Avatar of Ice

[cleavinghammer]

Talk to the ship captain in the southern island and tell him to take you to a random destination for the second sea monster. The final sea monster is at the far north of the map, past the Tuskarr village.

 

[EternaLife]

But I did tell him to take me to a random location, and he just takes me to some place ive already been before

 

[cleavinghammer]

Was it in the northeastern corner? Where were the sea monsters you've killed so far?

 

[EternaLife]

Thanks cleaving, I did that.. and am now on chapter 2, frost hammer.

I'm finding it incredibly difficult. When I try and get close to the generators I died instantly... I'm trying to use my stealth but I just die with one hit.
Or rather, my unit gets changed into an enemy and I can no longer control him.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Yeah, my least favorite level too. What you want to do is wander around looking for mechanical penguins and explosives, give them to your troll who talks about them, and use the exploding penguins to take out the generators. Be warned: this will take a while (I think the items' locations are randomized).

 

[Nagarito]

Anyone knows how to get to northwestern area of kobolds in chapter 3?

 

[cleavinghammer]

Have you tried all the caves?

 

[Nagarito]

Have you tried all the caves?

Yes, I can go to the front of that area. But the problem is I can't open the gate because the gate can't be attacked..

 

[cleavinghammer]

The one with the golem? Strange, it worked for me. Did you get the whole cutscene with the talking kobold?

 

[Nagarito]

The gate that is located in the northwestern of the Underground Ruins.
Hmm... I don't see any cutscene there..

 

[MARYNOM]

how do you activate footswitch on island in chapter 1?

 

[cleavinghammer]

Find a rune of strength and use it, summoning a polar bear. Activate the switch with the bear.

 

[MARYNOM]

well better way would be collecting all runes get ability and chose str rune then activating

so how do u open treasure room in chapter 3 XD i am too laze to walk through 10 caves just to deal with switches XD

the taskmaster isn't in northwest cave of 1st map after he ecapes.

pop cap in 1st chapter is max 45.. why is that so?

 

[jocacar]

Nice, 4/5

 

[deepstrasz]

Any updates coming? Especially for the crashing game bugs.

 

[Susano]

looks like a nice map i'll try it tomorrow

 

[infamous_kid]

Chapter 3. I am stuck...

I do not know if this is right place to post such question, but i am stuck in chapter 3.
After i killed Zulzujas in SW area of Snow Mountains map, he tells me something about spring, glacier, secret well, blah blah blah, i was not paying attention and that i should follow him to SW gate. Then after cinematics Zulzujas just disappears, all my units become "yellow" so i can not control them. Question is where should i go? What SW gate? I went thru all three maps again 3 or 4 times already with no result (Athough, when i meet my units after jump to different maps and come back, some of them join me again, some not, i think this is some type of bug). Anyway, i have all 3 maps discovered except for ruins north-western part where there are 2 rooms, one with huge chunk of ice and one with lich and a ghost-demon - this i looked up in editor, but have not discovered in game yet, also north-western gate in caves map cant be opened - undestructible (i already opened it before and killed kobolds, but then it became undestructible again with more kobolds inside), and 2 square floor switches behind fence at the very bottom of central-south part of ruins map can't be accessed because of fence in front of them...
Any ideas? Thank You



PS: Merchant by the fountain of health - any time i pass by he offers to upgrade Icebolt to level 2, even thou i already have, says it is 1000 coins, i have 0, click Yes, and he says that it was upgarded - cosmetic bug.

 

[mgbt]

chapter three is anoying, but y passed it twice! it's not impossible. the bad thing about this campaing is that when the eredar sorceress uses the chain lightning i think. i solved it by editing the campaing by my self, and removing the spell, but the game crashed a few chapters later... it's a shame that such a good campaing hasn't been updated in so many years. i really liked the chapters that i played. i will try to keep editing it until i can finish it!

 

[deepstrasz]

i will try to keep editing it until i can finish it!

Hey! That's an awesome idea I haven't thought of to do. If you manage to solve all or at least most issues to make the campaign completable, please tell us!
Thanks.

 

[WarDude]

When will be the next update?
and what happen with avatar of forest?

 

[GreenShadow]

Hei! I downloaded this campagin but when I play all the ground is black. How can I fix this?

 

[deepstrasz]

Hei! I downloaded this campagin but when I play all the ground is black. How can I fix this?

That never happened to me.

 

[GreenShadow]

On my laptop even the cinematics in campagin are black and I can just hear the sound...

