ThinhHo, I created a profile just so I could comment. I've been playing Defenders of the Light for a couple weeks now, and I just wanted to say THANK YOU. I love this campaign. I've tried about 10+ different custom campaigns now, but they're all missing what I really craved, which is to focus solely on hero/unit play. The Founding of Durotar was a masterpiece, and I can never find a campaign that lives up to it. Yours is very well done. OH, and on a side note, that cinematic that plays showing the Blood Feather clan fighting the demon? That shit was EPIC, dude. lol After hearing classical music during the whole game up to that point, then hearing the techno/rock song queue up and the dialogue that ensued?! Craftfully done! I was grinning the whole time. Excellent work all around, and thanks for the hard work.

 

Im stuck in the main quest Water of Purity.....The collecting of 20 spider crab meat☹️☹️☹️heeeelp

 

The mage in Adenvale city need Staff of Renavant to give more infomation but I already sold it, sadly. May I can have it again, or have to replay campaign

 

Make sure to turn off iseedeadpeople cheat as the crabs wont respawn if its active. Go along the coast and farm the crabs there

 

Sadly thats my only complaint about this campaign is the inventory problem.

I would love to just dump any item i find into stash in case it is useful but since we have very limited space we have to either drop a useful item to make room for an item that isnt too useful or leave it there.

And it would be very annoying to transfer back to old map to get it. Sometimes I dropped items in random spot too so I don't remember where it is if i find out its useful later lol.

 

So I replayed the campaign just to find the Staff for him, and guest what, he need " Mana Stone" this time, What the .....!!!

 

Spoiler: Location of mana stone

You can find that on the murloc map in the top left, you have to use flame strike staff to destroy the trees to get it. Let me know the reward for all of this. Feels like its not worth the effort lol

 

Exeptionnaly well made campaign for what i have played,i didn't get captivated at such for a long time by a Warcraft3 Custom map or campaign since Tomoraider's Curse of the Forsaken and Rise of The Blood Elves, i have finished the main story with heroes at level 34+ but i haven't done every map (not the most hidden at least).
@ThinhHo thank you for giving us this Masterpiece ,it is quite inspiring ,even if is not exempt of kind of errors or bugs of sort.
Waiting with impatience The Second Act

T

 

Hi everyone,

Ever since this campaign was uploaded, I haven't got time to open the World Editor to work on the campaign. My time is really tight at the moment. It's hard to find time to even reply to your messages. Though I have read all of your amazing comments. I thank you greatly for playing this campaign. I'm happy to have created something that you guys can enjoy.

The hidden text below is my reply to @deepstrasz's review on the campaign. If you haven't completed the campaign or if you don't want to be spoiled by even the little things in this campaign, I suggest you not reading the text.

SPOILER, Reply to deepstrasz's review

My Reply
Beginning Scene
- That's the nice trick you found there.

Home
- Yes Hao Hao is a product names for noodels.
- Having the other model without the hammer is a small detailed touch that I spent time on making. There is not much significance in doing so but I did it anyway. Losing your hero control group is also a small thing.
- If you are not aware, the reason I don't do complicated abilities with triggers is because of potential bugs. The more complicated the triggers are, the more bugs the campaign has. W3 has its limit. Adding more triggers like these may break the limit of the campaign. So I decided to create just simple abilities which your heroes can use them in synergy with one another. As you have seen, those abilities work quite well in this campaign in many circumstances.
- There's no Blood Mage in the world of DOTL, so having a Blood Mage's abilities won't make him a Blood Mage. Buri's main purpose in term of gameplay is to support Adias as a mana hero in the beginning of the game. Without him, the game would be hard and tedious in the beginning. The Transfer Mana ability makes him unique. Siphon Mana is quite essential for the kind of hero that he is. If I am to change his abilities, Banish is the ability I would change. It's not that useful. However, I couldn't thought of anything better to replace it. Flame Strike maybe too good for him as a support hero. He's not meant to be an full-on AOE in my opinion, while his Flame Strike can decimate the Murlocs in Den of the Murlocs. Chen should be the one who is capable of that. This is not the world of Warcraft so not many things would be the same as you've known. Paladins in this world aren't always Light-oriented and equipped with Light-abilities.
- Yeah you completed quest Dave Munshi. Quests in this campaign is not like the original ones. Not all of them are meant to be completed nor discovered. Dave Munshi is only one of the hidden quests you'd find. When players miss any quest in this campaign, they shouldn't expect to sweat over it. Quests in this campaign are not to-do list like other campaigns. It may only frustrate you if you treat the quests like one big to-do-list.
- I think it also depends on culture to call pop as a father or not.
- Permanent Immolation kills things even Paul! Wow, thanks for pointing that out.

