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 No longer updated !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


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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

Betrayed, invaded, defeated.... The Humans of the Empire suffered greatly in their fight against the Demons. They have now lost another kingdom in the war against the Demons and the inner conflicts are just about to start. Only a strong hand and leadership can lead them to victory against these odds.
Command the cruel General Gardon Bloodclaw and unite the estranged factions of the Empire by any means necessary. Withstand your enemies, both inside and outside, and face the horrifying Demons.
The question is... how far are you willing to go for absolute victory? Will you have to sacrifice your humanity in order to achieve victory? Only time will tell.


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 Human Book!
Click here for the First Orc Book!
Click here for the First Undead 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 or 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 hotkeys
All abilities, units and buildings use QWER hotkeys.
- Race Mechanics
Every available race has its own unique race mechanic to improve gameplay - and, in some cases, to add new ways influencing the story.

Characters

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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 mystery. He simply appeared out of nowhere and became general. He proved very fast, that he got that position for a good reason, destroying the enemies of the Empire with fast, merciless effectiveness. He is the commander of the Ironfist, an elite force of the Empire, which often carries out top secret missions for the Emperor himself. According to rumors, Gardon himself enjoys the favor of the Emperor - much to the frustration of many higher-ranking Imperials. Yet none would dare make a move against him, as in the past, such attempts ended in disaster.
The fact that Gardon was forced to retreat because the inner conflicts of the Imperials had weakened them too much, infuriated him a great deal and he longs for a chance to take revenge on the traitors.

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Admiral Merlon Seabright
Both in the Imperial and Royal Fleets, Admiral Merlon Seabright is a living legend. It is said that he was the captain of the ship that killed the Terror of Feraldir, a gigantic, demonic sea monster that had terrorized ships for thousands of years. Merlon dislikes staying on the shore for longer than absolutely necessary, for the sea is his true home. He is said to have been a critic and even an enemy of Gardon Bloodclaw until the two of them were assigned to a special mission. After that mission, Merlon remained silent about Gardon and even proclaimed to assist Gardon whenever he was needed.
Today, he is Gardon's most loyal ally who is not part of the Ironfist.

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Larine the Exile
Larine used to be the personal guard and a good friend of the elven queen. However, she began criticizing the fact that the Elves were hiding in their woods instead of fighting side-by-side with the Imperials and Dwarves. She blamed the Queen for the fact that the Elves were despised by many of the Humans who had been forced by their surperiors to defend them. She left the Elven Kingdom and was later exiled. She went to the court of King Dorten of Kerrel and started working for him, gaining his respect. Trained in both archery and nature magic, she is ready to fulfill her surperior's every command.

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Lady Cora Redfist
Following her father's wishes reluctantly, Cora joined the Imperial Army instead of continuing her studies in the Imperial Academy. Having proven herself as a valuable asset of the army, she was given the offer of joining the Imperial Navy. She had always loved the sea and knowing that the Imperial Navy would enable her to progress further in her studies of water magic, Cora accepted the offer and became a member of the navy, later serving as the liaison officer between the Imperial Navy and the Golden Guard.
Over time, she developed a certain dislike for Renald van Durce, the general of the Golden Guard, considering him arrogant beyond measure.

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Lord Brian the Fallen
Long ago, before the Empire had set sail over the sea, Lord Brian was a high-ranking member of the Emperor's court. People were afraid of the lord in dark armor who was said to study the forbidden dark arts of Shadow Magic. One day, he and his family disappeared without any trace of their whereabouts. Since he didn't return after many years, people started to believe he had died. However, in truth, he had discovered ancient secrets and power. Whatever happened to him, it made him immortal and gave him unknown power and knowledge. It remains a mystery what he has done over the past centuries.

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High Lord Inquisitor Renald van Durce
Being one of seven younger brothers of the former emperor and therefore one of the uncles of the current Emperor, Renald could have lived a peaceful life of luxury in the Imperial palace. However, he loathed his other brethren for letting the luxury make them become lazy and corrupt. Becoming a great warrior-priest and leader, he himself led the final assault that removed all Demons from the continent of the Empire. Renald had always been arrogant, but his success made it even worse. However, his loyalty towards the Emperor is almost limitless and only the Emperor himself can command van Durce. Whenever he and his Golden Guard are sent on a mission, the Emperor sends his finest, most loyal and most arrogant soldiers.
His full title is:
High Lord of the Imperial Court, Lord Inquisitor of the Order of the Righteous, Lord Consultant of the Emperor, General of the Golden Guard.

Click here to learn more about the other characters!


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Initial Release

General:
- After finding out what caused the game to crash in the current iteration of 1.30, I fixed the Angelic unit, selecting it should no longer cause any crashes (Don't worry, I have fixed this with a 1.29 iteration, you do not have to update to the latest patch and I still advise against doing that, but those of you who already patched should be better off now)
- Increased the durability of Lord Brian the Fallen
- Armor of the Holy Bastion now also increases the hit points by 500 in addition to its 15 armor bonus
- Fixed Spears of Pain icon

Chapter Twelve:
- Added Resistant Skin for the Purificator in both A and B

Chapter Thirteen:
- Increased hit points of Krogar the Conqueror by 500

General:
- Replaced Krogar's Stampede with The Horde, summoning a group of permanent Moghtar warriors
- Praxeus gained the Memory of the Past ability
- Plating no longer increases armor and reflects damage, instead it now reduces all inflicted damage
- Lord of the Shadows no longer splits Brian, instead it allows him to summon up to four permanent Shadow Creatures from corpses
- The amount of trainable Black Dragons is no longer limited to 2, go train more, go nuts
- Replaced Horgar's Barrier ability with Lightning Rune, summoning a rune that attacks enemies
- Changed the model for the Healing Rune
- Horgar and Zarin have both received Spell Resistance
- Changed Gardon's title from Butcher to Warmonger
- Gardon and Praxeus now both have a new permanent item

Chapter Seven:
- Changed a few epilogue lines for the Undead if Larine becomes queen

Chapter Eleven A and B:
- Slightly edited and fixed some dialogues
- Added new dialogues

Chapter Eleven A:
- Fixed the issue with Zarin's portrait not appearing when speaking

Chapter Eleven B:
- Added more enemy Black Dragons and Black Drakes to make sniping the enemy bases with Destructors less efficient

Chapter Twelve A and B:
- Removed the lines coming from the three liches in the intro cinematic

