Shadows of Twilight v2.2

[Warseeker]

Hi, is some specific way required to replay the campaign? I can't keep the items from veteran mode.

The items in this campaign are linked to the difficulty which means you cannot replay the campaign on a new difficulty and keep your items from another difficulty.

@Warseeker can you fix please?

I'll fix it asap.

 

[Warseeker]

I'll fix it asap.

Done.

 

[Cristian]

Finally I just finished the campaign! (Veteran difficulty), I had a lot of fun
The layout of the prologue I thought I had seen before, then I remembered the first map in Rise of the Destroyer (glad to see it again)
A lot of unique items and artifacts! <3
In the temple mission, after I finished the sheep game the the timer still appears above

When I fight with Cho'gall I got 3 sheeps!

Beautiful campaign and I can't wait for the next campaign, congratulations on your hard work!

 

[Paok2019]

In chapter 3 after I completed in loading screen for the submap the game keeps crushing and I can't continue(in reforged),any chance you can have all the missions opened?

 

[Ravager16829]

In chapter 3 after I completed in loading screen for the submap the game keeps crushing and I can't continue(in reforged),any chance you can have all the missions opened?

Have you ever read the one in "Known Issues" first???

Try restarting the game + PC if all else fails on the latest patch. It could be related to broken import stuffs or something similar.

 

[Paok2019]

Have you ever read the one in "Known Issues" first???

Try restarting the game + PC if all else fails on the latest patch. It could be related to broken import stuffs or something similar.

Yes I have and I have also restart the game and pc like 5 times already.

 

[Oceus]

I'm very divided for this campaign. I see what you tried to achieve, I see the potential, but there is a lot of things that are simply... lacking or dull.

Prologue : Fine mission, but I would swap the second mana foutain for a healing one. Mana is kind of pointless on this map and it avoid going back to the start of the map to get your units in shape. Surviving units should be taken with you at Orgrimmar imo. It's not like the elemntal waves are dangerous, but heh, it's a reward in itself.

1 to 4 : Ok, so... the idea is to play a map introducing one of the four subfactions of the Horde, then another map inspired by the dungeons (or sort of for Bael Modan) with the hero.

Frankly, all of those dungeons are absolutely boring. It's just a gauntlet of enemies unable to do anything against you because your heroes, with the artifact items, are already too much for them. They look bland and reptitive. There's like four or five units at max you face. Lack of events. The worst is Bael Modan, it's painfull to watch how the dwarf can't do anything against your scepter of healing passive healing, and at the same time how your spellcasters cannot attack the shieldbreakers that are everywhere. You have Zul'farrak and Dire Maul, but none of them looks like their WoW counterpart, at least that could improve the thing.

For the building missions, discovering the specificities of each roster is cool, but the maps themselves are just about taking down three to four opponents with the exact same army, layout, and hero or pseudo hero, with mediocre defenses, and nothing special happening. Turtle a bit, make your army, destroy the enemy without any kind of challenge, and continue your onslaught. Mission 3 in this case was the trickiest because the fire elemental waves combined with the mortars and griffin raids makes the enemy quite efficient at destroying many structures, so you have to turtle a bit more.

Chapter 4 is the only one that I found kinda enjoyable, Feralas wasn't looking as bad as the other areas (even if the maze-like gigantic map was a pain to travel through) and at least there's more mechanics involved in the dungeon section. And you very rarely plays tinkers and alchemists in other campaigns.
And the goblin roster is kinda fun. Must say the bombardier unit model is extremely cool.

But realistically, it's the meme from The Office, Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture, they're the same picture. All those missions needs something to make them feel different. Those no build sections needs to have a form of interesting challenge instead of being pointless mob bashing. I almost abandonned the campaign at mission 3 to be honest.

5 : Here comes one of the biggest issue of the campaign : with the absurd amount of items, heroes are too strong when they are together. I did this whole mission with my three heroes only, ignoring units. Nothing was a challenge. The forgotten one? I did it while I was expanding my base, barely looking at it. The dragons? Same. The idea of the mission, facing silithid, old gods spawn, and even those poor Cenarion Circle elves that get destroyed for no reason other than my cruelty has potential, but being able to do it with heroes only ruins it. The whole temporal part should probably be a dedicated mission also.

