Posts from The Necromancer's Path.

Yes, that's exactly how it is. The script only checks the heroes available to the player within the map. A mod that unlocks Campaign heroes has already appeared in the map's history twice. But the first time was more amusing: the player simply added a bunch of undead to Markel's army and blamed me for it.

Added 1 minute ago

IchGViji, by the way, how are you doing? I remember you were trying to play through my maps.

Before I got sick, I was trying to play through "Price of Love," but Ter-Gelat was crushing me, and it was probably because I didn't get the spell and the bald hero, and the chance of getting a spell for the dwarf is very low, unfortunately, so a mistake in the first month has a high price, there's no mentor, and there's no time to mentor anyway in the first month).
But I had more success with "Path of the Necromancer," I managed to defeat Giovanni 4 times, Benedict 2 times, and the Orc 2 times.
Giovanni is constantly harassing Arantir, he keeps coming and coming, after 3 days, if the blue hero doesn't scare him, he comes back to my territory after each defeat.
This is all Arantir's karma for his invasion of Grimheim, which left that accursed Ter-Gelat there. What was the argument with Kirdan that started a whole invasion. Either Kirdan said something completely absurd, or Arantir was just not in the mood that day, which is why he started this mess.
I stopped at the point where Giovanni is getting stronger - I haven't had a chance to fight him yet.

Well, good luck! This lore moment will be described in the finale of Grimheim's Rock.

So, the Necromancer's path turned out to be completed. The first month was crucial to properly prepare for the visit of our old acquaintance, Giovanni. The first encounter with him was not easy. Then the battles with him became easier, and I already thought that he would become a minor nuisance on the map for me, but then he performed a ritual and significantly increased his stats - if Arantir knew the details of this ritual, maybe the march to the Duchy of the Bull would have ended faster). It was possible to withstand the encounter with the enhanced Giovanni, and in principle, Benedict then defeated him once, and then he just started hanging out only on his territory. At the beginning of the game, Giovanni visited me quite often, but after two encounters with his enhanced version, he decided to curb his temper and spent more time on his lands. Of the Blue Knight's enemies, Benedict turned out to be tolerable; I am even grateful to him, he helped me so many times - he brought me the Tome of Summoning, killed Giovanni for me once, and teleported to the Orcish city. I hope Arantir, at least, did not turn him into a zombie for his merits. The Orc, on the other hand, was quite unpleasant, and, in my opinion, the main difficulty of the map, especially if you try to fight him in his own city with hordes of Cyclops. And yes, despite the concerns expressed in the patch announcement that the Blue Knight might not clear the map well, I did not notice this; by the time I arrived, almost all of his territory already contained a negligible number of neutrals. Vessel did not cause much trouble. Special respect for the amazing battle arena. Bertrand turned out to be more difficult - insane combat stats, leadership, overpowered knights, who are more like Tier 7 than Tier 6 - in short, not an easy hero. Additional quests, despite being optional, turned out to be very useful and appropriate on this map. There is a piece of the map inaccessible to the player, with a giant crystal and undead worshipping it - is this an Easter egg? And here is what, in my opinion, allowed Arantir to make this successful campaign to the Duchy of the Bull - it is, as strange as it may sound, well-coordinated teamwork. As the Lich wisely said in one of the additional quests (not quoting, from memory) - even if Arantir is great in himself, he must also be a good mentor, and he must be accompanied by worthy students. Well, Arantir really turned out to be a worthy mentor, and each of his students played a significant role, thereby bringing the success of the Chosen One of Ash closer. Giovanni has problems with this. Kaspar managed to get the cloak and skull from the Ghostly Grove before Giovanni or any of his minions could, and also protected our brave vampire, Nar-Shein, while Arantir broke through the Imperial legions. Zoltan performed various small tasks, and also managed to distract Kagra from the Orcish city so that Arantir could take it peacefully. Ravenna went to the witches to bind Giovanni's forces during the final stage of the campaign for the Dragon Scrolls. And Naadir, who almost constantly followed Arantir, was able to defeat Bertrand. Teamwork is everything! It is not surprising that with such a team, Giovanni might be cornered in the future and forced to flee. Regarding the plot - in a conversation with Samuel, Arantir mentions Anastasia - is this the same Anastasia from the Griffin clan that we know from Heroes 6? It will most likely be revealed almost at the end of the story, but the motives of Elissar are interesting - what prompted her to start doing what she is doing. Her plan is very radical, in my opinion. And of course, I hope that the next scenario will reveal the backstory of Giovanni - his return, how he established contacts with the witches of the Sabbath... Bertrand, by the way, mentioned that he was expecting a minor vampire, not Lord Arantir - this gave me the idea that before Arantir, Giovanni also waged some kind of war with the Imperials, or at least the relations between them were very tense. It is only unclear who started the conflict between these two sides. And in the starting video, Giovanni kills an Imperial scout, and our brave vampire cannot be accused of sympathy for Arantir. Well, and special respect for the interesting author's presentation of the plot. Thank you again for this interesting scenario!

Perhaps this is now the best review of my maps.

In the lore, we have no proof of the death of Anastasia, let alone Svetlana. So, it's about her. I thought that if such a powerful necromancer is still somewhere out there, either on her own or in the spirit world, then Aranthir, as Ascha's chosen one, could try to bring her to his side.

Giovanni is an important character in the next map. His plans are quite grand and extend beyond Erathia and the Duchy of the Bull. Even after being defeated by Aranthir and forced to flee, our brave vampire doesn't lose his grip.

The closed mini-zones are Easter eggs, yes.

Thank you for the walkthrough.

Sorry to bother you, but I encountered a problem while playing through the map. The Death Harbingers don't have the "Touch of Death" ability. At first, I thought it was disabled because it was too overpowered, but I couldn't find any mention of this in your main map description. Perhaps it needs to be "earned" through a quest, or maybe it's just a bug on my end, but I felt obligated to report it here. I'd like to see your response, and if it's not a bug but a feature, please add a comment at the very beginning of the post so that newbies like me don't have to search through all 16 pages.

Feature. The Death Touch ability allowed for exploiting Wessel's combat script. This is not mentioned in the map description, but there is the following line in the list of changes: "The abilities of royal griffons have been changed for authorial reasons." This answers the question.

And what abilities do the Messengers get in return? Because this is one of the strongest assets of the undead faction, and I'd like to know what they get in exchange (I just checked the map code. It looks like they now have the FEAR ability. Do they now scare enemies instead?). (Correction for others: Yes, they now scare enemies instead).

Fear attack, similar to that of Nightmares.

Good evening. Just for my understanding, is this not the unit that was originally intended for the map? There were 40 of them in the garrison before the Duchy itself, and I managed to defeat them with Summoning and 40 minutes of archer attacks, but what should I do now? 😀

What should I do? 😀

Remove all maps from the Maps folder temporarily. I assume you downloaded several map mods (specifically, this creature is from the "Price of Loyalty" scenario) and put them all in the Maps folder, which caused this conflict.

Yeah, killing 40 Tashlaks definitely wasn't very fun. But that explains why the Fortress faction has so much "meat."

Otherwise, the user above is absolutely right: maps like these should be placed in the Maps folder, all by themselves.

The scenario is really tough, especially the final boss on the mountain. He has a general vampirism ability and some debuffs, like a counter-spell or something similar that prevents raising the dead! It's like a blacklist. Giovanni is a real pain; he didn't lock him up, and I managed to defeat the final boss and the zombie knight, but I was one turn short. The mission was completed the next morning, but I had spent so much time on this boss. I had to revert, lock up Giovanni with a secondary character. As a result, it took 120 days on the hero, and I got 2772 points, but I had to spend about a day on the scenario, thankfully it was a weekend. Thanks for the map; a brief walkthrough with more hints for the quests would be helpful.

Congratulations on successfully overcoming the challenge!

How do you even beat it in version 2.2...? I'm already doing everything perfectly, not a single extra tile, but I only manage to reach level 15, while Giovanni is at 21-22, and with his stats, he just destroys me (even if I win, I'm left with 5 skeletons, ugh...). I saw how someone beat it with the remix, using the Ghost Box, but Giovanni was using Subjugate (easy). Now, there's the Pike, which completely destroys that Ghost Box... Well, it's tough, they really piled on the stats.

Check out Nixon's walkthrough. There, Giovanni also has sharpened pikes. And, by the way, Nixon's version is more complex than the current one.