Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

no, I think the theoretically possible result has already been achieved there.

I think this is a mistake. You can definitely do better there in one day.
But it will require a lot of effort.

Regarding the generation of weeks and monsters, this rule is actually prohibited in tournaments, including online ones, and it is completely disabled in HD+.

By the way, no, months and weeks in HD+ are generated as they should be. I just checked. They are only optionally disabled in SoD_SP. The motivation regarding monster months, as I understand it, was not that they could give an unfair advantage to the player, but rather that the random spawning of units often made maps unplayable, in which the authors had not protected critical cells.

apparently, I was mistaken; I couldn't find any logs for HD+ regarding weekly/monthly monster events. I don't remember having weekly/monthly monster events in my playthroughs – in Paragon, for example, there was a significant issue deciding which creatures to use for demonizing, even though many months passed.
And in online games, they are definitely technically prohibited in both HotA and Heroes of Might and Magic.
But I found where I got this idea from – these rules were used in offline tournaments that I participated in.
More precisely, not just the rules, which could change from tournament to tournament, but they were removed from the executable file used for these tournaments (HOMM Tournament Edition or TE version).

I finally finished playing a map recommended to me some time ago called "Alexandretta" (author Grigor Minchev). I had never encountered this author's maps before, although I had heard they were quite unusual. But honestly, I didn't expect this.

At first I wanted to write a detailed opinion about this map, but decided it was better not to. It would have come off as somewhat improper.

I'll only say that I finished the Walkthrough in the middle of month 17. I've never taken this long to complete any map. And this despite having established almost full control over the map by the middle of month 8, when the monstrous Torgrim was eliminated, almost all available Castles were captured, and all the one-way portals from which enemies emerged were blocked. All the subsequent months consisted of rather tedious running around the entire map from one quest to another. Perhaps if I had had Town Portal, things would have gone faster, but as it happened, I completed the map without the Book of Earth at all. I can't imagine how it could have been obtained in the early stages, and later on there wasn't much point in it.

Overall, the map left a rather unfavorable impression. On one hand, I liked the small challenge of capturing the nearest Dungeon. But again, try figuring out that it's highly desirable to do this no later than 1.2.6. There wasn't even any sort of message at the beginning. I, for example, only found out about this after reading a review of the map by Marlo_Stanfield. I had to restart from the very beginning. Also, quite difficult yet fairly interesting was the slow and laborious process of establishing control over the map, during which I had to run around a lot, both towards the computer's heroes and away from them.

On the other hand, I didn't like that the map is excessively overloaded with quests, events, Pandora's Boxes, Hut of the Magi, Border Guards, and similar elements. In total, there are over a hundred of them, and the endless running from one to another just gets tiresome at some point. Moreover, the Pandora's Boxes and events reset resources, and if you forget about this (which happened to me several times), you can find yourself in a situation where you've just finished a tedious fight lasting 10-15 minutes, only to realize you forgot to spend all your resources beforehand and they simply got zeroed out. Overall, the author has some unhealthy obsession with taking resources away from the player. Many dozens of Hut of the Magi and Border Guards, which among other things require a full set of war machines (Ballista, First Aid Tent, and Ammo Cart), also seem to me a rather pointless thing. The only complication here is that if you arrive at a Hut of the Magi or Border Guard and find you forgot to take something (or gave it away earlier), you'll have to replay a significant chunk. I can't even imagine how this map can be completed at all without checking all these elements in the editor or clicking on them via Alt.

I also didn't like that a significant part of the map consists of endless labyrinths and corridors, more resembling some kind of gastrointestinal tract. For example, it took almost a month and a half for a hero without Logistics to travel from the nearest Castle to the Brown Tent!!! And if it also turns out that after traveling for a month or more through this "intestine," you run into an insurmountable obstacle (for example, you forgot to take some item to complete a quest, or you need more of them than one hero can carry), you'll have to replay an entire month. Yes, yes, because of some single missed trifle, I had to replay several weeks, or even more.

