying a multiplier to that total, and there you go. This means fragile units lead to fragile Gremlins. (Ironically, this means fights against higher-end units often have relatively easily-killed Gremlins) The multiplier is based on the Item Level the fight is attached to -in the case of suppressing a rebelling Item, that's of course the Item's current Level, but when upgrading an Item it's instead based on the Level you're upgrading to. As there's no in-game way to see what Level you're upgrading to, this can make for a nasty surprise, because some Item upgrades jump multiple Levels at once!

As for what these multipliers are, they're...

10% for Level 1
12.5% for Level 2
15% for Level 3
17.5% for Level 4
20% for Level 5

So in The Legend, a Level 5 Item has its Gremlins have twice the Health of a Level 1 Item if the Health of the non-Gremlins has the same total in both fights. In actuality higher-Level Items have bigger armies, but still.

In Armored Princess, Warriors of the North, and Dark Side, Gremlin Health still derives from the Health total of the non-Gremlins, but it no longer uses Item Level as a factor. Instead, it halves the total Health, and then splits the resulting number up among the Gremlins -if you have two Gremlin battlegroups with similar unit types and numbers, but one has 3 Gremlins and the other 5, the 5 Gremlins will have less Health than the 3 Gremlins. This noticeably reduces how much Gremlin Health can be on the field at max; an Item Level 5 fight in The Legend with 20,000 non-Gremlin Health on the field with 5 Gremlins would be 4,000 Health per Gremlin. In Armored princess, it would instead be 2,000 Health per Gremlin. Conversely, it makes Gremlin count less dominating of fight difficulty; take the prior numbers but switch to 3 Gremlins, and in The Legend you drop from 20,000 Gremlin Health total to 12,000, whereas in Armored Princess its total of 10,000 gets redistributed so the individual Gremlins have 3,333 (Give or take a point) Health. It's much more consistent of a result and I very much appreciate it.

In all games, Gremlins scale their Defense, Intellect, and Initiative to Item Level. For Intellect, they get 7 per Level, meaning a maximum of 35 Intellect -notably, the player's Intellect peak overall rises with each game, so Level 5 Gremlins in The Legend are only a little behind an endgame Mage, whereas in Dark Side Daert looks down his nose upon a meager 35 Intellect long before he reaches his endgame.

Defense-wise, Evil Gremlins gain 5 per Level (So 25 at most) while Friendly Gremlins gain 3 per Level. (So 15 at most) Pointing your units at Friendly Gremlins is thus a bit more effective than pointing them at Evil Gremlins, so consider pointing Spells and Rage at Evil Gremlins and units at Friendly Gremlins if you can.

Initiative-wise, Friendly Gremlins have 5 base Initiative and Evil Gremlins have 3 base Initiative -except they add the Item's Level to that, so the lowest you'll see is 6 and 4. And almost no Level 1 Keeper fights exist in the series, so you might as well treat them as starting from 7 and 5, which is kind of nuts! And of course for Level 5 Items, that's an absurd 10 and 8 Initiative, a nightmare to get the jump on.

Oddly, base Armored Princess switched the Evil/Friendly Initiatives, but then Crossworlds switched them back, and Warriors of the North and Dark Side stuck to the above.

Evil Gremlins are fairly straightforward. They're basically a player-type caster, only trapped within turn order like a unit but ignoring Mana. The only caveat to this is that their counter-attack, though it appears to be a Lightning Spell, is actually a weak Magic damage attack with no special effects. (ie it won't bounce or Shock enemies, and on the flipside it can hurt Black Dragons, albeit only barely since it's weak and they're so resistant to the Magic damage type) Their Spell list is primarily aggressively oriented, aside from inexplicably having Divine Armor mixed in. (I guess to ensure they can do something, even if you do something gimmicky like only bring a Black Dragon stack?) The rest of it is Weakness, Doom, Sheep, Lightning, Fireball, and Pygmy. For whatever reason, they're a lot more aggressive about using Fireball in The Legend than in later games. Also note that they're strangely prone to Dooming and then Sheeping a unit -since Sheep clears all other buffs and debuffs, this wastes the Doom. So depending on AI silliness, you can end up with 4 Evil Gremlins accomplishing no more than 2 could do. This can even be exploited deliberately, such as by having Royal Thorns generate Thorn Hunters/Warriors, which surprisingly will often distract the Evil Gremlins into the Doom+Sheep wastefulness, instead of dropping Fireballs on the pair like you might expect. (Assuming you don't have other units clumped nearby: Fireball-slinging is far more likely when you have 3 or more units close enough to all be caught by a Fireball)

