Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

Pomazok1329, you've changed your approach quite drastically. You used to only recommend maps like these. But honestly, I think that Biobob and Aeris don't really care whether people complete their maps or not. Creating such battles is interesting in itself. In my opinion, there should still be some balance between hardcore difficulty and a reasonable pace of gameplay. Each battle shouldn't take several hours of attempts, especially the battles on the first day, if we're talking about XL maps.

I don't quite understand these conversations about it not being "the right game." A huge advantage of Heroes 3 is that, almost 20 years after its release, players and map creators continue to explore the potential inherent in the game, coming up with and implementing new and interesting ideas. If someone doesn't like this, they can simply not play those maps and play what they do enjoy. It's all very simple.

But potential isn't about bugs.
So many mods have been made, but not a single one focuses on improving the AI.
But okay, at least demonstrate the replacement of various parameters, spells, and the overall essence of the gameplay.
I would show and stream what I mean (75% of the most comprehensive mod for Heroes 3 was ready), moving from words to action, but I can't do everything alone for the entire New World Computing team.

Pomazok1329, you've changed your approach quite radically. You used to only recommend such maps.
And in general, I think that BioBob and Aeris don't really care whether their maps are played or not. It's interesting to come up with such battles in itself.
In my opinion, there should still be some balance between hardcore difficulty and a normal pace of gameplay. Each battle shouldn't take several hours of attempts, especially battles on the first day, if we're talking about XL maps.

That's absolutely right. Moreover, not everyone has the opportunity to spend several hours on the same thing, making only a small amount of progress, only to then discover that they have to replay it from the beginning.
In the end, the day is gone, the enjoyment is questionable, and the only thing you can do is report the results here.
It's not a very good way to spend time.

Added 3 minutes ago

Pomazok1329,
Have you read my report on "Astral Venice" above? Does this map deserve to be added to the HeroesPortal collection? And who should suggest it: me or you, as your own?

In principle, Heroes has already run its course for me, unless someone suddenly helps me with the mod (specifically, adding archers and working with monster abilities).
Therefore, I can leave the password and login for my profile on Heroesportal, and you can have a free-for-all with the maps and forum:smile24:

No, that's not the right approach. Everyone should act under their own nickname and be responsible for their actions. Otherwise, someone might do something, and you'll have to explain that it wasn't you. The map has already been added to Maps4Heroes, so it won't be lost. By the way, while looking at one map today, I noticed that it's a reworked version of another map (by a different author). One person has already mentioned this in the discussion, but the author hasn't responded. Although, it's possible that he explained it somewhere at some point. I don't think this author would engage in plagiarism; he's quite a well-known person, but I don't know the details. Here's a section for comparison that I recognized:

Map Name: Xiedu
Author: Season
Downloaded: from the Heroesportal map catalog

The map is quite well-known in the same world of heroes and for many years enjoyed the status of "the most difficult map for a single walkthrough in SoD." Now that certainty no longer exists, but believe me: to complete Xiedu, you still need a great deal of patience, ingenuity, and time. For my completion, I needed three weeks of fairly regular real-time play and practically 16 game months (!), which is perhaps my personal record for map completion at a more or less decent level (if memory serves, Jedi Story once managed it in 20 game months or so, but back then he didn't know how to play at all). As a result, Xiedu left an enthusiastic impression; it is probably the best scenario of all those I have ever encountered. The author's inventiveness here is truly striking even after becoming acquainted with his other works. In general, I have a theory that a strong gaming community formed in China largely thanks to the efforts of ONE person — Season. Heroes 3 needed to be launched by the developers if only for the purpose of allowing Season to make his maps, especially Xiedu. I don't know what the chronology of his works was (as a reminder, besides Xiedu, Season is also the author of Way Home, The Lord of Rings, and Heroes of Jin Yong), but Xiedu seems to me as the highest point, the culminating moment in the flight of the author's fantasy, an almost ideal embodiment of all the developments available in his arsenal. It is only a pity that non-Chinese speaking communities are deprived of the opportunity to experience the story told in the scenario. Compared to other maps, there is significantly more (unreadable) text here. I think that the existence of an English version of the map would have made the impressions from the walkthrough even more vivid.

