Posts from The Hero's Path Auto-translated

In short, it's about cutting down on freebies across the board. That's the direction everything is heading.
The fact that most quests reward players with gold was my original idea – the player can spend the money as they see fit, depending on their playstyle. I'm unlikely to change that.
The Shipyard itself may not be relevant, but it ultimately provides additional benefits in the form of daily income and instant travel between cities.

1) I don't know about others, but breaking through to the elven city was the most difficult part. After that, there were furies (all the strong ones were killed, but they are slow and their level was raised significantly - on a higher difficulty, the hero has thick armies), the Crystal of Secrets (archer blocking), light, darkness - in short, it wasn't fast, but the path to victory was clear. IMHO, strengthening the armies won't have much of an effect - it will just take a little longer.
2) And what if we add such plot twists - quest (and not only) battles, where you don't have a carefully developed hero and a selected army, but a script-defined one? The idea was taken from the sixth installment of Might and Magic: Heroes - the battle between Azkaal and Zana.

what if you don't have a carefully developed hero and a well-chosen army, but instead, it's all predetermined by the script?

Your hero is your alter ego, earned through sweat and blood; you can't just take it away and replace it with someone unknown. However, individual elements of such transformations are certainly interesting.

I'm not suggesting taking the hero away permanently, just for specific moments. And if you really want to go all out, you could make the hero script-based for a particular battle, and give them artifacts from their original inventory (or other features – skills, spells, one of the army units, balancing the numbers for that specific battle). But, I think I'm getting carried away – the amount of work involved in all these options, and writing the code, would probably be overwhelming. :smile11:

It requires a lot of work. I won't promise anything, but maybe later I'll come up with something about it. At the beginning of development, I had a similar idea about a dungeon that could only be entered with one unit, or even just one creature – something like a test of the hero's strength. I just didn't have time to implement it.

In the “Fall of Shantiri” map, there was a final battle with an angel boss. Maybe we could do the same here? Redo the dragon battle quest – instead of a kidnapping simulation, make it a fight with a monster with around 100k HP and 10k damage (and immunity to berserk, mind control, and blindness). Disable the Divine Retribution spell – in Shantiri, during the battle with the angel, it one-shotted one of my units, and then I was dealing 30k damage to it with that spell.

Right now, I'm more focused on balancing the game than adding new content. Bosses are an interesting feature, but they have been implemented in other maps multiple times, so they were a lower priority for me.

Well, I completed this map in 40.5 turns, or 10 months and 3 days according to the standard calendar (in-game time). I'm convinced that this result can be improved by at least a couple of weeks, because I made a mistake while playing – I forgot to talk to Letus about vampirism (I got distracted by learning new spells), so when I found the vampire, I couldn't understand why he was acting that way. I only realized my mistake when I reviewed the quest – I had to go back.
P.S. And if you actively buy, produce, and use potions that extend the turn duration, you can reduce the result by another couple of weeks.
P.P.S. I only suffered the planned losses – I used swordsmen and a griffin as cannon fodder so they wouldn't get in the way; all archers (human, elven, mage, and even demonic temptresses) remained alive until the very last battle. Regarding cutting down trees for the catapult – you leave the entire army at the gates of Binom and calmly cut down the trees with one unit.

I reviewed the map in the editor. I really liked the design of some of the locations! Is the final room, where the Lord stands, available in the game resources?

Rambo1969, after a few playthroughs, it becomes easier to quickly navigate to key locations. You can also take summoning magic and use beacons to teleport, which should save a lot of time.

Dagonet, yes, I didn't add any new objects. You can check the "Shared" section in the object properties to see where it's located. In the game, this is further enhanced by effects (a cave with a lot of islands starts to look much more interesting).

After a few playthroughs, it becomes easier to quickly navigate to key locations.

Before this, I only played through it once, but on different computers, I had different ending variations.

You can take summoning magic and use beacons to teleport, which should save a lot of time.

As I understand it, this trick is only possible after creating the Guild of Mages, which happens a month (four turns) before the end of the game, so you won't gain much advantage this way.

As far as I understand, this trick is only possible after creating the Mage Guild.

No, you can buy the beacon right away from the demon, who can be reached almost at the very beginning. Then it just depends on you to place the markers. And after building the guild, free teleports appear, so you don't have to struggle with running around the map in the final stages.

Well, regarding "buying everything right away," I don't know, I really don't know :rolleyes:
In my opinion, it will only be possible to gather over two hundred elementals without any losses after about 3-4 months, and without that, it won't be possible to face the demon.
And thanks for the tip; if I find the time to play it again, I will definitely try this option.
I really liked this map (it's almost like a new game).

P.S. By the way, where is the ring of speed located? When I played it the second time, I couldn't find it, and the first time I got it without any problems, but I don't remember where I found it :smile35:

Rambo1969, I'll share a small trick regarding the demon: if you don't rush to kill everything and just wait on the island for 2 or 3 turns, it will also appear and be immensely pleased with your peacefulness. The ring is on the swamp, near the demon mountain. Map updated to version 1.2 - Fixed a bug where player units remained on the map when playing on difficulty levels higher than "Warrior." - Fixed a bug where, on the "Recruit" difficulty level, battles awarded twice as much experience as on other levels. - The "Summon Ship" spell for the elf, Korael, now no longer disappears when she moves to the Guild of Mages. - Increased the cost of buying potions and chemical elements, and adjusted the assortment in the alchemy shops. - Increased exchange rates at the market, and increased the ratio between the purchase price and the selling price of resources. - Increased the cost of using some runic spells. - Increased the cost of buying some spells. - Strengthened the arena, and introduced a limit on the total number of battles a hero can participate in at lower difficulty levels. - Revised the cost and increase of some mercenaries. - Added the ability to choose a faction - Knight/Necromancer. - Added a new potion - Magic Boost. - Added a "power of effect" parameter for alchemy and runic magic - it decreases with each consecutively used potion/spell and is fully restored after a battle. - Added several alternative endings to the "Team in Danger" quest. - Expanded the statistics, added a new achievement. - ...and a few other minor changes. In short, all bugs found so far have been fixed, an attempt has been made to make the Walkthrough a little more difficult, and an alternative to the Knight has been added.

Downloaded the new version, took a little look at the game. The "Warlock" option definitely makes it more interesting :) I'll gladly play it (too bad I never have enough time :( ) My first suggestion is that in the imperial stables, the owner should always mention when talking about the surroundings that there's a mercenary camp at the city gates. Otherwise, when playing as a "bad guy," if you don't find anyone else in the city's battle academy, you buy imperials, solve the peasant problem with them, and then, when you go outside the gates, you realize you made a huge mistake - and you have to start over. My second suggestion is that if a Warlock doesn't get any artifacts at the start, it would be helpful if he at least had one dark or chaos spell, because his starting units aren't very useful in battle, although you can certainly survive with them.