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First Human Book of Arkain (Patch 1.29.2 or newer!)

This bundle is marked as director's cut. It exceeds all expectations and excels in every regard.
arkain_2020_x200-png.369838


! No longer updated !
Check out the
True Story of Arkain for updates!


full


A Campaign Series made by Shar Dundred

! Requires Version 1.29.2 or newer !
You are not allowed to publish any edited version of any Arkain map! This includes but is not limited to Reforged edits!

Story

The Humans of the Empire, who fought the Demon invaders for years, after the end of the so called Voidwar, now face a new strong invasion force. New ships have arrived from the other side of the Great Sea and the Humans prepare to defend themselves against the incoming invasion.
Command General Blen Greymoore, one of the best generals of the Empire, and his allies and face the new Demon Invasion. Defend the kingdoms and defeat the ruthless and merciless Legions.


Campaign Series Info

The Legends of Arkain is a campaign series which takes place on the world Arkain.
The races of Arkain fight against the demon invaders, who try once again to enslave every being on Arkain. The Humans, the Orcs and the Undead will have to make a stand against them... or face complete annihilation or enslavement by the Demons.
This campaign series will consist of actually three different series. There will be a Human, an Orc and an Undead campaign series. They will all run in the same timeline but will present three different stories and outcomes. When they are all finished, it's completely up to you, who wins this conflict.
Those, who win the war, will write the history.

You like the campaign?
Click here to see the progress of the series!


Click here for the First Orc Book!
Click here for the First Undead Book!

Click here for the Second Human Book!
Click here for the Second Orc Book!
Click here for the Second Undead Book!

Let's Play made by @Jayborino!

Features

- Three different storylines/campaign series
Take control of one of the three factions, the proud Humans of the Empire, the plundering and strong Orc Clans or the mysterious Undead Nexus and their endless army of the dead, and face the demonic invasion as well as other struggles that await you.
- New units
Command units, you already know, as well as completely new units with new upgrades and abilities.
- Decide the fate of Arkain
At some points of the campaigns, you'll have the opportunity to decide things, that affect the storyline, characters and sometimes even the chapters you play or how you have to play them. By doing or, well, not doing certain side quests, you can also affect the campaign.
- Three difficulties
You can play the campaign in either easy, normal oder hard difficulty, just like in the original WC3 campaigns. It will impact on the AI difficulty and scripting as well as other minor changes.
In easy version, for example, the AI won't rebuilt lost buildings.

- Full Jass AI
In this campaign series, every single AI is written in Jass instead of being created with the AI editor. This makes the AI more intelligent.
- Universal Hero hotkeys
All hero abilities use the QWER hotkeys.

Factions

The Human Empire
There have always been Humans on Arkain. The Human kingdoms and their allies, the Elves and Dwarves, have fought the Demons for centuries while also being attacked by orc pillagers. They had no chance against the demons and were already close to annihilation, when the Empire showed up.
They came over the Great Sea in the west and saved the kingdoms, who immediately joined the Empire in return. The Humans still fight the Demons and more and more of them join the fight against their old suppressors.
The Humans already tried to get rid of the Demons for good, but they failed. However, they continue fighting and won't stop until there are no humans or enemies of humanity anymore.
The current Emperor is Theodor the Second.

The Orcish Clans

Legends say that the Orcs hail from another continent and then spread all over the kingdoms. But not even the oldest Orcs can tell, if that's the true or the Orcs have been here all the time, just like the other races.
But it is known that the united clans attacking absolutely everything and everyone they met and conquered a large territory. It did work for a while, but not long. The other races, especially the Demons, who were very angry about that insult, brought the fight to them and massacred half of the green skins.
The Orcs had to retreat and lost much of their territory. The only reason, why half of them are still there, is that their enemies fought among each other as well.
The Orc Clans allied with the Trolls, to increase their strengh, but still didn't manage to gather an army, that was comparable to their old numbers. Since they weren't able to begin their another huge conquest, the clans stopped working together and some old rivalries amongst the clans became important again.
Still, they managed to raid the other races and remain an annoyance for the other factions. There are still many Orcs left, which could prove to be a strong force, if they'd be united under a strong leader.

The Undead Nexus

The Undead are the most mysterious race of Arkain. Of course, necromancers and necrolytes are not unknown and have always summoned some undead servants to do their bidding, but the Undead as a complete race are a mystery to all creatures.
Once, a group of mighty necromancers, who became insane because of their immense power, believed they could rule the world with an army of the Living Dead. However, only days after they began attacking the Human kingdoms, they simply vanished. Their armies were gone and only the remains of the corpses were proof, that they ever existed.
What no mortal and no Demon knows, is, that a powerful Archlich, Aridon the Watcher, self-proclaimed guardian of Arkain, took care of them. He has the ability to take control of every Undead, he wants to control. He uses this power only, to make sure, that besides him is no one, who can form a real army of Undead. He always made the Undead kill their masters and reanimated them as his loyal servants.
The only mighty Undead, not currently living on the Dead Mountain, are guarding old temples and ruins, which contain artifacts, not meant to fall in the hands of neither mortals nor Demons. Still, they all call Aridon their master.
Aridon and his Undead live on the so called Dead Mountain, which lies within the Human kingdoms. Every sent expedition on this mountain never returned, so the Humans decided to simply ignore it and built a garrison to watch over the only entrance to the mountain.
Aridon claims to be as old as the world itself and has seen the rise and fall of races and nations. His goal is to maintain the balance of the world - or at least, what he sees as balance. He stayed out of every conflict and only watched for millenia.
But recent events force Aridon to end his idleness and take action himself instead of only manipulating others. He'll have to make the world know about the Undead - and give reason to fear them.

The Demon Legions

If there are any creatures besides the Undead Lord Aridon, who are as old as Arkain itself, than it must be the Demons. These creatures have been the bane of Arkain for a long, long time. If their history contains anything else than attacking and enslaving other races, than only the Demons know about it.
Every Demon Legion is lead by its most powerful Dreadlord. Who is the one, who commands all Legions, is unknown to every non-demon.
The Demons' realm lies in the East of the continent and is seperated by a bottomless rift, the so called Void. No one, except for Demons and their slaves, has ever been on the other side of the Void. The Void is so heavy fortified by the Demons, that they managed to block every attack there. The Void is also the place where the Imperial Army was defeated during their Great Attack.
Now, the Demons seem to begin another great offensive against the other races. And this time, they are determined to be victorious and won't show any mercy.



Characters

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General Blen Greymoore
General Greymoore embodies everything the Empire stands for. He is a honorable warrior who is proud to fight for the Empire and the Emperor. His tactical knowledge and physical strengh made him rise up the ranks very fast and he is eager to fight the Demons.
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Lord Harmos, Guardian of the Flame
Lord Harmos has spent half of his life in an academy to study the arcane arts. He is known for a rather fierce and impatient personality. Still, he knows more about fire magic than anyone else and is absolutely loyal towards the Empire and fights the Demons with full caution and uses his knowledge to gain every possible advantage.
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Aedale
Aedale is probably the most powerful spellcaster in the Empire. Not because of her current power or experience but because of the potential within herself. Aedale still has much to learn, which makes the fact that she was sent to the front look strange. She takes every opportunity to prove both herself and the veterans what she's capable of.
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Salana Woodhunter
Salana is the best ranger of the Elves and has some friends among the Humans and Dwarves. Therefore she often serves as diplomat for her people. Although she serves her queen without question, she had some problems with the politics of her people and begins to think, that the queen should take a more aggressive approach towards the Demons.
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General Gardon Bloodclaw
General Gardon is the most ruthless and merciless general in the Empire. He is known for using every available weapon against his enemies without showing any pardon. His background is a huge secret. He simply appeared out of nowhere and became general. He proved very fast, that he got that position out of good reason. He is the commander of the Ironfist, an elite commando of the Empire, which often carries out top secret missions for the Emperor.
Click here to learn more about the other characters!

