Dark Side Unit Analysis Part 9: Vikings

In Dark Side, Hardened remains a quasi-unique Viking Ability.

Hardened
The unit has 10% Ice resist and gains 50% more Defense in snowy battlefields.

Additionally, Runic Knowledge has become a lot more exclusive, as its mechanics have been stripped down. It works out to...

Runic
Once per turn, the unit will do 20% more damage on an attack. Once per turn, they will take 15% less damage from an attack. These effects activate automatically the first time they could be applied.

... which is much less versatile than the old effect. But at least you're no longer managing the effect, or directing a Valkyrie to manage the Runes for you, and for longer battles there's no point where you actually run out of Runes. Plus, you're using both Runes at once if you melee attack or are melee attacked and a retaliation is involved, unlike Warriors of the North.

Overall, the new approach to Runic is a moderate buff to melee Vikings -since they get to benefit from two Runes in a standard melee engagement, instead of only one- and more debatable a change for ranged Vikings, which got a lot of use out of Luck Runes and often didn't care that much about Defense Runes in the player's hands. (Of course, enemy ranged Vikings appreciate it)

Also note that Runic's defensive effect is a flat percentage modifier to any damage source, even effects like Rage. Even percentage damage effects! As such, you should consider using a weaker attack to trigger the Defense Rune activation before using your biggest hits, particularly in situations where you're relying on percentage effects like Orc Strike to wear down stacks far outside what you're really intended to fight. If you're using a 10,000 Leadership army to fight a 100,000 Leadership army, better to have a Scoffer Imp hurl a fireball into the enemy's midst before you start trying to hit for 10,000+ damage from Orc Strike or the like, as you'd rather the enemy shave 15% off of 2000 damage than off of 10,000-15,000 damage.

And to be clear, when I say any damage source, I'm including things like Burn damage.

To be fair, Warriors of the North's Defense Runes increased Health by 16%, which worked out to a similar idea, but for one thing that didn't help against percentile damage.


Vikings are de-facto nerfed, since in Warriors of the North tons of Skills and even some Medals incidentally boosted your Vikings. This is fine, since Vikings were honestly a bit too good in Warriors of the North.

Race relations-wise...

-2 Morale for Orc presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Undead presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Demon presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Light Human presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Traitor Human presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Light Elf presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Dark Elf presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Zwergr presence in allies.

... Vikings are suddenly not at all chill, being offended by every Dark faction and even having issues with non-Dark Humans and Elves! Though amusingly they're actually a lot less bothered by Undead than in Warriors of the North, between having a lower penalty in the first place and the overhauled Morale system meaning equivalent tiers are less of a penalty.

Interestingly, the Morale .txt file has commented-out -5 Morale from Undead. I'm curious as to why that got cut, given hating Undead used to be their defining racial relations trait. Dark Side's narrative unfortunately offers no explanation for their new hatred of Demons, and indeed the only non-Viking foes to the Vikings on Okkarland are once again Undead.

Note that Mystics are missing from the following unit list: again, none of the Ice And Fire content survived to Dark Side, which is understandable, if a bit disappointing. Though in the case of Mystics it may be for the best, given how often Dark Side's coding for immunity to mental effects doesn't work properly: it wouldn't surprise me if Mind Games would've worked on basically anything 100% of the time.


Viking
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 65
Leadership: 40
Attack/Defense: 12 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 30
Damage: 3-6 Physical
Resistances: 10% Ice
Talents: Shield Bash (Reload: 2. The Viking charges in a straight line out to their current Action Points+1, doing 3-5 Physical damage to a single target with a 50% chance to Stun the target. Requires at least one empty space between the Viking and the target, but the target cannot retaliate), Berserk (Charge: 1. For 3 turns, the Viking has doubled Attack, Initiative, and crit chance, halved Defense, and goes out of control. Does not end the Viking's turn)
Abilities: Hardened, Vengeful (50% or more casualties equals automatic crits), Runic

-1 to minimum damage. No other direct changes.

