Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

Can you suggest some interesting maps for single-player? I really liked the Wayfarer map (I played it about a year and a half ago, and I basically started learning the game's mechanics with it; I didn't know much before). I've tested maps like Xeiid, Rise of the Sun King, Metataxers Revenge, etc., but they seemed too complicated to me, and many of them have strict time constraints (a very high level of hardcore gameplay). I don't really want super long maps either. Maybe there are some interesting maps similar to Wayfarer and relatively new?
Don't suggest Paragon.

I might say something strange, but there are no strict time constraints in Metataxers, except for the first two weeks - until the reincarnation of the hero Friend. I agree that before this point, it's hard to immediately understand how to complete this section, and you approach the rest of the game with suspicion, wondering if something will happen that will force you to reload. But no, after that, it's an open world; the main goal is to complete the map in 12 months. There are side quests with time constraints, but they only give you a not-so-large army.
But the battles there are amazing! It's not just one strategy for victory (like with Clonarchs in Paragon). You need to know or learn many tricks. And a definite plus is that there is a detailed walkthrough by Rowskavalier, which will help you if you get stuck somewhere (or teach you new tricks).

Recently, I played two maps; I didn't complete either of them. I'm talking about “Valley of Heroes” by RoseKavalier and “Les prémices de l'Apocalypse” by t3trone.

Valley of Heroes is a puzzle map that requires completion within 1 game day, despite being XL size. There are 8 heroes at the start, each with their own task. As tasks are solved, the first hero opens the way for the second, the second for the third, and so on. The goal of the mission is to deliver the spellcaster's necklace to the city of Home (the Tower in the upper right corner). The key hero here is Ivor; he is the one who must arrive in Home on the first day with the required artifact. Although it seems possible to buy it directly in the city. The main difficulties of the map are logistical: for all heroes except Katerina, literally every move point counts. I'll briefly go over the heroes and their actions in order of execution:

1. Shiva

Take the Cloak of the Undead King, put it on, and then dismantle it, since we have basic necromancy and after the battle we need skeletons rather than walking dead. Kill the peasants, avoiding enemy morale and shooting only with straight arrows under blessing. Once the shots run out, hit three times under blessing via wait. An easy fight. Be sure to get expert training and go to the fort on the hill to upgrade the skeletons. Then sacrifice all artifacts and troops for experience at the altar (cloak in assembled form), reach level 11, visit the lighthouse, and collect the 15000 gold hidden behind the fort.

2. Gundula

Visit the blue tent, leave the cursed armor alone, and break through the hero with spawn of evil using the only useful spell in this situation – remove obstacle. The spawn of evil has speed 6, so there are no particular difficulties. This fight is a rehearsal before the next battle with crusaders. That one caused great difficulty because the crusaders have speed 7, and 4 stacks easily control our entire movement range. But there is one nuance: we have a wait in reserve; the secret of the battle is to use it wisely, and using the same obstacle-removal spell, kill the crusaders, and then take the resource box.

3. Katerina

Visit the green tent.

4. Jelu

Using Shiva's money, upgrade 37 snipers and leave 3 crossbowmen. Don't take Haven, pass through the obelisks and attack Voya. The hardest fight on the map. Divide the troops as follows: 36 snipers, 1 sniper, 1 crossbowman, 1 crossbowman, 1 crossbowman. In tactics, make sure dragons and scorpions can't reach you; place 2 crossbowmen one after another in the top row so that after casting prayer, one blocks the medusas while the second stands immediately behind him. Prepare the third crossbowman to drive from below from the terrain obstacle; position the snipers so that after prayer via wait, the main stack hides in an external dwelling, and the single sniper provides cover. On the first turn, manticoras and medusas kill the crossbowmen at the top; all troops except troglodytes move up, hiding the snipers. On the second turn, cast blessing and wipe out all medusas; dragons hit the single sniper and block the entrance to the external dwelling for one-hex units. Shoot 32 times under prayer and blessing, ensuring the last shot from wait finishes off the remaining dragons, then finish the 3 minotaurs and 40+ troglodytes in melee. As a result, 36 snipers are preserved. With a final diagonal move, Jelu takes the castle and sells 35 snipers.

5. Dragon

Run past the scientist with ballistics and attack Clavius. The fight is tricky but not very difficult. On the first turn, hide the titans and the wagon behind the force field; the enemy accelerates knights and hits the catapult with them—it is essential that the first knight stack destroys it in one hit. On the second turn, brace the gates and as a result fight one-on-one with one knight stack, helping with resurrection. Unfortunately, the knights soon decide to destroy the wagon; finish the knight stack manually anyway while bracing the gates. Resurrect all titans and start shooting across the wall under blessing. In this position, we damage one knight stack with a straight arrow and the others with broken ones. Evenly spend all ranged ammunition on the 6 knight stacks, then move the titans one cell left of the gates and finish off all knights one by one, helping with resurrection.

