Flame_Haze
Mission - 1 - Mayor
In short: getting acquainted with the level cap of 5, plus a couple of quests, one of which doesn't work
It's nice that since it became a campaign, you can choose a starting bonus — a small thing but pleasant (someone might wonder what's up; it's normal, I just used to play maps with a flag on the next map that raises your level)
From the start we don't really have any objectives besides "Markal must survive"
The map is gated by progression and completing tasks, which looks good and makes sense overall
The tactics are simple: from the start we take the zombies that join us, then grab the mine guarded by peasants
At the crossroads there's a dialogue box, like "there's undead here, what are you doing?" And we need to scare them, and it's made clear that not with a bunch of undead but with an artifact... Which we'll find later...
Overall, wherever possible we push through — on the first week I went for the zealots to get the zombies — a so-so trade-off, but it works
Then we gradually advance; behind the air elementals in the bottom-left corner there's an artifact — "Flesh Tunic" — that's exactly the artifact that will let us scare the peasants, whom Markal ultimately tells he'll turn into skeletons...
Behind the peasant huts there's a border guard, and again a dialogue ensues: "I'm Fiona's advisor, let me pass." "No way, go sort things out with the priest"... Okay then
What I didn't understand was the quest in the hut with vampires asking for a sword that simply isn't anywhere on the map. Is that intended? I think not — that shouldn't be the case...
Anyway, we go to the local priest Yolanda, who won't give us the key willingly, and we know how to deal with such fellows)
After we get the key from the guardian, we can proceed further and enter the underground. On the way we pick up a Necropolis that lets us build it in the castle too.
Upon entering the underground, another dialogue box hints that it's better to go right first, then visit the demon...
On the right side there are also dwellings of our town; after capturing them we simultaneously unlock building them in the castle...
Then we go to the demon — one of those useless fights (since the level cap for this mission is maxed), but it exists — this is breaking through Pit Lords near the fort on the hill
Then along the path we head to the castle and wipe it out)
So in the end Markal turned out like this...
Let me sum up the first mission: IT IS COMPLETABLE — that's a plus... Because when I played the standalone map, after wiping out the demons a quest appeared about meeting an old acquaintance or something, but there was no one on the map, and that was sad. But at that moment I just skipped it and played the second map... The progression feels ideal as groundwork for the second mission (and how annoying it was when it was a standalone map — you had to catch her, and the stat boosts you collected didn't carry over)
The broken vampire quest... And it's unclear why there's a portal behind which griffins guard a cloak for BD (yes, very useful for a necromancer)
Moving on to Mission 2 - Regent
If the first mission is chill and relaxed, here you'll have to sweat a bit...
Let me briefly return to the standalone map — funny enough, as Fiona you could build an undead castle and play with it)) oh well
In this mission Fiona appears, who sent a message to Markal asking him to come help her, because she stayed in the capital while enemies besieged her from all sides...
And here I should split the mission into two conditional parts: playing as Markal, playing as Fiona...
In short, compared to Fiona, everything is fairly straightforward for us until one point, which I'll address closer to the end...
Markal starts with 1 upgraded Vampire Lord, which helps quite nicely early on with kiting various zombies, and thanks to Fire Warriors and the mark, we clean almost the entire starting area without issues (except for Liches and Death Knights guarding the amulet)
As we progress across the map, we receive various small quests from our own units guarding keymasters of different colors, which Fiona will need later...
On the first week I dove into horses (to spend dark energy, and extra Spectres won't hurt either)
The first encounter is the red keymaster and vampires...
- Their task is 100 crystals. The first time I wondered if anything would respawn there, but thankfully we're told there's a mine, and safely after breaking through mummies, there lies a single pile of crystals worth exactly 100 pieces. And yes, it's worth noting that until we complete the quest, we won't be able to construct buildings of that tier in the city — that needs to be kept in mind... Although I focused more on the human castle than the undead one, whatever...
Then, to boost our Markal faster, we can go left — there's an abandoned mine guarded by a swarm of Golems. Basically, we wipe them out, gain a ton of experience, and happily return along the path to the other keymasters.
The keymaster guarded by Liches wants a "scroll" with the Suffering spell according to the text, but in reality it's the Temple of Magic Touch, which is not on our territory but on Fiona's, guarded by Archangels. After killing them, Fiona regrets doing that — well, nothing to do, if it must be done, it must be done)
The next keymaster — Wights, who serve their duty and themselves no longer know why they give us a task: there are souls they haven't taken, and eventually they describe who we need to put to rest. If you're too lazy to read carefully, the locations are shown below
The next keymaster — guarded by Bone Dragons — there it's trivially simple: just kill them and that's it)
The last keymaster (purple) — here the fun begins, because taking the key itself isn't a problem; the problem is that when approaching the tent, a dialogue triggers with Aidan, who's an imba Dragon Knight and all that. So rushing there unprepared is absolutely not recommended... Because the guy there is loaded to 100%
And here there are two developments: either we can take the key and provoke him to chase us (that's how it worked in the map; not sure it still works now, but anyway). If we came with a weak army, sensing his superiority, he'll drive us until we sit in the castle, and as soon as we step out, he runs at us — which is strangest of all... That way we can both take the key and avoid fighting him...
But maybe in the campaign this doesn't work, so I didn't try reinventing the wheel and just gathered a bigger army and wiped him out feet-first without much effort, though honestly I never understood the mechanic of how to fight him legitimately, so I exploited a gap — I'll try to explain in more detail...
