Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

Dunkler HorizontV02 (standard version)

Author: Dungeonmaster

Review in parts. Part 3. (days 311 – 347)

Traditionally, I am attaching the movement map of the main forces (now 2 maps - overworld and underground), a couple of saves, and screenshots.

10. Map Quests
Now, after capturing 2 of Flaks' castles, you need to immediately start recruiting thieves and orcs on boars from the external dwellings near them. For 100 thieves, they will give 65 archangels (!), and for 100 orcs - +15 attack. Both the first and second quests are highly desirable, especially since the map is VERY poor in upgrades; therefore, getting +15 attack for the main hero is a must.
As for other map quests:
- for 15 phoenixes they give +10 defense – you should take it. The Seer is located in Necromancer lands, so there's no need to rush the purchase of phoenixes, but the quest must be completed by the main hero.
- defeating azure dragons and receiving 145 archangels – also doable,
- exchanging 50 champions for Titan' same armor; I completed this, but if I recall correctly, the armor can be obtained anyway in one of the Dragon Utopias, so 50 champs can be sold in one of the Barbarian castles. Either option is possible.
- exchanging a dragon scale shield for 500 archangels – no comments, as they say. I don't even remember if I managed to complete this quest at all.

11. Ninth Week (finishing off the pink)
311 – 314. We take the second swamp castle; on 313 – the third and final castle; on 314 we kill the last pink hero, Inteus, with stats 17/18/32/35, also without resistance. Since same Mephala is without pathfinding, we immediately use some "fodder" heroes to bring her dragonflies for movement without terrain penalties and acceleration. Also important: from the home Castle, we start ferrying armies to Mephala: 7 angels + 43 fanatics + 139 archers; we move them south to upgrade them at the fortress on the hill.
315 – 317. In the north, at the respawn of the swamp-dweller Ellezar (for leveling), we kill about a hundred grey bears and get a sword from the AOTD set; additionally, we already have the ribs from this set. As a result, Ellezar became a very decent mage with all elements, capable of handling a complex battle where a lot of magic is needed for restoration. I try to move all more significant heroes through upgrades and swamp-dweller castles to get +1 defense, then immediately return Mephala back and build a chain to transfer the army back from the corner of the map.

12. Tenth Week (legions of chaos hydras, taking the brown tent)
321 – 322. We unite the army and break through 2250 chaos hydras (slow, blindness, quicksand, blindness, archer fire); Mephala is left with 3 mana (!), rising to level 34. A teleport to another location is open, but the army moves west as planned. Ellezar, with 2 phoenixes, 48 riders, and 150 pegasi and a wagonload of mana for restoration, enters the teleport for scouting and clearing.
323 – 325. Again with Mephala, we take a spot slightly further north, break through titans, take the IMPORTANT ARTIFACT VAMPIRE CLOAK, and collect gold using fodder heroes there. On 325, the main army reaches the home city of Arion. Ellezar continues to scout the lands beyond the teleport.
326. We bring the main army to the Rampart – Elvinir, and immediately take the brown tent; important moment, see battle screenshot: with this number of archers everything went smoothly, even on cursed ground.
327. We start leveling Thorgrim (just in case it's needed); we place Mephala further north to capture another castle – Calvurion.

13. Eleventh Week (obtaining the book of earth)
331. We take the same Calvurion castle with Mephala, and immediately, without scouting the territory, turn the army back – toward the Barbarian lands. Ellezar leaves the teleport and we give 50 riders to Kyrre, who carries them northeast to complete a quest and receive Titan's armor.
332. We bring the army to the Barbarian lands; Mephala is already standing at the entrance to the Dungeon.
333 – 336. We give the army to Mephala, enter the underground area (the one under the Barbarians), break through earth elementals and via the brown border gates enter the territory of earth elementals, turning east. Here we had to spend one day waiting for Orrin and Thorgrim; it was necessary for them to level up on elementals.
Another very important point (for a future walkthrough): on 334, we put scout Coronius (without any ulterior motive) in a boat for scouting by sea, sailing south and then north.
337. We fight the guard of 648 rust dragons with Mephala (slow, dragonfly bait in the bottom right corner, blindness, restoring archangels as they enter battle), and take КЗ!

This is the most important event of the month: obtaining the book of earth. Now we get not only teleportation between castles, which will add VERY GREAT DYNAMICS to further progress (reminder: there is no city portal magic in castles), but also obtain the significant magic "force field". I hadn't noticed before the dragon fights that this spell is missing from castles. Now battles with many dragons and other unpleasant guards have become possible.

