Heroes 4 The Restoration of Axeoth

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Heroes 4 The Restoration of Axeoth project.

This project has been around for a little while, but activity dropped off considerably for a little while until recently.

What is the Heroes 4 The Restoration of Axeoth project? Originally it started out as a project to port the Lost Tales of Axeoth to H4 where they belong, but has expanded considerably recently. Here is a list of what is being worked on:

Porting Unity to H4
Porting Every Dog Has His Day to H4
True follow on expansions to the original H4 campaigns
Heroes IV Chronicles
Translating H4 campaigns and maps to English

There has been quite a bit of progress on the Unity campaign. The first two maps are finished as far as landscaping and writing, with the writing completed for the third map as well. With our new member ByteBandit, the landscaping of the remaining islands is in good hands.

Every Dog Has His Day, has, well, been completed. See this announcement here for details on that, as well as a general update for this project. There are still some things we would like to do for this campaign, which you can see in the screenshots in the above news item, so it isn’t being released quite yet.

Heroes IV Chronicles is well underway, with porting of Warlords of the Wasteland to H4 being completed. This campaign is ready to be tested by others (see the end of this post for the link). Feel free to post any feedback here or via pm.

This particular task is being helped along by the Advanced Options Map Editor, which is getting a new feature for converting H3 maps to H4.

There will be a WoW compatible version of each campaign that can be placed in the maps folder, but we also want to include a modded version using some of the H3 assets, as well as making these campaigns playable from the campaign selection screen.

As things become available I will update this post with links to them below.

If anyone would like to be a part of this project in whatever capacity they prefer, please send me a pm or just let me know here. We can always use testers and map makers

Products -
H4 Object Package by Karmakeld: Object Package

Unity

Every Dog Has His Day

Heroes IV Chronicles:
Readme
Warlords of the Wasteland
Conquest of the Underworld
Masters of the Elements
The World Tree
The Fiery Moon
Revolt of the Beastmasters
Clash of the Dragons
The Sword of Frost

Heroes IV Restoration of Erathia:
Long Live the Queen
Dungeons and Devils
Spoils of War Part 1
Spoils of War Part 2
Liberation
Long Live the King
Song for the Father
Seeds of Discontent

Heroes IV Armageddon's Blade:
Armageddon's Blade
Dragon's Blood
Dragon Slayer
Festival of Life
Playing with Fire
Foolhardy Waywardness

Heroes IV Shadow of Death:
New Beginning
Elixir of Life
Hack and Slash
Birth of a Barbarian
Rise of the Necromancer
Unholy Alliance
Specter of Power

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 PoL:
The Price of Loyalty
Descendants
Voyage Home
Wizard's Isle

Music Mods:
HoMM2
HoMM3
Lords of Magic
Final Fantasy

Translated Maps

[ByteBandit]

As of this moment, Master of the Elements is halfway done. Sure to be released before the end of January.
The Unity campaign is underway with a few details still being ironed out before completion.
Several surprises are also in store for HoMM players that involve campaigns converted to H4. We'd tell you, but they're surprises.

[cjleeagain]

Awesome

The power of fandom and fan-aticism...

It's thanks to the super enthusiastic guys that we have people who do so much hard work to adapt these campaigns to other versions of Heroes.

And with good cause too. Older versions of heroes, especially H3, have vastly superior AI to H6 and H7.

[Pol]

Especially H3 is very easy moddable now. Thanks to ERA or VCMI. Most likely even easier than H7. What an irony.

Although the H3 AI is solid, nowadays is pretty rusted. The best AI shall come from Quantomas, even if only for Heroes V.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Masters of the Elements is almost complete. ByteBandit is currently working to landscape the last map of that campaign. Once he is finished with that, I'll do my final pass through the maps and then we'll release it for download.

After that, we're going to take a pause on H4 Chronicles to thoroughly play-test these first three campaigns. We'll also start doing more work on the Unity campaign, and I'll continue to work on the H3 to H4 map converter.

Currently for the H3 to H4 map converter I have switched to converting landscape objects, specifically trees. I'm thinking mountains next.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Original post updated with the link for Masters of the Elements!

I made sure the AI started with at least one hero and gave them a good experience boost, as well as ensuring any of the other AI heroes already there had an appropriate experience boost. I also did this for Warlords of the Wasteland, but haven't gotten this done yet for Conquest of the Underworld.