Now about the map itself. The start is tense, as is traditional for Season's works, but without any extreme difficulties. Contrary to popular opinion, there is nothing here that must be done only one way and no other. Yes, you need to stick to the general author's idea throughout the scenario, but if you free the hero with Sir Mullich's specialty from prison on the fourth or even fifth day instead of the third, nothing terrible will happen. The same applies to the first global task: leaving the starting respawn with both heroes. The sooner — the better, of course, but this can be done as early as the beginning of month 2 or the beginning of the third. The only battle in the early stages that caused some difficulties was Ufretin with 32 cyclops and 360 + 360 dwarves. You can break through him with losses, but the main thing is that an army remains afterward sufficient for Aiden (the intelligence specialist) to overcome a garrison of golems. It is also very desirable to have a larger army to place on the sacrificial altar and obtain the maximum amount of experience. Aiden's SP will become important for us in fighting a hero who has 300 angels in his army, from whom we flee across the swamp with 2 flyng serpents.

Since I mentioned Ufretin, I will highlight a funny feature of the map. At first, we will be tormented specifically by such specialists in "useless" creatures. After Ufretin, same will be Strucker. A huge pack of zombies under haste can create serious problems, especially if your armies are meager. Then own Crellion, Ajit, etc.

According to the plot, Sir Mullich goes to the lands of the Necromancer with 1 upgraded fly, while Aiden follows the elves with 2 flies. The game becomes noticeably more difficult; a wall of fire will help us break through and establish ourselves in new positions. You must play actively, as we will need to take new cities so as not to perish. At the starting location, all our castles are taken away. In connection with the wall of fire, it is worth mentioning that Luna is at our disposal. But she is a technical hero whose task is to win one battle and then be killed (the same applies to the imba necromancer with legions of bone and spectral dragons). We join 10 obsidian gargoyles specifically for Luna.

I also wanted to comment on the tips circulating online regarding the tactic of blocking enemy Knight heroes with legionary troops in the water at the starting respawn. I also considered this option at first, but firstly, you would need to lure as many as 3 same-ally enemy heroes into the water, and they simply would have nothing to do there, so it's unlikely they would all go in together; secondly, Aiden, who will handle the luring, has no logistics or boat summon, only water walking, while the enemies have log, gloves, and boots; thirdly, you cannot completely close off the red hero with a mark of courage in the water using burrows, as his death will be needed for passage later, so he can only be blocked by a ship purchased at the shipyard; fourthly, the time spent on the entire luring and blocking procedure in the water could have an extremely negative effect later. Therefore, after some reflection, this option was discarded as pointless.

Further in the scenario, both of our heroes start a new life in new territories. Sir Mullich fights with knights of terror and liches, while Aiden uses grand elves. At the same time, Aiden has it harder at first; the tasks on his respawn are absolutely mind-boggling (searching for suitable terrain types for battles, planning one's own death after entering a one-way portal and subsequent delayed re-hiring in an external tavern for the keeper of the question). Yes, he also frees two heroes from prisons who also have their uses. Sir Mullich, meanwhile, collects the cloak of the king of undead. It would seem that the game has started and now we'll mow down skeletons (our heroes have no necromancy), but the bitter irony is that you can only collect 500 skeletons, there's nothing left to farm after that, and the cloak must be given up for passage.

Then an interesting moment will be the crossing of heroes from the necro-respawn and the elf respawn. A very cleverly designed water route serves this purpose, and you'll have to rack your brain quite a bit to overcome it with the necessary troops. It was approximately at this stage that I encountered great difficulties, which I previously wrote about in the thread. To leave for the necro-respawn with elves and defeat the completely unrestrained necromancers there, especially Moandor with 700+ liches, we need a stable. But by opening the passage to it, we release a very problematic hero from a neighboring castle onto our territory. It is impossible to take him on immediately; you can outsmart him, but not enough for an immediate confident kill afterward. And this means that he takes almost everything from us (a bit earlier underground, all castles were snatched by necromancers). We are left with one same-ally Rampart with elves and an income of 500 gold per day. In general, I decided to hole up in the current situation and accumulate troops (I'll note immediately that this was a mistake; the castles could and should have been surrendered, and that hero should have been properly outsmarted; for troop purchases in castles at all stages of the game, we will only need shooters, let the enemy boldly buy the rest). I spent 3 months doing this, but in the 7th month, my fascinating activity was interrupted by a swamp hero with imba stats and troops arriving at the elf Rampart. I had to move and defeat the hero from the castle in exchange for visiting the stable, the death charm, and leaving for the necro-respawn with elves. As for the swampy one, I buried him in a puddle under the Rampart.

