Flame_Haze
Greetings, so the milestone of mission number 4 has been passed, and by tradition I'll share my opinion; in short, it didn't click with me... No, that doesn't mean it's bad, it just looks a bit weaker against the backdrop of the previous ones, and I'll try to explain my position on this matter...
Mission 4 - The Hero's Return
- lore-wise: Sigrif and the other guys got out of Hell (including various Biara Markels and others whom you'd rather not see, and it's a pity Nicholas remained a vampire, but oh well). We know Igg Shail has fallen, but instead of saving our lands, we decided to strike at the very heart of the elven capital to get them to capitulate, so the Alliance would fall apart blah blah, save Igg Shail etc. etc., you get the idea...
A lot of quite beautiful and generally logical cutscenes in my opinion — there's the scene where we attack the border, and discussions of the plan of action among our heroes Traalsai, Sigrif, Shadya, and Ylaya. I especially liked the logic that we can't put on the imba ring because we have some kind of connection with the light elves and Findan will sense something wrong... It sounds like utter nonsense, for crying out loud, we crawled out of Hell to chill and enjoy ourselves; obviously these are all emotions, and there's no other way to balance it so that every mission is hard and interesting to play.... And the escaped elf who will later report about us to Findan, etc. etc. And naturally, the fact that our Sigrif forgot everything after passing through Hell — whether to burn over it or not, seems I need to accept that all missions will be like this (and that's probably almost exactly how it is). But on top of that, they add that we've forgotten all our spells)) Well, naturally, it was funny to watch Sigrif trying to cast while nothing happened, and in the end he barely managed to beat down a druid with two "bare-handed" hits))
Our witch tells us this is a fairly strong curse and she can't remove it, but who always knows everything? Right, the local prophet))
After dealing with the fairies with what I consider small losses, next fight is against the boars at the free guild, and then little by little, I learn there's a town underground and without much fighting I head there. Well, let me tell you everything in order
They tell Findan that supposedly the Dark Elves are attacking and Sigrif is leading them, and Findan asks Sinitar (our brother) how that could be, to which Sinitar says he personally escorted him to the Outcast lands... I don't remember which scene it was, but I liked Findan's jab "I told you not to eat those mushrooms")) Oh well, moving on)
I didn't keep the starting battle replay, but so there's at least some replay at this stage, let it be this one)
Kite Gidor
So what do we have with the prophet, who will we meet here in the Hut? Dossan, and here I don't understand the lore logic — Dossan isn't a monk, but one of the Sixth Dragon's [followers], whom we most likely killed in mission 3, or how should I interpret this? Anyway, he was a cool guy in all missions except 3, although in the third he was probably in the starting hut for sure.
In short, getting magic back traditionally won't work (well, almost), since knowing of our arrival, allegedly all mage guilds in all towns were demolished (okay, understood, but why is there no Mage Guild in the League and Necropolis towns, or did the light elves help there too?)
-But magic can be learned for runes scattered across the map + we can buy them (jumping ahead, I managed to fully learn 2 schools if abusing the rune for 200000 gold; if you think about it, you could probably learn the whole spellbook, but it would take too long)
Well, that looks good, and indeed there's not a single mage guild in any of the castles...
Overall a cool mechanic, nicely done, and actually I really enjoyed it, though I didn't know that "Phantom Forces" from the summoning branch is at Level 4, and also that if you already have a spell, it would logically make sense not to learn it again when you pull it via the scholar and/or solving the riddle...
A small abuse that helped me catch up to a hero I didn't really feel like chasing... You can enter the library only if you took a rune (bought or received from the mage tower). For example, a situation where Sigrif has no movement points left, but you'd like to move him... We need a button that any hero can stand on (more precisely, the runes we collect). Sigrif will teleport to the library; if we simply enter one of the branches, pick a spell, and say return back, the movement points will remain as they were. But if we go into the portal of a school, then don't choose a spell, exit to the main hall (via the league marker), then choose the desired school and spell and agree to leave, voila — full movement without skipping a day)
Traalsai basically wasn't used as a hero, only for scouting; overall my logic was that I understand we're weak, the town is a must-have, and the sooner the better)
After a while they show us another cinematic where the elves capture Nicholas, and he says Sigrif is stronger than you))
And we're warned that human troops will arrive in a couple of months... Okay then)
Saw the entrance to the underground and rushed there as fast as possible)
Once in the underground, went roughly upward, looking at the garrison that needs to be broken through
Dark Elf Outpost
And then after the outpost, I see a castle that seems to belong to someone but has no army in it, and I don't see a hero nearby either; well, I thought, we don't mind having at least one place without a fight) What's cool is that the other two outposts came under our control, though it's a shame you can't just grab an army from them, but oh well)
Right away, using the good old method, we check Findan's info to understand what awaits us)
Looks like a decent fellow, but I figured it'll be easy, especially with my playstyle)
Let me jump straight to the first and main stumbling block that I had to struggle with for quite a while, and I didn't want to replay the map, although ideally maybe I should have, but I still managed to pull through...
