Posts from Alcatraz Escape

So let's calculate: given 2222 magogs, we need to reach a level of 194 or lower. The dragon has 5 casts in total. According to the calculations, a plan emerged: 1 Meteor Shower and 4 Infernos. Let's count:

2222-664-341*4 = 2222-2028 = EXACTLY one hundred ninety-four damn magogs!

Hooray, the solution is found, off to battle... Nothing. The magogs simply refuse to be hypnotized... even after I used the dragon to reduce their number to 187, hypnosis still didn't work on them...

I tested the same battle on the first map I found in the editor; there, the magogs are hypnotized (!), but on the other map they aren't (Fuuuuuuuu..). So why did nothing work?

A battle with a rusty dragon against two champions and 400 crusaders. After a couple of attempts, an obvious plan for passing the battle emerged: hypnosis on the riders (this is our control and extra damage), then we make a clone of the dragon and carousel the crusaders. We save the turn with the original dragon, the clone attacks and takes the retaliation, then everyone together hits the crusaders again, and so on in a circle. Everything is great: the crusaders' armor slowly melts from two rusty dragon hits per turn, traitors riding horses—pure bliss. The problem is that around the moment when the crusaders' armor becomes zero and your dragons finally open this tin can and deal significant damage, the mana runs out, but the crusaders are far from finished (only 400 mana total).
The result: no range, no attacking spells, no mana; how to get out of this situation?

Personally, I came up with the following plan: before the battle, I "gifted" the enemy hero a Life Elixir (making the crusaders even tankier). After the crusaders' defense was sufficiently lowered, I saved enough mana for 2 hypnosis recasts (i.e., for 120 turns, guaranteed). I locked the adversary in a single cell with two horses; fortunately, there is an external dwelling on the map created specifically for this purpose, where by destroying the obstacle you can roast through the champion with a dragon. And then "this music will be eternal" according to the following scenario: the first horse hits the adjacent one to take the retaliation (***I don't know why, but my hypnosis doesn't prevent the counterattack at all, but in this case, whatever***), the dragon roasts the previously attacked horse and a crusader along with it. The horse regens HP because the enemy was gifted an elixir, and since its defense is simply off the charts, it will survive two hits per round until the second coming until the crusaders are thinned out and then joyfully die in battle with the horses.

Forts with crystal dragons and your first turn on the ballista obviously suggest that titans should be placed under the gates and dragons should not be let out of the Castle.

Author's hint: "if you hit crystal dragons with titan thunder to the head for a long time, they will scatter"

Titan thunder is a spell if the Titan Set is created... We don't have the Titan Set... But we do have the titan himself—so we'll bash the dragons through the wall until they fall apart, but how to do that? The titan only has 24 shots, which won't even kill 1 out of 10 dragons. I didn't find a cart anywhere, although I looked carefully everywhere.
For me, the most obvious solution was the initial transfer of the Phantom scroll. Now we can produce clones while constantly renewing their arrows. Checked—it works.

Since then, I have assigned the phantom scroll to Kira in my table, but it turned out that this is intended... for the bugged magogs..

Plot dialogues during Kira's movement after her battles suggest that the author intended an immediate clash between Kira and the dragons (while I was wondering if she needed this scroll or if a cart should be brought from the mainland..)

The Sphere of Vulnerability doesn't work; protection against three attacking spells is absolute for all heroes in cities, and the only artifact that solves the problem completely must belong to another hero.

Let's be honest, without your hints on that famous stream (where I looked for how to handle the magog hypnosis), they can't even take a step, despite the "collective intelligence."

Actually, I had to admit that I lacked knowledge about bugs, various hidden tricks, and so on, and how else would I guess what exactly to do in this battle, if, say, taking that shield there would prevent the enemy hero from casting Haste on the first turn...

In short, I gathered everything I could before I got frustrated, figured out a plan, and wrote it down on a piece of paper: who I know how to save, who I will 100% need in phase 3, and who is not worth saving at all, who can be saved "for free" (As it turned out later, I had no idea what awaited me in phase 3. I saw the heroes, but basically I didn't know anything about it yet, and what seemed like an easy walk turned into a complete disaster, but let the Stablehand forgive me, tired of battles, although he has nothing on the Anti-Mage, but more on that later.)
So, on the 2nd day of the game, I managed to:

1. Get Kira with the Cursed Armor, Phantom Scroll, and Elixir of Life (I still don't know how the auto-battle killed the immortal troll; it was probably a suicide out of desperation). I easily captured the elf mines with Phantom, got mercury, which was immediately exchanged for money.

2. Get Miriel. Getting her to the center was absolutely necessary, regardless of the means, and I had no idea what to do in her battles, so I gave her the Power of the Dragon Father, and the dragons tore the pieces apart. The two easiest battles.

