LordWai
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I decided to play Paragon 2.0 for a second time, to complete it faster and at the same time try out an idea with Ashwing that I'd had since the first playthrough—and it worked! =)
Story under spoiler
Hurrah for stupidity and courage! I realized my plan and "stole" +10 attack from Ashwing in exchange for the sphere of suppression.
I'll describe how to do this below; it took me 2 days and 5 game days to implement this idea, which overall doesn't hit the "speedrun" too hard.
So, as for how I managed it, I'll write it all out on a huge sheet below.
Here is the essence: when we come to Ashwing, we are supposed to sacrifice Vael to deprive the enemy of the sphere of suppression. Here is how it works: the enemy has a border guard that opens if the enemy defeats the hero Vael; behind this border guard is a seer's hut, which offers to exchange the sphere for +10 attack, which the AI does. As it happens, Mograine also has a sphere of suppression, inherited from his mother Aelwynn, and since the spirit of munchkinism is strong in us, I decided to exchange my sphere of suppression for this bonus at any cost—moreover, no further events will be disrupted, because we'll get the sphere back from Ashwing's corpse. Sounds like a plan.
So, where I started: Vael must run past Ashwing, who is wandering between 2 gardens, and take the castle; after that, you MUST exit it. On the next turn, Ashwing attacks Vael, attacks the castle, and only then runs to the border guard. If Vael stood in the way of the castle, Ashwing will have just enough moves to open the border guard, and his turns end there. The next day Mograine runs with screams of "This is mine!! MINE! MINE!!!" into the hut opened by the computer and exchanges the sphere of suppression for +10 attack. Hurrah, the first part of the plan is complete; now I have to think about how to kill Ashwing without magic.
I decided to assess what artifacts I had: I have 3 rings of speed, 3 necklaces of haste, and 5 cloaks of speed. This is important for further actions. So, let's go: we give Mograine one dragonfly (upgraded snakeflies) (native speed 13 + 2 Mograine perk = 15 total). We need to move first; the rusty dragon has a speed of 17, so our speed must be at least 18: put on a cloak of speed and either a necklace or a ring of speed; now our snakeflies will move first in battle.
So, Mograine in one cloak (one "vash") and with a ring attacks Ashwing with single snakeflies. The goal: force the dragons to roast the shooters; this happens without any problem—eyes (or wizards) fall on the first turn, and the rusty dragon roasts the medusas (a fair number of medusas remain since there are few rusties). The battle is lost and Mograine goes to drown his sorrows in the tavern. We dig Mograine out of the tavern and repeat the runs until the shooters are wiped out. In this way, losing all cloaks of speed (except one, which I saved for the final battle), I managed to do the following: take out all the shooters and all of Ashwing's war machines. And now he has 3 units left: Rusties (250 pieces), Crystals (230 pieces), and 1000 black dragons; they stand far from each other, so at the start of the battle, something more needs to be thought out. A test battle with my main troops showed that he gives me a total beatdown without any chance. And we still need to manage without losses—well, maximum sacrifice cyclops or bigs (though I feel sorry for the bigs/monsters). At this moment it started to seem unreal, but I continued searching for a solution and eventually felt a way forward. The thing is, I wondered how to deal substantial damage and decided to buy up some "dead stock" (things I don't use in main troops and wouldn't mind losing). The choice fell on Knights, of whom I gathered 1000 from the castles; I put on the last cloak, second-tier artifacts (old junk), and rushed into battle with 1000 Knights and single snakeflies. Essentially, the plan was to protect the knights with snakeflies and try to hit the dragons with them. While I moved the snakeflies back and forth in different ways trying to find a good position so the knights wouldn't be wiped out on the first turn, I accidentally discovered an interesting pattern that made me reconsider my plans for this battle and take away much more than I expected:
In a standard battle, the AI does everything to position the dragons so that you can't "roast" your own through a counter-attack—and it does this perfectly, even refusing to attack at all and simply skipping a turn or flying away. BUT there is a nuance: if there is an especially tempting target in the battle, the dragons might ignore this rule of theirs, and that's what I used: if a rusty dragon attacks snakeflies in such a way as to open a path for the black dragons to the knights, the blacks attack regardless, ignoring the position of the rusties! After some time, I managed to reach the following position: I have 3 snakeflies, one of which saved its turn, and the dragons are positioned so that they can perfectly roast each other. One snakefly forces the blacks to attack the rusties at the end of round 1, and at the start of the second, both snakeflies force the dragons to roast each other in turn, and Mograine goes once again to explore the tavern. From this battle, I took 30 black dragons out of 1000 and, most importantly, half of the rusties!! Great progress; the only problem is that to make the black dragons forget about caution, the attacked stack must be truly powerful (for example, they no longer aggroed on 700 knights and the AI played safely), meaning these kamikazes are really expensive! In general, I'll say this: I managed to interest him with 1000 Knights; 700 unicorns; 1800 Orc Chiefs (the ones that throw axes). Since the cloaks of speed ran out, instead of snakeflies I took gold dragons; they can't force the dragons to roast their own shooters in the initial stage because they are "double," but for such battles, they were perfect. Feeding him all these poor souls (spending all my money), I managed to destroy all the rusty dragons and leave him with 941 black dragons out of 1000 (and those useless crystal creatures). And I realized that it was TIME FOR REVENGE for this dozen defeats, the sorrows drowned in the tavern, a whole mountain of artifacts gifted to him, and 2 million gold spent. Firstly, obviously, the last battle must take place in the castle to neutralize the crystal dragons; however, defending the castle won't work—Ashwing has ballistics and breaks the gates on turn 1-2. So you have to lure him into the castle himself; fortunately, he returns to the castle after any victory, so if he is standing still on the map, feed him anyone and Ashwing crawls into his lair, which will become his grave.
So, what do we attack with: full gear of attack artifacts, sniper bow (my attack was 98 with 50 defense, and that's without finding a "teapot"). 200 champions (place in the 3rd cell from the bottom), 4000 snipers (in the top cell), fill other cells with single gold dragons, and definitely an ammo cart—this is important. The first dragon pushes against the gates, others cover the shooters (with the cart, you can find a position where dragons kill 1 dragon instead of two). On the first turn, the dragon hits the champions, reasonably assuming that 200 champions are cooler than 1-2 gold dragons; and we didn't put the champion in the 3rd cell from the bottom for nothing, as in this position they stand flush with our catapult, and the dragon, destroying our catapult, will forever bury his crystal friends in the castle walls. And then a bit of luck (at least once luck or morale for shooters over 4 rounds) and the dragon dies before it can break through the screen placed before the snipers =) Crystals fall in 4 rounds; they can't do anything.
That is how I slew this beast without using magic, receiving a reward of +10 attack for my efforts and slowing down the walkthrough by an insignificant 5 game days!
For the most part, you can even save Vael, although it's harder because there will be 10 less attack in the final battle, and how to use Vael isn't very clear... In theory, you could open guards to get dragons that Vael fights with undead, but who knows for sure what's best (if "this Vael" can even open guards; I assume another character is hidden behind him and he simply won't be let in).
So that's how it went! Thanks to everyone who slogged through this sheet of rambling text =) I really wanted to brag about the solution to a problem that took me 2 days =).