The Ranger - The Vampire Lord

[sanctuary79]

I,ve killed this Nicolai 1000 times, but I didn't finish the game.What's the point?

[Anibus]

I belive that i have a big problem, Nicolai has 41436 spectral dragons.

I owns all castles and i have bilded tears of asha. Last time i tried to down load any patches the game crached(it was for an other misson(had to play all missons again)), im playing version 1.(europe version). Does any one know what i shall do? Maybe i download wrong patches, i dont know. PLEASAE HELP ME

[akaihane]

I finished this map on 1.5 heroic in month 2 week 1. The key here is rush like all heroic maps when odds seems impossible unless you have certain skill/spell. My findan was a regular build without the fancy dark magic. I don't like to follow the walkthrough but the map in the walkthrough was perfect for planning the perfect route to take for rushing.

I clear every single creep behind the garrison on week 1. Do the summon/TP trick as said in this walkthrough on week 2 day 1.

Clear the garrison , check the seer tent , take out the necro town C and head to T2.

Go south and clear the D1 , take the unicorn bow at 3(not sure if this was even needed but i went to take it nonetheless) , clear D2. Take out town E and and clear D3 and D4. Ignore town D and head straight up until you can TP to your town A. I did all these with 0 loses because of 3 emerald dragons and ressurection. I only had emerald dragons , druids and master hunters.

Upgrade your druids and buy everything , set favourite enemy and head out to seer tent.

Now head straight for T4 and find nicolai. You can choose to take the necro towns or not , it don't matter really.

[ThunderTitan]

Yeah, rushing seems to work on most maps for H5... i guess it's because they didn't bother giving too many troops to the AI at startup as all those free moneyz and co. are enough to ensure they get strong fast.

[csolski]

HELP!! I have the Resurrection spell, but it doesn't show in my spellbook, it only works when the battle is set to automatic. What gives??? Anyone know??

[jack2859]

I am playing the game on a laptop wih Vista. I defeated Nick, the trailer played, The resurrection of Nicolai was stored, the close screen displayed,

I clicked on close and the program stops working. Tried both vesion 5 and 6.

any help will be appeciated.

[RiccElijah]

help Help help..

after months of playing I'm badly stuck..

I'm on day 1, week 1, month 9 with EVERYTHING cleaned up.. no spectral Dragons, no 700+ Wights, no enemy's heroes, no enemy's towns to conquer, and worst of all.. no Nicolai..
I killed him sooner in the game, I conquered all of Necro's towns and later I cleaned up the dragons expecting him to appear somewhere..
what should I do now??

[Blake]

wow.. that's a weird problem.. are you sure Nicoli is dead?? the scenario ended the moment I killed him despite that fact I hadn't taken all of his cities.



Do you still get a 'teal player moves' when you click end of turn.. if you do then he's still out there somewhere.. if you don't then restart the mission cause there's now way you can end it without cheating..



I just finished the mission with 1.6.. I put 9 months into it so it took a while lol but it was fun.. killed Nicoli a few times before I decided to kill all of the black dragons and get the phoenixes to finish him off for good.. I was enjoying all the experience he was giving me lol!!!

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

Ressurection=very useful.With it and Divine Power +2 Treants,6 Unicorns,9 bladers,15 wardancers,28 Mh,35 Pixie and around 20 Sprite=no loss at garrison with 650 plague zombies,80 vamps/40 wights.Only Day 6 week 1 month 1.Week 2 day 2 month 1-first Necro,only lost 7 Mh against garrison,Raven fled in Quick Combat and I lost nothing to her.

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

This is my second run on Hard and the mission is not that hard as I felt with an inferior Findan on Normal.I now have 5 towns,a Findan lev 31 and lots of mass light spells(I did not feel as taking Dark magic as Sandro's Cloak ins not bound to appear).I have more than 300 MH,over 125 Druids(old),100 unicorns,70+ ancient treants and 25+emeralds.The enemy(I dont know why but they use Vladimir as main hero) has 6k skellyes,700 plague zombies,400 specters,300 lords,125 archlichs,70 wraiths.Another hero Lucretia has swarm of lords and other troops like horde of specter dragons.My favorite enemies are skells,lichs and vamps(upgraded) with a 70% chance to deal that 100% boost.I have Resurection which saved me in an underground M2 fight against 1,5 k skellies from 100-hunter death.How many chances do I have?

