WarCraft III: High Death [War and Time Trilogy]

[Resyak]

Nah, it's fine . Just wanted to explain it that way. Nothing wrong with the blessings of the High Death from time to time, either.

I'm on Act 2 chapter 4 (or whatever it is called. The chapter where I use The Reaper hero). I'll see about the next ones. If they are unbalanced too, then I'll have to use some blessings of the High Death. The Dreadlady never disappoints with her blessings.

EDIT: PS: Okay, I didn't expect the campaign to end that suddenly. I don't know, but it seemed abrupt. Anyways, it was a great custom campaign and I enjoyed it quite a bit, aside from the Kirin Tor Survivors who had legions of armies to spare every minute. Some mobs are also as strong as heroes, like the demonic units in chapter two that oneshot Mike with one spell. However, it didn't affect me that much aside from a small brain tumor.
5/5 excellent

The ending is like this because in principle a third part had been planned, although in the end we discarded it for different reasons.

Regards.

 

[Seylem]

Chapter 2, Burnt Firewood crashes pos first cinematic =(
ver. 1.36

Very good campaign.

thx from Brazil.

 

[Resyak]

Chapter 2, Burnt Firewood crashes pos first cinematic =(
ver. 1.36

Very good campaign.

thx from Brazil.

Thanks for commenting, I'm glad you liked what you played. Unfortunately we have not tested any of our campaigns in versions 1.35+ so errors are normal.

Regards.

 

[Mon40k]

Leaving a rating after playing the whole trilogy.

This was my favorite of the three easily. The progression system, new level up mechanics, sheer variety of mission types and the unique items were all great! Splitting the campaign into two parts - essentially making this into two separate campaigns packaged together - was perfect, both narrative-wise and in execution.
I liked the story a lot - another great example of how to make a "bad guys" campaign work well and be engaging and satisfying.
Like with "Legend of Mikokoro", this once again had memorable characters and an interesting "what if" scenario, playing around with Warcraft lore.
Great custom music choices for the second half of the campaign too!

Only complaints: The Kirin Tor arch wizards collectively acting like arrogant a-holes was a bit much. It went outside the realm of believable and into the realm of ridiculous. Also just seeing Khadgar and Antonidas conversation and the "You're a much better teacher than I am" quote after all that feels so out of place and it shouldn't.

Minor nitpick: The audio track at the end of the "Kaldorei Pride" mission was unnecessary. You could've gotten a similar effect by mixing WC3-built in sounds, but in stead that track was, dare I say, cringe (I don't like using this word, but honestly I can't think of a better way to describe it). Considering that it fails to get the intended reaction out of the player and you also put a trigger warning before it, the whole thing just seems edgy for the sake of edgy.

 

[tulee]

Thought I would add some notes I wrote down from when I played this campaign:

Hidden

Opening
I like the setting being based around the Cult of the Damned. It is rarely covered in custom campaigns.

Ch1
So, 4 months later and Zarah'Shar no longer is Human?
You can complete the power book quest just by killing the Ogres. Taking the books is not necessary.
What is gold used for?
I like the background of this story, a what if Arthas died sooner than he should have---what would the Scourge have done?
Is the Baroness Zarah's sister?
Lol how Kel'thuzad is not a hero but the Baroness is.

Ch2
Spider quest says they are in the far west but actually they are in the far east.
Same with crab easters - northwest => north east/
The spiders' death animation and spawning new ones by falling from the sky is fantastic. I love it.
I like the Hero design of Mike having Auras and passive spells, as well as that strong single target spell.
Final boss was really hard, I had to kite him around.

Ch3
My heroes destroyed everything in their path, I loved it.
Not sure how optional that optional quest is. If that final wave that hit me with the level 10 Green dragons was combined with Tyrande's attack wave, I don't think it would be possible to win.
The Murlocs in this mission are very OP with their spells.

Ch5
The Mal'ganis one was quite tough. I really needed to time everything right in order to win this.

Ch6
The night elves massed huge armies in their individual mini-bases, but I used starfall and wiped everything out. It was hilarious.
Since I just used heroes, I saved my entire army up for the end fight + did the optional quest, so, Cenarius was very easy to beat.
Zarah had no reason to kill Kel'thuzad--- her own sister didn't want to tell her the truth, so why kill Kel?


