Walkthroughs for custom maps.

Campaign name: The Fantastic Four Returns
Author: Maxuta-Phoenix
Downloaded: from this post

The saga of another campaign by this author has finally come to an end. I played leisurely for about a month of real time in total. Compared to "Risen from Hell," "Fantastic 4" is both easier and harder. Easier because the missions are individually simpler, but there are more of them (12 vs. 7). Harder because they come in development blocks of 5 different storylines to unite all the heroes in the final mission of the campaign. In "Risen from Hell," all seven scenarios were a sequential development of the starting heroes.

The plot is quite simple: there is a certain Lord Max, who has grown completely decrepit with old age. So his buddies decided to save him by embarking on a quest for the components of the Wizard's Well. Overall, there isn't much text along the way, but it is presented in a very amusing, witty style. The campaign's humor reminded me of jokes about Petka and Vasily Ivanovich. The author worked especially thoroughly on the names of enemy heroes. At times, it was hard to keep from laughing.

Gameplay in the campaign is quite similar to "Risen from Hell," but the missions are not as tedious and stressful, so I got more enjoyment from the game. I won't detail all the scenarios this time, but will briefly describe the walkthrough according to the story blocks.

Anastasia's Missions
1. Artyokha's Problems
2. Mountain Pass
3. In Search of a Way Out

Anastasia (Mephala) enters the game first. Her final goal is to find the Amulet of Mana. The first two missions are probably the easiest of any I've played by Maxuta-Phoenix. In "Artyokha's Problems," you need to defeat dungeon heroes using castle troops (mainly cavalry). To do this, you'll have to fight several battles of medium difficulty to tip the balance of power in our favor. You'll also need to jump into the underground using the Dimension Door to get the Cloak of Speed. Notable: the loss condition is the death of an allied hero (!) who sits motionless in a town so the AI can actually kill him. Otherwise, based on my observations, the AI doesn't touch our roaming allies unless they block their path. Special attention should be paid to leveling the hero's secondary skills: this is the key point of the campaign, and it can only be properly figured out by studying the mission blocks beforehand. I'll post my skill leveling options for all key heroes in the screenshots.

In the second mission, you need to deal with the barbarians on the surface part of the map and the Rampart in the underground, ultimately gathering an alliance of angels and delivering it to the only Tower on the map, which cannot be surrendered to enemies (loss condition – losing the town, the most stressful loss condition in the game, in my opinion). The map reminded me of mission 3 of "Risen from Hell," with similar running around with barbarians, but in "Fantastic 4," the mission is simpler, though I still had to run a lot because the map terrain and the layout of colored border gates and monoliths significantly hinder the quick elimination of the barbarians. Before completing the mission, I fought through 4000 Azure Dragons in a head-on battle to level my hero to the maximum level 35.

Next, we deal with the famous map "In Search of a Way Out." There are three months to collect the components of the Admiral's Hat, each guarded by 700 Black Dragons. Here, the leveling from previous missions will fully catch up to us, including the set of learned spells. A non-obvious mandatory requirement: Eagle Eye for resurrection. The generation of Utopia is of huge importance. Gameplay follows this principle: you need to visit tents in different corners of the map, while fighting off enemies that come your way and recapturing accessible free castles along the path to avoid dying after 7 days without towns. In the first few weeks, you can still break through roaming heroes, but then they gather armies, and we become a punching bag for most enemies. An unreal action unfolds when the AI rushes from all sides to kill us, and we have to maneuver without room for error. All this time, we collect Minotaurs in caches along the road and try to steal the Minotaur growth in accessible AI towns. By the way, Hypnotize was very useful on this map (access to Blind is traditionally limited until the final mission). Two moments stood out: 1) the battle defending a town where I hypnotized all the enemy stacks and sent them to their deaths in the moat (melee kills were problematic due to the AI's Fire Shield buff); 2) an artifact giving immunity to hypnosis on one of the enemy leaders Also, I got lucky with Armageddon dropping from the Necromancers in a surface town (I didn't generate it on purpose, and it helped a lot later).

Gen's Wife's Mission (Karasuchka)
4. Uprising

Lord Gen went to help his friends search for artifacts to assemble the Wizard's Well, leaving the command of Necromancer forces to his wife (Tamika) with a quarrelsome nature. The wife fell out with the Necromancers, as well as the underground dwellers who rebelled against her.