So basically they're slightly worse, but not fundamentally different aside I suppose the lack of Luck Rune triggers.


Berserker
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 130
Leadership: 60
Attack/Defense: 20 / 14
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 52
Damage: 4-7 Physical
Resistances: 10% Ice
Talents: Dash (Reload: 2. +2 Action Points), Berserk (Charge: 1. For 3 turns, the Berserker has doubled Attack, Initiative, and crit chance, halved Defense, and goes out of control. Does not end the Berserker's turn)
Abilities: Hardened, Shock Shield (If an enemy counterattacks the Berserker, the Berserker makes a follow-up attack that does 3-5 Physical damage and has a 20% chance to Stun the target. Their retaliation also has these properties, instead of using their normal attack), Mad Fury (After 50% casualties, the stack becomes uncontrollable, doubling its Attack and Initiative while rendering it immune to mental effects but halving its Defense), Disregard for Pain (+5% resistance to all damage types each time the Berserker takes damage, up to a total of 25%), Runic

Their non-shield-bash damage now has the correct claimed number, unlike Warriors of the North, by virtue of their shield bash damage losing a point of minimum damage.

Berserkers are probably the Viking unit least bothered by the loss of Luck Runes, since Shock Shield only triggers if the enemy counterattacks, and so getting a second turn to attack a unit they just attacked is lower-value for them than for most units. Since Berserkers are really built for mid-length battles, the new version of Runic Knowledge actually quite suits them: in Warriors of the North, they tended to run out of Attack Runes in any battle they were actually putting in a lot of work.


Jarl
Level: 4
Hiring Cost:1470
Leadership: 320
Attack/Defense: 32 / 36
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 240
Damage: 20-30 Physical
Resistances: 25% Physical, 10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Sweeping Strike (Reload: 2. Attacks not only the target but also enemies to its side for 20-30 Physical damage. No friendly fire risk), Cry (Charge: 1. Adjacent enemies of 320 Leadership per Jarl or less that are below Level 4 become Frightened for 2 turns and immediately move 1 tile away from the Jarl. For each enemy successfully frightened, the Jarl gains +2 Morale for 2 turns. Cry is impossible to recharge, but using it does not end the Jarl's turn), Call to Battle (Reload: 4. A target ally who is below Level 5 and whose Leadership total is below 800 per Jarl is granted a full second turn after all other turns are done with. If the target was a Viking-the-race, they also receive +8 Attack for 2 turns. Using Call to Battle does not end the Jarl's turn)
Abilities: Hardened, Enchanted Armor (25% Physical resistance, 10% Fire resistance. When attacked, 20% chance to halve incoming damage), Daring (+2 Attack per crit landed, to a maximum of +10), Elemental Axe (Has a 30% chance of Freezing or Shocking targets with melee attacks, including Sweeping Strike. This effect cannot trigger against Level 5 units), Shoulder to Shoulder (+10% to Attack and Defense for allied units below Level 4 that are adjacent to the Jarl), Runic

No changes aside from Runes changing. This includes that Daring's Attack cap is still half what the game claims.


Skald
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 50
Leadership: 35
Attack/Defense: 8 / 8
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 22
Damage: 3-4 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 10% Magic, 10% Ice
Talents: Paean (Reload: 3. All allies are granted a random positive effect), Evil Taunt (Reload: 3. All enemies below Level 4 are afflicted with a random negative effect)
Abilities: Hardened, Cautious (Once 30% casualties occur, 30% chance for incoming attacks to Miss), Armored (10% Physical and Fire resistance), Pangs of Conscience (When the Skald performs a melee attack, there is a 20% chance for them to zap the target with Magic damage equal to half the damage of their last attack, scaled relative to the Leadership difference between the Skald stack and their attacker eg the smaller the Skald stack the weaker the damage. This will do at minimum 1 damage per Skald), Singer (Non-Skald Viking allies have +1 Morale), Escort to Valhalla (+1 Initiative for 2 turns for allied Vikings when an allied stack is wiped out), Runic

They've picked up minor Physical and Magical resistance. Otherwise their only change is Runes being changed. They no longer list Cautious in-game, but while I'd be perfectly happy to see it truly gone it's not. Just unlisted.

