Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

Marmot, silly question, but if I load my save, finish the day, and save again, then send it to you. Will the glitch disappear, or will the game freeze at some point?

I saved the game after the turn ended; I've attached it. However, the freeze might happen again later. In that case, only the HD mod with the "HD+" option will help.
Right now, on this map, I'm at 3-2-1; I've already defeated Brown on 3-1-6.

In general, I'm abandoning the map. Since the crashes started, I've only been playing with the HD mod, but to be honest, it's not very convenient for me. I've gotten so used to the double-spell feature over the years.

Aha, now I get it! :D

Well, I played WoG for the first 3 years, and then I switched to playing pure SoD. Even though I was used to WoG, it wasn't easy.

But double casting per round is a bug in The Restoration of Erathia, not The Shadow of Death. Or are we talking about something else?

Map: "Picturesque Land" 《江山如画》
/ or literally "lands, mountains, rivers like a picture" - the difficulties with the map begin right with its translation :)
/ or it could be called a beautiful map featuring an image of a sword/shield and a target with arrows.
Image attached

1. Chinese maps forever
Having finished 2 epic Chinese maps, Heroes 6424 and Jedi Counterattack, I decided to find myself a new purely Chinese map, without walkthrough hints or forum advice, purely for a skill-based solo run.
Between the two versions of the map, as is often common with the Chinese ("popular" and "hardcore"), I chose the hardcore one. I didn't test the differences, but I suspect it's about enemy armies and the date they come to visit you.
Of course, everything is in Chinese, but there is little text and it isn't important. Prospector and the map editor are the best translators :)

2. General impressions and rating 8/10
At the moment, this map has taken up the most time IRL, primarily due to very long battles. Let's say an average difficulty battle takes 1-1.5 hours, and some are even harder, and there are tons of these battles. I haven't played Xiedu, Wayfarer, or anything else for this long. It is exhausting, but it increases the interest in completing the map. I think it's fundamentally impossible to finish the map in one or two evenings.
There is a lot of text in the review, but since the map is new, I think people will be interested in seeing how to complete it rather than delete it from their computer! :)
I liked the map because of its novelty, the lack of sources for hints, the hardcore nature, and the need to constantly find solutions for difficult battles. Overall, the map can be rated 8 out of 10. I got exactly what I wanted from the map.
There are few downsides: enemy troop overflow (see below), as well as a lack of many quests (which could somehow ease the game). On the other hand, the relative freedom of where to run and what to do is a plus.
The Chinese handwriting of the map manifests in things like:
1) there are no vulnerability or berserker medals on the map, "at all",
2) standard magic "hunger": town portal and clone are available in only one single copy from scholars, and you still have to get there quickly; blindness and forgetfulness are also only in one copy held by our 2 heroes in prisons, which must also be reached; flight and teleport magic are not present and will not be,
3) a focus on speedrun completion, especially in the first 3 months. If you don't hurry, the player is doomed,
4) the ability to kill not just superior, but mega-superior forces with small numbers (for example, how to crush 28 thousand archdevils and 28 thousand titans with 240 archdevils, especially when they are on an immune Torgrim — such tasks may occur),
5) absence of taverns in castles. The exception (which makes it possible to complete this map at all) is the Barbarian castle at point 58-56-1. Other taverns are available only to AI until the end of the game.
6) artifact sets can only be collected by killing enemy heroes; they cannot be obtained on the ground or through quests,
7) a focus on non-standard actions, changing armies over time, etc., etc.
The starting save, in my opinion, doesn't matter much. It is only important for Alamar to get pathfinding at the start (or you can visit a hut for this skill).