Ch7
why set a difficulty for just the final mission?
Ok never mind, that was very hard.



New Ch1
Not sure how I feel about my Overpowered heroes being gone. Zarah said she absorbed the powers of the world tree, but she is now far weaker than before. I like the new leveling up system/ability system, it is very cool.
Yay, first base building mission.

Ch2
Opening cinematic shows Zarah with some other Undead units, but they are gone when cinematic mode ends.
This campaign is super long (in a good way). Really enjoying this.
it would have been nice to know locations of the warehouses and the bandit leader (maybe by pinging them on the map).
Cool green hand effect when the bandit leader was resurrected.
I like how the hero is going to pretend to be human. Happy the setting is back in Lordaeron.

Ch3
Very well-designed map, I liked it a lot.
It took me a while to realize I needed to reverse the order. I kept thinking I mixed the blue lever with the black one.


Ch4
I could not beat this mission on normal difficulty, and then I also failed it on easy difficulty.
The issue is there dispel magic spell on any of our units, which means the hero cannot counter "slow" being cast on the hero (it relies on attack speed to regain HP through vampiric aura). Also, there is no anti magic spell, which means I cannot avoid the damage from the crushing wave spell (which hits my healers behind me as they run close to heal my hero + towers in the background (tried massing towers until my hero could level up enough, but the crushing wave spell destroyed them). I tried every trick possible, including using the boulder stun on the Archmage heroes at the correct time so I could kill them before they use mana shield, as well as trying to use those siege attack flying imp units to target the buildings that make enemies to send at us, but no matter what I do with my gold, there is a point around 13-15 minutes in game when I cannot stop the wave attacking me, even in easy difficulty.

Rest of campaign
Not being able to pass the previous mission, even in easy difficulty, put me in a bad mood, so I just whosyourdaddy-ed through the rest to see how the story ended.

General points
The notice to use 1.31 is really outdated. Playing custom campaigns on the latest patch, in my opinion, is by far the best way to play them nowadays. Overall, everything in the past is compatible with future versions unless you use a third party W.E to make maps. 1.31 also comes with game breaking bugs, whereas the latest versions of wc3 have fixed most of those issues.

 

[LISBOAH]

Is the Baroness Zarah's sister?

Yes.

Lol how Kel'thuzad is not a hero but the Baroness is.

I have the same issue.

Zarah had no reason to kill Kel'thuzad--- her own sister didn't want to tell her the truth, so why kill Kel?

Some of the characters' motivations are kind of hard to figure.
My guess is that she blamed Kel'Thuzad for her death, plus she was going after the World Tree for her own goals.

New Ch1
Not sure how I feel about my Overpowered heroes being gone. Zarah said she absorbed the powers of the world tree, but she is now far weaker than before.

I understand the need for balance, but this is BS, I agree. This is even worse that when Arthas went from a Level 10 Hero with Chaos damage to a Level 1 Hero with Normal damage.

Rest of campaign
Not being able to pass the previous mission, even in easy difficulty, put me in a bad mood, so I just whosyourdaddy-ed through the rest to see how the story ended.

How on earth is Khadgar harder to beat than Tyrande or Cenarius?

 

[Mon40k]

Ch4
I could not beat this mission on normal difficulty, and then I also failed it on easy difficulty.

Spam Earth Imps - 50% stun chance and siege damage to snipe buildings.
Your hero can solo the base to the west. You can bring the butcher you start with and an Earth Imp to finish off the towers faster. Take second base fast and mine it out before building up a full force.
Necromancers and a ton of graveyards for raise dead for defense. I used 10-12 necros, 4 acos for building repair and the rest of the supply just Earth Imps. The necros also heal Imps with Death Coil easy if you pick out the damaged ones, in stead of rebuilding the Imps - saves resources.
If you face a huge army of hydromancers, pull your Earth Imps on the edge of unpassable terrain or a wall, to snipe individual mages and pull out before getting obliterated by tidal wave - kinda like how you use Mutalisks in StarCraft Broodwar.
If nothing else works, just snipe production structures with the Earth Imps. There's only a couple and they don't rebuild, so this is an easy cheese strategy.

