Posts from The veil is lifted. Auto-translated

Greetings) I've gotten to another work by this author and want to share my impressions) The map was a hit, the design is good, there are a few annoying moments, but in my understanding that's not the map's fault but rather a gameplay feature, well, let's go through everything in more detail...

Start — Duncan and Freyda. Logically and for tempo (which I'm not good at), you'd want to take the logistician, but naturally the choice fell on Freyda, because she's imba, and her starting build of Attack/Light is more to my liking than Duncan's Attack/Defense. As for gameplay specifics, only the first month is hard, maybe a month and a half, and then everything goes smoothly.

- On the first week, day 7, we take the castle in the bottom-left corner, and right there we can defend against all sorts of our offenders)

pretty solid specialist))
Starting battles:

Freyda vs Valery

Freyda vs Varens

Freyda vs Andrias

- then later on, we try our best not to give up that castle, although I didn't manage it too well, but oh well. The main goal in my head was to keep Duncan alive, so I tried to build up the main castle's strength as much as possible so that various attackers wouldn't even think about attacking. Though, for example, Lorenzo in an open field would have beaten Duncan on "Normal" difficulty, but he didn't rush the castle, which I took advantage of for a while while running around with Freyda.

- after some time they take the castle, but the starting castle and Duncan are safe.
And right away, something I didn't like! What's the point of this fort if you can't upgrade horses in it?


- the mines are an interesting concept, even though it's unusual and you have to leave an army there, but overall it's quite interesting and cool, I liked it.

Since I don't like rushing, I kind of forgot that we have a timing to find the Priest. Fortunately, there's a hint in the quest description itself, though I did cheat a bit and went a different way than everyone else (I assume). But thankfully the console politely reminded me, like "hey buddy, hurry up," so I blindly sailed from that location in the screenshot to the approximate spot where the Priest should be.


Well, good thing I guessed right. Though I look at the outpost, and there's a hero behind it. The army I had (the one in the screenshot at the fort) seemed like enough, but once the battle started, I realized I didn't have enough strength. Oh well, there happened to be a castle nearby that was waiting for us to capture it, and above the castle past the garrison there's a good spot to level up, which is exactly what I did. With about 5-6 days left, I went in stronger to break through to the Priest. Cutscene, voiced dialogues — seems like a small thing but it's nice. Though I don't have a mod to boost their volume, so they were quite quiet for me. And the best part, in my opinion, is the archer's set, which I happily used for the whole game)

Freyda vs Lorenzo (for the Priest)

- after freeing the Priest, we get a quest to capture Waterway, and there's no time limit this time, so off we go. We make lots of trainers (one for each castle), one runner, and Duncan can get some levels too) Before that, we need to take back what was taken from us, namely the castle in the bottom-left corner, clear out all the cockroaches, and repaint everything. At this stage, there were no problems overall.



Let's go through the sides a bit, and what generally pleased me and stuck in my memory


additional creatures like yetis and black knights — not new, but they're there and that's good, beautiful arenas

- the quest with the seer (witch's hut) who unlocks portals for us, first a two-way one, then the one near the castle in the north (though caravans were already passing through that portal before its deactivation)
Nothing hard — kill the mage and bring the Tome of Summoning. The Tome of Summoning is guarded by phoenixes, but to get back, I went to the gold mine, Town Portal'd to town, cleared out all the unwanted guests, then killed the mage. I could have done it smarter — just leave the Tome of Summoning to the cockroach instead of going back myself, but no big deal... She also offers to unlock the portal near the city (one-way) for 15 crystals — won't hurt, we take it (though crystals are a pretty valuable resource since you can't build warehouses, oh you author, well done, you even thought of that)

Freyda vs Fazim

- this isn't even a quest, let's call it a SCOUNDREL ZEALOT who's chopping down a tree (near the southwestern castle). I'm thinking, what a setup, well, nothing terrible, but still