All of the above makes a thorough study of the map in the editor absolutely mandatory; otherwise, completing it will take an infinitely long time. I, for example, don't like this. There should be a mystery in completing a map. It's no coincidence that when we start playing, the map is completely hidden from our eyes, and we reveal it gradually as we progress. Spending many hours studying the map in the editor loses all of that.

I'm sure that even such specific maps have their admirers, but I'm definitely not one of them, and in the future I will steer clear of this author's maps.

UPD. Setting aside emotions, I'll still add some information about the Walkthrough itself. As already mentioned, the first non-obvious but very important task on this map is capturing the Dungeon no later than 1.2.6. The task is difficult but doable. Moreover, if you manage to find a couple of secrets hidden by the author, under certain conditions you can even capture the Dungeon on 1.2.1. You can get some small dividends from such an early capture, but such haste doesn't provide a fundamental advantage. During the Walkthrough, I did it on 1.2.6, and that was quite sufficient.

Secondly, I'd like to draw attention to a secondary skill that isn't particularly popular but becomes very important on maps where the player is significantly limited in magic, while the computers have almost a full set of spells. I'm talking about "Eagle Eye." You can level it up on the main hero or dedicate a specially trained hero for this purpose and thus learn spells unavailable to the player. I adapted the heroine named Sanya with the Eagle Eye specialization for this function, and she didn't disappoint. Early on, she learned "Blind" and "Slow," a bit later "Resurrection," and then "Clone" (see pictures below). She also had "Scholar" leveled up, so it wasn't difficult for her to teach the other heroes spells obtained in battles.

Briefly about the Walkthrough itself. On 1.2.6, I captured the Dungeon. Then followed gathering Angels from Griffin Conservatories and capturing mines. At the beginning of month 2, an enemy weakling sailed to my starting resp, which was an extremely fortunate event. Firstly, I was able to obtain a couple of extremely important spells, and secondly, I got a boat, on which one of my heroes sailed to the Blue resp and stole several Djinns from there, which were required to complete quests.

After visiting several Pandora's Boxes and Hut of the Magi, I gathered an impressive army of Angels and Giants and captured a large piece of the Blue resp located nearby. Incidentally, this territory, with two Towers located on it, was hardly ever attacked by enemies afterwards, so essentially I didn't even have to hold it, and it brought in decent income.

Next, the main hero visited the Red Tent and a Hut of the Magi, where he obtained the Boots of Levitation, after which he headed up, from where he began the offensive against the enemies. The following several months were the same kind of heavy struggle for territory as in "A Long Way," but after getting rid of several enemy monsters, like Sir Mullich (see the picture below), it became a bit easier. Finally, by the beginning of month 8, control over the map was practically established (except for a few Castles that were still inaccessible, and two or three enemy survivors still roaming my territory).

But at the beginning of month 8, an event occurred that is worth mentioning separately. The fact is that around this time, the Orange boss – Torgrim – attacks us on a timer. He has full magic immunity and a huge army of 1000 Phoenixes, 500 Faerie Dragons, and other minor units. Unfortunately, during the Walkthrough I never figured out how to get the Book of Earth at an early stage (later, curiosity got the better of me, and after combing through the map in the editor, I did find this method), so the war with the computers for control of the map was longer and more exhausting than it could have been if I'd had this artifact. Thus, by the time of Torgrim's attack, I couldn't gather an adequate army and had to deal with him using weaklings in several attempts.

First, using a few tricksters (in the video, the first and a couple of the last ones), all the Faerie Dragons were eliminated, and then with another trickster, the large Scorpid tower was zeroed out. He only had 1000 Phoenixes and a few Red Dragons left. My first thought was to find a map tile with terrain that had a "pocket" unreachable by two-hex units, into which I could place Harpies. But I'm not well-versed in programs that help with this, so I didn't overthink it and chose a simpler method – the "Chinese" siege. When Torgrim settled in one of the underground Dungeons, Christian with Expert Ballistics and 1.5K Harpies was sent to assault. Taking advantage of the computer's strange behavior during a "Chinese" siege, Christian reduced Torgrim's army to about two dozen Phoenixes, then surrendered. Sanya then took over, finishing him off the next day, learning the "Clone" spell in the process.