Friendly Gremlins are a bit odder. Firstly, their counter-'attack' is a non-damaging push, comparable to the Archmage's Telekinesis. This is mostly significant due to their second oddity: in addition to a proper Spell list, they can generate additional copies of any stack their team started the battle with, directly adjacent to themselves. They actually have to have a free space for this: if you block off all the tiles adjacent to them, they'll be unable to summon new stacks. The amount summoned is derived from the Friendly Gremlin's max Health; in The Legend, they summon a stack with roughly 33% of their max Health ('Roughly' because the stack is fully healthy; they won't summon a stack where the top member is missing 1/3rd of its Health to get the number exactly right), while in all later games they summon a stack whose Health is randomly from 62.5% of their max Health to 125% of their max Health, making this unit-summoning effect a lot more relevant past The Legend. Their proper Spell list is mostly oriented toward supporting their allies: they can cast Resurrect, Haste, and the atypically aggressive Slow spell.

Spell Level is odd. Friendly Gremlins always cast Haste and Slow at Level 3, Evil Gremlins always cast Weakness at Level 1, while the remaining Gremlin Spells have their Level determined by the Item Level: Spell Level 1 for Item Levels 1 and 2, Spell Level 2 for Item Levels 3 and 4, and Spell Level 3 for Item Level 5. This for one thing means Keeper fights have a fairly jagged difficulty curve -you can have two Keeper fights, one of which is maybe 20% more units, but which is vastly more difficult because the Gremlins have leveled their spells and boosted their Intellect.

That said, Evil Gremlins are affected more by this overall, as Friendly Gremlins summoning new stacks is not affected by their spell level and Friendly Gremlins are quite fond of summoning stacks, in addition to Resurrect being their only Spell that levels and their only Spell substantially affected by Intellect. I personally tend to prioritize Evil Gremlins in general, but these facts make it even more true the higher the Item Level is.

It should be pointed out that Gremlin casting, though partially randomized, does have some sensible rules to it, where for example Friendly Gremlins won't bother to cast Haste unless a good portion of their troops are melee units who can't currently reach any of your units. The rules aren't perfect (See prior Doom+Sheep commentary), but still. For one thing, don't expect save/load usage to significantly change their behavior if you don't like what they do.

Some oddities of Gremlins as a whole:

-You can't Fly over a Gremlin Tower as long as the unit lives. This is one of their more bizarre quirks, as no unit or battlefield object shares it. It usually doesn't even matter, but there's edge cases where it can cause problems for you. Lina's Gizmo is perfectly able to hover over them, surprisingly... which is frustrating, because its side effects are useless against Gremlin Towers, and it's perfectly happy to waste one of its attacks on a Gremlin Tower.

-Gremlin Towers are immune to almost all buffs and debuffs... but can be Poisoned and Burned. I don't really get that one, and their susceptibility to Poisoning and Burning goes away in later games. Not that it matters, since Poisoning and Burn do so little damage in The Legend, and in all later games they are immune to them. (As well as Freezing and Bleeding once those become damaging statuses) The immunity to buffs/debuffs has a bunch of implications, like being impossible to take control of them.