Overall, the mission looks suspiciously easy, and this hides the author's cruel intention: we will have to play against all the Necromancers we use to complete this scenario in mission 12. That is, we are leveling up our future enemies with our own hands! And we can level them so that we have to restart the campaign from this very mission 4 if we learn spells like Fly and/or Dimension Door. I figured this out in advance, so I didn't level anyone properly, but the author still managed to surprise me. All these Necromancers went into mission 12 with the troops they had left at the end of the map, which were legions of skeletons and hordes of other undead

Lord Gen's Missions
5. In the Line of Fire
6. Son of Saint Alexander

A fairly difficult branch. Lord Gen is a sort of undercover agent. Seemingly a Necromancer, but actually serving the forces of good. In the fifth mission, you need to obtain the Angel Wings. The surface part of the map is dominated by Wizards, and the underground traditionally belongs to Dungeon. Both Wizards and Warlocks caused a lot of trouble. The key to success is generating Pathfinding from the Witch Hut near the starting castle and immediately getting Logistics on level-ups, otherwise we'll be killed quickly. Another important feature of the scenario is that enemy heroes are available for re-hire by the human player, which helps control the map through the AI leaders. The turning point is buying one of the two resurrectors. But you need to remember that Lord Gen continues in the campaign, so he needs to be maximized in stats and secondary skills in this mission.

I took the sixth mission by blitzkrieg, as I didn't see a way to control the map, and I regretted it for a long time. Above are the domains of our useless ally (again, you cannot lose the allied hero, this time an active one), and in the underground, there is hell both literally and figuratively. Several Inferno flags on a cramped map, all heroes powerful and mobile, and not available for re-hire. The mission goal is to take the Talisman of Mana from the King of Hell. Since almost all towns above belong to our ally, we have virtually no source of armies. So the plan was to break into the upper left corner, take a four-stack of Cavalry, and run straight to the King of Hell, placing Fire Lords in any Inferno towns we came across along the way (I visited only about a third of the available castles). There is also a Red Ball on the map guarded by Azures, apparently a hint at a positional war option, but I didn't see any tangible benefit in it.

Vasek Skull's Missions
7. When Vasek Skull Is Sober
8. When Vasek Skull Is Drunk
9. When Vasek Skull Is in His Right Mind

From the author's description: "When Vasek Skull (Clancy) is sober, he tries to become a governor. And if that means wiping out Dwarf and Elf settlements, he'll do it, not even wiping the sweat from his bald head." Actually, the storyline of Vasek Skull begins with a punitive operation against the forest dwellers. But they will resist with all their might. Overall, a fairly standard mission with a lot of running around (the map is L-size this time instead of the usual M). Visit tents in different corners of the map, engage in a prolonged struggle with the AI. It's important to learn spells from towns on the map as much as possible; secondary skills can be leveled as you wish.

But the eighth mission surprised me considerably with its uniqueness. Vasek Skull became governor and went on such a bender that he woke up in a swamp, having forgotten all his secondary skills. On the way to the castle, events push secondary skills onto us, and these will be Mysticism, Diplomacy, Estates, Ballistics, Artillery, First Aid, Resistance, and Pathfinding. Moreover, you cannot level up in this mission, and all these skills are basic. The most curious thing is that the most useful skill from this list is probably Mysticism, since there are no guilds in towns on the map, and the well in the accessible area takes all your money for a visit. Overall, the enemies are nothing supernatural, but because our hero is a complete fool, I still had to put in considerable effort.

In the ninth mission, Vasek Skull is chased by Death. An enemy Necromancer with a huge advantage in stats, mana, and troops. And he needs to be killed. The catch is that we can't do it with our main hero because we have no arguments for a conversation whatsoever. The key to completing it is hiring auxiliary heroes and setting up dozens of ambushes on Death. The map itself is easily controlled, you just need to skillfully level up your secondary skills in this mission. It's especially important to take Scholar. This can only be done here, and it will be the path to teaching all heroes Resurrection and other magic in mission 12. Vasek Skull also picks up the last component of the Wizard's Well.

