Legends of Arkain True Story

[Macielos]

I play on 1.31 and works just fine.

 

[Ravager16829]

do i need 1.29 to play it, shows up as "Just another" in the camp menu on current version, sorry im new to this stuff
i figured it out <3

I am having an issue where saving is crashing, not sure if thats known

Please don't ask this kind of question like this. I'm really confused about your actions.

If you thought the game crashes when saving the campaign, then it's very likely due to the insufficient memory you have. Some suggests you have to delete an unwanted saves OR just play the campaign in one run WITHOUT the saves.

 

[Macielos]

Okay, the Siege of Kome was one of "these" missions you have to reserve a full evening for.

The early and mid-game was challenging, but in a good way. Lots of open ground so you have to watch for flanking attacks from many bases, but plenty of goldmines and trees to finanse your machine of war. Some aspects were irritating, like Darkmind getting stuck in the looong chokepoint in the middle or sending all its attack waves against the Dwarves - the any force that could literally be bypassed as they openly stated they will only defend themselves, therefore suggesting that it's better to press through the western base of the elves.

But the real pain in the ass came with the final base difficulty of which came down to the same thing over and over - AI having 20-30 production buildings (and ~3 altars!) that kept rebuilding any lost army practically instantly. So the battle was a long and costly tug-of-war with mass witch doctors to heal, slow structure sniping with demolishers and constant micro with necrolytes and warlocks to counter the two OP heroes and tons of knights. And due to distance between my bases and the final enemy base, the only way to beat this final base is to build tons of production buildings just next to the enemy to keep up the pressure. Not sure if it was intended strategy, but even Jayborino did that, so possibly yes.

 

[Abhuyl]

Okay, the Siege of Kome was one of "these" missions you have to reserve a full evening for.

The early and mid-game was challenging, but in a good way. Lots of open ground so you have to watch for flanking attacks from many bases, but plenty of goldmines and trees to finanse your machine of war. Some aspects were irritating, like Darkmind getting stuck in the looong chokepoint in the middle or sending all its attack waves against the Dwarves - the any force that could literally be bypassed as they openly stated they will only defend themselves, therefore suggesting that it's better to press through the western base of the elves.

But the real pain in the ass came with the final base difficulty of which came down to the same thing over and over - AI having 20-30 production buildings (and ~3 altars!) that kept rebuilding any lost army practically instantly. So the battle was a long and costly tug-of-war with mass witch doctors to heal, slow structure sniping with demolishers and constant micro with necrolytes and warlocks to counter the two OP heroes and tons of knights. And due to distance between my bases and the final enemy base, the only way to beat this final base is to build tons of production buildings just next to the enemy to keep up the pressure. Not sure if it was intended strategy, but even Jayborino did that, so possibly yes.

If you think the Siege of Kome was "one of those" missions... you're in for a treat, my friend.

I just finished what's available of the True Story, however I have played the original books. Books were waaaaaay harder as far as the tug of war goes.
Still... I've got used to building and re-building roughly 12 production structures at each new checkpoint, plus however many altars as there are heroes in the given map so they can all be revived at once.

In case you want any advice, get used to having a control group for production and one of siege units to be able to deal damage in chokepoints via attack ground just behiond enemy frontlines.
Also sniping production.
Notably Kome, the orc invasion, the human traitor, the battle against the Legion... are all about chokepoints and AoE damage, either via heroes or siege. Just citing the ones you're already aware will happen, based on where you are in the story.

 

[RocketHops]

Please don't ask this kind of question like this. I'm really confused about your actions.

If you thought the game crashes when saving the campaign, then it's very likely due to the insufficient memory you have. Some suggests you have to delete an unwanted saves OR just play the campaign in one run WITHOUT the saves.

Wdym insuffecient memory? I have plenty, of memory on my machine and other campaigns save fine.

 

[Ravager16829]

Wdym insuffecient memory? I have plenty, of memory on my machine and other campaigns save fine.