Chapter Fourteen A:
- Salana and Larine may both now call on the Elven Forces (Salana may even call upon a certain hero if she is still alive)

Prelude:
- Adjusted the lines at the beginning of the map regarding the choice system from the First Human Book

General:
- Fixed the description of the Old Amulet

Chapter Nine:
- Praxeus should now start with his proper item, the Old Amulet, rather than the Ring of the Exile

General:
- Fixed the tooltip of Lightning Rune
- Vail's leadership bonus now correctly states that the increase is permanent
- 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
- New icon for the Bowman
- Increased the hit points of Knights to 840
- Some grammar fixes
- Dark Secrets now displays the duration
- Fixed the hotkey for Lord of the Shadows

Prelude:
- Fixed the issue with the prelude finishing too early

Interlude Two:
- Fixed the skipping issues related to this cinematic

Chapter Nine:
- The hotkey for sending Marin lumber has been removed

Chapter Thirteen:
- Fixed the tooltip for Korgar's ultimate

Chapter Fourteen A:
- The hint now tells you that Salana/Larine can also summon a wave of allies

Chapter Fourteen B:
- The Old Amulet item should no longer lie on the ground

General:
- New upgrade "Skull Shield" available from Chapter Seven on

Chapter Eight:
- Replaced most units of the Order of the Flame with new, Order-specific ones

Chapter Five:
- Replaced the hero in the yellow base with a weaker hero to decrease difficulty

General:
- Upkeep reworked: Low Upkeep now gives you 8 instead of 7 gold and High Upkeep now gives you 6 instead of 4 gold

Chapter Seven:
- The items you get from Larine if you chose Salana are now the ones from Chapter Six instead of Chapter Five

Chapter Twelve:
- Replaced the building models used by the Dominion to better showcase their new organisation
- Changed the names of some edited buildings

Chapter Thirteen:
- New model for Orie Redfist
- New model for Red Mages

Chapter Fourteen A:
- Replaced the building models used by the Ironfist to better showcase their new organisation
- Replaced the models used by Peasants and Militia
- Changed the names of some edited buildings

General:
- Most maps now have their own unique loading screen made by @Rhapsodie

General:
- Shieldbearer Changes:
* Decreased the damage dealt by Shieldbearers by 3
* Decreased hit points from 1500 to 1100
* Increased food cost from 4 to 5
- Reduced the movement speed of Warmechs in air form
- Increased the food cost of Black Dragons from 8 to 10
- All workers now start with Repair activated automatically
- New model & icon for Sir Praxeus "The Holy Bastion" Braelon
- New icon for the Order of the Holy Bastion leadership bonus

General:
- Several tweaks and fixes (including changes that fix some bugs caused by newer Blizzard patches)
- Changed & Replaced several unit types and hero models to fit their kingdom/faction
- New models for Thanok & Claire (courtesy of @deepstrasz)
- New model for Shieldbearers (courtesy of @HerrDave)

Chapter Eight:
- Replaced Brutes with Firestarters

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

General:
- New model for Sir Jay Bubblerino (courtesy of @deepstrasz )

Chapter Eleven:
- Fixed the loading screen of Chapter Eleven

General:
- Fixed the food cost for Black Dragons (was 8, should have been 10)
- Fixed the button positions of Dragonhawk Riders and their Cloud upgrade



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
supertoinkz
SuPa-
Tarrasque
Power
Afronight_76
chr2
olofmoleman
imforfun
Deolrin
Pyramidhe@d
HerrDave
Meteor_demon
kangyun
Kael Theron
PROXY
JetFangInferno
JesusHipster
Makoodzaka
Rizz_Boomer
Arowanna
Rhapsodie
deepstrasz


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
Sellenisko
-ToasT
jigrael
Just_Spectating
APproject
Pins
Eagle XI
kangyun
-Grendel
BLazeKraze
Mc !
Kael Theron
Stanakin
JollyD
The_Silent
-Berz-
chr2
olofmoleman
San
Scias
Akolyt0r
Peekay
Edge45
ChevronSeven
4eNNightmare
Arowanna


Music:
Bastian Kieslinger - Tears of the Mire (used in Interlude Four)

Campaign Preview Screen:
Heinvers

Campaign Logo:
Mythic

Loading Screens:
Rhapsodie

Campaign Chief Development Tester and Grammar Genius:
Kasrkin

Additional Testing:
Championfighter25

Terrain Improvement:
Imperator (Prologue, Chapter Four, Nine, Eleven, Twelve)
Heinvers (Chapter Three & Chapter Eight)


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!
To all who reported bugs and gave/give constructive feedback both during and after the development!
And very many special thanks to Kasrkin, who supported the creation of this project in many, even countless ways!



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

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

Legends of Arkain Second Human Book (Campaign)

Reviews
2016-04-10 Rufus: Rufus ReviewMap ScoreGameplay:25 / 30Aesthetics:20 / 20Total:45 / 50 Rating Chart 45-505/5 Highly Recommended35-444/5 Recommended25-343/5 Useful15-242/5 Lacking0-141/5 Unacceptable Gameplay That was one damn good first...
StoPCampinGn00b
Restricted under author request / work in progress rule.

Pick your favorite character


  • Total voters
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Messages
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After "finishing" the A path, some thoughts on the gameplay and the story.

Completing the sidequest in 9 means that you will have to deal with a strong destructor attack in the beginning, peaking with an attack by the lord of the sky. But I think it dropped an immunity necklace (at least I saw one on ground after that battle), so it may be not too bad.

Just go back with all your heroes, train marksmen from the beginning, and you should manage to repel the initial onslaught.

Then, we get to the frustrating part. With banishers to heal, your heroes and some knight of kome to tank and deal damage, and some marksmen (especially useful when the enemy try to attack you with destructors), it's not very hard to repeal the enemy attacks. You can use the gold mines in front of your base, but it's not really necessary at this point. What you want is to destroy the twinned base of the paladins and of the royal army renegade, and you don't have much options for this.

With saves and reloads, I could manage it with aerial attacks of black dragons (1st attack : destroy castle and try to kill some peasants) (2nd attack : destroy the townhall in construction and kill some more peasants) (3rd attack : try to finish cleaning up those peasants) ; distracting enemy troops with a ground attack can be useful (or use your allies attacks), but beware Renald coming to help them. Once all peasants and the castle are eliminated, you can eliminate easily the units production building, and after some time, all their remaining units will die.