Little Village
- It is intentional to leave Buri with only 3 lvs for his abilities. And you got it right, he is meant to only played for only a while.
- Buri should be able to give the Vial as well in the next version.
- The Doggy Exterminator quest is totally optional. You don't have to do it. It's even hidden. I made this quest because I felt like making it for fun. I wanted to see how many people would be able to find this quest, or complete it. Every playthrough is different and hidden things like this should bring different experiences to different players. You don't have to like it and you don't have to do it.

Dark Wood
- Like any other maps, I noted all of the bugs that you mentioned. They will be fixed in the next update.
- The statue doesn't protect you actually. Adias just basically told players to avoid the houses and stay close to the statue so that players don't aggro the zombies. It seems like I didn't make it clear enough for you.
- Orbs doesn't work on Darak sometimes when he already carries other orbs with other effects. This is the limitation of the engine and I can't do much about it.
- I'm not a fan of Starcraft. It's just the game I spent the most time with when I was younger. It is also made by Blizzard so may as well give it some credits here.
- You're right about the Circle Gateways. It would require some triggering but it's definitely doable to make them like ones in the dungeon.
- Yeah Undead can be hurt in this campaign. The physical pain they experience is significantly lesser than the livings experience though.
- If players use too many herbs and there are not enough for the quest, then it's their fault. The quests are not all designed to be completed anyway. Depending on how you play it you may have to abandon some quests in the game.
- I could have made heroes to be fully after the ghost battles. However, I didn't want players to abuse the system too much by using the same hero again and again.
- The AI of the Dark Souls are entirely the orignal game's basic AIs. I didn't trigger their AI in this case. This is an optional thing and I didn't want to spend to much time on it programming what abilities heroes should use at what time.
- The Dark Souls heroes are totally random each time and yes it's only for experience.
- I have all music playing through music channel. None of them is played through sound channel. I don't know where and how you got this info from.
- Yeah, the shades are annoying. Some optional maps are annoying too and they are meant to be difficult, annoying and frustrating. They are not meant for casual players who just want to run pass everything. I made maps like this with the Dark Souls mentality in mind. They maps are meant to be hard and tedious just like the Dark Souls series. They are meant for gaming masochists like me.
- About the horizontal ! on the living tree, I tried but couldn't fix it.
- Living Tree quest completed! Yes, it's a hidden quest.
- Yeah, the Maiden of Pain attacking back is a nice touch. I'll consider it. The unit's purpose is only for the tomes.

Glowing Cave
- There might be a bug with the spawning system in this map. I'll take a look into it. The spawning system always has a limit of how many units to spawn in certain areas without over populate those areas.
- The hereos were touching Kaleo during the cinematic? Haha. They must been on queue commands or something. I didn't get this during my playthrough. And yeah, the issue you mention can certain be fixed.
- Yeah this is one of the tedious optional maps if you wonder. Frustration is expected.