3. Elenwe, another sister without wisdom, but with a very interesting set of skills. I planned her for the very last battle, which means I also need to get her by any means. I knew the first step to victory over the dragons was to transfer the Sniper Bow, but what to do with them next was completely unclear, because they are standing in such a way that one stack remains out of reach of the Berserker. After about 40 minutes of despair, I, out of fatigue, threw another Berserker, approached the same dragon, frankly exposing myself to attack... And I don't know what kind of bug happened, whether it was intended or not, but the dragon killed itself on me, inflicting only 1 damage on me... I immediately repeated this with the second dragon, and then with the rest. Most likely, this is a planned bug, but I don't know how it works and why; I found it by chance. Elenwe's second battle was about moving points so that the dragon would kill a lot but not too much. There are 3 points on the map where you can hide the archmage from the enraged crowd, and to avoid worrying about healing every other round, I also took an Elixir of Life for this battle. As a result, I managed to find a position where the dragons, after killing the last dog, had about 400 units, and after I exposed two of my guardian efreets to them, there were about 100 left. To have enough arrows, I removed all the armor from this hundred and then, using teleportation after a wait, shot 3 at a time until there were so few left that I could safely hit them with a staff at close range. A very tedious battle, and I'm proud that I was able to complete it!

4. Viziriell. The elf herself was the first candidate to sit in the castle for the rest of the time, and I didn't want to mess with the oaks, but I needed the Mana Well from this branch (and as it turned out, it was a damn good decision), so I replaced the peasant with a mage and sent this mage for a run in the park with living trees. The well was obtained, and running away from zombies, despite the reduction in magic cost, I didn't seem to have enough mana... I could, of course, give her a hood, but when I imagined this battle, the desire to fight disappeared.

5. Astriel. Speed ​​cloak, fire wall, closes the monk in the lower left corner, allowing you to observe the mass suicide of knights. It's a little more difficult with the dogs; they need an obstacle from above to be removed, and then you can cycle their squads, running from side to side under prayer, while the walls slowly turn them into a shish kebab.

6. Arwen. I had huge plans for her, as she has wisdom... As it turned out, I messed up, and wisdom without earth magic allowed me to use it very limitedly in the future, but nevertheless, I knew that I needed to win the first battle for fire magic. This was the last elf I planned to drag into the battles of the first phase, so she got both shields (1 for her, 1 for the enemy), and she also didn't get an Elixir of Life. As a result, I racked my brains on how to arrange the force fields to lure that slow griffin... Ugh, how many nerves I would have saved if she had a second speed cloak. As a result, I somehow managed to arrange things so that after luring the griffin to the center of the map, the enemy squads moved into attack, and I locked myself behind a broken tent with 1 HP. The chain lightning did not finish off the ballista, leaving only 13 HP, and I was already ready to replay again, but to my surprise, the Sniper, despite the logs sticking out of his body, still managed to deal those 13 HP to her; I was so happy! The remaining 12 spearmen fell from arrows.

Well, that's all the battles I completed.
The other elves, remembering that the main dungeon is the one in our heads, simply got rid of their unnecessary shackles and went to surrender to the prison guards, tempting them with gold, and possibly not only gold...
This is where the money I exchanged for mercury came in handy. The Guardian found a hat and boarded the ship on the first day (this made it easy to get to the right place on the second day), while the Wanderer ran around the tavern looking for elves celebrating their release, along with the creatures needed for victory.

Of the losses incurred: Galadriel, in order to have time to surrender to the enemy, left the Titan's Hood forever, and one of the elves did not receive the Ring of Speed; in addition, I did not have a second mana well...
But I was free! Finally, I had the opportunity to take revenge on this map, the map that caused me so much PAIN from helplessness, wasted nerves, and time: thanks to Galadriel's escape, I saved a huge amount of resources, which I turned into money for further battles, the Guardian easily reached the hut on the second day without any dancing with horses, the 1-1-3 quest could be ignored! I had a plan to destroy every remaining enemy on the map on the way to victory! I have the Portal of the City, and the Guardian will transport the necessary creatures to the castles; Arwen has wisdom, and she can also learn it, although she is not the strongest elf, she can LOSE battles, just like the Guardian; the main thing is to inflict maximum damage and not lose key creatures.
Oh, I remember that wonderful feeling when I stopped banging my head against the wall and when I imposed my own rules on this map!
I was sure that I was just a little bit away from victory, literally a half-hour or an hour of gameplay.
How wrong I was... The Stablehand was grinning ahead, some kind of indestructible armored dog-bastard was sitting in the Torture Chamber, and somewhere far away, the Anti-Mage was quietly laughing at my pathetic attempts.