I recommend choosing Vail's leadership bonus ; stronger heroes is by far the most useful ability you can get in this mission. The bonus to dragons, which I took instead, is too weak, those boosting other units are equally uninteresting because those units don't survive well enough.

That said, I should mention that having up to 80 food used before hitting medium ukpeep, and a max upkeep of 120, is a really nice touch for this mission. It makes it much less frustrating than it would have been with normal upkeep limits.

When, after a long grind, you've got rid of these two bases, you can claim this terrain as your own. At this point, I collected from 7 gold mines at once. Build a lot of barracks, arcane sanctum, and other production buildings, and it won't be hard. Don't bother with towers, they are not useful against destructors, but you can put one or two in front to alert you.

Now, you've got two options. The first one is trying to flood your enemies under units. The issue is, though the yellow golden guard units won't be retrained (contrast with the yellow templars of van durce and the cream lord marin's golden guard), you still have three enemy bases, and your allies are as dumb as ever.

My suggestion, instead, is to use and abuse of your heroes, and to use two black dragons who will slowly clean up towers and the very powerful siege machines which block your offensive. When an enemy attack wave is too strong for your heroes (often : the dwarven attack wave), pull back to get support from a bunch of marksmen and to heal them with banishers. Don't bother too much with knights of kome at this point. They suffer from a serious mobility hindrance due to collision issues, have no interesting ability, and only serve to take some damage away from your heroes.

Try to help your allies when they attack, but pull back before losing your heroes, it's better to heal them than to retrain them.

At some point, you should manage a breakthrough with your allies help. In my situation, it was against Van Durce templars. Most of his base got destroyed. The enemy didn't give up, though, and the destructors guarding Lord Marin's base are very frustrating. I think that at this point, flooding the enemy under a constant stream of units work well (I had over 120K gold at the end, so that's enough to send a few hundreds units to their death), though the slower grinding method will also pay out. In my case, the dwarves tried to help Lord Marin while one of my allies (and a bunch of my marksmen I sent to help) attacked their base and their defences broke.

Big letdown in this mission : arcane towers don't have the reveal ability. This is frankly frustrating.

This chapter is quite cool. I think it is doable in hard without any save reloads and huge headache, because you only need to survive some time to win. My suggestions are to start by moving your heroes to the main entrance, and moving all your secondary units in one group on the north and south. You want them to be too far to take the initiative to stupidly charge into main battles, but close enough to be able to retreat behind them and protect as much of your buildings as you can. You want your units grouped, because 12 soldiers are much more stronger than 2x6 soldiers. There is a reason why "defeat in detail" is one of the most useful military tactics ever.

Also, form a group with your banishers. They will help you heal your heroes (Vail, especially) from time to time.

Blocking the main entrance with your heroes allows you to get a maximum benefit from enemies attacking each other. You can often pull back your heroes and just let demons, undead and orcs fight each other.

Your first purificator blast should go to destroy 3 of the 6 souleater's demon gates, for what follow you can do as you please, take out those who annoy you the more first.

You regularly receive reinforcements, and even if all your units are killed, it takes several minutes for the enemy to destroy the buildings to get to the purificator (I did a test where I didn't do anything but waiting, and I got enough time for a blast).

This mission is mostly a patience thing. Don't use your base units, only your heroes and their summons, and mostly the summons to tank the damages (as your heroes will die very quickly if focused). Try to take out the red priests by using your two ranged damage spells, and it shouldn't be hard to finish the other units of the groups. Just be patient and pull back when your heroes start to be focused.

When you reach the end, all of the dwarves and humans will try to help father Redfist, so you better kill most of them. Only those guarding the path to the life fountain are far enough they shouldn't matter.

Completing the sidequests make this mission easier, as not only you won't have two powerful units coming to help Volarian Redfist, but they grant you useful items on their death and trigger the arrival of small reinforcements.

Still, considering that Aedale is under the demoness control, and that what the demoness want is most assuredly bad, I wanted to try without killing either Fox or Thorn (who the game even tells us was a friend of Aedale). This is doable, but it is hard.

To clean up the units supporting father redfist (and so reduce the final battle's duration), I used a silence on the area where the units are.

The rally to Volarian Redfist happens only if one of your units go on the place of the last battle, or if you attack him. The silence don't trigger this and allows you to kill most of his underlings. Then, for the final battle, it's a spell spam. His armor is absurdly high (71% damage reduction), so the main damage source will be your ranged damaging spells. They should be used as often as possible. Kill any supporting units fast with normal damage, because you don't want them to heal Volarian or to inflict damage to your heroes. Use and abuse of your summon, the Felguard's taunt is a vital ability. Don't hesitate to tell your orc hero to run away to reduce taken damage. Use Adeale's demon form to get additional HP (and some additional attack too). Use your doom guard stun and cripple abilities on father Redfist. He deals crazy damage, any stun or reduced attack rate is very useful. At the end, you should be able to finish him.

I personally left my moghtar warriors away in the north, at the crossroads, to block the two commanders from helping Volarian. They will die, but when they are only three or four left, send them away to the east. The commanders will follow them and won't join the main battle. Of course, if you kill them, it becomes much easier.

Not having consumed any demon shard in book 1, I could save the father, and this was quite satisfying.

Chapter 14-A

This mission in hard is crazy. I mean, it makes mission 4 seem easy (I played mission 4 on normal, but according to Shar, you only receive some more attacks on your base in hard, and defending your base isn't that hard, it's the grind on attack which is painful). I threw in the towel after over 70 saves and just cheated my way through the end because I couldn't take it anymore. If there is some extra strategy allowing to beat the level with much less grind, let me know.

See the spoiler for details.

The issue can be summed up simply : "rain of fire spam". The elite doom guard have a gigantic mana pool (800 mana), their rain of fire deals 70 damage per wave, and if you have several waves targetting an area, the damage stacks. Oh, did I mention that you have no good stun ability ? The only hero who has one (Merlon Seabright) is not controlled by you in this chapter. Occasionally, the fire golem offers a stun, but with 180s cooldown, this is not reliable. The one that Brian has only target one enemy, has a too long cooldown, and require aiming. As a general rule, it takes way too much time to micro.

If Warcraft 3 had a "pause" or "very slow" feature, this mission may be manageable, but it doesn't. Without saves and reloads, this mission is humanly impossible, even with them it is the worst grind I've ever seen.

