Flame_Haze
Greetings, I want to share my walkthrough of this campaign (so far only the first mission, due to its impressive size). I've heard about this author (though not sure) something like "Master's campaigns, but I won't play them" (a remix in my opinion). For now, briefly about the first mission — despite some nuances, I liked it completely. The map is huge with tons of locations, everything is beautiful and well-crafted, some things are cleverly hidden, plenty of places for leveling, a massive number of artifacts too. In short, there's room to stretch out, and I won't lie — I managed to beat it in 12-13 months of game time. Seems like a long time, but hey, that's how it went. Let me go through it all in order...
I'll divide it into conditional stages: Start (where we need to get to the surface), the surface itself (side quests, avoiding scouts, etc.), the second part of the surface (we dig up the grail and head underground), and then the underground...
Our antagonist is Sigrif, and according to the map's lore, some Dungeon lords have returned to their old ways and want to destroy Igg-Shail with the support of the horned ones, naturally. We, as a super solo hero, want to pass through elven lands and deal with these traitors (maybe not exactly one-to-one, but that's the main gist of the first mission)
Mission 1 - A New Threat (Start)
Our protagonist starts his journey from the dungeon — a specialist in initiative + dragon summoning (the secondary skill seemed like garbage at first, but after understanding how it works overall, or rather where the extra dragons come from, it's quite decent). Let's say he's Raelag on max settings. Our task is to get to the surface. The location itself is fairly small, but you'll need to hustle here. I took the starting bonus with furoks, I think. After looking at the stacks and running around a bit, I realized the first fight is kiting a zombie stack with furoks to level up faster. While we're weak, my plan was that we need fire warriors, can't do without them, seeing the strength of neutrals. And as strange as it sounds, I didn't have to wait long — got summoning with fire warriors on the first try, and even at the start I picked up an Elemental Waistband (what luck!). There's just one catch though — with Knowledge 1 you can't summon many elementals. I wasn't very lucky, and most stats fell into Attack (until about level 11 I think)
There's a cool magic school, let's call it that, where they can give us one of the magic schools of our choice (or improve existing ones). I chose Summoning to get Expert Summoning for fire warriors as early as possible...
Also along the way closer to the exit there are 12 buttons (I think) — stepping on them you can either lose something or gain something. Nothing complicated — grab a piece of paper, write down each button, and follow the optimal route...
Before leaving the underground, there's a witch hut guarded by a stack of undead dragons. It's worth taking it, because in my understanding, without Logistics on the surface there's nothing to do. Then we head out to the surface where the interesting part begins.
Stage 2 - Surface
And a bit of frustration when you seem to already have a high level but your protagonist doesn't look like a Warlock...
In the prophet's hut we get the first side quest, which seems simple enough — capture all peasant huts on the map and I'll reward you. But don't be fooled — almost every hut owner needs something from you, and for the hut to change to your color you need to do something (find my wood, pay the treasury, kill zombies, kill wolves, burn a village, bring an artifact, etc.)
All would be fine, but after some time the first scout appears (don't remember exactly when, but nevertheless), and here a gameplay feature gets added. Though at first we don't really understand what it's about — a scout is a scout. However, we mustn't engage him in battle, and even if we do, he has strong armies that will wipe the floor with us (although later you can accumulate power and take out the scout, but that will only stroke your ego while the mission fails..)
At first glance it seemed quite difficult — you need to do stuff and run away from them (and later there will be two of them). But thankfully there are safe zones that they (the scouts) don't enter, and they don't just stand near the zone waiting for you either. The first one is the Sanctuary...
You need to sit there for about 3 days to have room to maneuver, then continue doing your business....
We also visit a second prophet who says we need to clear all ruined human cities cursed by the undead, saying he'll thank us
Damn, it looks beautiful...
There are also minor side quests we encounter along the way. One of them is freeing assassins from encirclement; there's a similar one with furoks (the spots where they're being beaten are highlighted). We simply defeat the attackers, the saved stacks join us, and their tier building gets constructed (War Academy/Blood Arena)
Below is just a screenshot of the moment when I didn't understand why the hell I had such a level but so few summoned drakes
And actually nothing seems too hard until you gather enough mass so that breakthroughs aren't questionable, but at some point a second scout appears. Leveling mostly stayed the same until the end of the mission.
And here a problem arose — I honestly thought for quite a long time about how to complete the red keymaster quest. They won't give us the key until we bring the Necromancer set. Doesn't sound too complicated, but there's no safe zone there, and we simply can't manage to clear that area without falling into the elves' clutches. I tried this way and that, until it finally dawned on me that doing it with Sigrif is practically impossible. And nobody said it had to be him — so it could easily be done with a cockroach, Sinitar for example.