3. How to win this map in principle
The difficulty of the map lies in the fact that the player is given very little time to build up; you must run only forward, leveling up and capturing castles, without lingering at the respawn. In the first months, you need to assemble the maximum stack of archdevils and, if possible, snipers. Then, in the 3rd-4th-5th month, the AI open columns with legions of creatures, having access to all tents, and travel across the entire map. If you have no army, or no town portal, or no money, etc., there is nothing to fight the AI with; it will take back all the castles. For example, up to 20-30 enemy heroes can move in the Dungeon simultaneously, making it very difficult to dodge them all.
The map is won under these conditions:
1) speedrun at the start and an extremely fast pace throughout. Enemy bosses stand behind columns and accumulate snipers. As soon as they reach the required number, they begin to arrive in waves. If you didn't manage to get town portal, or collect gold, or assemble an army — it is a fiasco.
2) accumulation of money. There are no municipalities and there won't be any. Capitols are only held by AI, so it makes sense to take at least one castle from someone, but this can only be done toward the end of the map. It is important to collect "quest" gold on the map in 100k increments, even 1 million near the azure ones. Given 3 elven castles, you can get a 30% gold bonus and in a couple of weeks-months obtain enough money to buy out all troops. Therefore, holding elven castles is extremely important,
3) the Barbarian castle at point 58-56-1 is key for the entire game. You will be able to free your own important heroes from prisons. Before that time, you must take this castle literally on the 2nd-3rd week, buy "fodder" (low-tier units), and use them to clear resources on the map, ferry armies, etc. There is a refuge near the castle, so fodder might hide there and fight back for the castle. The castle has the only tavern, which allows hit-and-runs and firing/hiring heroes several times a day.
4) all enemy castles with "daddies" / bosses (like Orrin, Gird, Solmir, etc.) should preferably be captured by Dessa on a run from an oasis. About 5000 move points + 500 from the oasis allow you to fly into a castle and buy 150-200 archs, for example, which would normally take 2-3 months to save up. Only then should you fight the AI. Hence the money problem mentioned above. Similarly, in 1 day, preferably on a run from an oasis, capture the same as in Dungeon and all archangel castles; there is a large growth of archs and archers, whom Gelu will turn into snipers.
5) it's important to get handcuffs in 142-8-0 as quickly as possible, since there are many enemies, they have various important artifacts for sets, and enemies almost always want to flee. You can kill them anyway, but if the enemy flees after 1-2 hours of battle, you won't want to replay it.
6) overall, use your fodder to lure AI heroes away from unnecessary places, set up sacrifices, create threats to opponent castles so that the AI runs in unprofitable zones like the swamp or Dungeon, while we keep Inferno and elven castles. Test where the AI will run, save/load constantly,
7) definitely buy external dwellings for strike stacks: angels, devils, monsters, shooters+elves, giants, azure dragons.
8) for difficult battles, visit the mana doubler at point 30-98-0; there is nowhere else to double it until the end of the game (except the Dungeon castle 95-86-0, but we'll only get there at the end).

