Dark Side Unit Analysis Part 5.1: Neutral Sapients


The Ice and Fire content is all gone, alas, but weirdly Dark Side has brought back Barbarians and Berserkers-the-Neutral-version. While still keeping their Viking counterparts. It's... really confusing. You might also notice that Witch Hunters are missing from this list, but they'll show up later.


Pirate
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 50
Leadership: 25
Attack/Defense: 8 / 4
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 25
Damage: 3-5 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: None
Abilities: Excavator (+10% Gold from overworld loot), Marine (+2 Morale in naval combat), Nimble (20% chance to dodge attacks)

No direct change, just like in Warriors of the North.

Though it's worth pointing out that Marine is largely irrelevant to Dark Side. You engage in almost no naval battles at all, and even shore side-counting battles are rare, and even if those points weren't true +2 Morale is a lesser bonus than in prior games.

And as with bears, Pirates suffer pretty badly from the fact that you'll already have access to competition that's overall much more useful before you ever get access to Pirates. And Dark Side doesn't really go for criminal-supporting Items, either.

The one thing Pirates really have in their favor in Dark Side is that they have Excavator, and there's a surprisingly long chunk of Dark Side where money is a fairly constant problem. But you can just slot 1 copy in Reserves to trigger it, so that's not a reason to use them in battle.

Sea Dog
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 100
Leadership: 40
Attack/Defense: 18 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 2
Health: 40
Damage: 5-7 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Fury Attack (Reload: 1. Simultaneously attacks not only the target but also enemies to the side for 5-7 Physical damage. No friendly fire risk), Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Excavator (+10% Gold from overworld loot), Marine (+2 Morale in naval combat), Nimble (20% chance to evade attacks)

Unchanged from Warriors of the North, just like Pirates.

Their access to Fury Attack is much less of a reason to consider them in battle than it was in prior games, note. Orc Veterans can spam Savage Attack turn in and turn out if they're in the thick of things, you'll eventually have large stocks of them no matter what, and they of course benefit from various Dark support, so for pure combat purposes they pretty consistently outperform Sea Dogs. Excavator is seriously the main, indeed more or less the only reason to consider Sea Dogs.

Ouch.

Griffin
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 260
Leadership: 80
Attack/Defense: 20 / 20
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 5
Health: 90
Damage: 5-10 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 20% Magic-10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Split (Charge: 1. Stack splits in half, shunting half its numbers into a new stack directly adjacent. This new stack cannot use Split, and is considered a new unit in most every respect, having its full supply of Action Points and being unaffected by any effects lingering on the spawning stack. Does not end the originating stack's turn)
Abilities: Beast, Flight, Furious (Retaliations never 'run out'), Magic Resistance (+20% Magic resistance)

Interestingly, Split no longer lists a charge or reload value at all. Mechanically, though, they're unchanged from Warriors of the North.

Unfortunately, they're hampered in real terms by access issues. In prior games, Griffins were often your fastest unit for a long time, and one of your tougher units, and your only Furious unit for a long time and one of your first Flying units. In Dark Side, you'll get dragons before you get Griffins, which significantly outperform them as tough and fast flying units. Demons are also consistently available sooner, and you can get lucky with Executioners, and Orcs and Veteran Orcs can fill the Furious role. Altogether, Split's utility for grabbing Chests is the main thing Griffins have to their name in Dark Side.

I've also never seen the Griffin-supporting Items that existed in every previous game, exacerbating the issue. Meanwhile, Dark Side has several kinds of dragon-supporting gear, one of which is guaranteed albeit hidden. So... you're unlikely to use Griffins unless you like spamming Call of Nature.

They also don't crop up as enemies very often in Dark Side.

Beholder
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 460
Leadership: 140
Attack/Defense: 20 / 24
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 80
Damage: 7-12 Magical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: None
Abilities: Soaring, Archer (Range: 6), Paralyzing Ray (Ranged attack has a chance to put target to Sleep for one turn. The lower the target's level, the higher the chance of Sleep), No Melee Penalty, Underdweller (+50% Attack in underground combat), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

No change.

For most purposes, Beholders will tend to be pushed aside by Imps and Scoffer Imps. Nonetheless, you'll sometimes get early access to them, before you have a ton of ranged options, and while the range of enemies you fight isn't so biased toward low-Level threats that are worth locking up with Paralyzing Ray (To wit; you don't fight Devilfish or other fast, Level 1 units nearly as much as prior games), it's still a capability they don't have to worry too much about competition over. Just them and Evil Beholders. And early in the game, there's enough Level 2 Human units that are nice to get lucky with Paralyzing Ray triggering on they can be quite useful in the early game, if hampered a bit by how Human forces include a decent amount of Magic resistance.

