Posts from Echoes of the Void

After deleting or making other changes to the mod configuration, you need to start the game from the beginning; old save files will not work properly.

I started deleting the mods, there were 6 of them, one by one. Without the data mod, the game wouldn't launch, and the music and text would disappear. Without the other mods, it would still freeze after saving. I guess I need to restart the battle.

Added 1 minute ago
I deleted the mods, and it still didn't work.

Don't get confused. The data folder should contain a maximum of 7 files:
a2p1-data.pak
a2p1-texts.pak
data.pak
GEmaps.pak
sound.pak
soundsfx.pak
texts.pak

These are not mods, but the game's database, so you shouldn't delete them.

The UserMods, UserCampaigns, and Maps folders should be empty, except for the map you are currently playing (in this case, VoidEcho.h5m). Because maps can contain mods, and authors don't always mention this.

And as Ment correctly pointed out, in this case, you need to start the map from the beginning, because the influence of the mod from the save often doesn't disappear when the mod is deleted.

I've started playing as the Hero. I'm currently in the 3rd month. My impressions are positive, and very much so!

Vittorio is not necessary at all, although I had to replay a few times, I had slightly forgotten how to play as humans.
Alaric has an excellent ability - a random Charge on units. And he starts to become very effective very quickly!

You need to hire 2 heroes at the very beginning - for the army. Dugald is highly desirable because of the archers and the wagon.

We develop Alaric into a classic priest - light (already available), machines (ballista and wagon - that's what we need), defense, magic, and most importantly - education. We need to get this skill as soon as possible.

You can survive if:
1) You take the first two plague villages in the very first week! This gives you free militia and experience, and the Necromancer clearly has a smaller army.
2) Don't build improvements, no matter how much you want to upgrade the archers. Focus on building up the walls and the tower as much as possible.

Then, at least in my case, the Necromancer only came in the third week, and he was defeated relatively easily.

On the 4th week of the 4th month, I finished off the last Necromancer, thus eliminating all active AI players. Screenshots of the hero and army are attached. I played all the important battles only with Alaric, and Light was quite sufficient, although the altars still hint at Darkness and Summoning. But that's not a problem...
I also dealt with the mages without any problems, buying up the Necromancer upgrade to 88 Phantom Dragons. I also wandered around the map a bit, looking for the Dragon and Necromancer sets. I didn't find or buy the Staff of the Underworld and the Dragon Scale Armor. Was that intentional?

As a result, when I reached Naadir, he had ~150 Phantom Dragons and other hordes of undead. I had to change my strategy a bit and buy the upgrade, mercilessly converting all my own troops into undead. In the end, Naadir is a challenging but manageable fight - antimagic on the troops, the Ring of Sin, Divine Retribution, and Holy Word work wonders. But then, unfortunately, I hit a snag.

After the battle, I had 100+ dragons left, which I managed to save thanks to a strong defense, +7 protection from the Sphinx, and relentless vigilance (thanks, Sir Thomas), 20 Phantoms, and a few Zombies. I was happy.

But I shouldn't have been.
The battle starts with a Shadow who has TRIPLE the number of my troops! I assume the calculation was as follows: Naadir was supposed to be defeated in a hardcore way, leaving only one and a half Paladins. And then a cowboy duel, supported by the fact that the clone has no Charge. But if the troops are preserved, it is impossible to defeat him.
There is no save before the cutscene after defeating Naadir, so you can't get rid of the troops. This can be understood: it's closing a loophole that existed in "Armageddon's Blade".

~
Overall impressions of the map - I'm delighted. Huge thanks to the author.

I haven't played in a long time, saving every day and every week. It reminded me of Heroes 3, where the first and second weeks are crucial. And more than ever, you realize the value of Peasants and Militia. It's not just a beer belly, but also +1 gold. Especially when Ellaina comes to the tavern, which doubles the income. Thanks to her, I was able to build a Tower and a Stronghold in the shortest possible time.

Special effects, arenas, cutscenes, and scripts are amazing. The battle with Naadir is a masterpiece in itself - there are custom mines on the battlefield. I'm going to study how to create Entangling Roots on the battlefield through the map.

UPD

Decided to replay. And that's when things got really tough. It seems that a lot here depends on random chance. Sometimes, Ishkabal appears as early as week 1, regardless of the number of villages saved. Well, Ishkabal/demons/Raven – that's still manageable. They can be defeated with turrets.