-Gremlin Towers are in many ways considered to be battlefield objects. This includes that Siege Gun provides a damage bonus against them (And honestly this is the only reason that Ability even really matters) and also means that a number of effects you might hope to use on them don't work. (eg Soul Draining and Rage Draining can't affect them) 

-It's completely impossible to move a Gremlin Tower. You can't use Infernal Exchange on them, and effects like Cyclops' Push Talent or Emerald Green Dragon's Target Capture Talent will either not allow you to target them in the first place or will fail to move them while inflicting damage. (This probably ties back into the battlefield object point, admittedly, but is worth separate commentary regardless)

-Attacking Gremlin Towers does not generate Rage. (This is only true in The Legend: in later games, Rage absolutely is generated by attacking them, making them much less biased away from the Rage-specialized class)

-Generally speaking, effects that can target Gremlin Towers will prioritize them outright. The Geyser Spell, for example, will only ever hit non-Gremlin units if it's generating more geysers than there are Gremlin Towers currently on the battlefield. As alluded to earlier, Lina's Gizmo likes to prioritize them, even though they're bad targets for it. That kind of thing. It's not some absolute rule, but it's widespread enough that it makes for a good rule of thumb if you don't already know for a specific case.

-Gremlin Towers don't interact with Action Points. You can't steal them to cause them to skip a turn, or reduce their Speed to delay their turn order. (Hence part of why Gizmo targeting them is frustrating) Indeed, you can't effect their Initiative/turn position in any way: all the Evil Gremlin Towers will always go back to back, and all the Friendly Gremlin Towers will always go back to back. There's no way to cause a Gremlin Tower to act earlier or later than the rest of its kind of Gremlin Tower. (Obvious example: you can see Shock being inflicted in The Legend, but it won't do anything) By a similar token, they can't Wait or Defend; if they can't do anything when their turn rolls around, they do nothing. (eg a Friendly Gremlin Tower you block in, with all your units being immune to Spells and no regular units on the enemy's team... it won't summon in new allies if, partway through the turn after its original turn opportunity, you move units so it has space available)

-Nonetheless, they seem to be treated by the game as having the default Speed value of 2. (As we'll see later, this gets used on Ice Orbs even though they don't use Speed for any purpose except turn order calculation. I'm fairly sure 2 Speed really is just the game's default value, if nothing was specifically entered) This matters for turn calculation reasons (Two units in the same Initiative tier may have one go ahead of the Gremlins because it's Speed 3 while the other goes after them because it's slower), but also crops up for certain specific interaction cases. (eg in Orcs on the March Veteran Orcs get an Ability that prevents retaliations if their Speed is higher than the target's. They need 3 or more Speed to not be retaliated by Gremlins)

-In The Legend in specific, Gremlin Towers are, for certain purposes, considered hostile to everybody: if an enemy Sea Dog uses Fury Attack with a Gremlin Tower within the strike zone, they'll hit it. If a Cerberus attacks one of your units with a Gremlin Tower in their strike zone, they'll hit it. Even though in both cases they don't have friendly fire! This isn't super-exploitable, but it's worth keeping in mind when it can crop up. (ie it can be a good idea to move a unit adjacent to a Gremlin Tower if you expect the enemy to target them with splash damage, even if said splash damage doesn't affect allies) Thankfully later games fix this bit of jank.

-Some Talents just can't target Gremlin Towers for no obvious reason. (The one I remember off the top of my head is actually an Armored Princess-onward example: Executioners can't Execute Gremlin Towers. This is just a regular attack, slightly stronger than usual, with special benefits if it finishes off the stack, so it's pretty weird it can't target Gremlin Towers)

-Gremlin Towers don't intersect with racial/factional stuff at all. This mostly doesn't matter in The Legend, but in later games you can see stuff like a Keeper fight where Elven forces are getting a mono-racial bonus even though there's Gremlin Towers still standing.