After that, several enemy heroes that had avoided the purge and were still wandering around the captured territories were hunted down. Then the main hero paid a visit to Mutare, after which began that very multi-month quest grind necessary for learning the "Summon Boat" spell.

When I sailed to previously inaccessible locations to deal with the remaining enemies, I simply ignored the Book of Earth on principle. The quests were already tiring enough, and besides, there was no real point in it anymore – shortening the Walkthrough by a month or two wasn't critical.

After that, all that remains is to dig up the Grail, the location of which on this map also seems to me not entirely successful. The fact is that you inevitably have to study Minchev's complex maps in detail in the editor. But as a result of studying the map in the editor, the Grail's location becomes immediately known to us; consequently, there's no longer any need to visit the Obelisks. I, however, visited all the Obelisks anyway, even though without the Book of Earth this significantly lengthened my Walkthrough. Thus, the map was completed only by 17.2.3.

I can understand such a reaction, although I personally like this author's maps (with some reservations). But for the sake of seeing how it is, I think that fans of all sorts of unconventional things in Heroes 3 should at least play one of Minchev's later maps. Without the Book of Earth, I can imagine how difficult the gameplay is in Alexandretta.

Added after 11 minutes
By the way, did you take the Eagle Eye skill?

No, Sanya fulfilled this function for me. She had the "Eagle Eye" specialization, so she learned everything. Starting with Slow and Blind at the very beginning, when some noob showed up at my base, and up to Clone, Resurrection, Prayer, and other useful spells towards the end. She also had expert Literacy. Thanks to this, the spellbook of my Tazar looked quite impressive.

By the way, does anyone know if Eagle Eye only allows you to learn the spells used by the enemy hero, or can it also be used to learn spells cast by Djinns? I'm too lazy to check myself.

Only hero spells, with units moving across the map.

I tried taking on a Dungeon on level 126, but it didn't quite work out. However, during the process, I figured out how to quickly obtain the Earth Book. Let's just say that it requires performing some very unusual actions that I haven't encountered anywhere else. If the spoiler function worked properly, I would explain how to do it right now.

In my case, you can also try it on version 1.2.5, but there's not much point. The amount of resources needed to unlock the pillar before the blue tent is accumulated by version 1.2.2. You can also beat Pandora on version 1.2.4, but there won't be enough troops left to capture the castle. Although, theoretically, I suppose it's possible. But I repeat, there's no point in capturing the Dungeon before version 1.2.6. The earlier you capture this castle, the higher the losses will be, and primarily in arbalests, a certain number of which we will need later.
UPD I tested the theory about capturing the Dungeon on version 1.2.4. It's possible, but it's a huge hassle and the losses are too great. The only plus is the ability to take the lumber mill on version 1.2.5 and have time to build a market or tavern in the Dungeon by version 1.2.6. So, you can probably get some minimal benefit from this.

With persistence worthy of a better cause, I finally tested the gloves and quick battle bug variant on the live servers.
Interesting timings: the Barbarian village is cleared on day 132, and the right garrison on day 143 – this allows you to capture both swamp castles and the Serpent and Hive dwellings by day 147, and then calmly generate Serpent units from 3 castles. In my opinion, this is the only option that allows you to accumulate 5k+ Serpents by the 5th month, although it's not certain that this will be enough, but it's not that interesting to watch further.
I got tired of randomizing the necessary setups, but at least I was in the mood to experiment – although, of course, it's not the most enjoyable thing.
I learned a few new things – I'll describe them below.
During the random weeks, I found some tricks, like how to break cycles, but some of them didn't stick in my memory because I was also listening to and absorbing an audiobook.
Of what I remembered: within the same cyclic save, restarting the scenario helps – and the first few loads usually give a new result. Also, saves of the type "autosave" in the root, "daily autosave" in a folder, and a specific save – these are different saves and may have different behavior regarding cycling. Again, you need to try different options with the executables – both HD+ with SoD SP, and a clean SoD and HD with the "HD+" checkbox disabled – also have different behavior, and a save from one version, loaded into another, sometimes does what is needed. But sometimes even this doesn't help, and the only way to replay the last 1-2 days is almost the only way – by the way, it seems that at least one battle should be fought so that a different chain begins.