Lonely Island
- I agree, the Turtle-dodging system is not perfect.
- YEAH HAHAHA, Makrura Abominations, my favorite custom unit in the game. The stun is long but it's not overpowered. I believe you've found out the trick to fight those guys. Moving away before they cast the stunning spell is the best way to deal with them.
- The switches are annoying and the map is meant to be that way anyway.
- Gargantuan Turtles with mana? Was it intentional? I don't quite remember. Need to check that out.
- Armor/Damage types are the same as the original, the only difference is the Damage Reduction.
- You're right, the whole room should be visible.
- I may reduce the cost of upgrades for the statues. I didn't test this as much so they, as you say, can be greatly overpriced.
- Putting the camera back up... uhm, good idea.

Shimmer Wood
- Aha, using Solaire to get the items in the back of Balaro is quite clever. You don't have to kill Balaro by doing this.
- I'll make the items from Solaire drop next time when the unit changes ownership.
- I thought I et the undead units to neutral with their level displayed. Will check that again.
- It's normal for creeps just run somewhere during fights. It's part of the roaming system.
- When a unit has alpha besides its name, it's two time stronger than the original version. All creeps in the campaign used to have Alpha, Beta, Delta behind their names but I removed them. Players should now notice the difference in creeps' power by their level.
- You're right. It would be nice for all units to have QWER hotkeys for their spells. However, making QWER hotkeys for all units in the campaign requires time and effort. I don't have enough of those factors, so I only applied QWER to the most important units in the campaign.
- Not gonna burn Buri's body? Hah, you're right! I forgot about that. I guess you can safely assume that Adias bring Buri's body to his family later.
- I can see why Chen was teleported to the north of the map after finding Buri. I'll check the triggers and see if I can fix this.

Murloc Caves
Wow, you figured out the way to kill the Emperor! When I created this boss fight I know that it would be an annoying boss fight. That's why it's annoying and optional.

Edenvale City
- A packhorse is even more complicated than a static stash. Would it be invincible? If it dies, keeping all your items for map transfering is quite complicated. The stash system is just spiral up into oblivion. The best thing I can think of for the stash system is that I can add another stash. So now players would have 2 stashes to transfer items between maps instead of only one. It would require a lot of triggering but it's safe to do this.
- Yes experience is shared. We can remove buggs and reset spells in the future version after an areana fight.
- I think I haven't incorporate Buri into the Unit Testing minigame so the modes may not work with him proberly.
- The Holy Order avatar shouldn't spawn with full mana. With the mana transfer ability, players can abuse it to restore Adias' mana every time the avatar get summoned.
- All testing units should give you gold just like any creeps would do even after finishing the arena quest.
- One of the sheep remained green after the 4th round? Wow, this must have happened because the game engine reaches its limit. Sometimes the game cannot go through all of the triggers proberly causing problems like this. It's unfortunate but I can't do nothing about it. The final reward of this quest are not the ankh and a potion of mana. The final reward can only obtained if you complete round 50 of this minigame. As I said, this quest is optional. It may not be for everyone as not everyone has the ability to do it. You may ask how the hell we can reach round 50. It's possible. One of my friends reach round 40 in his second try.
- Yeah, I didn't notice that the sheeps were vulnerable. I'll make them vulnerable in the next update.
- You're right, the bandits are really weak. Maybe we should replace with the alpha (x2) version.
- Making the crab food and the musical core as variables are better than making them as items. Simple but effective, I like it. I'll do it in the next update.