4. Completion Stages
1) Initial. Start with Alamar. Nothing needs to be built in the starting castle since it will soon be taken; you must immediately go north, join 2 black dragons at the sulfur mine, take the nearby dragon external dwelling, and on the first week or maximum 121 break through the ifrits, capture the second castle, and kill Gunnar. Right here we free our first hero from prison, almost immediately kill Malekith, and take the 3rd castle.
2) Buy red dragon growth to the max — this is currently our strike stack and it can be resurrected; on the 2nd-3rd week move west, capture the key castle at point 58-56-1 (our support point), buy up to 8 fodder units, and then move west to the swamp respawn. Enemy armies already appear along the way; try to kill them immediately.
3) on the 4th-5th-6th week, you need to leave the swamp respawn for Inferno, capture all of Inferno, and buy all archdevil growth. In the following months, this will be the basis of our army; we cannot kill legions of enemy armies with anything else. Enemies simply one-shot any of our stacks on a counter-attack (except archdevils, obviously). Definitely buy all devils from 2 external dwellings, and immediately free Aiden — our "daddy" from month 3, and his intelligence ability. Visit the green tent, return to the Dungeon castles, and win them back. Simply put, do a victory lap clockwise, and we'll have the center and north of the Dungeon open. Preferably near water, take a scholar for water walking magic. The AI doesn't know the spell and you can run away from it with this spell.
Then you are given a choice where to go: to the elves to free Gelu, to the Barbarians, or for the town portal quest at point 10-41-1. I first freed Gelu, bought more snipers, and then went to 10-41-1 with them to break through 1.5k ifrits. But with enough mana, Aiden can go against the ifrits with archdevils; it's painful, but doable with a mana reserve. Near the 1.5k ifrits at point 0-31-1, step on an event that gives you thieves, whom we exchange in the quest tree for town portal.
4) at the end of the 3rd-4th month, if lucky and skilled, you can clear all of Dungeon. But I only got town portal on the 43rds, so everything dragged on. I had to circle around my castle with the tavern at point 58-56-1, kill AI fodder along the way, hit-and-run, take neighboring castles, lure away AI heroes with forces, create threats of capturing castles to keep the AI in those castles, and fire/hire heroes. All accumulated about 500k money were spent literally in a couple of days.
5) Middle period. In the 5th-6th month, consolidation of enemy armies occurred; they dumped all the strongest stacks onto the main "daddies," while low-level units remained on the fodder. Plus and minus of this situation: fewer enemy heroes on the map, more freedom, better map control, more recovered artifacts. But opponent bosses with stats 70-70-70-70 (and our 30-30-30-30) with 0.5-1k azure, 1k archs, etc., are simply impossible to hit for now (we have a hundred or one and a half archdevils at best). I finished off most of the AI fodder, outsmarted and killed a couple of bosses who traveled without forces, and captured most castles. If in the 4th month income per day was 20-25k, now it's 80-100k + 30% profit from elven castles. I managed to accumulate archdevils and get 1.5k snipers with whom you can break dragons at the water respawn in overworld to take handcuffs, get clone, get horn of plenty, and a legion statue for 4k azure dragons,
6) Late stage. In the 7th month, I kill Orrin, Gird, Solmir, Alkin one by one. Almost no AI left. In the 8th month, we kill the leaders: Gundula, Mephala and their allies with legions of archdevils, titans, etc. End of map on 8-4-5.

5. Your heroes and leveling
All heroes MUST HAVE log+pathfinding. There is a lot of sand and swamp on the map; to play normally, take it and Alamar at the start. Intelligence is also MANDATORY; with our meager forces, winning is only possible through magic.
Fire magic is useless; you can skip it entirely, there are no berserkers on the map at all, and almost all heroes have a medal of courage and are immune to blindness. Almost all heroes have "preset" stats, so there's no difficulty in the specified guide.
I recommend leveling ONLY attack and KNOWLEDGE to the max until the end. Closer to the finale, you can even out the stats. Since our strike stack consists of archdevils and snipers (usually after resurrecting in battle), we need an advantage of our attack over the AI's defense, whose stats are usually 30-40 higher than ours. Enemy stacks usually one-shot us anyway, so what our defense is doesn't matter (20 or 30 or 40 — we get killed in one hit regardless), but attack matters. Also, since we have small forces and not much to resurrect, magic power isn't as important; it's more important to have as much mana as possible for force shield and destructive ray. To lower the defense of just one enemy stack, you can spend 200 mana on a destructive ray. If there are 2-3, then 600-800. Therefore, magic power and defense are leveled on a residual basis, almost until the finale.
Now about the heroes:
Alamar — starting hero with resurrect spec. If lucky enough to get pathfinding, he is the 3rd most important hero until the end of the game. In the first months, he is our main hero.
Aiden — intelligence spec in Inferno prison. After liberation and a bit of leveling — he is our main hero for 70% of battles on the map. With his 2-3k mana, wonders can be worked even with small forces.
Tazar — after liberation and build-up, he will become the main hero. With rare exceptions (when opponents have tactics and leave castle walls during battle, then Tazar fails), with sufficient mana, Tazar handles all major boss battles. At the end of the map, he is level 55-60 and can withstand very impressive hits. After killing green, tea, yellow, it's Tazar who should take events near their castles for +5 to all stats (not Aiden).
Dessa, Kreg, Sephinorof, Voy, Gelu, etc. — after build-up, they perform logistical and support functions (chase away AI fodder, collect growth from dwellings and castles, perform secondary functions, etc.). Dessa on a run from an oasis should capture opponent castles with growth, so she needs to be leveled at least to level 40 with 5k move points.