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- Initial release


Epilogue:
- Fixed cache issue


General:
- Minor fixes
- Grammar fixes
- New skin for Elite unit
- New portrait for Destructor unit
- New abilities for Blen
- Set experience gain on all difficulties on 30%
- Various trigger fixes
- Terrain improvements
- Secret Chapter will no longer appear if you haven't followed the right way

Chapter One:
- Blen no longer sells his items when AI takes over

Chapter Two:
- Reduced the available gold
- Added a new gold mine
- Reduced the number of rescueable troops
- Reduced the movement speed of the Orc emissary
- Added guards for the emissary
- The Orcs gain a new base if the emissary escapes

Chapter Three:
- Destroying the Keep of the Unknown Soldiers solves the quest

Chapter Four:
- Fixed the outpost area
- Improved cinematics

Chapter Five:
- Decreased difficulty

Chapter Eleven:
- Decreased ally hit points on Hard

Epilogue:
- Fixed cache issue


General:
- Minor fixes

Chapter Seven:
- Fixed Main Quest update bug

Chapter Nine:
- Added reward for destroying Blue
- Reduced the significance of the item gained by killing the golems

Chapter Two:
- Fixed emissary spawn

Epilogue:
- Fixed epilogue

General:
- AI heroes now gain additional levels on Hard difficulty when they are supposed to
- High level Demon units can no longer be charmed
- Demon units don't take any damage from Holy Light anymore
- Demon units now take damage from Death Coil
- Activated latest melee patch for all maps that were still not up to date
- Blen's Neccessary Meassures spell was replaced with Imperial Edict
- Nerfed Giant Skeleton Warrior by removing Resistant Skin and Hardened Skin
- Increased damage of Destructors by 3
- Changed Armor Type of Eredar Warriors, Eredar Wrathguards and Eredar Grandmasters from Medium to Large
- Several model changes
- Added Hardened Skin and Resistant Skin to Clan Elite

Chapter One:
- Demon units now belong to the Souleater Legion
- Overlord replaced with Pitlord
- Added more Demon units
- When purple is defeated, an ally will now join the fight
- Slightly increased the defenses of the enemy bases
- Modified dialogue when encountering the Demons

Chapter Two:
- Increased size of enemy bases
- Increased the defenses of the enemy bases
- Minor terrain improvements

Chapter Three:
- Improved main base defenses
- Increased the number of Orcs attacking with the first wave

Interlude One:
- Added a few Pit Lords
- Added portals

Chapter Four:
- The Demons now send waves against the Ironfist
- The Captains are now still alive after the cutscene in the outpost
- Added Pit Lords

Chapter Five:
- Improved throne room
- Added more enemy units
- Added two Pit Lords

Chapter Seven:
- All Demon units now belong to the Blooddrinker Legion
- Added additional Pit Lord
- Added new dialogue
- The Deathbreeze Clan now supports its shipyards when attacked
- Added more ships to the fleet of the Deathbreeze Clan
- Added additional units to the base defense of the Deathbreeze Clan
- Increased difficulty of the attacking waves
- Replaced the Far Seer with Sasrogarn

Chapter Eight:
- Replaced Soul Burn of Progaderas with Mass Soul Burn
- Increased hit points of the bosses by 1000
- Added new ability for Margazar
- Added an additional Pit Lord
- Increased the number of Fire Golems

Chapter Eleven:
- Replaced Soul Burn of Progaderas with Mass Soul Burn
- Increased the number of Fire Golems
- Added Spell Immunity to Progaderas the Smoking
- The overall style of the map has been modified, the player no longer trains units, but instead supports the armies of his allies with his heroes, by capturing certain buildings and by upgrading the allied army

General:
- Decreased range of Dragon Lancers from 800 to 700
- Decreased Warlord damage by 3
- Fixed Mass Soul Burn
- Salana no longer drops her necklace when she dies

Chapter Four:
- Increased number of allied forces attacking the outpost

Chapter Eight:
- Removed Margazar's super AoE stun

Chapter Eleven:
- Fixed attacking routes

General:
- Various fixes

Chapter One:
- Small grammar fix

Chapter Eight:
- Name fix

Chapter One:
- Completing the side quest regarding the Black Dragon will now be saved as a choice

Chapter Nine:
- Completing the side quest regarding the Darkmind Clan will now be saved as a choice

Secret Chapter:
- The campaign button of Chapter Eleven will now appear properly after completing the secret chapter

Epilogue:
- The new choices will now be referenced

General:
- The campaign no longer uses the latest melee patch due to several balance changes messing up things, a few unit changes still apply to the campaign however

Prologue:
- Fixed an issue where the prologue would crash in version 1.30.1

Chapter Eleven:
- Reworked the AI to be less buggy
- Dramatically reduced the cost of upgrading your allies

General:
- Upkeep reworked: Low Upkeep now gives you 8 instead of 7 gold and High Upkeep now gives you 6 instead of 4 gold
- Furbolgs are now correctly named Bearmen

General:
- Fixed Batrider model

Chapter One:
- Replaced Ironthunder Clan cinematic with dialogue

Chapter Nine:
- Added a hint about the internal clan conflicts for the case of their heroes dying
- Clan Elites now spawn all over the base and no longer require a building to be spawned when the hero of said base dies

Secret Chapter:
- New model for Duke Redfist (courtesy of @Rhapsodie)

Chapter Eleven:
- Removed the dot of "Drake." because my lad @Drake no longer has that annoying dot.
- Destroyed Castles now drop Runes of Restoration
- Increased the size of the ramp to Genethas' castle

General:[/u]
- Fixed triggers that would not be working anymore after loading in newer versions of the game

Prologue:
- Changed the color of the Deathbreeze Clan to Emerald

Chapter One:
- Changed player color from Light Blue to Dark Green
- Renamed Blen's faction from Imperial Army to Kasrkin
- Changed the color of the Darkmind Clan to Navy

Chapter Two:
- Changed player color from Light Blue to Dark Green
- Renamed the Orc Wizards to Ravaging Fire Clan
- The prisoners are no longer "scouts" but instead part of a "vanguard", making their number and strength more plausible
- Changed the color of the Darkmind Clan to Navy

Chapter Three:
- Changed player color from Light Blue to Dark Green
- Changed the color of the Veterans of the Voidwar to Grey
- Changed the color of the Imperial Army to Light Blue
- Changed the color of the Unknown Soldiers to Yellow
- Changed the color of the Darkmind Clan factions to Navy

Chapter Four:
- Decreased the number of Demons attacking the outpost during the cutscene to decrease lags
- Changed the color of the Imperial Army to Light Blue

Chapter Five:
- Changed the color of Larantos' Elite Guard to Peanut
- Replaced Larantos' Phoenix ability with Doom

Chapter Six:
- Renamed the Slaves to Demon Slaves
- Changed the color of the Demon Slaves to Peanut

Chapter Seven:
- Changed the color of the Deathbreeze Clan to Emerald

Interlude Three:
- Adjusted the colors of several units and heroes

Chapter Eight:
- Changed player color from Light Blue to Dark Green
- Changed the color of the Veterans of the Voidwar to Grey
- Fixed the name of the Rohir Nexus

Chapter Nine:
- Changed the color of the Darkmind Clan to Navy
- Changed the color of the Deathbreeze Clan to Emerald
- Renamed the Renegade Orcs to Orc Dissidents
- Changed the color of the Orc Dissidents to Coal
- Minor adjustments to Rath's taunts
- Improved the quality and quantity of the Orc attacks & defenses
- Improved the attacks of the Elven Army
- Allowed Salana to use more Judicators

Chapter Eleven:
- Changed player color from Light Blue to Dark Green
- Changed the color of the Imperial Army to Light Blue
- Renamed the neutral Imperial Army to Imperial Army Bystanders
- Changed the color of the Imperial Army Bystanders to Wheat
- Changed the color of the Knights of Kome to Peach
- Increased the amount of units defending Progaderas
- Brought back the old RTS version of Chapter Eleven
- Removed all taunts

Epilogue:
- Changed the color of the Elves to Teal





Models & Skins:
Blizzard Entertainment
67chrome
epsilon
Wandering Soul
infrenus
Tauer
AndrewOverload519
Mephestrial
Dojo
PrMosquito
Hawkwing
Em!
dickxunder
acagnip
Uncle Fester
Frankster
Mc !
IamMclovin
AhhFreshWeeD
Sin'dorei300
Elenai
Kuhneghetz
CloudWolf
alreadyused
Dark Hunter1357
Dmitry Rommel
Kitabatake
Shar Dundred
RazorClawX
Uljimasa Hojo
eXciTe
Sellenisko
frostwolf
-Grendel
Skipper
Deolrin
gookywooky
Callahan
BlinkBoy
Hueter
Coinblin
13LUR
Pins
Mr.Goblin
Direfury
PROXY
Mechanical Man
DarkEvil
Infrisios


Icons:
Blizzard Entertainment
Uncle Fester
CloudWolf
xylign
SkriK
CRAZYRUSSIAN
Darkfang
GreyArchon
67chrome
Fjury
PrMosquito
INSEKT
Muoteck
dickxunder
Frankster
CloudWolf
Kuhneghetz
Elenai
Heinvers
Shar Dundred
Uljimasa Hojo
SinisterX
Darkfang
Hemske
Palaslayer
NFWar
Hellx-Magnus
Justicebringer
Sin'dorei300
sigelang
Mr.Goblin
Mythic
antihero
Pins
Eagle XI


Campaign Preview Screen:
Heinvers

Campaign Logo:
Mythic

Campaign Chief Development Tester and Grammar Genius:
Kasrkin

Everything else made by:
Shar Dundred

First Supporters:
Theoden of KoMe
Chen
youness
Kasrkin
kakuzu
BandolXD
Heinvers
Imperator
Veritas 117
PlankingWolf



Please contact me via PM if I forgot to give you credit for your resource!



To Blizzard Entertainment for this great game.
To Turnro whose great campaigns inspired me to revive this old project.
To Jayborino for his enjoyable let's play projects of the Arkain series!
To all who supported this project.
And very many special thanks to Kasrkin, who supported the creation of this project in many ways!



Feel free to post your suggestions, opinions and questions!
Please report any bugs!