6. Sir Mullich

Divide angels into singles and attack the hero with snakes. There is no universal tactic here since snakes hit randomly; I tried to huddle in the upper left corner and cover the wounded angel. Overall, not very difficult. After the battle, stand on the cell where Girda was.

7. Rion

Learn town portal from the box and attack Tazar. The goal is to manage to escape by bribing 1 thief. After trying several army configurations, 1-12-1-1 turned out to be the working version.

8. Sir Mullich

Buy back Rion at the tavern, leaving us with 1700 move points.

9. Rion

Exchange troops and take the wanderer's ring from Sir Mullich.

10. Sir Mullich

Enter inventory, exit. This manipulation affects the displayed number of moves for Mullich (1700/1700); dig up the Grail.

11. Rion

Take the Grail from Mullich, open 2 keepers of the question, and from the cell behind them move via town portal to the Not home tower, take the gold, and place the Grail.

12. Ivor

The last and key hero, whose move management puzzle I never fully solved. I made moves in this sequence: oasis – azure external dwelling (placed 8 pegasi in 2 stacks of 4 for burn, divided elves by 10 and placed them in corners, then stopped the azures with a berserker and shot them with elves) – oasis – Sandro (hydras under berserker, pegasi kite, elves shoot, zero losses) – oasis – Shakti (sacrifice 1 pegasus so monsters take the correct position, 2 single pegasi cover the elves, the large stack kites) – oasis – Mutare Drake (Armageddon) – oasis. Call the ship from point 31.9 twice to land at point 30.9 (2991 moves on land, 9083 in water). Visit the stable, take the artifact in the seer's hut (dominate resources to reach the necessary amount), dismiss the elves, land on the islet near the peasant external dwelling, hire, enter inventory, get a move recalculation, get in the boat at cell 41.1, having 9063 moves in water, repeat the procedure near the islet with the centaur external dwelling (dismiss peasants, land, hire centaurs, inventory, move recalculation, board boat). As a result, stop at cell 137.0, five cells from the finish. I have no idea where else moves could be gained.


I downloaded Les prémices de l'Apocalypse a long time ago after coming across promotion from user Pomazok1329. I've already played Chinese, German, and Polish maps; now it was time for a French map. The scenario overall turned out to be very interesting in terms of gameplay, but confusing in its conclusion. It looks like more problems with the map's beatability (unfortunately, such scenarios have been appearing every other time lately). The goal of the mission is to kill the hero La DISCORDE or defeat everyone. The funniest part is that this hero runs past us with a tiny army on day 8, opening 2 white guards of passage, but we cannot catch him (I tried), and then he is killed in a phoenix ambush event. So logically we need to defeat everyone, although I see a theoretical way to catch this hero, but finishing a very dense XL map practically at the very beginning would be extremely absurd.