I haven't yet gone through the various creature stacks / ambush events to buff them, but that will come soon.

For now, we're going to take a small pause to do a thorough play testing of the first three campaigns, as well as to switch focus a little bit back to Unity (and one other little surprise ByteBandit has been working on during all this).

Thoughts and feedback are appreciated!

[ByteBandit]

ILiveInABox05 has already corrected a few things on these campaigns and the testing he's been doing so far, seems to be positive. I will be joining in the testing process as soon as I finish the project I'm currently wrapping up. Work will continue onward with the other Chronicle campaigns once the wrenches tighten the nuts and bolts on the previous ones. But that may not take as long as it sounds.
When we started this project, we went on the basis of the original Heroes Chronicles layout, and copying everything bit by bit to the H4 layout, which, as many players know, may not work the way it should. The good news is, the tweaking on the maps are minimal but need to be addressed for proper H4 gameplay nonetheless.
We've been mass producing the campaigns to get them out, and have been asking others to try them out to see how they play. We've been getting some positive feedback we 've needed to correct the campaigns as they come up. All comments about the campaigns, good or bad, are welcome so that we can make them more enjoyable for everyone who loves this series. Much appreciated.

[ByteBandit]

We have been testing Warriors of the Wastelands and have found that the maps in H4 play exactly as the H3 version plays. In fact, the H4 version plays just a little harder than the H3 version. It surprised us how side by side, they play exact. (Maybe a day or two more is needed in the H4 version.) The thing about the Chronicles series is, it's primarily a story campaign instead of a 'The Best Score I Can Get' kind of thing. With that said, we still feel a little challenge in these campaigns won't hurt. And work is moving along nicely with the completed campaigns thus far.

The World Tree is now complete and ready for us to finalize when we get things back on track. The Advanced Options Map Editor really, really speeded up the process to create it.

And a suprise campaign! While making the Chronicles campaigns, a side project was underway. The Price of Loyalty is now ready for play and play testing. This is straight from the H2 maps and converted for H4. You have no main hero in this one. Rather, you have to collect artifacts for the final scene. And you will need them. There is no underground, obviously, but I expext this campaign to be quite challenging for sure. We'll see.
We'll have both of them up for download before long.
____________

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Original post updated with our latest changes for the Heroes Chronicles campaigns.

I haven't gotten to the difficulty adjustments for Warlords of the Wasteland yet. Currently I'm playing through the final map. After which I will start in on the difficulty adjustments.

Also added a section and download link for the H2 Price of Loyalty conversion.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Some comments for CJLee's testing feedback!

I have been playing the first two maps featuring Tarnum as a knight (underworld conquest). I played using Winds of War after you told me the scenarios are not designed for

Map 1 was not difficult. I am only an average player, so I should think that good players would find it boringly easy. However I think you have to be cautious about increasing the difficulty setting. This is because so many battles, especially the last battle that is the map objective, feature Devils. Since Devils teleport and like to make a beeline for your heroes, it is extremely difficult to keep your heroes alive.

Yeah, to keep in line with the original campaigns from H3, they are likely going to be a bit on the easy side. They're also story maps, which is another reason they're a bit easy. After testing Warlords of the Wasteland side by side with the H3 version, they were both very similar in terms of difficulty, with the later maps being a bit easier on the H4 side.

Having said that, I'm currently in the process of tweaking AI enhancement scripts so that the AI plays a little bit better like it does in the H3 version. We are also going to work on adjusting difficulty based on the chosen difficulty at the start of the campaign.

Treasure chest at 80, 24 practically next to your starting heroes. Treasure not defined (I believe?). So the chest can give a low level reward. This results in me getting Cloak of Warding literally before 10am in the morning of the first day of this scenario.

IE, within a few steps, my heroes had inadvertently picked up the Cloak of Warding, which is required to pass this mission.

(The Cloak is also obtained via quest hut, but that quest is very boring).

Ah okay, I went ahead and disabled the Cloak of Warding in the map settings, so hopefully that will take care of it.

Game hung three times in the course of playing this map. I don't know if it is the map at fault; just mentioning.

Was this during battle? The game freezing during battle is just something that sometimes happens with this game unfortunately It's been said that setting the affinity for H4 via the task manager to a single core supposedly helps this not happen as much.