Here you can find the old 1.27 version of the campaign.
Keep in mind that it is no longer being maintained!



Keywords:
Arkain, Legends, Legends of Arkain, LoA, campaign, series
Contents

Legends of Arkain First Human Book (Campaign)

Reviews
Moderator: StoPCampinGn00b Legends of Arkain First Human Book by Shar Dundred RATINGS Scores[/COLOR]] Gameplay: 27/30 Terrain & Aesthetics: 13/20 Total Score: 40/50 Explanation[/COLOR]]5 Stars: 47+ 4 Stars: 40-47 3 Stars: 25-39 2 Stars...

Pick your favorite character


  • Total voters
    321
Level 1
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1
Pleaase help
1.when I played chapter 8 to finished game, it can't playing chapter 8 , its
Bounce offใ
2. I can't played chapter 9, it show black screen when I started it.
 
Level 5
Joined
Aug 31, 2018
Messages
64
@deepstrasz Yeah, I already played it. I couldn't get further until Chapter 5 on Difficulty Hard..It's insane actually because the enemy ranger is lvl 6
and starfall just wrecks my units and towers^^. Also I haven't anything to disable starfall, have I?

I "accidently" played on normal this time and hell even this took me 2 hours to complete on chapter 5.
The story and dialogues are very well written! For that alone it deserves 5* IMO. Characters are also great personalities and not borring.
Also the decision making (and later the consequences) makes this campaign outstanding and feel like a rpg.

Edit: Thanks @ThinhHo I very appreciate it.

Edit2: The boss fight against the lich was really nice.
 
Last edited:
Level 2
Joined
Jun 27, 2013
Messages
10
Not bad campaign overall but it has really tedious and awful moments that feel like you've never playtested them at all.

Chapter 11 is the biggest joke and worst map ever, congrats on making a map that basically ruins your whole campaign.

You earn so little gold for only kills that YOU do while it costs a shitload to upgrade anything, go around (teleport) or revive the hero while your allies can't hold anything and the enemy has some OP hero ball, 2 paladins that can heal eachother while 1 can solo kill your base cause he gods shields every 15 seconds? FUN! also enjoy never being able to heal your heroes

Seriously, remove it or rework it or at least playtest your maps its totally awful! You're stuck running around defending your allies base with your heroes and can hardly do anything at all (while your mage insta dies literally if he ever comes near anyone) while earning so little gold that there is basically no progression to do anything at all, where is the fun in that? killing Paladins that mow down my heroes and can heal themselves nonstop and dont die isn't fun and neither is the entire design of that map..one kill does between 20-40 or sometimes 50 gold and I need for JUST the second damage upgrade 1500? that takes eternities and you cant even kill many enemy units as you're stuck defending your allies. Its plain boring and tedious and you can't even get around fast enough if you ever try to do something else than defending your allies base and if you buy teleport books then yeah, you'll never earn money.

Till chapter 11 it was a solid 6/10 while some maps were better, some worse but this is just garbage.
 
Last edited:
Level 5
Joined
Aug 31, 2018
Messages
64
Not bad campaign overall but it has really tedious and awful moments that feel like you've never playtested them at all.

Chapter 11 is the biggest joke and worst map ever, congrats on making a map that basically ruins your whole campaign.

You earn so little gold for only kills that YOU do while it costs a shitload to upgrade anything, go around (teleport) or revive the hero while your allies can't hold anything and the enemy has some OP hero ball, 2 paladins that can heal eachother while 1 can solo kill your base cause he gods shields every 15 seconds? FUN! also enjoy never being able to heal your heroes

Seriously, remove it or rework it or at least playtest your maps its totally awful! You're stuck running around defending your allies base with your heroes and can hardly do anything at all (while your mage insta dies literally if he ever comes near anyone) while earning so little gold that there is basically no progression to do anything at all, where is the fun in that? killing Paladins that mow down my heroes and can heal themselves nonstop and dont die isn't fun and neither is the entire design of that map..one kill does between 20-40 or sometimes 50 gold and I need for JUST the second damage upgrade 1500? that takes eternities and you cant even kill many enemy units as you're stuck defending your allies. Its plain boring and tedious and you can't even get around fast enough if you ever try to do something else than defending your allies base and if you buy teleport books then yeah, you'll never earn money.

Till chapter 11 it was a solid 6/10 while some maps were better, some worse but this is just garbage.

I'm currrently on a break from playing campaigns but I still read stuff here. And I must say that I also feel that some maps aren't truly playtested. For example:
Chapter 5 where you have to fight against a lvl 6 ranger with starfall. You can't use polymorph because he is a hero and how are you supposed to interrupt her starfall?
Simply you can't! This is totally absurd and way too hard. Even if you are so pro, it will take hours upon hours to complete it.
Then what I find strange is, that after chapter 5 it becomes a lot easier, even on hard compared to other chapters.
I mean the fight against the lich was challenging and was fun BECAUSE it's not too hard!
I watched a lot of Jayborino's videos and he also sacrificed everything to destroy buildings/demon gates. Some units and heroes to distract while the black dragons take care of the buildings.
It's not really a fun concept. But still I have HUGE respect for the story and dialogues. It's a lot of work and even the original wc3 campaign doesn't come close to this.
 
Level 2
Joined
Nov 29, 2015
Messages
22
I can't play the 9th mission. When i click on it, insted of a loading screen, the screen goes black and nothing happens and i have to quit the game.
 

Shar Dundred

Community Moderator
Level 72
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
5,862
I have edited every map in the last update with an editor using 1.29.2.
I cannot replicate the bug that has been reported myself so the first reason I can think of is that
the last update affected not all maps in a way that could cause incompatibility.
What it could be related to I do not know, maybe it is because Chapter Nine has a relative large
number of used player slots in comparison to the missions before and the latest updates of Blizzard
edited them a lot.
It is not a certainty, it is a possibility.
 
Level 3
Joined
Dec 12, 2018
Messages
28
I have only played the first five levels but loved it. The mapping is a bit too flat for my taste but the coding, the variety of units and the heavy plot writting are excellent.
 
Level 7
Joined
Aug 5, 2018
Messages
62
I wanted to replay your campaigns lately, and seeing this updated version when checking in convinced me to do so.

I'm playing it in difficult, with the added benefit of my previous experience. I noticed a few minor spelling error in the early chapters (I've played up to chapter 5 for now), including one affecting a character name, but I didn't pause to write it down.

This campaign was enjoyable for the challenge it offers and for its great story, and this is as true as ever.

The upkeep rework of course makes things easier, but in a pleasant way. You will have soldiers dying and towers destroyed and you'll need to replace them. Old upkeep encouraged too much a passive strategy where you'd defend a lot to get a stockpile of gold and then go on the offensive with quick replacing of the losses using the stockpile. Now, staying at low and being more offensive works just as well.

So far, I completed the five first missions. For the four first it was without having to reload a save to fix a mess up, except in mission 3 : the main quest got completed by allies (I focused on stopping the attack waves first) before I could finish a side quest, but I don't count "crushing the enemy too fast" as a fail. So while it is challenging, it's still absolutely manageable. For the fifth, I erroneously thought that I needed to not destroy a castle in order to do what I wanted for a sidequest, which switched the difficulty from "hard" to "insane". I tried a few times from a bad overextended position, before completing the chapter without issue from an earlier more solid position.

Here are the strategies I used for each mission for reference.

You start in the south-west corner of the map, and you have to eliminate enemies at the north-east, with optional enemy bases to take down in the east and in the north-east (close to the target base).

Peasants don't count for the upkeep limit, so I did a few of them to collect more woods and build a few towers. Attacks mostly targeted the eastern entrance. I did upgrades quickly. I mostly remained in my base, not knowing when to expect the first enemy attack, but you do have the time to clean up creeps which are nearby your base. I didn't do the dragon optional quest.

Of the enemy attacking waves, I found the red and yellow more annoying than the purple, but the purple base is in a spot which is easier to attack.

The key crossroad in this map is near the fountain of life. All attacks targeting your main base must go through here. There are some random orcs to eliminate, but once this is done it is a great defensive spot which in retrospect I should have taken earlier.

Staying at the limit below high upkeep, I destroyed the small enemy forces north of the fountain of life and created a full-fledged base near the goldmine there. Units trained from there have a much shorter path to any of the enemy bases.

After I was confident in my defences (with grapes of towers to the east), I went to destroy the purple base. Against a full-scale assault, it could not hold. I repeated the process for the yellow and red bases.

My army was split in four groups, with Blen + Knights, Crossbowmen, priests, and catapults. The crossbowmen are very efficient as they don't suffer from movement issues like the knights do. Catapults are a must to quickly erase a base, but it's better to destroy the bulk of the enemy forces before having them join in to avoid them being rushed. You want to destroy the units production building as quickly as possible, as there are many and they can quickly respawn an army if you're not careful, but your catapults won't be able to help if they get destroyed early.

For Blen abilities, I went with upgrading Command Aura. Increasing the damage output of your units is VERY powerful, because the fastest you kill an enemy unit, the less it has times to harm your own units, and this effect gets more and more powerful as you get more units in the battle. Related link :


The Imperial Edict is also a great ability to spam often.