 

[GreenShadow]

Hello! When I try to play this campaign all the screen is black. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

 

[cleavinghammer]

Maybe a version problem?

 

[jbasket]

yea getting black screen; any solutions to it?

 

[SilentNoise]

To be honest this is the best campaign that i have played in my 3 years of warcraft 3

 

[Holy Fool Sehrael]

Hey, really nice campaign. Didnt finish it though because some little annoyances and some minigame that wasn't for me *cough*, I lost patience. Anyways I played almost to the end and I have to admit, that you did great work here. Please continue x) Maybe I finish it later on, I don't know 4,5/5

 

[YetAnotherYoutuber]

Im having no problems, campaign runs okay so far, no black screen... does anyone have contact onto the project's dev?

 

[Mechanical Man]

I doubt it, he left quite suddenly.

 

[tulee]

To anyone who is experiencing the crash issue in relation to the critical error, I have found out that the error occurs when the demon \\eredgar (archimonde model, non hero spell caster) unit uses its nuke ability (either finger of death or forked lightning, i forget which). IN order to avoid this bug, A) when you are playing as demons never use this unit ever, and B) when fighting against demons who produce this unit, engage them only with your hero, as they will not use the spell if fighting a single enemy, but if there are multiple enemies they will use the spell and you will crash. If you do this, you can enjoy the campaign to the end, and it is a fantastic campaign.

 

[skull]

are there legendary items in campaigns?

 

[deepstrasz]

Sadly, I'm getting random crashes, apparently when selecting enemy units. Tried saving it on 1.30.4. Still the same thing happens.
Also got a crash in the Prologue which is a cinematic map.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Sadly, the campaign had crash issues since 2013 and the author is gone, so it is no longer playable.
Guess the new patches from Blizz didn't help either.

Its description should be edited by a mod with a warning.

 

[Mechanical Man]

Maybe can be fixed if the maps aren't protected?

 

[deepstrasz]

Sadly, the campaign had crash issues since 2013 and the author is gone, so it is no longer playable.
Guess the new patches from Blizz didn't help either.

The Finger of Death crash is still a thing. But now, it's just worse.

Maybe can be fixed if the maps aren't protected?

They're not protected... I just wrote above that I saved the maps and campaign on 1.30.4.

Spoiler: debugging

Also, on Chapter 5 when you meet Lord Brutus, the camera remains stuck and oblique on the region the demon was in the cinematic scene. This has to be fixed by editing the map I presume.
Overall, there seem to be bugs with main and optional quests, at least text related if not also trigger-wise.

EDIT: fixed the camera issue. Orientation was locked on a hero and Stop+Reset Camera didn't remove the orientation action so I disabled it.

EDIT2: selecting the enemy Overlord crashes the game. I have no idea why. I'm trying to find out...
EDIT3: alright it's because of the Overlord's Veteran Training (an upgrade like that of Shaman/Priest etc. training). Just got to find out why and how to fix it.
EDIT4: for some reason the upgrade didn't like Stats - Class: Caster so I changed it to Melee.

---

EDIT:
Right, so, at least now I got it to not have any crashes (attached; requires 1.30.4+).

 

[Ricox19]

I played this campaign years ago, I don't remember much but this campaign was really good, custom races, the main character, the enemies and the terrain, thanks to the lord I didn't get caught by a glitch during my whole playthrough.

Anyway here's my 5/5

 

[tulee]

I played this campaign years ago, I don't remember much but this campaign was really good, custom races, the main character, the enemies and the terrain, thanks to the lord I didn't get caught by a glitch during my whole playthrough.

Anyway here's my 5/5

The author, Sage Chow, made a masterpiece when he created this. I am always shocked when people who create brilliant campaigns just disappear from the hiveworkshop community completely--- It seems to me that they would need to be very invested in the community in order to make such an incredible campaign, which is why it doesn't make sense that they just never log in to hive again.

 

[Ricox19]

The author, Sage Chow, made a masterpiece when he created this. I am always shocked when people who create brilliant campaigns just disappear from the hiveworkshop community completely--- It seems to me that they would need to be very invested in the community in order to make such an incredible campaign, which is why it doesn't make sense that they just never log in to hive again.

Maybe they are just perfectionists, I had a friend with the same description as you say about Sage Chow, my friend created Starcraft BW campaigns, he created one called "rage against the nuclear" on a spanish website, a really good campaign, but the website died and with it the campaign, my friend obviously suffered but his intention never was to other people play his campaign, but him enjoying what he created, I advised him to uptoad the campaign to the internet, he uploaded it a never logged again.