In general, we choose our starting castle ourselves (any except Tower). I took Swamp, but the choice isn't fundamental; what matters is that the hero Le Gardien has Meteor Shower, as well as capturing external dwellings and buying magic dragons (first time I've seen such a setup). Aside from the fairy tale units, Le Gardien didn't need any other army throughout the map; this hero solved almost all his tasks exclusively with them. I gave the swamp army to Craig, who happened to come to the tavern, and leveled him up in parallel. Among the starting tasks: on the 2nd week, take the magic dragon external dwelling and prepare to meet the enemy hero Barbe brune, who has an admiral's hat in his inventory and deals massive damage with Chain Lightning. I blocked his landing near my castles, so he came through the two-way monolith from above. I waited until he opened access to the second fairy tale building and then fed 4 heroes to him to force a significant reduction in magic points (one Chain Lightning for 235 is devastating), then killed him with 3 fairy tales, preventing escape. Another important point: we will need help from one of the allies (yes, another new trick for me); for this, we need to open the path for the ally with our dummy carrying the symbol of knowledge. The ally captures the Rampart, which gives us access to the green and, most importantly, black tent. After this, the ally becomes traditionally useless (though he was the one who dug up and planted the Grail, hah). Next, we go into the one-way portal with hero Le Gardien (had 6 fairy tales in the army, beginning of the second month); there we take, among other things, the elixir of life and the Mn'Uil castle, where they gave resurrection at guild level 4. Then without visible problems, we demolish the green and seize the ramparts. Simultaneously, Craig goes to the two-way portal near the Wizard external dwellings, where he takes the Conflux with the Grail (no control magic in it), Inferno, frees Ignat with Craig's portrait (name Kaz-Ardès), a very good army, and decent stats, then both heroes burst into the pink and seize all castles belonging initially to another ally. After that, we squeeze Gunnar (Vortiguern) in the Dungeon. Even though he has the cloak of renunciation, he doesn't cause much trouble. We clear the bonus territory with three castles similar to our starting one. Kaz-Ardès breaks through the brown hero {LE ROI} and runs toward Pandora's box with a huge stat boost, as well as a cool army of snipers and harpy witches. But Kaz-Ardès remains locked in this position until Le Gardien visits the blue tent on the islet near the Stronghold in the north of the overland world. Around this moment, the red activates: heroes with off-the-charts stats, huge armies, and town portals burst in on us (one of them, La MORT, seems completely insane at first glance—stats near 100, 6000 bones, tens of thousands of ghosts and crusaders, hundreds of archdevils and efreet sultans). Now we have to play carefully. The main task is to bring the immobilized Kaz-Ardès back into the game. After this, Kaz-Ardès captures about 10 castles in one turn (!) through a repeated process of dismissing and rehiring, and kills all red heroes, including La MORT (he sat in the castle, and despite having shackles of war, stood in a convenient position for tricks; we die against him about 10 times, constantly casting berserk on the crusaders, they wipe out all other enemy stacks, then we finish the remaining crusaders). Then we clear everything we can; Le Gardien finds a town portal and 99999 mercury, which opens the way for the long-awaited starting hero – Dessa (Korik). Le Gardien, via a specially prepared dummy, teaches all other heroes the town portal, and then spends about three weeks traveling through swan ponds to the red tent. Now begins Dessa's line; he frees the mage Zifnab (Astral), and both heroes together flee from the demon Mäul. This plotline remained a mystery to me. Dessa and Astral circle around the castle with the hero CORRUPTION, but they don't even have a theoretical possibility to attack: armies are zero, and in front of the castle and generally across the whole respawn there are many un-disableable events with legion ambushes. I entered the Dungeon into a section of the map shaped like a question mark and took the hourglass (gave another one away earlier for passage). I can't figure out what to do next. In general, after visiting the red tent, I finally destroyed the red and took all other castles from other enemies. Only brown CORRUPTION and pink in the city of Elysium remained; there is no access to either. Considering there is no flight, DD, or angel wings on the map at all (checked specifically in the prospector), it seems the map is unbeatable. Two heroes, {LE DIABLE} and {DIEU}, were supposed to come from the pink eventually, but I didn't wait for them, nor is there any point in waiting.

Pomazok1329, did you beat this map?

Added after 8 minutes

I might say something strange, but in Metataxere there are no strict timings except for the first two weeks - until the reincarnation of the hero Friend. I agree that until that moment you can't tell how to pass this section and you treat further gameplay with suspicion, wondering if something will happen that forces a reload. But no, after that it's an open world; the main thing is to complete the map in 12 months. There are side quests with timings, but they only give a not-so-large army.
But the battles there are awesome! Not just 1 strategy for victory (like clonarchs in Paragon). You need to know or learn many tricks. And an undeniable plus - there is a detailed walkthrough from RoseKavalier that will help you if you get stuck somewhere (or teach you new tricks).

The battles are stunning, to say the least. Lately, I've been watching your streams; your composure is also stunning :) Sometimes I post noob comments in the chat under the nickname Naughty Lad. Good luck on the home stretch!

Marlo_Stanfield, thanks for the interesting feedback again. "Les prémices de l'Apocalypse" is being discussed here. Lunar Aurora also provided a link to the English version ("Start of the Apocalypse") there - if you don't know French, you should play that one. I downloaded it and saved it in SoD format. If you need it, I can give you this version. I haven't tried playing it myself yet, but it's on my list. I hope to finish playing "5th element episode 1" soon. It's not hardcore, but it's quite interesting and rightfully included among the best maps on HeroesPortal.

Marmot, thanks, I'll read about the storyline in English, although I don't see how it can help. Unless the map differs not only in the language of the events.

Added 4 minutes later
Please share the resaved version. The version in the link doesn't launch.

Honestly, I don't understand your principled rejection of Paragon. It's strange to read posts from some people: "...I haven't played it myself, but the map is still bad... the battles are boring... it's overrated... it's only known in the Russian-speaking community..." Although the map is good, it's one of the best maps created in recent years. Everything below is purely my PERSONAL opinion, and I'm not going to argue with anyone. 1. Although I'm Uzbek, I was born and raised in a Russian cultural environment. And a Russian-language map will always be closer and more familiar to me than an English, German, or even Chinese one (although my English is quite good). 2. Every map has its strengths and weaknesses. The presence of weaknesses is not a reason to blindly criticize any map. 3. From day one on Heroes Prime, the map was positioned as the best STORY-DRIVEN RPG map. That is, no one said that it has the best and most interesting battles in the world. In addition, the author accepts constructive criticism and is working on making the combat more challenging, in particular, by delaying the acquisition of the Clone skill. 4. The fact that you don't need to solve puzzles that require a thorough knowledge of all game bugs, calculate the remaining movement points with a calculator, and so on – is only a plus. If someone has a lot of free time, or they enjoy portraying themselves as the "Father of Heroic Democracy," then more power to them. 5. Regarding the "overhyped" nature of the map. Perhaps some people don't fully understand the meaning of this term.