Garrison at 25,91 is superfluous. Because the square at 22,84 is not passable. So if you defeat the garrison, you just enter a blank area that doesn't contain anything apart from two resources. (Is it supposed to contain something important, or is it supposed to grant access to Green's area?)

Odd, in the version I have, this doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe that's because we've been testing and fixing some of these issues, haha Grab the latest copy from our thread!

Demon dwelling is guarded by a quest guard at 126,59. However, it is accessible from the square at 126,58, so that has to be blocked off.

I swear I fixed this before, but I fixed it again anyway

the 50-EvilEye quest takes too long. Even though I liberated my first Evil Eye dwelling pretty fast, at the growth rate of evil eyes, come on! This scenario is easy enough that my secondary heroes defeated the enemy so quickly that I almost didn't have enough xp left on the map for getting my heroes to level 10!

We initially added 2 dwellings, for a total of 3, but even that will take a while to get enough for the quest. In general, we are trying to keep as close to the original as possible, but in the original you can purchase Evil Eyes from enemy towns.

We reduced the number to 25.

This map is so low in creatures and experience, that I almost couldn't get my three main heroes (Tarnum's party) from level 6 to 10. The problem was that the mapmakers sent me messages that I should hire more heroes to defend the castle from attack, so I was expecting portal invasions and what not. I quickly hired two other heroes and leveled them up to 7 and 8 respectively to defend my home area. This resulted in a lot of difficulty in getting Tarnum's party all to level 10.

Updated that text to be more in line with H4. Instead of hiring heroes to patrol the tunnels, it just lets you know to make sure your castle is defended in case the enemy sneaks around.

I also notice I started with an ally, Purple. I am not sure what Purple is doing and the storyline never referred to them. Possibly it is a mistake to ally with them. It makes a lot more sense having them as enemies.

Because I wasn't sure if mapmakers really wanted me to ally with Purple, at first I didn't do some of the things I could have easily done:

1) I had picked up the Cloak of Warding earlier from a treasure chest, so I could easily have used my Town Gate to teleport to purple's castle, and from there use the Cloak of Warding to open access to the Red Keymaster's tent.

2) I could take out Green pretty early on once I got hold of the Town Gate spell and teleported to Purple's castle. Green is very weak.

The H3 version does have the purple player as your ally. I'll be onto testing Conquest soon so I'll be able to take a look at that myself, but this is unlikely to change.

Near the end of this mission, when I unlocked the quest guard at (60,133) (the Archangel quest), they reference a red orb supposed to be just after the quest guard. But I can't see that anywhere.

And then I got into a fight with a level 10 Fireguard. But by that point I had given up my Shackles of War to fulfill a quest. So how can I fight the enemy? He fled to Scythe. Which as the cheat code nwcprometheus tells us, is an inaccessible town. I tried winning it with nwcares so that he didn't have time to run. And yes, he is holding the Scarab.

So from my experience, Map 2 has a bunch of bugs that need to be addressed.

Ah that red orb is supposed to be a "golden medallion." Nimo had already made his own copy of these maps, so it was already fixed in our version.

It's very odd that the hero picked up the Scarab! I checked, and the hero should be set to guard, so he shouldn't have been able to move over to grab the Scarab. Maybe it's different in the version Nimo has. Either way, it seems like we just need to fix the ability of the blue hero to retreat, so I've added some scripting to use the shackles of war to prevent them from retreating.

[ByteBandit]

I have been testing the Conquest campaign looking for errors and problems too. A lot of the things cjleeagain has found, have been addressed and updated to the download file. I have found a few issues of my own. The carryover artifacts are now in place. Towns now have scaled back buildings and magic levels like the originals do. A few passability issues were also found. Addressed early on about the amount of evil eyes needed and the amount allowed on map 2. Addressed the issue about the wrong colored tent in map 3. Some Quest issues in Map 4. So, a lot has been found and a lot has been fixed as we find them.
The original post is always updated with our latest changes for the Heroes Chronicles campaigns.
We keep wanting feedback, good, bad and . . . unpretty. :)

[cjleeagain]

OK, from now on I will only use this post: https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/ ... 69#p385888 which should be where the updated maps are?

but now how do I replay Map 2? Do I just download and stick these in the folders?

I don't want to replay map 1, yet I want my savegames/ hero builds to carry over to map 2.