Edenvale Dungeon/King of Edenvale/Throne Room.
- "The light is with us! I curse you!" Huh? I don't get it. Do we have this line in the campaign?
- It's a game after all, so the boss may look like he/she is waiting for you.
- The door opens after you finish round 4. Players can keep playing beyond that point if they want to.
- Chen sometimes would use his mana when he's low on hp. He also uses a potion of healing when you fight him. It would be fun fighting him without item on Adias. I know I made this fight quite simple and it's intentional. The main fight is after him.
- The doors which you destroyed at the start of the dungeon should be invulnerable. I'll fix it in the next version.
- The elevators with magic barriers are not bugged. The pathing of the elevators are supposed to be reversed in someway. I know I changed the numbers in the triggers to "reverse" them but I stil don't know how they work exacty in practice.
- Yes Arthas isn't really hard if you find a way to fight him. You figured it out. Congratulations! One of my friends use hit-and-run on Arthas.
- I intentianlly painted a minimap that looks like the lion. Stormwind, yes, a preference. I did it mainly for artistic purpose haha.
- You don't get anything out of game achiecement btw. The only thing you get out of it is the achievement itself.
- The problem with multiple options of heroes to choose from is that you can't build a good story for them. Chen plays an important character in the story so we can't replace him with anone else.
- The heroes which weren't present in the dungeon trial you can assume that they were already defeated.
- I made the throne room map. It is one of the last maps that got reterrained before public release so it's quality is pretty high. My terraining skills definitely improved after terraining more than 2 dozens maps. When you see parts that look ugly in this campaign, you know when the terrain was made.
- Hues for Cloak of flames and fire? Nice. Thank you. I'll do it.
- I thought of putting info in the library as well. However, after putting everything I needed in there, I found out that there weren't much room left for info.
- Fighting the heroes in the dungeon again after the trial was meant for gameplay purpose even though they are technically no longer in there.

Shimmer Coastal
- You're riht. The grunt should not decay during the scene. That's why the scene always seemed weird to me.
- I'll use different names, color for the barrels which are invulnerable.
- Tojara is a minor boss.
- The Sunken Monster wasn't sent by team undead. I just classified it as an undead enemy.
- Your wolves will gain an ability to increase attack speed when Darak's ability reaches level 8.
- The Light bullets are powerful but they are limited in supply. You're right I can put a stronger creature there. I'll consider it.

The Barrows
- The number of lizards will throw people off at first. Targeting the strong ones in the clusters is the trick to deal with those lizards. When the strong ones are down, the rest are just pieces of cake.
- I didn't set the respawn to be greater in number. I wonder if this was a bug.
- The thunder lizard eggs should still drop after you've found on.
- About the Warlock in the middle, I can't answer your question because I don't know either.
- The Shimmerweed is really random. It also moves, yeah.
- This map was reterrained right before public released so the pathing at some areas are not fully blocked. That's why units can just go through the doodads. I'll spend more time on blocking the pathing on this map.
- You can get a lot more eggs and shimmerweed. The game will store them as variables so that you can create more potions in the future yes.
- I thought of other fast traveling systems for the campaign as well but I like the slow pace of this genre and I wanted to stay true to that.

Longpass Valley
- Heroes have more than 9 levels but there's a limit of how many characters you can type in a box of tooltip. That's why I can only put 8 levels their. Venkolm also suggestted other ways to write the tooltips including the higher lv abilities. However, the power of the of the higher lv abilities are not solid as Act II's still in development and balancing still needs to be done. The power of heroes' abilities increases a lot less once they are above level 8. They are subject to change as Act II is developed. New tooltips for heroes' abilities will be re-implemented once Act II is completed.
- 9k gold on the statues?! Wow, they need some nerfs.
- Arthas Chain Lightning. Yeah, this is not Warcraft 3 you know. This is Defenders of the Light.
- I need to take a look at the enemy hero in this map. He's kinda buggy I'd say.
- You can go through a shortcut, as you did, leave the wagons behind, kill everything beforehand. That's a nice trick you found there. No complaint, I could have done the same thing.
- Treants don't belong to the undead actually. However, that's the only way I could think of to make the undead not attack the Treants. Because the undead is hostile to Neutral Hostile, they will kill every neutral hostile in their vicinity. Another approach is to make the undead treat neutral hostile as neutral. By doing this, the treants and some other units can belong to neutral hostile.
- Arthas and Musko will be revived just like the other heroes when they die.
- Arthas did not leave all the artifacts you've put on him?! It's either the triggers that I need to take a look at or the game reached its limit again.
- Now that I think of it. It would be better to have a stash in this map.

