Inferno Guide

[Psychobabble]

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/555

[Psychobabble]

The image "https://www.celestialheavens.com/Infern ... age001.gif" is missing. Otherwise, it's a great guide, well done .

[Cunning Death]

i just want to mention a minor flaw: in the troops section you forgot the name of imps
anyway, good work, thx

ed.
just finished reading the whole article. i want to see the dirty tricks section to expand. the one you mentioned is my favourite tactics, you can use in the camp very effectively

[Morannon]

Thank you for a nice guide. So far I have not played with inferno accept in the campagin because they feelt pretty weak. But after reading your guide, playing with inferno sounds like fun. They might even be the new fortress that I miss so much. A town that everyone think is weak but played well can be deadly.

[Skullmane]

What did you want to know about Urgash's call? All it does is, you pick a spot to gate, and the creatures appear at once.

[Loco Blutaxt]

Very nice guide! Thanx!

In a German Fan-Forum (Drachenwald.net) I read that phantom troops cannot gate anymore since the 1.1 update. I haven't tried it but it was believable.

[Infiltrator]

Awsome guide



Four more factions to go

[dylanfan]

Great guide! I just finished the Inferno campaign and really started to enjoy playing Inferno. I agree with most of what you say. Logistics and Luck are essential skills, but I think that Attack is essential too. To me the way you should play Inferno is: Blitzkrieg. Move fast and get to your enemy as quickly as possible. Be sure that you kill as many enemy units as you can in your first strike, so there will be so few creatures left that they cannot hurt you. With tactics your cerberi and hellchargers can hit the enemy in their first turn.



Defense is not really essential. For Inferno attack is the best defense. When you kill most units with you first attack, you don't really need defense. Most level-ups give +1 attack and very rarely + 1 defense, so your heroes will never be great at defense anyway.



Dark magic is the best magic school for Inferno. It gives access to useful spells like Mass Slow.



And I totally agree with you on the (Arch)Devils, they really are a very disappointing unit. In most big battles they got killed very easily and they did not do much damage.

[dylanfan]

And Hellfire is a really great ability, which helps you do as much damage as posible on your first strike.
Edited on Wed, Jun 21 2006, 05:37 by dylanfan

[Labyrinth]

Great guide! Kudos!

[Bandobras Took]

Great guide! I just finished the Inferno campaign and really started to enjoy playing Inferno. I agree with most of what you say. Logistics and Luck are essential skills, but I think that Attack is essential too.

Be sure that you kill as many enemy units as you can in your first strike, so there will be so few creatures left that they cannot hurt you. With tactics your cerberi and hellchargers can hit the enemy in their first turn.

Attack is good, but Logistics and Luck go ahead of it. I rate the other three approximately equal, but for different reasons. Attack is strong in its basic abilities.

Defense is not really essential. For Inferno attack is the best defense. When you kill most units with you first attack, you don't really need defense. Most level-ups give +1 attack and very rarely + 1 defense, so your heroes will never be great at defense anyway.

In this case, it's Vitality, Evasion, and Hellwrath that I feel make Defense shine. It helps mitigate the destructibility of your Imps and Cerberbi.

Dark magic is the best magic school for Inferno. It gives access to useful spells like Mass Slow.

Oh, definitely. I just don't think the Inferno gets as much profit focusing on Magic as other classes. Just choosing Hellfire means that you can't guarantee your mana. Like you said, though, Dark Magic's the best choice of magic for the Inferno.

What did you want to know about Urgash's call? All it does is, you pick a spot to gate, and the creatures appear at once.

I hadn't yet gotten it for myself. That situation has been happily rectified; and the guide should be updated.

Thanks for all the positive replies!

[howgrizzly]

Great Guide I'm just translating it to polish language just for fans from Poland so they can enjoy it and learn. Hope you don't mind.
Edited on Thu, Jun 22 2006, 13:49 by howgrizzly

[Solace]

Deleb kicks butt in duel-mode for the record :-p



Nice guide. easily agreeable. Though I personally prefer Deleb for longer maps and/or playing on heroic. Mainly because grok's level-based growth is so slow and Deleb has an explosive start (heheh).



Oh.. And a comment on horned demons... Late-game if you havn't built them in a while... The demon/overseer buildup should be quite large.. Playing around with it, I've had much better damage output with teleport assault + overseer attack/explosion compared to the pit fiends.

[asandir]

That's a good point solace, though the overseers cop a bit of a hiding from most people, you get good numbers of them and they do cop a wallop, teleport assault makes them quite useful towards endgame

[Bandobras Took]

Oh.. And a comment on horned demons... Late-game if you havn't built them in a while... The demon/overseer buildup should be quite large.. Playing around with it, I've had much better damage output with teleport assault + overseer attack/explosion compared to the pit fiends.

As I said, Teleport Assault turns them into a gem. I don't get rid of my Horned Demons in the late game, but it is an option if you need an XP push. Just to let you know that I pretty much agree with you %100.

[Nelgirith]

Great guide !

I will translate it for french fans, if you don't mind

Thanks

[N3rull]

One observation on Jezebeth.

Her Sorcery can combine very well with the Teleport Assault and her super succubi. Fact, you may need like level 15 to get both Tele Ass and Expert Sorcery, but with that combo (and help of the gimme-yo-mana familiars) You can make your succubi shoot as if they had 15 initiative. Just Teleport them one grid away and you'll have them jump a few places up the intiative ladder.

[TearofAsha]

I agree with alot of your guide. It is very helpful and I have learned alot from it. I have picked up a few tricks with Phantom Force I would like to share.



You can get Phantom Force by picking it as the Bonus at the start of the Second Mission. Since this spell carries over into all other Missions, it is a Bonus that keeps on giving. You will need summoning or my favorite Sorcery + Intuition by the end of the first mission to get it.



When you Phantom Force you need a space available for it to warp in. So whenever possible attack units from the side so you can Phantom Force a duplicate of that stack next to the target aswell.



I enjoy Phantom Force on Cerberi the best. They have a skill in which they are not retaliated against. This means that Phantom Cerberi will last longer, make the enemy actually target it for an attack and even make them miss them completely sometimes forcing them to attack second or third time without killing your Phantom Cerberi. This is highly effective in saving your Regulars from damage.



The Phantom Force tends to gain agro from the AI, so they will try to take it out as one of their top priorities.



You can Phantom Force a Phantom Force. If you have a Phantom Cerberi on the front line and he has lasted long enough you can cast him another duplicate right next to him. Which helps if you have Sorcery so you can cast faster.



The Succubi are the second best since they are shooters and usually dont get retaliation, making them last longer. If you do want to Phantom Force a Succubi you need a space available for this. Sometimes you will want to turtle your Succubi from ground pounders so wanting to Phantom Force them can sometimes be tricky. Also, you dont want to Phantom Force a Succubi and have alot of units around them, they might get targeted with an AoE spell and then there goes your Phantom Force. So decide when placing your troops if your going to Phantom Succubi in or not and then place in the optimal location, usually by themselves in a corner behind some rocks or wood obstructions that prevents frontal assault is a nice location.



I think for my top 10 normal Skills



1. Logistics for all the reasons you mentioned which is really great advice thanks.



2. Sorcery with Phantom Force (If your doing the Campaign this is a must)



With Sorcery and Intuition you can Cast your spells faster, allowing you too Phantom Force or do other spells faster. You can learn lvl 3 spells or lower spells of all the branches of magic. You can use Soulfire to make use of that dead Gated stack of Imps next to their shooters. Its just cool to use a dead gated stack for something offensive.



3. Luck for all the reasons you mentioned in our guide.



4. Enlightenment -



Enlightenment will allow you to share Phantom Forces and other spells with other Heroes with Scholar perk. A great addition



It will allow you to learn any spell used against you in battle with Arcane Intuition.



It will also grant you a huge bonus to the Heroes main attribute. That attribute should be attack. And if your hero has over +10 or more to his Attack stat due to enlightenment, then this increase should be even better than the damage bonuses you get from picking the Attack skill.



Although Agrael starts with Attack so you can skip it for him if you want another skill badly enough above the extra damage your units will do with Enlightenment. Alternatively other Heroes can pick this skill up, learn battle spells off your enemies, and teach each other the Phantom Forces and other spells Agrael has.



And it will give you a +2 to Spellpower to put better use to all those attack spells you've learned.



5. Leadership-



Inferno are all about the attack and not much defense. Alot of Inferno troops dont have much defense at all. Imps have 2, Horned have 4, Cerberi have 2, Succubi have about 8. The Defense skill wont really help any of these units, and they are likely the ones you wanted to save when you picked the Defense skill. The Defense skill isn't going to save very many of your forces. Shouldn't even be in the top 5 since it only helps Chargers, Pit Lords and Devils which is like giving a Defense bonus to only 10-20% of your forces. Giving 30% defense bonus to 2 and 4 defense troops is not optimal enough for their survival. The only thing I think that saves Defense from being useless is the Hellwrath perk.



The best option to save your units lives are with gated forces, killing fast and phantom forces. The faster you gate, using the Morale boost you get from Leadership, the more regular units survive. The more you gate in with Gate Master the better chances of your Gated Units surviving more assaults, which means more agro is off your regulars and onto Gated ones. The faster your initiative, the faster you can destroy the enemy which in turn means less harm to your unit. If you attacked a stack first, they are either dead or have their stack decreased in number, which translates into less damage your units will take. I think the best attack is your best defense for Inferno.



The Recruitment perk isn't very helpful true. But, you can pick up a free Basic Leadership by the Third mission using the Witch Hut for Agrael which will offset having to pick Recruitment to get to Gate Master.