Alternatively (better), I would just like to replay my last savegame on map 2, so that the level 10 Fireguard does not pick up the scarab or is unable to flee. (Either option is fine with me since I only need the scarab to win; there is no mission objective to defeat that level 10 Fireguard.)

[BTW I tried downloading and putting the campaign in my folder, then reloading my last savegames, and it didn't work. The enemy hero continued to flee at the slightest opportunity, meaning I can't get the scarab no matter what and therefore cannot finish the mission.]

EDIT

NVM, please forget my above stuff (which I'm leaving up here as a record).
I've realized that there are two ways to finish this. I played through both to make sure they work.

1: don't trade in the shackles of war. The quest guard is so near the final battle that I only needed to replay yesterday's savegame. After all, there are angels in your army already, so you can just use one of your angels to open the door to the level 10 Fireguard.

2: you can hire devils on this map. As long as you use your devils to assassinate the enemy level 10 hero, they can't retreat!
(note: due to morale problems, it's a bit iffy. Put your devils in the first army slot to maximize the chance of them going early, otherwise the enemy might get to act and they will choose to run.)

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

OK, from now on I will only use this post: https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/ ... 69#p385888 which should be where the updated maps are?

Yep! The post at the top of this thread will have all products we release

but now how do I replay Map 2? Do I just download and stick these in the folders?

I don't want to replay map 1, yet I want my savegames/ hero builds to carry over to map 2.

Alternatively (better), I would just like to replay my last savegame on map 2, so that the level 10 Fireguard does not pick up the scarab or is unable to flee. (Either option is fine with me since I only need the scarab to win; there is no mission objective to defeat that level 10 Fireguard.)

[BTW I tried downloading and putting the campaign in my folder, then reloading my last savegames, and it didn't work. The enemy hero continued to flee at the slightest opportunity, meaning I can't get the scarab no matter what and therefore cannot finish the mission.]

I would remove or save over the old campaigns that you have so you don't end up having a bunch of different versions floating around.

And that's a good question about not wanting to replay maps you already played. All I know to do is to replay the previous maps, which I admit is annoying. I've thought about making some sort of save editor, but something easier would be to use cheats.

I would start the first map and buy my second hero, then use nwcthoth to level them to max level for the map, and then nwcvalhalla to move on. One thing to consider now is that we're only allowing Tarnum and one hero to carryover instead of two additional heroes, since heroes taking part in battles really makes the game easier.

EDIT

NVM, please forget my above stuff (which I'm leaving up here as a record).
I've realized that there are two ways to finish this. I played through both to make sure they work.

1: don't trade in the shackles of war. The quest guard is so near the final battle that I only needed to replay yesterday's savegame. After all, there are angels in your army already, so you can just use one of your angels to open the door to the level 10 Fireguard.

2: you can hire devils on this map. As long as you use your devils to assassinate the enemy level 10 hero, they can't retreat!
(note: due to morale problems, it's a bit iffy. Put your devils in the first army slot to maximize the chance of them going early, otherwise the enemy might get to act and they will choose to run.)

Well, unfortunately, you're not actually supposed to be able to build Archangels here, haha So you will have to trade in the shackles. But I did add scripting to give the shackles to the enemy hero guarding the Scarab so that he can't flee once you attack him. I'm not sure why he is able to move and pick up the Scarab. Maybe he's splitting his army and the creatures are picking it up and bringing it back to him...

Either way, those updates have been made, along with a few more just now, and have been uploaded. Please grab the latest and let us know how it goes! Again, thanks so much for your feedback!

[cjleeagain]

Not supposed to be able to hire angels in Map 2? No wonder.

I was playing Map 3, and at the start they had a message saying the angels had decided to join Tarnum. I was wondering why the need for such a message.

That said, Map 1 and Map 2 both could build Angels, at least on the old version of this campaign that I had.

I've downloaded your latest Heroes Chronicles Conquest of the Underworld.h4c, deleted the older .h4c, and will stick to playing it going forward so that I can give proper feedback.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Not supposed to be able to hire angels in Map 2? No wonder.

I was playing Map 3, and at the start they had a message saying the angels had decided to join Tarnum. I was wondering why the need for such a message.

That said, Map 1 and Map 2 both could build Angels, at least on the old version of this campaign that I had.

I've downloaded your latest Heroes Chronicles Conquest of the Underworld.h4c, deleted the older .h4c, and will stick to playing it going forward so that I can give proper feedback.

