sanyassh
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Completed Paragon 2.0 in seven game days.
Based on Dandy's comments regarding an 11-day Walkthrough and Kirill Polikushin's video, which clearly demonstrates the path from day one to taking the Admiral's Hat on the seventh: https://youtu.be/Qaup18KTXh8
My improvement is the use of the Keymaster's tent bug when generating the starting save. The algorithm is as follows:
1) Disable HD+.
2) Enter the scenario "visit keymaster tents.h3m", where 8 tents of all colors are placed near the blue player's hero (Paragon is played as blue).
3) Visit the Keymaster's tents.
4) Exit to the main menu.
5) Start Paragon; all tents will appear as visited.
6) To generate a new save, you cannot press the "restart" button, as the tent visits will be lost. Instead, you can exit to the main menu and start over from there, meaning repeat steps 4-5.
Marlo Stanfield helped with the starting save generation, for which I am very grateful. I couldn't get the right layout—the Council was small and there was more than one fairy. He managed to roll it almost on the first try. This actually turned out better, as the purity of the generation is guaranteed; no save editor or other interference was used.
I took the Hat following the video in everything except two points:
1) I broke through the gold and diamond golems using a fairy and a ballista, an idea taken from Ayamizu's Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/watch?t=2419&v=U9OYW53bjpU
This reduces the requirements for the generated save: Morgrain does not necessarily need expert earth magic, shooting of any level, or high attack, spell power, and knowledge parameters at the time of the battle with the gold golems, and it doesn't matter if the golems split into 6 or 7 stacks. In Kirill's video, they split into 6 stacks, but for me, they split into 7, making them harder to manage. In theory, it's possible, but it's nerve-wracking. The fairy option is 100% reliable.
2) I obtained the Hat from the horses on the coast to the right of Stonehelm, an idea by Dandy. Breaking through the hero standing above Loteros would have been extremely difficult in my case: in Loteros, neither Force Field nor Resurrection dropped, only Forgetfulness among the useful spells. Again, in theory, it's possible, but why bother when the horse option is easy and a hundred percent reliable.
Then the real fun begins. With infinite movement points and visited tents, the whole map is in the palm of your hand. I won't describe the route in detail, but here are the interesting moments:
1) After defeating Alwin and gaining access to the red portal, we have the opportunity to free Vael. He has the best skill tree of all available heroes and has expert fire magic. Erianna also has it, but Vael has defense and attack instead of Erianna's air and intellect.
2) Lead Vael to Invincion, obtain stats of 90 and 99 Azure Dragons. Raise the stats to 99, defeat Invincion, and obtain another 200 dragons and the Sphere of Vulnerability.
3) Behind Invincion is a portal leading to several treacherous places. First, we free Ghashra and take 1000 Hydras with her. If unlucky, you'll first have to break through Hydross, as he may block the passage.
4) Purchase at least one Magic Dragon in Targron's domains. Defeat Heliar in the Nameless, obtain the Cursed Armor. Enter the portal and pick up the Pandora's box with 9000 Wizards intended for the Incinerator. The battle with Heliar was still not easy; with Frenzy, his 8000 Wizards killed all the Azures at once, plus he has anti-magic and Sacrifice, a blindness amulet, and all stats at 99. In the battle with him, I had to use the infinite resurrection bug with Archangels for the first time when a fairy is present in the army; the bug is described in physmig version 2.7 on page 120 in the section on neutral creature abilities. Otherwise, there wasn't enough mana for normal resurrection, and there weren't enough Archs to act via clone. Perhaps, in terms of the order of progression, this point and the next should be swapped.
5) Defeat Targron and take 400 Magic Dragons. They could have been a serious game-changer in the battle with Heliar.
6) Kill Ashwing with the red orb without losses. This same infinite resurrection bug works under the red orb. Take 400 Rust Monsters. With this, the army collection is finished; only various small groups of a hundred Wizards scattered in the corners remain.
7) Eranicus is handled in the standard way: anti-magic and force field near the enemy tent, berserk. No amount of creatures is enough to withstand Eranicus's magic and his two thousand fairies.
8) It was interesting to try and break through an anti-magic garrison with 30000 phoenixes using Eranicus. It worked.
9) The Incinerator with the red orb on the cursed land at Greystone is defeated with relatively small losses. Here, there are no tricks other than the Cursed Armor working on cursed land. In my case, he came out of the Castle, so his Black Knights were active, but that's not very important.
All other enemies simply don't deserve attention.
I am attaching the starting saves, the save after obtaining the hat, and the save before the three interesting battles, screenshots of the victories in those battles, and the final result. In this kind of walkthrough, the Grail can only be dug up if you find the devil in the refugee camp; this did not happen for me, so the score is small.