Escort to Valhalla still doesn't seem to provide Initiative and still has an insanely broken bug attached to it, unfortunately.

Also, just like Priestesses of Blood, I've struckthrough Armored because they're not internally tagged with it and so aren't susceptible to Corrosion.


Warrior Maiden
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1300
Leadership: 200
Attack/Defense: 29 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 5
Health: 150
Damage: 14-18 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical, 20% Magic, 10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Spear of Wrath (Reload: 3. Ranged attack with an effective range of 5 that does 21-27 Physical damage to a single enemy. Cannot be used if there's an enemy adjacent), Call of Valhalla (Reload: 4. An allied stack below Level 5 that is not completely dead nor is the casting Warrior Maiden resurrects up to 2 units per Warrior Maiden in the casting stack. Casualties from more than 2 turns ago are not eligible for resurrection)
Abilities: Armored (20% Physical resistance, 10% Fire resistance), Gift of Odin (Enemies who are lower Level and lower Leadership do not retaliate against the Warrior Maiden's attacks), Messenger of the Gods (-10% Attack and Defense to adjacent enemies), Beautiful (30% chance for male humanoids to miss when attacking), Magic Resistance (20% Magic resistance), Bear Cavalry, (+1 Morale for allied Bears, Ancient Bears, and Polar Bears) Runic

Spear of Wrath has lost its bizarre kill-based gimmick that rarely did anything. It claims to now generate 500% more Rage for the hit, but alas, this functionality exists only in the description, not in the code. Otherwise, their only change is that Runes have been changed, including that Spear of Wrath still only loses 30% of its damage for being thrown beyond its effective range.

Unsurprisingly, in English Messenger of the Gods still claims to boost Initiative for allied Vikings, and this is still just untrue. It stands out less in Dark Side, mind, simply because you have so much less reason to use Vikings in the first place, but hey.


Axe Thrower
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 360
Leadership: 120
Attack/Defense: 20 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 90
Damage (Ranged): 4-7 Physical
Damage (Melee): 6-10 Physical
Resistances: 10% Ice
Talents: Tandem Throw (Charges: 2. 7-12 Physical damage to a single enemy up to 3 tiles away), Circular Blow (Reload: 2. Deals 5-8 Physical damage to all adjacent units. Still has to select a target, which can retaliate against the attack)
Abilities: Hardened, Nimble (20% chance for enemy attacks to Miss), Axe Thrower (Can ranged attack up to 3 tiles out, and no more. Considered in certain respects to be a Shooter), No Melee Penalty, Runic

No direct changes, just Runes being changed. This includes that their in-game stat block is displaying their melee attack rather than their weaker ranged attack.


Slinger
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 25
Leadership: 22
Attack/Defense: 4 / 3
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 12
Damage: 2-3 Physical
Resistances: 10% Ice
Talents: Hail of Stones (Reload: 2. 1-3 Physical damage to a target with an effective range of 5, and half damage to adjacent units)
Abilities: Hardened, Shooter (Range: 5), No Melee Penalty, Accurate (If a ranged attack crits, there is a 20% chance it will additionally inflict Weakness), Runic

Hail of Stones has gained a point of max damage, bringing it closer to their regular attack's damage. Otherwise, their only change is Runes being changed. Slight buff overall, probably.

Accurate's English description in-game is also much more... uh... accurate than in Warriors of the North, thankfully.