So if dont pick Leadership until the Third mission, you might get it for free.



6. War Machines-



Deleb with War Machines is awesome. There is no doubt about it, she rocks with it. Aswell all the reasons you mentioned too is why it up there on my list. If you skip enlightenment or sorcery, you cant go wrong with this alternative.



7. Attack



If I cant get Enlightenment then I would choose this or War Machines to do more damage to the enemy. The best attack for Inferno is their best defense.



Attack, Logistics, Luck and Dark Magic are all needed for Urgash's Call. If you have no choice because you have Attack and Dark Magic, and thats all the level upgrade gives you, then may aswell go for broke and try for Urgash's Call.



8. Summoning



It is an alternative to Sorcery for getting Phantom Forces which is a must have spell for Inferno.





9. Defense



Although I was really hard on this skill before with comparison to Leadership. I think it has its uses with Hellwrath and using Teleport Assault from Logistics skill, using the Horned beasts for something offensive. As mentioned earlier with this great guide, A good idea would be to Teleport Assault your Horned Overseers to their shooters who hopefully have poor melee skills (not a good idea against Priests for example), and hope that their retaliation triggers the Hellwrath proc. Aswell you can use the Horned Overseers Explosion while your over there, and if this hero has high Luck skill and Soldier's Luck perk, you might get them enraged.



That isn't the best offense, but it can be a strategy you can give to atleast one of your Inferno heroes so that you can put the Horned beasts to atleast one use since they rarely have any other. Plus you can give this Defense hero alot of your high defense units to supliment the strategy aswell as giving them extra defense. Since those units are expensive you should consider a defensive hero if you know you will have alot of money too spare.



10. Dark Magic



Need it for Urgash's Call, but you will miss out on better skills

[TearofAsha]

I failed to mention another strategy of Phantom Force.



You can Phantom Force an incoming gating group of Cerberi. This will allow you to put a huge force right next to shooters while keeping your original stack safe. The best placement for the Gated Cerberi should be one away from the target area you wish to place the Phantom force. The Phantom forces like to spawn directly in front of the selected unit.



So lets say you have someone who has three shooters right next to each other on the front line. Use your Cerberi to gate in one away from the middle of the shooters. Then when it is Hero's turn you Phantom Force the incoming gating Cerberi.



To Phantom Force a gating but not already spawned Cerberi you can select the Phantom force spell and click over the blinking Cerberi icon down below in the Initiative bar.



If your morale is high then that Phantom Cerberi will be attacking those shooters in the next turn or two. This is great if there is a danger of Dragons or something coming to take out your original Cerberi since you can turtle them up to be safe with your shooters while the Gated Cerberi and Phantom Gated Cerberi reck havok on their shooters.

[N3rull]

Serious question about getting Ultimate Gating:

Ever since 1.3 (which I dled like a week ago ;p) I'm having problems with getting ultimate gating. I play Deleb, my evolution is 'complete war machines, then go for logistics and ultimate gating'. The thing is, when I get to level 5 I got my war machines skill tree full, then I try to take advanced gating, expert gating. That comes often. But now I'm level 7 and all the way to level 20 I can't get ultimate gating. WTF?

I get all the gating perks asap, for a belief that it may be necessary. I complete my logistics tree. But then at level +/- 16 all i get with a level up is a choice of "basic luck or basic attack".

That sux. I have archdevils in 3rd week on hard (Deleb's critter-cleaning capabilities own, i get all the mines in a blink of an eye) and can't make them Gate, which is the only way they can do SOMETHING on the battlefield (except for getting slain), since they are the weakest L7 of all.

Only the spectrals can compete at being the weakest, but they get the horde dwelling and can be perm-ressed with raise dead.





So, do you guys know anything about it? Is anything required to get Ultimate Gating? Like a certain level or something?



EDIT: I found this in the skillwheel comments:

----

DaemianLucifer at 2006-06-18 08:23 wrote:

(...)If you are refering to the racial skill like ultimate gating,or ultimate necromancy,in that case you can get them only via an artifact called pendant of master,that boosts your racial skill up one level,even beyond the expert.

----

If that is true then my whole infernal dream just got burnt to ashes :s



PS. After playing inferno for quite some time, i think that whenever you play at least a 4-player map or whenever you get to find/conquer a city of another nation, leadership comes in very handy. 4 archangels are more useful than stacks of imps/demons/cerberi that you will surely have reduced to a pitiable size in later game. But putting angels into your infernal army will get you like -3 morale for all creatures. That can kill anyone - your foe being the less likely.

Another use for leadership: U got 7 units acting nearly twice as often. They gate 6 other units (-devils ), each of them being 20% larger and acting twice as many times too. With luck that gives your units a high chance of inflicting double damage (and for the gated stack to be even twice as big)... That's like a total overrun...
Edited on Mon, Oct 09 2006, 06:33 by N3rull