When you get big enemy waves and have 10 elite doom guards to kill (of course with 10 infernals, 2 demon heroes, and a lot of smaller units in the mix), this becomes extremely frustrating.

The rain of fire spam makes most units entirely useless, because they will die very, very quickly. This of course apply to your allies from the royal army and from the knight of kome who will help you during this mission. They die like flies, doing minimal damage on the enemy. The "heroes of zayinor" leadership bonus is mandatory as it allows your heroes to tank a little more. You will do most of the fighting with your heroes, because they are the only one who can avoid dying very fast. You can also use black dragons ; as bulky ranged aerial units they increase your DPS and don't die too fast, but they cost a lot. Some darksteel golems to gain you critical time when your heroes are in a bad shape can also help. Destructors will help to destroy demon gates, but they are too frail against the rain of fire spam and cost too much food to be good otherwise.

You will want to have banishers in your base, because while Vail can heal your other heroes with holy light (whose 600 HP heal feels frankly weak in a mission where damage is much higher than the standard warcraft 3 this value has been balanced for), you can't heal Vail otherwise. Banishers die very, very quickly if they approach enemies, and the rain of fire spam means that even blocking the path with your heroes doesn't work. So you either need to have killed the attack wave, or to have some units slowing down the enemy while you pull back your heroes to heal them (with the priority on vail, as she can heal the others). Obviously, you can't order the banishers to use 6 heal waves at the same time, but you need to order it one at the time. Did I mention that the "E" keyboard shortcut for the heal wave don't work, meaning that you must point the heal wave icon with the mouse, point to an unit to heal (the heroes icon on the left are often useful because at least they don't move), click, and do so again, which means the healing process is way too slow ? Did I mention that your banishers will try to attack the enemy if it gets too close and will be killed very fast, instead of trying to pull out and stay alive ? Did I mention that your own heroes you pulled out for a heal may try to return to fight and **** your healing attempt ?

So, with all that, you can somewhat survive. Great ? Not so fast. You see, destroying demon gates is not really useful, at least at the beginning. It doesn't weaken noticeably the attack waves you receive. I threw the towel when, after having managed to destroy the two demon gates closest to my base, I got attacked by a gigantic enemy armies (two heroes, tons of doom guards, infernals, etc). Despite many, many efforts, I couldn't manage to repeal it (I guess I may have succedeed while losing 3 or 4 heroes, but the time needed to revive them would make defeat likely)

I'm sure the mission could be less impossible if I had been informed beforehand that I will lose Cora and Merlon for the final missions, and had their stuff transferred to my other heroes. Aside from a few hundreds of HP boni, one of them had the immunity necklace which would make Salana's ultimate (starfall) very useful instead of semi-useless.

I haven't played yet missions 11-B, 12-B and 14-B, but I have some idea of how they play out :
- 11B = a bunch of paladins to take care of ground units, destructors to raze enemy bases (destructors are much better than dragons at this, it should be easy)
- 12B : use your destructors to destroy the orcs fortress. Congratulations, you only need to survive long enough for 3 cannon blast instead of 4, and with your heroes and paladins, that's a given.
- 14B : I have not even seen how it looks like, but "paladins and destructors" is most probably the answer once again.

Some gameplay thoughts about the heroes.

- Gardon : the melee range of his damage + armor malus attack makes it very weak. Did I mention the damage are poor and the armor reduction is not that useful against enemy heroes (where you'd expect it to be the most useful because they have a lot of HP), because going from 20 to 13 of armors isn't as significant as from 7 to 0 ?). Immolation can surely be useful, if you remember to turn it off... I often don't because I have 20 things to micro, and it consumes all the mana. Invoking Zed is a good ability. The bonus damage and lifesteal is good, but doom guards can dissipate it, and in micro-heavy missions I often skip over it. The war aura is obviously extremely good.

- Merlon : a very nice hero. Likeable, and with good abilities. The stomp stun is extremely useful, the endurance aura is decent, the ultimate is excellent if you can avoid stuns/sleep. The damages in a line is also very nice to finish off ranged units you can't deal with directly.

- Cora : a great hero. Her ultimate is absolutely savage in mission 3 against militia, but can also be very useful in any battle with a lot of enemies, or even in places with a lot of enemy buildings. The cold aura helps a lot your units to survive, and the bolt's ability to stun at range can be a lifesaver.

Obviously, you get neither Merlon nor Cora in the last mission, while the aura stacking is exactly what you'd want.

Didn't see how Scarlett Retka plays as I killed her. Ridiculous she is reanimated by the undead in the epilogue, Gardon should have learned long before to burn corpses exactly as he saw the demons do.

- Larine : didn't impress me. The bird summon is ok, but the heal ability has both a huge cooldown and is overtime. It would need to either have no cooldown or to be an instant heal to be decent. I nearly never used Shadow Cloak, because sneaking through stealthily is very rarely useful. I guess it could work to kill enemy peasants once you've destroyed a castle, though. The mirage ultimate is quite nice, as it reduces damage taken and allows to deal more at the same time.

- Salana : I probably should have given her a sobi mask, because she needs a lot of mana if she is to use her cold arrows on a constant basis. The thunder, the aura and the starfall are all quite nice.

- Brian : didn't like him, and the epilogue told me I was right. As for his abilities, I have a hard time deciding what to think of it. The damage+stun one is obviously good, the "miss 75% of your attacks" is great... except when it doesn't do anything against rain of fire spam and magic immune infernals in mission 14A. The boost damage and lifesteal is meh, in my experience. I only use the ultimate when Brian is about to die and I can't heal him fast enough (or at least not without sacrificing another hero/unit), but this may not be optimal. In my experience, he takes damage faster than any of my other melee hero, but this may be related to item build.

- Harmos : it's hard to gauge how useful incinerate is, as it's not very visible. Still not bad. I used rarely the rain of fire, because when enemy are concentrated enough for it to be able to deal impressive damages, your heroes are probably taking huge damages and must pull back to not die. The fire shield looks very good on paper, but I never could micro fast enough to use it agressively. The fire golem is excellent.

- Vail : the holy light is very useful, but definitely too weak for what's needed in the last missions. You take much more damage than in standard W3, you should also be able to heal more. The ultimate makes her extremely though and with a very good manapool, nothing to complain about here. Command aura is great, immolation can be very useful but I forget too often to turn it off, and you don't want to end up with no mana for healing. The big weakness is that she can't heal herself.