 

[Belifhet the 4th]

Doubt anyone will reply but how exactly do I finish chapter 1? I killed the demon hero his base got the book and went to the caves that's shown in the cutscenes but can't do anything with them, also the quest for the book is still incomplete any help would be much appreciated

 

[xdxdxd]

anoyone know what is that 5th hero that is mention that we can get in chapter 6 valley of lich?

 

[VanAndro]

This sudden exit from the game has completely stopped me for now. Tested with v.1.27 and 1.30.4 + new game file. One day I will try Tulee's recommendation.

 

[Terrapista]

I really, REALLY want to like this campaign, but the sheer amount of technical problems makes it so hard to stomach, so much so that I can't even finish it, so please forgive me for writing this review prematurely. It is a shame too, because under the sea of crashes hide clever map designs, a lot of gameplay variety and creative ability systems. This campaign can be summarised as the coexistence of the polarity of the awesome and the awful: for every two steps it takes forward, it takes one step back.


--- Visual Design ---

Visually, this campaign is great. Habited areas and interiors especially look good, like the starting village in mission 1, the fortress in mission 2, the cultist base in mission 7, the cave system of mission 3, they all look fantastic, mostly due to a tasteful mixture of ground textures and props, where the areas reflect on how and what for are they used and their asymmetrical placements. The Cultist Bunker has to be the best looking interior: the walls near the area are littered with coffins, piles of treasure, a segment of the wall is decorated with bookcases, some dormant Obsidian Statues avait to be awakened near the Orc Cemetery's entrance: all in all every corner of the bunker feels like it fulfills a different purpose, it reflects how cultists are preoccupied with different tasks. The natural areas like the forests, mountains and passages lack that prop richness of the interiors, yet they still manage to look distinguishable from one another. The only part where the map geometry look repetitive is the second chapter's first quest, but it's not as bad as I make it look. The environment's visuals are further elevated by the usage of custom models that help to further reinforce the purpose of the locations, my favourite being the operating table with the Abomination on: it really sells the researching tendencies of the Undead faction.

As for the units, they all look really good! The custom construction animations of the Ice Troll structures, for one, look amazing, as the building slowly gets warped in while the Undead summoning tile disappears. The overlord's spin animation is attached so faithfully to the model, as if it was part of the model by default; the hand grabbing the soul of the unfortunate victim is animated sooooo smoothly, overall: great job with the models. Finally, the icons are well designed, even if most of them are just color flips of the standard WC3 icons. Their usage is also well made, as they player will have a solid grasp on what the icon will do even if he doesn't read the ability description.

--- Story ----

Remember what I've said about the forward and back steps? Well, if the visuals are the two step forwards, then the story is the one step back: every aspect of the story is awful, with only snippets of decent writing sprinkled here and there. The pacing is jarring, the dialog is too descriptive and simple, characters have no personality, it relies too much on the concept of "power" and "ancient" to make itself feel interesting, out of character dialogs, spelling mistakes mistakes: where do I even begin?

Let's start with the relation between the story and the Warcraft canon: what the fuck? When does this campaign take place? Well, Antonidas is alive, so it has to take place between the end of the human campaign and the siege of Dalaran. And then it mentions a blood elf expedition to northrend that happened before the events of the game: how? Then, how does the Cult of the Damned exists before the events of WC3? Why are the demons fighting the Cult of the Damned? Since when was Northrend a lush forest area during the events of WC2? The campaign tries so hard to follow the cannon of Warcraft that it manages to actively disregard it.
Then the story pacing: it is needlessly overcomplicated. First, we get a dream sequence that explains how the story elements came to be, then we get to the first mission, then the second mission is a 3 day prior of the first mission, then we're smooth sailing to the climax, but oh wait! a side plot with Vendigoos, then a CONTINUATION OF THE PROLOGUE, and after the two continuation missions we're back on track for good (I really hope because I haven't gotten that far). This campaign is just blue balling the player at every opportunity, delaying the story for no good reason. It would have been better if we'd start with the demon portion of the campaign, then the 3 day before, then the campaign would proceed as normal, as these would appear as visions during the voyage of the ice mage.
Speaking of whom, he has no personality. In fact, noone has a personality! All the characters can talk about is "ancient", "power", and what their next step is going to be, it looks smth like this: "I will now read the note on this ancient artifact! It says contains Borealis' power lays nearby!", repeated ad nauseum. The short sentences are made worse with a bizarre stylistic decision to drip-feed the dialog to the player by revealing only short portions of an entire sentence. What makes this annoying to read is that the player doesn't know when this effect kicks in, so the player either starts reading the middle of a new sentence or starts re reading the same sentence. If anyone comes across my review in the future: please, don't use this style in your custom campaigns, no matter how good or cool you deem it. Other problems of the dialogue include an inconsistent and out of character vocabulary, like demons referring to their superiors as "sir", a "For the Kirin Tor!" warcry when someone goes to investigate an uncertain dream, modern terms like "squad" in muttered in a fantasy setting, dialog being written in such a way that a voiced line of dialog could be inserted, and spelling mistakes. Plenty of them. Lieutenant is spelt like "Liutunant" being the most obvious to me.