6. Difficult battles, bosses (with images)
In almost all battles, I had much smaller forces, but often a mana advantage. Therefore, it's preferable to conduct them by attacking the opponent while they are in the castle. In this case, the general strategy is:
- destroy your ballista so the enemy stays in the castle,
- deprive opponent shooters of shots (destroy the cart if necessary),
- completely drain his mana (imps, ghosts, mage, pegasus),
- lower enemy stack defense with destructive ray,
- kill flying enemy stacks,
- resurrect your own shooters (if taken into battle) and / or strikes by archdevils under frenzy,
- if enemy stacks are very beefy, you can enchant the entire battlefield with quicksand and destroy the castle with towers, then kite almost any pedestrian enemy stack with archdevils (main thing is that he has no mana left for teleport :)
There were few battles in the field or defending a castle, mostly when forces were equal.
Bosses (with battle start images):
Kirr. One of the longest battles: 42 archdevils with stats A36D18 against 500 archs with stats A86D88 + infinite number of earth elementals summoned by Kirr. Battle lasts about 2.5-3 hours. Generally, Kirr is one of the most inconvenient bosses since he moves about 5k move points (like Dessa) and can travel from castle to castle. Therefore, kill Kirr immediately if possible.
Lord Haart and his undead are quite easily taken out by a hundred archdevils. It's important to drain all his mana quickly (for this, use ghosts, pegasus, and imps in battle).
Xeron. Send 1-2 hit-and-run units with dragonflies and Phoenix; his azure ones kill all wizards with 2 burns, then kill him easily with your hero using just 144 archdevils. Xeron can be killed VERY early + visit an important library nearby. Pity I saw this too late.
Mutare Drake and her dragons. Had to outsmart her with Aiden and an azure dragon using explosions on azures and drain all mana. Then attacked with snipers+archdevils under force shield the same day.
Orrin. You can attack him in the castle or defend. In my opinion, it's better to attack him yourself. Take all forces for this battle (see screenshot). A rare case where I had to wear AOTD for the battle; in other battles, this set was often useless since stats are needed + "dispel" magic is often used.
Gird. WEAR SHACKLES OF WAR if he is in the castle. After 1 hour of battle, he simply fled, and I had to replay! Aaaaaa!!!! In the battle, it's important to kill at least one stack of cyclops, preferably almost all. If this is done, the battle is won. Strangely, Gird hardly used combat magic, even as a spec; he mostly did defensive casts.
Lord Haart and his legions (14k archdevils, 14k titans, 9900 rust, 8800 crystal, 2200 wizards). One of the longest battles. Only Aiden had enough mana for the fight. Out of almost 3k mana, 477 remained after the battle, meaning a consumption of 2500 mana per fight.
Solmir. Hit him with Aiden (for mana and tactics). It's important to kill or nearly kill Solmir's mages under sniper frenzy (and preferably morale), then drain mana and kill with archdevils. MUST WEAR SHACKLES OF WAR if Solmir is in the Barbarian castle, as he can flee with artifacts :)
Alkin. Hit him with Aiden because he has tactics while Tazar doesn't; therefore, if Tazar attacks, Alkin moves his forces out of the castle using tactics and it's an immediate fiasco. The main thing in this battle: put frenzy on snipers, get morale with them, and aim all that at Alkin's wizards. Almost none will remain. We'll endure the fairy dragon magic, then drain Alkin's mana, resurrect archdevils, kill flying units, and victory. Phoenixes are taken for resurrection since we won't manage to resurrect everyone ourselves.
Torgrim with stacks of 28000 titans and 28000 archdevils. Since Torgrim is an immunity spec and you can't break his defense with destructive ray, I had to bring rust dragons to lower the defense of his stacks, then drain his mana, then resurrect archdevils, then kill 28k archdevils under force shield, and only then resurrect shooters and other forces. VERY LONG BATTLE.
Mephala and Gundula. Their armies are unbeatable for us at the time of attack. Therefore, you can take Dessa or Sephinorof (air magic experts), 1 phoenix, and 6 dragonflies, use mass haste on them, and outsmart these heroes; their dragons burn their own stacks. For Gundula, it's enough to kill all shooters, then attack with snipers+archdevils under force shield — easy battle. For the fight with Mephala, take all forces, especially swamp bulls; only they can adequately kill 600 azure dragons under Mephala (see screenshot).