14. Twelfth Week (buying forces, visiting tents, breaking through guards to other kgins)
341 – 342. In the Dungeon, we spend another 2 days leveling secondary heroes and take the artifact Sphere of the Slime Lake, which helps in battles where our strength needs restoration. Our scout is currently sailing in our vicinity. All heroes move toward the exit from the underground; everything is finished here, the army is deployed to the Inferno castle Magma. A fly-over of castles is done, more archangels, archers, and fanatics are bought.
343 – 344. Now with КЗ, there is no strict movement along a line; heroes fly around castles, buy up growth, and purchase growth from external dwellings; heroes visit castles to increase skills (where they haven't been yet). Purple apparently visits the green tent, and Tant with weak forces finally moves toward our respawn in the southwest. Kyrre, with purchased forces, goes and breaks through another red garrison in the north, where the next day she takes an important external dwelling of angels for growth.
345. We catch and kill Tant, receiving useful artifacts DEAD MAN'S BOOTS and dead man's shield.
We return the army to the Inferno respawn, where we break through crystal dragons.
346 – 347. A lot of confusion, flying all over the map back and forth. Main actions: breaking guards and taking red and blue tents near the Inferno land, breaking ГО into dungeons for passage to the books of fire and water.

Results of the 3rd month:
- all competing forces in adjacent territories have been finished off,
- book of earth obtained, and with it "city portal", greatly increasing troop movement dynamics; tasks can be solved in different corners of the map,
- with КЗ we are ready for the arrival of Necromancers,
- "force field" appeared; now even more complex battles can be conducted,
- hero levels have been well increased: Mephala - level 38, Kyrre – lvl 31, Ellezar – lvl 33, Casmir lvl 27; heroes visited upgrades. Ellezar can actually get up to 600-700 mana! While others of ours have a maximum of 200-300,
- an important scout sailed by sea toward the Necromancers (!),
- we obtained 3 out of 4 artifacts for the Cursed Armor set, and 2 out of 3 artifacts for the Undead King's Cloak set.
In principle, one can aim to clear the center of the map with artifacts and/or an invasion of the Necromancers. The Necromancers themselves broke through the green tent, but none of them have arrived yet (except for the killed Tant).

Cons of the month:
- Orrin's leveling was failed: he has no intelligence and logistics/pathfinding; air was taken. Ideally, intelligence should have been instead of air. He will not conduct any serious battles until the end of the game. Very unfortunate…
- a lot of confusion in the last week regarding movements,
- I didn't set long-term goals after obtaining КЗ, so secondary and not very important tasks were solved in the last week. Although ideally, as it later turned out, it was necessary to urgently take the Dragon Utopia slightly west of the Inferno respawn and visit the library there, obtain the black sphere that breaks magic resistance, and go directly to the Necromancers. I think this could have been done in a week – reaching the borders of the Necromancer lands. Instead, I decided (for some reason) to take the books of fire and water (for archangel clones), although this was a completely redundant and unnecessary action (since there is very little intelligence for clones anyway). Essentially, the last week of the month was devoted to activities other than those that should have been done; the week turned out not very well-thought-out or productive.

To be continued…

Dunkler HorizontV02 (standard version)
Walkthrough in parts. Part 3. (days 311 – 347)
To be continued…

Well, I was inspired by this Walkthrough and decided to try playing this map myself...
I started with Valeska as the main hero, although I'm playing with a more stable and reliable build using Angels from the canned goods, but without rushing and mainly through the main hero, while the others are just there to support...
It seems like the Necromancer is stuck:
In the second month, a Tant (with a couple of stacks of several dozen skeletons and a couple of ghosts) emerged from a one-way portal near the Crystal Dragons, and he's been standing there ever since.
Tamika also arrived near the green tent at the end of the second month, with 1 unit in the left area, and she's been there for all 5 months; it seems the Necromancers haven't taken the tent yet.
There haven't been any other Necromancers for 5 months...
As for the Legion of Rust near the Book of Earth and the starting spawn generation (for those who do that): with Inferno, you can get a Force Field in the GM, after which you can transform all the archers into Snipers, and the dragons will be easily defeated by the Snipers with the ranged attack skill, without any problems.
In 4 months, without any Necromancer attacks, the enemies on the surface are easily defeated.
At the very end of the 4th month, the Book of Earth was taken.

Now, with the Ring of the Mage, the Sniper Bow, 1k Snipers, and the ranged attack skill, all that's left is to complete the quests for stats, and then I can go and defeat the sluggish Necromancer.

By the way, I don't understand if this is intentional or a bug: between the two pink cities, the passage is blocked; there's a guard and a road, but the obstacles are arranged in such a way that it's impossible to pass.

I still don't understand how the Necromancer attacks are implemented in this map (whether any events, timers, etc. affect the arrival of the Necromancers). Sometimes the Necromancers appear in the 3rd month from one-way portals with 2-4 heroes and all their legions (and then they either stay in the captured cities or fiercely harass everything around), and sometimes they just stay at the spawn and don't come out, or they just take the tent and a couple of random heroes come as guests without the main force. It's not clear what it depends on....

So, I'm waiting for the end to see how long it takes and how the main villain will be defeated

Map Name: A Long Way
Author: Grigor Minchev
Downloaded: from the Heroesportal map catalog

I spent the last few days marathoning and completed this scenario. It's been a long time since completing any map was THIS difficult. Probably the hardest map I've played since "Metataxer's Revenge". At the same time, it is entirely in the style of the Bulgarian author, developed over years—absolutely unique and unlike anyone else's. The player is primarily required to have sound planning, patience, endurance, and a high tempo. I suspect that completing this map blindly is impossible.