I'm talking about the encounter with Vinrael — yeah, honestly, he was the one mostly annoying me)
Our MC looks like this
And this creature came at us))
Just so you understand, Sigrif has 4 or 5 knowledge, and even though I had Decay pulled out by Traalsai from Lethos, and then transferred via Traalsai to Sigrif, I didn't have its mass version, so I had to sweat a lot, especially since my build ultimately sacrificed the charisma stat, which is needed but didn't fit here...
Here's Sigrif vs Vinrael 1st encounter) — the fight of my dreams)
Barely, scraping my teeth, we finally got this guy, and afterwards we continue leveling and exploring the map)
Then we stumble upon the spell library, and the first thing I want to figure out is whether it's freebies or not — well, of course not (there are none anywhere), and a funny dialogue ensues, but essentially all you need to know is that he sells runes, the ones that give us access to the library, and the only thing worth knowing is that when the rune price reaches 200000, even if you buy the rune, you won't be teleported to the library, but if there's a rune on the ground and you buy before picking it up, you'll have 2 runes; overall you can abuse all spells, but the key is to have a rune on the ground)
And we keep running around chilling, and here they give us more intel...
The joy when you get "Quick" education...
Somewhere in between I met this guy once more
Moving on; in my opinion, one of the turning points comes when we break through here (lots of tasty stuff + Tome of Darkness, which feels somewhat underwhelming in my view, but whatever):
There are essentially two battles here:
1) That's 8k death knights
2) This one is against 12k liches
And a funny picture, especially when fewer lich stacks remain and dragons blast them from all sides — yes, they're not the main damage dealers, but still))
In my opinion, after these fights our MC is maximally fed up and feeling great....
A small digression regarding the library: as much as you might want to quickly learn high-level spells of one school while ignoring everything else, we won't manage that, because the author took care of that too; as unpleasant as it is, it's actually quite logical and balanced
And as you understand, my main biter of everyone was Lethos; I gave him boots for Decay, and at first he just bit, and later blocked the exit and simply kept hitting Vinrael on cooldown, but we'll come back to that...
A small breakthrough, plus just a screenshot of the amount of armies Lethos bit)
Next, we meet one of the humans, namely Gabriel, and our MC deals with her (having weakened her beforehand, though that wasn't strictly necessary, just the opportunity existed)
As for my further gameplay, it was collecting everything and leveling the mains (I even thought they'd carry over in the last mission — yeah, right)
And now Lethos is ready to bite various enemies)
Also, while exploring the surface, our Sigrif catches a "vision" and sees what others don't, though it's strange that the devil is alive; oh well, I guess we'll find out in mission 5 what we're seeing and what it leads to...
I also noticed a pretty interesting location on the map that we know from the original campaign, but its purpose isn't clear to me yet; nevertheless, we'll find out later
Overall, we've established ourselves quite firmly on the surface; the only problem was Dirael — not that she was hard to defeat, but due to Shackles of Inevitability she couldn't really be bitten, and losing Lethos wasn't appealing) But no worries, we come for her with Sigrif and take her out without much trouble)
So, I thought maybe it's time to visit the undead and see what they're doing there, and why they're even on this map; we approach them and they give us a side quest along the lines of: if you want our trust and help, it's simple — buy it))
I think okay, let's do it, and immediately, without missing a beat, step forward step back, complete the quest, then go to the city, and they tell us there's a project for a super catapult, but it needs resources — wood and ore. All of it is easily found even if those mines are already captured. The ore near the ore mine is highlighted, but the wood isn't; however, to gather them, all we need is to approach the mine again after receiving this quest. The mines are in the north below...