Now the epicenter of events moves underground. Having dealt with several necromancers (except Moandor) and added 250 vampire lords to the army, we are faced with the necessity of visiting the brown tent. Opening the black border guard before it triggers a series of the gloomiest consequences: after us, an elementalist with a terrifying army visits the tent; as a result, a hero arrives at our surface world castle respawn with 120 fabulous and 240 gold dragons and a pendant of inner vision (!), and another elementalist underground steps 2 cells forward and, in exchange for losing all mana, learns "dimensional door." If you delay breaking him for too long, he theoretically gathers mana and jumps out of cover, and the terrain of the cell he stood on is likely the only way to defeat him with our very meager forces at this stage. Battles with the mentioned elementalists are managed using the capabilities of vampire lords. As a result, we free Orrin level 58 from prison with resurrection and blinding, kill Moandor, learn town portal, and kill the hero with fabulous and gold dragons with the help of terrain (the main thing is to survive 5 casts of fabulouss with elves in cover, then force the enemy to spend all mana, resurrect the elves, and shoot everyone).

After this comes the long-awaited freedom of action. We master the snow, collect the sniper's bow and cursed armor, get 2 elixirs of life, join 50 titans and buy as many more, gradually defeating one by one the heroes standing calmly on defense of various castles or simply on the map. The global task now is to knock all parts of the power of the dragon father out of the enemies and give it up for passage. Some battles will be very difficult; almost all heroes have pendants of inner vision, and later marks of courage.

A new turn of problems awaits us when it comes to the orange computer. Up to a certain stage, we don't encounter him at all. He has 8 heroes on the map. One of them is a jailer with a limited radius of action. As soon as we kill the first of the oranges, the jailer begins to release very tough heroes from prisons, who arrive, of course, right in the heart of our domains. The last of them is Thorgrim with full immunity to magic, 360 azure and crystal, 600 archangels and titans, 900 phoenixes. He is the only one who reaches our very first location and gives freedom of action to three of our old acquaintance knights with legionary troops, about whose expediency of blocking I spoke earlier and who have been idle all this time.

Also interesting: as soon as orange heroes start coming to us, we can re-recruit Jel in the tavern (external or in one of the Ramparts), who previously belonged to the pink computer (the only enemy flag not in alliance with the others, so orange wipes him out on his way) and upgrade our existing elves and crossbowmen into snipers. Then Sir Mullich and Aiden study force field and we enter the home stretch — collecting parts of the angel alliance. Among the enemies in the finale are defense specialists — Mephala, Tazar, and Nila. The most difficult opponent of these three is Nila. To break her, two tricks were needed: first to kill the titans and maim the azures, second to drain all her mana (Sir Mullich, azure dragon, pegasus, mage, ghost, power of the dragon father, force field, dispel, and computer stupidity will help us do this), and on the third attempt finish her off.

At the very end, you need to obtain the medal of vulnerability. We have a choice: either kill the orange jailer, who tormented us quite a bit before (he has just enough moves to take the pandora's box standing behind the prison with Thorgrim and transform into a super-imba as a result), or pick up the medal from the ground by fighting tens of thousands of fabulous dragons, azures, crystals, and rusts. Both options are equally difficult. But I decided to perform both tasks. In the end, victory in the scenario was achieved on 16.4.1.

Genre: strategy.
Plot: An expanded version of the battle for the Crossroads. Four empires: Light and Darkness, Chaos and Order have clashed in a great struggle for resource-rich land and legendary artifacts hidden in the dungeons.
Besides the description, there is no more text on the map.
Victory and defeat conditions: standard.
You can choose to play as one of 4 sides: Green (Castle), Red (Tower), Blue (Fortress) or Purple (Dungeon). In the center of the world is a Pink enemy, who has a random type city without a tavern or heroes, so they are doomed from the start.
A feature of the map (and for some — a big plus) is the relatively high game pace because each side has many cities and several external dwellings; therefore, the accumulation of troops goes faster as time passes. And so that you don't relax, resources are added to enemy cities via events.
In the dungeon, there are caves with many treasures, and among them are particularly wealthy ones, but due to the ban on Town Portal, it is imprudent to go there until you have established dominance over almost the entire world. There are seers' huts and keymasters' tents on the map. One-way monoliths allow each of the 4 opponents to quickly get from the surface to the city in the center of the surface world.
Many heroes have set starting skills (4 each) and their own names, including Barilzar (the author's nickname).
What should be known from the very beginning: Town Portal, Fly, and Dimension Door spells are banned on the map.
Pros: good rendering and sufficient content. The map is quite symmetrical in a topographical sense and in terms of what each of the 4 sides possesses (with one exception, mentioned below). There are enough artifacts. The guards are reasonable. Garrisons on the borders allow each player to develop peacefully in the initial stage without fearing attack.
Among the cons identified by me, I can name a certain imbalance in favor of Red (for example, in "their" dungeon, there is an additional sawmill and mine). Most likely, this was done intentionally to create more comfortable conditions for whoever plays this color. Therefore, the map is not suitable for Multiplayer. Also, the reasoning behind why the border garrisons in front of Blue's cities are on cursed ground is not very clear to me: probably because this player (based on my two attempts) turned out to be weaker than the others. Unfortunately, there are no Obelisks or Grail on the map. Also, the absence of the sea was a bit disappointing: small water areas in the dungeon are blocked by rocks and impassable (but this, of course, is insignificant).