But at the end of week 4, a cheerful and energetic Sorgall showed up with 6 Shadow Dragons and, despite having a castle with a built turret and Alaric at level 14, he defeated me. And that's despite the fact that Alaric had well-developed defense, evasion, and reflection. And he had excellent logistics – he was running around the map, leveling up, and was already gathering demons to kill Sir Thomas, and then this happened=(

At the same time, my army consisted of 100+ archers, 60 pikemen, and 300 militia. It was a disappointing outcome.

So, I'll expand the list of suggestions.

1) A refuge for secondary heroes. It's VERY necessary. If you're stuck in a castle, which you often have to do, the AI hunts down secondary heroes and eliminates them. And they are essential – for gathering resources, managing the treasury/training troops, and other important tasks. To prevent players from avoiding playing as Alaric, you could prevent him from entering the refuge.

2) Delay the appearance of the Necromancer. His magic negates all efforts to build up an army. This is what happened to me.

3) Altars with Light magic are also very needed.

4) The Seer. It would be good if, after the dialogue with him, it was possible to postpone receiving the bonus. Often, it is more convenient to visit him with a secondary hero, and then have Alaric come and receive the coveted bonus to spell power. Currently, this is not possible: if you close the dialogue without choosing anything, he gets offended and doesn't give anyone any more bonuses.

5) Necropolises. It would be better to convert them into human cities after capturing them, so that the player is not tempted to convert troops from all castles into undead, which greatly simplifies the game and is not canonical. Again, it's no coincidence that the video mentions breaking up parks on the site of bone pillars. And an army is desperately needed, so let it be a normal, human army. Otherwise, the player is tempted, and then receives a triple dose of trouble from the Shadow Lord – and the whole game is ruined. And there is no information in advance warning about this on the map.

6) Regarding demon cities... maybe they should be dramatically destroyed? The Inquisition would approve of that.

7) Witch huts. Yes, the skills there are useful. But by the time you get to them, you've already acquired the necessary skills. It would be good if the Seer showed them all, so that his visit would be more useful.

8) Judging by the map, the first thing you're supposed to do is defeat the demon. But how can you defeat him if there are garrisons with imps that drain Alaric's mana before he can speed up his troops/cast Darkness?

UPD 2

I finally finished it, in 202 days (I prolonged it because I went to visit Hottabych). Overall, everything is great, except for the possibility of the Necromancer appearing too early...

I really liked the map; I completed it on the first try and didn't even have to reload. I just had to wait at the beginning for the human castle to have a decent garrison capable of repelling any attack, and for the main hero to have an army that could defeat everyone. After that, I secured the demonic castles and quickly defeated the Necropolis and Dungeon factions. The battle with Naadir made me nervous because of the clouds that stopped the turn and the nasty lich. The final battle wasn't a problem because I simply cast spells more effectively than the AI and had vampirism. It took 166 days, resulting in 89 won and 7 lost battles, and I lost cities 3 times. I played with a purely human army, but I used the demon army to defend territories. I don't know how to attach pictures, or I would have posted a screenshot of the hero.

Greetings, I want to share my impressions of this map.

To keep it brief, at first I thought it wouldn't be anything too complicated overall — a linear scenario, even though the task was to find the cloak. In my head, the goal was to defeat everyone, so I stretched the scenario as much as possible to explore everything and everyone. But how wrong I was to think it would all be easy after seeing the last two battles, at which point I thought this was unbeatable, at least in my setup. But let's take it one step at a time. Let's divide it into a conditional Start (everything before the last two battles) and Finish (everything after)

Alaric is GOOD — what a twist! I'm used to him being a rabid fanatic and mentally unhinged, but here he's a good guy, doing diverse quests, almost a poster boy (conditionally)

1. The opening cutscene, taken from the original and reworked in its own style. Though it was a bit funny to watch "I feel silly in this dress" — you're in armor, come help your hubby) (this isn't a nitpick, just thinking out loud). Also nice to see non-standard heroes, though of course there are no new specialties, but still.



