Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

To tame a land

1. What is the secret to the battle with Rashka? The author never revealed what his plan was.
2. Did you give up the Sphere of Vulnerability for additional troops? If so, how did you defeat Lord of Light and capture the Pink Castle without the Sphere?
3. Did you retake the second set of Armor of the Damned? How and with what losses?
4. Question for kolotok: you admitted that you cheated with the Tome of Air. And in the finale, did you defeat Lord of Light, because to win, you only need to take the capital?

Congratulations on completing the game!

I didn't quite understand the point of the question about the battle with Rashka (not to be confused with the Russian Federation :).
Here are 2 screenshots attached: before and after the battle. As far as I remember, you need to slow down his troops and direct the dragonflies into the thick of it so that the archdevils, ifrits, etc. gather together, so that in the next round you can apply a berserk spell for self-destruction. And finish off the remnants of the army with our archers. As you can see, after the battle, 17 mana remained, even though it was specifically doubled. What's wrong with that battle? Upload a save or screenshot for comment.

I didn't give up the Sphere for any troops. Firstly, it took a long time to travel to it, and the game was already dragging on, and I wanted to finish it faster. Secondly, and more importantly, with the Sphere, it's easier to attack immune troops, especially black dragons and titans, which were the biggest problem. I don't remember how I defeated Lord of Light, most likely with a berserk spell and a vulnerability medal, as the simplest option. See the screenshot, we have plenty of strength by this month + medal + berserk. But I definitely killed Lord first, and only then took the castle (I checked the saves).

I retook the second set of Armor of the Damned, I don't remember why :) but with the forces accumulated by that time, it's done without losses. At most, some fodder is lost, like 1-2 genies, the rest shoot (titans + cyclops + orcs) under a blessing. In the first round, all the liches are definitely destroyed, and, it seems, fodder is given to the bone creatures to keep them away. In the second round, the bone creatures are shot, and the black knights are kited. There are enough forces to do it without losses, see the screenshot.

As I wrote above, I defeated Lord because there were more than enough forces, and the arsenal to do it is also sufficient. The simplest thing is a medal + berserk. In general, I looked at the saves, there are very few saves in the last couple of weeks, which means that everything went very smoothly, there were no difficulties.

Just keep in mind that since I didn't give up the Tome of Air, there was an opportunity to steal castles without buying upgrades, hence such a large army.

Thanks for the replies! Basically, in a battle with Rashka, the main feature is that he soon has only 2 stacks of Archdevils left; their number in one stack decreases too quickly, and after some time, there remains only one stack numbering several thousand (due to the random distribution of damage in different attempts, this number varies greatly). And because the enemy cannot be blinded, we need to destroy this stack without letting him attack us. I was just trying to catch the moment when there were few Archdevils left and finish them off with monsters. With single snakes, I weakened the larger stack of Archdevils to equalize their numbers (this is besides shooting, of course). Just now, I realized that you can put a snake or phoenix under fire and immediately resurrect it after the Archdevils hit it. And I almost did everything right, but at the end, Rashka suddenly cast Frenzy, and another shot from the Cyclops unexpectedly destroyed all the remaining Archdevils, and I didn’t have time to revive the phoenix. So, in principle, that’s how it should go, only a dragonfly should be under attack (its loss doesn't matter). I found a recording of a stream where a player named Glenn completed the map; I added the link to the review in the "Tips" section. And now I started playing the Chinese map "Brave People," inspired by your review. It probably deserves the title of "the ideological successor to Wayfarer." Let's see what happens...

Thank you for the answers!
Actually, in a battle with Rashka, the main feature is:

And now I've started playing through the Chinese map "Brave People," inspired by your review. It probably deserves the title of "the true successor to Wayfarer." Let's see what I can do...

Yes, I remembered the fight with Rashka. Precisely restoring units each turn allows you to finish off 1 stack of Archdevils. At the same time, Phoenix is best suited for kiting due to its regeneration ability. Of course, it’s difficult to kite Archdevils because of their speed (even under slow). But the battle drags on. By the way, as far as I remember, you can use Berserk once so that the second stack of devils attacks an extra time; more precisely: so that in one of the rounds, the first stack based on speed doesn't attack at all, and the second one hits it. Then, towards the end of the battle, the first stack may be very weak. This, as far as I remember, is one of the options.
As for "Brave People," there are no complaints about this map; everything is well-thought-out, everything works, there are no glitches or shortcomings. You can enjoy gradually playing through the map, depending on your preference. The map deserves attention; I liked it, even though I gave it a score of 7 out of 10. It will be interesting to read an alternative review!

In essence, the main feature of the battle with Rashka is that he soon has only 2 stacks of archdevils left, and their number in each stack decreases too quickly, eventually leaving only one stack with a few thousand units (due to the random distribution of damage in different attempts, this number varies greatly).

Theoretically, you can apply the berserk effect to the remaining stack of archdevils and hide your nearest unit behind an obstacle. In this case, the archdevils will stand still for 255 rounds (the game must be without HD+ or with the SoD_SP plugin, of course).

I reached this interesting moment with Jelu in FB 2.5 and decided to record the battle for posterity. It's funny that Jelu considered the golden bow and the book of water more valuable than the sphere of prohibition, even though he already had a sniper bow. The fact that Jelu is positioned to maximize his radius and cannot move far, and the presence of a Rampart below him, from which lurkers periodically emerge, suggests that the author intended this specific solution with the hero's equipment change. It might be useful for other maps as well. https://youtu.be/7sNTqv474ig

Map Name: First Blood
Version: English, 2.5
Author: shooo
Downloaded: from the maps4heroes map catalog

Paid homage to hero classic in a new wrapper (version 2.5 was released by the author in 2015, although the map itself is old). Unlike Wayfarer, I liked this map; it had several interesting moments.