So I mentioned a few traces of decent writing, but even those are mostly overshadowed by the amateur writing. One example of decent writing being on how Northrend came to be, where Boreas froze the continent, down, but it is handled so poorly: it realised with a "power" gained off-screen, it doesn't absolve any narrative tension, it just happens. The only untainted trace of decent writing is the interaction among the Ice Trolls in the second chapter: it looks so inviting as they joke, boast and rest in each-other's company: it helps explain how the core ability of the faction came to be. More moments like these would have improved the story a lot. At least the cutscenes are somewhat skippable, even if the dialog and camera effects play as if nothing happened.

--- Gameplay ---

Once you manage to sit through the slog they call a "story", you get to the main course of the campaign: the gameplay. The gameplay is actually a four step forward compared to the usual two.
Let's start with the heroes: every one of them has at least one unique/custom ability that is fun in both concept and execution. The ice mage's ability to turn enemies into snowmen is not only a funny gimmick, but also prevents powerful enemies from doing wreaking havoc, making it very useful. The Yeti Chieftain's snowball sounds innocent at first, but then one realises that the projectile does a lot of dps to any enemy it gets stuck on, and as it increases in size it eventually explodes, doing massive damage to every enemy in the blast radius. It must have been a lot of effort to code such an ability in the game. The Troll Chieftain receives a special version of Tribalism: he gets more bonuses the more trolls are near him. The remaining abilities are also interesting, such as a stronger version of Brilliance Aura that triggers it's effect whenever a unit gets hit, a passive Howl of Terror, an ice bomb ability, a snowstorm that knocks every enemy unit back, and many more.

Speaking of Tribalism, this is the most important ability of the Ice Troll faction: the more troll are near each other, the stronger bonuses they receive, that being damage, armor and critical damage at it's best. This one ability dictates on how you play the faction: it encourages large numbers and self-preservation, an interesting concept that seems mutually exclusive in most game designs. What makes this more interesting that a decent chunk of these units lack this ability, which means that the player has to juggle between having a tanky army or a bunch of glass-cannons as army. The variety doesn't stop here: every unit can use a limited amount of items to boost themselves. They can use basic potions, custom consumables like nets and bear traps, and even basic permanent items like a Tribalism granting talisman or a weaker version of the Mask of Death. The peak of variety comes in the form of mounts: that's right, basic units can mount other basic units to create stronger units, with trapper+wolf for a frontline dps or healer+wolf to make use of the ice mage's passive ability. The customisation and possibilities seem limitless, as the player gets a choice to either wait for better bonuses, or charge head on for instant gratification, neither of which are fortunately punished. The units on their own are also well designed for the most part, where every unit fulfills a function within the army, like wolves riders are one food cheaper than separate, Vendigos deal act as the melee dps the less Hp they have, Ice Ogres are tanks, you get two types of spellcasters, the snow yeti being the defensive focused one with frost shield, disenchant and the snowman debuff, while the ice mage can steal buffs and have a mana flare effect on an enemy unit that hurts nearby enemy units. One unique aspect of the faction is that they advance through the ages like in the Age of Empires series, where after each age the structures receive some bonuses, which means that once a unit is unlocked, it will stay unlocked forever. The design in general has so many unusual bonuses that are integrated so seamlessly into the game.

The other faction you can play as are the demons, whose are also special and fun to play in their own way. The soul stealing mechanic is such an interesting one, as you either keep the souls to deal more damage or sacrifice them for a stronger ability, like the Demonesses reskinned Roar that restores more health and mana the more souls she has. The sacrificial well is also an interesting concept, as it is essentially just sacrificing time and resources to have either a Starfall or Tranquility effect to heal your army/kill invading enemies. The techtree has some gaps and shortcomings, but overall it's fun to play with this faction as well. The heroes, unfortunately, have a lot of shortcomings when it comes to their designs, as 3/4 are filtered out by the 6th mission, leaving you with the Pit Lord as the only viable option.