- Van Durce : the golden bastard has quite impressive fighting abilities, namely his gigantic HP and excellent armor. The ultimate is nice against big packs of enemies, retribution is too. The devotion aura is not bad, but not great as 4 armor isn't that useful when your units already have 10 of it.

- Praxeus : a super-paladin. The holy light isn't that useful because most of the time, you'll have your paladins do it instead ; but the command aura, the defensive bonus and best of all the resurrect ultimate are great.

- Zarin : a standard dwarf hero. Get the job done, the stun abilities are very useful.

- Whitebeard (runepriest dwarf hero) : forgettable. Very weak ultimate, but chain lightning, barrier and healing rune are all rather good.
 
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Level 7
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Having finished the B path, here are my strategies to do these chapters in hard.

As expected, it is "paladins and destructors". At the start, Marin gives you 3 destructors and 2 prides of humanity which cost 0 food (I guess only if you did the sidequest in chapter 9 ?). Considering that 5 destructors eat 60 of your 120 food limit, those are invaluable. You must do your best to avoid losing them. When doing an attack with your airships, if one of the 0 food is getting targetted, pull it out. If your enemies are trying to pursue you, don't hesitate to sacrifice one of your 12-food destructor to save a 0-food one (let it behind, and when the other gets farther, enemies will change their target).

At the start, you can get a lot of good items for free in the market (the items your heroes on Gardon's side had, if I'm not mistaken), make your choice. Try to give the best life and mana bonus to Zarin and Praxeus ; Van Durce doesn't really need either.

Build up paladins and one or two additional destructors. Search the paladin upgrade. Send all your other land units next to the fortress entrance. Don't care too much about them, them dying is making food available for better units.

You have two enemy bases right next to your fortress. Thankfully, it is quite easy to destroy them. The enemy heroes can get annoying, but your allies will launch attacks quite soon. Between your paladins, your heroes, and the dwarven attack wave, Marin's own airships, the enemy units will be very busy. Which means that your destructors can easily sneak through. I began by the north. You should always follow the same pattern : 1)Destroy castle ; 2)Kill peasants ; 3)Destroy units-production buildings ; 4)Kill off the remaining units ; 5)Destroy farms and other leftovers. Deal with towers if they attack you and it doesn't compromise steps 1 & 2.

I had to pull out once, but it was overall quite quick to clean up both bases. Now, you can build your own bases there and get gold from 4 mines. To make things easier, the undead will abandon Gardon.

Beware, dragons will sometimes try to attack your fortress from the south. I suggest building additional towers between the energy towers, and sending your airships if needed as they beat dragons.

The enemy will launch attack waves regularly, and it is sometimes not trivial to repeal them. All heroes on Gardon's side are much more bulky than when you control them in chapter 11-A, and killing them takes a while. Vail is especially frustrating. Don't forget to quickly stun when Salana (if you've her as elven queen instead of Larine) or Cora launch their ultimate.

There are a lot of ironside units and shadow towers between your base and Gardon's one ; they are never replaced once killed, so your allies will slowly eliminate them. You can help too.

Now, you need to take out the royal army and elven bases to be able to focus properly on Gardon's. If you want to do it while always protecting your base, you will find it very hard. But, do you need to ? No ! In my case, I had the path to the royal army base cleaned, and I jut defeated an elven attack wave. My airships were in position to the west of the royal army base... And Gardon's troops attacked my bases east of the fortress (I had built towers but they were rather useless). Rather than abandoning my attack, I sacrificed my bases. I attacked with my paladins and my heroes, drawing the attention of the Royal Army's defenders. Then, I sent my airships to eliminate the castle and the peasants. It was somewhat tiring to juggle between the airships and having to spam holy lights with the paladins to avoid them dying, and at the end I lost several of them, but I could eliminate the castle and the peasants.

You're drowning under gold in this mission, so as long as you don't lose your 0 food airships, this is nothing to worry about. Send peasants to rebuild bases outside the fortress, replace lost units, and launch a new attack.

With one or two additional attacks, the royal army and elves defences will crumble and you will be able to finish them off.

At this point, I began to build new bases. Collecting more gold wasn't really useful, but I wanted to have closer unit-production buildings in case it was needed, and closer peasants to repair my airships between attacks.

To destroy Gardon's base, attack with your Paladins and heroes (or wait for one of your allies to attack, or attack when your allies are about to die so it lasts as long as possible).

While enemy units are focused in the north, you can send your airships to destroy the southern castle (destroy the towers, too). After one or several attacks, you will have cleaned up the whole southern part of the enemy base (whose heroes are Vail and Cora, so you won't face them anymore). At this point, finishing Gardon is even easier.
I was wrong, actually. In hard, you have only 3 destructors, and the ogre hero is very powerful, so you can only take out ~25% of the life of the fortress with them (in easier difficulties, I wouldn't be surprised if it could work if you have 5 or 6 destructors available, though). Anyway, it isn't too hard, really.

In 12-A, you have 5 heroes, Zed and the Fire Golem, so it's much easier to hold the main entrance. Here, after some time, you will lose the control of it, that's guaranteed. Elite Doom Guards and their rain of fire can be very dangerous for you base units, so I recommend to not have all your units regrouped north and south, rather split that in two groups. Melee units aren't efficient when it's crowded anyway.

Don't forget to put your paladins in a special control group, and try to keep them alive. They are your most useful units beside your heroes, who should be spamming spells all along the mission. Also put destructors in a special control group. You can't heal them, so you need to have other units being targetted instead, but if you can keep them alive they do some good damage.

Even when you lose ground, don't panic. Different enemies will fight each other, and they will take a lot of time to destroy your buildings, so you have a lot of margin. When the points you're attacked in the north and south become too far apart, your units won't be able to travel fast enough from one to the other. I suggest using your heroes and paladins only to defend one side (I did it on the north side) while you let the other be overrun, defending it only at the towers close to the life/mana fountain. When the travel distance from one side to the other diminish again, you'll notice it becomes easier defending.

With your blasts, first eliminate the souleaters (they have the more annoying offensive waves in my experience, between the succubus silence, the infernal's spell immunity, the doom guards rain of fire, and their annoying heroes), then the bonelords, then the orc fortress. When you have only one remaining enemy attacking you, defence becomes trivial (you could probably let the game run while doing something else and still win)
Unlike the chapter 14-A, which is hell, this chapter is easy. You ready it right. EASY ! In hard.