By modern standards, First Blood is fairly simple to complete. I'd say it's not yet Vengeance Is Mine, but no longer Way Home. That is to say, a solid map that should be manageable for an average player. I can also understand why the scenario caused and still causes extreme difficulties for many. The main thing required from the player here is to formulate a preliminary plan and play with tempo, rather than just moving your hero across the map in a random order.

Notable features: magic problems at the start (available towns have guilds, but no spells, so you'll have to use Eagle Eye to learn Resurrection from the red player); Literacy is banned, so initially only one hero is suitable for any serious battles—in my case, that was Ingham; conditions for purple and red to spawn on our respawns, while getting to their respawns is very problematic (a big shout-out to "Risen from Hell"); a serious roadblock in the form of 4000 Ice Elementals, which halts further progress.

Essentially, the start of the map revolves around the task of breaking through these elementals. In version 2.5, getting going is somewhat harder than in 2.4, since Angels do not join on the Castle territory, but this didn't cause me a major delay; I broke the Ice Elementals with Ingham in week 3. This task presents the player with several sub-tasks: you need to level up the hero well for breaking the elementals, have them learn Resurrection from Jeditte, learn Earth Magic and Intelligence, have someone learn Water Magic for Summon Boat, take the Golden Bow from 350 Sharpshooters, use the Barbarian to get the Captain's Hat from the Seer's Hut, and break a Utopia (it generated a Chalice and Titan's Cuirass by the classic formula), then transfer all the valuable artifacts upward.

Besides the complications, this version also has some elements that actually simplified the game: Dessa starts with 1 Azure Dragon instead of 2 Cyclopes, so joining troops to break the Utopia isn't necessary; the dragon alone breaks the pre-maximum with support from Goblins. The second key point for the entire walkthrough: the prison with Kaitlin is now moved closer to purple, rather than red. I had to put in some effort to get the AI to free her, learn control spells, and then jump where needed, but the procedure didn't cause major issues. By the start of month 2, Kaitlin was already under my flag.

After that comes a ruthless exterminatus of everything that moves. Kaitlin captures enemy towns with Jump and Fly, while a bunch of heroes scatter in all directions and also capture enemy castles. So in a couple of weeks, I cleared the entire upper area and all the useful parts of the underground.

In the finale, Gelu, Deymer, and Sandro remain. The most problematic guy in version 2.5 is Gelu, who has seventy thousand Sharpshooters with the Bow of the Sharpshooter and the Sphere of Inhibition. Through various manipulations, a way was finally found to remove his Sphere. This was achieved by trading artifacts with Gelu using an enemy weakling, after feeding that weakling the Golden Bow and the Book of Water. Using the Cloak of the Undead King, we turn the Sharpshooters into Skeletons (previously, Skeletons were also made from 7000 Cyclopes), upgrade the Skeletons in a Fort, and then sell them for Gold and Gems. After that, I ran Gundula through the level-up buildings, learned Fly in exchange for the Book of Earth, flew into the Book of Air quest zone from the upper exit monolith (the book, by the way, wasn't needed), learned Dimension Door for the Pendant of Seeing, and using Dimension Door jumped onto the tile in front of Deymer (this way, mana isn't drained and combat with neutrals isn't triggered). Against 1250 Arch Devils, Deymer had no chance. The next day, Sandro fell on auto-combat. Victory on 3.1.1.

Map Name: First Blood
Version: English, 2.5
Author: shooo
Downloaded: from the maps4heroes map catalog

By modern standards, First Blood is quite easy to complete. I would say that it's not as challenging as Vengeance Is Mine, but not as easy as Way Home. In other words, it's a good map that should be manageable for an average player.

:) I don't know, but this map caused me a lot of difficulties, even though I planned the order of completing the objectives :)
I even lost on my first playthrough, mainly because I didn't re-learn the Eagle Eye skill for resource recovery, and due to some other reasons. Personally, Way Home was much easier for me about six months ago.

Respect! It's unclear why the author gave the Azure Dragon. It seemed fine as it was. We're waiting for version 2.6 :D

Lazurny asks for the last quest before Dimera's Castle, but due to a bug, it couldn't be turned in after flying there. Since I already had it, I used it in a battle to destroy the enemy's cart :D

Decided to upload Chinese tutorial maps (BT 教学图) into one archive.

You can download it here.

These maps are designed for those who want to learn how to complete more complex maps and represent a kind of "obstacle course" from simple to complex.

You can watch a walkthrough of one of them - 色, here.

wenwell, it would be interesting to upload your maps to Gamerhome. I bet none of the Chinese players could complete any of the maps :D

Added after 3 hours and 9 minutes

You can watch a walkthrough of one of them - 色, here.

Good walkthrough. There, a Chinese player casts a force field and clone in one turn against phoenixes :smile29: I once tried to reproduce this bug in SoD, but I couldn't.

Marlo_Stanfield, double casting seems to only work in Armageddon's Blade and earlier versions. There's also a more legitimate walkthrough from another player =)

P.S. Damn, sand is really lacking in terms of obstacle variety. I immediately found three familiar landscapes.

It's not like sand, but rather the landscape of a coastline. Apparently, the variety of terrain on it is very low.

Yes, beach sand, to be precise. It seems the developers decided not to put too much effort into it, assuming that battles would be much less frequent.

Today, player Giorgio1777 uploaded a recording of his speedrun playthrough of the "Lord of the Rings 3.0" map. He believes that this is currently the world record for this map:

I have done the world record speedrun on this map (well I have not seen anyone on youtube or twitch do it quicker than 4.5 hrs and at 847).