The chapters themselves have a ton of variety when it comes to the mission designs, ranging from standard build and destroy missions, no build missions, stealth missions, hold out missions, rpg style maps, even minigames
Build and destroy missions are the most fun to play with as the player can make use of the chapter's respective faction.
The second most fun mission type is the no-build mission, as all of them have their own twists that make it interesting. The very first mission is the best example, as it starts out as an rpg map, then it evolves into a build and destroy mission vs the tuskarr village, but the conflict feels so small and local that it doesn't lose it's rpg map feel, since the rpg missions continue as normal.
The third most fun aspect of this campaign are the minigames that the ice mage and yeti chieftain can play. They involve steering a projectile into a collision course with an object, being either a spire or a target block. The controls are a bit tiring due to the amount of taps the player has to do, other than that both mini game's gameplay loop is a lot of fun. Another great thing about them is how benevolent they are with their rewards, as overachieving will grant the player two prized items instead of one, and if the player comes way too close to win, but didn't manage to to do, he gets a free try.
Other gameplay styles are restricted to a single segment only, stealth is not that interesting as the visibility radius of the trolls is limited, the hold out at the fort on the other hand is without a doubt one of the highlights of the game, as the player watches barely hold out against the invading demons.

Gameplay is not all perfect, as there are areas in which the development is just lacking. On the first mission I managed to accidentally skip one of the side quests because a misplaced region detected that I wanted to finish the chapter, preventing me from finishing the quest. Chapter 7 with the undead cult has a problem of the cultists being too good at hiding, as in case the player fails to find all of them, he won't receive his precious reinforcements.

By far the worst designed mission is chapter 3, the cave exploration one. The cave system is confusing, as navigating the caves means transitioning between random parts of three different maps, and each cave entrance puts the player at a random cave entrance found on a different map, which means the player has to wait for the new map to load in to continue. It becomes especially tedious when the player inevitably has to backtrack to pick up the Warchief. To rub salt in the wounds, the level transitions don't send all the units to the next map, so if the player wants all their units to proceed, they have to go back and forth to transport all the units on the desired map. One last thing about this map is that it can be soft locked by dropping the Tuskarr book from the inventory. All one has to do is complete the side quest and have a unit pick the book up: when done so the game won't update the charge count on the book, thus not keeping track of the progress the player made.

The time has come, the step back that steps us back to square one: the crashes. The crashes make this campaign neigh unplayable. Apparently it has to do with the Eredar Warlock's nuke spells, over which the player has no means to prevent it from being cast. The game crashes every second second. Sometimes it even crashes when loading into a save file. The crashes are so unbearable that I had to result to whosyourdaddying my way through the majority of the campaign. It's so soul draining to lose progress because of something out of your control and the time it takes to reload your save, multiple times, it's just not worth it. It's a shame, really, a fun campaign ruined by the technical side of things. Keep in mind, I run the 1.21b version of the game, the recommended version that is supposed to fix all the problems.

With all that being said and with a heavy heart, I have to rate this campaign with 3 stars.

 

[tulee]

I really, REALLY want to like this campaign, but the sheer amount of technical problems makes it so hard to stomach, so much so that I can't even finish it, so please forgive me for writing this review prematurely. It is a shame too, because under the sea of crashes hide clever map designs, a lot of gameplay variety and creative ability systems. This campaign can be summarised as the coexistence of the polarity of the awesome and the awful: for every two steps it takes forward, it takes one step back.


--- Visual Design ---

Visually, this campaign is great. Habited areas and interiors especially look good, like the starting village in mission 1, the fortress in mission 2, the cultist base in mission 7, the cave system of mission 3, they all look fantastic, mostly due to a tasteful mixture of ground textures and props, where the areas reflect on how and what for are they used and their asymmetrical placements. The Cultist Bunker has to be the best looking interior: the walls near the area are littered with coffins, piles of treasure, a segment of the wall is decorated with bookcases, some dormant Obsidian Statues avait to be awakened near the Orc Cemetery's entrance: all in all every corner of the bunker feels like it fulfills a different purpose, it reflects how cultists are preoccupied with different tasks. The natural areas like the forests, mountains and passages lack that prop richness of the interiors, yet they still manage to look distinguishable from one another. The only part where the map geometry look repetitive is the second chapter's first quest, but it's not as bad as I make it look. The environment's visuals are further elevated by the usage of custom models that help to further reinforce the purpose of the locations, my favourite being the operating table with the Abomination on: it really sells the researching tendencies of the Undead faction.