Based on Dandy's comments regarding an 11-day Walkthrough and Kirill Polikushin's video, which clearly demonstrates the path from day one to taking the Admiral's Hat on the seventh: https://youtu.be/Qaup18KTXh8
My improvement is the use of the Keymaster's tent bug when generating the starting save. The algorithm is as follows:
1) Disable HD+.
2) Enter the scenario "visit keymaster tents.h3m", where 8 tents of all colors are placed near the blue player's hero (Paragon is played as blue).
3) Visit the Keymaster's tents.
4) Exit to the main menu.
5) Start Paragon; all tents will appear as visited.
6) To generate a new save, you cannot press the "restart" button, as the tent visits will be lost. Instead, you can exit to the main menu and start over from there, meaning repeat steps 4-5.
Marlo Stanfield helped with the starting save generation, for which I am very grateful. I couldn't get the right layout—the Council was small and there was more than one fairy. He managed to roll it almost on the first try. This actually turned out better, as the purity of the generation is guaranteed; no save editor or other interference was used.
I took the Hat following the video in everything except two points:
1) I broke through the gold and diamond golems using a fairy and a ballista, an idea taken from Ayamizu's Walkthrough: https://youtu.be/watch?t=2419&v=U9OYW53bjpU
This reduces the requirements for the generated save: Morgrain does not necessarily need expert earth magic, shooting of any level, or high attack, spell power, and knowledge parameters at the time of the battle with the gold golems, and it doesn't matter if the golems split into 6 or 7 stacks. In Kirill's video, they split into 6 stacks, but for me, they split into 7, making them harder to manage. In theory, it's possible, but it's nerve-wracking. The fairy option is 100% reliable.
2) I obtained the Hat from the horses on the coast to the right of Stonehelm, an idea by Dandy. Breaking through the hero standing above Loteros would have been extremely difficult in my case: in Loteros, neither Force Field nor Resurrection dropped, only Forgetfulness among the useful spells. Again, in theory, it's possible, but why bother when the horse option is easy and a hundred percent reliable.
Then the real fun begins. With infinite movement points and visited tents, the whole map is in the palm of your hand. I won't describe the route in detail, but here are the interesting moments:
1) After defeating Alwin and gaining access to the red portal, we have the opportunity to free Vael. He has the best skill tree of all available heroes and has expert fire magic. Erianna also has it, but Vael has defense and attack instead of Erianna's air and intellect.
2) Lead Vael to Invincion, obtain stats of 90 and 99 Azure Dragons. Raise the stats to 99, defeat Invincion, and obtain another 200 dragons and the Sphere of Vulnerability.
3) Behind Invincion is a portal leading to several treacherous places. First, we free Ghashra and take 1000 Hydras with her. If unlucky, you'll first have to break through Hydross, as he may block the passage.
4) Purchase at least one Magic Dragon in Targron's domains. Defeat Heliar in the Nameless, obtain the Cursed Armor. Enter the portal and pick up the Pandora's box with 9000 Wizards intended for the Incinerator. The battle with Heliar was still not easy; with Frenzy, his 8000 Wizards killed all the Azures at once, plus he has anti-magic and Sacrifice, a blindness amulet, and all stats at 99. In the battle with him, I had to use the infinite resurrection bug with Archangels for the first time when a fairy is present in the army; the bug is described in physmig version 2.7 on page 120 in the section on neutral creature abilities. Otherwise, there wasn't enough mana for normal resurrection, and there weren't enough Archs to act via clone. Perhaps, in terms of the order of progression, this point and the next should be swapped.
5) Defeat Targron and take 400 Magic Dragons. They could have been a serious game-changer in the battle with Heliar.
6) Kill Ashwing with the red orb without losses. This same infinite resurrection bug works under the red orb. Take 400 Rust Monsters. With this, the army collection is finished; only various small groups of a hundred Wizards scattered in the corners remain.
7) Eranicus is handled in the standard way: anti-magic and force field near the enemy tent, berserk. No amount of creatures is enough to withstand Eranicus's magic and his two thousand fairies.
8) It was interesting to try and break through an anti-magic garrison with 30000 phoenixes using Eranicus. It worked.
9) The Incinerator with the red orb on the cursed land at Greystone is defeated with relatively small losses. Here, there are no tricks other than the Cursed Armor working on cursed land. In my case, he came out of the Castle, so his Black Knights were active, but that's not very important.
All other enemies simply don't deserve attention.
I am attaching the starting saves, the save after obtaining the hat, and the save before the three interesting battles, screenshots of the victories in those battles, and the final result. In this kind of walkthrough, the Grail can only be dug up if you find the devil in the refugee camp; this did not happen for me, so the score is small.