As you progress their value tends to drop off, between having reliable access to powerful ways of pulling off equivalent effects without needing to spend a unit slot on it (Why gamble on a Beholder putting the target to sleep when Jealousy will guarantee they're out of your hair, and in fact get them harassing enemy units for several turns?), overall Level rising, Magic resistance being more common for reasons I'll be getting into in another post, and the fact that Dark Side is reluctant to throw enemies at you for whom Magic is one of the best damage types to target them. Cyclops, Ghosts, Cursed Ghosts, and Pirate Ghosts are all much rarer of enemies than in prior entries.

Still, for a good chunk of the early to mid-early game, they're worth considering, even if they're not as compelling as they used to be.

Evil Beholder
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 620
Leadership: 180
Attack/Defense: 22 / 28
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 100
Damage: 9-15 Magical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Mind Control (Charge: 1. Mind controls a single unit -enemy or ally- that hasn't used up its Action Points yet and directs it to attack an enemy. If the victim can't reach the chosen target, they will still move as close as they can. This consumes the victim's turn. Invalid against Level 5 units, units with immunity to Mind effects, and can only control up to 180 Leadership per Evil Beholder)
Abilities: Soaring, Archer (Range: 7), Paralyzing Ray (Ranged attack has a chance to put target to Sleep for one turn. The lower the target's level, the higher the chance of Sleep), No Melee Penalty, Underdweller (+50% Attack in underground combat), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

Still no change.

See prior remarks about Beholders, with the added comment that Mind Control is extremely unlikely to be useful. Dark Side has the most ridiculous late-game enemy Leadership scaling of any entry in the series, so the Leadership limit on Mind Control makes it of almost no use, even for Neoline, and options like Jealousy and Flames of Passion tend to overshadow it anyway.

This incidentally means you're generally better off fielding Beholders over Evil Beholders in Dark Side. You'll end up with better Damage in real terms, better Leadership-to-Health rates, better Initiative, and burn less of your Gold to keep up with your Leadership. Bit of a shame.

Cyclops
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 5000
Leadership: 1400
Attack/Defense: 50 / 67
Initiative/Speed: 1 / 3
Health: 650
Damage (Ranged): 60-70 Physical
Damage (Melee): 80 Physical
Resistances: 30% Physical, 60% Poison, 30% Fire
Talents: Stunning Slap (Charge: 1. Does 70 Physical damage to an adjacent enemy and Stuns them), Push (Reload: 2. Pushes an adjacent enemy one tile away and does 80-100 Physical damage in the process. The target can't retaliate)
Abilities: Archer, Sniper, Stone (30%/60%/30% Physical/Poison/Fire resistance. The Cyclops is an inorganic unit, rendering it impossible to heal but immune to Plague etc), No Melee Penalty

They've inexplicably lost their Ice resistance, with no other (intended) changes. (Though oddly Stone's description claims it provides 70% Poison resistance now, even though the Cyclops remains the only Stone unit in the series and only has 60%) They've also completely lost immunity to mental effects, apparently on accident, oops.

Note that Stunning Slap still lets the enemy counterattack even if they were Stunned, just like in Warriors of the North. Also note that I've only ever seen Cyclops offered by one shop in what might as well be post-game content; you can still get them from a Call Colossus Wanderer Scroll potentially, and Blood Priestesses can be used to Sacrifice up more copies as needed once you have a seed population, but if you're playing the game normally you'll not be using them, and you'll fight them only a handful of times -and that's assuming you're fairly thorough about clearing out enemies, even on optional parts of optional maps!

It's a bit disappointing since Orc Shield's mechanics work quite nicely with them.

Emerald Green Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 11000
Leadership: 1900
Attack/Defense: 53 / 60
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 6
Health: 800
Damage (Default): 80-110 Physical
Damage (Hates Giants): 160-220 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 30% Magic, 50% Fire
Talents: Target Capture (Reload; 2. Targets an enemy 1 empty tile away, dragging them adjacent and doing 130 Physical damage per Emerald Green Dragon in the attacking stack. The target doesn't get to retaliate, and will eg set off traps it's been pulled into), Mana Source (Reload: 3. Inflicts 50-70 Magic damage on all adjacent units, granting the owning Hero Mana based on the damage done)
Abilities: Flight, Hates Giants (Calls the Hates Giants attack against Giants, and -1 Morale if Giants are in the army), Fire Protection (50% Fire resistance), Magic Resistance (30% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

No changes.

Emerald Green Dragons are actually the second-least accessible dragon type in Dark Side. I'm not sure I've ever had a shop offer them, and while you can get some eggs, it's an unusually low number of them. As the other dragon types are overall more consistently useful and Dragon Riders in particular can outright summon dragons that can immediately move, I've personally never made serious use of Emerald Green Dragons in Dark Side.