A superficial look in the editor shows nothing supernatural. The AI start in standard conditions, without a head start in the form of insane troops, but with good preset upgrades for their main heroes and a decent set of spells—specifically with Town Portal, but without Boat Summon or Water Walking. But our start is something else entirely. There are two heroes: Jelu, who is locked behind quests and effectively useless, and the knight Lord Haart (Minchev loves this hero) with negative experience of -1230000 and a couple of curious artifacts (Titan's Gladius, Sphere of Forbidding, shooting artifacts). Our starting respawn stretches in a long strip upward toward a garrison on the border with the Barbarians. There are three Castles located on the respawn besides our starting one, but access to them is blocked to varying degrees by quests and multicolored guards. The towns have no taverns. There is also a set of conservatories. Traditionally, everything is very tight in terms of resources and spells. For example, one sawmill is guarded by 40 angels with an upgraded stack; the second is essentially blocked by visiting a blue tent, for which you must kill 24 orcs and 220 ogres to gain access. There is a crystal and ore mine right next door. You have to run quite a bit to reach the others. The initial stage of completion basically boils down to running one hero up and down the respawn, very gradually gaining access to various objects. Water magic, earth magic, logistics, and pathfinding are banned on the map; you need to build up towns one by one from scratch with an almost total absence of resources and money (some quests require bringing archangels and black dragons), while Pandoras along the way—traditional for this author—completely wipe out our economy, so development proceeds very slowly.

I already mentioned what a difference using SoD_SP made on this map. You can generate a starting save such that Lord Haart wipes out his negative experience on day 1 and then starts leveling up like a normal hero. At first, I thought this was the author's design for an inventive player to figure out, but no. Using standard game features, you cannot wipe a hero's experience in the same way. But the author himself assumed that people could play this map on Hot, and there are prerequisites for playing under WoG, so I think the method is still legitimate. The consequences of wiping Lord Haart's negative experience are as follows: we get various secondary skills upon leveling up and, accordingly, primary skills. But! There will be no possibility to obtain logistics, pathfinding, or earth magic. In other words, the hero becomes a powerful but slow turtle. If the negative experience is not wiped, by the time he reaches Paconi's Stronghold, Haart will get intelligence, logi, and pathfinding, becoming a normal hero in the midgame. To the extent that a hero without earth magic can even be considered "normal" :) At the same time, regardless of whether it's wiped or not, the key moment of the start is obtaining water magic from a box at 15.78.0. Water magic is the only 100% must-have skill on this map. "A Long Way" can be completed even without wisdom on the main hero, but the absence of water magic means immediate гг. Therefore, if you do wipe the experience, you need to calculate it so that water magic appears in the hero's tree after the battle with 900 magma elementals and 10k peasants. Tactics also greatly helped for a fast start. It allowed me to kill packs of 4000 snipers before the green tent without waiting for forgetfulness in Paconi. In general, the town of Paconi is our key to obtaining not only forgetfulness but also slow, blindness, shield, stone skin, dispel, and force field. Only, to get access to it, you have to sweat quite a bit. It requires building up a tower at the top, which can be reached in turn after fully building the Castle and Dungeon, as well as visiting the red tent on the Barbarian respawn by making a foray across the sea. To complete tasks on the respawn, the key object—surprisingly—is the mercenary guild near the Inferno respawn. I did some of the same town construction, as well as upgrading angels and djinns, by selling parts of the army given to us through quests :)

By the way, regarding the Inferno respawn, since I mentioned it. Near the mercenary guild, there is a boat that can be used to sail to the red heroes in the first week, capture their lower castle with its growth, and immediately force a struggle against Xerone. At first glance, this seems like the right option for a tempo player. But no, there is no money for adequate troop purchases, and sooner or later we'll be wiped out—if not by Xerone himself, then by his neighbors—and the surrounding terrain is a swamp; a swamp for a hero without pathfinding, logistics, and swamp units is death. Another important nuance: landing at the red base, we brought them a boat that we cannot adequately remove. There's no way to sink it, and buying a boat in the nearby town to tow it back is beyond our means—and you can't sink the boat because then we wouldn't return to the starting respawn. Regarding Boat Summon, there's a curious point: obtaining it on this map is harder than getting flight/dimension door on other maps, and access to some existing shipyards is blocked by hellish quests :) But I'll talk about Boat Summon in more detail later.