For the second phase of the mission, I just went cautiously enough to not lose any firemage, while cleaning up the map to get tomes. I didn't find Harmos spells very practical to use (I'm not great microing with banish) so I went with incinerate to get a passive boost. I abused the firemage stun spell to incapacitate enemies, it does wonder to reduce enemy DPS.

When joining in with Blen forces, I gave Blen the mana item as with my limited micro abilities it is much more useful for him than for Harmos. For the final battle to eliminate the blue orc base to the east, I went with the same unit composition as earlier, except I added Harmos and his firemages to the crossbowmen group. The fight was a bloody mess, but producing reinforcements and destroying buildings with catapults I erased the green skins presence.

Orcs really want to control this forest, but Blen won't let that happen.

You have to destroy one enemy base in the south-east and one in the north-east, while being in the center-west of the map.

I immediately began to do a lot of upgrades, and peasants to collect more wood. I built some towers along the entrances (most at the center to cover both south-east and north-east entrance). I sent Harmos and Blen forward each on one path to forewarn of any enemy attacks.

With your heroes and supporting units (I used the same mix as before with knights, crossbowmen and priests, plus catapults later) and your towers, defending your base is quite easy.

Next, I pushed south. I had to in order to intercept the orc emissaries, but one you've dealt with some annoying orcs, there is another gold mine making for a great second base. I built a new fully-featured base there, including some towers to help intercept orc emissaries and attacks from the blue base.

At the main base, I left two or three knights to assist defending the towers, in particular to eliminate catapults. Most enemies units are simply crushed when attacking about fifteen towers with a mix of all types (the less costly guard towers in the front). This allowed me to not have to worry much about this defence and not have to micro there a lot.

At some point, I built a big army and went to the attack along the south road to attack the south-eastern enemy base. The path is long and I had to deal with some attacks on the road. The bigger issue was that it was not possible for me to get reinforcements quickly, and despite dealing massive losses to the enemy, the constant production of new units and attacks from towers almost completely wiped out my army, including Blen dying. A second similar attack, however, wiped the enemy base for good.

I began to build a new base there, but the AI is coded to attack you when you do so. I had not my full troops, no tower support, and both purple and yellow orcs got together. I ended with my army mostly wiped out once again, but Harmos survived by hiding. I could quickly rebuild the base soon after and recreate my army. From there, I eliminated progressively all the red units blocking the roads, and organized a massive assault onto the orc wizards of the optional quest, with reinforcements coming from the starting base. I got some significant losses, but in the end it was not an issue. I built a new base near the gold mine, and used catapultes to destroy trees separating this spot from the south-north road to the east.

This allowed to go much more quickly from this base to the south-east base and vice-versa. I moved my troops to the crossroad points further north, which I fortified with a few towers. Once I got satisfied with my resources and after having repelled an enemy attack, I went to liberate the imprisoned scouts. I had max food so this put me over the limit, somewhere around 148. It is important to max out food before doing the liberation to benefit as much as possible from it.

The final attack, done after the enemy hero killed himself trying to attack me, didn't require much strategy. I mostly rushed with my units into the enemy base and try to kill and destroy as fast as possible. The unit surplus from the side quest is very useful here to properly overwhelm your enemy. I had heavy losses, and orc emissaries attacking didn't help the matter. But with my heroes managing to stay alive along with a few units, I could send in a stream of reinforcements from my central and south-eastern base while building with a peasant new barracks much closer. From then on it was just a matter of time to finish the job.

Blen and Harmos says that the humans should stay defensive, but your allies will go ahead and attack stupidly as soon as they can.

I moved all the troops from my main base to the river quickly in order to defend it against the attacking horde, and then added some more peasants for wood production while launching as many upgrades as possible. I built new barracks and other units building closer to the river frontline, and built a lot more new towers (which weren't used often in practice).

I didn't want to rush the attack and preferred to get technology and resource stockpile on track first, but as my allies didn't have any of it, I sent Blen along them.

You really don't want Blen to die, so as soon as he was threatened to be encircled by orcs being too numerous, I pulled him back. Even if he doesn't land a single blow on an enemy orc, you want to have him around your allies. Between the command aura and the imperial edict, you greatly enhance their damage output and their survivability, so the orcish hordes will only rarely manage to get to your fortified line on the river.

At some point, I was happy with my units and went to the attack. I eliminated a few orcs waiting left and right before helping to crush the main base. Catapults were very useful to eliminate towers and enemy catapults, but other units suffered terribly from the choke point at the entry of the main enemy base. You want either your units in if you're attacking or out if you're retreating, but certainly not blocked at the chokepoint trying to move. Unfortunately, stupid allied crossbowmen and catapults which can find something to attack from there will block it and it's a real pain.

Once you've managed to destroy a few buildings near the entrance and overcome the chokepoint, it gets easy. Replace your losses and destroy as many buildings as possible from the three sub-groups of the enemy clan. Keep your units grouped enough so that when some orcs attack you can deal with them easily.

One thing I did wrong was to go too far. I annhilated all three bases, so my allies went to attack the enemy chieftain and boss. This puts you on a clock to finish other objectives before he is killed. He doesn't seem to have any code to back to his throne, so as he slowly killed allies, he got closer and closer to my base. I had to reload once as he killed himself on my towers. On the second try, I had my towers attack one another to keep him alive, and somehow the orc moved the leftmost point where I had towers and just sat there after having destroyed them. Meanwhile, allies accumulated at his empty throne.

The two things I wanted to do before killing him were eliminating the golems in the north-east of the map to get a sweet item reward, and saving Lady Aedale in the North-West to get a sweet item and save her. The enemy base in the north-west doesn't rebuild so it's easy to destroy, just train some units to replace your losses if needed. I used the same Blen+knights, Harmos+crossbowmen, priests, and catapults composition as before.

A mission with only units to control, so quite easy if you don't rush too fast. You've got priests to heal between battles. I used Salana in a first group and the weak elven units in a second group. I killed optional creeps to get items and liberate the captains. The captains are strong enough to handle some attack so I put them in the 1st group with Salana.

After having reached the outpost, you get massive reinforcements with Gardon. I eliminated the optional demons for the items, before slowly cleaning up the base. With the Ironfist sending streams of units, you can't lose. I nonetheless kept as many of my units alive as late as possible, which proved useful to take down the demonlord. I handed over Gardon's good items to Salana to help in chapter 5.

In my first playthrough, this chapter was hell. I played on an older patch with an older campaign version, and either one of them or the combination did that the allies never arrived. At first I thought there would be some delay for them to arrive, in fact it was bugged. I had to do a hard defensive hold, accumulating a gigantic resource stockpile, before doing an insane offensive rush to win. The final offensive is by far the hardest part.

With the ally working properly, this mission is less frustrating, as even though the ally only attack rarely and get quite inefficient when it comes to attacking the final base, it helps to relieve some pressure and/or to overwhelm the enemy.

I first cleaned up creeps to train Salana and get some items before getting to the meat of the mission.

At this point, I had 3 ability points placed into Salana's forked lightning, because I wasn't very convinced by her aura (Blen's is much nicer as it affects all units), the auto-bonus to attack is nice but the slowdown is best distributed among many enemy units and you can't possibly either micro Salana to always attack a different unit or script her to do so... The forked lightning on the other side deals very solid damage. However, some demons will blast your mana, so the passive aura may work better against demons.

Once having taken control of my base, I did a few things as soon as possible :
1) I sent Salana see the emissary, to call for help. I requested Gardon, as he've got the best units to help you with and I like this character.
2) I ordered a few workers to be trained. I quickly sent one to the second gold mine to the east in order to exploit two mines at once. Other workers went for wood. You have no gold issue at the beginning, but wood will quickly be limited. You can get some lumber in a crate.
3) I started upgrades. To save on resources not having your units dying stupidly or your towers destroyed too easily, you want max upgrades as soon as possible. This is especially valid with those elves as elven units are incredibly frail.

Soon after, I also got two workers to build towers behind the walls. I built a continuous range behind the wall, and a second layer populated with half tower and offset by a square, so all towers would remain repairable. I mixed guard towers and arcane towers, with guard towers in front. In hindsight, I think arcane towers are better in front.

Arcane towers are insanely good at eliminating what would otherwise be the most annoying enemy units : doom guards, the felhounds and the heroes. The elven units are frail, but they can deal with other elven units who are just as frail.

I also built some towers in the north of the eastern gold mine to prevent a possible aerial attack there, but none ever came. I think I mixed it up with another elven mission.

For the beginning phase of the game, as I was finishing upgrades, I stayed in low upkeep to get a stockpile of gold. Gardon launched a few attacks which I didn't bother to support.

The most annoying attacks are without a doubt those involving Lera the huntress, as she has starfall. Did I mention how frail elven units are ? Starfall is scary no matter your units when you can't stun, but when your army build is a lot of weak units, it can be devastating. The best tactic by far to deal with it is to get Lera to activate Starfall and retreat your units out of the attack range. She will thus waste her ultimate for nothing, and you can eliminate her once she stop it and push further.