2. The start itself — we have Alaric, supposedly a specialist. Not that it's super cool, but the extra onslaught sometimes helped, even if it didn't trigger as often as I'd like, but still fun. Everything seems fine and there's room to level up, but if not for one thing — in the second week Ishibal starts knocking on our door, and the catch is that until we capture all the Necromancer castles, he'll keep running around. The obstacle challenge is cool, but he caused problems exactly 3 or 4 times, and after that he's a punching bag, even though he has meat, but thankfully he barely casts anything. Although sometimes Ishibal's ability that triggered 2-3 times in a row was annoying


Encounter with Ishibal 1

Encounter with Ishibal 2

Encounter with Ishibal 3

All would be fine, but there are the Horned Demons and the Dungeon, and sometimes there were scenarios where Ishibal shows up and a day later some demon, and that's it — finita la commedia. The Dungeon also came, but didn't cause much trouble, except for a couple of fights with them. But you can also get lucky (if the stars align and all that) — either a demon attacks a Necromancer or vice versa, and we, like true champions, finish off the wounded beast)

3. Overall, the game seemed to have not much interesting, but there are a couple of nuances:

- Cursed dwellings — after each cleansing they give an army, plus completing the quest gives stats, which is nice


- Witch huts with a skill choice, three of them in total (but I used two) — seems like a small thing but pleasant

- Arenas (+2 Attack/Defense) — they don't just give them to us, they offer to play a battle instead, which is also a cool touch, although they could have cranked it to +3 somehow (if that's possible, I don't know)

- "Free 10,000 gold" — inconspicuously hidden in the forest, and of course good that the main character didn't pick it up, otherwise it would've been bad. And I feel sorry for the taraknas, even though there were only 5 singles, but the bastards split into 5 stacks (and Rutger was there too)



- Quest from Colduel (might be spelled wrong) — prove you can do it and I'll teach you. During the dialogue it's clear what he'll give, but I'm curious: does he give only Prime or with Overseer? Because by that point I already had Overseer — the quest isn't hard, go beat up some demons and I'll teach you)

4. Once we're more or less beefed up, we clear the map — I started with the Horned Demons, then the Dungeon, then the undead. Elana into the castle and we start the factory of archers---monks---horses (as resources allow)

5. After the cleanup, we're told to go to the mages' castle, but there's an evil Necromancer there and we need to defeat him. Evil Necromancer, take the stage

Alaric vs Deirdre


He didn't cause any trouble either, then an interesting cutscene...

with imba spirits that no one can hit) but still cool...
Then we're given the key to the red border guard, and the sphinx is also opened. He's not simple here either and offers diverse rewards. Since (at that moment) I didn't have Darkness, I thought Mass Slow would be a good choice, but I didn't know what was coming in the finale...
For most of the game, Alaric looked like this


Yes yes, Chaos)) I thought I'd take it for fun, let it be, who knows what awaits us next...

Moving on to the Finale... so the path is opened, and we're going to grab the cloak and finish the game... wait, what's this castle hiding over here

And this will be the finale? Well, something like that (but then it dawned on me it's not for that)

A pretty path, oh cool, and here's the cloak...


And then bam — surprise motherfucker... this guy meets us, and the arena is awesome (though annoying, but awesome)


Yes yes, those traps are not props, which was certainly annoying. The tactic against this guy isn't complicated overall — in my case, I combined the army with demons and took horned demons to drain the guy's mana, and no matter what, he periodically resurrects Ishibal (lich), the main thing is to kill him as fast as possible so he doesn't have time to do nasty stuff, and Naadir will cast a bit later, after the pendant steals our mana, though it's all nonsense. It's a shame that from the start of the battle the liches move first and wreck the catapult, obviously it's by design...
Overall, after beating him without issues, we get another cutscene, where Beatrice is no longer Beatrice, but the screenshot will come later — I'll explain why...

Alaric vs Naadir

After the cutscene, we meet our own shadow, and I wonder if it's intended or a bug that the human army is mirrored in numbers, while the demon army is about three times higher? And I'm like, here we go, looks like I need Darkness, which is exactly what I did...


Cutscene where Biara gets exposed





And in the end, here's Alaric for the finale




But then I ran into a problem that I created myself — those demonic HORSES that burn everything to hell. After replaying a couple of times, gritting my teeth, I finally beat him. Though this arena — as a concept it's cool, but gameplay-wise it's an eyesore. And the mirrored hero is supposedly a mirror, but why does he have all spells in his book?))


Usually people write something like "easy" here

don't remember if this fight was before or after the respec

The Final Final) (the one from the screenshot above)

Conclusion. I liked the map, even though I wasn't in a hurry — everything was good, and I like the author's style overall. I'll gladly play more maps by this author)
Screenshots and replays attached)

Continue with the files:

This map was significantly nerfed by Red Haven compared to the release version. It used to be very difficult because the enemies fought each other less and were simply stronger. Especially the Dark Elf, who usually defeated the player.