Haha yep, that is why! Also, if you notice some oddities in the text like that, definitely mention it to us so we can take a look and make adjustments if necessary. There are certainly many instances of that where artifacts are involved since those are very different between H3 and H4.

And yes, make sure to grab the latest, since ByteBandit found one or two game breaking issues in later maps of Conquest of the Underworld during his testing. I forgot to script a questguard in one place, so the artifact you needed to win the map was unavailable. In another place we used the wrong color tent and so a colored questgate wasn't passable (oops)!

[ByteBandit]

If everyone can continue playtesting through these campaigns and help out tremendously like you all are doing, that could free ILiveInABox05 and myself up to continue with the other campaigns that are in the works right now. For instance, The World Tree campaign is completed, and needs to be finalized for release. And Fiery Moon is about halfway done. But we had to pause to find and fix the campaigns we already have completed. To those who are testing the campaigns, your names are included in the Readme notes for your contribution as playtesters. It paid off to take time out and fix what we've found in the released versions. They are now very playable, with a few minor things left to do to them, and ILiveInABox05 will adjust them, and upload current versions as he gets to them. ILiveInABox05 has pretty much wrapped up WotW and has kept all the campaigns current and up to date. We really appreciate all those who are out to make these campaigns as enjoyable as possible. So, if you that are testing these campaigns would like to continue with your findings, then we can move forward with the other campaigns that follow onward.

[cjleeagain]

Map 3 and 4 feedback for Heroes Chronicles Conquest of the Underworld:


Quest tower at 48, 105 says have to 'achieve level 13'. But the wording is wrong. At level 13, I still couldn't get past the tower.
(Which is a pity because my heroes were level 13 by the time they came to the tower. The design of this map is such that travel is quite inconvenient.)


Quest structure at 83,52 didn't give me anything on turning in the Warlord's Ring.


Day 5 Week 3 Month 2, storyline message about Tarnum's dream. Typo in the word Berzerkers.


Didn't like the design of this map. It's quite linear, with practically only two major directions after a while - take out the NE Purple first, or the SW Orange.


Minimal challenge.

I feel very strongly that there is an imbalance in calibration, but I don't know how to overcome it. A story map doesn't have to be hard, but shouldn't be too easy either.

There were only a few difficult battles, but they didn't have to be won at all. EG there is a bunch of Champions on the northeastern corner of the map, and beating these guys with my roving army of Tarnum + his two main heroes + one angel was hard. The Champions were not really guarding anything important nor were they necessary to provide experience. I picked a fight with them just because map was too easy.

The first map would have been impossible to win without combat skills on my heroes. The devils would have made short work of my heroes easily.

But by map 3, the enemy was not challenging at all. There were no devils to assassinate my heroes. To up the challenge, I avoided getting them to Master or Grandmaster Combat, but my heroes were rarely under serious threat even though they were moving around usually with only one or two angels.

The AI heroes were ultra bad. I barely even noticed them as I crushed them and tossed them all into jails. Hardly hired any troops apart from a few vampires and angels (for the movement points). I also noticed that while they built up their castles, they didn't open up nearby mines. It was not until late in the game, Month 3, that the underground hero (purple?) emerged and started harassing me. But due to the large number of Learning Stones, I had a little army of level 12-15 Lords by that point. Defending with these secondary heroes was easy.



Map 4:
I just started this map, but immediately realized something was wrong.

In earlier maps, I had acquired the Helm of Power and was warned to keep it with Tarnum. I had forgotten this advice, and stashed the Helm with one of Tarnum's lieutenants since Tarnum was't a spellcaster and didn't need all that much spell points.

In Map 3 I had acquired the Angel's blade and it was equipped on Tarnum all the time.

Map 4 starts with the objective that the Helm of Power and Angel's blade and a third artifact Lion's Shield of Courage (presumably to be acquired when playing Map 4) would carry over. And then I realized that I didn't have the Angel's blade or Helm of Power.

I don't mind playing this map if the lack of artifact merely makes it harder. But if there is some quest gate to unlock in the subsequent where you absolutely must have an Angel's blade, then we're in trouble.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

Quest tower at 48, 105 says have to 'achieve level 13'. But the wording is wrong. At level 13, I still couldn't get past the tower.
(Which is a pity because my heroes were level 13 by the time they came to the tower. The design of this map is such that travel is quite inconvenient.)