-As far as I can tell, Gremlin Towers seem to be treated as if their Level and Leadership is whatever makes them 'win' an interaction. Effects that fail on Level 5 units will fail on them (Even if an equivalent effect that works no matter Level does work on them), yet effects that target Level 5 units won't apply to them. (eg in later games Furious Goblins get bonus damage against Level 5 units) I'm... less certain of the Leadership point, as I'm not sure there's a case where Leadership is a factor that isn't being overruled by some other consideration (eg in Warriors of the North, Warrior Maidens won't be retaliated if the target's Leadership is low enough... and its Level is low enough. They always get retaliated by Gremlins, but this may well just be the Level favorability thing. Similarly, a lot of effects that are capped by Leadership, such as Mind Control/Charm/Magic Shackles, couldn't be applied to them regardless of what their Leadership is treated as due to their immunity to status effects), but I suspect it's true and that I'm just not remembering an example of it cropping up.

Not-technically-Gremlins is the point that Keeper fights are abnormal in general. Diplomacy can't trigger on a Keeper fight, for example, and this kind of pre-battle effect becomes more common in later games, with almost all of them being barred from applying in a Keeper fight. This means Keeper fights have an additional layer of difficulty, above and beyond the presence of Gremlins, which can have a pronounced impact if you're used to leaning on such effects.

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I'm not gong to be covering Gremlins in the later games. I've not noticed any major changes in their mechanics (They don't modify their Spell lists, for example), and to a larger extent whatever differences are of relevance will tend to crop up in talking about other units and the like. (ie the Trapper Medal can't trigger in Keeper fights, but I'll be explicitly covering that when covering the Medal itself. Though I suppose that brings up an example that wouldn't crop up normally in my analysis itself: the Trap Item also can't trigger in a Keeper fight)

The only particularly significant point worth noting is that when Ice damage shows up, it's not resisted by Gremlins at all, just like Physical, Fire, and Astral damage. This is most significant for the fact that a few Magic damage units switch to Ice damage, abruptly spiking their effectiveness in Keeper fights.

Next time, we get started on Spell analysis, starting with Chaos Magic.

Comments

  1. A few corrections about gremlins:
    - have 80% resistance to magic
    - gremlins' defence, initiative and intellect all scale with item level. Hp depends on both item level and defenders hp. Evil gremlins do not have attack stat - they use intellect instead, so your defence is irrelevant.
    - "friendly" gremlins (actually "good gremlins" in the original) have +2 to initiative compared to evil, not +3
    - evil gremlins can also cast Weakness
    - in the Legend, when friendly gremlins summon a unit, it's health is 33% of said gremlin's hp. Later games use different calculations.

    I think (but not sure) that their poison resistance is different too.

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    Replies
    1. Double-checked and updated the Magic resistance.

      Not sure how I'd double-check the Item Level stuff, especially with such a vague summary.

      I'll pay attention for Weakness and add it in if I see it happen, but I don't think I've seen Evil Gremlins cast it in any of the games.

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    2. Alright, I checked geremlins for the Legend and AP, specially for you:) That said, I can only check AP without crossroads, sorry.

      - they have only 20% poison resistance. Strangely, my memory tells me that they are way more resistant. I have no saves where I can test it but if it is indeed true, it is from some special hidden trait, like being object rather than unit. But their bacis poison resistance is just 20%.
      - initiative is X + item level, where X is fixed number. In the Legend it's 5 for good gremlins and 3 for evil one. Those numbers are switched around in AP.
      - defence and intellect are X * item level. X - is fixed number that is different in different games. In the Legend it's 5 for good gremlins and 3 for evil ones. In AP:
      - good gremlins: 3 for defence, 7 for intellect
      - evil gremlins: 5 for defence, 7 for intellect

      HP is calculated differently in the Legend and AP. In the Legend every gremlin's hp = combined hp of defenders * item level mod. Said mod is:
      - 0.1 for level 1 item
      - 0.125 for level 2
      - 0.15 for level 3
      - 0.175 for level 4
      - 0.2 for level 5

      In AP it's [combined hp of defenders]*0,5/numbers of gremlins.

      In AP when gremlin summons a new stack, it's HP is 62,5-125% of said gremlins hp.