6 : Coolest mission by far, even if I'm not exactly a fan of no build missions. This one is similar to the Tomb of Sargeras with a lot of events, different ennemies. Still too easy especially when you can mind control permanently creeps, but this is a recurring issue at this point.

7 : Second coolest mission, being able to chose your roster and facing a gigantic amount of enemies with three allies is nice. It gives replayability. Not being able to control all heroes means you needs to play around your units and timing your attack with your allies. Sometimes even helping them to defend. Just sad that you don't get anything of value when you destroy the secondary orcish bases. A secondary objective also would be appreciated.

8 : Part 1 and 2 are just other boring no build missions that are harder to lose than win. Still a nice idea to replicate to some extent dungeons from WoW, but heh. It's getting old at this point.

Timer feels incredibly short for mission 3. The rising plateforms part is an absolute waste of time considering this. The combat themselves are still not providing any challenge at all. So it's basically a speedrun mission instead of an interesting one.

9 : I'm really not a fan of giving four bases that are all isolated from each others to the player. It feels like a cheap way to artificially make the mission harder. Also, it looks like you put yourself in a corner. The heroes are so strong with the items that you have to keep them separated to not break the challenge. It is a challenging mission that is pushing you to use the full extent of your heroes and their armies, but again, it's this kind of situation where I can only tell myself "And what if each faction had a dedicated mission to take down one gate?". Or maybe another mission with allies.

10 : Another no build mission, at this point, I don't think I have much to add on the matter. Same pattern, same issues, same qualities.

Overall, there is a clear intent of focusing on the dungeon crawling part of W3, but it almost immediatly turned into a very similar feel to farming creeps in the Foundation of the Dutorar on the maps (and not actually doing the dungeon crawling parts). Scepter of healing must be one of the most broken item I've seen, I would strongly suggest to nerf him. But outside of that, I get that getting cool items is nice, but it lost meaning if there is too much of them and nothing to make a good use of them after.

Unfortunately, while those rosters are overall balanced and nice to play, the mission design of the building parts is very simplistic, leading, when you can't hard carry with heroes, to a very simple "turtle-then-attack" pattern, where you never really feel threatened by anything, and the enemy is never that difficult to take down.

btw I played on hard. If insanity mode is required to have challenge on many parts because of the item removal, I would simply suggest to limit item strength and numbers for hard. Getting your 15th artifact isn't that exciting.

Also while I like WoW Vanilla music, hearing the same ambient theme for 1 hour is... not incredibly exciting. More variety for musics inside the same mission, just putting the classical orc themes from W3, to vary a bit, would be better. Horde themes isn't something WoW is lacking.

So, imo, mission 1 to 4 needs a lot of changes to feel different from each others and all the no build parts should be heavily reworked except for 4, the enemies should be stronger in 5 to prevent heroes from soloing it (or you should nerf items), 6 is fine & cool, 7 could use a secondary objective, 8 first and second part could be shorter or have stronger bosses, third part should get a longer timer and also stronger bosses, 9 for my taste should be entirely reworked, and 10 is like all other no build missions.

In general, the campaign works, there is interesting ideas, nothing is terrible for all the defaults that I can think of, but it lacks polish. You know, it felt like an alpha version more than released version. Hopes it helps you to improve it in the future.

 

[Warseeker]

I'm very divided for this campaign. I see what you tried to achieve, I see the potential, but there is a lot of things that are simply... lacking or dull.

Prologue : Fine mission, but I would swap the second mana foutain for a healing one. Mana is kind of pointless on this map and it avoid going back to the start of the map to get your units in shape. Surviving units should be taken with you at Orgrimmar imo. It's not like the elemntal waves are dangerous, but heh, it's a reward in itself.

1 to 4 : Ok, so... the idea is to play a map introducing one of the four subfactions of the Horde, then another map inspired by the dungeons (or sort of for Bael Modan) with the hero.