 

[Mon40k]

How on earth is Khadgar harder to beat than Tyrande or Cenarius?

For me Khadgar was easier - sure, in health and damage he's stronger, but his attack speed is normal and he has to call some spirits to help him occasionally. Tyrande is immune to non-spell damage, burns your mana very quickly and her damage bursts are way worse than with Khadgar. Not to mention that in the story you beat Tyrande with two very powerful heroes and Khadgar takes only one.
When it comes to Cenarius, yeah he was a joke, but I attribute that to the fact that I ganked him with a large army after weakening him by corrupting the land. If he was at full power he'd probably fair better. Let's be real though, Cenarius canonically dies by getting jumped by a bunch of red orcs, while supposedly being so powerful that the demons fear him. His power scaling has always been all over the place xD

 

[LISBOAH]

For me Khadgar was easier - sure, in health and damage he's stronger, but his attack speed is normal and he has to call some spirits to help him occasionally.

The mechanics surrounding the Khadgar fight are so annoying.
Not only is he stronger, but the spirits can be such a pain, and it is hard to destroy the crystals if you get swarmed.

 

[Mon40k]

The mechanics surrounding the Khadgar fight are so annoying.
Not only is he stronger, but the spirits can be such a pain, and it is hard to destroy the crystals if you get swarmed.

I use the silencing staff on the ghosts just after they spawn, so they were no problem for me. Khadgar can be nullified with stun or the (W) ability that makes him miss every attack. The only annoying part is dodging the AOE attacks, but that's not really because of the attacks themselves, but because the indicators are very hard to see when they're right under the hero. I just opted to move around a bit more often the first time I fought him, though the damage from the AOE wasn't even that bad and the complete mana burn wasn't that bad either (though it threw me off the first time it happened, wasn't game ending), cus the W ability only costs 25 mana and lasts for 10 seconds. When I did the fight a second time, it was pretty easy to figure out the pattern of the AOE attacks though. I didn't even touch the crystals, tbh I didn't even know that you could destroy them xD.


Edit: I realized that I can just stun lock Tyrande with Mike's Q and W abilities if I properly space them out. The first time I fought her I was relying too heavily on the anti-magic shield, so when she started dispelling and burning 400 mana, it threw me off badly - I ended up beating her just barely after I had exhausted all her mana. If I had opened up properly and stunned her, this would have made the fight trivial. With this in mind, I suppose Khadgar is in fact harder.

 

[tulee]

Spam Earth Imps - 50% stun chance and siege damage to snipe buildings.
Your hero can solo the base to the west. You can bring the butcher you start with and an Earth Imp to finish off the towers faster. Take second base fast and mine it out before building up a full force.
Necromancers and a ton of graveyards for raise dead for defense. I used 10-12 necros, 4 acos for building repair and the rest of the supply just Earth Imps. The necros also heal Imps with Death Coil easy if you pick out the damaged ones, in stead of rebuilding the Imps - saves resources.
If you face a huge army of hydromancers, pull your Earth Imps on the edge of unpassable terrain or a wall, to snipe individual mages and pull out before getting obliterated by tidal wave - kinda like how you use Mutalisks in StarCraft Broodwar.
If nothing else works, just snipe production structures with the Earth Imps. There's only a couple and they don't rebuild, so this is an easy cheese strategy.

Tried all of those strategies. Did not work. Unless I see a play-through video of someone beating this without vision cheats (which would enable the structure sniping to work, since it cannot work unless you know where the waves are or your units get caught by slow from mages and destroyed), I will assume this mission is unbeatable even in easy difficulty.
And no, I disagree with sending the hero solo to kill the west base, since the tower there will completely drain his mana for no benefit.

The hydromancers are not the main issue--- the main issue are the archmage heroes who start stacking up.

 

[Resyak]

Thought I would add some notes I wrote down from when I played this campaign:

Hidden

Opening
I like the setting being based around the Cult of the Damned. It is rarely covered in custom campaigns.

Ch1
So, 4 months later and Zarah'Shar no longer is Human?
You can complete the power book quest just by killing the Ogres. Taking the books is not necessary.
What is gold used for?
I like the background of this story, a what if Arthas died sooner than he should have---what would the Scourge have done?
Is the Baroness Zarah's sister?
Lol how Kel'thuzad is not a hero but the Baroness is.