Also note that Giants are extremely rare opponents, making Hates Giants largely irrelevant. Though conversely the Morale penalty from being in an army with them hasn't been increased any; since Morale tiers have a less pronounced impact in Dark Side, this makes it more tolerable to run Emerald Green Dragons alongside Giants if you care to.

That said, with Dark Side being the most Trap-irrific entry in the series Target Capture is unusually useful. Guard Droids are a bit more flexible in abusing Traps, but are less mobile and don't provide Mana support, so it's a bit of a personal preference thing.

Red Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 12000
Leadership: 2000
Attack/Defense: 63 / 63
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 7
Health: 870
Damage: 100-120 Fire
Resistances: 15% Physical, 30% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: Fire Flood (Reload: 2. Infinite range straight-line attack that does 100-140 Fire damage to all units in the line with a 50% chance to Burn them)
Abilities: Flight, Dragon Breath (Melee attacks hit the tile beyond the target, with a 50% chance to Burn hit units. This includes retaliations), Fire Immunity (80% Fire resistance and cannot be Burned), Magic Resistance (+30% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

No actual changes.

Notably, you're guaranteed an early source of some Red Dragons. Dark Side is thus the first game in the entire series to give you access to them early enough that you can properly leverage their solid bulk and whatnot, which is really cool.

I do have to wonder if the decision is driven by the inclusion of Dragon Riders, though, as there's very little reason to use a regular dragon of any stripe if you can field Dragon Riders to summon them instead.

But in the early game, it's a lot of fun using Red Dragons as a nearly-invincible tank, absorbing lots of punishment without casualties and dishing out okay damage.

Black Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 15000
Leadership: 2500
Attack/Defense: 70 / 70
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 8
Health: 1000
Damage: 110-130 Fire
Resistances: 20% Physical, 80% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: Rain of Fire (Reload: 2. Moves up to the Black Dragon's full Action Point total, automatically attacking units the Black Dragon flies over for 110-140 Fire damage with an 80% chance for each affected unit to be Burned)
Abilities: Flight, Dragon Breath (Melee attacks hit the tile beyond the target, with a 50% chance to Burn hit units. This includes retaliations), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance and cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (Immune to most Spells, and 80% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Dragon Power (Enemies below Level 5 have -1 Initiative)

Strangely, they've lost their Ice resistance. That's the only thing that's changed from Warriors of the North, though.

... until we get into bugs. Dark Side's turn calculation is really, really messed-up, and in this case Dragon Power apparently doesn't kick in until after the first unit turn has been assigned. Which means that when you're fielding a Black Dragon it'll be routine for some enemy stack to go before your stuff, and then all the other stacks of its type are behind all your other units. It's particularly crazy-making in the early game where you're trying to get Grand Strategy progress and you've got everything set up to give you time to react and whoops wait that one random Horseman stack went first and instantly charged into your forces, inflicting casualties.

Speaking of the early game, like Red Dragons you're guaranteed a fairly early source of some Black Dragons, at last giving you the chance to take advantage of them in the early game! It's a lot of fun, and they're quite effective without being heinously overpowered. You'll tend to move on eventually, between running out of purchasable Black Dragons and the fact that they don't hold up so well as Leadership rises (Not to mention Dragon Riders displacing them), but it's wonderful to finally have a King's Bounty game give you Black Dragons early enough that they're not largely a disappointment.

Thorn Warrior
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 10
Leadership: 8
Attack/Defense: 4 / 3
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 9
Damage: 1-3 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison-100% Fire
Talents: Sowing (Charge: 1. Spawns a Thorn Warrior or Hunter from an adjacent corpse, destroying the corpse, whose Leadership is 2-4 per Thorn in the spawning stack)
Abilities: Plant (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to Mind spells, the 'top' member of the stack restores 10% of their Health at the beginning of their turn, assorted secondary implications), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind and Precision. Also can detect invisible creatures)

The only change is that Plant now provides really weak regeneration. Which does essentially nothing for Thorn Warriors, alas. Though note that Oily Mist is gone and no replacement has been tossed in, so Eyeless is even less relevant than ever before.

What does help them and all other Plants is the fact that literally anything can inflict Bleeding in Dark Side, and there are more ways to directly inflict Bleeding in particular, while Plant still provides immunity to Bleeding. This isn't much of a boost to Thorn Warriors in particular -they die fast to Burn still- but it's something to keep in mind in general.

