Gerter
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Played the first two maps as Markel on the latest version. I had completed them almost at release, about 4 years ago, so my impressions are practically brand new (and very positive).
There isn't much to say separately about the first one. Quickly reached bdp + bald guy; for schools—Darkness; through riddles, I collected spells from archliches and fought mainly with mass plague, and from the third week and after the prophet's quest, I added vampire necromancy. In 2 short months, I methodically gathered almost everything possible from the map and reached Rutger; the fight with him is quite tight, but my meat was comfortably enough to hold out while his army died of plague.
[spoiler=First mission, Rutger]
[/spoiler]
The second one is much more interesting. Initially, we have a very difficult setup—cannot hire additional necs; cannot build the capitol or Mage Guild above level 3 in the starting town; playing Darkness is almost useless since the main opponents are necs (yes, there's the cloak, but without accessible higher Darkness it's nearly useless); playing conditional elements is very unstable due to the curse. In the end, I decided to play as a ranged combatant with Summoning purely as a support school. For the first couple of weeks, I quite tediously cleared my start zone, mostly using minion skeletons. Reached full def, own shooting + got lucky catching log, raised almost 300 skeletons.
Tried to kill Gaspar in the crypt immediately; the army there was quite weak, but he simply smashed a third of my skeleton stack with a boulder and had hard raising + nothing to actually kill the same-stack units with, so I dodged that fight. From the third month, I switched mostly to vampire grades, fighting almost everything. Reached the witch, picking up an hp ring and green boots along the way. At the start of the sixth, Zoltan emerged from a portal with a very large army. I didn't dare fight him; instead, I moved all the army accumulated in the castle, went out to sea, and sailed toward the altar.
Completed the traitors quest and broke into the crypt with Ravenna, which was very close by. Lost all zombies and ghosts in this fight, but got a bunch of artifacts, including the staff of hell. On the next turn, I flew through a portal back to my start zone, collected upgrades, and fought Zoltan. Overall, I had a solid power advantage (skeletons with two hp rings, resilience, and a 10% hp buff), but he banned literally every spell on the first try + cast evasion, which countered my ranged build. Lost half the vampires, but at least saved the skeletons. Next turn, I killed Vlad, who was holed up in my starting castle, sacrificing the remaining vampires to save the shooters.
Brought some reinforcements and immediately Deidra emerged from a portal with an army far larger than Zoltan's. However, the dead girl was dangerous only on paper; in reality, she has only 40 mana, and I managed to shoot down her army in the castle virtually without losses. And after a couple more turns, I popped over to Gaspar's crypt; lost quite a bit, of course, but the second part of the curse was finally lifted.
[spoiler=Second mission, content of first two months]
[/spoiler]
Immediately moved toward the enemy cities, restoring the vampire population more or less along the way. Zoltan soon emerged from a portal again and chased me; I failed to take the bottom-left city because he immediately used Town Portal there, making it impossible to besiege. Reached the top-left city, picking up a claw on the way. Zoltan caught me there, but with the full arsenal of Summoning now available, he stood no chance; he was shot down similarly to Deidra. After a couple of days, I took his city as well.
Then I spent some time exploring the map and gathering buffs from it. Put together an archer set for my build, killed Lucretia (unpleasant fight) and Naadir (quite simple) in the crypts, and lifted the curse completely. From Lucretia's crypt, I returned to my start zone via portal, then went for a key to the Temple (the passage is, of course, extremely non-obvious + there is one moment that could be considered a bug, but more on that below). I had to spend some time hunting heroes that the AI sent from the last city, but overall, without much trouble, I finished off the remaining necs around the middle of the 4th month (I could have just gone straight in; I probably would have cleared the garrison a month earlier).
[spoiler=Endgame playing as Markel]
[/spoiler]
Switching to Sigrif. Killed the Dragon Utopia and the strait without losses, though 0 decent artifacts. At the mentor, I just dropped leadership into a character and went to catch Markel. The fight isn't the hardest; the main thing is to block the one-shotting liches and rush with all other troops before the old man can cast a bunch of phantoms. Then 2 turns on log and boots as Markel to the Temple to finish the mission.
[spoiler=Sigrif vs Markel and end of game]
[/spoiler]
Good maps; I had concerns about the second one regarding the nec vs nec concept, which usually turns into a super slog, but the mission is quite dynamic. It's only slightly annoying in its structure, as enemies from their main city have a one-way portal straight to our start zone. This could easily be solved with a mentor, but there's essentially no one to mentor since other necs cannot be hired.
Other things I'll note:
- The traitors quest. It would be better to highlight the witch on the map when giving the quest and the altar after talking to her. Otherwise, it's completely unclear where to go; I just checked the map with a script.
- The passage to the Temple. Extremely non-obvious because a) it doesn't light up with the cartographer (which, as I understand, is on the water for this purpose), b) it' same blocked until the quest is given, which gives the false impression that there is no passage at all (you can spot it with scouting/stealth of course, but the initial design is still questionable). On top of that, the only passage on the right is blocked by a ship—I checked the passage and Temple guards with a secondary hero, and as a result, the remaining ship from him blocks the passage completely; I had to remove it with a cheat (you can remove it by calling a ship of course, but I didn't really want to waste an extra week on that). In short, making a water passage in that spot would just be more logical and convenient for the player (imho).
