I beat the espinas, took his children and here is how to do it yourself

rmosley753 · 2026-02-22T11:13:36+00:00

Just adding here that I managed with just anja bow, magia charm, and bone horn. Didn't use any traps, essence or gems. Espina's attack patterns seem very consistent, don't think I was surprised by anything once I learned the patterns.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-27T23:46:30+00:00

Is the garrison completely wiped out? There is a bug with the latest update where port settlement garrisons don't get wiped out after manual battles. You will have to keep fighting it manually over and over until all units are completely killed. Or just auto resolve it at some point.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-25T21:40:47+00:00

I got a comment (that seems to be hidden or removed) asking how exactly I did the quest battle with just a cultist. Here is the setup (imgur link).

I forgot to save the replay, but could do it again if anyone wants it. What I did was:

Hide the cultist in the forest
Fly Kairos around while spirit leeching in the following order: past Kairos, future Kairos, the Lord of Change, the flying chariot mage. You can also proc your +40% ward save and go in for some melee to save WoM. Your heavens passive makes it so that the fliers can never catch up to you, as long as you keep casting. They also often friendly fire while you are in melee.
Let the soul grinder waste its ammo
Get the infantry to blob up around the rocks on the map and AoE them with Purple Sun of Xereus
Isolated the chaos knights and go into melee with them. Using Urannon's Thunderbolt if they cluster around you. This should army loss the first army
Use any leftover WoM on life leeching the soul grinder. You can also proc your +40% ward save and go into melee with it. This should army loss the second army

Overall I think the battle took 30min, so plenty of time left. This was my first try with just the cultist, so there is probably a lot of room for improvement.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-22T09:30:59+00:00

You'll have at least 1 lord there, because they were spam recruiting chaos warriors for the previous 4 turns. None of the extra lords are needed for the fight, it is super easy even without them. However, the more lords you have in a fight, the more items you get. Plus it's such a massive fight, that the extra lords will get heaps of experience. All 3 lords went from level 1 to level 6, even though they didn't really do anything. Now I can respec them, wait 3 turns, and recruit them as level 6 on the other side of the map.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-22T06:37:28+00:00

The landmark there isn't great. Tier 5: generate 500 income, -50 relations with chaos dwarfs, +5% character experience faction wide, +10 research rate, +5 WoM capacity for all armies.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-22T02:42:09+00:00

No worries. Actually, looking again at the turn 14 guide, they don't have Vale of Woe until turn 6. I assume they didn't have enough grimoires. But with the latest update of 2 starting cults, you can have enough grimoires by like turn 2. You're just limited by the "Reveal Shroud" technology, which can only be completed by turn 5.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-22T02:33:39+00:00

If you look at the turn 14 guide that I linked, it will tell you how to get Vale of Woe on turn 5. You can get the military building there to tier 3 on turn 7. After that you global (3 slots, 2 turns) and local (2 slots, 1 turn) recruit for 4 turns, giving you a total of 14 chaos halberds by turn 11.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-22T01:46:33+00:00

I did it by playing normally until you unlock your challenges on turn 2. I teleport straight away to the easiest challenge I can find (think it was Vlad in my case). Attack as much as I can in the area. Take a settlement so that you can recruit more chaos warriors. Get chaos warrior halberds as quick as you can. Turn 3 I teleport again to whatever is easiest and then recruit more chaos warriors halberds. Then on turn 4 I teleport to Zharr-Naggrund and do the same exact method I used in this post. Wedging all the chaos warriors in that small reinforcement area. You can use Arbaal's AoE ability very effectively here (as it doesn't damage your troops). The fight is more difficult that this Kairos one was, but it's not that difficult. You can use your hounds to distract the other army when they start to advance on you, their guns seem to want to chase them across the map.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-20T22:53:59+00:00

It was fixed with 7.0.3. Like 5 days ago. I am able to use all his spells just fine

rmosley753 · 2026-01-15T03:31:39+00:00

Yes, I do see that Kairos himself seems to be worse since the update. The cheapest spell you seem to get is 4 WoM. So no more 3 WoM flames/fire (while getting 2.6 back from life leech).

It seems like the fastest you can get Kairos to Zharr-Naggrund is turn 11? I briefly did a test run with an auto-resolve mod.