Lord Max's Missions
10. Don Quixote
11. Old Age Is No Joy

Lord Max (Gelu) decided to have some fun while the others were collecting the Wizard's Well for him. The peculiarity of Lord Max's branch is that he absolutely cannot be properly leveled in stats. He starts the game as the most pathetic weakling and ends the same way. In the first mission, Lord Max looks for the Saint's Sandals (so his feet won't sweat), and I had to artificially delay my progress to level up his Secondary Magic skill in fights with the AI on level-up (!), because with a skill level of one, the next mission was unplayable. Total chaos. Also, in mission 10, there was the longest battle of the campaign – a three-hour capture of a Gnome dwelling with a hundred, using 9 Sharpshooters and 3 Cavalry. A million restarts due to Gnome morale on grass

I liked mission 11 even more than the third one. The goal is to build a Capitol! The map takes the prize for the poorest map in Heroes from Limes Inferior. You have to cherish every ore and wood, moreover, generate ore in the only Mill on the map, and convert gold into wood at one of the external markets. And around, there are rogues. Literally. There are dozens of Rogue hiring posts on the map, and you'll have to destroy very, very many of them before you scrape together enough resources for a Capitol. Rogues with Ballistas are particularly scary

Finale
12. Reanimation

The Fantastic Four are assembled. You need to simultaneously restore order in four local areas. The mission starts with a verbal altercation between the Four and Karasuchka, after which we see who one of our enemies will be. At this point, most players probably experience real shock, as the likelihood of having to replay the campaign from mission 4 is quite high, and we see this immediately at the start of mission 12. I also realized with horror that the Necromancers came into the mission with their armies not deleted, which I couldn't even have suspected, as the campaign editor is still a dark forest to me in such matters.

The mission is very difficult and extremely intricate. Definitely the hardest in the campaign. It took me several days of planning before I even sat down to play it. You need to distribute the Four to different zones through one-way monoliths. At the same time, the enemies in the locations vary in strength, and through testing, I had to determine who could fight in which zone. The largest zone belongs to our Necromancers; the other three are Swamp Dwellers (all heroes with high defense), Barbarians (moderate in strength), and Dungeon (the toughest, with tons of mana for spamming elementals). The locations are complex in terms of logistics. In all zones, castles behind the brown tent cannot be taken. To visit the brown tent, you need all 4 heroes to simultaneously leave their zones and break through an absolutely infernally strong hero in a tower, after which you return through a buyback to the four zones. And the issue of return is very delicate. To do this, you have to use the remaining four completely zero-level heroes. In the Dungeon and Barbarian zones, these helpers must capture the central enemy town behind the brown tent. This must be timed so that in both cases, no heroes are sitting on defense, as they are all well-leveled and our weaklings won't break through. In the Swamp zone, the weakling needs to be brought from the start and protected at all costs until he reaches the island with the tavern and digs in there. For the Necromancers, the fourth hero reaches the tavern without much trouble once the other return issues are resolved. And also, on my map, the Barbarian hero Banzai was jumping around like a mountain goat using Dimension Door. He even jumped into the Swamp zone once and killed my helper near the tavern. I had to roll back a couple of days so Banzai would change his route.

In connection with all this, you need to find a flawless balance. Income on the map is very low, so you'll have to rack your brains over where and what troops to gather so that the weaklings can then simultaneously capture the central towns, and we can break through the Dragon in the tower. This Dragon really surprised me: stats of 80 against our best heroes' 20-30, nearly a thousand mana, all magic schools, spells for every taste, 45% resistance, and Tower troops with a Grail set up. I barely killed it with Mephala in the middle of the second month. The battle's difficulty was on par with particularly crazy fights from Metataxer, involving the gradual depletion of shooter ammunition, mana depletion on the brink due to elemental spam, Armageddon through resistance, and finishing off Golems with Minotaurs, which I had to think ahead to collect. And this is in a campaign from 2001!

Overall, the plan was implemented smoothly. Result: 2100 points for completing the campaign and an Archangel rank.

In the screenshots: leveling for all heroes. For Lord Gen, it would have been ideal to take Navigation instead of Eagle Eye, but it became clear too late, and I managed to manage anyway. This campaign, as I already wrote, I liked more than "Risen from Hell." Some of the author's ideas are mind-blowing, although the principle of mission setup is still more or less similar, which slightly reduces the overall positive impression.