- clear the zones, grab the bag — simple quests, but why don't they give anything for them? I thought after clearing 8 stacks, the red guys would stop randomly spawning on the map, but no, they kept spawning the whole game. But for that, we have Duncan who put out everything he saw, because those jerks were interfering with troop logistics))

Freyda vs Lorenzo (when he sails toward us)

Freyda vs Groll

And the finale — I'll compare it to Echo of the Void, since that was the first map I played by this author. To put it mildly, it was easy. Why? Well, if autobattle wins almost without losses, then something is clearly wrong. Remembering that annoying Naadir with Ishkibal, this is a light stroll. And leveling the main heroes into the studio, plus a replay

For Waterway





Another downside I ran into — the first time I fought, the heroes teleported and the hourglass got stuck. I thought I was done playing, but it turned out that griffins that spawned in a bad spot were blocking the final cutscene. I killed them, then attacked the castle, and everything was fine.


This is in the nitpicking category but it's worth mentioning — did I just get lucky, or did RESURRECTION really only appear in one castle, the one in the northwest? Because those resurrections with regeneration really drag out the time, but oh well. Though the vampire lady was almost in the second castle.

To sum it up: Great map, design, concept, quests, voiced cutscenes, but the final boss needs to be stronger) Now "Ambassador" is next in line.

p.s. It was also funny watching heroes with different names but identical icons, like Glen-Klaus, Dougal-Gear

Continue files

I reached the first level. I played through it again. It would be good to make it more challenging. There are many battles, even on Grand, without any losses, so it's not very engaging (which is bad – there's no challenge).

I completed this scenario on Hero difficulty.

Walkthrough

At the start, we have two heroes of level 12: Frida and Duncan. I decided to play as Frida, as she has Light magic and better stats. The neutrals are strong, but with the right tactics, they can be defeated with almost no losses. At the end of the first week, I reached the enemy town (Millfield), but I didn't take it because Valeria was too strong there. In the second week, Varens arrived (medium difficulty), and I distracted him once with a secondary hero, after which he mostly stayed near Millfield. Duncan stayed in the castle, and Frida fought the neutrals (it's interesting that the script regularly generates new units). On the 24th day, I defeated the red outpost without losses. Here, I remembered that the main task was to find the monastery within two months. I couldn't figure out where it was, but I scouted the map (by loading saved games) and figured it out. On the 31st day, I defeated Varens in the field (losses: 3 archers, 1 knight, and 1 angel), and the next day, I defeated Valeria in Millfield (losses: 137 archers , 22 pikemen, 2 knights). After that, Frida went to the monastery, but a strong Andreas arrived through the portal, so I distracted him with heroes from the tavern so that he wouldn't attack Duncan in the castle. Frida's skills: Light, Offense, Darkness, Defense, Logistics. On the 45th day, Frida reached Lorenzo, who was guarding the monastery. She arrived there with an army... not a very good one, to be honest. Lorenzo seems weak, but he has a combat script that constantly summons demon units. Even after I killed all his real units, the battle didn't end, and Lorenzo continued to summon! And only after destroying all the demons, it was announced that Lorenzo had fled. Losses in this battle: 232 peasants, 68 archers, 83 pikemen, 19 cavalry, 2 angels. I decided to return home to get an army from Duncan, but it turned out to be not so easy, as Andreas was stronger than Frida and wouldn't let her go to Forest (the starting town). In the end, I managed to distract Andreas, Frida reached the outpost and stopped there, but then Varens appeared from the portal with a large army and attacked Frida. It's very important that the battle was actually in the castle (outpost), and this allowed me to defeat Varens with almost no losses. Then Frida retook Millfield, but Andreas approached the town. He didn't attack Frida in the castle, but in the field, Frida would have probably lost. For about two weeks, I just waited, and then Duncan brought reinforcements from Forest, and Frida easily defeated Andreas. At this point, the strong enemies were over (Frida is the strongest in the tavern). Enemy heroes sometimes appear from the portal, but Duncan can control the roads to both Forest and Millfield. I visited the mentor (removed Logistics, took trophies). I defeated the neutral mage Fazim (autobattle), which allowed me to get the Tome of Light. Before this, I played without resurrection (and I couldn't find Vampirism throughout the game). The task of destroying hidden demon units was automatically completed at the beginning of the 12th week. I think that the last unit was killed by one of the enemy heroes. Then I captured the third town (Greystone), went to the dungeon, got the key, defeated Grol without losses, and cleared the garrison. I defeated the final demon (Fernando) in an autobattle. The scenario was completed in 139 days.

