Might & Magic: Heroes VI - Inferno - Angel, Angel, Burning B

[RollingWave]

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/795

[RollingWave]

Yes, for some odd reason the final fight ends up being the toughest of the whole game (except for Sanctuary 4 if you accidently get into those uninteded fights)



Also, in my experience, orange is actually quite tough on this map, he starts with much more town than you can can come at you from several direction, very problematic. also this is another map where the AI hero would utilize Town portal well and very often avoid your attack. (while another hero hits another part of your territory!) maybe this is kinda a random thing depending on what the AI builds, but my end experience was that I had to actually build the chaos portal to catch those pesky AI heroes.



As for the final fight, yeah, avoid th Cerebus at all cost, luckily that map has a lot of obsticals and you can teleport, so that shouldn't be TOO hard. if Xana havn't casted life drain on the Cerebus then always frenzy it and let it eat up half of her army for you.

[RollingWave]

Another thing, Demented drain "damage" not "attack" for example, goblins do 2-3 "damage" per unit, and have base attack + hero bonus etc, but their damage is fixed, so if you hit Goblins 3 times with demented, he will do abosalutely 0 damage even if he has 1 million of them with a super might hero..



This obviously means tha demented's drain works much much better against low damage units (aka core units) where draining 2-3 damage essentially makes them totally usless. meanwhile draining 2-3 damage from a champion hardly do anything.



Though yeah, most of the Inferno creature set is rather blah, or at least difficult to utilize well, the most interesting is actually Ravagers, since his aura is 2 square, if your effected you can only move or attack him, but if you can reach him (because your blocked) then the unit essentially can't attack this round.

[maltz]

Inded, the dogs have a smaller weekly growth compared to the other two core creatures. For example, a core creature building's weekly growth is 5:3:5. I guess the designer of this campaign really likes dogs, so (s)he gave plenty of free dogs on the map, and also boosted Xana's dog stack by almost two fold.

[RollingWave]

Also, on PitLord, their special actually isn't that hard to utilize especially if your going might, just take taunt on level 15... Taunt + countstrikes + stand your ground if you want and Pitlord's basically insane, also he can life drain with his retaliation (all of it) which is really nasty.

Also, Tormentor is above average as an Elite unit, it's the only AOE unit that's small sized, meaning it's much easier to hit multiple stacks with them than most other units, they also have a taste of pain passive that adds to their damage.

As a whole, the Inferno lineup is.... weird... on the one hand it has more multi unit hitting units than everyone else, on the other hand it has hands down the worst unit in the game in Breeder. Maniacs / Demented is also underwhelming (relatively speaking), while Cerebus is a very extreme unit that have big time flaws to go with big time strength. Ravager is tough to work properly but generally quite good, while Tormenter / Lilim / Pitlord are all very nice.

[Oxi]

Ah nice, now Inferno walkthru is out aswell ! Somehow playing "by the script" is much more fun, call me lazy if u like Thanks again Maltz, outstanding work ! Also thanks to RW for the additional tips.

[Thoram]

There is a very nice trick how you can regenerate a huge amount of lost units during fights against enemy heroes:

Prerequisite: Regeneration ability, Lilims and Breeders (you get some as a reward between town B and C).

Split your Lilim into 3 stacks of similar size. Before the end of the fight, try to get one enemy stack with low initiative damaged just enough that you can cast enthrall (Lilim ability) on them. From now on, you can disable this stack forever with 3 Lilim stacks (cooldown is 3 turns). If the initiative of the enemy stack is lower than your Lilims, the enemy hero will also never act again.

Now you can cast regenerate as long as your mana pool allows it. Don't attack the enemy. When your mana gets low, attack with the breeders; they have the mana leech ability (also works if the enemy is out of mana). This should get you from 0 to full mana several times before the enemy stack dies.

Fights take very long this time, but you can easily regenerate an insanely huge amount of dead units and still leave with full mana.

[jaga]

Due to an update I guess, Frenzy is not working as stun any more. It can not be used on targets that don't have any adjacent targets.



Even more ridiculously, Frenzy can be used if the target stands right next to Azkaal. But don't bother to try, it just triggers the target to attack Azkaal, and nothing else. I don't know why this is manipulated in such way, now it completely depends on luck to win. Tried 5-6 times but no luck.