Using and abusing forked lightning by Salana works great on elven enemy units.

For my unit composition, it went like this :
1)Salana, a few walkyries (I'm not sure if they were very useful, they have good mobility but can die quite fast), a few archer (important to deal with enemy aerial units).
2)Some warriors and half a dozen of Spellbreaker. Spellbreakers are the bulkiest units you can get and they are useful to deal with the many mana users.
3)A few sorceress, and several priests. The healing of the priests (and optionally some auto-casting inner-fire) is very usef
4)Ballistas You want those to destroy buildings at a decent rate. If you can avoid them being targeted at close range, they also deal hefty damages to most enemy units. The big number of units in my first three groups usually created a decent wall of protection for my ballista.

When all was ready and it was time for attack, I completed my groups to be full and I accompanied an attack by Gardon onto the orange base of elven traitors. They opposed some resistance, and after destroying some buildings in the entrance, I had to retreat to avoid losing a lot of units as the green Lera base came as support.

A second offensive wiped out the central part of the enemy base, including the castle. With enemy workers killed in the battle, it was only a matter of time. I tried to build some towers and buildings to establish a new base there, but the stream of units newly produced by the orange base and attacks from the green and yellow base got most of my forces eliminated.

Thankfully, it was quite quick to rebuild them. On my next assault, I only took care of finishing off the orange unit training buildings, before retreating. Then, after having repealed a few attacks in my main base, the last one by Lara, I rushed my units into the spot where I wanted my new base and used several workers to build the town hall and tower walls. I used a single-depth wall of guard towers to the north against aerial units, and double-depth walls of towers (mixing arcane and guard towers) both to the right and to the left entrance, with an opening in the middle to allow my army movements. My units stayed in the middle, able to quickly switch from one side to the other. I also built new unit production buildings to be able to quickly replace losses. The distance newly trained units have to travel matter a lot on such a map.

This new base got challenged a few times by the green and yellow base attacks, but it proved to be very solid.

So far, I had not reloaded the game a single time to correct some of my mistakes. I went along them, still improving my position despite them.

However, this changed in the next phase of the game.

I went to attack the green base at the eastern entrance while Gardon troops distracted the Lera's army at the western one. I was able to destroy some things, before retreating in face of the defence.

The eastern side of the enemy base has huge distance between buildings, making it quite easy to attack. On the next opportunity, I destroyed most of it.

In hindsight, I made one BIG mistake : destroying the lumber mill. If you don't care about saving Lera against her own will, you can destroy it. If you do care, let it alone.

Onto the next phase, I brought some workers to try and build a new more advanced camp with some towers and unit production buildings. My ballista travelled the long way to attack the western part of the enemy base (it was not defended by much units, as Gardon had another attack in there and my own units were attacking from the other side).

The buildings from the green base are rebuilt, but not in their original spots : the new versions are built just near the castle.

At this point, the yellow base often sent attacking units against me, including Larantos which is a level 9 blood mage who deal huge damage to a frail elven army.

The fight was very bloody, but with the income of two gold mines (the first one in the main base had collapsed by then) I finally managed to destroy the greatest part of the enemy buildings, including the altar of the queens so Lera finally stopped bothering me with her lightning fork and her Starfall.

At this point, I thought I had done the hardest... And I was wrong.

I thought that to not complete the optional quest "Devilish influence", I had to not destroy Lera's castle. As this castle is situated right onto the way to the yellow base, as it constantly spawn workers, and as these workers have infinity resources to build new buildings, not destroying this castle means that if you're not constantly there to kill workers and destroy new buildings, the green base will be reborn fast, very fast.

The demons in the yellow base are very powerful, and trying to control the regrowth of the green base forced me to deal with many attacks. At some point, I had an opportunity and attacked. But with the level 10 dreadlord and a bunch of demons against me, I was actually weaker than needed to pierce through defenses. I got most of my army destroyed, and as I was routed, I couldn't even hold on my advanced base to the east of Lera's base. With my gold stockpile reduced to a few thousands and Lera's base being completely rebuilt before I could train fresh troops, I quitted the game. There was still quite a lot of gold in my mines, but this huge setback was just too frustrating.

After noticing than my last save was already in a lost position, I tried a previous one. But there, I was trying to defend my outpost in an extremely tense fight. After a few frustrating tries where my army crumbled against doom guards, Starfall, infernals.... I decided to go another step back.

I reloaded a save from when I still just had my new base in the place of the old orange base. It was well guarded, so I could defend it easily and accumulate resources. From then until the end, I didn't have to reload to correct a mistake, though I did once or twice later to test some things (which buildings triggered the completion of the sidequest, where the yellow troops decided to move and support thegreen base).

I repeated the destruction of the eastern part of Lera base, committing again the mistake of destroying the lumber mill.

Then, I went for a safer approach. I stayed some time at low upkeep to stockpile more gold, before sending workers to the north-west. My first batch got killed by enemy troops on their way to attack me (these workers are so slow... They couldn't even retreat properly), but another one made it. Then, the next time I killed Lera, I moved my whole army (including the three Elite I had kept in reserve !) to the north-west.

There, I advanced to the most advanced point where I would still not clash with the core of Lera's base, and began building towers with 4 workers. This time, I built a majority of arcane towers, about fifteen in total. I also built new unit production building just behind, but I would not lose many units in the follow-up.

When defending, my 100 upkeep army supported by tower could easily get rid of most attack, and Larantos himself never got far enough to attack it.

Massing my army to the south of Lera's castle, and recalling troops which went too far, it was actually very easy, as any attacker from Lera was quickly outnumbered and eliminated, and I could easily retreat in face of Larantos troops. I destroyed several building training units, and the castle, after having tested that its destruction DO NOT trigger the sidequest.

I built a bunch of towers to the northwest of the gold mine, a town hall to the south of it, and another bunch of tower east of the goldmine (with a passage so my units could move as needed). I kept those far enough so that the yellow base defenders didn't spot them right away.

When the yellow base sent its next bunch of attackers, it ran quickly into my army and my towers, triggering reinforcements. Thankfully, I got rid of most of them. I lost some units however, so I trained fresh one and took time to repair my towers and build some new one.

Next come the sad part : the entrance of the yellow base was mostly blocked by Lera's lumber mill. I had destroyed all buildings except farms and Dragonhawk roosts... And neither of these two count ! I tried to pass without attacking it, but it was too narrow and my units were too stupid to manage it.

So, to avoid reloading and playing for another hour to redo the exact same things I did except leaving that lumber mill alone, I decided to consider my choice done.

I attacked the yellow base along with an attack including Gardon himself, and after Larantos and some demon units had killed themselves on my towers. The arcane towers were insanely effective to get rid of them quickly, while my priest saved me from having to retrain a lot of units.

I went all in, including the elites I had kept as a reserve, and the enemy defence crumbled. Once a few unit production buildings were destroyed, including a demon gate, it became trivial to finish the job.

For those who don't want to read the spoiler and would like to not complete the 1st sidequest in chapter 5 : do not destroy the lumber mill in the green base to not have it counted as destroyed and to not have to face annoying attacks while you're busy to deal with the yellow base.

Shar Dundred, please make Dragonhawk roost also count as remaining buildings for that base, I had two of them left (plus a bunch of farms), they even produced some units after the quest was counted as completed.
 
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Level 7
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Aug 5, 2018
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Now onto the following chapters.

You go into an underground cave with Aedale, Salomar the Healer and a few soldiers. Salomar has THE ability you want : holy fire, which allows him to heal allied units. When levelling up, however, I went for resurrection instead of a third level of holy fire : in the big fights where you can't heal units fast enough to avoid deaths, it can be useful. For Aedale, the ultimate is not very useful in this mission and boosting brilliance aura allows Salomar to spam holy fire.

I split my units into a "heroes" group and a "units" group, because you want to avoid losing units as much as possible and your heroes are bulky enough to be able to retreat if a fight goes bad.

It's a mission without a base and without a timer, so it's easy as long as you don't rush. I got left and right along the road to eliminate creeps, get gold for the optional quest and find items. Every single tome I encountered along the road went to Salomar : Aedale has more than enough mana for summoning some water elemental, and the additional damage from boosting her intelligence isn't worth as much as increasing Salomar's holy fire spam potential. Agility boosts defence which is more important for Salomar, and while both benefits from PV boosts, the damage means that strength is better used on Salomar.

After a few minutes I got to a crossroads : ahead, an heavily guarded spot. It is possible to get seen by a few units, retreat, kill them while isolated, and repeat, but such a process is not worth it at all. To the left, the path Aedale opened, and to the right (on the minimap, to the north-east), another path.

I first went to clear the north-east path. There is a dangerous demon slave hero, but if you lure him to attack you without the support of most of his units, he's easy to eliminate.

Once this was cleared up, I went along the path Aedale cleared up. You can find demons and undead fighting each other ; attack whichever seems to have the better units left so both are eliminated without any risk for you.

Heal your units before going ahead, because it will be bloody.