Soothsayer
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1220
Leadership: 240
Attack/Defense: 20 / 28
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 160
Damage (Ranged): 12-16 Magical
Damage (Melee): 6 Physical
Resistances: 35% Magic, 10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Ice Storm (Reload: 2. Targets an arbitrary tile. Does 10-14 Ice damage to that tile, and half that to all adjacent tiles, with a 30% chance to Freeze the target for 1 turn and a 15% chance to Freeze units in the adjacent tiles for 1 turn), Loki's Touch (Reload: 3. A target enemy below Level 5 and whose Leadership total is less than 216 per Soothsayer in the casting stack becomes hostile to all units. Cannot be used on the Undead, and in any event the Soothsayer is afflicted with Weakness for 4 turns afterward), Arcane Healing (Charge: 1. Heals a single allied unit for 16 Health, as well as clearing Plague, Poisoning, and Bleeding. if the target ally is below Level 4, this healing can resurrect it, but only half the healing value gets applied to resurrection eg a unit with 16 Health would require 2 Soothsayers to be able to undo a casualty at all)
Abilities: Witching Staff (Range: Infinite. Attack has a 50% chance of removing a single positive effect), Divine Hand (Anytime a friendly unit gets a crit, +1 to the Soothsayer's Attack, to a maximum of +15), Magic Resistance (35% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind, Keeper of Knowledge (Allied Viking units can activate a Defense Rune twice per turn. Friendly units that lack Runic instead get +4 Defense), Elemental Shield (10% Fire and Ice resistance at base. Taking damage from one or the other will raise that resistance by 4% and lower the other by 6%, out to a max of +20%[ie a total of 30% resistance]/-30%), Runic

Aside from Runes being changed, thus demanding Keeper of Knowledge be changed, they're almost the same as Warriors of the North. The net result is they've lost their quirk of having twice as many Runes as usual, but better support Viking allies. (Because they functionally add a Rune per turn to allies taking hits, instead of one Rune across the entire battle) Though do note that the in-game (English) description of Keeper of Knowledge incorrectly claims it boosts the Defense of Viking allies, rather than its true effect of boosting Defense if an ally lacks Runic. Notably, the Russian description is also partially wrong, because it claims the Defense boost is based on species, rather than the Runic Ability. (ie it implies that Jotun would get the Defense boost)

This lack of change includes that Divine Hand's maximum bonus is still 50% higher than it's claimed cap.

Unfortunately Arcane Healing not only still fails to clear Plague but also now fails to clear Bleed. Which is rather unfortunate given how much more common Bleed is. This isn't even an intentional balance decision, just a side effect of Dark Side reclassing Bleed behind the scenes into not-dispellable-by-default and not properly updating Arcane Healing to overrule that!

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Unfortunately, Vikings are very much an afterthought. To my understanding they don't even exist in the base version of Dark Side, and even in the DLC-modified version they're only found on Okkarland, aside a Viking battlegroup guarding a Sea Chart to Okkarland plus the occasional Keeper fight. Okkarland itself is a fairly small island with not very many encounters, and Vikings make up maybe half of those encounters to boot. And of course the entire area is completely optional, with no Weapon of Vengeance components or anything else important in it.

By extension, you can only hire Vikings from shops on Okkarland, and the supplies of a given unit tend to not be good enough to carry you through the game if you really want to rely on them. You're basically guaranteed to need Sacrifice shenanigans to prop them up in such a case.

Okkarland itself is a mid-lategame location, which means you can't really get access to Vikings until you've already got access to more or less the full range of core Dark races and Traitor Humans+serious Traitor Human support. Vikings don't have much support in Dark Side, so while they remain a very strong race that's worth considering, they don't actually stand out in the same way they did in Warriors of the North. Some units particularly suffer -why use Slingers when Imps and Scoffer Imps largely outclass them?- but in general I've never managed to quite motivate myself to give them a proper try. There's just too much incentive to use Dark races of one sort or another by the time you have access to them, and the fact that they get along poorly with Dark races discourages splashing in one of the particularly exceptional ones like Warrior Maidens. If you're using Vikings, you really ought to be either all-inning on them or mixing them with Neutral units.