I mean, you must close all unwanted programs (use Task Manager) if you don't encounter "insufficient memory" error while also deleting all of worthless saves from the other campaigns. That way, you should be able to play the campaign and save progress without any unwanted issues.

 

[Macielos]

It seems unlikely for the other saves to make you run out of memory. I mean, I didn't see the game code, but I don't think the other saves are read into memory when you open a save window, it's just a list of files that should occupy a couple of bytes each. We can verify if that's the case by checking if quick save works (which bypasses any interaction with other saves).

EDIT: Another mission - Purge of the Pearl:

• Boss fight is tough on its own, but there's a hack - Rahandir's ult, taking life's percentage, can take Raszar's majority of HP in a few seconds
• Rahandir can die and nothing happens
• The portals' and the tentacles' colliders could be smaller - it's sometimes difficult to get the restoration rune. Alternatively they shouldn't appear in a direct proximity of the runes
• I won and lost at the same time by losing Galareth at the very end of fight - defeat popup showed up and then the victory cutscene started anyway, so as Windows users say it "task failed successfully"

Night Hunt:
Stealth and assassination mechanics is... okay, I guess, although some health potions in crates from time to time would make gameplay a bit less unforgiving.

Bloody Uprising:
Alright, I do it vary rarely as Arkain is rather known from its straight forward huge battles, not some fancy mechanics, but here I have to praise Shar for an original mission gameplay and a very good pace. The clan subjugation mechanics is simple, but really cool - you have to rush for the enemy townhall, pacify the clan, then use its warriors to keep up the pressure on next camps, using your own base to build mostly Demolishers and Witch Doctors. Nicely done, entertaining and not tiresome at all.

Possession:
Aaaaaand another one of THESE missions. It's annoying that this mission used to be quite well balanced in the First Undead Book if I remember it right... But now the brown base has this ridiculous AI with instantly respawning armies. The base has one entrance being a choke point, so there's no room for any tactics, just lots of production building and constant pressure until you're able to snipe some buildings... But even worse, this AI, being almost unbeatable most of the time, sometimes makes breaks and trains units very slowly. I suppose it happens when you destroy some structures and AI has to finish rebuilding them before moving back to training, but I don't know. That was the case for Jayborino's playthrough, but in my playthrough AI kept rebuilding stuff like crazy... Of course, I could once again build tons ot towers and production buildings, keep stealing bear riders with spirits, but was absolutely fed up with this mechanics, so I quitted the mission for now. Damn, I'm usually the guy who likes challenges and completing campaigns on Hard, but playing the same ridiculous tug-of-war over and over it NOT the proper balance. Especially that some bases have this mechanics while some don't, there's no indication until you attack them. Like people of the Enclave, one day... I shall return... to Arkain, but for now, I'm giving it a break.

EDIT: Out of curiosity I opened this AI and it's nothing out of ordinary there. I suppose the issue is simply the number of production buildings combined with infinite resources. Same for the final Knights of Kome AI several missions earlier.

EDIT2: Returned to this mission, beaten all the remaining bases, left brown for the end and conquered it surprisingly easy. This AI is crazy...

And now I am in this perfectly balanced mission...

 

[BurnedSmackdown]

Hey Shar you ever thought using custom maps for the your map/interludes' loading screens? Would be cool see the world of arkain's geographic

 

[Shar Dundred]

I have used custom maps for the Second Human Book but the idea was discontinued due to the
custom loading screens doubling the file size of the campaigns - meaning that they simultaneously
double the loading times.

 

[BurnedSmackdown]

I have used custom maps for the Second Human Book but the idea was discontinued due to the
custom loading screens doubling the file size of the campaigns - meaning that they simultaneously
double the loading times.

Fair enough, though shame as that would have been cool to see

 

[Macielos]

Here we go again...