In general, I played as tempo-heavy as possible and crawled out of the respawn toward the end of the 5 (!) month. Without wiping the experience on day 1, there would have been a delay of another couple of months. It goes without saying that during this time the AI gathered an immense amount of troops, considering their number of towns, the presence of level 7 external dwellings, and Town Portal for their main heroes. At the same time, it should be noted that our opponents will be Gunnar with a clairvoyance amulet, Crag, Tazar, and a number of other unpleasant companions, including the witch Khalid. She is the only hero on this map with spell power 50+ (all other heroes, including us, have primary skills around 10+), and that hag mows down troops brutally with explosion or chain lightning. Because of Khalid, I even doubted whether to hand over the Sphere of Forbidding via quest at the beginning (the correct answer is—hand it over). Leaving the respawn is preceded by wiping out an unpleasant Barbarian garrison and then packs of azure dragons (pack size depends on timing). The garrison and dragons could be broken through by our neighbor personally, but I wouldn't be happy about such a turn of events. Another funny point of this map is the ban on resurrection; it exists in the red player's starting Necropolis, which looks like a mockery :) And in all battles, you'll have to rack your brain on how to avoid losses or keep them to a minimum. Add to this a total ban on the possibility of obtaining Town Portal on the map—and earth magic already becomes less useful here than water magic. But one can manage without earth magic and resurrection when you have a clone and a stack of archangels. The problem will be that even a clone scroll and a hundred archs won't give us a carefree life, as casting requires mana, which is in short supply. Lord Haart did not get intelligence for me. After capturing the first green Stronghold, we finally gain access to the tavern, and we can now choose a candidate for the role of new main hero. My first thought was to look for an intelligence specialist or even Daremih, but all those heroes are banned. Game experience suggested that in any unclear situation, you should take the armor specialist. Here, that's Nila. Near the Barbarian town before the white tent, there is a box that grants secondary skills. The list is built in this sequence: pathfinding - logistics - leadership - water magic - earth magic - navigation. This is the first and essentially only adequate chance for us to make ourselves a viable main hero. With some skill, you can build your game so that navigation won't be decisive here, so it can be cut off by taking the box with a hero who already has three selected skills. For Nila, these are literacy and armor, but I thought long about the third skill between wisdom and intelligence. Or I considered the option of taking both wisdom and intelligence, cutting off earth magic in the box. The choice, to put it mildly, is not great, let me tell you. In the end, I gave up on intelligence, and after that, it was hellishly difficult. Knowledge for both Lord Haart and Nila during the key phase of completion with artifacts equipped was around 8-10 :) At the same time, Lord Haart had about 700 mana in reserve, gathered from boxes as a bonus. And Nila had 200+. That's the mana you need to kill the map bosses on the first try (yes, they are regularly rebought by the AI here, just how we like it), and that was Crag with an army of 400 ancient monsters, 1300 thunderbirds, and 400 cyclops, to whom a kind ally—by an unpleasant coincidence—added hundreds of phoenixes and magical elementals. And this is despite the fact that when exiting toward the red tent, I lured Dess with a hundred ancient monsters away from the white gates and killed her, so Crag was missing some army. Then it was Gunnar with hundreds of black dragons and arch-devils plus sultans and pits. With Gunnar, you can't drag your feet, as in the inaccessible orange town, events start piling up an immense amount of troops from a certain stage. The battle with Gunnar was without blindness. All key battles in the midgame were without shackles. Also Khalid with practically a legion of hydras and 50+ sp, although the battle with her went easily since I caught her almost without mana. A case where the devil isn't as scary as he is painted. Moreover, most dangerous heroes have Town Portal, and therefore they behave unpredictably. Our army, if you play the start correctly, consists of 100 archs, a little over 1000 master djinns, and 5-6 thousand witch harpies (I sold a thousand harpies at the mercenary guild because money was very tight). An extravagant combination. Battles are fought by casting everything on single djinns from the main djinn stack, and they in turn destroy the enemy supported by harpies and healing via an archangel clone. The archs must not be killed or heavily damaged, otherwise we won't recover later. In general, mana barely held out with all these folks :)

Parallel to capturing and holding territories, you need to complete quests. There are two key points in this regard: I strongly advise against swapping the boots of levitation for the helmet of divine enlightenment prematurely, no matter how much you want to! Do this only after obtaining the second set of boots, otherwise you'll make the game many times harder for yourself. The second point concerns the dolphins from the admiral's hat set. There are two on the map, but three quests for them; moreover, the quest to obtain the sword of justice is mandatory for completion—without it, the map becomes impassable. The other two are optional: either speed boots and access to the fort on the hill, which is very convenient territorially and situationally, or the only chance to get Boat Summon on this map in a prison with a hero. I had to sacrifice Boat Summon, even though I'd already prepared a plan on how to free that hero without sailing across the entire map to him.