This is the first map I started playing after a 4-month break from "Heroes," when I was already afraid that I had forgotten everything completely. Skills are restored quickly, but here the first attempt was unsuccessful, and I had to start over.
The first time I decided to play as Blue (Fortress). I hadn't played as swamp in a long time, and I thought it wouldn't be as easy as my favorite Castle or Tower. I was unlucky with the layout: the main heroine got Earth Magic only at level 16, which most strongly affected the pace of development. Red was outpacing all other players more and more with each week. Moreover, their main villain had the Cloak of Renunciation. It also plays a role that Blue can only learn high-level spells in other cities, and one must fight through strong garrisons to get to them. I had to replay twice to avoid the month of plague. At the beginning of the 6th month, assessing the situation, I decided to start the walkthrough over.
The second time I chose Green (Castle), and from the very beginning everything worked out successfully: the main heroine (Varla) got Earth Magic as early as level 3.
The balance tilt in favor of Red was observed this time as well. However, I still managed to become the strongest of all, gradually and with difficulty. I took Red's cities while they weren't around. I was lucky: according to intelligence, their main heroine descended into the caves and wandered there for a long time. My position became very good at the beginning of the 5th month. And once after a battle, the backpack of the main heroine, Varla, even turned out to be full! It's also funny that this time I hired a heroine (Brabb) for secondary tasks, who in the first attempt (playing as Blue) was Red's most powerful heroine. Here she is also strong, but does not have the Earth Magic skill (and other schools), so she is not very useful as a warrior.
Unfortunately, due to the ban on Town Portal, one has to constantly rush back and forth across the map. If you leave some captured city for 2-3 days, enemies come there again. It's always like this on strategic maps without Town Portal: the larger the territory, the harder it is to keep it under control.
On 6-1-3 Brabb defeated the last hero of Purple, and they were the first to disappear from the map.
On 6-3-1 my third hero defeated the last hero of Red, and they also disappeared.
On 6-3-3 Brabb defeated the last heroine of Blue, and I was declared the winner.
Result: 157 days. The only thing I didn't do: I didn't explore the dungeons with the main treasures. And also, I sometimes missed the Shackles of War: they are not banned, but for some reason I never came across them.
Overall, I was satisfied. A very sensible strategic map, where you don't have to relax from the middle until the very end of the walkthrough.

Does anyone know of any complex and interesting maps where you have to play as Inferno?

I can't immediately recall a map that focuses solely on Inferno. Among the maps I've played, I can recommend "Raising a legion" by maygwan. However, in that map, you play simultaneously with two main heroes: a Necromancer and a Demon. This map might be too easy for you, especially at the beginning. It's excellent for learning Necromancy and Demonology. I enjoyed it overall, but I would have made it possible for the Necro-hero to return after passing through a one-way monolith: the City Portal is given after a difficult battle where losses are high; I would have fought that enemy later, but then it wouldn't be possible to return. I was lucky: I defeated the enemy heroine with my Demon hero, who had the Tome of Earth Magic. With that, it became much easier to progress.

