Dark Knights, Black Hearts or Gold Mine?

[alonadel]

Hello Fellow addicts, I wanted to start this discussion about fighting the Dark Knights / Black Knights/ arrg were screwed kind of thing.

Ever since I started playing this game I learned fast to run like heck from these fellows as they seem to be of the nastiest sort, evil, evil, evil. Well anyway, then I decided I was going to go ahead and create a new character, mister alien man with a face like I know its not the face of course, but with him I am now able to solo quite well the Black and twisted Hordes. I am sure veterans are doing this all the time, but I just want to see if anyone else is doing this just to be sure. You see, I take my men into fights with these fellows and , , well, patte, is the word for my poor men, even my knights etc,,, death death and more death.
As for me, , I use a nice horse with a speed of 9 atleast,, cary a nice long sword or nomad saber each having fast speed as well as great range. OR as I found much nastier, A blade of War. I also cary arround with me a bow and some arrows.

When Fighting these fellows I tell my men to just hold their ground and run out to meet the enemy myself, I get them to chase me into an area where i can run in circles basically, Because my horse has decent speed,, and handling of atlest 9 as well, I am abel to run them in tight cicles cutting their horses out from under them until they are all walking. Then I keep making passes killing off the men on foot. Run a little ways away and fill their heads full of arrows. .. This usually gets me up an entire level in ONE Fight. So then, Is this the best way of doing it? How do you do it? And how on earth do I get them to drop more of that nice armor? I always get like maybe 5 items after killing all of them. . > Course I do have 22 soldiers as well, but I do not see any of them looking any better than me after the fights, none of them in black armor etc.

 

[The Black Douglas]

its ok takin them head on yourself but you just end up hogging all the xp and your men dont progress. if you tell your men to charge just as the whole enemy army is chasing you, you can get good flanking moves.

 

[okiN]

It really isn't all that hard soloing dark hunter parties, no matter how big, once you get the hang of combat and manage to procure some decent gear. It always makes you feel good, though.

 

[alonadel]

To be honest I did not care about my mens progression, It seems to me that my men suck anyway. I mean, they level from a vagir peasant, all the way up to a knight or whatever and thats it, no more progression, no stronger etc. Of course correct me if I am wrong, but my men basically stop growing there. The only ones that do keep getting stronger are Marnid and Borcha. So, I figure, gee, my men die like flies against these fellows, so I will just uberise myself first on them and then later on have my men fight them when I have a large mass of knights and a high surgeon skill or something. Or do your characters get stronger even after they hit their max progression of knight

 

[compfreak]

unfortunatly they don't get stronger. you'd think that swinging that axe into the dark knights' heads would be a nice workout, but your men don't advance at all within their "class" or whatever it is. my viegir knights don't do so badly against the dark knights though. are you just allowing them to charge, or having your men hold position/follow you?

 

[alonadel]

I have done both, Had my men wait and ran the horde into them, , had my men follow me, had my men charge after I got the horde to come with me, however it seems that my men end up breaksfast more than not. If i go toe to toe 22 men to 22 men,, well, I end up the last one arround, concious atleast.

 

[katank]

Are you playing vanilla? Then it's pretty easy and generally how I do it.

Try the Mag 7 Mod and you'll be surprised. All dark knights become mounted on nightmares which are essentially black coursers and some have been given lances. Dark armies (100+ groups of them) also contain what's called dark fanatics which are uber archers with warbows.

Soloing a dark army actually becomes quite harrowing as occassionally you get couched by the now faster moving dark knights or get shot up by the fanatics.

Getting unhorsed among them is possibly the scariest thing of all.

I tend to forgo missile weapons when fighting them and rely on a great axe or sword of war as secondary with a great lance and steel shield as primary.

My best single charge took down 3 dark knights with one couched hit after another.

 

[JohnathanStrange]

Wow, someone's in love with the Mag 7 mod 'cause he mentions it in so often in his posts. I kid, I kid. The mod's been out for awhile, but it's still kinda funny to hear someone call the non-modded version "vanilla" as though we had the modding tools to create in-depth mods like R:TW's SPQR or Realism mods, or mods like NWN's or Morrowinds. Mag 7 is cool, and an achievement greatly valued but wait until we get the tools: then we'll see mods that make an unmodded M&B seem vanilla indeed.

 

[Blade]

Exactlly BECAUSE the Mag 7 mod is done without tools, is what makes it so great!

I am more than sure that with the tools we will get much more elaborate and complete mods, but the work put into Mag7 is VERY worth mentioning in many posts!!

 

[katank]

Yes, I'm indeed loving the mod. I did play through many mods like the RTW mods you mentioned.

It's not at all a reflection on the quality of the orginal game but I'm used to calling an unmodded game vanilla.