There is a lot of demon units waiting. Water elementals and holy fire have to be used as much as possible. Focus your attacks so that enemy firepower goes down instead of having a lot of units with half-HP. The succubus are particularly tough to deal with, as they can attack your damaged units from a distance.

Resurrection proved extremely useful here, as the demons can't destroy the corpses immediately and you can wait to have 5 or 6 units lost before using it and overwhelming the enemy. Make sure that you have enough mana to be able to use it, using one holy fire too much and not being able to resurrect your units in time will ruin you in hard.

There is a dangerous room with a lot of eredars soon after. I recommend attracting the attention of a few before retreating and killing them. Dealing with all of them at once is a bad idea, you will be overwhelmed and lose some units. I was actually somewhat too careless and lost a foot soldier. I didn't want to reload a save, but if you have trouble handling some battles, it will make things easier to avoid any loss at all. All the tomes there went to Salomar.

You just have to keep advancing defeating demons and undead until you reach a portal. After approaching a second portal, the main quest will complete.

You now have to defeat a powerful undead, and that's why it was better to not lose any units. Make good use of healing and runes, and you should end up victorious after a tough fight.

When given the choice of absorbing or not the demon shard, I made Salomar keep Aedale from absorbing it.

This chapter can be either quite easy or very hard, depending on how you go about it.

In the first part of the mission, your main worry is the ship attacking your naval base. Build some frigates and up to 3 battle ships (but not 4, to not complete the quest right now) to defend effectively against these regular attacks.

Several additional workers for wood and a string of upgrades make for a standard but efficient start. I trained a few captains and went to the East. There are two goldmines guarded by orcs, and you want to build bases there.

I cleaned up orcs around the first mine and built a town hall, however I had no anti-aerial units, Merlon couldn't attack aerial units and I had no guard towers, hence an attack by flying units several minutes into the game created chaos. I highly recommend training some crossbowmen to avoid such a situation, and buying an orb for Merlon when you have upgraded your main keep into a castle.

Orcs will also regularly land units from a Zeppelin. I built a serie of guard and cannon towers along the cost to the east of the harbor to take care of this and of aerial units attacking there. The eastern base also got a dozen of towers.

When I got some time, I went to clean up the second gold mine to create a new base there.

At this point, resources are flowing in. I kept accumulating new resources, finishing upgrades, and building an army staying at no upkeep. I regularly had to replace destroyed ships, but I had a peasant which tried to repair ships as much as possible to limit losses.

When I felt ready, I built a big army maxing out my upkeep (I had a bunch of military buildings around my north-eastern town hall) and the 4th battleship completing the 1st main quest.

At this point, Salomar and Aedale arrived to help... And a big orc attack began.

When you're unprepared because you do not expect it (as I was the first time I played this mission on an old version), this can put you in a very difficult position.

This time, I had a row of towers and my whole army (except the heroes) defending the north-eastern base. My south-eastern base was poorly guarded and I had to rush my units to avoid complete destruction.

Let's have a word on abilities and unit composition. Merlon's ultimate is wonderful in big battles to clean enemies. Thunder Clap is also spammable, it does a lot of damage.

For units, I went with a group of knights along Merlon and Salomar, a group of crossbowmen along Aedale, a group of priests and necromancers, and a few catapultes.

The enemy base in the eastern swamp is spread out over a large area and it is constantly training new units, so my plan was to hit it hard and fast. When I began my attack, the enemy rushed to defense and my units were blocked in mobility. With a thunderstorm and a resurrection, however, it wasn't too hard to overwhelm the defending troops. I immediately focused on taking out as many unit producing buildings without spreading my troops out too thin. The orcs units are extremely strong in melee, so I had to train reinforcements to replace my losses as fast as possible and keep superiority in numbers.

Once the fortress and the peons got eliminated, the threats of a full rebuild of the enemy base disappeared and annihilating it was a slow but easy process.

Once all the enemy units and buildings were eliminated, I focused on taking sail. With my big resources (I also began to exploit the gold mine in the swamp), I built as much ships as I could. They don't count for the upkeep limit, so having two dozens of battle ship was not an issue at all. I took out the western orc shipyards with an overwhelming attack, and then used advanced positions for my ships to block counter-attacks.

There are some demons to defeat with interesting items, so I travelled my units around to get them. Salomar stayed at base to help against some enemy attacks the towers alone had trouble with.

Once all demons were slayed, I distributed items to Salomar and Aedale, because you don't get to play Merlon later in this campaign.

Destroying the eastern shipyards was a cakewalk with 30 battleships.
In the interlude following chapter 7, you're given a choice : help Gardon or Genethas. I had not helped Genethas in my first playthrough, and while I was already aware of the plot, I wanted to see what the missions looked like in that path.

Genethas is a very powerful hero which along Blen, Harmos and his Fire Golem form a very strong group. The regular units available are nice, but you can use them sparingly to avoid losses.

At the beginning, you have to kill demons... And the demonlord which Genethas wanted to hunt appears to be a simple unimportant pit lord. At this point, Aaron the Sacrificing appears and accuses Genethas of being the traitor.

He doesn't offer proofs however, and Genethas convinces Blen that he must have lost his mind.

The second part of the mission is all about exterminating the soldiers of the order of the bleeding who believe Genethas is a traitor and attack him but also Blen and all your units.

There is a short path through a huge orc base, and a long but easiest path where you have to eliminate soldiers of the order, including dwarves and elves.

I killed both the soldiers of the order and the orcs, because why not ? It's very easy to be overwhelmed by the orcs, so I had to try a few times and go progressively : lure, kill, heal, destroy a few buildings, lure, kill, heal...

The sidequest requires to kill Aaron, which is in the North-East corner.

The story is very well done here, so that you feel that something is wrong but Genethas claims against Gardon are still believable.

Before destroying the castle of the order in the north-west, which is quite easy, one may want to take out Progaderas the smoking, the infamous lava creature of Arkain. He's guarded by a bunch of fire golem, so better not rush if you don't want to be crushed.

You won't get to play Genethas anymore, so give any valuable item to Blen and Harmos.
In the corrupted forest that formerly was the Pearl of Lor, Blen and Harmos meat Gardon. He show them undead, demons and corrupted forest creatures fighting, and explains he wants to discover and eliminate the source of this corruption.

I began to eliminate demons towards the North-West of Gardon's base. At some point you can't proceed further, but it's useful to gain some experience. The units are weak, so I mostly used a group made of my heroes (when Harmos reached level 6, his Fire Golem joined in). Gardon's base abilities are not great, as his battle roar stops Blen's imperial edict. It should only be used when the imperial edict is not active. His "hit", which damages and stuns, can be useful and should be used. Harmos's banish comes very handy here to not be overwhelmed, do not hesitate to spam it. At level 6, I boosted Blen's imperial edict. Avatar is a decent ultimate, but boosting all my units felt more effective.

Then, I followed the road to the east. I got to the north-east corner to recover an item, before cleaning up the way until the next crossroads from demons and corrupted forest creatures. Demons from the Souleater Legion (green) are visible to the South-East. I highly recommend leaving them alone for now.

I tried a few times to attack them, and I always lost some units or outright lost with a hero dying.

Instead, I continued along the path to the West, killing undeads and corrupted creatures. Then finally Gardon will get to level 6. His ultimate, the war Aura, gives +70% attack to friendly units. This is insanely powerful, especially as it stacks up with Blen's own +30% attack aura. Going back, the demons of the souleater legions were much easier to eliminate.

Their eredar master however is very powerful, and it's easy to have a hero dying against him. I recommend first taking out his guards, retreating and healing before another attack against him alone. Gardon's Hit is very useful when he tries to pursue your weakened heroes, as the stun blocks him for a few second.

I had a weird bug when Blen died but the enemy demon was killed immediately after, with the sidequest completion cinematic blocking the defeat screen (it was however impossible to save the game or go back from the menu once I had it open). I had to reload an earlier save to avoid this.

I gave the tome to Blen and went back to the main path, where I came across the forgotten. They have a weak armor, and are reather easy to kill with the heroes.

It soon appears that they were behind the corruption of the forest, and their disgusting tentacled chief invite to fight him, promising to wipe out humans, orcs and demons alike for his master.

The formerly block road in the north-west opens, and you just have to follow it along killing some forgotten to get to the creature.

You don't get to control Gardon in the subsequent missions, hence giving his items to Blen and Harmos is useful. However, for the fight itself, it's better if he has some good items. It is possible to give items towards the end of the battle, but it's tricky. The very best items should go to Blen.

Now, about the fight : the creatures traps your heroes and your units, so no hit-and-run tactic is possible. You have to face it head on. It has a mana burn ability, so you want your heroes to use their mana often. Gardon's Hit is very useful to limit the damage ability of the forgotten boss. Using your necromancers to use weakness on the creature also helps. They are very frail however and will die soon into the battle.

There are a few runes to restore mana and HP, they should be used as necessary to heal your units. You do not want one of your heroes to die.

At some point, the creature may summon portals (I write "may", because on my first attempt it didn't and the fight was made much easier. I did other attempts in order to give correct items to my heroes).

