Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - REDEMPTION!!!

Long time readers (both of you) will know the heartache I suffered on The Ancient Ghosts Iron mode, having to give out my first 'F' ever in any of my Impossible Hero Challenges.  I just could not finish the map with Oloch no matter how hard I tried, and I was extremely bitter about it.

Well, I recently redid the map with Isfet as part of adding him to my Vengeance series, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered.  Despite him have a ranged magic attack, which is nearly useless on Liches and Haunted Skeletons with their absurd magic resistance, I ended up giving him a 'C', and honestly could have argued for even a 'B-'.

That inspired me to go back and give it one more go with Oloch.  After all, I'm a better player now than I was back then, so maybe I'd be able to pull it off.  Well I'm excited to say that I did.  I can officially rescind my one 'F' and can say that I have beaten every single map across all three games with every single hero.

I altered my strategy a little bit based on my experience with Isfet.  I knew from him that if I could permanently stall the Liches coming from the upper left, it would free up resources to devote to the righthand side of the map - which is honestly the one most likely to get out of control.  It took some doing, but I was able to make it work with Oloch as well.

Part of the strategy change was also changing from Demon Goonies to Demon Guards.  Now most players use Goonies exclusively, as I do myself, as they have a ranged attack which is generally more useful than the pitiful increase in health and damage that Guards get compared to them.  But ranged attacks aren't needed here - the Liches need to be kept in melee constantly, as their own ranged attacks are extremely powerful.  In addition, the Guards have the upgrade where they cause AoE explosive damage when they die.  It's not much, but it's something, especially considering they will be dying a lot.

Now the balance patch that came out this past December did include a slight buff to Demon Guards.  It increased their melee damage by 2 points and their explosive death damage by 10.  However, I wasn't using Guards when I was originally trying with Oloch, so it's hard to say if I could have done this pre-patch or not.  We'll never know now, but I don't really care.  I'm just glad I could get this failure which has felt like an albatross off my neck after all this time.  Oloch gets a 'D' of course - what else would we expect? - but I'm pleased to give you:

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - 28. The Ancient Ghosts Iron - Oloch

The Road Ahead 2024 Edition

Now that I've finished the Hammerhold DLC for Kingdom Rush Vengeance and will soon be done adding Isfet to my Impossible Hero Challenge series, it seemed like a good time to do a new road ahead post to put down my thoughts on what games I'll be working on for the rest of the year.

I really was not expecting a new DLC for Vengeance, and it, along with the announcement of KR5, have rather thrown off my original plan for the year.  I had hoped this year to get back to finishing some of my older projects, like my Baldur's Gate and Stronghold videos, but Kingdom Rush is what pays the bills (well, not really considering my channel isn't even monetized yet, but it certainly is a lot more popular than an old DOS game from 1993).  So we roll with the changes.

If you haven't heard, the fifth Kingdom Rush title, Kingdom Rush Alliance, will be coming out July 25th.  Given that, I'd really like to do Legends of Kingdom Rush before then.  It's extremely doubtful I can get all video content done before then (I don't even know what I might be doing for it besides a walkthrough, having not played the game yet), but I'll give it a try.  But regardless, when July 25th hits I can guarantee I'll be dropping everything to get into it and start posting content as quick as possible.

First will be a walkthrough series, as usual, and then I'll have to see about an Impossible Hero Challenge series.  If you haven't been reading the updates, Alliance will now let you use two heroes on a level at once.  In exchange for this power (which includes having two hero spells to use), it looks like the game will not include a major power like Rain of Fire, Lightning Bolt, or Soul Impact.  I'm not sure right now how I would go about an Impossible Hero Challenge when you use two heroes at once.  I'll have to play the game to find out.  It may be that you can opt to only use one hero at a time, but obviously the game will be balanced around having two, so I'll just have to wait and see.

Assuming I do one (and of course I'll find a way one way or another), it will definitely consume the rest of 2024.  The devs have announced the game will launch with 12 heroes and 16 maps, so with 3 modes that's 48 sets of potentially 12 videos each to do.  If I do the same cadence I settled into with the Hammerhold DLC of two per week (which is about the max I can handle), that's 24 weeks to get through it all.  I have to finish the walkthrough series first obviously, but I can probably crank that out in a few weeks.  And of course we can absolutely expect new levels and new heroes as time goes by, so expect KRA content to go well through 2025.