From a walkthrough perspective, some moments turned out to be unexpected.
1) It seemed that 200% and the Wood/Stone bonus were the biggest problems. But the most effective start is for the gold bonus. I doubt the author did this intentionally, but with the resource bonus, there is not enough space to capture the castle on day 116, and losing a day prevents you from including a Silo resource in the build order. As a result, even the Wood/Stone bonus loses out on resources by the 3rd week compared to the gold bonus. But this is a minor issue; much more critical is the fact that it is simply impossible to buy a 2nd hero on the 1st week. There is simply not enough of that extra 500 gold from the village.
2) With the quick battle bug, it is sometimes possible to save Serpents. For example, 4 Serpents + a Bull + a Ballista are enough for Hydras – the Hydra, for some reason, doesn't always hit the Ballista at close range, and only 1 Serpent died when clearing Behemoths. And yes, this helped a lot.
3) Archers are not needed at all. The main stack is Wyverns, then Serpents and Gorgons in the future. There are few Lizards, and they serve more as meat shields than damage dealers. Potentially, you could build Cyclops, but there are clearly problems with gold in the future. Therefore, I would take, unexpectedly, Ballistics – just for the final battle to break through with Bulls.
4) Some difficult battles turn out not to require morale. From the second week, there were many difficult battles, and all of them involved Gnolls – and the first losses of these Gnolls were only on day 132 – when taking the Barbarian village (-8 Gnolls and 3 Lizards). And before that, either clever closing or the fear of retaliation can solve the problem well.
5) Each defense of a Tazar is incredibly valuable. Usually, defense is not highly valued. But specifically here, the key timing is clearing the right garrison, where all the stacks are dangerous, but 500 upgraded Lizards are especially so. And the difference between a 20th-level Tazar defense and a 17th-level defense is the difference between -25 attack/defense or -28, that is, +25% damage! This is very significant, and to upgrade Tazar, I scraped together +3 level-up bonuses on the Monks and even built +1 defense in the swamp. If Cypsela had come to give us a shield with +2 additional defense, it would have been much easier, but she arrives a couple of days later.
6) The entire army with heroes from the tavern turned out to be necessary – not only from the swamp heroes but also from the Barbarian ones. And the availability of Barbarian meat turned out to be very useful. At the same time, I did not dismiss the heroes, and even so, there were not enough chains.
7) The fixed random events from HD+ are broken by SoD_SP, and this is not news, but we are talking about something else – if you bind a spell to a button and use it with a hotkey or use it with the mouse from the spellbook, there will be two different chains of events (morale/resistance, etc.), although, from the point of view of actions in battle, it is all the same. It was also noticed that if you use an intermediate move when placing units on the tactics screen, the chain of fixed random events will also change – I don't know if this is related to SoD_SP.
And yes, the fixed random events for choosing the right events are a cheat – but this is not news.
8) Upgraded Wyverns are awesome! I was thinking about building and generating 5 Hydras, but in these conditions, the Wyvern's poison on thick stacks of the garrison is much more effective. In a situation where there is little damage from your own units due to the small number of troops, poison is simply overpowered.

I can add one more observation from my own experience. For me, having at least one of my heroes with unused moves helped in generating the desired week/month. In such cases, the generation on Lime Island didn't get stuck at all. Although, I don't rule out that this is a placebo effect and something else is actually influencing it.

I decided to gather my forces and complete the Metatax campaign. I already saw the first week of gameplay on Ed's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/VariousHero/videos. Can you tell me what stage of the game I need to complete each day to avoid having to replay due to time constraints? Is there a list of all the mandatory timings available somewhere?

It’s important to play at a fast pace during the first month to smoothly eliminate the Boss (11.93.0) and Wendigo (13.82.0) heroes. After that, you can play at any pace you like. But, of course, it’s more interesting to play quickly.

and the final entry will be somewhere around the 12th month. Well, I lived to see the day when other streamers will learn about the metatasker).

You don't need to open the last column.