How so ? Haven't we only one tiny base against 7 enemy bases ?

Well, it may be harder if you destroyed the unknown human base in chapter 3 of the first book, because you won't have the Golden Guard Vanguard to help you, and they absorb the attacks from the imperial navy. Even then, though, the main strategy doesn't change.

You need to play very aggressively in the beginning. Search the leadership bonus, blacksmith improvements, and train a few paladins, crossbowmen and angelics (wait a moment to stay in no upkeep and have the required gold faster). I also built two additional siege machine. Repel the first attack, wait a bit to finish your army's preparation, and attack to the North. Use Van Durce's ultimate, heal your units with Paladins, and destroy buildings with Siege Engine. As soon as you have destroyed the green castle, you'll receive Golden Guard reinforcements. You can finish cleaning up or let this to them. I suggest letting your steam engines, will going back with your other units to your main base. Because at this point, you will have been attacked by the elven hero and will likely have lost several buildings. Don't worry too much about that, you can rebuild.

Prepare your troops again, and this time attack the brown base north-west of your main base. It is a bit more resilient than the green one, but you should not have major difficulty eliminating it. If you receive an attack from the blue in the meantime, don't panic. First make sure you destroyed the castle and killed all peasants before rushing out in defence. After some time, you will have destroyed the whole brown base. When destroying the brown castle, the shipyards of this base become yours, but they will be destroyed rather quickly.

Build a new base where the brown one was. It will now be the focus of attacks from blue, so don't hesitate to build a lot of towers behind the walls.

When the elven hero use starfall, don't forget that your angelics can stun her with holy smite. The attacks can get quite annoying, but with your hero, your paladin's heals and some angelics there should be no major issue.

Send some oil tankers to the north, there is an unguarded oil platform you can take control of. It will give you an enormous amount of gold, so you can stay in high upkeep without worrying much from this point on.

And now come the really easy part.

You read it right. Easy, even if the enemy has those terror-class ship which can sink twenty of our owns in a blink. And in truth, exactly because he has them.

With the massive amount of gold from oil platforms, you could use a very aggressive strategy of having many shipyards producing all the time as much ship as possible. Terrors are not replaced when sunk, and when attacking with enough ships you absolutely can sink a terror with battleships. Most oil platforms on the map are defended by enemy ships, but if you spam ships you could take them, which would allow you to afford constantly replacing your losses (the enemy will send new ships trying to take control back).

But, is this really fun ? This is a grind trying to outspam the enemy in ship production, and this will get tiring fast, because the enemy has a lot of shipyards.

No, there is a much better way. An extremely easy way, made possible exactly because there are those terror-class ship. If you have read my comment on chapter 6, you may remember I warned about the terror's friendly fire. Do you think the AI has any carefulness with this ? Hint : it does not.

So how to exploit this ? You have one ultra-bulky unit, Van Durce. You can easily have him over 3000HP. Now, build an arcane vault in the old brown base, and buy a scroll allowing you to teleport back to a townhall. Build a transport ship. Go to an enemy base (if you have the golden guard vanguard as allies, you can disembark in their harbour for the first attack).

To destroy the enemy, the only thing you have to do is to run around with your ultra-bulky Van Durce !


The terrors will take care of killing the enemy for you. All land units following you will explode. Run around a building and the splash damage of the terrors will quickly destroy it. The more terror ships attacking you, the better ! Just never stay in the same place, you need to move constantly (as you may get attacked in your main base when doing so, having defences good enough to take care of the enemy without micro is a great help. Except if there is that elven hero, taking the time to ask an angelic to stun her is really worthwile when she uses starfall).

When Van Durce's health is low, use the teleporting scroll. Van Durce is invulnerable as soon as you use it, so he can't be finished off while waiting for the teleport effect to trigger. In your base, use your Paladins to quickly heal Van Durce, buy another teleporting scroll, hop in a new transport ship, and begin anew !

You should first destroy the two imperial navy bases. You will then be able to clean up the ships guarding the oil platform west of your starting point without having to worry with a stream of ships trying to take it back. It will give you even more gold and so ability to spam ships. Build a new base in the southern imperial navy base. It will be easier to continue from here. Use pegasi or just a lot of battleships to destroy the terror in the north of this island. Even if it can't attack you without view, the enemy attack waves will now target this island, so it will get it. Also, take all your fighting units to this island as they will be useful to repeal the attack waves. Build a shipyard in the west, and move to the hydromancers base. Destroy it again with the terror's help.

You can then move on to the southern blue base (the one the elven hero is attacking from), and then the northern blue base.

The terror ships will do your job for you. The only units immune to them are aerial units, to get rid of them you can use Van Durce's ultimate for a moment, but you will take damage from the terrors.

And that's it. I never had to launch a conventional land attack with my paladins and angelics to raze all enemy bases.
 
Level 2
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Lord marin said that they had to kill greymoore because he killed the unknown soldiers im kinda wondering why this was put i mean if i choose not too will they spare him i think not

And another question does the sparing of the unknown soldiers have any effect on the gardon timeline

And what is the effect of not choosing to kill the black dragon and that of not saving aedale

AND PLEASE TELL ME WHEN IS THE NEXT BOOK COMING OUT AND WHAT WILL IT BE ORC2 UNDEAD2 OR HUMAN3
 
Lord marin said that they had to kill greymoore because he killed the unknown soldiers im kinda wondering why this was put i mean if i choose not too will they spare him i think not

And another question does the sparing of the unknown soldiers have any effect on the gardon timeline

And what is the effect of not choosing to kill the black dragon and that of not saving aedale

AND PLEASE TELL ME WHEN IS THE NEXT BOOK COMING OUT AND WHAT WILL IT BE ORC2 UNDEAD2 OR HUMAN3
He died regardless, just different reasons.

Can't really remember.

The first one is more to dialogues, the saving will affect epilogue

There will be no future book, refer to Arkain forum for more info.
 
But it said at the end that the war is far from being over and that it will continue what will it be then a whole new game or a book maybe
Feel free to ask the Lord of Arkain himself on the matter. Only written book has chances of being released, not another campaign.
 