Marmot, I tried Astral Venice for Inferno, but first, I modified the map for a cooperative game (sometimes I play like that with my brother; he started with Rampart). In this version, the start for the Demons is slightly less terrible because he regularly sent me money. But even with that, the starting challenges are very unpleasant: 20+ magical elementals, which forced me to switch to dogs right from the start, almost twenty phoenixes for the shipyard, then an event on the water requiring me to defeat 200 storm elementals and 90 energy elementals, followed by 20+ Ifrit Sultans. And only after joining forces with 40 Ifrit Sultans did the game start to become manageable. If you play Inferno in single-player on this map, the beginning is truly awful: we don't even have a tavern, fort, or imps in the castle at the start, the starting area is very small and almost empty, the heroes are mediocre, only Aiden is somewhat decent in the long run. It will take about a month to get to the water. And even more time to adequately defeat the storm elementals and energy elementals. In a cooperative game, we played reasonably well; the Rampart's magic guild got resurrection and city portal, but a problem arose with one computer player who acquired boots of levitation very early and started pressuring Jela. In general, the downside of the map is its high dependence on the actions of the computer players. The enemies can simply come and overwhelm you very early. After successfully defending against an attacking computer player, we encountered the following drawbacks: the release of a hero from prison with a mega-army (about 80 rust monsters, over a hundred phantom dragons, 500+ knights of terror + vampires, liches in huge numbers). This led to visiting several tents and quickly obtaining the Cloak of the Necromancer King. Then, one of the first necromancers found in the tavern ended up on the territory of the hero John XXIII and amassed tens of thousands of liches from the crusaders. After that, it became simply uninteresting to play. In summary, the map is unreasonably difficult and highly dependent on the actions of the computer players at the beginning, and then it becomes extremely easy.

In general, it's a tough situation, as I expected. If you're lucky and manage to hold out for a while, avoiding capture by the enemy, you can break through and win. In my case, Orange (Inferno) was stuck in place until I went there myself and dealt with him – it turned out to be easy. Purple later managed to emerge and capture some dwellings in the northwest, but didn't achieve much success. Brown was doing better: he had as many as 3 cities, but then he was beaten by both Turquoise and me, until he disappeared.
By the way, since you like playing with your brother in an alliance, you should try playing the map "2 friends" (it's in the collection of the best maps that I posted here, and I think I wrote about it on the forum). This is a map specifically designed for playing together in an alliance, although you can play it solo (as I did), but it will be a little more difficult and take more time.

Thank you for "2 friends"; there aren't enough maps of this type, so I have to modify single-player maps.

I'll share my thoughts on Nautilus's (also known as BioBob) maps. I found 4 scenarios created by him: Metataxer's Revenge, Rise of the Sun King, Bug-Race, and 3 Hoch Smash. Nautilus's work is a mixed bag: he has a brilliant approach to gameplay and design, unlike anything else, but all the maps on the list, except for Metataxer's Revenge, are unplayable in their current state (even on the author's website). They contain critical flaws that prevent you from completing the game (or, conversely, allow you to finish it earlier than intended, haha). In Bug-Race, I found 3 major bugs: 1) The campfire at 7.20.0 can give you mercury, after which you are informed that you have won the scenario (the victory condition is to collect 420 units of mercury; one of the seer's huts at the very beginning of the game gives you 419). 2) It is impossible for the hero LiLaLauneBer to disembark from the boat onto the tile 6.15.0, as there was a prison there before (I wrote about this earlier in the thread). 3) It is impossible to reach the seer's hut at 11.10.0 by any means (even using flight, dimension door, or walking on water, by boat, or without a boat), as the tile is on the water diagonally to the right of the nearest water tile. Therefore, it is impossible to plot a flight or water-walking route to reach this tile, and the ship cannot sail diagonally upwards in this position. In 3 Hoch Smash, I found one definite bug and several suspicious moments: 1) The underground gate at 41.107.1 has no exit to the surface, and this is where our heroic journey ends. 2) Some quest guardians require you to send the hero SmashDownhill, but he is killed on the first day, and there is nothing you can do about it (we can either dismiss him, or he will be killed by PowerMaster; we cannot bribe him or escape, as the enemy has shackles). The function to buy him back in the tavern is not available later. However, there is a prison at 74.109.1 with a hero with the same name, but you can only reach it if you have flight or dimension door, and we don't have these spells yet. As far as I understand, the author planned for this to be a kind of "rebirth" for the hero SmashDownhill, but the bug with the missing underground gate on the surface ruined the idea. 3) The last hero with the brown flag (O-Zauberer at 141.7.0) has disappeared, taking the skull helmet and lion's courage shield with him. We cannot defeat him, as the quest guardian requires us to send SmashDownhill to pass, so we return to point 2. Of course, there is the option of not capturing his last castle, but this still seems like a bug. However, it is possible that the computer may buy him under a different flag in the future, but this means relying on chance. I also started Rise of the Sun King, and problems arose after the first game day. The hero Der Operator does not allow access to the quest guardians that are only available to him, and there are restrictions on them: arrive no later than day 2. I corresponded with RoseKavalier about Bug-Race and Rise of the Sun King, and he also believes that the author needs to test and refine these maps. Unfortunately, that's the situation. Even in their unfinished state, Bug-Race and 3 Hoch Smash are some of the best maps I've ever played. The first has absolutely mind-blowing battles (sometimes completely surreal), and the second has very clever and strict requirements for turn management and mana spending (Chinese maps can only dream of that).