Frankly, all of those dungeons are absolutely boring. It's just a gauntlet of enemies unable to do anything against you because your heroes, with the artifact items, are already too much for them. They look bland and reptitive. There's like four or five units at max you face. Lack of events. The worst is Bael Modan, it's painfull to watch how the dwarf can't do anything against your scepter of healing passive healing, and at the same time how your spellcasters cannot attack the shieldbreakers that are everywhere. You have Zul'farrak and Dire Maul, but none of them looks like their WoW counterpart, at least that could improve the thing.

For the building missions, discovering the specificities of each roster is cool, but the maps themselves are just about taking down three to four opponents with the exact same army, layout, and hero or pseudo hero, with mediocre defenses, and nothing special happening. Turtle a bit, make your army, destroy the enemy without any kind of challenge, and continue your onslaught. Mission 3 in this case was the trickiest because the fire elemental waves combined with the mortars and griffin raids makes the enemy quite efficient at destroying many structures, so you have to turtle a bit more.

Chapter 4 is the only one that I found kinda enjoyable, Feralas wasn't looking as bad as the other areas (even if the maze-like gigantic map was a pain to travel through) and at least there's more mechanics involved in the dungeon section. And you very rarely plays tinkers and alchemists in other campaigns.
And the goblin roster is kinda fun. Must say the bombardier unit model is extremely cool.

But realistically, it's the meme from The Office, Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture, they're the same picture. All those missions needs something to make them feel different. Those no build sections needs to have a form of interesting challenge instead of being pointless mob bashing. I almost abandonned the campaign at mission 3 to be honest.

5 : Here comes one of the biggest issue of the campaign : with the absurd amount of items, heroes are too strong when they are together. I did this whole mission with my three heroes only, ignoring units. Nothing was a challenge. The forgotten one? I did it while I was expanding my base, barely looking at it. The dragons? Same. The idea of the mission, facing silithid, old gods spawn, and even those poor Cenarion Circle elves that get destroyed for no reason other than my cruelty has potential, but being able to do it with heroes only ruins it. The whole temporal part should probably be a dedicated mission also.

6 : Coolest mission by far, even if I'm not exactly a fan of no build missions. This one is similar to the Tomb of Sargeras with a lot of events, different ennemies. Still too easy especially when you can mind control permanently creeps, but this is a recurring issue at this point.

7 : Second coolest mission, being able to chose your roster and facing a gigantic amount of enemies with three allies is nice. It gives replayability. Not being able to control all heroes means you needs to play around your units and timing your attack with your allies. Sometimes even helping them to defend. Just sad that you don't get anything of value when you destroy the secondary orcish bases. A secondary objective also would be appreciated.

8 : Part 1 and 2 are just other boring no build missions that are harder to lose than win. Still a nice idea to replicate to some extent dungeons from WoW, but heh. It's getting old at this point.

Timer feels incredibly short for mission 3. The rising plateforms part is an absolute waste of time considering this. The combat themselves are still not providing any challenge at all. So it's basically a speedrun mission instead of an interesting one.

9 : I'm really not a fan of giving four bases that are all isolated from each others to the player. It feels like a cheap way to artificially make the mission harder. Also, it looks like you put yourself in a corner. The heroes are so strong with the items that you have to keep them separated to not break the challenge. It is a challenging mission that is pushing you to use the full extent of your heroes and their armies, but again, it's this kind of situation where I can only tell myself "And what if each faction had a dedicated mission to take down one gate?". Or maybe another mission with allies.

10 : Another no build mission, at this point, I don't think I have much to add on the matter. Same pattern, same issues, same qualities.

Overall, there is a clear intent of focusing on the dungeon crawling part of W3, but it almost immediatly turned into a very similar feel to farming creeps in the Foundation of the Dutorar on the maps (and not actually doing the dungeon crawling parts). Scepter of healing must be one of the most broken item I've seen, I would strongly suggest to nerf him. But outside of that, I get that getting cool items is nice, but it lost meaning if there is too much of them and nothing to make a good use of them after.