A4M3
- Probably the heaviest of the three insane battles, but I eventually beat it. I can't open the map to see the triggers, but I suppose each production building does something like "spawn/train units every X seconds and have them attack-move through the map". I don't know if there's some limitation of the max number of units being present at the same time per player, but such limitation would greatly help balance this mission. The main problem here is the following behaviour:
-- our allies keep pushing towards enemy camp
-- after a while their offensive is halted and their attacking force is slowly reduced to zero
-- throughout this time the enemy keeps spawning units, so they are stacking at the base
-- the enemy then begins to push the opposite direction with his huge amassed force, meeting almost zero opposition because our allies continue to send troops one by one, so eventually it's the player that needs to stop this wave almost by himself
One way to fix it would be to limit max number of units being spawned per player. But here's another idea - Rangul and Blen could have an ability to place a temporary banner in a designated location which would cause nearby allied units to defend this position instead of blindly rushing forward. Banner would disappear after e.g. 30 seconds and could have a long cooldown not to get overused. As a result we could gather allies to confront a massive enemy wave instead of helplessly watching them being sent to their deaths in small groups.

A4M4

• Another huge battle, but this one feels much more balanced than the orcish one, probably due to a smaller number of players and Aedale's mass teleport
• Regarding earlier missions I wrote that mass rain of fire is OP... well, in this one it's just a basic way of mass murdering units stuck in chokepoints. So mass golems + mass firemages + some crossbowmen and catapults for the win.
• At least three players in both teams have the same color (me, dwarves and at least one Genethas' player) which makes it confusing to distinguish units. You have 24 colors to choose from, so please use them .
• An objective to destroy wolves' base ruins the mission pace a bit in my opinion - their troops just wonder around in the middle of massive battles and attack only our units, ignoring both our allies and our enemies. In particular, when I built tons of towers in Kome's base, wolves kept attacking the base and destroying the towers and my allies just stood and watch. In terms of both realism and mission enjoyment, it simply doesn't work. In addition, I destroyed Genethas castle first which stopped some bases of both sides from sending troops, but not all - dwarves and Veterans of the Voidwar kept sending attacks from time to time, of course the Wolf Regiment too. The solution could be to place wolven base somewhere in the south-west or south-east, but that would of course require to rearrange the map a bit. Or just make Wolf Regiment only defend which would be quite logical given they're here to observe, not fight

A4M5

• Just a single path, five badass heroes and allies capable of holding the line with only limited help of the player, so luckily this mission is mostly free of problems of the previous ones
• Western part of the map is completely useless. I cleared it looking for goldmines or items, but it was all a waste of time as it's the same terrain we fought on as orcs, just with the wyvern base, some buildings being invulnerable and of course the unlucky firelord... The map could easily be cut off just behind the wyvern base, so the player doesn't lose time searching further for anything valuable. The original wyvern base on the cliff doesn't seem to do anything.
• Optional quest description claimed that destroying the wyvern base would allow us to "use wyvern corpses", so I thought we'll get to train undead wyverns, but it didn't happen. Actually, I didn't notice receiving any reward for this quest at all

With the end of Act Four and original First Books I get the impression that Aridon, although being presented as a mastermind playing 5D chess and being one step ahead of his opponents like Palpatine or Thrawn, has a tendency for orchestrating master plans that eventually backfire. His long term goal is to prevent any faction from dominating the others (and in particular endangering the Undead), so he likes to ruin plans of the one that's currently the strongest. However, all the Undead were doing so far was weakening the orcs, the imperials and to a much lesser extent the demons, so in fact his actions led to strengthening the strongest faction which is the demons. The two sole reasons the demons conquered Lor is that the Imperials were bled out defending the open ground near the Dead Mountain and the orcs were allowed to unite and lead the invasion against the Kingdoms. If Aridon did nothing, Dead Mountain would probably be separated from the demons by human forces much longer...

