to Malych,
Looks like he's not a noob; he's playing on Impossible difficulty, and he has the cloak at the very beginning; I checked in the editor. But I put it on for the first time before the ice elementals, and I raised 1200 skeletons. Now I have about 12,000 of them, after destroying the green heroes.

Since my last message, I found a path to the towers, but I lost half of my behemoths, and it seems I've locked Dess up until I find the dark blue tent. I guess I'll have to go down into the dungeon.