Hopelessness....
And jumping ahead, I should say that opening the red guardian isn't necessary — more precisely, I advise against opening it, because then 2 elves will enter that zone and you'll have to flee from them there. Actually, you can enter from the top-left corner, where the sands are, and where we save the furoks there's a passage. If we go there with Sigrif, the furthest they roam is the sand, and they don't go further. But if you open the guardian, they'll roam everywhere.
About SAFE ZONES — any farm field behind a fence, bots don't go there. Also, standing on green markers, like those before ruined castles or before graves — oh right, that's another side quest where we need to go to the cemetery and to complete it, stand on the marker and fight an undead stack...
About Sinitar — after thinking long, it hit me that Sigrif should keep running where they don't chase him, while Sinitar clears the zone. To do this, I leveled him in the Town Hall with elemental gear — Axe + armor (to strengthen elemental chains) + Evercold Icicle (until you find him something better)
And here's our boy going pish-pish ololo — tough, but he fights off four artifacts, and we can calmly deliver them and get the key. But again, I repeat — I don't recommend opening it for you)
The funniest thing is that any hero can turn in all these side quests, and since the elves show interest mostly only toward the protagonist, that plays into our hands (they aggro on cockroaches only if Sigrif isn't present, or if they're not in a safe zone, or if you deliberately expose yourself — but if Sigrif and a cockroach are standing together, the first target they run at is Sigrif)
Further along the way we'll meet Archangels and Crystal Dragons who ask for resources for passage. I didn't have any, but without much thought, I wiped the floor with them without much difficulty...
A few battles that I think deserve attention:
vs GnomeStack
vs 750 crystal dragons
vs ElfStack
Phoenixes for passage to the underground entrance
vs Phoenixes (for mentor)
One more thing someone might find useful — one of the peasant huts asks to find their ore. We see a cart but no bandits themselves. Here an alt will help — among the trees a stack of brutes will light up, or here are these very "bandits"
Now let me tell you straight about something I don't understand why it is, but it is. If you find any tome of magic, don't rush to rejoice — as far as I understood, they only contain levels 1-3 spells, maybe even nothing at all... (since I couldn't cast spells properly, I can't judge adequately). But the fact remains that TOMES OF MAGIC are USELESS specifically here. Yes, if you suddenly need a specific spell, you'll only find it separately by clearing mage towers — there they give you scrolls and wands (Resurrection, Blind, Vampirism, Implosion, Stopping Cold, Frenzy, Heavenly Shield, etc.). Maybe it's a map feature, but damn, why the heck...?
As we complete additional quests, we get hints about the Grail's location and parts of the map are revealed. Advice: if you want to read the hint, either screenshot it or quickly skip the map fragment reveal, because while you're looking at it, the message with the hint becomes unreadable (besides that, we get an army and various goodies). Not to spoil too much, I won't say the exact spot where the Grail is. Let's just say — when a couple fragments remain, you'll understand where it is, but you won't be able to approach it... At first I thought it was some kind of bug, but no — it's a feature that adds even more spice to this map...
Funny when we approach this zone and go to the prophet — he says "you must have spent quite a lot of resources to get here?" I'm thinking to myself, yeah, a whole lot of "0"s, but whatever — his quest is to capture all mines in the vicinity, there are three of them, and you can return for the reward. And if resources are truly tight, you can feed a hero for a small amount of resources. That's amusing, of course, but I think I'd rather keep mine
Also on the way to the center there will be a refugee camp (which again gives a side quest to capture all dwellings and gives a hint that it's one of 12). No problems with that either — if you did everything else, there won't be issues...
Then we arrive at the center, but don't rush to the prophet's hut. Instead, head straight to the tavern (or thieves' den) — there, for a certain fee, they'll reveal the last fragment of the riddle map, and you'll know for sure where the Tear of Asha is. Also, while Sigrif is here, either pay the phoenixes or take them out (I took them out — battle log above)
Let's summarize this stage: everything is cool and great, lots of quests, everything is well-designed overall. The only slightly annoying thing is having to frequently upgrade units when your army slots are full and there's a stack of the wrong upgrade grade. Overall it's not a problem when you have cockroaches with logistics, but it does happen — even the bonus army given from side quests isn't always suited to us, so stay alert. Tomes of magic are useless, and it seemed like we handled it — soon we'll enter the underground and everything will be fine. Well, not quite — moving on...
