Objective:

• Clear the area of enemy scouts
• Build a Jousting Arena and upgrade it
• Defeat the enemy army (later during the mission)
• Isabel must survive

Carries Over:

• Isabel (max. level: 18)

Walkthrough:

At the beginning of the scenario, you must choose a bonus from one of these three:

• Archer: 15
• Footman: 10
• Ore: 10

When I played I chose the 15 archers, since most of the low-level demons are fairly slow and I like to thin out their numbers, while they cross the battlefield. You might want to take the 10 ore resources, as there are no ore mines on the map (more on this below). Anyhow, choose as you see fit - you can easily complete the scenario whatever your choice is.

You start just outside Ashwood, your starting town (also the only town on the map). Start by building a tavern to get an extra hero and a few extra creatures for Isabel. If you see a heroine called Ellaine, then for the love of Asha hire her. Ellaine's specialty brings you one extra gold per peasant per day, and there are more than a dozen of peasant (a.k.a. tax payer) huts on this map!

Send Isabel east and start eliminating the demon forces, while your newly acquired hero flags the nearby dwellings (3 peasant huts and 1 barracks) and picks up the resources lying around Ashwood. The primary task for your 2nd hero will be to visit the many dwellings on the map and take troops to Isabel, so she won't need to return to Ashwood too often.

Just east of Ashwood Isabel encounters the first demon scouts: imps! Defeat them and head southeast where you'll meet more imps. Further south is a sawmill that will be useful. The sawmill is guarded by peasants, who join you. North of Isabel's position is an archer tower, but it's guarded by a huge stack of hell hounds, so you might want to avoid it until you have some more troops. You should continue to head east, while flagging all the dwellings you pass. You should be safe if you keep to the forest and grass areas. Along the perimeter of the forest is a mountain range with lots of undeads that guard various treasures, if the stacks are too hard to defeat, just ignore them for now and come back later - your primary concern is the demons.

A general note about this map is that all Haven creature stacks around the map will join you (with the exception of a few, who guard treasure and resources). All of these Haven creature stacks combined with the many dwellings should also help Isabel's army increase constantly as you progress. Fighting neutral creatures are all about troop conservation.

Build a Jousting Arena and upgrade it: The Jousting Arena costs quite a lot of wood and crystals and requires Stables and Town Level 12 to build. If you're having trouble getting the crystals, you can build the Resource Silo, which provides 1 crystal each day. You should try to build a Capitol as soon as possible, to ensure sufficient funds to buy all the creatures in Ashwood before the final fight. You can build most dwellings in Ashwood (except the Monastery and Altar of Light) and you should do that.

Clear the area of enemy scouts: Basically you need to roam around the countryside slaying demons as you can find them (that's a nice way to spend an afternoon). Don't forget to visit the stat bonuses around the map (only two), while you're exploring the map. There are 11 stacks of demon scouts, ranging from simple imps to tough pit lords (guarding the gold mine) and archdevils (located in the northeastern corner of the map). (**Spoiler** You can find a map with the location of the demon scouts here.)

Defeat the enemy army: Whenever you defeat the last group of demon scout, watch a small cutscene with the Demon Lord revealing himself. A tough demon lord has just spawned east of the archdevil position. Head east and defeat this army, to ultimately win this scenario!

Now if you are playing on heroic and you are here quite early (probably on a high-score run), you will have a tough time defeating this demon hero. You can now run back to Ashwood. (Stop just before the archdevil on day 1 to make sure you have enough movement points to run away on day 2; this demon lord does not have the logistics skill.) With a massive upgrade of peasants to archers at point blank, you can win this fight very easily.