Quest structure at 83,52 didn't give me anything on turning in the Warlord's Ring.

Those sound like I forgot to script something! Will fix.

Day 5 Week 3 Month 2, storyline message about Tarnum's dream. Typo in the word Berzerkers.

Got it, will fix.

Minimal challenge.

I feel very strongly that there is an imbalance in calibration, but I don't know how to overcome it. A story map doesn't have to be hard, but shouldn't be too easy either.

There were only a few difficult battles, but they didn't have to be won at all. EG there is a bunch of Champions on the northeastern corner of the map, and beating these guys with my roving army of Tarnum + his two main heroes + one angel was hard. The Champions were not really guarding anything important nor were they necessary to provide experience. I picked a fight with them just because map was too easy.

The first map would have been impossible to win without combat skills on my heroes. The devils would have made short work of my heroes easily.

But by map 3, the enemy was not challenging at all. There were no devils to assassinate my heroes. To up the challenge, I avoided getting them to Master or Grandmaster Combat, but my heroes were rarely under serious threat even though they were moving around usually with only one or two angels.

The AI heroes were ultra bad. I barely even noticed them as I crushed them and tossed them all into jails. Hardly hired any troops apart from a few vampires and angels (for the movement points). I also noticed that while they built up their castles, they didn't open up nearby mines. It was not until late in the game, Month 3, that the underground hero (purple?) emerged and started harassing me. But due to the large number of Learning Stones, I had a little army of level 12-15 Lords by that point. Defending with these secondary heroes was easy.

Yep, due to the scaling of heroes, after the second map, neutral stacks need to be increased. We can't just take the numbers from the H3 maps at that point and need to modify the stacks. The AI needs significant help as well as you've seen.

Thought these are story maps, we definitely want them to provide at least some difficulty. What I want is for intermediate difficulty on the H4 maps to feel like the same in H3.

Luckily we do have somethings we can do to make things more challenging, including help the AI not be plain bad. For Warlords of the Wasteland, I've been working to increase neutral stack sizes for important neutral stacks, such as those guarding mines or boundaries between player areas. I've also looked through the various ambush placed events, and increased those where necessary, as well as added setting to increase them further for higher difficulties.

Then there's the AI. I've added the AI Enhancing scripts to the Warlords campaign, though I've only tested the first map at the moment. The difference is night and day. Before the scripting, the AI never breaks through the boundary to the neutral area between it and the player. I had the time do wander around doing whatever I wanted, clearing everything at my leisure, and then I broke through the boundary to them and they just sat on their castle. I was forced to build up my forces due to those I lost breaking through, so it took a bit until I had enough to actually beat the AI town.

After applying the scripts however, the AI broke through to the neutral area and took the neutral town just as I had finished clearing my area, and showed up at the stack guarding the way into the player area. This was actually a bit faster than it takes the AI to break through to you in the H3 version.

There are still a couple more things for me to do, such as increasing enemy garrison sizes based on the chosen difficulty, and a look at adjusting the important boundary stack sizes based on difficulty, but then I think Warlords of the Wasteland will be in a fully testable state.

I plan to also apply these same things to all of the rest of the campaigns, so right now it is expected that Conquest of the Underworld will be really easy after a certain point (probably map 3 and onward).

Map 4:
I just started this map, but immediately realized something was wrong.

In earlier maps, I had acquired the Helm of Power and was warned to keep it with Tarnum. I had forgotten this advice, and stashed the Helm with one of Tarnum's lieutenants since Tarnum was't a spellcaster and didn't need all that much spell points.

In Map 3 I had acquired the Angel's blade and it was equipped on Tarnum all the time.

Map 4 starts with the objective that the Helm of Power and Angel's blade and a third artifact Lion's Shield of Courage (presumably to be acquired when playing Map 4) would carry over. And then I realized that I didn't have the Angel's blade or Helm of Power.

I don't mind playing this map if the lack of artifact merely makes it harder. But if there is some quest gate to unlock in the subsequent where you absolutely must have an Angel's blade, then we're in trouble.

Ah yes, I had thought I marked all the carryover artifacts, but either I forgot to or my updates got overwritten. The latest version of Conquest should actually have this issue fixed. I don't believe any quest guards / gates require any of the pieces, they're just used to build the Angelic Alliance artifact. So you should still be able to continue without them.

