LordWai
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Walkthrough continuation
The first task that arose after the euphoria of successfully implementing my plan was quite tedious: moving this crowd of half-drunk elf girls from the tavern to the castles, accounting for all transfers and with only one admiral's hat in the shortest possible time. Quite a logistical challenge; I think it's tougher than what the author intended here =)///I should note, I messed up big time: I overlooked that Elaine had wisdom (whatever) but most importantly, so did Illuziron! meaning I thought only the Keeper and Arwen could make it to the mainland. A total fail. I only discovered my mistake after completing the map///
In general, we were swapping hats, fighting overpopulation, and settling into castles almost until the end of the week; on day 7, I decided that the easiest target would be that guy in the torture chamber, since he has the smallest garrison.
Storming the Torture Chamber
The idea was simple: wipe out the garrison despite the summons of fire elementals, and when the opponent runs out of all "material" troops, flee to the tavern, leaving the gates open for the triumph of the next hero.
To accomplish this task, I took the most upgraded hero — Astriel, and realized that it wasn't just some guy sitting here, but some kind of armored brontosaurus, because with a 99 attack parameter, my titan with a sniper bow dealt the coveted 1 damage.. Overall, the task was solved quickly; I took Arwen, she has a force field, locked in a titan, and behind him (sitting and drinking from a life elixir flask under the fence the enemy wall, so he wouldn't see how many fire creatures were arriving) a cursed armor. And I spammed Earthquake alternately with recasting the force field. The material enemy garrison quickly dwindled to two lonely Efreets, and then Arwen surrendered to the victor's mercy and was bought out in the tavern, while Astriel went into the torture chamber, hitting it with the same Earthquake, capturing the mainland's first guarded outpost in one move.
The torture chamber turned out to be a generous town; the angel alliance significantly simplified further battles, and moreover, a ballista appeared on the scene!
Storming the Stables
This is where I suffered plenty of grief due to my own mistake. How simple it would have been if Illuziron had started storming the stables, forcing everyone inside to simply kill each other (a test battle showed that 566 non-upgraded rocs remained alive, and that's with me not participating in the battle at all.. I think if you "help" the right side at the right moments, Illuziron could actually capture the stables in a single battle).
But since that would be a healthy person's Illuziron, and I have a smoker's Illuziron who spent the entire map in one of the roadside elf-dens, at first I couldn't think of anything better than "hit and run" with the Keeper's Armageddon..
Just as in the torture chamber, I used Arwen, whose task was to lock herself under the wall and spam Armageddon, but because Arwen is quite weak even with parts of the angel alliance, mana ran out quickly, and she had to spend a long time getting back from the tavern by crossing the sea. In the end, I paid dearly for my overconfidence. Yes, I captured the stables with the Keeper, buying him out once again, but I spent an enormous, unacceptable amount of gold, and after 6 hours of gameplay, I was forced to load up 25 saves back and start thinking again about how to approach storming the stables... Moreover, I realized that on this map all money must be saved as much as possible, and every rogue, crossbowman or knight must not die in vain.
The task was quite simple in formulation, but not for that reason simple in execution: it was necessary to inflict losses on enemy troops while spending the minimum amount of money, and only in extreme cases — own troops. Starting with Arwen's Armageddon recast, the Keeper began fully utilizing the ballista, taking out a few at first, and then 2-3 thousand units per battle. In three battles, all the enemy pegasi fell, both basic and upgraded, as well as royal griffins. This was enough for Astriel, entering the battle with one rusty dragon, to catch the enemy in a cycle of moving back and forth, flying diagonally across the map and finishing off all the remaining units, the archangels, with lightning. The monetary losses were about 30 thousand.
Storming the Command Headquarters
After realizing that every fighter would be worth their weight in gold later on, all attempts to storm the command headquarters seemed unacceptable to me, and yet there were practically no other options. Equipping the Keeper for battle with a ballista and crossbowmen for damage, I begrudgingly gave up 4 pegasi and 2 knights in exchange for reducing one of the titan squads to 10. The trade felt like a Pyrrhic victory, but I couldn't think of anything better; the sphere of suppression is probably the most annoying artifact in the game.. Such trades were not in my favor at all, since an Anti-Mage awaited me; I had to think of something better, and I decided to try and tank as much as possible, leaving the work to Elenwe, life elixirs, and fat rusty and fairy dragons, while the practically harmless "ten" was tanked by archangels. In three turns, the ballista and archers shot a full squad of titans down to a safe number, and the command headquarters, the last castle on the map, passed into my hands.