[spoiler=Passage to the Temple]
[/spoiler]
There isn't much to say separately about the first one. Quickly reached bdp + bald guy; for schools—Darkness; through riddles, I collected spells from archliches and fought mainly with mass plague, and from the third week and after the prophet's quest, I added vampire necromancy. In 2 short months, I methodically gathered almost everything possible from the map and reached Rutger; the fight with him is quite tight, but my meat was comfortably enough to hold out while his army died of plague.
[spoiler=First mission, Rutger]
[/spoiler]
The second one is much more interesting. Initially, we have a very difficult setup—cannot hire additional necs; cannot build the capitol or Mage Guild above level 3 in the starting town; playing Darkness is almost useless since the main opponents are necs (yes, there's the cloak, but without accessible higher Darkness it's nearly useless); playing conditional elements is very unstable due to the curse. In the end, I decided to play as a ranged combatant with Summoning purely as a support school. For the first couple of weeks, I quite tediously cleared my start zone, mostly using minion skeletons. Reached full def, own shooting + got lucky catching log, raised almost 300 skeletons.
Tried to kill Gaspar in the crypt immediately; the army there was quite weak, but he simply smashed a third of my skeleton stack with a boulder and had hard raising + nothing to actually kill the same-stack units with, so I dodged that fight. From the third month, I switched mostly to vampire grades, fighting almost everything. Reached the witch, picking up an hp ring and green boots along the way. At the start of the sixth, Zoltan emerged from a portal with a very large army. I didn't dare fight him; instead, I moved all the army accumulated in the castle, went out to sea, and sailed toward the altar.
Completed the traitors quest and broke into the crypt with Ravenna, which was very close by. Lost all zombies and ghosts in this fight, but got a bunch of artifacts, including the staff of hell. On the next turn, I flew through a portal back to my start zone, collected upgrades, and fought Zoltan. Overall, I had a solid power advantage (skeletons with two hp rings, resilience, and a 10% hp buff), but he banned literally every spell on the first try + cast evasion, which countered my ranged build. Lost half the vampires, but at least saved the skeletons. Next turn, I killed Vlad, who was holed up in my starting castle, sacrificing the remaining vampires to save the shooters.
Brought some reinforcements and immediately Deidra emerged from a portal with an army far larger than Zoltan's. However, the dead girl was dangerous only on paper; in reality, she has only 40 mana, and I managed to shoot down her army in the castle virtually without losses. And after a couple more turns, I popped over to Gaspar's crypt; lost quite a bit, of course, but the second part of the curse was finally lifted.
[spoiler=Second mission, content of first two months]
[/spoiler]
Immediately moved toward the enemy cities, restoring the vampire population more or less along the way. Zoltan soon emerged from a portal again and chased me; I failed to take the bottom-left city because he immediately used Town Portal there, making it impossible to besiege. Reached the top-left city, picking up a claw on the way. Zoltan caught me there, but with the full arsenal of Summoning now available, he stood no chance; he was shot down similarly to Deidra. After a couple of days, I took his city as well.
Then I spent some time exploring the map and gathering buffs from it. Put together an archer set for my build, killed Lucretia (unpleasant fight) and Naadir (quite simple) in the crypts, and lifted the curse completely. From Lucretia's crypt, I returned to my start zone via portal, then went for a key to the Temple (the passage is, of course, extremely non-obvious + there is one moment that could be considered a bug, but more on that below). I had to spend some time hunting heroes that the AI sent from the last city, but overall, without much trouble, I finished off the remaining necs around the middle of the 4th month (I could have just gone straight in; I probably would have cleared the garrison a month earlier).
[spoiler=Endgame playing as Markel]
[/spoiler]
Switching to Sigrif. Killed the Dragon Utopia and the strait without losses, though 0 decent artifacts. At the mentor, I just dropped leadership into a character and went to catch Markel. The fight isn't the hardest; the main thing is to block the one-shotting liches and rush with all other troops before the old man can cast a bunch of phantoms. Then 2 turns on log and boots as Markel to the Temple to finish the mission.
[spoiler=Sigrif vs Markel and end of game]
[/spoiler]
Good maps; I had concerns about the second one regarding the nec vs nec concept, which usually turns into a super slog, but the mission is quite dynamic. It's only slightly annoying in its structure, as enemies from their main city have a one-way portal straight to our start zone. This could easily be solved with a mentor, but there's essentially no one to mentor since other necs cannot be hired.
Other things I'll note:
- The traitors quest. It would be better to highlight the witch on the map when giving the quest and the altar after talking to her. Otherwise, it's completely unclear where to go; I just checked the map with a script.
- The passage to the Temple. Extremely non-obvious because a) it doesn't light up with the cartographer (which, as I understand, is on the water for this purpose), b) it' same blocked until the quest is given, which gives the false impression that there is no passage at all (you can spot it with scouting/stealth of course, but the initial design is still questionable). On top of that, the only passage on the right is blocked by a ship—I checked the passage and Temple guards with a secondary hero, and as a result, the remaining ship from him blocks the passage completely; I had to remove it with a cheat (you can remove it by calling a ship of course, but I didn't really want to waste an extra week on that). In short, making a water passage in that spot would just be more logical and convenient for the player (imho).
[spoiler=Passage to the Temple]
[/spoiler]
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