Stage 3 - For the Grail and into the Underground
As I said earlier, don't rush to take the hut because we need to prepare. Jumping ahead — he's the key keeper, but for him to give us the key, we must prove our strength by bringing him the Tear of Asha. We already know where it is, know we can't reach it, but after watching the cutscene, we'll be allowed to stand on that spot and dig it up... According to lore, Faidaen sends Ossir and Anwen (new scouts) — though one of them will be roaming (with an army fit for a god), and the other will be waiting right behind the guardian (and that's the exception when we're allowed to beat a green one)
And before activating this script, I recommend preparing and doing it like I did. What do I mean?
Overall, we have 4 heroes — anyone can approach the hut, so I left a cockroach there, and the other 3 closer to the tear. My order is simple — make a chain to get the protagonist with the Grail as close as possible to the path to the center.
Everything happens on day 7:
- one cockroach at the hut activates the script
- another is already almost at the excavation site of the tear — after activation, we're allowed to move to the needed position
- protagonist + cockroach stand at the stable to take it the next day
Skip a day, put the cockroach on the excavation, another cockroach in a chain so that the day after excavation he passes the tear to him, and place Sigrif within movement range of the second cockroach who will pass the tear. Ideally, Sigrif goes through several portals and ends up on the grass zone, where we need to stand in a specific spot so Ossir can't reach us.
- then grab the flag and haul ass back at full speed
Ideally we stand here so he literally can't reach us by 1 tile — a couple of save loads and it works (all cockroaches have expert logistics with pathfinding)
Then thanks to stables we even pull slightly ahead of him, then along the way we reach the center, can pick up the Grail with a cockroach and turn in the quest, getting the key. But don't forget to upgrade dragons from Black to Red, because the League stack before the underground entrance — you'll see for yourself what it looks like and compare with yours to avoid losing unnecessary units.
At this stage with such an army there were no problems with Anwen whatsoever, so I won't dwell on it much
Sigrif vs Anwen
We enter the underground, see a cutscene, and move to the next stage...
Stage 4 - Entering the Underground + Scenario Finale
According to lore, we made it and must take everyone out. But our friend in stockings calls daddy Raelag through a portal and tells him about our deeds. To prevent information leakage, we need to eliminate Ossir, who's about to report to the capital about our adventures. Long story short — bring in Raelag
As they say, an autobattle is an autobattle))
Nothing terrible actually — a couple of buffs and it's in the bag (I think I managed slightly better with my build)
Raelag vs Ossir
Here too there are a couple of nuances: Ossir stops moving from the moment Sigrif enters the underground, and starts moving from the moment Raelag exits the underground. So before exiting the underground, skip a turn to have full movement points, do it on day 6-7 to reach the stable next week along the way, and head toward Ossir. No problems here — the only downside is that after this there's nothing to do, and unfortunately only Sigrif can go into the underground...(
And finally the finale — the underground. Here, in my opinion, there are no problems. Our task is to take out everyone — there are several castles and heroes. Honestly, judging by army strength, only Lethos seems strong, but if you meet them in the field, the enemy has no chance. If enemies are in a castle, you'll need to fuss a bit, but not too much...
The main build is as follows — the only thing is when I found the last piece of the Dragon set, I abused dragon growth and sometimes took Scroll of Vampirism
And finally I saw the specialty working properly with summoning extra dragons
Namely that it's a percentage of the base ones)
In the underground itself we collect 1 dragon artifact to enable abusing the set, and here we have 4 League towns and one demon town. None of them caused particular problems — methodically clear everyone and finish the mission
By the end of the mission my army looked like this
And a few battles I simply saved
Sigrif vs Sorgal
Sigrif vs Deleb
Sigrif vs Lethos
They're actually quite strong, but at this stage with such a protagonist there are no problems anymore. Overall, everything depends only on you and how many losses you're willing to take))
Let me sum up the mission overall: I really enjoyed it. Despite seeming like there's too much of everything and everything takes too long, damn, it doesn't cause aversion — on the contrary, it's a challenge to complete everything, and you want to keep playing. From the downsides I noticed — I don't know about others, but I had fairly frequent crashes, and that was somewhat annoying. Not during actual gameplay, but during save/load phases — yes, I had to do that often, and sometimes it burned when you fail, load, and the game just crashes. Happened about 10 times I think, maybe more. Not that it's a big issue, but it was irritating...
Another downside — one of the League towns in the underground has no name label. Not critical, but it exists...
On that note, moving on. Depending on mission length, it'll be either one post per mission or one post per two missions)