Anti(damn)Mage
I will remember this creature for a long time.. No, not like that.. I'll likely never be able to forget this creature! This bastard just laughs at your futile attempts to do anything: simply an absurd number of dragons, absolute immunity to magic.. In the first few battles, this creature sent me back to the beginning of the map, to the earliest attempts to escape from prison cells, where there is only a reinforced concrete wall of futility, a barrel of despair and an abyss of hopelessness.. I could literally feel how close the elf girls were to obediently putting on their shackles again.. But, I did find a way to get all the elf girls out, even though it was impossible! I completed all previous battles preserving as many troops as possible, I have huge gold reserves, I've collected every creature on the map that can hold... whatever it is they fight with. And even if I don't know which bug should work against the anti-mage, I have the strategic initiative and I will be able to defeat him in an absolutely honest battle!
So, what do we have:
Approximately 80k gold accounting for income and losses;
63 crossbowmen (sixty three, Karl!), 36 found in archer towers over two weeks, another 14 from the vagabond in the first week, and if we fire the Vagabond in the first week, he appears again in the tavern on the second week, but this time in the company of new crossbowman friends! another +13 units!
11 pegasi; 11 rogues (the rest were distributed among the elf girls instead of creatures); 16 dwarves; 1 useless mage; 8 knights, the others were... spent in general. Also all quest creatures, which cannot be lost.
It's a pity I couldn't find the ring of speed at first, and yes, we lost the titan's hat; need to think about how to hit the enemy.
After various variations, I managed to arrive at the following build for battle: Keeper, naturally. Cloak of Speed. Angel alliance, sniper bow, phantom scroll, dragon rings.
Troops: 1 archangel and 3 lonely pegasi (archangel is needed for prayer at the start of the battle from an artifact, pegasi for initiative after prayer and covering the shooters) 62 shooters and a ballista (they deal roughly equal damage); a WIZARD is mandatory! (this guy did everything for me, casting blessing and giving time to resurrect archangels, make clones etc. depending on circumstances; moreover, he's of least interest to the anti-mage, he doesn't need to be covered or protected) and the last squad is the most important. These guys must give their lives for the freedom of the elf girls; they are holy martyrs who grant salvation to others through their sacrifice (meat). The meat squad consists of rogues, knights or dwarves; in case these run out, I planned to split the shooter squad. These guys can distract the enemy attack twice, first and after resurrection by the archangel.
Each battle cost me about 6.5k for buyout, plus 2.5 for the ballista and 2.5 for buyout in the tavern, meaning one attempt costs about 11.5k gold.
At first, I considered a battle successful if it was like the one in the first picture. After some practice, bits of luck and processing experience, battles with results like the second picture began; after such battles, the anti-mage's fate was sealed, and as soon as one squad of dragons fell, the next battle sent this creature to hell (burn in hell, /picture number three/)
Mirage
The simplest puzzle in the game; there is no way to kill the little dragons unless they kill themselves, and that's obvious. As soon as I saw this hero, I thought I should cast Mirror and roll for when it would work, however, while completing this map I tried several times to defend with Mirror against a chain lightning tail, and after a bunch of failed attempts I checked the physics/mechanics, where it is specifically stated that Mirror does not work against creature spells or enemy AI... But anyway, this hero must kill himself one way or another and only one little dragon spell can do that. After a dozen other troop arrangement options and random casts, chain lightning killed everyone except my meat squad and his summoned earth elementals. I decided not to continue the battle and simply fled to the tavern with a ram character, and the mirage melted away, opening the way to the coveted freedom of the elf girls and such a completely "non-papal", incorrect, but still very real, honestly suffered victory.
To the author: despite all the pain and despair I experienced (without which there would be no such satisfaction from victory), I am very grateful and say a big thank you for the work! Keep making interesting maps. I had to sweat a lot — during the completion of this map, I learned more about heroes than in the last 15 years (This is my second completed author's map; the first was "First Blood 2.4")
