Posts from Warlock – “Cultist” [Campaign 4, Mission 3]

Yeah, mages are very slow, so logistics are essential for them. On this map, Leto seems to be the strongest enemy; I had the most difficult battle against him, and I lost a lot of troops to his plague and magic. In general, in each new battle with him, he cast the plague differently; it could affect the witches, or it could affect the harpies and assassins. You can only figure this out in advance on the battlefield by looking at who he casts the spell on, loading a save, and changing your tactics.
I'm not sure about applying the plague to dragons, but it should work. After all, the plague is not an offensive spell; it is a type of curse, like weakening or misfortune.

Of course! I always take Solmyr as a secondary hero if he appears in the tavern; he's definitely strong.

I decided to play through the campaign as the Hero, and...

Up until this mission, everything was going more or less smoothly, but now I can't capture the first castle *_* Railag is on the eighteenth level, I've explored all the upgrade locations in the previous missions, he has a strong Chaos build (with all spells up to the 4th level), basic summoning (phantoms), and spellcasting... Shadia has Darkness, Mind Control, and Phoenix. Both are defeated by the hero sitting in the first castle - that hero has more mana than I do, resistance, a lot of troops, and he doesn't leave the castle at all. Shadia dies after killing about half of the enemy army, Railag about 4/5, but it's after these 4/5 that he runs out of mana, and the enemy starts spamming resistance and dealing painful damage with spells. What should I do?:smile35:

For me, this mission is undoubtedly the most difficult in the entire game, including all the expansions. The main thing is to survive the first few weeks, and then it will become much easier.

And why does Railag only have spells up to level four? In this mission, Railag and Shadia should have all possible spells, except in rare cases.

I'll tell you how I completed it, as I recently replayed the campaigns on Hero difficulty.
I developed Railag with Chaos, Summoning, Education, and Spellcraft, although I was only able to get Spellcraft in this mission. Shadia was developed in the same way, but with Darkness instead of Summoning. I think Summoning is a very useful skill in this campaign. Thanks to it, I completed the fifth mission by going straight through the garrisons, instead of taking detours. And in general, there are situations where even a Phoenix is more effective than Chaos. In the last mission, the Swarm was very helpful, especially with Railag's special ability.
In this mission, I divided the army, giving the majority to Railag and a smaller part to Shadia. Railag took the castle, and again, the Phoenix was more effective here. I immediately sent Shadia down to capture the mines, because even with such a siege, you can't forget about the economy and upgrading the castle, preferably upgrading it to Hydras as soon as possible. Then I hired secondary heroes for scouting. Railag replenished his mana and immediately went to capture the second castle. Then, according to the script, a Demon should appear, but in version 1.6, the scripts are a mess, and the Demons didn't appear at all, but just stood there. If the Demon had also appeared, it would have been even worse, and as it was, it was a constant siege by high-level Warlocks.
The same problem occurred in the fifth mission for Isabel, when Agrael and other Demons didn't come to besiege the castle, and also in the third mission for Faelan, when the Necrophages attacked sporadically, and because of this, the quest to liberate the area didn't open until I went out and attacked them myself.
Next, buy as much of the available army as possible and defend against the high-level Warlocks, preferably in the castle, and continue to gather mines as much as possible, it's good if you can quickly get upgraded Hydras. After defeating the enemy heroes, don't forget to check the taverns, as sometimes the defeated heroes come there. If you buy a few, the mission is practically complete. You can safely send Railag in one direction and Shadia in another, and the purchased Warlocks 20+ will be able to defend the castle and capture even more mines. By the way, you can send one of the purchased low-level heroes as quickly as possible to the portal, where there are a lot of gold chests, although there is a risk of encountering an enemy. When you buy enough Warlocks 20+, the computer will often be running around with low-level heroes, often not Warlocks, and it will no longer be difficult to win, just capture one castle after another.
But before the third mission, it's advisable to upgrade all the skills to the Expert level, so that you can learn all the possible spells in the second mission. Also, max out the Unstoppable skill, as there will often be Warlocks with a high resistance skill. And of course, Arcane Wave, and Elemental Sense are also useful, and you definitely need Education and Magic Affinity, as you will be very short on mana. Spellcraft is also desirable, but I wasn't lucky.

That's how I completed it. The main thing is to survive for at least two weeks, until you defeat several enemies and buy at least some of the defeated Warlocks, and then everything will be easier.
If it doesn't work out, I can recommend a few good videos on YouTube about completing the campaigns, they helped me in some missions when I started playing on Hero difficulty.

Probably. I'm just quietly amazed by the difference in this mission on Hero and Veteran difficulties – on Veteran, it was a moderately easy walk, but on Hero, I'm dying in the first battles.

Chaos was only offered to me as a choice at the very end of the first mission, and I only managed to upgrade it once during the second mission – as a result, I never got to the Expert level. Also, the skill progression was very unsuccessful – I had to invest in defense, I never got Logistics, Education was offered only once, but I took the second level of Chaos, already getting tired of playing with Ice Golems. The only good thing was that I got Sorcery in the hut.

The problem is that I'm losing in the early battles. I did take the Castle – I had to spend mana and start attacking with Meteor Shower from the very beginning, but in the end, 40 Minotaurs and fifteen Assassins survived. Fortunately, it turned out that I was just "lucky" the first time with the enemy having 100 mana, the second time he didn't scare me as much and had a less intimidating reserve of 60, and also, the mana wasted on Phantoms, which didn't destroy anything except a single Beast, was a waste. But the very next day, a second blue hero arrives at the Castle with the same army, and I don't have enough mana or troops to defeat him.

Probably, I need to replay the second mission, as the hero's skills were developed very poorly.

I didn't invest in Logistics at all, as the campaign is quite challenging due to the third mission, and it's better to focus on skills that directly help in battle.

It's debatable. For example, with logistics, you could easily take the first town before everything is bought out. And it's also easier to escape from the enemy that way.

But I finally replayed the first two missions. I managed to give Railag Chaos and Summoning skills at the master level, as well as Education + Mana Attraction and Luck at the maximum level. Shadia didn't become an Expert in Chaos, but she does have Inspiration. After spending almost all my mana, I took the first town with a Phoenix and spells (the enemy hero was a real pain, constantly hitting me with lightning:mad:, and because he was so fast, I had to spend mana and immediately cast Meteor and Earth Shock). On the second day, a blue hero came to Railag's castle to check things out; I defeated him with one Phoenix:smile19:, but I was left with only the bonus witch and three hydras hired right before the battle. But I won. One day later, a third hero appeared on the left, slightly less annoying and painful. I somehow defeated him, leaving myself with one hydra:smile19:. In the end, I have Railag with one hydra and Shadia with one minotaur. :) But for now, no one is attacking. :)

Well, I actually made it through :smile49:

After replaying a few times, I managed to defeat the first three heroes, then finished off the fourth, gave the city to the Demon faction, and continued expanding westward. Slowly but surely, I eliminated them all - after the first ten battles, I hardly used manual combat anymore; the auto-battle decided everything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Demons behaved strangely - one ran to my city and captured it, after which it didn't leave at all, and the second and third simply stood still in their starting location throughout the game.

But proper development is key. At the end of the mission, Railag was walking around with 500 mana and 30 spell power :smile44

In short, the main thing was to survive the beginning