A4M6

• Demon mission. Wow. And even cool demonic UI.
• I got some crashes in this one, one just after start, the other when attacking the orc base where Eliminator joins us
• Location of commander Tassia, unlike the two others, is not revealed on minimap, so it's difficult to find her on this quite large map

 

[PrOfSeS]

If I replace the old version of the campaign with the newest one with the new mission in it, will my progress be saved? If not, is there a way to save it somehow?

 

[nchp1903]

If I replace the old version of the campaign with the newest one with the new mission in it, will my progress be saved? If not, is there a way to save it somehow?

If you use the same profile, then it's fine. The save data is saved in the cache of each profile. Update whenever you want.

On a side note, I lost count of how many people have asked this question. Perhaps we should have a pinned post to explain to people exactly that.

 

[Macielos]

Alright, time to dive into refreshed content from the Second Books.

A5M1

• Simple and lore-focused mission. Nothing wrong here.

A5M2

• Lots of troops to rescue and almost no way to heal them, so as a result every fight requires microing wounded away and dragging them behind the main army so that they're not accidently killed and can be healed at some later point of the mission. Eh, at this point I shouldn't be surprised...
• Windwalk is mostly useless and confusing here - when I tried to scout ahead with the hero alone, I just kept triggering events with allied troops being in combat and lost more than I could because my army was left behind. Then I tried just pressing onwards with my whole army saving after every fight, but my number of dead and wounded was still too high to get through final groups of enemies. On my third approach, knowing where rescuable allies are, I simply approached each group with stealth hero and withdrew everyone immediately after rescueing them, therefore saving most of them. That allowed me to gather a large army and win easily, although it still feels like a hack and missions shouldn't be designed that way
• When we encounter fighting allied troops, they're often beyond sight range, so looking around we waste precious seconds needed to save them. Why not rescue them immediately after triggering the event or at least make them share visibility?

A5M3

• Not much has changed, but there was no need. Cool introduction to Gardon's arc, as in Second Book, and finally lots of items to get
• Gardon and Merlon are stuck on level 6 here and in A5M6 and can't get any exp. I suppose that's intentional as they can't reach level 10 until the end of the campaign, but perhaps it would be better to raise the level cap and number of ability levels?

A5M4

• One of the missions that are challenging in a good sense of the word. The two level 10 paladins were a pain in the ass, but after taking down one of their bases and getting the economy running, we can keep on clearing up the map
• I'm not gonna comment a recurring motive of mass kiilling children in Arkain missions...

A5M5

• Pretty simple map, with just one path to the enemy bases and no real threat to your main. Easy.
• The allies do nothing, enemy attacks against the northern base are very weak, other allied bases aren't attacked even from air
• Overally large parts of the map serve no purpose, including the whole southern part where at least some items or side quests could be placed

A5M6

• Merlon refers to his fleet having been destroyed by the Undead as it happened in the First Human Book, even though in True Story I played this mission as humans, destroyed all enemies starting with Undead and then was forced to retreat by the orcs, not the undead, so this dialog could use an adjustment
• In the first demon base there is a group of doom guards that seem to be paused - they don't move, don't attack, just wait to die
• Perhaps that's intended, but after destroying the demon base in the south-east, their main base in the south west doesn't send any attacks at all

 

[BurnedSmackdown]

That recent mission with Gardon's forces vs. Van Durce's forces was well down and loved how you made Gardon more human as here he appears to show remorse and regret over killing family

 

[Kingsley]

Last stand of the Golden Guard was like the climax part in terms of human story line and as Golden Guard fan. The events during this mission was just great, tho I was hoping that Gardon would have spared Van Durce and his children to send back to Rodan in order to deal with the emperor as Gardons battles the demons but that was just wishful thingking and these events where more somewhat realistic and intriguing in terms of story and lore. Playing as the iron first in this mission with our allies the elves, royal army, and undead were great as we see the forces that Gardon was able to gather at his side after the van durce took away his forces. But hear me out haha I know this is the true story and will likely never happened but, would it be cool to play as the Golden Guard in this mission with our usable heroes as Van Durce, his sons and praxeus similar to the end of the iron first mission in the second human book?
Tho most likely it won't happen but I would still be hoping hehe even if it is just include in the beta. Keep up the great work Shar! Looking forward to future missions.

 

[OhGee]

Last stand of the Golden Guard was like the climax part in terms of human story line and as Golden Guard fan. The events during this mission was just great, tho I was hoping that Gardon would have spared Van Durce and his children to send back to Rodan in order to deal with the emperor as Gardons battles the demons but that was just wishful thingking and these events where more somewhat realistic and intriguing in terms of story and lore. Playing as the iron first in this mission with our allies the elves, royal army, and undead were great as we see the forces that Gardon was able to gather at his side after the van durce took away his forces. But hear me out haha I know this is the true story and will likely never happened but, would it be cool to play as the Golden Guard in this mission with our usable heroes as Van Durce, his sons and praxeus similar to the end of the iron first mission in the second human book?
Tho most likely it won't happen but I would still be hoping hehe even if it is just include in the beta. Keep up the great work Shar! Looking forward to future missions.

download second book of human if you want to play as the van durce family.

 

[Kingsley]

download second book of human if you want to play as the van durce family.

Was the Children of Van Durce included in the second Human book? I don't know if it was updated again since I was able to replay the game on its last update about a year ago or so.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Nope.

 

[OhGee]

Nope.

Just checked a bunch of missions and was thinking of 'Lords of the Golden Guard' from the true book (Act 8, chapter 5). Where can control Flavius Van Durce, whilst allied with two more of the VD children. Apologies Kingsley, 2nd human book has no such mission.

 

[Kallel]

Didn't play any of the Arkain campaigns yet, so no spoilers please, but by reading the description alone, I gotta ask: is the General Gardon Bloodclaw inspired by TES's Pelinal Whitestrake, by any chance?

 

[Shar Dundred]

No.

 

[Kallel]

No.

Thanks,

Do we have an idea of how many acts and chapters there wil be in total for this specific campaign?

 

[PhongThanGio]

Hello, can i ask you one quest. The twindragons aka undead chimaera's icon is your work or another member's work? If it's belong to another member, then can i ask the author's name of it? I like this icon but don't know who is the author of it, so i cannot ask for their permission or write their name on the credit.

I searched on hive workshop with "dragon" and "chimaera", as well as "View resources in use" of this campaign, but still cannot find the source of undead chimaera icon.

 

[Shar Dundred]

If it were for public use it would be uploaded which it is not.

 

[Kordan]

Hola \m/

I can't run the campaign on the current 1.36 Reforged, yes?

 

[Kordan]

Okay all good:

It was a bad idea to create an Arkain folder there. Just files.

 

[Ravager16829]

Hola \m/

I can't run the campaign on the current 1.36 Reforged, yes?

Dude, please read these comments below:

Not supporting Reforged.

Anyways the recommended version is at least 1.29.2.

The site says 1.29 but it's not precise.

Spoiler

So better always check the description first in case the author mentions something important like this.

 

[Kordan]

Hola, thank you,

Yee it workes okay fine with my 1.36, I ran like 20 maps back to back.
But Reforge only displays only 24 maps in total //_-

And I can't run older patches on Mac.

Sad.

 

[Ravager16829]

Hola, thank you,

Yee it workes okay fine with my 1.36, I ran like 20 maps back to back.
But Reforge only displays only 24 maps in total //_-

And I can't run older patches on Mac.

Sad.

I can't give you any kind of solution regarding this problem. Furthermore, the author said that he won't even give the solution for Reforged as this campaign was intended to work on 1.29.2. Other versions, even Reforged, are prone for tons of bugs and constant crashes.
And yes, if you want to install the older patches on macOS, you probably need third-party tools (Darwine, to be exact), but this is not the place to ask this kind of question.

 

[LuisMenethil]

Shar, do you intend to include AI voice acting in the future?
I can only imagine what a huge job it will be.

 

[Shar Dundred]

No.

 

[OhGee]

in the latest update, larine has a cost of 550 at the alter of emperors

 

[Shar Dundred]

Uploaded a hotfix.
Fixed the gold cost of Larine, removed the buggy Eredar Warlocks and gave the Royal Army their proper footman variant.

 

[Trương Nhật]

in new chapter, some items of Gardon, Brian and Vail from old chapter disapear.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Last Stand of the Golden Guard had to be updated after its initial release due to a cache error.
Replaying it should fix your issue.

 

[Lazarator]

in new chapter, some items of Gardon, Brian and Vail from old chapter disapear.
View attachment 453050View attachment 453049

Dude, you're playing Legends of Arkain and complain about items? Who cares about items? Just build your army, crush the enemy and enjoy the game

 

[Lang]

Dude, you're playing Legends of Arkain and complain about items? Who cares about items? Just build your army, crush the enemy and enjoy the game

It not only items actually, by the cache problem all tomes acquired are also affected as a lost, like pure no tomes at all, just level up from hero which quite impactful on this long series campaign.

 

[Lazarator]

It not only items actually, by the cache problem all tomes acquired are also affected as a lost, like pure no tomes at all, just level up from hero which quite impactful on this long series campaign.

The same goes for tomes as well. You have many powerful units and heroes. Why would you care about having extra items and tomes? In my opinion, it gives you extra advantage over your enemies, which makes the game less challenging. I know it's great to have strong heroes with all items, tomes and such, and I know Shar will fix this when he releases the complete Full Story project, but I think having such strong troops and a strategy to play the game is what's really important while playing LoA, not items/tomes

 

[Shar Dundred]

I literally just explained what the issue was.

 

[Trương Nhật]

The same goes for tomes as well. You have many powerful units and heroes. Why would you care about having extra items and tomes? In my opinion, it gives you extra advantage over your enemies, which makes the game less challenging. I know it's great to have strong heroes with all items, tomes and such, and I know Shar will fix this when he releases the complete Full Story project, but I think having such strong troops and a strategy to play the game is what's really important while playing LoA, not items/tomes

collecting item is a way to enjoy game bro. i agree that LoA is about strategy and heroes only make small impact, but play hero with item is better than nake. you played old chapter, spend time to expose map not only do main quest, and next chapter you still get old item + tome you found. it will make you feel better. Playing campaign, enjoy story and feel happy when your hero stronger n stronger.
Hero make war3 different to other strategy game.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Personally I disagree that heroes have only a small importance when it comes to gameplay.

Regardless of personal opinions regarding the impact on gameplay, I encourage reporting bugs our issues to maintain the high quality standards that I have for Legends of Arkain.

In this particular case, replaying Last Stand of the Golden Guard already fixes the issue as this bug was found out about in the past and already fixed.

 

[OhGee]

with gardon's attack bonus it's hard not for him to have an impact, also use a lot of grofzags growl and okri's shield. Plus there are others, however those are the ones that come to mind

 

[diamon dog]

Amazing.6/5

 

[OhGee]

Latest mission doesn't finish. Cleared peach and mission doesn't end.

 

[diamon dog]

The only thing that was a bit dissapointing was the fact that you can not train any centaur units or play as them, even thought they are your alies for 3 missions or more, except that everything is .

 

[OhGee]

there was centaur melee units that could be upgraded to ranged units around act 5/6, unless that was in orc book 2 and memory is scratchy

 

[Lang]

Amari passive max hp increase doesn't work??
AI ally not rebuild their stuff too?

 

[HuanJuan]

Amari passive max hp increase doesn't work??
AI ally not rebuild their stuff too?

Yes, you see it right: If you want to repor this, you should go to the proper forum /thread here, and report it. I'm sure it's going to be a huge help.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Just uploaded a hotfix, both Shadowbound and the mission ending should work properly now.