[Defense / Survival] Battle of Darrowshire

[The Nightmare Book]

BATTLE OF DARROWSHIRE

"And your spirits once again may be at rest in Darrowshire…"

OVERVIEW

"A defense map, sharpened for the effective management of limited resources and control of various units.
Thanks to Blizzard Entertainment for their mini-campaign for Zeratul in Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, where we must hold back the onslaught of the dark forces as long as possible, realizing that we have already lost this battle anyway."

​

STORY

"When the Scourging of Lordaeron began and the undead armies of the Lich King proceeded to sweep across the Kingdom of Lordaeron, the village of Darrowshire became cut off from the remainder of the forces of the Alliance of Lordaeron. As it became further threatened by the arrival of Scourge forces, a unified defense force was established to protect the settlement and its inhabitants. This force was a combination of Lordaeron troops, paladins of the Silver Hand, and a thrown-together group of militia led by Captain Joseph Redpath.

Although Darrowshire's defenders were successful in repelling major undead attacks, and even slaying one of their leaders in the form of the ghoul lord Horgus, the tables turned on them when, during the battle, Captain Redpath's spirit was torn loose from his body by the death knight Marduk the Black. Having had his spirit twisted and corrupted by the death knight's black magics, Redpath spread his taint to the other humans. The defenders, now under the sway of the Scourge, turned on Darrowshire and promptly slaughtered all of its residents.

In the wake of the battle, the remaining Scourge forces and the corrupted defenders left the ruined village behind and pressed on to continue to ravage the once-mighty kingdom, adding to the Scourge's assault on the living…"

FEATURES

EXPANDING THIRD WAR
That map is begining of project, that tell you about Human desperate battles against Scourge.
Relive memories of Darrowshire and feel sorrow of this tragedy…

SHAPE YOUR GAME
Every game you'll see different undead enemies from pool.
Every game you can choose suitable difficulty.
And every game you can choose a bonus too!

DESPERATE FIGHT
Scourge war machine is on march - you can try to hold it, but how much?

ENSCRIPT EVERY MAN
You need to count your forces to make a best army.
You need to manage your heroes, because every death in your army - new soldier in Scourge's.
You need to manage your resources, because noone could help you.

BE BEST
Map will account your "score" at the end, so you can saw how much Darrowshire lived under Your command.

MEDIA

MODEL CREDITS	ICON CREDITS	MISCELLANEOUS CREDITS	KNOWN ISSUES
Blizzard Entertainment	Blizzard Entertainment	Blizzard Entertainment; Damage Engine from Bribe; "Battle of Darrowshire" - art made by ClintLangley	First and score cinematic lagging, while player turned Reforged graphics on;

v1.09 - Current Version.
Map maded by The Nighmare Book (XGM nickname - Hush).

I'd appreciate any bug reports, suggestions and tips!

 

[The Nightmare Book]

If you encountered some strange situations, bugs or you've a suggestion - please, do not be a shy: post them here!

 

[Achille]

I played the map a couple of times and I've got to say I'm impressed! Its fun to playthrough the difficulty scaling is a nice touch. I did find that on normal I could only really last up to around 15 minutes before being completely overrun, though I am not that great with micro.

One suggestion I have would be to try and find a way to utilize lumber a bit more. I am often still left with a large pool of lumber after buying units/upgrades, and I see no discernable way in which I could run out of lumber as opposed to gold. Perhaps a way to build additional barricades for the cost of lumber could be neat? It would make lumber feel more valuable at the start and can allow a player more versatility in how they set up their defenses.

There were also a few minor typos, likely due to translation. As an example, the ending cinematic text would state, "You killed 'x' for 'y' times!" this should instead be, "You killed 'x' 'y' times!"

What I have listed are incredibly minor issues, and the map is incredibly enjoyable. It has a ton of replayability and I absolutely adore the fact that dead heroes rise to attack you with the rest of the undead waves. It really felt like a lot of care and passion went in to making this, and I'll probably drop a nice review on the map page after a couple more playthroughs (to ensure I saw as much as I can ofc).

Awesome work and I'm going to continue watching this with interest!

 

[The Nightmare Book]

I played the map a couple of times and I've got to say I'm impressed! Its fun to playthrough the difficulty scaling is a nice touch. I did find that on normal I could only really last up to around 15 minutes before being completely overrun, though I am not that great with micro.

One suggestion I have would be to try and find a way to utilize lumber a bit more. I am often still left with a large pool of lumber after buying units/upgrades, and I see no discernable way in which I could run out of lumber as opposed to gold. Perhaps a way to build additional barricades for the cost of lumber could be neat? It would make lumber feel more valuable at the start and can allow a player more versatility in how they set up their defenses.

There were also a few minor typos, likely due to translation. As an example, the ending cinematic text would state, "You killed 'x' for 'y' times!" this should instead be, "You killed 'x' 'y' times!"

What I have listed are incredibly minor issues, and the map is incredibly enjoyable. It has a ton of replayability and I absolutely adore the fact that dead heroes rise to attack you with the rest of the undead waves. It really felt like a lot of care and passion went in to making this, and I'll probably drop a nice review on the map page after a couple more playthroughs (to ensure I saw as much as I can ofc).

Awesome work and I'm going to continue watching this with interest!