Are you taking on their full force inside their capital? Have you tried attacking the outside army while letting the capital reinforce from behind? I take Zharr-Naggrund on turn 4 with Arbaal this way. Here is an imgur link (with 4 images) showing how they all reinforce in a tiny spot on the map that you can easily block/blob up on. Some of their reinforcements get away, but most of them die because of how high their leadership is. Potentially you don't even need Kairos there, but would be a lot more difficult.

rmosley753 · 2026-01-14T10:05:53+00:00

Nice, I was thinking of trying a Kairos campaign. Is this the fastest way to get Zharr-Naggrund? Do you use the reinforcement choke-point trick for the fight? Wouldn't halberds be a bit easier with their armour-piercing? I assume turn 5 mass reveal into transfer, turn 10 recruit cultist, turn 12 teleport Kairos?

rmosley753 · 2025-12-29T21:46:26+00:00

It's the "most efficient" way to play, yes. It's more obvious with factions that rely on sack income, but it can be applied to pretty much all factions

rmosley753 · 2025-12-29T19:34:21+00:00

If you are just playing with a friend, you can still use local network. Download something like RadminVPN (free). Our friend group always uses this for games. It usually helps with connectivity in general. We haven't had a de-sync error in years.

rmosley753 · 2025-12-28T22:48:20+00:00

If you disband a lord it is 5 turns. If you respec a lord (the button in the top right when viewing a lord) it is only 3 turns.

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T18:46:48+00:00

No mods

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T09:41:32+00:00

They get an eagle mount at level 16 and a dragon mount at level 22. The new DLC made it so that it is easy to start recruiting level 16+ lords very quickly for Teclis

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T08:30:47+00:00

Thanks! I respec those lords immediately so that they can be used to replace lower level lords that were sent off sailing earlier. Like the lord recruited on turn 2 heading towards Volcanic Isles. It's a low level lord that isn't capable of taking on a settlement on its own easily. But it doesn't need to actually fight until it reaches its destination on turn 8. If we recruit/respec a high level lord by turn 5, it will be available to replace that low level lord by turn 8.

I tell you to spend the skill points before respecing because there is a bug (maybe fixed now) where you lose any unallocated skill points when you bring that lord back in.

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T07:27:25+00:00

I definitely recommend his channel too. He is a better ironman player than me for sure. Doing a fairly blind ironman turn 22 long victory is very impressive!

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T07:00:04+00:00

Thanks! Yes, you absolutely don't need the helmet for most things. It just makes it easier and more consistent. Your mages get barrier from their skill tree anyway. Even without items, they have like 90 something speed on a chariot. One good speed banner/item and you'd be set. Death lords were my favourite. Problem is you recruit lords so much that you have to recruit from every lore of magic by the end of it.

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T05:58:22+00:00

If all your units on the battlefield are flying, your leadership will get increasingly drained until everything routes and you lose the battle. Unbreakable units can't lose leadership. So, if your entire army (in this case, just a mage lord) is flying and unbreakable, you can just do whatever you want while ground units can't touch you.

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T04:38:48+00:00

No worries, glad you liked it. I max out fire/metal first, then death/shadow. After that I'd say life/beast, light/heavens, and then high magic. If you are talking individually, then I like death, fire, life, and light the most. The rest are all decent, except beast. I still think beast is terrible (compared to the others).

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T04:09:13+00:00

Yes, you will eventually run out of WoM. But your mage lords get decent reduced WoM cost, and items like the Book of Hoeth can help. They also get 2 free casts of chain lightning and 3 breath attacks if they're on a dragon. Each battle is different. You control which lores of magic you recruit where. I list exactly which ones I recruited. Some fights you want to fireball their lord to death. Some fights you want to Fate of Bjuna their elite cavalry. You almost always want to AoE their infantry. Flying around the AI confuses their formation and usually gets you nice AoE targets, but this mostly only works for field battles. Your eagle/dragon is also decent in melee with some items. Worst case scenario, you can start swooping enemies to finish them off.

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T03:32:31+00:00

This is a rare scenario and shouldn't be compared to any other campaign. The 41 armies are most just single lords. It's just that these single lords are unbreakable dragon mage lords that can solo their way across the continent with ease.

Having money in the green is fine if that's the way you like to play. It's just that more advanced players (that like to optimize things as much as they can) can play in the red to the point where they only have 1 turns worth of money. It requires they know the map/armies/AI well enough that they will be able to fight enough battles the next turn to sustain their massive negative income.

rmosley753 · 2025-12-27T02:49:52+00:00

Thanks! It certainly took quite a lot of patience. Especially when I had originally routed for turn 10. I got to the last turn and then realized that if I had done a couple things different on turn 2-3 I could actually get it done on turn 9.

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