Ch2
Spider quest says they are in the far west but actually they are in the far east.
Same with crab easters - northwest => north east/
The spiders' death animation and spawning new ones by falling from the sky is fantastic. I love it.
I like the Hero design of Mike having Auras and passive spells, as well as that strong single target spell.
Final boss was really hard, I had to kite him around.

Ch3
My heroes destroyed everything in their path, I loved it.
Not sure how optional that optional quest is. If that final wave that hit me with the level 10 Green dragons was combined with Tyrande's attack wave, I don't think it would be possible to win.
The Murlocs in this mission are very OP with their spells.

Ch5
The Mal'ganis one was quite tough. I really needed to time everything right in order to win this.

Ch6
The night elves massed huge armies in their individual mini-bases, but I used starfall and wiped everything out. It was hilarious.
Since I just used heroes, I saved my entire army up for the end fight + did the optional quest, so, Cenarius was very easy to beat.
Zarah had no reason to kill Kel'thuzad--- her own sister didn't want to tell her the truth, so why kill Kel?


Ch7
why set a difficulty for just the final mission?
Ok never mind, that was very hard.



New Ch1
Not sure how I feel about my Overpowered heroes being gone. Zarah said she absorbed the powers of the world tree, but she is now far weaker than before. I like the new leveling up system/ability system, it is very cool.
Yay, first base building mission.

Ch2
Opening cinematic shows Zarah with some other Undead units, but they are gone when cinematic mode ends.
This campaign is super long (in a good way). Really enjoying this.
it would have been nice to know locations of the warehouses and the bandit leader (maybe by pinging them on the map).
Cool green hand effect when the bandit leader was resurrected.
I like how the hero is going to pretend to be human. Happy the setting is back in Lordaeron.

Ch3
Very well-designed map, I liked it a lot.
It took me a while to realize I needed to reverse the order. I kept thinking I mixed the blue lever with the black one.


Ch4
I could not beat this mission on normal difficulty, and then I also failed it on easy difficulty.
The issue is there dispel magic spell on any of our units, which means the hero cannot counter "slow" being cast on the hero (it relies on attack speed to regain HP through vampiric aura). Also, there is no anti magic spell, which means I cannot avoid the damage from the crushing wave spell (which hits my healers behind me as they run close to heal my hero + towers in the background (tried massing towers until my hero could level up enough, but the crushing wave spell destroyed them). I tried every trick possible, including using the boulder stun on the Archmage heroes at the correct time so I could kill them before they use mana shield, as well as trying to use those siege attack flying imp units to target the buildings that make enemies to send at us, but no matter what I do with my gold, there is a point around 13-15 minutes in game when I cannot stop the wave attacking me, even in easy difficulty.

Rest of campaign
Not being able to pass the previous mission, even in easy difficulty, put me in a bad mood, so I just whosyourdaddy-ed through the rest to see how the story ended.

General points
The notice to use 1.31 is really outdated. Playing custom campaigns on the latest patch, in my opinion, is by far the best way to play them nowadays. Overall, everything in the past is compatible with future versions unless you use a third party W.E to make maps. 1.31 also comes with game breaking bugs, whereas the latest versions of wc3 have fixed most of those issues.

Thank you very much for the review. I must admit that you aren't the first one who gets frustrated with that mission, it's not impossible because I have completed it without using cheats and I know other people who have also, but it's certainly very poorly balanced on my part, otherwise there would not be so many players saying the same. It will definitely be one of the big changes in the remaster I'm preparing.

Little more to say, I'm glad that you were able to enjoy part of the campaign and I'm sorry that it ended in frustration at the end. Once again, thanks for commenting and rating, it's great for me.

Regards.

 

[Mon40k]

Unless I see a play-through video of someone beating this without vision cheats, I will assume this mission is unbeatable even in easy difficulty.

Oki Doki. There you go:

I put further notes in the description of the video (mainly regarding my mistakes).
Also, sorry in advance for the low quality - I use built-in free recorder and editor, plus I'm pretty bad at editing. The audio always comes out crap.