Wiping out the bosses lets us breathe a sigh of relief; then begins a prolonged stage of pushing enemies out of their locations and holding conquered positions. Important points here: target one specific flag, rush all its towns, and either hand them over to some ally or fend off attacks at home and in other places (AI wander across the entire map, usually far from their respawns). This way, the pink, purple, and blue AI die within seven days. At the same time, the races of the pink, orange, and purple players are generated randomly during the creation of the starting save. My great luck was that the pink player spawned as Inferno. And Inferno has Town Portal on a minimal level—City Gates. To make the game easier, you can set the pink player to Inferno when choosing map settings; the generation of purple and orange is not as important. Things are harder with green and brown; you have to rack your brain to figure out how to get to them. Incredibly, they have normal daily income in their respawn towns, not 500 gold like everywhere else on the map. They also have a brown tent, and after wiping these flags, other AI will not enter these zones (stupid AI doesn't TP into ally towns and doesn't visit the brown tent, which works in our favor). It is even harder to completely destroy the red player. The last Necropolis is closed by a black guard. Curiously, Sir Mullich is sticking out of a rock nearby with a large army and stats. I couldn't understand what the point was. It turned out that after the death of the red player, the orange player can immediately buy and start using Sir Mullich. The orange player is not permanently eliminated on this map and keeps us in the game so that we perform specifically the delivery of the grail to the city of Colossus. At the same time, scripts periodically dump resources and army into the orange starting town, and all heroes he rebuy immediately learn Town Portal. But the trick from "First Blood," which consisted of driving your own hero through an AI town, won't work here.

I'll also say that the difference in victory conditions between "A Long Way" and "Abelia" is that the city requiring the grail is not a starting one but is heavily blocked by quests. At the same time, the author places obelisks in such inaccessible places and behind such guards that it all looks a bit strange. If you couldn't dig up the grail without fully opening the puzzle-map, it would make sense, but instead, both in "Arlok" and here, I dug up the grail by trial and error, without visiting half of the obelisks. In "Abelia," however, I visited almost all of them and even saw the cross. Also, a difference between "A Long Way" and other maps completed from Minchev is that here quests must be performed parallel to the war with AI, not after—meaning doing many tasks simultaneously. Another tip regarding holding occupied positions and fending off AI constantly crawling into every crack: daily visits to the veils of darkness. Veils near both Dungeons and in the purple player's Castles are especially important. In general, near the exits of the two one-way paths.

In the finale, taking the blue tent with special terrain for harpies was curious—it came as a surprise to me. I prepared to hit the box guards specifically with harpies and 1 mage for a teleport costing 1 mana, but it turned out even easier. And Nila managed to ram through all the guards on the road to Colossus in 1 day with zero mana. Any other available hero with existing means could not have repeated this :)

Victory on 13.4.5, which is still very fast for this map. Under certain conditions (for example, early surrender of boots of levitation), you can play much longer :)

I put the map in my top-5 maps along with "Xiedu", "The Last Crusade", "Metataxer's Revenge" and "Ira the Mage". Yes, goodbye "6424 Heroes". The only thing that could be added is some sophisticated battles with preset starting troops for the AI, and giving the orange player more means to rebuy an army, as he became impoverished over time, but it'll do.

I posted a couple of conducted battles in the screenshots. For example, in the first battle, using the "remove obstacle" spell is vital; otherwise, you won't be able to place single knights in the correct position to then loop the golems, and there is no slow. I spent three hours on the battle with Gunnar so that he wouldn't flee and cause me losses.

P.S. During completion, there was a funny moment when artillery in secondary skills on Lord Haart saved his life. He was defending against Khalid in a castle in a pretty hopeless situation, and control over the towers gave me the ability to blind 150 arch-devils before their turn. The enemy cast earthquake a couple of times, didn't break a single wall, and then fled without waiting for blindness to wear off from her archs (!). Otherwise, I would have been in trouble. In a similar fashion, a hero with a legion of ogres, against whom I had no chance, also fled :confused:

I don't understand, is this intentional, or is it a mistake by the author? Between the two pink cities, the passage is blocked. There's a guard stationed there, and a road, but the obstacles are arranged in such a way that it's impossible to pass.

I checked in the editor: if this is cell 122,119, then it's almost certainly a mistake, as the map is built very densely, and it's not uncommon for adjacent obstacles to not look like that in normal mode. The pathfinding mode always makes these problems visible.
Regarding AI behavior: give me some clueless Necromancers, and I'll probably beat this map too... maybe. :)

Valeska is a good starting hero for the main quest, but I prefer more stable and reliable options with Angels from the Conflux, although without rushing and mainly focusing on the main quest, while the others just bring and deliver...
.....

By the way, I didn't understand if this is intentional or a bug: the passage between the two pink cities is blocked; there is a guard and a road, but the obstacles are arranged in such a way that it is impossible to pass.
................

It's still unclear in this map how the Necromancer attack is carried out (whether any events, timers, etc. affect the arrival of the Necromancers). Sometimes the Necromancers appear on the 3rd month from the one-way teleporters with 2-4 heroes and all their legions (and then they either stay in the captured cities or fiercely harass everything around), and sometimes they just sit on their spawn point and don't come out, or they just take the tent and a couple of random heroes without the main force come to visit, and it's not clear what it depends on....

I think that progressing by slowing down the enemy and getting Angels in the Conflux is the author's intended "correct" plan.

I agree about the author's mistake with the obstacle between the Flax castles, as the road blockage doesn't serve any reasonable purpose.