Stormhaul
- Rum for Friend and Broken Piano are universal quests. They require you to travel to other maps to complete the quest. That's why the quests appear in different maps as well. But you are right, they don't have to appear in every single map. I can remove this in the future.
- I don't quite remember. Can building give gold? Now that you mentioned it, I'll see it I can make them give players gold. 200 each would be nice.
- About Titans not giving out money after you complete the quest, that's really weird. They should continue giving you money. There's not even a trigger to stop them from giving you money. It must be something related to the engine.
- Titans with another color seems like a good idea. I'll consider it.
- Yeah you can just run through the undead base to reach Glaring Shore. You can make it a challenge by destroying all of the building if you want.

Glaring Shore
- The titans were summon by the boss. There can be many explanation for your point. Maybe the boss just wanted Arthas afterall. Maybe Arthas was unlucky when the titans' spawn locations were right next to him. Maybe we can skip through all of the reasoning I just accept that Arthas is meant to die.
- The artillery units can hit the Akiba wards? Wow, that should not happen. Added into to-fix-list.
- You can't go back at this point unless you have a save before this map.
- Your 4 point about Starcraft II last level is not true haha. I thought of this level design from scratch actually, not inspired from anything else. I went through many improvement to reach the gameplay that it has right now. Epic final boss right? I'm curious of how many times you died from this boss.
- Before entering the map, you was notified about this being the last map right? Maybe it wasn't clear enough. In the previous versions, you could return to other maps after the final boss.
- Arthas doesn't believe in "destiny" stuffs. He's skeptical. The prophecy was vague so Arthas didn't know what will happen and deal with them accordingly.

After this, I'll start replying to the rest of your messages. With the limited time that I have, short texts would be better from now on. Replies will be more responsive cause now I can use my phone to reply to messages. Ask me any questions that you have, I'll gladly answer.

 

Spoiler: ThinhHo->reply to reply

I wholeheartedly disagree. Bugs appear when you make stuff wrongly. You do them properly in one map and export-import them on the others.

That's a cheeky way of getting out of the situation. The remark is not only for a hero rank but also for the almost copy paste of a hero ability roster from the game.

Not if they are optional and you can ignore them if you want. Of course, hidden ones is a neat gameplay diversity.

I'm not sure how an English word and it's sense could have a different meaning in another culture? You're saying the English word pop in other countries has other meanings?

Hidden? I just got it when entering the map from the north without any notice. How does that make it hidden?

Yeah, I might have misunderstood.

No. They don't work even if it's the only orb on him.

That shouldn't be because you could use the herbs before getting to know about the quest which makes it frustrating and it's a sort of laugh in your face from the author to the player.

That forces player to replay which isn't a good way of creating replayability. Usually you do it by letting a player choose between something and something else but without having to know of it beforehand unless it won't work anymore.

I play with music off so, I have no idea how it happened unless you trigger the volume for music on each chapter.

Weird, maybe try another attachment point? Or use special FX on region, I don't know really... Another possibility might be to make the ! a flying unit with Locust ability so you can't select it.

Maybe some seduction/deceit as well?

Either make the horse invincible or make the stash item transaction range higher (map wide) but I think if you do this one it affects all item manipulation ranges from hero to hero, shop to hero etc. You could circumvent this by adding an ability to the stash which moves the items from a selected hero to it, say only from the first slot or something like that and the other way around.

Should just mention that he is excluded or make the quest available after Buri is no more.

Well, it has a cooldown but the thing is that the other spells become useless when you'll be using the summoned unit for mana transfer when it already has low mana.

You can. Just reset the colour of the sheep every time, after every round.

What about you as the creator? If you can't then... it's pretty weird. I don't expect other people to do something I can't in one of my maps.

Yeah, it's funny, using the light and all that but he resorts to cursing like dark magic, you know? It's the unit's soundset.

Hmm? What exactly do you mean? You could just simply stand next to the bookshelves and text would appear.