The thing is, a few points before the tent with the key, we approach, take the key, and if you simply walk closer to Aidan without clicking his icon, he starts running away along the path to help Fiona (by the script, I assume, to show Fiona how important we are to her). And even with Windstrider Boots, no matter what I did without leaving the road, he always escapes past the garrison and results in defeat....
So I simply attack him when I reach the tent and have enough movement points — the battle starts, even though Aidan is running somewhere. I'm no expert, but I believe it shouldn't work that way at all
Well, on that cheerful note, after defeating him, all that remains is to run around grabbing a couple of stat boosts, and our song is sung — Markal has nothing left to do.
Let me show what he looked like before the battle with Aidan
Summary of this part: Keep in mind that within the mission our upgrades are limited, so from Necromancy you shouldn't take upgrades for Vampires and Wights, because they won't be needed at all (it happened that two stacks of upgraded vampires, one being the starter, ended up guarding the wood mine near the castle from foes)
What slightly burned me was that in the Mage Guild — sure, it's capped at level four — but why is Chaos there? Probably to make the game harder. But in fact, three mass casts were enough, and Aidan fell. Now moving on to the part as Fiona
Part as Fiona
Again, a brief analogy with the pure map: cool that you can choose a starting bonus — my choice fell on Marksmen, because everything else isn't that necessary, and overall it gives a small boost...
In two words: the difficulty spreads across two fronts, and with only one hero it's rather hard to manage, plus economically it's tough to grow two castles that love ORE and WOOD. Still, if you find loopholes, it's possible — just not fast)
Unlike Markal, Fiona starts at level 1. I had a couple of options in mind for how to play, but in the end I chose the machinist, because there are breakthroughs but no buildings, and no human cockroaches (until the rebels are wiped out) at all, so everything falls on Fiona's fragile shoulders (with Irina's specialty). Unlike Markal, we start with 5 Griffins + Marksmen, and that's already impressive...
From the start, I took the blacksmith, bought all machines, and immediately headed down to capture the peasant huts and the archer tower. Despite the shooters there, thanks to having Griffins and machines, we manage two flights per round and cause havoc (without machines such a trick wouldn't work, because they'd keep retaliating and we couldn't leave combat without losses)
After the first week, we get a message that demons are advancing, but they don't start raiding right away and give us some space to level our character...
Near the mill we get a mini-quest: supposedly it needs repairing, but not with an ordinary hammer — with a dwarven smithing hammer guarded by Seraphims (yeah, already running)
And here begins the cat-and-mouse game: you need to move around, not stray far from the castle, and meanwhile grind as much as possible...
The whole difficulty is that you're squeezed from two sides.
Fiona's son Nicholas went with Dougal for a walk in the woods, but once we break through Isabel's Knights, a dialogue occurs saying "Fiona fraternizes with necromancers, tut-tut, you must be overthrown," and we realize Dougal and Nicholas weren't walking in the woods — they've been kidnapped.
All would be fine, but the garrison leading to the castle is initially unreachable for us — well, for now. Meanwhile, we try to grind as much as possible; if something can't be broken through, we sit at home, see a straggler, and if we're stronger, we take them out. As strange as it sounds, sometimes weeks helped by reducing initiative for dark factions, plus the flag and luck under the castle — somehow we managed to level up...
Later, when we become somewhat stronger, the bot for some reason doesn't even fight anymore — it just runs away, even though it could easily take out plenty... Oh well, there were many battles with demons while they ran around
so I'll just attach one of them resembling a battle)
Then, once we're strong enough to break through the garrison, we take out the enemy castle to our right. A pity we burn it down — it clearly wouldn't have been superfluous))
And then depending on the situation: if possible, we rush to the prison to rescue the kid; if not, we fend off demons while not forgetting to train at least the archers, since I didn't have a trainer yet...
After taking out the castle, human heroes started appearing in the tavern — Maeve showed up. I thought, not bad, and since Fiona is already level 20, we slowly level her instead, because we'll need her to send Fiona off toward the demons...
As fate would have it, the garrison before the prison was cleared by Maeve. Quite a specific breakthrough, but it was worth it — more than worth it)
After entering the prison, we get Dougal (who's supposed to guard the Claw but is level 1, so what use is he..)
Who needs him when I raised such a defender)
Later I gave Dougal some army to finish off the remnants of the unkilled and made him a true trainer)
He sat in the castle training, I gave Maeve roughly 2–3 weeks' worth of growth and placed her at the portal so they wouldn't push through, while Fiona walks past the keymasters closer to the last one, waiting for Markal to gather himself so we can take the final key and take out Aidan... Along the way we observe various dialogues...
Once in the dungeon, we collect stat boosts and go wipe out the castles
Battle — first castle
Battle — second castle
Let me show what Fiona turned out like)
Despite no stat-boost artifacts, there were horses and evasion, and that was more than enough)
Overall on the mission: I liked it — a pretty tough economic resource crunch at the start, thank goodness there's at least a trading post; torn from two sides, but everything's cool and great) Though when I played the standalone map it was even harsher — Vitya would show up almost on day 4–5, and what to do with him was anyone's guess, plus the demons had unreal growth with tons of Pit Lords. Here thankfully that's absent, and everything is completable) Overall, I'm satisfied with the campaign so far, and the general impression will come once I finish all missions)