I believe that the Necromancer's appearance depends on several factors at once:
1) The Necromancers have a large spawn point, so there is a very large variability in the behavior of their heroes - where to go, which guards they will attack, whether they will join forces and with whom, when, etc.,
2) when exactly they will break through the green tent, and what guard will be generated near the tent (the stronger the guard, the longer it will take to capture it),
3) where the Necromancer heroes will be teleported from the one-way teleporters. Ideally, not too strong heroes and their armies should appear in the guarded exits from the teleporters (for example, behind the Crystal Dragons),
4) also, I think, our accumulated forces and their location influence it. If our heroes spend the night not far from the open exits from the teleporter, with a VERY high probability the Necromancer will not jump out and will wait for a better moment.
So, it is impossible to predict how these factors will come together. Therefore, it is better to quickly take the Fortress and go to the Necromancers first.

Dunkler HorizontV02 (standard version)

Author: Dungeonmaster

Walkthrough in parts. Part 4. (days 411 – 447)

Attaching a map of the main forces' movement, a couple of saves, and screenshots.

15. Thirteenth week (collecting artifacts, scouting near the Necromancers)
411 – 412. Transporting forces to the Inferno underground, picking up the book of fire magic (though it won't be needed later). The main heroes head west of the Inferno lands towards the library and utopia. By this time, we've also assembled the Wizard's Well – now we can travel one-way and replenish magic on the road. Important: Coronius lands on Inferno territory (army – 1 upgraded griffin).
413 – 414. The army moves towards the dragon utopia west of the Inferno respawn, Mephala receives it through a chain and takes the Dragon Utopia, which contains 3 important artifacts: Sniper's Bow, Medal of Vulnerability (black sphere), and a Sentinel's Shield (+12 defense, -3 attack). With the Medal of Vulnerability, we can now take on dragon guards. Nearby, we visit the library with all heroes, taking the Sphere of Inhibition behind the guard (will be a quest artifact later). Coronius with 1 upgraded griffin continues traveling through Necromancer lands. The Necromancer castles are, of course, guarded, and we can't take them, but we keep moving further. On day 414, the Necromancer Tamika finally jumps out; her army isn't that large, not legions, but stats of 56/57/46/43 don't make us want to fight her, and there's no need to – let her keep blocking the teleport exit.
415 – 417. Near castle Calvurion, we pass to the east, defeat phoenixes, take a ring for +1 unit speed and a hell sword for +6 attack, and scout west of the castle. Next, we give Kirr an army, and she heads north of the Inferno respawn, taking the boots from the Angel Alliance for +2 to all stats. The entire army is transferred back to Inferno to head north towards the Necromancers. Meanwhile, Coronius passes the second castle, Darkternal, on the Necromancer respawn (also guarded, no heroes visible nearby yet). There is an external dwelling of vampires with +4 unupgraded ones, but I don't buy them to avoid reducing the hero's starting speed on the upgraded griffin (+9). We travel further north, scouting the area without being caught yet.

16. Fourteenth week (capturing Necromancers, collecting the Cloak of the Undead King and the Armor of the Damned)
421-422. During scouting, Coronius reaches castle Blackcorter, where 2 enemy heroes have arrived. But then the main event of this month happens: Coronius with 1 upgraded griffin enters an unguarded Necromancer castle! And we have Town Portal! :) A long day 422 begins: we fire almost all heroes and rebuy them at the Necromancer respawn. Immediately we take a second castle, Agonu, defeating Clavius (relatively weak army) and Moandor (medium forces). A leveled-up Kirr reaches the southern city of Cessassion. Mephala from there kills Aislin and approaches castle Terminis. We obtain the final artifact component of the Cloak of the Undead King from one of the enemies.
423. Another long day. We take Terminis, then to the west we take Darkternal and Deftag. We have the Cloak of the Undead King. There is a Witch Hut near castle Agonu with the skill necromancy. We take Adelaide (since she has only one skill – advanced wisdom, making it fastest to level necromancy on her), as well as Malcolm – a hero with basic earth magic and water magic. After tests, both show a very good skill tree (logistics + pathfinding + earth magic). We teach them necromancy, fire them, level them up a bit to expert necromancy, and then on the same day "feed" them the zombie and skeleton legions near Calvurion. At the end of the day – Adelaide is level 24 with perfect leveling (logistics + pathfinding + intelligence), see screenshot. And the main result for this day: + 4632 liches.
424. Through a chain, heroes capture the last 3 Necromancer castles on the northern respawn to the east: Dunkelturm, Blight, Coldsoul. Kirr, level 33, now travels enormous distances. 90-100 vampires remain unbought in the captured castles (in each). Overall, by day 424, the entire Necromancer respawn is captured, and all its heroes are killed (except Tamika on our respawn).
425-427. We level necromancy to expert on our second Necromancer – Malcolm; he also gets an excellent skill set (logistics + pathfinding, great!). We visit the white tent. We scout the Necromancer respawn, targeting which artifacts to capture next week. We collect the last required artifact – the Armor of the Damned.

