I've been playing the True Story in the last few weeks. I've left my reviews of each mission in acts 1 to 5 in the
maps thread as it didn't seem fitting to discuss chapters that have been out for many months in the "New content" thread.
After playing through act 6 and finishing Lord of the Shadows tonight, I wanted to discuss some things I've read in this thread about the story and some missions.
You assume she knows this is Zoia who was keeping her captive. Going by precedent dialogues, I'd she was being manipulated into targetting Blen once she got 'escaped' after completing training. After all, while Zoia would be prime suspect in case of human assassin, nobody would expect a good Imperial general to use an Orc assassin, right? And it's not like the assassin would have had no reason to attack Blen. After he was there too for the Darkmind's fall.
That was my thought too. Inara was Zoia's "experiment", and this explanation is the one that makes the most sense.
It's possible to finish the mission very quickly if you dive straight for dragon regiment but everyone wants the stat boost for Grofzag and the items in the royal base. Not that I blame anyone for that I want the same thing.
The stat boost for Grofzag is fairly easy to get, as you just need to go near the stones. You can just run in and out the blue base, and the red base too if they are fighting some demons. My strategy back when I completed this in the SOB in normal (I couldn't in hard) was to dive purple, then use this much more defensible base and goldmine to wipe out other enemies. I'd assume that the dragon regiment dive (leaving just a token building alive) followed by having Grofzag explore the one or two monoliths we couldn't get to earlier would not be particularly harder than just the dive itself, even if you don't get the resources to rebuild a new base.
- It would be nice to get access to caster Master training, at least for the Spider Caller, since, on adept, it is quite useless in combat. (4 food for a unit that doesn't last 2 seconds in melee is not really a worthwhile investment)
The spider caller in Act VI Chapter 4 was impressively bad. Frail melee units suck, and 4 food is a lot. It's the only unit we have with a targeted heal, but it's pretty weak, slow-acting and micro-intensive (a higher mana cost with a higher HP heal would be handier). I trained one out of curiosity, but I was disappointed.
Try fighting him in Woras' base for an extra challenge.
Of course I did, because Woras is the last noble I defeated, I didn't fully understand that the remaining building there would save me much more time than those in the other bases (and I hadn't left that much in the others too), and I also didn't want to be "boxed in". In the other bases, it becomes completely impossible to get out once the Grand Army is pouring in.
I got overwhelmed and defeated, but reloading a save from the beginning of the "last stand" and slipping out with Cora and Larine, I discovered I could just flee across the map. As long as I was constantly moving, Cora's aura and Larine's natural speed made it easy to outpace the enemy, plus Larine could heal Cora and use her mirrored selves for tanking from time to time. Recruiting some Ironforged helps to speed up things. It's a grind, but it's surprisingly reliable.
At first i thought as to why Shar would add similar units to our available recruitment pool but then i realized that towards the end we dont really get to be picky on what units we have to employ...
Indeed, I thought crossbowmen were useless when the all-around-better Ironforged are available, but it makes a lot of sense when you need to recruit warm bodies to send to the meatgrinder as quickly as possible.
Worst part of the mission for me was the goddamn hydromancers. Kill them.
The hydromancers are definitely overpowered.
- The army comp I used consisted of 10 Executors, 10 Priests and 12 Ironforged, with 4 food to spare. When the Mercenary Camp is far away from my army, I use Larine's Hawk to hire the units lost in battle.
Funny, I had almost the exact same army comp, except I went up to 12 priests. I thought for some reason a hero was needed to use a mercenary camp, I never thought of using the hawk to hire units from afar.
What I find the most strange with Salana's fate is the fact she was left to die bleeding, not even finished off. I mean, even if Gardon had a reason that forced him to kill her, I don't see why he would torture her (she's not really a traitor or anything) or be sloppy enough to let her live (Thanok would probably do it but giving her to Thannok is even more cruel than just torturing her).
Good point
Agreed. If I recall, the SHB did not have really durable flesh golems at their disposal (maybe I'm recalling it wrong?) to tank your army. I think it's because we have access to the superior ironfist healer, the Banisher, who can heal your entire army much more reliably than the ordinary Priest. After dealing with the flesh golems, you will have to deal with the Revenants. After that, you only have a few moments to besiege the traitor base before they can replenish their forces.
There was no flesh golem in the SHB.
Having said all this, I have to confess. I know i'm gonna eat my words and lord Shar's gonna punish me for saying this... But the mission got easier. Or maybe smoother. The original took me 5 painful hours of peeling off the defenders one by one until I won. Here I made it under 3 hour mark ( plus some saveloading). A big thanks to you Shar, the lord of shadows has got better.
I agree, Lord of Shadows has gotten easier. I didn't need a single save reload (I sometimes did a save reload when I did a test, like killing one of my starting elites to see if it's still food-free, but that doesn't really count) to complete the mission, which in my book makes it much easier than many others.
Part of that is also the Ironfist being intelligent and helping us against the Zirr Nexus at the start. It's not that much, but it helps getting rid of them early.
Anyway, the difficulty is up there with Between a Rock and a Hard Place imo.
I have 28000 gold and who knows how much lumber, yet I can't make an army that can kill that base, because I'm capped at 100 supply. I've tower spammed the entrance, so they will never be able to get out, and they keep replacing those flesh golems, they keep making those Death Revenants, and I can't defeat them, because by the time they are dead, I'm dead as well. By the time I trained enough elites to try again, they have replaced every lost unit as well. It's a stalemate, one that can't be broken, at least I can't break it
Well, since Elites were not fit for the job, I decided to try the golem, catapult strategy. It still doesn't work. The enemy simply has too much... Here is a video, where I relentlessly attack with workshop units, and fail miserably:
From the Changelog, the differences between the version I played and the first one are no more retraining of the flesh golems by the AI, and Zed/Claire being proper demi-heroes. The Flesh Golem certainly make a difference, but I'm surprised by these statements. Although the revenants were very annoying it didn't feel that difficult. I obviously had towers at the entrance, and a proper tower setup annihilates any counter-attack in seconds (this is not an exaggeration, they barely have the time to do any damage before being splashed by cannon towers and manaburned to death), so you can retreat, heal and replace losses, and charge back in just as their army got suicided.
I used mostly cavalry in front (I tried to mix in some golems, I ditched them after poor results) and banishers in the back (they are insanely good at healing, until mana runs out), and I managed to snipe the grey Traitors castle without sending my "free" elites to fight. The grey traitors rebuilt a town hall by the time of my next attack, where I went all in and never had my army kicked out, but I'm convinced that even without the free elites it's reasonably feasible to snipe peasants/castle and then to progressively destroy all grey's production buildings. The flesh golems made it harder, but to the point of feeling impossible? If someone has version 0.65, I'd like to try it out. To me, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, or the fight against Rahandir, or Rise of the Clans with the Deathbreeze, were much more difficult than A Lord of Shadows in version 0.69a, which would barely make it into my top 10.
I watched two minutes of the video showing the golem/catapult strategy, and when I see that the two enemy towers at the entrance of the base were left alone, I cringed. They were only destroyed after 5 minutes, and apparently because nearby units ended up attacking them without you meaning to. Destroying enemy towers (which do not get replaced, at least not in front) is crucial and intuitive. Especially with a full siege composition.
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