As for the units, they all look really good! The custom construction animations of the Ice Troll structures, for one, look amazing, as the building slowly gets warped in while the Undead summoning tile disappears. The overlord's spin animation is attached so faithfully to the model, as if it was part of the model by default; the hand grabbing the soul of the unfortunate victim is animated sooooo smoothly, overall: great job with the models. Finally, the icons are well designed, even if most of them are just color flips of the standard WC3 icons. Their usage is also well made, as they player will have a solid grasp on what the icon will do even if he doesn't read the ability description.

--- Story ----

Remember what I've said about the forward and back steps? Well, if the visuals are the two step forwards, then the story is the one step back: every aspect of the story is awful, with only snippets of decent writing sprinkled here and there. The pacing is jarring, the dialog is too descriptive and simple, characters have no personality, it relies too much on the concept of "power" and "ancient" to make itself feel interesting, out of character dialogs, spelling mistakes mistakes: where do I even begin?

Let's start with the relation between the story and the Warcraft canon: what the fuck? When does this campaign take place? Well, Antonidas is alive, so it has to take place between the end of the human campaign and the siege of Dalaran. And then it mentions a blood elf expedition to northrend that happened before the events of the game: how? Then, how does the Cult of the Damned exists before the events of WC3? Why are the demons fighting the Cult of the Damned? Since when was Northrend a lush forest area during the events of WC2? The campaign tries so hard to follow the cannon of Warcraft that it manages to actively disregard it.
Then the story pacing: it is needlessly overcomplicated. First, we get a dream sequence that explains how the story elements came to be, then we get to the first mission, then the second mission is a 3 day prior of the first mission, then we're smooth sailing to the climax, but oh wait! a side plot with Vendigoos, then a CONTINUATION OF THE PROLOGUE, and after the two continuation missions we're back on track for good (I really hope because I haven't gotten that far). This campaign is just blue balling the player at every opportunity, delaying the story for no good reason. It would have been better if we'd start with the demon portion of the campaign, then the 3 day before, then the campaign would proceed as normal, as these would appear as visions during the voyage of the ice mage.
Speaking of whom, he has no personality. In fact, noone has a personality! All the characters can talk about is "ancient", "power", and what their next step is going to be, it looks smth like this: "I will now read the note on this ancient artifact! It says contains Borealis' power lays nearby!", repeated ad nauseum. The short sentences are made worse with a bizarre stylistic decision to drip-feed the dialog to the player by revealing only short portions of an entire sentence. What makes this annoying to read is that the player doesn't know when this effect kicks in, so the player either starts reading the middle of a new sentence or starts re reading the same sentence. If anyone comes across my review in the future: please, don't use this style in your custom campaigns, no matter how good or cool you deem it. Other problems of the dialogue include an inconsistent and out of character vocabulary, like demons referring to their superiors as "sir", a "For the Kirin Tor!" warcry when someone goes to investigate an uncertain dream, modern terms like "squad" in muttered in a fantasy setting, dialog being written in such a way that a voiced line of dialog could be inserted, and spelling mistakes. Plenty of them. Lieutenant is spelt like "Liutunant" being the most obvious to me.

So I mentioned a few traces of decent writing, but even those are mostly overshadowed by the amateur writing. One example of decent writing being on how Northrend came to be, where Boreas froze the continent, down, but it is handled so poorly: it realised with a "power" gained off-screen, it doesn't absolve any narrative tension, it just happens. The only untainted trace of decent writing is the interaction among the Ice Trolls in the second chapter: it looks so inviting as they joke, boast and rest in each-other's company: it helps explain how the core ability of the faction came to be. More moments like these would have improved the story a lot. At least the cutscenes are somewhat skippable, even if the dialog and camera effects play as if nothing happened.