7. Problems and other things
The game is built so that you need to finish the map in speedrun mode by the 5th-6th month (according to Chinese manuals :) if this doesn't happen, and like me, for example, I dragged it to the 7th-8th month, problems arise. After killing red and blue heroes, they can be bought back in their native necro-castles. Upon leaving the castle, they step on an event point that gives them 555 crystal, 666 rust, 1000 titans, and 1000 archdevils + artifacts. That would be fine, such an army can be fought, but the PROBLEM is that enemy cheater-heroes enter and exit the castle, visiting the event 10-20 times per turn; as a result, a hero emerges with 14 or 28k titans in a stack, for example. But even this can be beaten, even on Torgrim. The problem is that a hero can do this several turns in a row, as in my case. And then in the red or blue necro castle, a negative amount of army forms (overflow), and the game eventually freezes irrevocably. This happened to blue on 7-2-3 and red on 7-4-3. No replaying for 1-2 days helped. The game just froze. I had to enable a flight cheat code for fodder, and they took the castles that had overflow. In doing so, where there was a negative army (-35k crystal and -56k titans, something like that), the hero received -56 million experience and dropped to level 0. First time I've seen such a thing. After such a capture, the hero with flight was hidden by me and not used, and I paid "compensation" to the AI every week: 35k gold for its unlawfully captured capitol.
The second problem, but this one helped, is that enemy heroes with huge armies somehow stalled in castles where their forces were bought. They would leave the castle by one cell and immediately return, and so on until the turn ended. This way, heroes could sit in castles for weeks/months. This helped because some strong opponents didn't run around the map and didn't interfere.
Otherwise, the map can be completed by accumulating money and forces, although it is not that simple.
How to complete this map can be seen on Chinese YouTube at the YOKU link
http: //v.youku.com / v_show/id_XMzAzNjUxMzMxMg==.html?spm=a2h0j.11185381 .listitem_ page1.5!13~A
I re-watched it after completion and saw that I was wrong about some directions at the start, and therefore got a real hardcore version of the map. Overall, the map once again showed the power of archdevils and a certain love the Chinese have for this unit.
From something new, I learned that lowering enemy defense with destructive ray is not necessary all the way to zero. For example, if our archdevils have an attack of, say, 96, then enemy defense can be lowered to about 30; after that, damage will no longer increase. Therefore, when using destructive ray, it's important to watch your damage parameters; at some point they will stop growing, and the destructive ray can stop being applied. Playing Paragon, I always lowered opponent defense to 0, wasting mana.
All the best!

kolotok went all-out with Chinese maps :D Thanks for the interesting reports.

Lord Haart and his undead are quite easily defeated by a hundred Archdevils. It's important to drain his mana as quickly as possible (for this, use ghosts, Pegasus, and Imps in battle).

