Posts from The veil is lifted.

Hello! I've reached another map by this author and want to share my impressions. The map is good, the design is nice, there are a few annoying moments, but in my opinion, this isn't the map's fault, but rather a feature of the gameplay. I'll go into more detail...

Start - Duncan and Frida. Logically, and for a faster pace (which I'm not good at), you should choose a logistician, but naturally, I chose Frida because she's overpowered, and her starting build, Attack/Light, is more to my liking than Duncan's Attack/Defense. The gameplay is a bit challenging in the first month, maybe a month and a half, but then everything goes smoothly.

- In the first week, on day 7, we take the castle in the lower left corner, and there we can defeat our enemies.

Not bad, a decent special ability.
Starting battles:

Frida vs. Valerie

Frida vs. Varens

Frida vs. Andreas

- Then, we try our best not to give up this castle, although I didn't quite succeed. But my main goal was to keep Duncan alive, so I tried to maximize the strength of the main castle so that various attackers wouldn't dare attack, even though, for example, Lorenzo would defeat Duncan in a fair fight on "Medium" difficulty, but he didn't attack the castle, which I took advantage of for a while while Frida was running around.

- After some time, the castle is taken, but the starting castle and Duncan are safe.
And immediately, 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 idea, even though it seems unusual, and you need to leave an army there, but overall it's quite interesting and cool, I liked it.

Since I don't like rushing, I almost forgot that we need to find the Priest within a certain time. Luckily, there's a hint in the quest description, but I cheated a little and went a different way (that's what I assume). Fortunately, in the console, they politely reminded me to hurry up, and I went to the approximate location where the priest should be, based on the screenshot.


And luckily, I guessed right. There's an outpost, and behind it is a hero, seemingly with the army I have (the one in the screenshot on the fort). But when I started the battle, I realized that I didn't have enough strength. But there was a castle nearby, which was waiting for us to capture it, and above the castle, there's a good area to level up, which I did, and in the remaining 5-6 days, I went to fight the Priest. There's a cutscene, voiced dialogues, which is a small thing, but it's nice. However, I don't have a mod to increase the volume, so they were quite quiet. And the best thing, in my opinion, is the archer set, which I used throughout the game.

Frida vs. Lorenzo (for the Priest)

- After freeing the priest, we are given the task of capturing Waterway, and then there's no time limit, and we're off to a great start. We make many trainers (one runner for each castle), and we can also level up Duncan a bit. Before that, we need to take back what was taken from us, namely the castle in the lower left corner, clear out all the monsters, and repaint everything. At this stage, there were no problems.



Let's go over some of the side aspects, and what I liked and remembered in general.


Additional creatures, like Yetis and Black Knights, it's not new, but it's there, and that's good. Beautiful arenas.

- The quest with the Seer (witch's hut) who unlocks portals for us, first a two-way portal, and then the one near the castle in the north (although caravans were already passing through this portal before it was deactivated).
Nothing complicated, kill the mage and bring the summoning tome. The summoning tome is guarded by phoenixes, but to return, I reached the gold mine, teleported to the city, cleared out all the unwanted guests, and then killed the mage. I could have left the tome to a weaker creature instead of returning myself, but it's not a big deal. She also offers to unlock a portal near the city for 15 crystals (a one-way portal). It's not a bad deal, so I take it (although crystals are a valuable resource, since you can't build warehouses, but the author has even taken that into account).

Frida vs. Fazim

- This isn't even a quest, but let's call it the "REVENGEFUL GUY" who cuts down trees (near the southwest castle). I'm wondering if it's a trap, but it's not a big deal.

- Clear out zones, take the bag, simple quests, but why don't they give anything for them? I thought that after clearing 8 stacks, random red guys wouldn't appear on the map, but no, they appeared throughout the game. But we have Duncan to deal with them, as these bastards interfered with the logistics of moving troops.

Frida vs. Lorenzo (when he sails to us)

Frida vs. Groll

And finally, I'll compare it to "Echoes of the Void," because that was the first map by this author that I played, and it was easy. Why? Well, if the autobattle wins almost without losses, then something is definitely wrong. Remembering the annoying Naadir and Ishkabal, this is a light walk. Now, let's see the heroes' stats and a replay.

For Waterway





Another downside I encountered was that the first time I fought, the heroes teleported, and the hourglass froze. I thought I was done, but it turned out that the griffins, which spawned unsuccessfully, interfered with the final cutscene. I killed them, then attacked the castle, and everything was okay.


It's a minor detail, but it's there. I'm just wondering if the "RESURRECTION" only works in one castle, which is in the northwest? Because these attacks with regeneration greatly increase the time. But the vampire was in the second castle.

In conclusion: A great map, design, concept, quests, voiced cutscenes, but the final boss needs to be stronger. Now "Ambassador" is next.

P.S. It was also funny to see heroes with different names and the same icons, like Glen-Axel, Dugal-Jir.

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).