Results of 2 weeks:
- We were VEEEERY lucky to enter the Necromancer respawn on one griffin and capture an empty castle. This allowed us to start expanding onto the Necro respawn with all our forces without breaking through the center of the map,
- All Necromancers are wiped out (except Tamika "stuck" on our respawn) and their castles captured within 1 week,
- The Cloak of the Undead King is assembled, 2 of our own Necromancers with logistics + pathfinding are trained to expert necromancy,
- Important artifacts taken: Armor of the Damned, Medal of Vulnerability, Sniper's Bow, and others,
- The Necromancers didn't have time to clear many areas on their own respawn; there are plenty of unclaimed artifacts.
Essentially, all the overworld is captured by us; there's nowhere left to expect ambushes or attacks. The game is almost won, just a matter of time.
Nevertheless, the game can develop through several scenarios depending on player choice:
1) We keep using the Cloak of the Undead King with Necromancers, building up forces by killing neutrals,
2) We clear hidden respawns,
3) With the current army, we clear the center with utopias and powerful artifacts,
4) We continue rushing and head to the enemies with our current forces.
In short, the author provides a choice: fight with a living army or, alternatively, build up Necromancers and farm liches. It's up to personal preference of playstyle.
Basically, for the lich-focused path, describing the further walkthrough in detail is pointless, because EVERY SINGLE guard and enemy is easily broken by liches. With a hero using Phoenixes or Archangels for first speed, equipped with the Cloak of the Undead King and the Armor of the Damned, plus the Medal of Vulnerability, this can be a rush through.
Therefore, I'll describe the rest briefly, as the game is no longer challenging.

17. Fifteenth + sixteenth weeks
431 – 433. Our Necromancers kill neutrals and farm liches, doing nothing else. Mephala, Kirr, Ellezar visit stat-boosting locations and increase their stats. The other heroes either capture mines or accompany the Necromancers for distribution at the end of the day.
434 – 443. We enter the central treasure respawn from the very west – castle Calvurion – and head east. Mephala levels up at all stat boosters; we create a 3rd Necromancer – mage Jellar (just in case). By the end of the week, we have a total of about 27,300 liches. Just in case, we buy all vampires from external dwellings (they might come in handy).
443 – 447. We kill dragons on cursed ground in the center of the map, capture all dragon utopias, and take the quest shield made of dragon scale (the quest gives +500 Archangels).

Results of another two weeks: all main heroes visited every stat booster, necromancy yielded 33,300 liches, we accumulated over 1 million gold, collected a bunch of artifacts from utopias. The final preparations for heading out for the book of air and to the enemy bosses are nearing completion.

The next part – part five – will be the last.

Dunkler HorizontV02 (standard version)
Author: Dungeonmaster

Walkthrough in parts. Part 5 - final (days 511 – 637)

I am attaching a map of the movement of the main forces, a couple of save files, and screenshots.

18. Fifth and sixth months
511-517. We finish off the center with our Necromancers, the rest pass through the upgrade locations, and we take the necklace from the Angel Alliance that gives +3 to all stats.
521-527. We go down to the Barbarian respawn point to another underground location – there we capture another human Castle (built) to increase the number of Archons, and visit the library there to increase the main hero's stats.
531 – 537. We go to the underground location at the Flax respawn point to get the book of water. On day 533, we kill Water Lord (Lakus).
541 – 547. We capture the blue tent, which we need for further progress.
611 - 617. North of the Inferno zone, we kill the Guardian of the Oasis from the Azure faction, jump into the teleport, kill Luftwaffe there, and then immediately take the book of air. We buy Azure Dragons in the underground location (just in case).
621 – 627. Mephala completes quests for 100 Orcs on boars and 15 Phoenixes, receiving +15 to attack and +10 to defense. On day 625, we kill Arlash, and on day 627 – Shakti, and capture the Dungeon Castle Kerker. The advantage in forces is so significant (see screenshots) that we could easily have coped without Liches, only with Archons, Fanatics, and Snipers. We also visit the black tent nearby.
631 – 637. With the book of air, we fly to the underground location in the Losthold Castle, where we kill the very weak Malekith (almost a zero-level hero) and Sephinor. On day 632, the blue one is killed. In the far northeast of the map, with the book of air, we open the Guardian, kill the Azure creatures, and take the Sword of Justice. On day 637, we fight Vokial, and on the same day – the main boss – Kharask. Since there were many Liches, I killed the bosses with Adelaide (stats 25 against 99). However, if we take Mephala with her skills and stats, gather and equip the Angel Alliance, she could have easily defeated the bosses without Liches. Fortunately, Mephala's mana can be increased to more than 2000 (increase knowledge by 50 on artifacts + intelligence + mana doubler in the Dungeon).