These portals will summon forgotten terrors, and it's easy to quickly be overwhelmed. Once your base units die left and right, your heroes themselves are doomed. Hence, as soon as these portals appear, destroying them is the main priority.

Once this is done, focusing on eliminating the forgotten terror to reduce enemy firepower is the best strategy. From this point on, if you have enough units, healing runes and HP remaining, you should win provided you make good use of your heroes abilities.

With the death of the creature, the source of the corruption of the Pearl of Lor is gone.

A weird bug (I played with 1.29.2.x) : in one of my attempts, Harmos dying during the final fight of the chapter 8 (with Gardon) didn't trigger the loss condition and the quest could be completed successfully soon after.
 
Level 7
Joined
Aug 5, 2018
Messages
62
And to the end.

I played this chapter twice, once after the chapter 8 with Genethas and once after the Chapter 8 with Gardon. I had to do about half a dozen restart to find a good balance.

In this mission, you get control of Zarin's dwarves and have to face 6 orc clans. You're supported by Salana's elves to the south-west. The major attacks onto your base will come from the north-east, with the dark green (deathbreeze) and yellow orc clans and the south-east with the blue darkmind clan. You will also receive some attacks in the north-west by a purple orc clan, while a last lime green clan will send some aerial units to attack. The sixth orc clan, in red, will attack Salana.

In this mission, the attacks can be quite heavy so there is no time to idle.

Thankfully, you don't have to care about the elves. They will do just fine on their own to repel their orcs, and some rare attacks from the darkmind through another road. I just focused on my own base which is the target of the bulk of the enemy attacks.

First thing first, you want more miners (dwarve workers). A lot more miners. I immediately started training miners and sent them to wood production. I also researched wood collection upgrade as fast as possible. When I stopped producing additional miners, I had about fifteen of them collecting wood. You need a lot of wood for upgrades and towers, and it takes more time

Take your starting units (don't forget those in the north-west) and go eliminate the orc units around the healing fountain to the east. Heal your units and bring them back to around your barracks.

Now let's talk units and upgrades. In some of my unsuccessful attempts, I tried to train bear riders and riflemen. Scrap that idea. Bear rider have over 1K HP, decent attack and armor, so they look like attractive units at first sight. Unfortunately, the orcs have one strength : melee units. Their grunts are already tough, their champions are even more so. You will unavoidably get heavy losses, and inflicting more damage to the enemy is useless when outnumbered so heavily. And if you don't have a wall of bear riders, riflemen will get decimated. You should train 0 warrior, 0 rifleman, 0 bear rider in the whole mission (apart for killing some golems in the south who have a protection ring, but you can do this when most of the orcs clan have been defeated).

So what to do ? Grypon riders, a lot of gryphon riders. Besides being immune to these scary orcish melee units, they have several other strong advantages. The mobility of land unit sucks, between base speed and collision issues, while the grypon riders mobility is nothing short of fantastic. You can easily go destroy catapults behind the enemy line before they have to deal any noticeable damage, for example. The magic attacks deal heavy damage onto most orcish land units, and are also efficient when it comes to targetting buildings. Gryphon are countered by piercing attacks, but orcish towers are quickly destroyed so this mostly leaves some troll with spears and some magical units (Shaman, Necrolyte, Heroes) to deal with during fights. The raiders can also be annoying with ensnare. Once those are eliminated, the remaining orcish melee units are powerless.

At the start, it's too soon to begin training them, but you should research in priority the upgrades giving them more attack and defence. Once you have a lot of miners collecting wood, you can divert one to build a grypon aviarie. You can divert another to begin building towers around the farm and the barrack to the east. You will receive a lot of attacks here later and it's better to be prepared. Do the building strength upgrades to limit the amount of damage they will take (you will still have to repair and rebuild them regularly during the mission).

Also, build around three guard towers north of your base where your miners are collecting woods, to deal with an upcoming aerial attack there.

The first attack will come from the darkmind. The darkmind hero has a devastating ultimate, so you want to lure him into using it on a single advanced unit (Zarin usually) before retreating. With the supports of the few towers near your base and your starting units, you should be able to repel this attack. Use and abuse Zarin's thunderclap.

At this point, you will receive reinforcement. The good news is it gives you a bunch of new units. The bad news is that you may go into low upkeep which will slow down gold collection. Thankfully, the difference isn't huge, but as you should be pumping out a lot of upgrades and towers, every little bit of gold helps. Also don't forget to train the barracks upgrade giving additional HP to bear riders and gryphon riders.

Keep quiet and be patient, repelling attacks to your base. Another round of reinforcement will come soon after, pushing you into high upkeep.

At this point, I had two different approaches in my successful games :
1)Rush the purple base with all the units. Kill one of the greenskin heroes of the sidequest, and try to destroy the fortress and peons. I lost all my riflemen and bear riders, and Zarin could barely make it alive. However, by training several gryphon riders back at base using 2 aviaries, I could do another attack a few minutes later to finish off the peons who tried to rebuild things, and then later another round to kill enemy units and clean up buildings. I only cleaned up the orcs guarding the gold mine to the west of the path between my base and the purple base later.
2)Clean up orcs around the aforementioned gold mine, build up a town hall and some towers. Then do an attack on the purple base to kill the greenskin heroe and your useless units sucking up upkeep. The purple orcs tried to destroy my extension, but support from my units avoided it. Collecting at low upkeep from two gold mines makes money cash in fast, even if I had to often rebuild towers to the east of my base as Zarin and some gryphons couldn't completely prevent it. Once I had a lot of gryphons, I went ahead and eliminated the purple base.

From then on, I could build another town hall to collect gold from three mines at once.

At this point, the mission is won. Attacks will only come from one direction, and you can have two dozen of grypon riders attacking at once. I eliminated first the red base by attacking from two sides while the elves were attacking from the north. This leaves time to do a lot of heavy damage to their buildings. When dealing with their units, you can overwhelm them and once those able to attack aerial units are gone, it's a cakewalk.

Same process repeated for the yellow orcish base, then for the blue darkmind base (without elven support). I sometimes chose to go back and heal my gryphon riders, train a few others, before going back to fight. At this point I also had three aviaries so I could replace losses very quickly.

Don't forget to take the tomes of knowledge with Zarin and the item from the Darkmind's base fortress.

The last base of the deathbreeze is tougher, as your gryphons can be damaged quickly. But with support from Zarin and the elven units, you can truly overwhelm the enemy. I focused a lot on destroying the burrows to limit the enemy ability to rebuild quickly an army. With some patience, the orcs should be overwhelmed and the mission won.

You get back to Aedale and Salomar on an island and... wait ? Blen Greymoore ? What is he doing here ?

In this mission, you don't have a base, only units. This makes it overall easy as long as you don't rush. I completed almost the whole mission with only my heroes and Aedale's water elementals.

Go to the west and eliminate some creeps for an item reward. Then, head into the temple. Orcs and undead are fighting each other. Eliminate them.

To the left, you can eliminate orcs for another reward, to the east there are two groups of undead, including a lorekeeper leaving a tome reward. It should go to Salomar for the same reasons as in chapter 6. You don't want to give it to Blen.

Going north, you can eliminate enemy units. At some point is a room with levers. The north-west lever opens a secret room in the south-east of the temple where you can get another gem of health after a fight. The two others trigger enemy attacks.

For ability improvements, I recommend the shield of invulnerability for Salomar as he can't heal himself. For Blen, avatar and imperial edict are both solid options.

Following along the main path, you can go kill some orcs north on the shore (no reward) and the other lorekeepers of the sidequest.

When arriving at the south-west corner of the map, you're at a critical point of the mission. To the east is an hero orc guarding the final room. And even further to the east is another room with orcs and a +2 intelligence tome reward once cleaned up. But if you casually try to go past the orc hero, he will attack you, making it both difficult to survive if pushing east and difficult to not kill him, which would end the main quest too early.

In my 2nd playthrough (I played it twice, once after Genethas and once after Gardon), I found a simple solution : use Salomar's invulnerability shield to pass in front of the orc hero without him reacting, and to clean up progressively the room to the right.

Once this is done, another important element is items.

You want to give all the best items of Blen to Aedale and Salomar. Because, this is not the true Blen... but a dreadlord tricking Salomar and Aedale. Giving the items allows to effectively duplicate Blen's best items (hence my recommendation at the end of chapter 8 to have him with the best available items).

Once the orc hero is killed, you've a choice : get the demon eye, or not.

If you chose to get it, you will have to fight the guardian. He is tough, but if you focus on eliminating his ghosts one by one and make good use of your heroes abilities, you should win.

If you chose to not get it, the mission ends here with Aedale frustrated against Salomar.

If you get the demon eye (or if you get the demon shard in chapter 6), you won't be able to have either Aedale or Salomar in the final mission, which makes a big difference.
I didn't intend to play it at first, but I clicked through options quickly after having completed the previous mission too early (I had missed the +2 intelligence tome because of the orc hero dying too early, and I had killed the guardian for fun). And while at it, why not ?

Aedale has lost all her items and has new spells.

The main point of this secret chapter is story plot showing Aedale succumbing to the demonic corruption if you absorbed the shard or the eye, but there is still a fair deal of fight.

