I decided to return to Dark Man. It seems like a great map, very meticulously designed and balanced, but due to the abundance of events, the randomness in the AI's behavior, the imperfections of the game engine, and the author's mistakes, too many absurd things happen on it.
The first warning sign came when the blue AI, in the second half of the 4th month, brazenly dug up the Grail right under my nose. I don't know how it managed to visit the obelisks scattered across the map, but that's a minor issue. It dug it up, and that's that. It's unpleasant, but not critical.
The second point concerns the fact that the AI exchanges troops and artifacts. With such a high density of enemy heroes, this happens quite often and, as I wrote in the report on Breaking Wind and Waves, it can both simplify the game and make it significantly more difficult. In my opinion, both options break the author's intention and equally spoil the gaming experience.
Here are two examples with heroes who have the Cloak of Displacement. In the first scenario, I had events unfolding with Nila. This is a secondary quest hero, and initially, she looked approximately like this. Not a super-tough lady, but I think she would have caused problems with her three ranged stacks. I don't know who she traded with, but she ended up gathering some scum, and it became easy to kill her.
The second option is when this Fiona, also with the Cloak of Displacement, farmed herself a huge army somewhere and became much tougher.
After all, theoretically, any hero could acquire such an army and such artifacts that it would become simply impossible to defeat him.
Another unpleasant thing was that, for some reason, two enemy heroes got stuck in one place. One – the pink "jailer" – got stuck between the mill and the White Tent and cannot release Tunar and Elleshar from the dungeon, and the second – Solmyr – got stuck on an event in square (37,107,0) and has not been able to move for a week. In essence, three mini-bosses have been removed from the game. Two are inaccessible, and Solmyr is too tough to fight him on the ship at this stage, and there is a strong temptation to just ignore him. This does not affect the completion of the map, but it leaves a feeling of "incompleteness."
But all of this is, in essence, minor. The most "pleasant" surprise awaited me when Mutare Drake disappeared from the map. This is a quest hero, and he must be killed to proceed to the final boss. The fact is that at one point, I eliminated all the orange heroes and captured all the orange towns. And then, suddenly, it turned out that Mutare Drake, who is standing near the volcano and is not visible at all, was also under the orange flag. Accordingly, a week after capturing the last orange town, she simply disappeared, and the purple AI freely passed and freed my Astral. I was, frankly, a little shocked by this development.
I have no desire to go back a week to avoid capturing the last orange castle. It was too full of events and battles, and I spent too much real time on it. And in the current situation, as I understand it, it is impossible to complete the map without using cheats or interfering through a save editor.
In this regard, a question: is there a save editor where I could change the flags of towns? I would give the orange, for example, some swamp on the outskirts, just so that Mutare would live until I reach her.
Yes, and I also periodically watch recordings of LC's streams of this map. He has even more fun – the quest Gundula did not appear and did not open access to the purple tent. Now, many enemy heroes, including the quest hero Tazar, cannot pass through the purple gate and may also disappear from the map if he captures all their castles. In this case, as I understand it, the map will become unplayable without external intervention.
scars of reality
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