Incredible! In my very first days, Kira kills Dace and captures the Deep Shadow Dungeon! And in your case, it somehow mysteriously remained in your hands! Maybe you even have Dace alive? According to the story, he MUST die, after all, that's why Mutare takes revenge on the Dragon!
On the same map at the very start, such radical differences, and because of them, you could do everything differently, just level up the hero and army and beat the Dragon, without having to go through anything else! And do it several times faster!
Can I still get your save, I really want to see this with my own eyes? I'm attaching my save on 1-2-1.
Dear Marmot, don't fall for what the authors usually feed us on the initial respawn! ;)
We generate a normal Dace (see screenshot) - artillery is mandatory!
1-1-1 Dace DOES NOT FIGHT, but eats a few resources, settles on point 135,9,0 - an observation tower and spends the night there. Kira eats the resources, captures the fort, and rides down for the garrison. Even though her army is stronger, Dace's stats are much higher, and the computer doesn't want to lose forces. At night, the computer builds a mage guild and spends the night below near the blue pillar.
1-1-2 Dace recaptures the fort, learns the mage guild (slow, curse, shield, haste) - Dace is expert in everything. Then either we spend the night in the fort, or we go back out to cell 135,9,0 (I don't remember)
1-1-3 - 1-1-4 we buy a blacksmith + ballista in the fort and spend the night in the fort. We give Dace 5 spearmen + a troglodyte, put the rest in the fort. :) Old baiting tactic against the computer! If you take all the forces, Kira won't attack. In short, we fool Kira by putting 1 creature each in Dace's 7 stacks, and the rest in the fort. Kira attacks, and with expert artillery and ballista + expert slow, Kira gets taken out in no time. The ballista takes out 1-3 angels, I don't remember exactly. And the fort is in your pocket! I just passed the battle on the first try; with the ballista it's a truly easy fight :)
Then we split on tactics in the anti-magic garrison with Dace heading to the southern castle and start the walkthrough in normal mode.