Yeah, saw that but well I really didn't think the movement speed buff was useful.

Or just use another player?

On Normal? Not once. The titans were a bit problematic but I had the allied units so, it was really OK.

You should be able to return to those maps afterwards to finish what there is to. That's how many JRPGs do it but not most I gather. Also, actually, the antepenultimate map is the last and you can't return once you start the mission.

 

That's a great question!
It will take quite a while before the next chapter gets released. As for the next update, I haven't had enough time to work on it just yet. The next update only fixes some bugs in the campaign. No new content will be added.
-------------------------
When receiving Cairne as the 4th hero in The Founding of Durotar, I noticed that the RPG formula starts to break from there. The game which focuses heavily on micro now become a macro-focused game. With 4 heroes, you can also spam their skills continuously. It is also hard to find synergy for all of their abilities when you have 4 heroes.
So the maximum number of heroes you would get are only 3 heroes.
A 4th hero can be temporarily added into your hero roster when the mission is a macro-focused one, just like some missions in Act I.

 

Thank you Ryan, this is one of the best comments that I have seen so far.

I'm very happy to read these lines. My whole intention for that part was to nail the emotions of players, storytelling and character development to the max level. The part can be considered to be the best part of the campaign and I'm very proud of it. Thank you for giving it the recognition it deserves. I love to see how this cinematic has an emotional impact on people. I'm curious. Why was you grinning during the cinematic? Was it the anticipation? Was it the death? The music?

A note on the song that I used: The song is Attack on Titan - Hiroyuki Sawano which is from the show itself. This is my favorite song of all time. I've listened to this song for more than 1500 times without getting bored of it. It's meaning is powerful and I want to put it into motion through that cinematic of the campaign. The song depicts a fight in which the fighters know that they may die. They fight for their family, their people and their country. The great thing about this song is that the fighters know that they may not make it out of there alive. The important thing is not to stay alive. The most important thing is that they fight whether they win or not. Many people carries this philosophy through life. This philosophy can make them monsters in what they do. They are undefeated because they don't fear death or failure. All they fear is not doing anything.

I agree. That is also my complaint. I'm thinking of putting a second stash beside the one that players already have. This allows them to carry more items through the maps. The system is already there. I just need to add another layer to it. It just takes a lot of triggering to implement.

I made the items random each time so that players can't easily cheese the system. They can't also spoil it for others if it's random like this.

 

is this map compatible with the latest patch release?

 

We haven’t officially tested the campaign with the newest patch. It only has some minor bugs from the previous 1.30 patches. If the newest patch hasn’t changed much. The campaign should work just fine.

 

Well i guess i will post if i find anything then! Thanks for the quick reply!

 

I'm glad you enjoyed reading my comments regarding your campaign. Thank you for the background info for the cinematic I referred to, that was very interesting to read! The reason I was grinning while watching it I guess was just excitement. The song set it up excellently and it was just climactic to watch. I had hoped I could watch it again but alas, there's no link for it on the campaign list. I finally "finished" the act, kinda. I got to the level where the demon is in the center of the map, saved my game, but haven't gone back to play the battle, probably because I know that'll mark the end of the campaign for a while. It was a pleasure while it lasted though. Thank you, friend.

 

IS there ANY way of killing the murloc emperor without cheats? like a strategy to stop those broken venomtrashers spawnin... really helps ... till now it's good,but this one particular fight drives me mad.

 

You can buy Hunter's Net in The Barrows which can be used to immobilize the Emperor. Without the ability to flee, it goes down fast. You also need to be strong enough to take it down (About lv20+). I cannot guarantee that you will be able to defeat it using this method but it certainly makes the fight a lot easier.

 

Hey i wanted to report a crash bug i ran into. The NPC that gives the "Pick up all the weeds" quest, starting the quest causes a crash.
Edit: wanted to say that i am playing this on 1.30

 

This must have been caused by the new patch. Nobody reported this bug before prior to the new patch.