I'll weigh in too.
I saw someone's walkthrough stream on YouTube and decided to play. After a couple of days of attempts, a results table showing which artifacts should be given to which hero for victory, and... a complete dead end.
Winning battles is tied more to bugs than to tactics (for reference—leading wolves through fire walls is a tactic). A bugged battle, for example, is the fight with the magogs:
Puzzle Spoiler
A battle with 6666 magogs (in 3 stacks) using only one fairy dragon is, in principle, possible due to the use of a bug: if you give the enemy hero a sniper bow, then when your single unit is positioned point-blank, adjacent stacks will not shoot so as not to hit their own, and the single stack standing point-blank will not attack because it would also hit itself. But I figured that out on my own; the problem came later: I tested various spell variations with my dragon and recorded the numbers: Meteor Shower takes out 664 units, Ring of Frost and similar spells—304, Inferno—341. The description for the Hypnosis spell says that I can apply hypnosis when a stack has 2525 HP remaining (99 Spell Power, Expert Air Magic). Through simple calculations, we divide the resulting number by the amount of HP magogs have and get 2525/13 = roughly 194 magogs.So let's calculate: given 2222 magogs, we need to reach a level of 194 or lower. The dragon has 5 casts in total. According to the calculations, a plan emerged: 1 Meteor Shower and 4 Infernos. Let's count:
2222-664-341*4 = 2222-2028 = EXACTLY one hundred ninety-four damn magogs!
Hooray, the solution is found, off to battle... Nothing. The magogs simply refuse to be hypnotized... even after I used the dragon to reduce their number to 187, hypnosis still didn't work on them...
I tested the same battle on the first map I found in the editor; there, the magogs are hypnotized (!), but on the other map they aren't (Fuuuuuuuu..). So why did nothing work?
Either it's just a bug, or this happened because the author devised a different plan for this battle (although the enemy hero has no special artifacts).
Well, in principle, to hell with those magogs; here is an example of a battle that I
Managed to pass
A battle with a rusty dragon against two champions and 400 crusaders. After a couple of attempts, an obvious plan for passing the battle emerged: hypnosis on the riders (this is our control and extra damage), then we make a clone of the dragon and carousel the crusaders. We save the turn with the original dragon, the clone attacks and takes the retaliation, then everyone together hits the crusaders again, and so on in a circle. Everything is great: the crusaders' armor slowly melts from two rusty dragon hits per turn, traitors riding horses—pure bliss. The problem is that around the moment when the crusaders' armor becomes zero and your dragons finally open this tin can and deal significant damage, the mana runs out, but the crusaders are far from finished (only 400 mana total).
The result: no range, no attacking spells, no mana; how to get out of this situation?
Personally, I came up with the following plan: before the battle, I "gifted" the enemy hero a Life Elixir (making the crusaders even tankier). After the crusaders' defense was sufficiently lowered, I saved enough mana for 2 hypnosis recasts (i.e., for 120 turns, guaranteed). I locked the adversary in a single cell with two horses; fortunately, there is an external dwelling on the map created specifically for this purpose, where by destroying the obstacle you can roast through the champion with a dragon. And then "this music will be eternal" according to the following scenario: the first horse hits the adjacent one to take the retaliation (***I don't know why, but my hypnosis doesn't prevent the counterattack at all, but in this case, whatever***), the dragon roasts the previously attacked horse and a crusader along with it. The horse regens HP because the enemy was gifted an elixir, and since its defense is simply off the charts, it will survive two hits per round until the second coming until the crusaders are thinned out and then joyfully die in battle with the horses.
The main problem with this map is that I cannot say for sure that I "won correctly." I now see 3 battles where a Life Elixir must be used, but there are only two of them. This means some battles are wrong and there is another way... And this kills all desire to chew on this cactus: you don't just have to win the battle, but win it CORRECTLY, as intended by the author, without hints or any logic. That is, constant trial and error of all possible victory options is required. Considering that in some battles I see several solution options, doing this trial and error just makes me want to give up... It's like bad sex: there's movement—but no progress..
Author, if you think your hints work... They don't.
Playing as Kira
I couldn't pass the first battle without a Life Elixir, although I admit there are options... (added: found a way: give the sentinel shield to the enemy, although it's so random that everything depends heavily on the spread of the titan's damage to angels). The second battle... I don't know what needs to be done there; nothing can break through the troll's regeneration (neither fire shield nor the titan's ridiculous damage will do anything to him, even in a wildly ideal situation—the troll gets a repeat and deals maximum 18 damage and receives 7 from the fire shield +1 from retaliation both times, then 2 attacks by the titan itself (via morale) with one retaliation for another +9 damage, and in the new turn another double attack by the titan for another +9; total 8+8+9+9=36 HP is the ABSOLUTE maximum with unreal randomness, there's simply nothing to lower your own armor or buff the enemy! (Berserk doesn't work on the titan)). However, if Kira has a Life Elixir, then even the troll can do nothing to the titan. Quick battle shows Kira winning after some serious mechanical brain-grinding. Again, whether passing this battle via a bug is "correct"—I don't know; perhaps something can be thought up here to avoid using the Life Elixir, but whatever, let's see what happens next:Forts with crystal dragons and your first turn on the ballista obviously suggest that titans should be placed under the gates and dragons should not be let out of the Castle.
Author's hint: "if you hit crystal dragons with titan thunder to the head for a long time, they will scatter"
Titan thunder is a spell if the Titan Set is created... We don't have the Titan Set... But we do have the titan himself—so we'll bash the dragons through the wall until they fall apart, but how to do that? The titan only has 24 shots, which won't even kill 1 out of 10 dragons. I didn't find a cart anywhere, although I looked carefully everywhere.
For me, the most obvious solution was the initial transfer of the Phantom scroll. Now we can produce clones while constantly renewing their arrows. Checked—it works.
Since then, I have assigned the phantom scroll to Kira in my table, but it turned out that this is intended... for the bugged magogs..
Plot dialogues during Kira's movement after her battles suggest that the author intended an immediate clash between Kira and the dragons (while I was wondering if she needed this scroll or if a cart should be brought from the mainland..)
The Sphere of Vulnerability doesn't work; protection against three attacking spells is absolute for all heroes in cities, and the only artifact that solves the problem completely must belong to another hero.
In the end, I am resentful of the map. It's a shame because the battles are very interesting and unconventional, but I just don't want to iterate through their variations. The bane of this map is that solutions can be wrong, and considering there are tons of heroes and artifacts—there can simply be too many variations (one branch, for example, can be passed without an artifact at all...). At first you try to understand without which artifacts nothing will work here, but you soon realize it's useless, because solutions that seem obvious
spoiler
speed cloak—to the fanaticand upon which you build your game can be wrong, despite positive battle results..
To the Author
Perhaps something should be done about this? For example, add a check for correct artifacts after battles?Let's be honest, without your hints on that famous stream (where I looked for how to handle the magog hypnosis), they can't even take a step, despite the "collective intelligence."