--- Gameplay ---

Once you manage to sit through the slog they call a "story", you get to the main course of the campaign: the gameplay. The gameplay is actually a four step forward compared to the usual two.
Let's start with the heroes: every one of them has at least one unique/custom ability that is fun in both concept and execution. The ice mage's ability to turn enemies into snowmen is not only a funny gimmick, but also prevents powerful enemies from doing wreaking havoc, making it very useful. The Yeti Chieftain's snowball sounds innocent at first, but then one realises that the projectile does a lot of dps to any enemy it gets stuck on, and as it increases in size it eventually explodes, doing massive damage to every enemy in the blast radius. It must have been a lot of effort to code such an ability in the game. The Troll Chieftain receives a special version of Tribalism: he gets more bonuses the more trolls are near him. The remaining abilities are also interesting, such as a stronger version of Brilliance Aura that triggers it's effect whenever a unit gets hit, a passive Howl of Terror, an ice bomb ability, a snowstorm that knocks every enemy unit back, and many more.

Speaking of Tribalism, this is the most important ability of the Ice Troll faction: the more troll are near each other, the stronger bonuses they receive, that being damage, armor and critical damage at it's best. This one ability dictates on how you play the faction: it encourages large numbers and self-preservation, an interesting concept that seems mutually exclusive in most game designs. What makes this more interesting that a decent chunk of these units lack this ability, which means that the player has to juggle between having a tanky army or a bunch of glass-cannons as army. The variety doesn't stop here: every unit can use a limited amount of items to boost themselves. They can use basic potions, custom consumables like nets and bear traps, and even basic permanent items like a Tribalism granting talisman or a weaker version of the Mask of Death. The peak of variety comes in the form of mounts: that's right, basic units can mount other basic units to create stronger units, with trapper+wolf for a frontline dps or healer+wolf to make use of the ice mage's passive ability. The customisation and possibilities seem limitless, as the player gets a choice to either wait for better bonuses, or charge head on for instant gratification, neither of which are fortunately punished. The units on their own are also well designed for the most part, where every unit fulfills a function within the army, like wolves riders are one food cheaper than separate, Vendigos deal act as the melee dps the less Hp they have, Ice Ogres are tanks, you get two types of spellcasters, the snow yeti being the defensive focused one with frost shield, disenchant and the snowman debuff, while the ice mage can steal buffs and have a mana flare effect on an enemy unit that hurts nearby enemy units. One unique aspect of the faction is that they advance through the ages like in the Age of Empires series, where after each age the structures receive some bonuses, which means that once a unit is unlocked, it will stay unlocked forever. The design in general has so many unusual bonuses that are integrated so seamlessly into the game.

The other faction you can play as are the demons, whose are also special and fun to play in their own way. The soul stealing mechanic is such an interesting one, as you either keep the souls to deal more damage or sacrifice them for a stronger ability, like the Demonesses reskinned Roar that restores more health and mana the more souls she has. The sacrificial well is also an interesting concept, as it is essentially just sacrificing time and resources to have either a Starfall or Tranquility effect to heal your army/kill invading enemies. The techtree has some gaps and shortcomings, but overall it's fun to play with this faction as well. The heroes, unfortunately, have a lot of shortcomings when it comes to their designs, as 3/4 are filtered out by the 6th mission, leaving you with the Pit Lord as the only viable option.

The chapters themselves have a ton of variety when it comes to the mission designs, ranging from standard build and destroy missions, no build missions, stealth missions, hold out missions, rpg style maps, even minigames
Build and destroy missions are the most fun to play with as the player can make use of the chapter's respective faction.
The second most fun mission type is the no-build mission, as all of them have their own twists that make it interesting. The very first mission is the best example, as it starts out as an rpg map, then it evolves into a build and destroy mission vs the tuskarr village, but the conflict feels so small and local that it doesn't lose it's rpg map feel, since the rpg missions continue as normal.
The third most fun aspect of this campaign are the minigames that the ice mage and yeti chieftain can play. They involve steering a projectile into a collision course with an object, being either a spire or a target block. The controls are a bit tiring due to the amount of taps the player has to do, other than that both mini game's gameplay loop is a lot of fun. Another great thing about them is how benevolent they are with their rewards, as overachieving will grant the player two prized items instead of one, and if the player comes way too close to win, but didn't manage to to do, he gets a free try.
Other gameplay styles are restricted to a single segment only, stealth is not that interesting as the visibility radius of the trolls is limited, the hold out at the fort on the other hand is without a doubt one of the highlights of the game, as the player watches barely hold out against the invading demons.

Gameplay is not all perfect, as there are areas in which the development is just lacking. On the first mission I managed to accidentally skip one of the side quests because a misplaced region detected that I wanted to finish the chapter, preventing me from finishing the quest. Chapter 7 with the undead cult has a problem of the cultists being too good at hiding, as in case the player fails to find all of them, he won't receive his precious reinforcements.

