I defeated both. I’m playing on easy so it wasn’t too hard to send my merfolk to the different prison cages, and then get the trident and then take down the water leader, while sending the rest of my force east.
I’m thinking I will recruit a couple more mages for taking down the undead in this next mission and hopefully level up my current mage.
I got totally owned trying to take on Muff Malal in the ground route. Just got mobbed by overwhelming numbers. I’m going to have to try some different tactics here. Every turn he has been recruiting a full camp of enemies, and I don’t have enough money to recruit a huge force.
In my second attempt, the Muff ran out to attack my horseman and I kicked his butt with a few of his guys still around. It was still a tough battle but I didn’t lose as many units that time.
Understanding the upkeep system is HUGE–thanks! I kept getting into ginormous negative upkeep (like -17 or more), and not understanding why: it’s because I was recalling all my level 3 units ASAP. Now it actually makes sense why you might station units in villages: a level 1 unit in a village is still a net positive for your forces. Not always a good idea, but sometimes is.
THanks again for the advice!
The siege of Elensfar is always a tough one, but I got a lot of experience. I went through a ton of melee cannon fodder and even lost my champion though. That’s the only downside.
My knight is almost a Grand Knight. I’ve got a red mage, a white mage and a druid all from this mission.
And Konrad is level 3 now. I ran out of melee guys to put between my mages and the undead leader when they kept falling. I didn’t want to put my mages up against the leader’s huge ranged attack, and my earlier attacks had put him at 13 hp left, so I sent Konrad in. It was a huge risk, but Konrad killed him and leveled up.
Now I need to work on getting some more melee guys leveled up. I have no level 2s in fighters. They just keep dying. I guess I need even more cannon fodder so I don’t have to send in the better ones as a last ditch defense.
Oh and I only lost one of the thieves this time. That’s better than I normally do. Once I realized they are pointless against the undead I kept them back taking villages.
Yep, swamp of dread, and it keeps kicking my butt. I can’t even take the first dread lord without losing several second-level units. Maybe I need to be progressing more slowly…
The trick to Muff Malal’s peninsula is to play in a little bit defensive. Move down towards his keep a bit and set up a line either around the first swamp you come to, with your troops on the grass/hills/forest, or on the two hexes of hills and their general vicinity. You should be able to get into position for this by nightfall and withstand his rush - it’ll mostly be walking dead anyway, which are pretty pathetic, though be careful if he recruits any dark adepts early. Keep some healers behind your line to shore it up and they should mostly break upon you. Cycle units as needed. Also, you can use your mermen to hold swamp hexes fairly effectively (this is good in Swamp of Dread too, actually). Actually, mermen are pretty key to this level because there are a bunch of villages on islands you’re not likely to get without them. I also tend to send a scout around north to grab the villages up there.
Swamp of Dread is a tough one. I find that I usually send a strong party across the top to deal with the Dread Lord in the Northeast corner, while everyone else moves southeast and desperately holds off whatever shows up until we can deal with the NE and move down.
I’m at the level where you face off against the princess and having a bit of trouble. I still can’t seem to keep any fighters alive long enough to get level 2s with them.
I’ve got one grand knight, so I’m going to start working on another, and of course I want to get my mages to higher levels.
I think the difficulty with the mission I’m on is that almost all of the Princess’s recruits are level 2s, and she recruits pretty relentlessly. I need to find the right mix of units to take down all those swordsmen. Her weakness seems to be recruiting tons of the same kinds of units. Cavalrymen at first and then swordsmen.
Princess of Wesnoth is a tough cookie, but I find I’ve gotten better at it over time. I generally send Khalenz and a couple of units - usually a scout, a couple of foot units and a shaman, preferably Quick - due east to cross the river and capture villages. Doing this causes Li’sar to send in her duelist, who appears from the cave to the south of your fort. I suggest having a couple of mermen in the water (including the one with the storm trident, and your loyal mermaid initiate) to deal with him before he makes a nuisance of himself, and also to capture the various villages down in that area. (You can also send some up the river, but I find it takes them too long to get to anywhere relevant).