Unfortunately, while those rosters are overall balanced and nice to play, the mission design of the building parts is very simplistic, leading, when you can't hard carry with heroes, to a very simple "turtle-then-attack" pattern, where you never really feel threatened by anything, and the enemy is never that difficult to take down.

btw I played on hard. If insanity mode is required to have challenge on many parts because of the item removal, I would simply suggest to limit item strength and numbers for hard. Getting your 15th artifact isn't that exciting.

Also while I like WoW Vanilla music, hearing the same ambient theme for 1 hour is... not incredibly exciting. More variety for musics inside the same mission, just putting the classical orc themes from W3, to vary a bit, would be better. Horde themes isn't something WoW is lacking.

So, imo, mission 1 to 4 needs a lot of changes to feel different from each others and all the no build parts should be heavily reworked except for 4, the enemies should be stronger in 5 to prevent heroes from soloing it (or you should nerf items), 6 is fine & cool, 7 could use a secondary objective, 8 first and second part could be shorter or have stronger bosses, third part should get a longer timer and also stronger bosses, 9 for my taste should be entirely reworked, and 10 is like all other no build missions.

In general, the campaign works, there is interesting ideas, nothing is terrible for all the defaults that I can think of, but it lacks polish. You know, it felt like an alpha version more than released version. Hopes it helps you to improve it in the future.

Thanks for the great review. I find it very helpful and I agree with pretty much everything you've said. I understand that the early missions feel repetive and that the factions tech-tree looks similar aside from the models and spells difference. To be honest, when I started this project I wasn't exactly sure how the story should procced. My intention was to replicate some events in WoW: Cataclysm from the Horde's perspective but the problem is I just can't think of a better way to introduce each faction beside giving them a similar mission design. I was hoping maybe those factions will be introduced you as progress in the story similar to Blizzard's campaigns.
Now when it comes to game design, I personally prefer no-build missions over build missions like in the Founding of Durotar which why I made many no build missions in this campaign. But I suppose everyone has their own preferences.
Anyways, I will see what I can do to improve this campaign in the future.

 

[Oceus]

As I expected, it makes much sense that way.

Some suggestion for those issues : for the no builds, look at what Shadows of Hatred campaign did for the no those that emulates raids/dungeons from TBC. You face dangerous bosses and foes, with a limited roster of units that is resplenished when they die, with, if I remember well, a limited amount of lives for the heroes. All those no build missions parts from mission 1 to 4 could use this format. Because you have only one hero at time with limited abilities, it makes sense to count on units but with a drawback. AoE is the easiest way to design bosses and you should includes them more.

For the scepter of healing, I suggest adding the passive regeneration from unholy aura instead of the healing war constant effect. You can raise a bit the amount of direct healing the scepter provides as an alternative. For the mind control item, I'm not sure if it is possible, but capping the amount of units you can control, of making the mind control temporary, would greatly balance it. Those are the real two offenders when it comes to item balance.

For the build sections of mission 1 to 4 now :

- 1 just needs a better layout of the map, and more assets to make it prettier to explore. I think you can open a bit the centaur roster by giving to each a different elemental to recruit to vary how to face them. One is getting fire who mess with melee units with immolation aura, one earth elemental with siege damages that can destroy quicly your buildings and spellcasters, the other an air elemental that can cast cyclone to do crowd control. You have also an elven and deamonic base. What if it was a free for all map? Like elves and demons fight the centaurs too, with you caught in the middle. If everyone get a big base, it could be fun to actually actively wait for an enemy attack to leave their base to caught if if less defense, or follow the wave and attack another enemy base alongside it. Desolace is made of people all hating each others after all, and it goes well with Garrosh's mindset of "Kill everyone!".

- 2 I would say to specialize each troll base into something different. One could be "cavalry" theme with regular air strikes from bat riders in all directions, and sending waves made of turtles riders and raptors riders. The other could be more focus on "infantry" theme with axe throwers, headhunters, and spellcasters. Overall I did find this mission kind of fine. It could be a bit clearer tho where you have to go to get the tablet, I had to use the iseedeadpeople cheat to understand you could go at the bottom of the map, behind the murloc gang. Zul'farrak count goblins from Gadgetzan, ogres clans, and pirates too. Another factions raiding you could work. It was the easiest of the four imo because nothing the enemy sends at you is really a threat.

