The path to knowledge.

I completed this scenario on Hero difficulty, using the version from comment #42.

Walkthrough

The beginning of the game went smoothly; Arantir left the swamps on day 31 (the quest required him to do so within two months). I defeated Faiza, who was guarding the amulet, but suffered losses of 2 higher vampires. The problem is that Wingael and the mage, Arachomus, are pursuing us. Wingael stops chasing Arantir after a certain point, but Arachomus always poses a threat because he gathers an army from three cities (you can't take them; it results in an instant defeat). It's important to note that you can hide from Arachomus in the crypt and the necromancer's Sanctuary; I also discovered several blocked regions for him during the game. In the crypt, I found the Boots of the Wayfarer in one of the tombs, and I had obtained the Boots of Travel earlier. I reached Saur (the final opponent) in the middle of the third month, but it turned out that he had a large army and Chaos. I checked that Saur's army doesn't depend on time, and then I simply ran around the map, gathering troops from dwellings and necromancy, while evading Arachomus. The battle with Saur turned out to be much easier than I thought: I summoned a phoenix and cast Heavenly Shields on everyone; the troops with +5 luck dealt a lot of damage. The scenario was completed in 114 days.

The scenario has many interesting scripts, cutscenes, and additional quests. As for the difficulty... I only had problems on the strategic map (I constantly had to watch out for the mage catching up, which led to reloads); the battles are easy. Others have already written about the garrison bug, but I still managed to overcome it. Thank you very much for the map!