Thorn Hunter
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 10
Leadership: 8
Attack/Defense: 4 / 1
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 3
Health: 6
Damage: 1-2 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison-100% Fire
Talents: Sowing (Charge: 1. Spawns a Thorn Warrior or Hunter from an adjacent corpse, destroying the corpse, whose Leadership is 2-4 per Thorn in the spawning stack)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 4), Plant (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to Mind spells, the 'top' member of the stack restores 10% of their Health at the beginning of their turn, assorted secondary implications), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind and Precision. Also can detect invisible creatures), No Melee Penalty

See Thorn Warriors: Plant now provides weak regeneration, which is worthless, and Oil Mist is gone so Eyeless is even less relevant.

Thorn Hunters are also indirectly hurt by the fact that Dark Side likes to give you access to Royal Thorns more or less at the same time as the other Thorn types, and it's almost always better to just run Royal Thorns and rely on their Thorn-spawning to handle getting you Thorn Hunters. Dark Side has sufficiently fast-paced combat that this isn't as true as it was in The Legend or Armored Princess, but you also have access to overall more useful ranged options from right out the gate. Sure, Thorn Hunters are an unusually mobile ranged unit, but Imps and Scoffer Imps fill that role just fine in real terms, and are less casualty-prone, have splash damage, etc. The faster-paced combat also means that Sowing is much less prone to being useful -a disposable meatshield just isn't that important if everybody is going to be dead in a turn or so. And things like early dragon access provides much better options for meatshielding without casualties, further pushing their relevance down.

This is a bit of a recurring problem with Dark Side; even though it certainly has more total unit types than The Legend, in real terms it's probably the least varied entry in the series. There's too many unit types where you just don't have cause to use them, ever, and too many unit types the AI almost never uses or even actually never uses.

Royal Thorn
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 600
Leadership: 380
Attack/Defense: 30 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 1
Health: 360
Damage (Ranged): 20-30 Physical
Damage (Melee): 20-40 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison-100% Fire
Talents: Germination (Reload: 2. Spawns a Thorn Warrior or Hunter in an adjacent tile, type randomly chosen, whose Leadership is 150-300 per Royal Thorn in the spawning stack)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 6), Plant  (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to Mind spells, the 'top' member of the stack restores 10% of their Health at the beginning of their turn, assorted secondary implications), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind and Precision. Also can detect invisible creatures), No Melee Penalty

They've lost Thorn Leader. On the plus side, they have enough Health that the Plant-derived regeneration isn't completely worthless. It's... not great, but 36 Health a turn actually matters a little, especially if you try them out reasonably early.

Overall, though, this is probably their low point. Warriors of the North had more consistently fast combat, but Thorn Leader did a lot to make up for that. Dark Side's combat can occasionally drag out long enough for them to shine, but more often you're pained by them taking forever to properly contribute to a fight. There's also just a lot of competition when it comes to the role of summoner, in a manner no prior game matched; Demons and Archdemons can potentially Frenzy up more summons at a comparable pace to a Royal Thorn while being more overall useful of units with more immediate impact, and while Dragon Riders only get the one summon in a battle their summon is fast, strong, and gets to act immediately. These are particularly stand-out examples, but other competition that's always existed has boosts to their own relevance, such as Necromancers being an even more fantastic unit than in prior games. Not to mention Rage provides a couple of ways to get summons or benefits whose utility significantly overlaps with summons.

In conjunction with the fact that I've never seen eg the Crown of Blackthorns, it's really difficult to justify using Royal Thorns. Particularly early in the game when you don't have a ton of wiggle room for messing around.


Assassin
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 800
Leadership: 150
Attack/Defense: 36 / 20
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 100
Damage: 11-13 Physical
Resistances: 25% Poison
Talents: Backstab (Charge: 1. A target enemy whose current facing and environmental location would allow a unit to strike it from behind is attacked for 17 Physical damage and Poisoned. If a Trap is in the position that would be attacked from, Backstab is interrupted, and the Assassin is now standing in the tile the Trap is in, having activated it), Murder (Charge: 1. Does 13 Physical damage to an adjacent enemy. If the targeted stack is slain by Murder, the Assassin only uses up 1 Action Point on the Murder, and in fact is given 1 Action Point if they would be at 0, giving them an immediate second turn. Additionally, Backstab gains a charge if it currently has no charge)
Abilities: No Retaliation, Poisonous (30% chance to Poison the enemy for 3 turns), Poison Resistance (25% Poison resistance), Servant of Death (Buffs of any kind are instantly purged, and the Assassin is immune to Mind effects except for Hypnosis. When Hypnotized, Servant of Death stops working until the Hypnosis ends), Known Enemy (Every attack made against a unit type increases the Assassin's crit chance against that unit type by 20. This bonus is reset when a critical hit is made against the unit type)

Known Enemy has been overhauled again. As we'll see later, it's actually become the Elven factional Ability, so it's a bit odd they share it with the Elves. Their actual stats are unchanged, though.

An odd detail is that even though the Female Vampire's Call is a mental effect that uses the Hypnosis spell graphic and is conceptually a form of hypnosis, Assassins are immune to it. Just one more reason Female Vampires are difficult to justify using.

In any event, Assassins aren't bad in Dark Side, but this is still probably their low point. Imps and Scoffer Imps tend to better fill their role as a swift, No Retaliation unit with a form of ranged attack, only Imps and Scoffer Imps don't have to worry about finicky unit placement, get two shots before having to wait, can reload their fireballs quite quickly if luck is with you and/or you bolster their Frenzy somehow or another, have splash damage, are also capable of inflicting a percentile damage effect (Admittedly Backstab is guaranteed to Poison where Imp Fireballs only have a chance of inflicting Burn), are guaranteed to be available before you have a shot at getting Assassins, and are perfectly able to benefit from buffs. And benefit from Dark Side's significant support for Dark races.

At least they're still interesting to fight, and reasonably common in the early game.


Royal Griffin
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1200
Leadership: 300
Attack/Defense: 35 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 6
Health: 215
Damage (Default): 20-30 Physical
Damage (Dragon Despiser): 40-60 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 50% Magic-10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Cheer (Charge: 1. For 2 turns, all allied Elves and Humans get 50% more Attack and Initiative), Heavenly Guard (Charge: 1. Summons an Angelic Guard stack into a random nearby tile, whose Leadership is 150 per Royal Griffin in the summoning stack)
Abilities: Beast, Flight, Furious (Retaliations never 'run out'), Magic Protection (50% Magic resistance), Dragon Despiser (Calls the Dragon Despiser attack against Dragons, and -2 to Morale if there's an allied Dragon in the army), Regal (+1 Morale to allied Humans below Level 4 and Griffins-the-unit)

No change at all.

I've actually never seen a shop selling them, myself, and probably wouldn't buy them even if I found one. Regal isn't important anymore (You can 100% reliably get Traitor Humans to +5 Morale through a Title, an Item that's guaranteed to be available in the early-midgame and is great in general, and the new Human factional Ability), Dragon Despiser is much more of a hindrance given how generous Dark Side is with dragon access, and for basically everything else of note about them you end up with the same basic issues as I laid out with Griffins; better Furious options, better and more accessible fast and tough fliers, etc. Heavenly Guard is an okay summon meatshield, but Dragon Riders blow it out of the water.

They're not actually bad, but they're pretty well pushed out by other options, unlike prior games.

Oh, and a bug/oversight: Regal doesn't affect Witch Hunters/Mage Killers, which have become Humans in Dark Side, but does affect Robbers and Marauders even though they're no longer part of the Human faction. Oops.


Angelic Guard
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: Technically 300, but this doesn't matter
Leadership: 60
Attack/Defense: 20 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 5
Health: 33
Damage: 4-7 Ice
Resistances: 50% Physical, 25% Magic
Talents: None
Abilities: Flight, Furious (Retaliations never 'run out'), Phantom (50% Physical resistance and can travel through solid objects), Negates Magic (25% Magic resistance, and is immune to negative effects)

No change from Warriors of the North.

Since they still only come into being by getting summoned by a Royal Griffin, they're largely irrelevant for player purposes in Dark Side. As enemies, meanwhile, they're unusually easy to deal with, since Dark Side is biased toward great units that don't do Physical or Magical damage. (Mostly in the form of Imps and Scoffer Imps, but it's not just them)

Troll
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3600
Leadership: 1100
Attack/Defense: 50 / 55
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 780
Damage: 60-80 Physical
Resistances: 15% Physical, 15% Fire, 15% Ice
Talents: Pacify (Reload: 3. Does 70-90 Physical damage to an adjacent enemy. Additionally, the target's Initiative is reduced to 1 and it will always do its minimum damage, temporarily)
Abilities: Troll Skin (If aboveground and in daylight hours, base Physical, Fire, and Ice resistance are doubled. If underground and/or at night, +1 to Speed and Initiative, and the Troll has Regeneration), Petrify (When the stack is destroyed, a statue is left behind, acting as a destructible environmental object), Malevolent (Anytime any unit dies, so long as it wasn't slain by a Spell, +5 Attack. This stacks)

No change from Warriors of the North. They even got to keep their Ice resistance, unlike a number of other units. This includes that the statue they leave behind has 50% Poison resistance, -50% Fire resistance, 3 base Defense, and its Health being based on which area of the game the battle is occurring in.

They've also inherited Warriors of the North's animation problems, though the exact details are a bit different. Alas.