Level 11
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Feel free to ask the Lord of Arkain himself on the matter. Only written book has chances of being released, not another campaign.
Isn't that the same thing? Book - campaign. We are playing a campaign that is called "The (Human/Orc/Undead) Book of Arkain" and that is a campaign
 
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Hello! Every time I'm about to play this - Second Human Book of Arkain, I get a memory error concerning about something unable to write. At first, I got to play the whole dialogue and was about to pick the choices but after a while, Warcraft crashed. Does the campaign requires a certain version or something? I'm gonna try to test the other versions of Warcraft. Can someone help me? Greatly appreciate it :)

EDIT:
Needs to be updated to 1.29.2. Found it in the comments. Thanks!!! :D
 
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Shar Dundred

Community Moderator
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Messages
5,862
Because I absolutely loathe the fact that some people who were unlucky enough to patch the
game to 1.30 are now unable to use the useful Angelic unit and because I was bored, I have
updated the campaign and FIXED the issue caused by the latest version of Blizzard after finding
out what the hell what causing it to begin with (which was quite the work, I tell ya).
(Hint: If you use 1.30, do not leave "Text - Caster Upgrade Tips" empty, that version HATES YOU if you do that!)

So, there you go, I also did a few more small changes. I know that this will cause speculation, but it just
pains me to have uploaded something broken and I could not let that stand.

#SharDoesBlizzWork #SaintShar #GardonHatesMeForBuffingGoldenGuardInsteadOfIronfist #FuckingHashtagsGotMe
 
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I didn't make the mistake to update to 1.30, and I already finished this campaign (well sort of, the last ironfist mission is nearly impossible), but I'm still happy to see you updating it. I got quite hooked to your Arkain world with the 20+ missions over human books 1 & 2 ; while you said you won't do anymore W3 campaign, I'd be interested in a follow-up to the story. :)
 
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Messages
225
Glad you updated it again, my friend


I didn't make the mistake to update to 1.30, and I already finished this campaign (well sort of, the last ironfist mission is nearly impossible), but I'm still happy to see you updating it. I got quite hooked to your Arkain world with the 20+ missions over human books 1 & 2 ; while you said you won't do anymore W3 campaign, I'd be interested in a follow-up to the story. :)

You're right Nayala, i hope he follow up with more of the story
 
Level 2
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Jul 24, 2016
Messages
10
Last map as ironfist is too rng on hard difficulty, previous chapters were quite balanced. Not sure if it's intended but sometimes u get attacked by 3 waves+3 heroes at once (when 2 attacks you its still doable with the help of reinforcement and chain heal spam), getting overwhelmed really fast. Worst part is that it can happen anytime on 10th minute or on 30th, very annoying when you have already destroyed some of the gates and have to restart just because of bad luck :]
 
Level 1
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Sep 23, 2018
Messages
3
Because I absolutely loathe the fact that some people who were unlucky enough to patch the
game to 1.30 are now unable to use the useful Angelic unit and because I was bored, I have
updated the campaign and FIXED the issue caused by the latest version of Blizzard after finding
out what the hell what causing it to begin with (which was quite the work, I tell ya).
(Hint: If you use 1.30, do not leave "Text - Caster Upgrade Tips" empty, that version HATES YOU if you do that!)

So, there you go, I also did a few more small changes. I know that this will cause speculation, but it just
pains me to have uploaded something broken and I could not let that stand.

#SharDoesBlizzWork #SaintShar #GardonHatesMeForBuffingGoldenGuardInsteadOfIronfist #FuckingHashtagsGotMe

Wow. Great man! Thanks for the effort! Did you change something major in the game? Nevertheless, I'll just download the map again. Fortunately I'm still in the early chapters. Looking forward to that Angelic unit! And again, like the others said, your story is amazing! I imagine it like its another story that happens at the same time when the Burning Legion invaded in the Warcraft story. Albeit on a whole new continent. I'll always keep a look out on your upcoming developments. Game or story. If there will be. I hope. ;)
 
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328
I can't help but feel responsible for inspiring some of these 1.2 changes :) Hopefully folks enjoy them, thanks Shar!

- Replaced Krogar's Stampede with The Horde, summoning a group of permanent Moghtar warriors
Great choice, Stampede was never worth it and this helps balance the micro map from becoming unwinnable if you lose one too many units.

- Lord of the Shadows no longer splits Brian, instead it allows him to summon up to four permanent Shadow Creatures from corpses
Another good one, I rarely, if ever, used his ultimate except maybe to save his life, though I can't speak for everyone, YMMV. This feels fitting for his character in any case.

- The amount of trainable Black Dragons is no longer limited to 2, go train more, go nuts
I feel cheated!

- Added more enemy Black Dragons and Black Drakes to make sniping the enemy bases with Destructors less efficient
You monster :)

- Salana and Larine may both now call on the Elven Forces (Salana may even call upon a certain hero if she is still alive)
This is great: it acknowledges a semi-niche choice path with Lera, and helps with the difficulty of this map that people have had issues with.
 
Level 9
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Messages
470
I can't help but feel responsible for inspiring some of these 1.2 changes :) Hopefully folks enjoy them, thanks Shar!

- Replaced Krogar's Stampede with The Horde, summoning a group of permanent Moghtar warriors
Great choice, Stampede was never worth it and this helps balance the micro map from becoming unwinnable if you lose one too many units.

- Lord of the Shadows no longer splits Brian, instead it allows him to summon up to four permanent Shadow Creatures from corpses
Another good one, I rarely, if ever, used his ultimate except maybe to save his life, though I can't speak for everyone, YMMV. This feels fitting for his character in any case.

- The amount of trainable Black Dragons is no longer limited to 2, go train more, go nuts
I feel cheated!

- Added more enemy Black Dragons and Black Drakes to make sniping the enemy bases with Destructors less efficient
You monster :)

- Salana and Larine may both now call on the Elven Forces (Salana may even call upon a certain hero if she is still alive)
This is great: it acknowledges a semi-niche choice path with Lera, and helps with the difficulty of this map that people have had issues with.
He also added a 1.10 version shortly before he updated again. Since you didn't mention any of those changes, I don't know if you saw them :)
 

Shar Dundred

Community Moderator
Level 72
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
5,862
I hope that you people enjoy the changes, feel free to leave some gameplay feedback and
don't hesitate to report bugs!