      Your words about Weakness really surprise me. For me evil gremlins really like to spam it along with Sheep and Doom. And I checked - they do have Weakness in their spellbook in both the Legend and AP.
      Btw, levels for most of their spells also changes depending on item level. To be presice:
      - Haste and Slow of good gremlins are always level 3
      - Weakness of evil gremlins is always level 1
      - all other spells are casted on level 1 when item level is 1 or 2, on level 2 when item level is 3 or
      4 and on level 3 when item level is 5.
      -

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    3. Double-checked Poison resistance in-game via Poison Skull and Poison Spit in The Legend and Armored Princess, and it is indeed only 20%. (Maybe it got patched? I swear it was 50% when I was originally playing less than a year after release) So I'll be updating the post.

      I similarly double-checked Initiative in both Crossworlds (I don't have any base-game Armored Princess files) and The Legend, and in both cases Friendly Gremlins went before Evil Gremlins, which was what I'd remembered as being the case. It's possible base Armored Princess swapped them and then Crossworlds swapped them back, though it'd be weird. In any event it's been consistent across all the games in my ow play.

      When I'm more together I'll see if the numbers for HP and Intellect and whatnot match up to the Keeper fights I've got on hand across games, but I certainly buy that Armored Princess changed a lot of these formula, as Keeper fights are very obviously noticeably different in it. The Initiative numbers do sound right to me as well, as Friendly Gremlins start out not too difficult to get the jump on and get very unreasonable with more serious Keeper fights, which 5+minimum 2 would put them at 7 for Level 2 Items (Very high, but not too hard to go ahead of if you prioritize Initiative advantage) and 10 Level 5 Items. (Utterly monstrous, requiring extreme measures to go before for more than the Onslaught turn)

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    4. Alright, I checked and indeed, Crossworlds swapped gremlin stats back.
      With it good gremlin have base defence and ini of 5 and int of 7. Evil one have base defence and ini of 3 with the same 7 int.
      Later games use Crossworlds stats.

      Also, I loaded a Darkside save, started a gremlin fight and got hit by Weakness on the first turn. Made a screen but not sure how to attach it.

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    5. I see you never updated this page, which may be my fault.
      ...I never gave you the screenshot. 'sigh'

      Darkside is the only game where I have saves with available Gremlins but their spell list never is the same in all the games so it doesn't matter.
      Once again, on the very first round one of Evil Gremlins used Weakness: https://ibb.co/vkks11B
      Let's try again, with another item and another army - Weakness again: https://ibb.co/C6YdkWH
      And like I said, I got tons of Gremlin-casted Weakness through all tthe games. Your words about never seeing it are really baffling to me.

      Always feel free to remind me if I plan or promise to do anything. I really just forget about stuff sometimes.

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    6. Updated the post with almost all of this -I haven't added in the info on Spell level-up numbers, because I know for a fact Friendly Gremlins do NOT cast Level 3 Haste in lower-Level Item fights (Many low-Level Keeper fights would be absolutely horrible if they did), but otherwise it's up to date now.

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    7. Hello again. I wanted to visit to wish you merry Christmas but...
      ...I also forgot when exactly you (i.e. catholics/protestants etc.) celebrate it. For some reason I thought it December 26 >_<
      Still, Happy New Year.

      Ahem.
      This Steel Band if a level 1 item:
      https://youtu.be/-oy8FGgIsf4
      As you can see, Friendly Gremlin cast level 3 Haste (aka Mass Haste) on it's very first turn. Keep in mind that AI in general uses level 3 Haste only if it feels like sizable enough part of it's army cannot attack or make something useful. So AI with army composed completely of ranged units will never use Haste.
      In this video I killed all ranged units to maximize AI desire to use mass haste - and it used the spell right away.

      A random question - may I ask where do you live? I mean, state-wise. Feel free to ignore it if you wish.

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    8. I'm actually not big on holidays and haven't celebrated Christmas for over two decades, but I can accept the sentiment.

      Did some testing in later games and yeah, mass-Haste. Seems like Friendly Gremlins have a pretty high bar for 'this calls for Haste', explaining why I mostly see it on high-end Items filled with melee units. So updated post fully now, pretty sure.

      I've lived all over the US and even lived in Germany for a few years, so I don't really consider any state more my home than the others.

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