And of course, thanks for the feedback and testing help! It's much appreciated

[cjleeagain]

Hey iLive inAbox05, your hard work is appreciated!

I played the first map of Warlords of the Wasteland, and didn't go very far. but then again, I'm not good at barbarian heroes and first maps are usually pretty hard when you're leveling your heroes and just about anybody is capable of killing these baby heroes.

If we don't need all artifacts, that's good, because maps are easy and I might as well play with handicap.

Map 4 of the Underworld is definitely ultra easy.

I think the problem is that we have 3 level 18 heroes already. In H3, that's no big deal, because level 18 hero still needs a little army. In h4, level 18 hero is strong enough to take on a week old army by himself.

I don't know if you're aware, but Town Gate can be used to tp your heroes. I know in Map 4 the intention was for us to lose our starting town to an ambush, but since I could TP my Battle Mage, why not? She TPed over to the starting town and killed the attacking army singlehandedly.

While Tarnum and his other lieutenant marched everywhere alone and wiped out enemies easily.

Also, the starting town had a decent army, so it might have been possible to defend it. I just didn't want to defend the town with troops alone, because I needed my heroes to get max experience.

I haven't finished Map 4 yet, but it's pretty much easy-peasy, with my only grouse that it's probably impossible for all heroes to hit level 20.

That said, the storyline (about Tarnum and his background) is starting to get interesting.

[cjleeagain]

Map 4 issues:

Map is tiny and can be finished in under a week. Since I decided to explore everything and milk all experience from the map, I delayed it and sent my heroes on a map tour at the end when I managed to get 1 hero to level 19 (with advanced death magic), so I wanted to visit all mage guilds again to get animate dead spell.

That was when we got to Day 1 Week 1 Month 2 and an important part of the storyline popped up. So actually Tarnum betrayed his own loyal captains and murdered them! This is something I totally did not expect.

I think most people are going to finish the map in under 3 weeks, which means they won't ever get to read the storyline.

Recurring event at 57, 38 (5 minotaurs attack).
Problem is, at level 18 every single hero is stronger than 5 minotaurs. Even if you didn't develop any combat skills and hero was pure support (eg scouting and nobility instead of magic skills).
So that ambush is just guaranteed to be irritating without the slightest hint of challenge. I fought that battle several times because I had to go past many times. If you want challenge, make it 50 minotaurs. This is a small map with many castles, so it is easy to flee if cannot win.

Two instances where enemy troops joined me/ their flags turned red.
One is a bunch of Troglodytes in the Southwest, guarding a mine.
One is a bunch of harpy hags in the midSouth, guarding an alchemist lab.
I tried attacking them, but they just changed flag color. This is clearly scripted, since by default creatures don't do that.

I was barely able to get all 3 heroes to level 19 by delaying finishing the map until month 2 when we got more neutrals to kill thanks to a creature of the month.

I think the biggest issue is that I start with three level 18 heroes, and there are three enemy factions allied against me but they are all dependent on one single level 20 hero. If you started each faction with either 3 level 20 heroes each, or a level 20 hero with an army of at least 10 level 4 creatures, there will be more challenge.

Also consider the fact that this map all the 3 enemies are Chaos faction.

Chaos's main combat hero is the ranger. But they're not really that strong, since usually half their skill points will be in scouting/ stealth. So the enemy really needs supporting spellcasters or frontline level 4 dragons to help their rangers.

I think you can safely triple the starting sizes of all garrisons, neutral stacks and enemy factions without making this map too difficult for casual players.


Map 5, Jorm's Ambush. The objective is to obtain the Ring of Lesser Negation, but the mission description screen before mission starts says that ankh of life will carry over. Then the in-game mission description says Tarnum must gain access to Spirit of Oppression. Something seems to be wrong.

nwcprometheus suggests to me that highest level possible on this map is 22, based on presence of 2 level up trees.

The scenario starts with a message about a young man (cook's assistant) getting his friends to join you. That message is wrong, since you will 'encounter' the young man only when your heroes or creatures move to square 23,38.

Since scenario is pretty easy there is no real need to level heroes to the max. It's just something I like to do.

Gem mine at 44, 12 is inaccessible.


42, 10 quest calls for Amulet of the undertaker. I had it, but the quest hut didn't recognize this. Tried it on all 3 heroes.

36,33 Quest for inexhaustible cart of ore. Also did not recognize when my heroes brought the cart over.