By far the worst designed mission is chapter 3, the cave exploration one. The cave system is confusing, as navigating the caves means transitioning between random parts of three different maps, and each cave entrance puts the player at a random cave entrance found on a different map, which means the player has to wait for the new map to load in to continue. It becomes especially tedious when the player inevitably has to backtrack to pick up the Warchief. To rub salt in the wounds, the level transitions don't send all the units to the next map, so if the player wants all their units to proceed, they have to go back and forth to transport all the units on the desired map. One last thing about this map is that it can be soft locked by dropping the Tuskarr book from the inventory. All one has to do is complete the side quest and have a unit pick the book up: when done so the game won't update the charge count on the book, thus not keeping track of the progress the player made.

The time has come, the step back that steps us back to square one: the crashes. The crashes make this campaign neigh unplayable. Apparently it has to do with the Eredar Warlock's nuke spells, over which the player has no means to prevent it from being cast. The game crashes every second second. Sometimes it even crashes when loading into a save file. The crashes are so unbearable that I had to result to whosyourdaddying my way through the majority of the campaign. It's so soul draining to lose progress because of something out of your control and the time it takes to reload your save, multiple times, it's just not worth it. It's a shame, really, a fun campaign ruined by the technical side of things. Keep in mind, I run the 1.21b version of the game, the recommended version that is supposed to fix all the problems.

With all that being said and with a heavy heart, I have to rate this campaign with 3 stars.

I posted a solution to the crashes here:

Avatar of Ice

Avatar of Ice v1.04B Long Bla-Bla part: This campaign was initially intended to be a classical blizzard-type campaign, where you controll a custom race of Ice-Trolls. I decided to experiment a little with each level, and i redid a large part of the campaign as I got better at map making. As a...

www.hiveworkshop.com

You just need to keep a single hero in front when fighting the warlocks, since their spell won't trigger unless there are multiple enemies.

"Recommended version" just means the version the map was made on; Wc3 maps are forward compatible with a few exceptions (memory hack, 3rd party editors, etc), so you can use any future version after 1.21 to play this campaign.

 

[Terrapista]

I posted a solution to the crashes here:

Avatar of Ice

Avatar of Ice v1.04B Long Bla-Bla part: This campaign was initially intended to be a classical blizzard-type campaign, where you controll a custom race of Ice-Trolls. I decided to experiment a little with each level, and i redid a large part of the campaign as I got better at map making. As a...

www.hiveworkshop.com

You just need to keep a single hero in front when fighting the warlocks, since their spell won't trigger unless there are multiple enemies.

"Recommended version" just means the version the map was made on; Wc3 maps are forward compatible with a few exceptions (memory hack, 3rd party editors, etc), so you can use any future version after 1.21 to play this campaign.

Well, maps crash even when the unit is not present on the map. Once it crashed when I loaded my save file of the first Demon campaign, where I didn't even have access to the unit yet. Another crash I had was during the battle for the oasis entrance, where the game crashed when I tried to fight the yellow undead, the demons were long cleaned up by the daddy cheat. I had plenty of crashes when I tried to use the Yeti Chieftain's snowball ability or when I was at the minigame area. Sometimes the game crashes because the ice mage's ultimate is just too resource-intensive. Any solutions to these problems?

 

[tulee]

I would suggest using higher versions of wc3. Pre 1.32, I personally think 1.30.4 was the best.

Patch 1.30.4 Backup Game Files

I've zipped all Warcraft III: TFT Patch 1.30.4 files for those who need them: Download Link (Google Drive) They might not be useful now, but after 1.31 goes live, maybe yes. Best regards, Tommi

www.hiveworkshop.com

Otherwise, I personally now just use latest version through Bnet.

 

[Terrapista]

I would suggest using higher versions of wc3. Pre 1.32, I personally think 1.30.4 was the best.

Patch 1.30.4 Backup Game Files

I've zipped all Warcraft III: TFT Patch 1.30.4 files for those who need them: Download Link (Google Drive) They might not be useful now, but after 1.31 goes live, maybe yes. Best regards, Tommi

www.hiveworkshop.com

Otherwise, I personally now just use latest version through Bnet.

I wish I could, unfortunately my rig is so outdated that it cannot even run the 1.28 version of the game. I always get the incompatible with 32x system pop up whenever I try to run a newer version of the game.

 

[tulee]

I wish I could, unfortunately my rig is so outdated that it cannot even run the 1.28 version of the game. I always get the incompatible with 32x system pop up whenever I try to run a newer version of the game.

That is unfortunate.