Here's a small note. Imps don't drain mana from the enemy. They simply transfer a portion of the enemy's spent mana to our hero. But their ability doesn't affect the amount of mana the opponent spends.

kolotok, went all-in with Chinese maps :D Thanks for the interesting reports.

Here's a small clarification. Imps don't drain mana from the enemy. They simply transfer a portion of the enemy's spent mana to our hero. But their ability doesn't affect the total amount of mana the opponent spends.

Thanks for the clarification. And also, as far as I remember from the battle, if the enemy casts something cheap, like Stone Skin or Shield, then only a portion of their mana is transferred to us. Is that correct?

Thank you for the clarification. And also, as far as I remember from battles, if an enemy casts something cheap, like Stone Skin or Shield, then part of their mana is not transferred to us. Is that correct?

I need to check; I'm not ready to answer right away :)

Here's another thing about attack and defense differences – it might be useful to refresh your memory: >>>

MD(bas) = (Att-Def) * 0.05 * D(bas)
(if attack > defense), maximum 300%, i.e., the maximum damage will occur when the attack is greater than the defense by 60.

MD(bas) = (Att-Def) * 0.025 * D(bas)
(if attack < defense), maximum 70%, i.e., the minimum damage will occur when the defense exceeds the attack by 28 or more points.

I need to check; I'm not ready to answer right away.

Also, it might be helpful to refresh your memory about the difference in attack and defense: >>>

That is, my empirical observation that the attack gap of 66 was almost consistent with the theory of a 60-point gap.
As for useful information, I refreshed my knowledge of the Frenzy skill – one of the advantages of fire magic when playing as demons. Because they will deal more damage:

* Frenzy – adds a single amount (1.5 times on an advanced level of magic, double on an expert level) of protection points to the specified unit’s attack (the unit’s protection is reduced to zero).

Frenzy is my favorite spell in the game. The Fire Magic Expert skill provides a very significant bonus to its effectiveness.

Added 8 minutes later
There is only one mistake in that excerpt from FizMig regarding the destructive beam. Its effect cannot be dispelled.

Disrupting Ray is one of my favorite spells (of course, it doesn't always play a decisive role, but sometimes it's with its help that difficult battles end). Here is a complete description from PhysMag 2.53:

It can be cast multiple times. It is not removed by Healing or Spell Removal. After a unit is resurrected, the effect of Disrupting Ray, applied before death, persists.

In addition, it is not mentioned there that Disrupting Ray does not have a duration that depends on the strength of magic: once cast, it remains effective until the end of the battle. So, it's a "tool against which there is no defense."

The duration seems to be the same as with Berserk or Root of the Dendroids, meaning it lasts for 255 rounds.

kolotok, it's an interesting map, as it turns out.

Originally, the map was designed to be completed in one day, but I decided to allow for alternative routes.

I got sidetracked for a few hours with the map, and with the quick combat bug, it became easier. But personally, I don't like using bugs in maps, and a game crash during events is clearly a bug. I consider game crashes to be unacceptable program behavior and a sign that I should abandon this unfinished version, rather than treat it as an Easter egg. That's why, by the way, I don't even want to deal with maps like bugrace. But I digress; since the bug can be bypassed manually, it's possible to play:
in 3 days, you can complete it in several very easy ways, almost on autopilot, which is actually good because it increases the potential number of players for this map.
A speedrun, i.e., completing it in one day, as usual, sharply increases the difficulty. However, as was the case with difficult problems in school Olympiads, the very fact that such a completion is possible is a strong hint. Given the small size of the map, the main logistical idea for the completion is quickly found, although it is not obvious, and the implementation of this idea goes in the only possible way. So, we are forced to conduct battles only with the only possible set of troops.
Actually, I didn't complete the map:) after half an hour of trying to kill the angel with a troll, I got tired, one round wasn't enough to micro-manage, + the problem of how to kill the high-level ifrit under the artifact hasn't been solved, the rest should be fine. It was interesting; I'll return to the map later when I have some free time.

Dandy, don't you think about streaming a map? :)