All this stuff is a big part of why I didn't add much commentary to the individual units; for one thing, Okkarland's difficulty is a bit low relative to the difficulty gaining access to it. How much Rage being changed has affected the way you fight them and the like isn't very important because you tend to stomp Okkarland's battlegroups if you didn't deliberately ninja your way to Okkarland well before you're meant to access it. On the flipside, I don't have much 'when using them' commentary because the commentary is largely 'you're not going to use them unless you really want to play more Vikings'. And if you care that much, going back to play Warriors of the North is probably the better choice. Dark Side's Vikings aren't compellingly different.

It's nice to have the option, but the actual execution is fairly disappointing.

Next time, we cover a Lizardmen-based bonus thing. Then we move on to Chaos Magic in Dark Side.

Comments

  1. Runic Knowledge' Attack Rune only gives +20% to damage, not +25%.

    Demons give Vikings massive -5 to Morale, not merely -2. Unless GOG strikes again.

    Viking-the-unit got -1 to mimimum damage compared to WotN, not +1.

    Berserker's shield attack damage got -1 to minimum damage compared to WotN, so now description's 3-5 is correct.

    I didn't mention it before, but Jarl's internal-comment name is 'samovar from Tula'. I wonder why. Maybe his body shape kinda resembles one? Even then, it sounds really random.

    As you propably noticed, Skald's Armor description mentions fire resistance that he doesn't have. And just like Blood Priestess, he is not actually tagged as Armored.
    Escort to Valhalla still gives expected initiative bonus for me. Problems with undying Skalds are present too.
    Cautious is still here, just invisible. So Skald just got buffed in DS.
    Wait a second. English version call it 'Prudence' for Swordsmen/Guardsmen but 'Cautious' for Skalds? Why? It's essentially the same ability.

    Warrior Maiden's Spear of Wrath has only 30% damage penalty at far range. And it is just a ranged attack without any special effect - 500% Rage thing exist only as description.

    Axe Thrower still has melee numbers shown in his stat block. His actual ranged damage is 4-7.

    Volhv deals 6 physical damage in melee.
    DS Keeper of Knowledge gives +4 defense to non-vikings only. Russian description is clear on this. What Russian description doesn't tell is that Keeper of Knowledge actually checks for 'Runic Knowledge' ability, not for Viking race. So Jotun too will get second use of Defense Rune per turn instead of +4 to defense.
    Considering that DS Viking aren't followers of light (unlike WotN Vikings), adding Jotun into their ranks would make sense. Jotun essentially being Viking for the sake of Keeper of Knowledge only gives one more reason for it.
    Like in previous game, Arcane Healing fails to remove Plague. Unlike in previous game, it now also fails to remove Bleed. Reason for this is that Bleed was slightly rewritten to be undispellable by normal means; Volhv's talent still tries to remove it by using the old way which doesn't work anymore. In case you are wondering "but what about Poison? Arcane Healing still removes it while Dispel-the-spell does not" - Poison is the only post-effect that is still a normal dispellable effect, it's just Dispel-the-spell have all 4 post-effects in it's manually-set exceptions list. But by itself Poison is perfectly dispellable - and it looks like an oversight that can cause additional bugs with it being wrongly removed when other post-effects would not. It would be better to make it undispellable too and update Arcane Healing to Healing-the-spell-like new mechanic for working with post-effects.

    God, there are barely any changes yet so many bugs and wrong descriptions. I like Dark Side, but sometimes it feels like it had no playtesting at all.

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    1. Got to all this -and surprised by the Demon Morale point, as I looked directly at the Morale txt file for Morale stuff. (With double-checking in-game, mind, but... apparently not thoroughly enough) But yeah, even in the GoG version it's -5.

      And yeah, barely-touched, still a few new bugs. Dark Side really did get screwed by the rushing...

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