Nothing complicated here — take it, do it, and when we collect the resources from the mines, approach the castle with any hero and they'll tell us our uber catapult is ready)
We smoothly transition to meeting the humans' main character, namely Valeria; I'll say this — I didn't fight her with Sigrif; Lethos handled her fine, albeit in 3 attempts, but oh well, as they say, no big deal)
One of the bites
Finishing off Valeria
Oh right, almost forgot that one of our main objectives was: Free Railag; nothing special to dwell on here, since the prison is located in the northwest; we break through the death knights and simply free him — no cutscene or dialogue, just freeing some nobody)
And afterwards, I just fooled around leveling the mains (thinking they wouldn't take away everything I worked for by mission 5). And I placed Lethos at the portal exit, where he clapped almost everyone except the dwarf...)
Meanwhile, Traalsai settled in the necropolis castle and slowly cleared that entire area with vampire spawns)
And after some time, the Dwarf exits the portal; Lethos meets him but doesn't kill him in one go. To eliminate him, I had to chase him with Sigrif, and I was one day behind.
But that's exactly when the library turn abuse came in handy, as mentioned above, and Sigrif catches up to him
Now nothing prevents us from heading to the finale, but again, I decided to clear everything and everyone.
Having gathered enough vampire spawns, Traalsai took out the last key keeper and grabbed the key
And to finish, we need to assemble the key; for that, we take a quest from the hut above the key keeper in the northwest; he'll tell us he needs the Dragon Flame Tongue, which is located in the dragon utopia. But to get there, you need to collect the key right where we saw earlier but couldn't interact until we took this quest.
After the key was restored, we head to the utopia, clear it, obtain the Dragon Flame Tongue, and go to the prophet; he gives us the Ring of Teleportation, with which we can pass through the gates, and subsequently fight Findan.
Another side quest is the Sphinx; there we're asked to hold all gold mines for (I think) a month and a half, and the reward for completion is this) As they say, the main boost here is +25% army, which ain't shabby, especially since my army was mixed)
Let's approach the finale; after obtaining the ring, we approach the gates, and we're offered to teleport, being told there's no going back, etc. (they take some artifacts from us, specifically the Town Portal scroll; I thought about giving it to Ylaya so Findan wouldn't kill her, though he doesn't aggro on her anyway). And the best part is that Ylaya comes to us not empty-handed, but with the Ring of Dominion, and we realize the finale will be a breeze)
Let me mention a few things right away:
-right when we're teleported beyond the gates, Sigrif and Ylaya have zero movement points, meaning we need to skip a day; after we do that, Findan uses Astral Gates to teleport closer to us.
-overall, we can just take the ring, skip another day, and Findan will attack us himself; we don't even need to push toward the capital
-but if we do use our turn and head to the capital, we'll see that thanks to the uber siege weapon against the gates, we're told we destroyed them without losing troops (so without that weapon, we would have lost some army)
-the guards may look strong, but at this stage, especially with the ring, autoresolve takes them out with zero losses
-even if we approach close to the castle, we can't capture it — not because we lack movement points, but because within 4-5 tiles of the castle, our movement bar resets to zero...
-and after skipping, Findan attacks regardless)
Findan posed no real problems, especially with such an army; you just need to know that units you don't need should be placed in the bottom slot, because remember his ability where all shooters attack — for me those were Nymphs...
And a couple of replays of the fight with Findan are attached
First fight
Purely for fun)
And from the category of "I leveled everyone in vain" (yes, in vain), but I'll show all the mains as they were by the end of the mission)
Ah, what awesome heroes they'd have made for starting mission 5)
Let's sum it up: I said at the beginning that the map didn't quite click with me — not because it's bad, it's great, but compared to the previous three it looks a bit duller, in my opinion. A lot of extra actions could easily have been skipped, but I wanted to do them. Going forward, our task is to storm the human city, but that's for the fifth mission. However, from the cutscenes we understand that something is off overall, because we see Biara being killed, and how the Overlord with the devil (whom we killed — why is he alive?) suggests she played her role, as I understand it; this was the Overlord's scheme from the start, including Biara helping us escape Hell, and overall everything isn't going according to our script, as we think. Well, we'll see, we'll see) As for the ending of mission 4, we achieved the initial goals — escalating against the elves so they'd return our lands and help us fight their former allies. Well then, ahead lies the final push and the concluding mission of this great campaign)
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