Of course my Skyrim series will continue coming out every weekday as well.  This year I've gotten a lot more proactive about planning out my content, and it's really helping me to visualize the future better.  For instance, I know I'll publish my last Isfet video on 5/7.  Now with Skyrim I have to do a lot of estimating of how many videos it will take to do particular content, but with 400+ videos already I'd say I've gotten pretty good at it.

Right now it looks like my current efforts to 100% explore Skyrim will take at least through July.  After that we'll do the main questline, the Civil War questline, and Hearthfire content, and that should take us through September.  After that we'll head to Solstheim for the rest of Dragonborn content.  Once that's done the series proper is over, but I am going to go back and do some "non-canon" videos for the sake of completeness, such as the questlines when you side with the Dawnguard and Stormcloaks instead.  All in all I expect Skyrim to go through the end of 2024.

So 2024 will definitely be Skyrim and Kingdom Rush Alliance, plus Legends of Kingdom Rush thrown in wherever possible.  It looks like I'll just have to push my other projects to 2025.  However, I will say I've been working diligently on getting ahead in generating videos.  At first this was because I was going to be gone for a month this summer and probably wouldn't be able to produce any content, but I didn't want my channel to sit idle for that long.  Well it turns out I'm not going to be gone for a month after all, but I still want to keep trying to get ahead.  I've been working on trying to get two weeks' of Skyrim content done every week, so every week I get one extra week ahead on the publishing schedule.  If I can keep this up then I potentially could be done generating all my Skyrim content by the end of summer.  That would then free up the rest of the year to either devote to another project or accelerate my release cadence for Alliance content.  It's a big if, so we'll see.

Of course the giant caveat is that I never know when I'll get the itch to play another game and just throw my schedule to the winds so I can play it instead.  Lately I've had a serious craving to go back and play The Summoning, an RPG from 1993 that I absolutely love.  We'll see what the year holds.  Let's just say that while I'm anxiously awaiting Alliance, I also wouldn't be terribly disappointed if the release date slipped.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - The Grand Arena Iron

Well here we are at last at the end of another Impossible Hero Challenge, and I'm certainly glad that it's over.  Although this was a pretty good DLC, I do feel that Vengeance overstayed it's welcome a bit.  It just wasn't quite good enough a game to justify 36 maps in the final tally, but I guess Ironhide has been trying to tide us over until Alliance releases.

As for this map, it was fun, if easy.  The Wicked Sisters get the job done pretty easily if you change them to their higher damage stunning attack (which is always the better option by default unless they're facing magic-resistant enemies).  There's a good bit of micro needed though - upgrading the rally range and then moving the Sisters around the map to where they're currently needed.  The heroes get a decent workout as well, dancing between lanes constantly until the very end.  It demands a lot of action and careful allocation of resources without being really all that difficult, which makes it an enjoyable way to wrap up this series.

Impressions

It's all 'A's here with the lone exception of Oloch - leave it to him to screw up the average, of course.  Having completed Impossible Hero Challenge series now for Frontiers, Origins, and now Vengeance, I can firmly and confidently state that Oloch is the worst hero across all three games hands down, and I will absolutely die on this hill.  He is an utterly trash hero whose DPS is awful, is slow as molasses, is made of paper, and whose hero spell is nearly worthless.  In case I'm not being clear, I absolutely hate Oloch with a fiery, burning passion.

Now I do my best not to let that hatred influence his grades.  I gave him an 'A' on Sape Oasis iron - a pretty difficult map in this DLC - because he deserved it.  Still, I consider it my parting shot to make him wear the dunce hat in the very final entry of this series.

Final Grades

• Veruk - A
• Asra - A
• Oloch - B
• Margosa - A
• Mortemis - A
• Tramin - A
• Jigou - A
• Beresad - A
• Doom Tank SG-11 - A
• Jun'pai - A
• Eiskalt - A
• Murglun - A
• Dianyun - A
• Jack O'Lantern - A
• Grosh - A

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - The Grand Arena Iron

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - The Grand Arena Heroic

Heroic mode is pretty easy here, which is fine with me after the workout that campaign mode was.  It's mostly a matter of going all-in with Spectral Mausoleums to take down the War Elephants, with a couple of Twilight Harassers thrown in to help take out Eagles and Flying Carpets.  Besides that it's just an exercise in taking out the other mobs with your heroes so the Mausoleums can focus on the Elephants as much as possible.  