Her teleportation ultimate is useless here, don't put a point in it.

Instead, max out mark of chaos. 300 damage on target AND 300 nova damages is overpowered, as it's 600 damage on target and 300 damage on several close units.

Put two or three points in brilliance aura and one or two points on the felguard summon.

Aedale is very frail, so the felguard with his provocation ability is essential to have her not targeted by the enemies. Brilliance Aura is essential for fast mana recovery.

Then, the plan for the whole mission is simple : go towards enemies, spam mark of chaos on them, use the felguard with provocation to not have Aedale targeted, and retreat each and every time you can see the fight going badly for your side. Recover mana and HP as needed and attack again.

Depending on who you choose to support earlier, you're going to fight against the traitor, or for him.

If you saved Aedale from corruption by blocking her from absorbing the demonic artifacts, you get 5 heroes : Blen, Zarin, Harmos, Aedale and Salomar.

Harmos will always summon his fire golem and make a generous use of banish.

Zarin will spam thunderclap, use the hammer ability to stop channelled spells (if you sided with Genethas, both Merlon and Salana fighting along Gardon have one), and use Avatar when needed to survive.

Blen will spam imperial edict, and use the avatar for survivability.

Aedale will spam water elementals and teleport around your units as needed.

Finally, Salomar's job is to heal as much as possible, with an occasional divine shield when targeted and resurrection when allied units died nearby.

The mission is quite straightforward : teleport your heroes to where the fight is, both to defend allied bases or attack enemy ones (neither will be repaired, all damages to buildings are definitive). With several heroes, you can overpower the enemy, but don't overpush : when your heroes have not much HP left, retreat rather than have them dying. Supporting an attack by allied heroes is often efficient, as 6 or 7 high level heroes are extremely powerful.

For each enemy unit you kill, you get some gold. With gold, you can buy upgrades for your allies. At the start, enemy units will be stronger than those of your allies, but as you boost them they will equalize. You can also improve allied units by killing demons in the south-west and south-east corners of the map, the "destruction" of the buildings near them giving more cavalry for one and elite unites for the other.

The units aren't trained in classical unit production buildings, rather they are spawned in groups by the castle. Destroying a castle of one of the base surrounding the main enemy base stop its units from spawning and attacking you.

The base of the Kasrkin where your altar of kings is located will be attacked by orcish aerial units. They will over several attacks destroy the defending towers, but by the time they prove to be an issue you should have already won the mission.

In the center of the map, you can find the dreaded Progaderas the smoking with a bunch of fire golem. He's a tough enemy, but you can kill him if you want a sweet item.

If you decided to have Aedale corrupted, the mission will be significantly more difficult, as the teleportation and the healing are two major assets of Aedale and Salomar. Without them, your mobility will be terrible and you'll have to wait on the road for allied priests spawned in a attack wave to be healed. Be careful to not lose your heroes, it costs gold and it hurts. It's better to save that gold to upgrade allied units.

When doing the mission with three heroes to gauge the difficulty, I had destroyed most of the defenses of the south-eastern base, but I had to stay a very long time around the north-western allied base in order to avoid the destruction of the castle. At some point, the pressure went somewhat down and I could finish off the south-eastern base. Afterwards, I focused on eliminating the demons to get the knight and elite upgrades, had to defend again the north-western base, before going on the offensive. At this point, I would likely have won even doing nothing, as my allies slowly destroyed the last defences of the enemy.

At the end, you get to discover the treachery of Genethas, and the epilogue.
 
Level 1
Joined
Feb 22, 2019
Messages
2
Hi everyone!

(Excellent job Shar!)

Hoping not to be innapropriate, I just wanted to report that i can't open the 8th mission of this "first human book", when i click on it from the menu of the campaign, the screen goes suddenly black.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of problem? Any advice on what could be the cause?

Thank you in advance.
 
Level 1
Joined
Apr 1, 2019
Messages
2
Sir, chapter 9, Green Waves doesn't work in my computer. How can I solve this? Please help I really enjoy your campaign. It's one of the bests.
Ps: I already finished the First Undead Book and I'm waiting for the second (if there is another). The storyline is really connected.
 
Level 1
Joined
Apr 14, 2015
Messages
2
I was going to give you a decently good review, but after thinking about it more, I decided it was going to be just decent. The campaign functions well and the story is understandable enough, but it can still be polished further.

There is a sort of "sequence break" for chapter 1, where the section where Harmos is can be prematurely entered by destroying the surrounding trees of the gate with peasants. You actually only need to destroy 1 and you have access to Harmos' area and kill the obstacles. (It was funny seeing Harmos crash a meteor over nothing).

In chapter 2, The Warlock sidequest can be easily finished with just a catapult. The south road has a section where it is quite close to where the Enemy Hero actually is (enough that the opposing Demolisher can actually hit me). Just Attack Ground the area where you think he is and you'll kill him eventually. You can also use Fire Mages and, after clearing some trees, they can use Rain of Fire to just reach and kill him.

The sidequest in the Navy chapter could be easily finished via breaking the trees to the right beforehand, clear the raiders behind it and I dunno, Build towers, amass an army, etc.

I wasn't too sure on this on other chapters, but peasants cost no food during the Navy chapter. You can essentially set up a Town hall, amass peasants, Call to Arms and Zerg Rush the enemy base. It was funny seeing a bunch of peasants take 1/3 of an orc base.

I also think that the RTS parts (Build stuff and kill stuff) is sometimes quite slow. In fact one chapter took me probably 2-3 hours because of how tedious it was to finish (weakish units, Allies sending tiny raiding parties, beefy enemies). I don't think I'm playing poorly, but I think there are just too many units in the way.

Also, the lack of any secrets is depressing. So many tools and space to hide stuff, yet there is nothing there. I used vision cheats to see if I missed anything and I missed nothing. there is also a lot of empty space that could have been utilized too.

The vision blockers and minimap fog of war could use some work. In the Base Building Elf chapter, there is a giant section where as if I explored it already. In chapter 1, the Dragon lair is just... a bit too lazy (pretty sure shadows don't have corners). You can probably do some camera trick like in the first Undead Campaign mission for TFT, cleverly hiding the Lich King doodad or zooming in the playable map area to hide some cutscene-only stuff.
 
Level 1
Joined
May 10, 2019
Messages
3
Amazing Campaign.
I really enjoyed it.
Just wanted to know, what are the Unknown soldiers in the green camp.
Cause I destroyed them and on the ending cinematic it just told that I destroyed them without having a idea what they had to do.
 
Level 5
Joined
Mar 22, 2009
Messages
170
Game crashes from prologue with no useful info. Current wc3 version is 1.30.4.11274
Not sure what to do. Was kinda hoping to try this out.

Edit: Some Researcch suggests I need Version 1.29, but I can't figure out a way to install it.
 
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Level 2
Joined
Apr 1, 2017
Messages
8
Hi, I must say very good campaing and story. I would criticize few things but it's not that important so lets get to my question :D In custom campaing i can see there is 18 mission so why in the campaing menu there is only 11 (including prolog and epilog). It's okey or is somewhere problem on my side ?
 
Level 12
Joined
Mar 4, 2014
Messages
204
Just some small feedback:
- every map should have a shop with tomes of retraining.
/reason: 1.Different maps require different spells for exemple a dungeon crawl map doesn't need units that slow you down like the water elemental
2. Making the gameplay more fluid and giving players the chance to test/experiment with other combos of spells.( i noticed you put a tome of retraining in the last mission with Aedale, that was pretty nice, something like that i want to see in the other missions as well).

- The items overall are too weak in my opinion, especially the item dropped by the Fire Lord from the last battle.
- Whenever there is Base vs Base battle the ally A.I stays afk too much time with his army is the base and doesn't do anything with it,i suggest improving it a bit.
- In the last battle the red force(demon force) only sends 3 doom guards into battle per wave, seems a bit weak(they do 0 dmg and can only tank for a few seconds), i suggest making Aedale fight as well going with the wave, i understand Gordon not going into the battle as the Commander but Aedale? she staying afk in her base seems like a wasted oportunity in my opinion.( a better idea is to give her to the player to control).
- I liked the idea with that cool Peon riding the wyvern with his friends, how about making it in such a way to capture like a building/flag(similar with the 2 buildings near the Kasrkin base) and make him your allie? in return him switching the target of focus and attacking your enemy instead.(or make it in such a way that u can buy him as a merc for 1k gold as well).
 
Level 2
Joined
Feb 28, 2016
Messages
9
Hello i would like to play this campaign, before i start is there any prequel before this? or this the first one ?
 
Level 3
Joined
Jun 12, 2019
Messages
12
I want to ask if every single optional quest have an effect in these books? I have completed every campaign until the second orc book now, but I want to replay two human books in both the best possible and the worst possible endings. For instance
the other two optional bases in chapter 1 or the orc wizards in chapter 2, or the troll quest in chapter 5, obviously completing them or not have not an effect in the long run since you are not asked in the beginning of second book about them, but do they still serve a purpose in the frame of the first book? I may be mistaken but I think they do not right?
 
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