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

I have won the mission,finally.Vlad had much more than I saw at him in the tavern:100+ specter dragons,170 wraiths,200+ archlichs,300+vamp lords,+450 Spectres,zounds of Zombies and 7k skellies.I had 34 emerald dragons,80+ancient treants,100+ unicorns,150 elder druids,350 Mhunters,and swarm of wardancers and sprites.I killed the skellies with my master hunters,druids and cast Deflect missile.Then I cast once Cleanse(mass),and then only light spells.Vlad opened with Banshee Howl,then he cast like mad P-force on Specter dragons/Wraiths.While my wardancers and sprites/unicorns soaked up damage while killing clones,my treants covered Mh and druids who won the battle for me.Finally-no Mh dead,no druid dead,more than half of the treants alive.

Lucretia only had 300+ lords and 1-2 weeks of growth,easy win as I had also 40+archlichs and 40+lords summoned from underground.And if u have luck you can hire one lev 29 necro to gather similar numbers of skels,then rush out with both Findy and necrohero and kill everybody.PS:1-Nick never had any significant army,the last Nick I faced had 40+ skellies and 30+ plague zombies;2-Findan before Vlad(with arties) +30 atack and defense,25+ knowledge,20+ spellpower,4 luck,1 mrale,Expert luck+elven luck,resourcefullness,expert atk+tactics,archery,exp light +master of everything,expert avenger+perks,exp logistics+silent stalker,pathfinder I think and scouting,expert enlightenment+arcane intelligence,inteligence and another perk I can't remember,patch 1.0 hard,lev31 and every light spell except Word of light and teleport.

[Grail Quest]

An incredibly tedious but easy map on NORMAL, IF you rush.

The Key is Raven's necropolis--It starts nearly fully built up. I rushed and built only archers and some druids in the Sylvan town, took the garrison, and then went through the portal. She appeared at the edge of Findan's vision. If you're lucky, she appears outside and you can crush her then take the town with fewer losses than trying to tough out a siege.

With her town captured, you've jumpstarted troop production with a full town without having blown too many resources on your Sylvan towns.

Continue to flag only mines with Findan and rush down. Leave either Dirael or Talanar to use their Raise Dead and necro troops to clear the rest of the SE isle (except maybe the huge cerberi stack. and 600 wights), then they can ferry troops down.



Underground, rush Findan to capture the necro towns, which for some reason are really pathetic. Build them up quickly so that in a couple of weeks you have full unit growth.

If Findan has 3-4 weeks of necropolis units, he'll be overkill and nothing topside this early in the game can stand against him. He can't use his specail, but the Elf ultimate skill does work with non-sylvan units, so it's 225% damage on every creature attack. It won't even be month 3 and you will effectively dominate the map.

Take all towns then turtle and mass troops in the towns, maybe 1-2 weeks of growth against Nicolai respawns. He won't try to take a town that has a full week of creature growth in the garrison. He'll be running around without a town, and not much of a threat.



At this point, because Findan can clear the large dragon stacks, it's probably easier to bring daylight than to get the phoenixes, although you will want to go back and get the level up from the Sylanna's Ancient.



Or, if you're impatient like me and hate doing tedious things, just cheat your way to victory since it's assured.

[Grail Quest]

Oops -- turns out Nicolai didn't attack the garrison hero because he wasn't standing outside at the time. Nicolai ressurrects right outside a town, so if there's anyone standing there, it's automatic combat. Gawd, that makes this mission tedious.

[Peredhil]

Heroic is funny,you'll get very good buddy with "save" and "load " twin brothers;however it's a nice challenge for tactical and strategical abilities,as well as for imagination and patience.Require a lot of time for the game when available,though...



"He can't use his specail, but the Elf ultimate skill does work with non-sylvan units, so it's 225% damage on every creature attack. It won't even be month 3 and you will effectively dominate the map."



Somehow I'm pretty sure that Findan can't get Nature's Luck in a legit way in Ranger campaign, due to Tactics
Edited on Sun, Jul 26 2009, 04:47 by Peredhil

[Grail Quest]

Oops. You're right. I forgot I was using a mod. I didn't want to play more than the campaign and I wanted to play the class specials.

It's irritating that you get the specials often in the very late game. I didn't manage to get Zehir any Arcane Omni, for example, not even during the final mission. :-(

[Peredhil]

Indeed.However, imho, most of the time a custom build is way better than the ultimate path,although I gave Agrael Urgash's Call and he rocks.For knights and warlocks -really not worth it, Findan requires mod,Markal and Zehir- decent ultimates.But in campaign Markal did a lot better customized.I'll see for Zehir soon on Heroic.

I guess luck is involved more in what you get from witch huts.The fan manual (kindly posted here too ),explain very well how assigning new skill/abilities works,and most of the time you can get the desired build even without "console prophecy".

But I've slipped slightly off topic.

[Grail Quest]

Zehir's ultimate comes way too late. On the way, you can get a lot of mileage out of developing other magic to Expert. Plus, having everything at Expert doesn't mean you can cast it all at once. You're still limited by your Initiative, and specializing in a couple of magic skills is generally enough.

Even with ToE, a lot of the ultimates could have their requirements halved. The Warlock one, for example -- utterly useless unless you have a supporting town.

[Peredhil]

On topic.Very nice map,nonetheless.Sandro's Cloak didn't appear in 30 tries,but I bought it in Artifact Merchant in month 3.Just for fun,though.(where is 40k dragon bug when you need it...)

Some things in 1.6 heroic

*the fourth obelisk is in SW of NW island



*Tear of Asha in SW corner near sawmill



*Findan can reach level 36(Exp Enlightenment,look for Turban and Scale Mail too)-just kill Nicolai about a dozen times until you reach 33 and 3 trees.



*use Talanar as squire-better mana to summon troops,logistics and great range of sight

[kaptcatb]

You need :expert luck \ attack \ defence \ light magic \ + ~ 300+ hunters / 100 druids .

Unicorn Bow

Armor of forgotten hero

Ring of speed



--month 4 - hunters 450 / druids 120 / sprites 800 / treants ~ 100 / unicorns 90 / emeralds 50

in last battle i lost only my sprites and half unicorn \ emeralds .

Nicolai sux ..... blade dancers too

sprites - hunters - druids - unicorns ( they sux too , i use only for magic aura ) , ancient treants and emeralds . Sprites/hunters/treants - awesome units

with resurection i have no losed unit till battle with Nicolai .... that sux
Edited on Mon, Aug 24 2009, 08:14 by kaptcatb

[Findagain]

Argh, just had the most boring game on this map ever, on heroic. I'm going thru all the campaigns again, about 18 months since my first pass. Findan got to level 30 on the previous map, with def, logistics, luck on the nature's luck path, light magic with wrath/windstorm/fire resistance, and attack with tactics and archery. I prepped for a month, then popped over and got level 31 (stand your ground) from the tree and got some more troops, then went for the first necro town.



Raven attacks me and casts mass confusion, and this battle was actually tough, but with lots of resurrection I beat him and went on to the first town. That turned out to be the toughest fight of the map. I got the ring of speed and some other artifacts from him.



I figured I'd collect all the dwarven artifacts and keep them, kill all the spectrals to bring back the daylight, find the grail, and kill Nicolai. I just didn't feel like attacking and holding the other necro towns. So I did all this, and basically never saw Nicolai till near the end, though I did defeat Lucretia and Vladimir easily, both of whom cast nothing but Curse of the Netherworld (?!?). Finally see Nicolai running to the top necro town. I dunno what was up, but the final battle was ridiculously easy - the biggest stack Nicolai was 1100 plague zombies. I had brought the entire elf army: 650 MH, ~200 elder druids, ~100 ancient treants, 50 some emeralds, 1.4k sprites and 750 dancers. Findan had leveled up once from combat and with three trees was at level 34.



I'm tempted to load up the last save and just sit there in front of the gate by the northern town for a year or so and see if the other heroes bring some troops to Nicolai.



Quite a diff from my first attempt on this map where I took like 18 months and Nicolai had a (likely bug-induced) 36,000 spectral dragons (!!!) - which I easily defeated using newly hired Vladimir (who was really tough in that first runthru) with Sandro's cloak who puppetmastered the 36k spectrals whereupon Nicolai instantly retreated and the game was over.