I glad to hear that you've liked map! And your record is better than mine - I've got stuck on normal when I survived up to 5 minute

• About lumber - I agree with you, because 2000 gold and 2000 lumber is a big number, but you can't realize lumber potential in full. I think that adding buildable barricades to peasants in Town Hall (if you didn't choose engineers) and more defensive buildings for engineer focus. So thank you for you suggestion!
• About quotes - I'll correct it, thank you;
• Thank you for your glad words - I hope that you really liked it so far

And I want to clarify - this map is first from map bundle about "Scourging of Lordaeron" - battles, sieges and more, that only remembered in World of Warcraft or Warcraft story books.

So next one will be about Siege of Hearthglen - another Scourge try after Death Knight Arthas killed his own father. In that map you'd play AS Scourge and you need to properly spend your limited resoures and forces to push a fortified city
For example: Hearthglen have an working goldmine with inhabitants in it, so Alliance would have an gold income in anytime. But you can use your vile magic and spread plague in goldmine, so miners would transmorph into zombies and they would distract enemy from your main forces and reducing their resources!

More from it you'll learn when I release it after a some new campaign about old story, but in specific genre...

 

[The Nightmare Book]

New version 1.02 with bug fixes and small content was released.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

Currently I'm working on new version for Call of the Swarm campaign, but recently I thought that Battle of Darrowshire doesn't recieved any updates since May!
So I started developing a new version 1.05, that will add new difficulty, correcting lore wise issues (such as missing Silver Hand paladin Davil Crokford) adding some new small features, balance fixing and more. No details more, but stay tuned - new update will arrive SOON!

 

[The Nightmare Book]

Because new version 1.05 isn't a big, so I can list all of new features right now:

1. New hero - Davis Crokford, standard paladin hero, the only hero that doesn't change sides after his death;
2. 1 new elite enemy - Abomination;
3. Added an events, like saving a peasants from Scourge forces, killing special unit to recieve temporary buff for all player units. Events can be divided into "Non-Timed", which can occur in any seconds of playing, and "Timed", that starts after surviving some big amount of time (3-6-9-12-etc minutes). Next timed event always displayed in multiboard;
4. Changes in multiboard - Scourge hero timers moved here, added event template;
5. Balance fixing - removed Militia traning from Supplying Blindages right now, but more changes you'll see in game.

New version will be released SOON!

Edit: Also I forgot to tell that Horgus & Marduk will be a "Timed" events, so on third minute of Siege Horgus arrives with his pack of servants (their kill will be counted as killing elite unit) and on six minutes of Siege Marduk will arrive and corrupts Redpath (if Redpath is dead or corrupted, he'll be automaticaly respawned near Marduk).

 

[The Nightmare Book]

As main features are already implemented & tested, new version closely begins to be a finished one, so right now I trying to create as much spells for all units as possible.

For example, Scourge's spell "Raise Undead" don't raises only skeleton. It's raising different undeads, trying to raise more appropriate type for selected corpse (Melee units will mainly raise Scourge Skeleton enemy type, but sometimes will raise Ghouls or Zombies).
How to deal with it? Your new hero, Davil Crokford & bunch of priests has recieved a spell "Burn Corpse", preventing necromancer from raising a new Scourge warrior.

It's only a one thing and we have more:

• Skeleton Knights (or Scrouge Champions) will now recieve an random Undead-themed aura, which can increase their value on battle;
• If Grim Caster would die, he would cast "Gift of Decay", creating a blight-corrupted zone near him, so undead can faster regenerate their HP;
• New Abomination unit will explode after his death, creating many small creatures like beetles, worms or rats. All of them will try to kill you;
• Horgus will recieve his special spells and lose his "Vampirism" aura;
• Marduk will recieve his special spells and lose his "Unholy Aura";
• ...And more in game!

Stay tuned.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

New version was released, featuring new hero, enemies, events & more.
For more details check changelog on resource page.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

Recently I thought about some small update for this map, specially enabling re-playing.
Also I'll try to improve some balance things, preventing softlocking and correct some mistakes.
I think that update would be posted in nearest future, but currently I'm working on Pearl of Azshara map, so…

Anyway, if you encountered some issues or have suggestions how to improve map, please don't be shy - tell me here or here.
Stay safe.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

In version 1.08, "Battle of Darrowshire" will get one cool feature: "Re-Run" or "Time Warp".
Let's see what Darrowshire could get from it:

• When player lose to Scourge assaut, after watching score cinematic, game will offer him a re-run. If player agrees, he'll recieve exactly same units in his first game start, but skip intro cinematic and go head up to difficulty/bonus selection;
• Enemies will be randomized again, but player main heroes (not bonus ones) will remain with their level until their death/corruption, helping player fight the Scourge;
• Also from this update, your units will recieve special Alliance attack/armor upgrades and their levels would increase each Re-Run circle.

This will help player to achieve maximum results in map.
Note that maximum amount of Time Warps is 10-15, after which you'll be forced to quit.

When version will release? I don't know, but it doesn't have big changes so I'll try to release it as soon as possible.
Stay safe & tuned.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

v1.08 - released!
If you encount some issues with Re-Run or other features, or you have some suggestions - please, don't be shy - tell me about it!