Posts from The Hero's Path

I had to register specifically to leave a review for this wonderful map. I wouldn't call it a scenario; it's more like a full-fledged RPG campaign, implemented on a single map. The map has a lot of humor; almost every quest makes you smile, and things like the Terminator-Colossus are especially great. The quests and dialogues somehow reminded me of King's Bounty. Alchemy and rune magic are well-conceived and executed, but they give too much of an advantage. The final boss is a bit weak, in my opinion; I like grand final battles with the destruction of legions of all sorts of creatures. I mainly used light and dark magic (40 percent initiative for my units and the same amount of slowing for enemies gives excellent results). I found 30 quests, completed 25, and failed 1 (where you have to negotiate about alchemy with the orcs). I didn't complete the biology department's quest, where you have to find rare plants; it's not my thing. I didn't figure out how to complete the quest with the water elementals in the river. There were also 2 more that I don't remember. By the way, is it possible to get black/red dragons on the map? I searched everywhere and couldn't find them. Question about the quest where the mages' eye is aimed at the goblin's house. After installing the Christmas tree, a mage appears and burns down the tree. I completed the quest simply by reaching the goblin before the tree was burned. Is there any way to prevent the tree from being burned? Now, about perhaps the only drawback. Let's take the situation with buying resources as an example. After purchasing, the dialogue window closes for a second, and if you click on the building at that moment, 2 windows open, one below the other, and when you click on any dialogue option, you get something completely different from what you need. I encountered a similar situation almost everywhere there are dialogues. I would advise either making the window not close or making the window open faster, but it's not my place to tell you what to do. Overall, even despite the annoying behavior of the windows, the map gets a solid 10/10. Will there be a sequel or other maps of this scale? P.S. A personal wish from me. It would be nice to have a choice of starting heroes, write a short story for each, not affecting the gameplay (a demon came from Sheo to become a hero, a dark elf got tired of chasing minotaurs in the Dungeon and decided to become a hero, etc.). And also, give the opportunity to choose a necromancer/knight specialization at the beginning. I personally find the models and animations of the heroes from the Empire extremely annoying

Overdok, thank you for your feedback. I will answer in order:

Is it possible to obtain black/red dragons on the map?

No, there are no black dragons, but if you help the elves a lot, green dragons will appear.

I completed the quest simply by reaching the goblin before the tree is burned. Is there any way to prevent the tree from being burned?

There is a mage's hut on the map where a mage lives, and he offers to look through this window. You can go to him and either beat him up or come to a mutually beneficial agreement.

After purchasing, the dialog box closes for a second, and if you click on the building at that moment, 2 windows open.

Yes, I already found out about this, so I will fix it in the future. Unfortunately, I didn't realize during testing that players would do that.

Will there be a sequel or more maps of this scale?

It wasn't planned; I don't want to repeat myself.

It would be nice to have a choice of starting hero.

Do you mean hero models from all factions, while leaving the specialization (necromancer/knight) to be chosen? This is not easy to implement technically. By adding a custom necromancer, I would have to place him on the map next to the knight (giving the player 2 heroes) and then delete one unnecessary hero after the choice. If there are 8 factions with two specializations, that's 16 options, and you can't place that many heroes. The human-knight model was simply chosen as the most neutral and logically suitable.

write a short story for each one.

I'm just too lazy, and there's already more than enough text at the beginning.

Excellent in-game experience; I've never seen anything like it for Heroes 5, and I've only encountered about two maps of this type in the entire Heroes saga. It's a unique example of what can be done with the Heroes 5 editor, and a rather rare one at that, given what I mentioned earlier. I spent over 35 real hours and 43 months (196 in-game days – a very interesting system for tracking game time; sometimes I think it would be more suitable for strategy games, and it could be used as a basis for creating something completely unique) in the game itself, and I spent almost two days straight playing. Of course, I cursed a lot at times, especially when I unexpectedly encountered an enraged Pirate Hero and a Sorcerer whose magic eye made life miserable for the poor, peaceful Orcs, at times when I wasn't expecting them and wasn't ready to defeat them, or when I was doing what seemed like a simple quest with Wyverns and got into a fight with an Orc Hero, with whom I had over 100 battles and learned to fully utilize alchemy to finally defeat him. I played through the entire game with the Knights of Isabel and red crossbowmen (later switching to blue Elven archers). At the beginning, it was difficult, and I almost always lost a few crossbowmen (poor guys). I explored all the places where I could avoid combat and did quests in the same way. At some point in the game, I finally met a master of summoning magic, who taught me the useful Phantom spell, which I used for the rest of the game. In addition, I acquired the skill of spellcasting and a set consisting of Lion artifacts, allowing me to move my hero as often as possible. And when I got the resurrection spell, everything went smoothly, and losses were reduced to zero in the vast majority of battles. The last boss provided the greatest resistance; it was impossible to defeat him without alchemy and rune magic. I had to use them to the fullest (rune magic, up to 10 times each from the school of light – 5 at the end of the week and 5 at the beginning of the next), so he fell quickly in a fast battle. Throughout the game, I carried around useless Inquisitors, who only distracted enemies, as well as equally useless Archangels. There are only two drawbacks for me in the playthrough: why are there so few Archangels available for purchase at such a late stage of the game, when I had already found the Tear of Ashi? What will 8 winged creatures do against hordes of warriors, whose ranks are already being broken by my 200 riders? Nothing, they turned out to be a useless burden for me. And the second drawback is related to resurrection potions and their uselessness – 500 units of the potion, despite all the difficulty in preparing it, only resurrect 35 of my Elven archers. In addition, only one type of unit can be resurrected, which reduces its usefulness to a minimum. And 3 ingredients are not always enough for such frequent crafting (even despite the mine that provides ingredients, it somehow didn't provide all the necessary ones, and, for example, plantain was not available from any of the 3 merchants). In general, alchemy was a very rare pleasure for me, and I got tired of clicking 100 times on the same buttons (the same with the market, when I exchanged 1000 units of my ore for gold). But overall, these are minor inconveniences; I give the map a 10/10 rating. I haven't seen anything like it and had a great time. Thank you very much; it's clear that the map was made with soul (I don't know how I would have completed it on a difficulty level higher than Warrior; I guess I would have had to use alchemy more often).
P.S. The potion of magical protection, which the dean of the chemistry faculty from Binom mentioned, is it a made-up thing? Because I tried to mix sand (or whatever ingredient he mentioned) with all the others in different proportions, but nothing worked, unfortunately (although the potion would still be useless).