Alaric is here before he came under the influence of Biara. Or rather, this is the beginning of that influence... He wasn't always a psychopath.

In the battle with the Shadow, everything is correct. The troops of all factions except Haven are multiplied.

It's been a long time since we've seen Red Haven.

“Last activity: Today 08:47” Although... Maybe he's still with us.

Red Haven seriously nerfed this map compared to the release version. It used to be very difficult. Because the enemies fought each other less and were simply stronger. Especially the Dark Elf, who usually defeated the player.

Alaric is here before he came under the influence of Biara. Or rather, this is the beginning of that influence... He wasn't always a psychopath.

In the battle with the Shadow, everything is correct. The troops of all factions except Haven are multiplied.

Ah, it's been a long time since we've seen Red Haven.

Added 55 seconds ago
"Last activity: Today 08:47" Although... Maybe he's still with us. 

Got it, thanks for the info.

The map has an interesting name; I thought it would be a reference to the activities of the Void Mage Sandro, but judging by the comments, it isn't. Also, regarding the geography: when creating the map, was there a reference to the Nelsham Canyon, which was shown to us in Might & Magic Heroes VI?

If the topic is still relevant - I'll say that the scenario is very interesting and beautiful.
I enjoyed the scenario. I downloaded two heroes - Alaric and Vittorio.
Alaric stayed in the castle and defended the main city, and Vittorio... He was just a killing machine. I captured all the Necropolis and Academy castles with him.
However, when I touched Sandro's cloak, the game crashed (it was version 3.0)
It was very frustrating, but it was my fault - I later installed patch 3.1.
Thank you to the author for their work. This scenario inspired me to create my own scenario.

Red Haven seriously nerfed this map compared to the release version. It used to be very difficult. Because the enemies fought each other less and were simply stronger. Especially the Dark Elf, who usually defeated the player.

Alaric is here before he came under the influence of Biara. Or rather, this is the beginning of that influence... He wasn't always a psychopath.

In the battle with the Shadow, everything is correct. The troops of all factions, except for Haven, are multiplied.

Ah, it's been a long time since we've seen Red Haven.

Added 55 seconds ago
"Last activity: Today 08:47" Although... Maybe he's still with us. 

Is it okay that Ishkibal came to me and defeated me on the 3rd week?
Ishkibal is annoying.

The scenario is very interesting in terms of plot and gameplay, but I was disappointed with the ending. The final boss, Naadir, is terribly unbalanced. After the battle, Sandro's cloak cannot be equipped, which prevents you from passing through the mirror with Alaric. This was extremely disappointing, and I hope the map author will listen and understand that doing this is incompetent and disrespectful to players. 🤬🥺

The scenario is very interesting in terms of plot and gameplay, but I was disappointed by the finale. The disgusting, unbalanced Naadir. After the battle, Sandro's cloak cannot be equipped, which prevents you from passing through the mirror with Alaric. This was extremely disappointing, and I hope the map author will listen and understand that doing this is incompetent towards players. 🤬🥺

This is a problem with almost everyone who creates scenarios.
You play, and everything is interesting, challenging, and engaging. But then the finale comes, and the authors go crazy)) they start inventing some kind of monster with completely absurd skills (sometimes completely incompatible with the game), which has nothing to do with the heroes. Heroes are primarily a tactical game, and the ability to play it well depends on a thorough knowledge of the game's mechanics – in the finale, we play a completely different game. Fact.
I'll add. No matter how the author intended to make the walkthrough more difficult, it didn't work. In the first battle (by the way, when will you authors learn to allow saving before the next battles? Is it so difficult? The battles aren't short; do you enjoy replaying them, or does life not give you a break? :)), I lost 13 drakes from the Dark Elf Castle (it would have been funny to use my 30 griffons instead of them) in the first battle because in the second battle, you will face them again, and you simply won't be able to kill this anti-magic horde of 30 units. So, for the second battle, the tactic is simple: stand in defense and berserk, berserk, and berserk – while simultaneously applying slow, haste, weaken, and vulnerability – this way, you can end the second battle without serious losses. The tactic is clear and understandable... the main point of the map is the development, but not the finale.