I tried to see at least an approximate order of actions on this map, skipping all the battles, and the problems start at the swamp (the only source of gnolls for opening one of the gates).

There is simply no passage. :( Further on, it gets worse; it seems like I missed something, but ProspectorRT doesn't think so. Also, it's unclear how to get through the "eye" to the hero Ein Freund in the lower right corner of the dungeon. And there are "minor" things like witches who, according to the game's mechanics, cannot teach banned skills (and on this map, they are all banned). A clueless operator who, in version 24.2, has a mill that forces him to open resource piles (2 out of 3 piles :facepalm:). There is a crash on at least one of the modified crypt file CRBANKS.txt that comes with the map (without which, by the way, "completion" is impossible, at least because of the 10,000 ore that drops from the medusa).

Sewa, yeah, that's true. What surprises me the most is that a person who can come up with such intricate maps treats their testing so carelessly. Regarding the witches who don't learn banned skills. In 3 Hoch Smash, I also noticed a similar issue. There's a specialist in intelligence without an actual intelligence skill. One slot remained empty for the entire map, but I couldn't find any intelligence anywhere until I got stuck because of bugged underground gates (I estimate that about 80% of the map had already been completed). Probably, the skill is given somewhere before the final stage, or the author simply forgot about it. Regarding Rise of the Sun King. RoseKavalier wrote that there are also problems with a hero or heroes who are given thousands of ballistas, but after one battle, the ballistas disappear, which stops the Walkthrough. I, after getting stuck with Der Operator, and having some experience with two other maps by Nautilus, decided not to continue the game. As I see, I was right. It's also bad that the author doesn't respond to messages sent by email; maybe I just have an outdated version, I don't know. Added 30 minutes later
It's even more disappointing that Rise of the Sun King, even with a quick look in the editor, has the potential to be considered the best fan-made map for the third game. It's a pity that it's unplayable. Added 14 minutes later
Heroes who have mega-armies, mega-stats, the Sign of Courage, and also War Shackles applied to them. This is what I thought about while playing Xiedu and cleverly defeating tough enemies: give them War Shackles, and it will become even more difficult. Several (!) jailers releasing ten heroes (!) one after another. In general, Rise of the Sun King is like Xiedu, but with the principle of "faster, higher, stronger."

I have often encountered situations where there is no passage on a map. After all, maps are created not only by specialists but also by those who want to showcase their skills, including novice mapmakers with only two levels of education. However, such situations are often resolved through trial and error, as not all maps have descriptions.
However, the author's poor writing style does not always correspond to a poorly designed map.
By the way, ProspektorRT does not determine the traversability of a map.

By the way, ProspectorRT doesn't determine map traversability.

Yes, at least for now, it doesn't have that functionality: it can only show the correspondence between pairs of monoliths and dungeon gates. But it is useful because it accurately shows the presence of objects, artifacts, spells, skills, creatures, and heroes that can be obtained in some way (sometimes in a completely non-obvious way). I remember that on one (otherwise good) map, several years ago, I had to tediously "clear" individual areas on the advice of one player to find artifacts that were necessary (or rather, one of two) to complete the map, but they could not be found anywhere through direct search in the editor. It turned out: they were with monsters! And there were a lot of monsters on this map, and those 2 monsters were located far from all the paths that my hero traveled.
Fortunately, with the advent of Prospector, this is no longer a problem. But this fact does not negate the need for authors to think and, if necessary, give players advice or hints. Unfortunately, for some maps, even well-known ones, there is no information even about the authors, let alone their contacts. But sometimes: the author is known, and there is contact information, but the authors are in no hurry to fix errors, even when players directly write about them. This is the case with a couple of maps by respected sirs from HeroesPortal: after learning about the errors, they promised to fix them. 10 years have passed - the maps are still in the same state. At least there are comments, from which you can find out what surprises await you. Sometimes you fix some "mistakes" yourself (if the map looks decent overall).