Dgomez, thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Archangels are powerful units, so I had to give them after completing challenging tasks. They are more of a bonus than a full-fledged combat unit. From a developer's perspective, level 7 creatures are too durable, which means the player doesn't lose them, which means they spend less money replenishing their army, which means they accumulate wealth and cause a kind of inflation in the game. If I were making a new map, I would even give level 6 creatures much later to increase the army turnover. The resurrection potion can be made much stronger, and you can use several potions if multiple units are killed. Its great advantage is that if, after a long and difficult battle, you didn't have time or forgot to resurrect someone important with magic, you don't have to replay the battle, but you can resurrect them with a potion. I personally hate replaying battles many times because of one bad move or morale. Unfortunately, there is no magic defense potion. For some reason, the inconsistent Nival made it possible to increase any creature parameter for one battle, except for magic defense, even though it exists in the same mage mini-artifacts.

Archangels are powerful units, so they had to be given out after completing significant tasks. They are more like a bonus than a full-fledged combat unit. From a developer's perspective, level 7 creatures are too durable, which means the player doesn't lose them easily, which means they spend less money replenishing their army, which means they accumulate wealth and cause a kind of inflation in the game. If I were making a new map, I would even give level 6 creatures much later, to increase the army turnover.

The problem is that some other, equally durable level 7 creatures are available much earlier, and their numbers can be accumulated much faster than when the player reaches the point of obtaining the Ash Tears and using them to buy Emerald Dragons or Archangels. Cyclops are available from the Wyvern trader around 20% of the way through the game, Phantom Dragons (if the player is a Necromancer and wants to reach the location, they will easily find them), Devils (similarly), and even for Magma Dragons, as far as I understand, it's enough to build a Guild of Mages (a task that isn't easy, of course, but it's still clearly earlier than obtaining the Ash Tears). And here you have the Ash Tears in your pocket, you've already completed almost all the main quests - and only then are you given the long-awaited Archangels.

Okay, I agree, maybe their quantity and growth rate could be increased slightly.

Hello, thank you very much for the map. I've never played anything like it before; everything is done very well! There are many quests, interesting neutral creatures, and a day/night cycle. It's great! The only problem is with the quest to destroy the wyvern raids and the descent from the mountain. Could you please tell me how to get down from the mountain after the battle with the demons at the top? I've replayed it twice, and both times I got stuck there; I can't get down. A catapult can't be placed there to fly down. And the spell that the mage in the dungeon promised to cast doesn't work...

Padme, thank you for your feedback. There is no regular descent from the mountain, and the wizard warns about this. The only option is to place a beacon marker in advance before climbing and then summon it; otherwise, there is no other way.

I wanted to play this map, but I encountered the following problem: I download the map, move it to the Maps folder, but "Heroes" doesn't recognize the map. It will probably be the same with other downloaded maps. I have already reinstalled Heroes several times from different sources. And the most interesting thing is that the standard Heroes from one source without the Russian language pack 3.1 recognized this map. It is impossible to play it without the Russian language pack, and when I installed it, the map disappeared again. I tried to find an answer to this question on the forum, but I didn't find it. Help me.

JustZoB, are you extracting the archive? There should be a file named "Sword and Sorcery 3.h5m" in the Maps folder. It should be visible in both version 3.0 and 3.1, but nothing will work in version 3.0. You can check if the map editor can open the map. I don't know what that will achieve, but it's just a suggestion. You can also try other maps. But it's best to just find a working version of the game.

Jack_of_shadow, yes, I unpacked it, and the file is there. The editor opens it; I tried. "And the most interesting thing is that the standard Heroes game from one source, without the 3.1 Russian language pack, could see this map. It's impossible to play it without the Russian language pack, and when I installed it, the map disappeared again."

Have you tried using a license? Or does "without a localization pack" mean it's the English-language Steam version?

I've had a licensed copy since the beginning (I still have the original disc from way back in 2008). I downloaded patch 3.1, but it doesn't recognize the map. I decided to download a different version from Rutracker – the English version – and it recognized the map, but it's unplayable. I installed the Russian language pack, and it stopped recognizing the map again. I downloaded the Gold Edition, and it's the same problem.

A similar situation has already occurred. The problem was resolved after completely uninstalling the game, cleaning the registry, and then reinstalling the Gold Edition.

I also have an image of a licensed disc, purchased right after the release of Tribes of the East. It always worked perfectly.
Patch 3.1 differs for different versions of the game. If the clean game can see the map, but after the patch it can't, it means the patch was installed for the wrong version.