One point in favor of Trolls is there's a guaranteed source in the mid-early game, as a not-strictly-necessary-but-clearly-core Quest is solved by taking one of a few possible unit types to a location, with Trolls being the primary intended solution. If you've managed to burn through your supplies of dragons, Trolls may be your best option for tanking damage. They're also another fairly good unit for leveraging Orc Shield, particularly for daylight fights where their resistances are bolstered. They tend to fall to the wayside past the mid-early game, and even during that phase they're hampered by their historical flaws, but they're viable if you want to give them a whirl.


Demonologist
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1200
Leadership: 210
Attack/Defense: 30 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 2
Health: 160
Damage (Default ranged): 12-14 Fire
Damage (Anti-Demon ranged): 18-21 Magical
Damage (Melee): 9-10 Physical
Resistances: 25% Magic, 25% Fire
Talents: Thread of Life (Charge: 1. Does 14-18 Magic damage to a single enemy anywhere on the field, 40% of that damage then being used to heal/resurrect an allied stack. Machines and Magic-immune units can't be targeted), Demonic Beasts (Reload: 3. A given battlefield randomly generates an arbitrary list of tiles that are valid places to target Demonic Beasts. When using Demonic Beasts, you select an unoccupied instance of these tiles, and then 52.5-105 per Demonologist of Demons-the unit, Cerberi, or Executioners is summoned into that tile)
Abilities: Flaming Skull (Range: 4. Against most units, ranged attack does Fire damage. Against Demons, they use their more powerful Magic attack instead), Demonology (+1 Morale if friendly Demons-the-faction are around, and +5 Attack in fiery environments), Gatekeeper (+2 to Attack and Defense every time Demons are summoned to the battlefield, or Teleport or Infernal Exchange are utilized. This stacks), Magic Protection (25% Magic resist), Fire Protection (25% Fire resist), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

No direct changes. A lot of the stuff Gatekeeper benefited from in Warriors of the North doesn't exist, but that's really it.

Their utility is debatable, though. If you play the game 'honestly', you won't have access to any stocks until extremely late in the game, and by then you'll have access to large stocks of Demons and Archdemons, both of whom can strongly compete on the Demon-summoning utility in Dark Side. Thread of Life is nice, but you've got access to better tools for preventing or canceling damage, including being able to use Blood Priestesses to Sacrifice up replacements/a buffer if you entered the battle with less than max Leadership. Their utility at killing enemy Demons is very narrow -there's maybe a dozen Demon battlegroups to fight over the course of the entire game. The fact that they're not properly a Demon unit carries fairly significant disadvantages now, unlike the prior games, since there's much more support for Demons and still basically no support for Neutrals, and Demonologists are not special-cased into being included in Demon-benefiting effects.

They're usable, but this is a far cry from how amazingly good they were in Armored Princess and Warriors of the North.


Jotun
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3600
Leadership: 1350
Attack/Defense: 46 / 48
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 720
Damage: 60-70 Physical
Resistances: 35% Ice
Talents: Icy Breath (Reload: 2. An adjacent enemy and the target behind it suffer 35-50 Ice damage and are Frozen), Enchanting (Reload: 1. Switches Enchanted Mace's behavior)
Abilities: Hardened (35% Ice resistance and +50% Defense in snowy battlefields), Enchanted Mace (The Jotun's melee attacks either have 10% lifesteal, or have a 30% chance to Freeze enemies. Freeze chance is the default behavior), Greedy (Finishing off a stack provides +10 Morale for the rest of the battle), Runic (Once per turn, deals 20% more damage, and once per turn takes 15% less damage)

They've lost Boldness and the leeching on Enchanted Mace has been halved, by which I mean the Jotun has returned to base Warriors of the North values instead of Ice and Fire values. (In general, Dark Side seems to be operating from base Warriors of the North as its foundation, but this is one of the more glaring examples of such) Runes as a separate piece are not a concept in Dark Side, as I'll be covering in more detail on the Vikings, and so Runic Knowledge has been overhauled -sadly, the Jotun has thus lost their distinctive quirk of having no Luck Runes but having a notably high number of Attack and Defense Runes, with Dark Side making no attempt to simulate their old dynamic. Their actual statline is unchanged, though.

Unfortunately, given that Boldness was the main thing they had over Ice Dragons... Jotun are pretty difficult to justify in Dark Side. This comes with the caveat that Jotun access is much more consistent and tends to come earlier than Ice Dragons in Dark Side, unlike in Warriors of the North (Well, Ice and Fire), and Freeze infliction isn't so readily/consistently accessible either, making Jotun potentially worth fielding to take advantage of their Freeze infliction. The tweak to Runic does also clearly favor them in longer battles if you're willing to support them -and preferably are a bit lucky by eg getting Dark Heal early- and even toward the beginning of a battle the fact that they get to both increase damage and reduce damage in the same turn makes them a bit better than their stats would suggest, to an extent Jotun in Warriors of the North couldn't quite match.