I don't want to repeat the walkthrough without Liches, but I am sure that it is quite possible to finish the map even in the 6th month. For this, Mephala with Vampires, which I collected in all the external dwellings, and of which there were more than 1600 by the end of the game, would go to various anti-magic garrisons and battles with dragons in the cursed lands.
Overall, I liked the map, everything is dynamic, the player can choose where and how to go, how to start the walkthrough, what to do in the middle of the walkthrough, and how to finish the final. I repeat that the map could quite easily be completed without Liches, but for some reason, I was in a hurry to finish the map, so I did everything with Liches.
I hope that everyone interested will enjoy the walkthrough. Play Heroes of Might and Magic 3!
Thank you to the author, Dungeonmaster, for the wonderful map!

kolotok, Dunkler Horizont really created a whole series around it, that's impressive! I also had this map on my list, but I never got around to playing it.

Dunkler HorizontV02 (standard version)
Review in parts. Part 5 - final (days 511 – 637)
I hope everyone who was interested enjoyed the review.

More than very well described, thank you very much for such details))

imo, I still think that even without intelligence: earth, water, tactics, archery, wisdom, logistics, armor, pathfinding
still managed to defeat the enemy with 9-2-4 without liches (although, of course, a thousand spectral dragons from Haraska were a challenge), receiving a shameful 432 points, including the Grail!
well, with 9 necropolis castles, completing the map becomes a matter of time, as you can get almost 50k liches in less than a month, plus upgrade and buy grand liches in the castles.....

Well, and a big thank you from me too! It's almost as interesting to read as it is to play. Now the topic of "Dark Horizon" has been fully explored! :)

Just out of curiosity, I checked how many save files I have in the folders with different completed maps that I still have on my computer. For "A Long Way," I have 848 save files. Only "Ira the Mage" has more: 1074. Also, "Resurrected from Hell" has 1613, but that's for 7 missions, so it doesn't really count. I occasionally look at the results of the winners of offline tournaments on HP; sometimes there are 200 save files from two days of gameplay. There's always someone who's even more hardcore than you :D

Just out of curiosity, I checked how many saves I have in the folders with different completed maps that I still have on my computer. For "A Long Way," I have 848 saves. Only "Ira the Mage" has more: 1074.

Also, "Resurrected from Hell" has 1613, but that's 7 missions, so it doesn't count.

I occasionally look at the results of the winners of offline tournaments on HP; sometimes there are 200 saves from two game days. There's always someone who grinds even harder :D

Very interesting review. I read it with pleasure (+2 pictures in my collection:cool:). Maybe you should upload the saves to maps4heroes for everyone who wants them? I feel that many players found this map exhausting.

What's next? :) Among the remaining ones, Adventure Tunnels and Aaron stand out, although the latter has a surface that's already getting old.

I think that very few people have actually completed "A Long Way." I saw a comment from one player on maps4heroes, but he wrote that he edited the map to make it easier. He probably added a town portal for himself :D

By the way, I've already been asked to send the save files for completing Minchev's maps, so I'll post them here too.

Arlok - MEGA
Abelia - MEGA
A Long Way - MEGA

Taking a break from Heroes for now. I also checked out "Aaron," and the dungeon there is impressive. I also found an angel wing on that map, which is an unusual event for Minchev's maps :)

In SoD_SP, a bug has been fixed where a hero, after being dismissed and then bought back, has all their moves remaining, and the dismissed heroes from the previous day don't arrive as 2000-unit stacks (the calculation is based on the slowest unit), so now it makes more sense to dismiss and hire a hero on the same day if necessary. This is the only way to restore mana. Or you can just reduce the double mana cost.

Just out of curiosity, I checked how many save files I have in the folders with different completed maps that I still have on my computer. For "A Long Way," I have 848 save files. Only "Ira the Mage" has more: 1074.

Also, "Resurrected from Hell" has 1613, but that's for 7 missions, so it doesn't really count.

I occasionally look at the results of the winners of offline tournaments on HP, and sometimes there are 200 save files from two days of gameplay. There's always someone who plays even more obsessively than you do :D

For me, it depends on whether the map is difficult or not, dynamic or not, and whether I'm going to make a Walkthrough of it. Here are some of my favorite/most well-known maps and the number of save files:
"Picturesque Land" 《江山如画》 - 2400,
Heroes 6426 - 2100,
Xiedu - 1800,
Jedi Counterattack - 1300,
Enemy at the Gates (Woxin's map) - 900,
Feifahrer (Walkthrough for 6-1-7) - 700,
Way Home - 650,
Mutare's Revenge - 630,
Lemnis Inferior - 900.

Simple maps - 150-300 save files, no more.

Added 3 minutes ago

By the way, I've already been asked to send the save files for Minchev's maps, so I'll post them here too.

Here's Grigor Minchev's working email: grig @ abv. bg
I corresponded with him after completing one of his maps.
Send him a link to your save files or the save files themselves. It would also be helpful if you send him information about any bugs or problems on the map; he fixes them and re-uploads them (usually).
He reads Russian fluently and writes quite well. So, I'm almost certain he'll enjoy reading your Walkthrough.

"Picturesque land" 《江山如画》 - 2400

Wow :smile11: