Posts from Demon invasion.

It's time to retire from playing Heroes...

Come back when you've had enough rest "in retirement." 🎲

I believe that despite the difficulties in your campaigns, you managed to create, without exaggeration, a LEGENDARY campaign that I have replayed many times with different character builds (of course, on the hero), because I don't recognize other difficulty levels. This involved hundreds of hours spent on finding solutions, devising builds ranging from standard to the most unusual, and, however sad it may be, you truly deserve your retirement. We will not forget you. A legend of Heroes V.

I played the third mission (didn't load the newest version). I have to say that the mission has become much more challenging than before, with no possibility of a mindless rush. I allowed myself to focus on leveling up, knowing that the neutrals are completely random. Leveling up went very well, but the stats were very poor – I got a spell on level 11 for the first time. Losing everything, I managed to reach the purple lands by the beginning of the third week. Keegan intercepted me at sea, but he died, leaving behind a 3-spell tunic. I only managed to capture the right city of the purple faction before Krag approached my starting city, so I had to retreat immediately, but I managed to grab the Phoenix cloak. Krag is an unpleasant character, with a Chaos ban, but he had enough damage. I got the Dragon greaves from him, and with 12 spells, I easily killed the brown Haggeesh. She drops a ton of great artifacts, including the Sar-Issa robe.

Basic Orcs

Next, you need to act very quickly. I retreated to the captured purple castle, quickly took the left city, and finished off the purple faction. On the next turn, Grobok emerged from the underground, so I had to retreat back to my starting city immediately, managing to grab a blue key. Before Grobok arrived, I had to reach level 5 in the Mage Guild and fully upgrade to Dark magic. I managed to do this just two turns before the defeat, grabbing berserk, vampire, and Town Portal in the city, and then quickly moved to the brown lands. I fought another fairly strong Haggeesh and finished off that enemy as well. I thought about returning to my starting underground, but on the portal from the brown faction, the Chaos Demon stood. I had to spend a week leveling up, gathering orc reinforcements. I broke through the portal with cyclops and a vampire, and then the mentor, cast Chaos, and almost completely cleared the area, because from now on, I will have to fight only with an orc army.

Breaking through to the mentor

I spent a couple more weeks traveling through the teleports, clearing several islands. After that, I gathered all the orc army that had accumulated in the brown castle and moved to attack the orange faction. On the way, I was intercepted by Garuna with a huge army, but I managed to defeat her, preserving the main striking force – the cyclops. Then I immediately broke through the garrison to the orange faction and quickly captured its cities.

Garuna and the garrison

Grobok continued to roam around my starting underground, while I cleared the orange island and gathered a couple of weeks' worth of reinforcements from the five cities. This was enough to deal with Grobok's army, although the battle was quite difficult, but he couldn't handle fifty cyclops with a vampire. Victory.

Grobok

The mission is good. After the update, it was possible to preserve the previous dynamics of the game, and the fix for old exploits maintains interest in the game in the endgame. But there are some shortcomings: - The AI is still stupid when it is in the player's starting underground. It had all the opportunities to go to my only city in the brown lands, as well as to sail and defend the central island. But it preferred to clear my underground. - There is a possibility of getting a softlock. There is only one path to the brown or purple lands along the water, and if you place a lot of ships on the coast, you will not be able to dock and enter these shores at all. - When capturing castles under the control of the purple faction, you are not offered to rebuild them. For the castles under the control of the orange faction, everything works normally. Apparently, there is a missing check for the owner in the trigger.

I quickly played through the fourth scenario (didn't update the version, I'm finishing it on the second-to-last one). Overall, you can say the same about it as about the second one – it has definitely become easier, but it's still just as tedious. The start is very difficult; I think the special unit Kana was nerfed in the early levels, so until level 6-7 and the appearance of the second special unit and the first upgrade for the special unit Deleб, it's incredibly difficult to survive each encounter. Ignoring losses, I managed to build a full army of machines and logs, and with the help of a pathfinder and marauder, I reached the end of the second week, and during skirmishes, I acquired boots. Then, I moved on to the BDP (Battle of the Day) and it was a long and tedious process, but I was able to overcome almost everything. Next, I expanded my base and moved into Darkness, and I appreciated the change in terms of the availability of 4-5 greater units in the demonic castles. That's a big plus. In about 2 and a half months, I killed almost everything alive on my half of the map (I understood the point of the change in the number of combat mages, but even so, everything was cleared out normally ). Not much happened during this time; most of the heroes who came to me were defeated by the BDP demons, except for the elf who came on the first visit, and I had to use some tricks. The orc attacked constantly, but I think that's not important anymore. Once, I encountered a crash when starting a battle with him in my castle; it was probably related to the army composition (the crash occurred when there were imps, skeletons, and unupgraded pits in the army; the next attempt with the same conditions, but with only tier 3 demons, did not result in a crash).

Various battles from the first half of the mission

I mentored a chariot in the NAP (Neutral Area of Peace) and went to attack the human half of the map. In principle, it would have been worth trying to go earlier; the garrisons and Vitto became quite simple. Duncan is essentially the only more or less strong opponent; I didn't bother and killed him on the second try, although with significant losses. Victory.

Vittorio + Duncan

translate jpg

So, here's my story. I epically killed the blue player, collected artifacts, leveled up, and... DIED. Glory to NIMUS, he killed three, including me. His berserker and huge army defeated the Dark Messiah Sigrif! The world is saved... Or not. I cheated and summoned legions, then killed Nimus. It seems I can't win fairly here.

Screenshot of the hero and army at the moment of death:



Added 1 minute ago
Nimus had 10 Archdevils, 22 Imps, 40 something Horses, etc.

Damn, my full screenshots don't fit! Sometimes you need to show an overview, especially when I find bugs. My monitor and the game are in 2K, and even if I set the game to full HD, it still screenshots in 2K. This also requires changing Windows/screen settings. What's wrong with the forum that it doesn't allow uploading files up to 10 MB?

Completed 1 mission of the updated campaign. It’s tough as always. I don’t know if it’s intentional or just the author’s design, but I was lucky that in a few battles, around 380 skeletons and 150 zombies joined me. These undead (a pack of archers + zombie level 2 units) helped a lot in defeating packs of druids and titans, which can’t be countered with gates or dispel. I played with darkness + summon (must-have: wall of swords, which I found in a temple purely by chance, and also phantom). From the Light faction, I only had regeneration, which means if you play with your native army, you can’t regenerate your troops. There was no berserk or enthrall. It’s noticeable that the initiative is boosted even for neutral creatures (I had a staff + ring of swiftness), but even under slow and with skillful use of darkness, they didn’t slow down much.

I won the fifth mission, as before, very quickly and dynamically, but now there is one nuance. The build is the default one for Sigryph, with Chaos, Charms, and BDP (Ballistic Defense Power), but in this particular mission, it is extremely important to get vehicles, as there are no other good alternatives for dealing with gargoyles and golems. So, I quickly got a Balik + Logu, cleared the island with the tavern, and landed on the island with the green boots on day 9, where Sigryph was attacked by Jhalib, who had already arrived. It wasn't a particularly difficult battle; the next day, I got the boots and started clearing the underground. On the third day, I took the city and got BDP, used it to clear the artifact shop's guard, bought the Phoenix Cloak and the Dragon Necklace. By the beginning of the fourth day, Razak arrived, but he died very easily. [spoiler=Beginning, Jhalib, and Razak]

[/spoiler] On the path of war, I quickly cleared the surface with four imps, killing almost everything, including the pyramids for the Sphinx's quest. Among the mages, Hafiz arrived (he fell without much trouble) and later Faez (I had to take archdemons from the Sphinx and fight with them, otherwise, it wouldn't have worked with just imps). At the beginning of the eighth week, I immediately sailed to the lands of the mages, captured 3 out of 4 cities, clearing everything in my path, and reached the quest titans. Astrid became active with a very solid army and was defeated by me in the Inferno city. I brought the entire army from the dwellings there just in time for the arrival of the first Necropolis hero, but he was defeated simply by the BDP imps; my magic stats were already off the charts. I changed the vehicle to Darkness, quickly went to Dragon Utopia for the amulet, and activated the portal to the nearest mage city. [spoiler=Mid-map, mages, Necropolis, Dragon Utopia]







[/spoiler] All that remained was to deal with Astrid, but she is a very serious opponent. After a couple of clever maneuvers, in which her golems and a significant part of her gargoyles were destroyed, I fought the final battle in the city just to the left of Al-Safir. I didn't think much about losses, as it was essentially irrelevant at this point. I was going to deliver the amulet to the titans and finish the game, but I discovered that Astrid would resurrect in Al-Safir literally the next day after her death with an army of almost twice the size, so I had to retreat and clear the garrison to the last city, which, however, was scary only at first glance. In the same turn, I finally defeated the mages. [spoiler=Astrid and the finale of the entire campaign]





[/spoiler] In general, this mission didn't change much, and it didn't need to; it was already good. Adding Astrid makes the final stage of the game interesting and prevents it from turning into a mindless rush of the final cities again. In total, I completed it in 587 days (red dragon). It's funny that my fastest completion on previous versions was in 601 days, which gave me the Thunderstorm, although, in essence, when calculating the final statistics, only the number of days in relation to the size of the maps matters. However, it doesn't matter. Thank you again for the update; it's still interesting to play, and it has become quite a bit more comfortable (although not everywhere).

In the second one, I didn't notice any changes (in my opinion); everything is as I remember, and Hangvul is just as overpowered . In the end, he switched to three schools (summoning and light/dark, leaving the mandatory spellcaster with defense). It's strange, of course... according to the principles of Feng Shui, Sigrif should focus on chaos, considering his super abilities, but he doesn't perform well subjectively. Phoenixes helped me finish off the packs, and I didn't want to lose creatures. I started the third one and ended up being weak again. I forgot which of the three demons is best to develop into a powerful unit (they all have good specializations, except for Udun... he casts spells so badly that he doesn't even need enemies , and it's a pain to disband them (I don't remember the third one very well, probably because I didn't struggle much with it .


P.S. Rebirth turned out to be the longest ((. It was difficult for Sigrif to understand (or remember ) how to fight almost without losses against the Necromancer from the tobacco box. It's better to move the only mine, which is next to the Necromancer's Castle, to the territory where the Necromancer's attack script doesn't trigger yet (this way, you can fully occupy 7 cells with Necromancer units). Otherwise, when breaking through the defenses, you have to avoid taking extra troops. Well, that's it... we're in Pao.

P/S/S/ The Archipelago of Pao is a good multiplayer map

P.S.P.S. 4. For the first time in the entire campaign, I gave Chaos to the main hero, Kaan. Considering the specialization, it works well with darkness. It's a pretty easy map. The second castle was weakened, probably for balance. I don't know what the puppies did to upset the author.