I liked the scenario; it has interesting scripts (the combat script of Lorenzo, the appearance of new units on the map, and the capture of unguarded mines were the most memorable), an excellent plot and cutscenes, and interesting battles. Another advantage of the scenario is that it can be completed in many different ways. After the game, I read the comments with the walkthrough and was surprised that the events unfolded very differently for me. It's strange that Lorenzo didn't appear for me a second time (the comments mention another battle with him, in which he summons undead?). This map turned out to be easier for me than the "Ambassador" scenario, but there was still a lot to think about.
Thank you very much for the map!

Good day!

I just finished a map in 111 days with a hero.

However, I unintentionally created a difficulty for myself...

Basically, I didn't delete a couple of previous maps, including "Echo of the Void" and "Sacred Tree," and because of the "Sacred Tree," I encountered a crash due to a stack where many people had problems, but that's not the main issue...

The problem was with the Light elementals instead of Adepts. I think it was on the "Echo of the Void" map (I might be wrong), but if I played as them there and it was great, here they are against you and ruin all the strategies and the gameplay in general.

It was really tough, especially at the beginning of the map; even machines didn't help much because you can't really play through the slope. The Light elementals have the ability "Child of Light."

In conclusion, the map is awesome; huge thanks to the author!

P.S. Special thanks for the voice acting in the videos; that's something that's often missing.

Pavlinchick, the light elementals in your game are from my "Sacred Tree" map. To remove them from the game, as well as other creatures, delete the pak file associated with the map, as described in the readme file.

IchGViji, yes, thank you)

I reread the readme file and started replaying the map))

Added after 9 hours 7 minutes

I replayed the map, as intended - without mods, and completed it in 94 days with a hero, which was easier, maybe because I already knew where to go and approximately how much time it would take.

But even so, it was sometimes difficult...

In the first playthrough, I didn't immediately rush to attack the neighboring Castle because I couldn't defeat the Haven faction, and as it turned out, this was partly the right decision, because the AI fully built its Castle, and I simply didn't have the resources for it in the second playthrough of the map.

So, thank you again, RedHeavenHero)

Finally completed it with a hero. On the 9th attempt, only on the last Walkthrough did I manage to reach the priest, and with a decent army to boot. In all other attempts, I was just terribly suffocated at the start, or didn't make it to the priest in time.
Having gained experience, I decided to finally close this gestalt.
The winning Walkthrough took as many as 56 saves!!!
Completed it in 161 days, received an adept. Symbolic, since the mission objective is to save the adept.
I liked that the author used cut dialogue voice-overs in the 2nd clip; I've definitely never heard those in the Campaigns, and I liked the first fight with Lorenzo.
A slight bad aftertaste remained from the final part; the last battle ended in a couple of minutes. The demons turned out to be really weak and without combat scripts, and the second fight with Lorenzo also fell short—he summoned very little undead: 14 vampires, 300 skeleton archers; my level 29 hero certainly didn't feel that.
I think the author got tired of finishing the map, which is why the finale turned out so simple, or perhaps they originally planned a brutal start and a relaxing finale.
Despite all this, the scenario is very high quality and deservedly considered a classic of fan scenarios, especially for its time (13 years ago).