- 3 I would not change much for the regular mission, excepter scepter of healing nerfs and maybe a better item for the turtles in the right side of the map. It's dangerous to reach them but the reward is just a ring of protection +2, which isn't great.

- 4 make it easier to travel the map and maybe replace one of the ogre faction for a twilight hammer one, stronger. Also gives the enemy the opportunity to attack from more different sides of your base, with long range siege units. Mines and towers get very easily rid of attack waves.

-> As a general rule, gold mines are too rich too. You should have more pressure on expanding. They should not exceed 20 000 golds, even 15 000.

One thing I did forget on my last post, I ended up killing the ogres before meeting the secondary quest due to the maze like shape of Feralas. I could'nt complete the quest anymore so I had to come back to a previous save. Could be prevented by automatically freeing the stonemaul once the enemy base is destroyed, so the player knows he has to search the secondary quest before killing the ogres.

For 5, you just need bigger, stronger, and meanier opponents. The heroes are level 3 and reach 4, they are not that crazy stat wise, without easy mind control and free permanent huge healing, if you nerf the items, they won't get that far alone.

For 7, I would simply reduce the amount of bosses and rewards on 8, and put two of them as rewards on the left and right huge bases. Getting rid of them could get you those rewards at the start of the two first parts of mission 8.

8, as I said, you just need way stronger bosses. And longer timer.

For 9, what if you ripped off the design from either the last part of the Second mission of the FoD, or the Third one. You play only the heroes and you follow alongside attack waves of your allied bases. The enemy is twice of thrice stronger but your heroes are supposed to make a difference.

For 10, go crazy. Bring enemy heroes to level 15 with improved adds. Do a Daelin and his squad level of challenge. Take inspiration from Curse of the Forsaken and the Icecrown fight.

I look forward to see what kind of improvement you can make for the campaign.

 

[ParagonOfHope]

Hey guys can you help me with this riddle.I solved 9 out of the 10 riddles.This is the only one i couldn't.I tried everything i can think of.Thank you.

 

[Cristian]

Hey guys can you help me with this riddle.I solved 9 out of the 10 riddles.This is the only one i couldn't.I tried everything i can think of.Thank you.

Spoiler: Here you have all the answers to the riddles

Scarab Wall
Twin Emperors
Anachronos
General Rajaxx
Silithid
Eldre'Thalas
Cho'gall
Signet Ring
C'Thun
War of the Shifting Sands

 

[Ravager16829]

Hey guys can you help me with this riddle.I solved 9 out of the 10 riddles.This is the only one i couldn't.I tried everything i can think of.Thank you.

Here's the "riddle" puzzle answers (it's based on War of the Shifting Sands from WoW lore).
Note that older versions of the campaign has a slightly different "riddle" mini-game, so I'm going to assume you played the latest one (v2.2):

Spoiler: Riddles

Scarab Wall
Twin Emperors
Anachronos
General Rajaxx
Silithid
Eldre'Thalas
Cho'gall
Signet Ring
C'Thun
War of the Shifting Sands

Also, I believe that you are playing on the latest patch of game. Please keep in mind that Warseeker has only tested this campaign so far on 1.29 and will most likely work on 1.31, but not Reforged (there's even a disclaimer in the Map Description as well). I don't really know how this campaign works in Reforged since, from my observation, Reforged is notorious for endless amount of bugs and errors.

 

[Superfrycook]

Reviews:
Orcs:
Pros:

• High survivability
• High attack speed capability

Cons:

• Lack of healers
• Mediocre damage

Goblins:
Pros:

• High tech
• Adaptable

Cons:

• Fragile
• Easy to be bullied by bigger enemies

Trolls:
Pros:

• Prioritizes ranged attacks
• Life regen

Cons:

• Lack of melee, except Raptor Riders
• They are not as powerful as the Orcs or Tauren

Tauren:
Pros:

• High health and survivability
• Excel at CC

Cons:

• Sluggish
• Lack of siege units

 

[ChasingDawn0321]

need help with the optional quest for the treasure or sum with voljin in chapter 2 or 3, forgot. Brain too boomed and lazy to figure it out