I can't help but feel responsible for inspiring some of these 1.2 changes :) Hopefully folks enjoy them, thanks Shar!
You are responsible! Partly. :p
Truth be told, watching your Let's Play has given me several ideas, from what you said, how you
played and also just the things that came to my mind when watching, sometimes related to what
you did and sometimes not even related to the chapter.
Great choice, Stampede was never worth it and this helps balance the micro map from becoming unwinnable if you lose one too many units.
Yeah, Stampede was a poor choice. Now you can spam soldiers instead of lizards that run past
without doing jack.
I feel cheated!
Ha ha!
Yeah, I first limited them because I wanted people to also use the Black Drakes and not just the Dragons.
Then I thought that I hadn't limited the number of Destructors, so why limit the dragons, just remove it and have
them further customize their forces - which is something I wanted anyway.
You monster :)
:p
 
Level 1
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Sep 7, 2018
Messages
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Ty so much for fixing the problem with the angelic. The golden guard levels were impossible without that unit, especially the last one.
 

Shar Dundred

Community Moderator
Level 72
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
5,862
Both this and the First Human Book have received a minor update regarding unfinished business in the choice system.
Nothing that would really affect your gameplay experience if you have already started the Second Human Book, you now merely are able to skip the Prelude if importing your choices had been successful and the First Book now recognizes the two additional choices that had been added here already at release but had not been implemented in the First Human Book yet.
 
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- Increased the durability of Lord Brian the Fallen
Nice. I always had the feeling he was the most frail of my heroes, especially in 14-A.

I can't help but feel responsible for inspiring some of these 1.2 changes :) Hopefully folks enjoy them, thanks Shar!

- Replaced Krogar's Stampede with The Horde, summoning a group of permanent Moghtar warriors
Great choice, Stampede was never worth it and this helps balance the micro map from becoming unwinnable if you lose one too many units.
That's not right, this map is doable with the heroes alone ! You just need to be veryyy patient by eliminating absolutely every other unit on the map, then despite the hero to kill being extremely though and doing a lot of damage, hit and runs should do the trick. (Source : me doing that map without doing the optional quests, which requires you to leave most of your units behind during the final fight). The +500 HP to Krogar in 1.10 also should help a lot compared to how it was when I did that mission.

Though I'd be the first to admit that it's really easy to die on that map.

- Lord of the Shadows no longer splits Brian, instead it allows him to summon up to four permanent Shadow Creatures from corpses
Another good one, I rarely, if ever, used his ultimate except maybe to save his life, though I can't speak for everyone, YMMV. This feels fitting for his character in any case.
Agreed, I only ever used that to save him when it was my last option available.

Chapter Eleven B:
- Added more enemy Black Dragons and Black Drakes to make sniping the enemy bases with Destructors less efficientt
I remain persuaded it's still the best method to take them down, however. Destroying castle+peasants is so vital to eliminate an enemy that a powerful aerial siege engine can't really be anything but the best choice.

Chapter Fourteen A:
- Salana and Larine may both now call on the Elven Forces (Salana may even call upon a certain hero if she is still alive)
Great !

This should change the map from "grind for hours and pray that you never get an overwhelming-impossible to repulse attack" to "grind for hours" (which isn't that enjoyable, but that's better at least). The lift of the black dragon limits may help quite a bit too.

I'm still convinced that reducing the potency of the rain of fire spam is the only reasonable thing to do. When a group of enemy can kill most of the units available in 3s with a targeted AoE attack, and inflict so much damage than even hyper-boosted heroes have their health failing very quickly, there is something wrong.

Though fixing what makes trying to heal one's own units in that mission so painful would also help : fix the banisher's heal wave keyboard shortcut ; make Vail's heal decent (it is way too weak for a chapter in which units are much more powerful than in standard W3, you can increase a bit the mana cost if you wish, better to have higher burst heal ability than sitting on a huge manapool) ; make the banishers less vulnerable to the rain-of-fire spam (I don't mind if they are destroyed by melee units, but having them behind your own melee units and still killed in a blink because you forgot to pull them out quickly after a heal can be infuriating)...
 
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On the third chapter there is something that annoys me. It is not a bug, but I think it is better to say.

While we are fighting throughout the Pyrrean pass, occasionaly some Pyrrean Rebels units appear from behind, even though I had already cleared the area, and attack my catapults. I used 'iseedeadpeople' cheat to find out why, and then I see that occasionaly some enemy units spawn at the start of the pass.
This slows me down even more, as I am already too busy with the countless towers, archers and catapults on the pass alongside the occasional enemy waves.
 
Level 9
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On the third chapter there is something that annoys me. It is not a bug, but I think it is better to say.

While we are fighting throughout the Pyrrean pass, occasionaly some Pyrrean Rebels units appear from behind, even though I had already cleared the area, and attack my catapults. I used 'iseedeadpeople' cheat to find out why, and then I see that occasionaly some enemy units spawn at the start of the pass.
This slows me down even more, as I am already too busy with the countless towers, archers and catapults on the pass alongside the occasional enemy waves.
Arks act as waygates. So they're not technically spawning, they're coming from one of the bases
 
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Guys can any one tell me how to solve this !!
l1pjan


This !!
 

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Shar Dundred

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Hopefully the last patch for the Second Human Book. Enjoy!
General:
- Fixed the tooltip of Lightning Rune
- Vail's leadership bonus now correctly states that the increase is permanent
- 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
- New icon for the Bowman
- Increased the hit points of Knights to 840
- Some grammar fixes
- Dark Secrets now displays the duration
- Fixed the hotkey for Lord of the Shadows

Prelude:
- Fixed the issue with the prelude finishing too early

Interlude Two:
- Fixed the skipping issues related to this cinematic

Chapter Nine:
- The hotkey for sending Marin lumber has been removed

Chapter Thirteen:
- Fixed the tooltip for Korgar's ultimate

Chapter Fourteen A:
- The hint now tells you that Salana/Larine can also summon a wave of allies

Chapter Fourteen B:
- The Old Amulet item should no longer lie on the ground
 
Level 1
Joined
Nov 12, 2018
Messages
1
Wait this campaign is alive Again? Back then when I finished the 1st three books for the first time I thought you said you were quiting the development? Well anyhow glad to see this still going. What changed your mind? Huge fan of your work man. Created account just to type this. :D
 

Deleted member 237964

D

Deleted member 237964

Is it finished now? I have tendency to vanish from this site for few months then come back after few another.
 
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