Impressions

Absolutely nothing shocking about the grades this time.  It's 'B's down the top row until we get to Beresad, and then it's 'A's the rest of the way.  I know I've said before that I didn't want to get into '+' and '-' modifiers on the grades, but I'm really regretting that I didn't do it for this series.  In Origins the heroes sorted themselves pretty well into grade tiers on a regular basis, so it felt superfluous - distinguishing between an 'A' by Durax and an 'A+' by Wilbur felt unnecessary when there were plenty of 'B's and 'C's on a regular basis.  But since Vengeance is so much easier I wish I had done it to better differentiate the heroes.  I would have given Jun'pai an 'A-' for instance, while Eiskalt was definitely an 'A+', and the distinction would actually mean something.  Alas, it's a bit too late to start on the penultimate entry for this entire series.

Final Grades

• Veruk - B
• Asra - B
• Oloch - B
• Margosa - B
• Mortemis - B
• Tramin - B
• Jigou - B
• Beresad - A
• Doom Tank SG-11 - A
• Jun'pai - A
• Eiskalt - A
• Murglun - A
• Dianyun - A
• Jack O'Lantern - A
• Grosh - A

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - The Grand Arena Heroic

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - The Grand Arena Campaign

Overall this DLC goes out on a pretty good note.  This map was decently challenging throughout the entire process.  It took a fair amount of work to figure out just the right build for sure, but even once that was nailed down executing on it still requires pretty good play as well.  The Malik fight was fun as well as shocking the first time you encounter it.  Never before in a Kingdom Rush game have we had a mechanic that actually permanently destroys not just towers, but entire build points.  The first time it happens you instantly start panicking and calculating in your head if you think you have enough DPS to take him down before he destroys everything.

That's actually what drove the adjustments I made in figuring out the build.  Initially I went all-in with Spectral Mausoleums on all the build points in the middle of the arena.  However, adding a Melting Furnace to increase the DPS of the nearby towers, plus adding a Shadow Archer so that Malik would get hit with a Shadow Mark as soon as the fight started, were critical changes that greatly upped my chance of success.

But you want to know what the hardest part of this map is?  The freaking eagles.  Something is bugged with this map for certain, because I had several restarts due to an eagle slipping through because my Bone Flingers or Tesla Coils simply refused to target it.  No other enemies had this problem, just the eagles.  It was an intermittent problem for sure, but still, nothing is worse than getting 10 minutes into a recording only to have it fail because your Bone Flingers simply watch an eagle fly past them without attacking.

Impressions

Grades here are largely a reflection of how quickly heroes could call the next wave, with pretty much only the 'A' tier heroes able to insta-call every wave.  Overall the grades aren't that bad.  As I said above you do have to play well, but getting the build right is the larger part of mastering this map.

Margosa deserves a special callout for this map.  While her overall performance was definitely 'B' tier, she absolutely slaughtered Malik in record time.  Her self-heal in Beast Form can actually out-heal his damage, and while he's in melee he can't use his other abilities - like destroying towers.  If it weren't for the fact that they finally fixed her so that Beast Form can expire while she's engaging an enemy she could have soloed him.  It was a nice redemption for her considering this DLC has been brutal on her grades.

Several other melee heroes had good boss performances as well, like Jigou and Grosh.  Oddly enough it's the dragons who had some of the worst times versus Malik simply because he priority-targets heroes, so they kept dying over and over.  Dianyun was the one exception, since he can't be targeted while he's moving but can still attack, so I just flew him overhead constantly.

I do want to note that while I was able to insta-call every wave with Jun'pai, I still gave him a 'B'.  Insta-calling is impressive, but overall his performance lacked the kind of buttery smoothness we look for in 'A'-tier performances.

Final Grades

• Veruk - B
• Asra - B
• Oloch - C
• Margosa - B
• Mortemis - B
• Tramin - B
• Jigou - B
• Beresad - A
• Doom Tank SG-11 - A
• Jun'pai - B
• Eiskalt - A
• Murglun - A
• Dianyun - A
• Jack O'Lantern - A
• Grosh - B

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - The Grand Arena Campaign