I've personally ended up regretting it both times I really tried to give them a shot -they're slow, not as capable of avoiding casualties as I'd like, and their sloth makes it difficult to get them contributing in faster fights- but honestly they're a lot closer to a viable splashable option than in Warriors of the North. In Warriors of the North, you really basically needed to be planning around abusing Boldness if you wanted to justify using them.

Also note that the in-game description for Runic claims they' do 25% more damage when it kicks in, but it's actually 20% more damage. A small thing, but still.


Ice Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 23000
Leadership: 2200
Attack/Defense: 62 / 68
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 7
Health: 1100
Damage: 100-120 Ice
Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison, 80% Magic-100% Fire, 80% Ice
Talents: Cold Heaven (Reload: 3. The target and enemies to both sides take 60-80 Ice damage. Enemies below Level 5 are also knocked back one tile), Call Henchmen (Charge: 1. Generates a stack of Ice Minions or increases the size of an existing such stack, either way by 850 Leadership per Ice Dragon)
Abilities: Flight, Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance, and immune to Spells), Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Freezing Touch (Melee attacks always Freeze), Creator (Each time the Ice Dragon finishes off an enemy stack, it gains a charge on Call Henchmen. Additionally, when an Ice Dragon stack is completely finished off, it leaves behind a Mana charger, which provides Mana and 1 Action Point when a unit enters its tile), Claustrophobic (Attack is halved underground)

No change. Irritatingly, this includes that the enemy-Ice-Dragons-have-No-Retaliation-but-not-mine glitch remains in action.

If you manage to get a hold of Ice Dragons -whether from a shop or from getting lucky with Call Colossus- they're a fantastic unit in general but especially for Daert, who for one thing can use them to tie down units and then hurl indiscriminate Spells in to kill enemies without worrying about friendly fire; most Spells that used to ignore Spell immunity respect it in Dark Side! Their utility as a source of Ice damage is a much bigger deal, since you no longer have on-demand Ice damage from Rage moves, while their weakness to Fire is less relevant than in Warriors of the North; you just don't fight as many fire-breathing dragons, Demons and thus Imps and Scoffer Imps are very rare, and some traditional Fire damage sources don't actually do Fire damage anymore. As such, they're widely useful as a tank even before you consider Ice Minions, and with Ice Minions considered they're fantastically useful for doing things like manipulating enemies into Traps and just generally buying time. Enemy stack sizes are also a lot more prone to unevenness in Dark Side, which makes it easier to acquire additional Call Henchmen charges and then have the charges actually useful.

Their main flaw is their problems with casualties. Your options for healing them are nonexistent, and they're even invalid for Blood Priestess Sacrifices, so if you misjudge things and end up with a casualty... your only option for undoing it is to load a save. I tend to play really cautiously with them as a result, especially since I've never seen a lifetime supply in stores. I've bought them from shops, yes, but never something like 20 being sold by one shop, or 8 from one and 12 from another later in the game. And you can't really count on Call Colossus in Dark Side.


Ice Minion
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 10, but this doesn't actually matter
Leadership: 50
Attack/Defense: 12 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 3
Health: 35
Damage: 3-5 Ice
Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison, 80% Magic-100% Fire, 80% Ice
Talents: The Crystal Garden (Charge: 1. The Ice Minion stack is destroyed, spawning Ice Spikes in three adjacent tiles of the player's choice)
Abilities: Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Nimble (Flat 30% chance for incoming attacks to Miss)

They no longer suffer less damage from Traps and are no longer able to Freeze enemies with their attack. Nonetheless, they're plenty useful as a disposable tank. Their main loss is that The Crystal Garden no longer has Ice Elves to synergize with.

Bizarrely, they're immune to Spells, but still don't have a listed Magic Immunity Ability. This gives them a lot of utility, though it can occasionally be inconvenient since eg you can't center a Fireball or Fire Rain on a unit that's immune to Spells. That's really annoying when you deliberately get an Ice Minion mobbed and then it inconveniently survives long enough to block you from slapping down a pair of Fire Rains.

Still, they remain plenty useful.

-------------------------------------------

Next time, we wrap up Neutral with the units Dark Side added in or shifted over to Neutral.

This post is already too long. Seriously.

Comments

  1. Cyclops deals 80 damage in melee.
    In addition to wrong number, in Russian version poison-related part of 'Stone' is worded differently from other resistances. Strange.

    Green Dragon's hiring cost is 11000, not 9000.
    Anti-giant attacks deals 160-220 damage.