Shadow Priest, it's a natural process in Paragon. Sometimes it seems like people only play Paragon and only discuss Paragon (the same could be said about Wayfarer before). Regardless of the map's merits, it's clear that this state of affairs can annoy some. Action and reaction, by analogy with Newton's third law.

— What is the difference between objective and subjective? — the students asked Hodja Nasreddin.
— Objective quality, — Hodja explained, — is an attribute understood by God, subjective — is accessible to humans. For example, a lemon has objective existence and subjective taste.

Marlo_Stanfield, objectivity is unattainable, but one should strive for it.

Marlo_Stanfield, here is the English version:

Yes, digging into the English-language events immediately yielded results: I captured the Conseillum Tower, and the brown one is gone. Only one inaccessible pink castle remains.

...Everything stated below is purely my PERSONAL opinion, and I don't intend to argue with anyone.
1. ... a Russian-language map will always be closer and more familiar to me than an English, German, or even more so, a Chinese map (although my English is quite good).
2. Every map has its own advantages and disadvantages. The presence of disadvantages is not a reason to blindly criticize any map.
...
4. The fact that you don't need to solve puzzles that require a thorough knowledge of all game bugs, calculate the remaining movement points with a calculator, and engage in other hardcore activities is a definite plus. If someone has a lot of free time, or they enjoy portraying themselves as the "Father of Heroic Democracy," then more power to them.
5. Regarding the "hype" surrounding the map. Perhaps some people are not familiar with the meaning of this term.

Points 1, 2, and 4 – I 100% agree.
Point 5 – (not entirely relevant) there is a newfangled breed of people – "PR-sters" (they probably removed the letter D from the name for aesthetic reasons):D – and they really like to look at Europe:eek:

"I'd like to add my two cents" about "Paragon." The map is undoubtedly outstanding. The geography, plot, and characters are all very well-developed. But what personally bothers me is that the author tried to cram everything he could think of into one map. As a result, there's so much on one map that it would be enough for a campaign of a dozen maps. The further you go, the more you have to keep in mind (or write down): artifacts, creatures, quests... Also, hiding objects is quite a nasty trick. And soon version 3.0 will be released, even more elaborate than before. By the way, here's an interview with the map's author.

Added 6 hours 38 minutes ago
Marlo_Stanfield, regarding "Valley of Heroes," I wanted to ask right away: are the Admiral's Hat, Boots of Swiftness, and Gauntlets of the Rider missing? Because maybe it's possible/necessary to increase move points by using the bug of recalculating remaining movement points when boarding and disembarking?

I wanted to ask about "Valley of Heroes" right away: does it not have Admiral's Hat, Boots of Swiftness, and Rider's Gloves? And if so, maybe it's possible/necessary to increase move points by using the bug of recalculating remaining movement points when mounting and dismounting?

No, this trick doesn't work on this map.

Added 6 minutes later
Regarding Les prémices de l'Apocalypse, I found the reason for the problem. The map is old, so there was no talk of playing it with HD+ enabled. The thing is that the hero La DISCORDE doesn't die from the phoenix event when HD+ is turned off. I observed a similar situation on the Xiedu map, where the enemy hero also had to overcome an ambush event and only survived if HD+ was disabled. That's quite a thing.

As a result, we stop at cell 137.0, five cells away from the finish. I have no idea where else we can gain a turn.

Perhaps there is an obscure logical trap on the map that recalculates direct and diagonal moves. Although, according to the description, you even took into account the recalculation of moves when opening the hero's window.
P.S. The move count after the oasis has not been recalculated.

– oasis – Mutare Drake (Armageddon) – oasis. We summon the ship from point 31.9 twice to land at point 30.9 (on land, 2991 moves, in water, 9083).

I completed Valley of Heroes, using two hints from the author. It's hard to imagine how I could have found the right solution on my own. I won't describe it.

(Paragon 2): Killed Ashwing (second time). Fought both in an open field and in a castle. It's easier to fight in the castle for one reason: Ashwing heavily casts earth elementals. In the open field, the elementals move freely across the map, but in the castle, they can be contained. The AI behavior patterns that Rince mentioned don't always work, and Ashwing, using Tactics, positioned his infantry troops behind the fence. And only once did the AI actually "surround" its archers and not "jump out" from its wall.
Now I'm considering how to get to the brown tent (everywhere there are brown guards of the passages) or, after giving 2 magic books, go to the city of Blazing Inferno?