The secondary effect of sending Khalenz and some troops across the river is that not only can you grab some villages, but you can draw off some troops from the fracas that’s going to occur at the bridge. Li’sar seems to primarily use footmen, cavalry, mages and ogres, and none of that can keep up if you run away through the woods. So slip in, grab a couple of villages, kill the first couple of units that respond to your offensive and then fall back to the south when enemy reinforcements start coming up. You’ll get a little bit of gold from the villages, some XP from some of the units you manage to kill, and you’ll delay troops from reaching the bridge. Just be sure to cut and run at the first sign of things getting hairy though - you’re not there to hold those villages. And if things get really ugly, hopefully you can fall back across the river and get your mermen up to cover your retreat, but they probably won’t chase you that far.
Otherwise, send Delfador and the bulk of your troops (and eventually Konrad) north to the bridge, but don’t place a unit on the bridge itself or on the village just beyond it (which I swear is only there to make you overextend yourself). Make your opponents wade into the river to come at you in any numbers, and cut them down there. Once you’ve thinned the ranks a bit, and night is starting to fall, you can probably launch a counteroffensive. You do have to face a fair number of level 2 units in this scenario, and you’ll want to do it while levelling your own troops, 'cause you’ll need 'em next mission.
Cool, I’ll have to try that. Maybe recall some mermen this time and do some village taking or whatever.
Usually, I go and take out the duelist first and then advance with all of my forces, but I ended up splitting up last time because the cavalrymen were getting behind me lines and that turned out bad.
You know you don’t need to kill the bosses, right? You just have to keep your leader guy alive till the timer runs out.
I can’t get anywhere close to beating the next level though (the Seige of Something or other). The 2nd level orcs just roll over me, so by the time the skeletons reach me I don’t have enough troops left to fight them off. I’m thinking I’ll have to replay the campaign to get more high level units.
I may be naming it the wrong name: it’s after the Decision level, and you face five dread knights and a lich (or something). You have to kill the lich, and you get a bonus if you kill all five knights.
I haven’t tried it again in several days; been busy. Will try again this weekend if not before, but am grateful for any advice on it.
Heh, sorry, was thinking of a different level. The games fun, but its based on the gernicest generic fantasy, so basically all the levels have names like “Swamp of Dread” or “Forest of Evil” etc.
To be fair, Heir to the Throne is the oldest campaign in the game and therefore dates back to when it was just some guy’s pet project. Some of the newer campaigns are less “generic”. Though I’d argue that in the world of fantasy, there are only really two options for names:
#1: The generic option, which involves names like “Forest of Darkness” “Dragonspine Mountains” and “High Lord Smith”
#2: The silly option, which involves ridiculous names like “Elensefar”, “Thurgadin” and “Thulsa Doom”.
Neither of them is particularly conducive to being a mnemonic aid.
Anyway, assuming you were referring to the Isle of the Damned, then the mission you’re having trouble with is Siege of Elensefar. Here’s some tips.
First, get a couple of mermen out. They’re useful for controlling the ‘moat’ and keeping your units from being too vulnerable when crossing the bridges. Next be careful about attacking too quickly - you don’t want to be in a vulnerable position come the first nightfall, and it’s usually hard to get enough units into offensive position before then. Attack across both bridges. Bait the enemy - line the shore of the moat with good units and then send a level 1 with a leader or a healer behind it out onto the bridge in such a way that if the enemy wants to attack him with more than one unit, the others will have to jump into the water. Then when they do, use your mermen, and units that won’t suffer huge counterattacks to kill them off quickly. You should, ideally, be breaking through the orcs by the time the undead start to reach the city. Move Konrad up - if you can get him into the keep in the middle, you can recruit a second round of units to help fight off the undead. Bring in the thieves whenever you think it’s advantageous, but probably not before you have -some- sort of foothold in the city.
Oh, and Left Hand - you don’t actually have to DO Swamp of Dread. If you find it too nasty, reload a save from the previous mission and select another option. That’s definitely a branching point in missions - there are at least 2 choices there, and while Swamp of Dread can get you some very nice armor for one of your units, I think the various other branches have loot too.
Yeah, I’ve thought about this. If I can’t manage SoD this weekend, I’ll probably try the other path.
I defeated the princess last night finally. I think I did a better job of outmanuevering her this time, and being careful
I recruited a pretty sizeable “blob” that headed for cover in the forests near the bridge. I lost a number of recruited fighters pretty soon, but I managed to cover my mages and archers pretty well so I was taking down almost everything the princess sent across the river. I realized that nighttime is better for me in this scenario, because the enemies alpha is less whereas I still have enough forces to defeat approaching enemies at night.