    Black Dragon's Dragon Power coded exactly the same way as in WotN.
    One can use Black Dragon through the whole game using Call Colossus scrolls. Put your current dragons somewhere, equip leadership-boositng items (not nessesary), summon Dragons with the scroll. Those new dragons + reserve of ones we already had will work for some time.
    I did Black Dragon/Dragon Rider/Ice Dragon/Armageddon spam runs. Works fine on impossible. Very repetitive through.

    Royal Thorn deals 20-40 damage in melee. It did not lost any damage compared to WotN.

    Just like in WotN, Assassin's Murder only recharges Backstab - it will not give it additional charge if it already have one.
    Known enemy (it is marked internally as Elf racial ability first and foremost in case you are interested in who got it first) has another, unused, feature - every hit received from a specific unit gave +5% chance to turn a crit form said unit into a normal hit.

    Royal Griffin has hiring cost of 1200.
    Anti-dragon attack deals 40-60 damage.

    Sky Guard has hiring cost of 300.

    Petrified Troll has usual 50% poison resistanse, 50% fire weakness, 3 defense and health that scales with location difficulty.

    Demonologist deals 9-10 physical damage in melee and 18-21 magical damage against demons.
    Demonic Beasts still counts halves, so it's leadership is actually 52,5-105. And it can only summon Cerberi, Demons-the-unit and Executioners.
    You know, by DS in-universe portrayal of Demonologists clearly shifted from "humanoid demon-summoners" to "Demons who are arcane scholars", yet gameplay-wise they are still some vague neutral humanoids. Devs really should have converted them into proper Demons IMO. Maybe give them Archdemon's disabled ranged attack too.

    Jotun's hiring cost is 3600.
    Rune of Attack actually gives only +20% to damage, not +25%.

    Ice Dragon costs 23000.
    Call Henchmen had the same leadership limit of 850 in WotN.
    Mana chargers work the same way too.
    I never saw hirable Ice Dragons in DS.
    We can get Call Colossus through a quest of Magic Department through. And I somehow always got a few during the game.

    Ice Minion has useless hiring cost of 10.
    In both WotN and DS Minion also has Immunity to Magic, but it is not shown in their ability list.
    Also, I don't remeber if either of us mentioned it, but Minions are considered dragons.

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    Replies
    1. Royal Griffin's Regal (actually Perfection in Russian) doesn't affect Witch Hunters and their dark analogue but does affect Robbers and Marauders.

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    2. Okay, finally got to all of this, pretty sure. Well, almost; I'd like to double-check the 'Ice Minions are dragons' thing, but I'm genuinely not sure how I'd test that.

      I don't think the Demonologist shift is THAT clear, but you're right that in Armored Princess they could show up in a variety of shops (Including the first island in a witch's hut!), whereas WotN and DS, as far as I've seen, restrict them exclusively to Demon territory. In conjunction with the mechanics issues, it's pretty unfortunate/weird that DS didn't make them Demons, yeah.

      I think I got Ice Dragons from a shop in Amazonia of all places, but it's been literally years so I might be misremembering. I just know my first run did in fact find a shop offering them late in the run.

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    3. There is still mention Royal Thorn losing some damage compared to WotN. It is not true.

      On Demonologists - there is also that thing with WotN and DS Demonologists NPCs being demons themselves.

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    4. Whoops, thought I got to that. Corrected.

      I don't remember encountering NPC Demonologists? Though I could certainly be forgetting a WotN Hero using the Demonologist graphic while being a Demon character...

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    5. Derp; in checking stuff I was reminded of Verdelet the Demonologist, who uses the Demonologist graphic while being a demon living in Atrixus. So yeah, weird that DS didn't make them into Demons. Rushing being why, one imagines,

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    6. Cyclops actually doesn't actually have Persistance of Mind in DS.

      Btw WotN also had Demonologist named Arkton whio is a demon.

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    7. Huh. As in the Russian version no longer says it has that, or as in it's bugged and doesn't work right, or as in it was obviously deliberately removed if one looks at the code?

      Though I can see why I largely missed this given Level 5 units are immune to a lot of stuff that respects Persistence of Mind.

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    8. It is a bug. All inorganics are intended to have Persistance of Mind.
      The reason for the bug is that DS Cyclops is not actually a copy of WotN version as I could think; it looks like devs wanted/tried to do 'something' with this unit but than decided against it and tried to make Usual Cyclops once again but forgot Persistance of Mind.
      Think about it like if someone decided to customize a car, partially dismantled it, than changed his/her mind and assembled it back - but forgot to put a part back.
      I wonder what did devs wanted to do with Cyclops. It is a unit that was pretty much unchaged through the series; some rework could be interesting.

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    9. Ah. Interesting. I wonder if this has anything to do with me finding them in the Baba Yaga Amazon shop?

      Updated the post appropriately, anyway.

      Delete

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