I had been playing before with the habit that nighttime was bad and day was good, so I kinda just disregarded time except for thinking more about who was exposed at day.
I ended up having to reposition after a lot of forces flanked me to the southeast, and then I took them out by splitting my forces, losing a level two ranger unfortunately, but I had a lot of experience going to other units because of all the kills. After that flanking attempt, I realized the princess had no forces ready to stop me from going across the river in the southeast, so the forces I had sent to stop the flankers went across, while the rest of my forces took the princesses next wave.
I managed to protect my units and heal while the enemy attacked several different fighters so none of them died, and I crushed their counterattack.
Then the princess sent everything against my units that had crossed the bridge in the east, but my main force crossed and I wiped out the last defenders and then sent my whole force forward.
My scouts had taken a lot of villages, so the princess must have been out of money as there were no more recruits, and I sent my ranged units against the princess but I didn’t have enough of them to take her out so I sent in my horseman next and he finished her off, and as a bonus he’s almost level 2 now.
I finally have two fighters that are almost level 2 and some others partway there. So I should be able to get some champions soon. I’ve got a lot of level 2 and 3 archers now, at least 4 of the level 2s and 2 level 3s. I still only have the white and red mages levelled up, but my other mages have more experience now.
I’m going to need them for the valley of death, I imagine.
I notice that I usually end up with a lot more good ranged units than good melee units. I tend to prefer the ranged attacks for some reason. But I need to work on creating and levelling up more horsemen and fighters.
Valley of Death is a survival scenario, so I think I’m going to be facing a lot of foes, I’m going to need plenty of fighters to cover my mages. I’m going to try to level up as many mages as I can on this mission and recruit a few new ones as well.
This looks interesting - thanks for the thread.
How would you guys compare Wesnoth to:
It’s not particularly similar to Civilization other then they’re both turn based strategy. There isn’t any “world map”, you just go from battle to battle. And there aren’t any building/tech trees, you just recruit guys and fight, and the only resource management is that holding certain points on the map allow you to gain gold to increase the number of troops you can maintain. The combat is somewhat similar, I guess, but honestly when playing Civ I seemed to do pretty well just massing troops and charging in, while thats a recipe for disaster in Wesnoth.
I haven’t played any of the Might and Magic games, so I can’t really help you there.
The most similar game I’ve played is Final Fantasy Tactics, if that helps any.
It’s not much like HoMM either; HoMM is again, a game that really is more about strategic play than tactical - actually battles in HoMM are pretty simple, and only involve a few ‘stacks’ of units. Battles in Wesnoth take place over much larger maps than HoMM battles and feature many more independantly moving units.
They’re really not comparable. Indeed, no game where the “main” map is different from the “battle map” is really going to be much like Wesnoth. The closest approximation I can make is the older Shining Force games (back when it was still a Strategy RPG and not an Action RPG). Emphasis is very much on combat.
Mind:
For Valley of Death, the most important thing I can think of to do is to -not- try to defend your keep. It’s right the heck in the middle of the map, which means that the forces of all three enemy leaders will be reaching you at roughly the same time, and that’ll mean a whole -lot- of enemy units. The keep is also very large, relatively speaking, so you’ll likely only need a couple of rounds to recruit all the units you could want. I suggest doing 2-3 rounds of recruiting, and moving out of the keep towards one of the enemy leaders - you should be able to make contact before dark and do some damage, and it’ll delay the arrival of the troops from the other two leaders and spread them out a bit (The wraiths will arrive well ahead of any ‘foot’ troops they recruit). I’ve had the best luck going south, but I’ve also succeeded with a northern offensive. The idea is to get your units into some reasonably defensive terrain and then crush most of the forces of one enemy before the forces of the others arrive.
Don’t be afraid to lean heavily on Delfador and Khalenz in this mission - they both have ranged attacks that are very nice against undead. Hopefully you have some levelled up mages and/or sorceresses by now for some extra magic damage - wraiths and the various level 2 skeletons are an unholy pain to try to kill in melee and pretty much shrug off arrows.
Oh, and do send some sort of unit after the Northwest Holy water, at least, and if you end up heading south, try to nab the other one as well. A good solid melee unit with holy water will rip through a lot of undead.