[sizzlingsquid]

Definitely the most interesting boss battle so far. I sucked at the first try; frenzied the wrong units instead of the dogs!

[jaga]

After several attempts, I realized that even if you can avoid the dogs until the end, you are no match for the left dog stack, which could be as much as 500-600.

So I figured out a trick. The key is to have the dogs perished by other troops, namely Juggernauts.



Frenzy the dogs at the very beginning, so that the first approachers block the way. Then just stick to the bottom left corner and leave no room for large gates. When the dogs "get in line" behind the juggernauts, frenzy the juggernauts so they will attack the dogs. Xana is going to open gates right behind the dogs, not very cleverly, making them to stuck at there. Keep your stance, let the number of dogs reduce by 50-60 with each attack of the juggernauts. When the dogs are left around 200-300, you can deal with them.

My hp was around 7400 at the end of the battle.

[Sir_Toejam]

has anyone tried going blood/magic for this campaign? Was curious about whether armageddon actually is useful or not. Figured it would make this campaign even harder though...



Edit:



Well, I'll take it on myself to post here how it goes; character name: Ignus (might bring back memories for some...). So far, it's difficult on hard mode, but you CAN avoid all losses if you have a fully upgraded staff of urgash AND a fully upgraded staff of Sandro. Mainly because the firestorm doesn't just damage units and cost no mana, but it also dazes them, giving your lillum the opportunity to act first against pretty much any target you run into. use the staff of Sandro when you think you will need to heal your puppies (against other heroes most likely), otherwise stick to urgash. Don't underestimate the healing you can get with the special from Sandro staff; it's huge, and scales nicely with your damage output. Since the AI almost always targets your puppies, you just cast it on them at the beginning, and all that damage you do with your fireballs, pressed attacks, etc, heal them more than even a regen spell does! Split your lillum into 3 equal stacks, and keep your other units in single stacks. your lillum can cycle their charm attack that way (use it to make sure your gate doesn't get smacked before it pops), maximize your chances for a luck strike, while still keeping stack size big enough to cause decent damage.



specialty is master of fire, being as this will end up being the primary damage dealing mechanism.



Dynasty traits: If you made platinum, take fanatic. Must have, as you can gate on your first turn every battle, which is game changing more than any other thing. You cannot take it after you start the campaign, like say in map 2. for some reason fanatic only works if you take it right from the start. Kinda makes sense in a way for your other traits, explorer, magic power boost (+3 boost), and the one that boosts core production of units by 3.



first skill you need to take, oddly, is ambush. again, so you have the initiative advantage at the start of combat. Then, because we want to burn things, best take firebolt. It's cheap, does good damage, and builds blood rep. Then take fire magic power boost. It boosts the damage of every one of your primary attacks, and also boosts your lillum, breeder, and pit lord fire attack damage! With the staff of urgash in your hot little hands, your power is now boosted for fire damage by 16 (+5 fire affinity, +5 magic power, +3 trait, +3 skill)! Not bad for level 3. I'm going fireball and probably heroism or pressed attack at level 5. will likely take lifedrain after that, then not sure. archery maybe. - yes, went pressed attack, adds 100 points of damage minimum, and it's especially useful if you are fighting another hero, and are using the staff of Sandro to heal your puppies. heals about 6 a turn, if the unit you cast pressed attack on gets a morale boost; plus is free, and boosts blood rep. excellent. Much more useful than heroism, since we are focusing on ranged attack and using puppies as meatshields mostly.



Eventually, I'll need tactics, but right now the early enemies do not require it. Oh, and pathfinding appears to be not only broken atm, but broken such that it does exactly the REVERSE of what it is supposed to do! Don't take it, whatever you do. I tried it out in the Crag hack expansion much to my chagrin.



mistake number one: do NOT take immolation, unless you want to give up the idea of controlling units with your lillums. had to backtrack to before a hard battle to learn that one.



start needing tactics around level 7-8, so took that. Had to bite the bullet and take regen at level 8. became too slow to battle without losses otherwise. Man, playing these guys requires way more planning and thought than any other faction, hands down! It's more like chess than war... Speaking of which, I chose slow for level 9. Again, since it is about controlling the battlefield, the opponent heroes often have units with faster init than your lillums, and if you can slow these, they don't get the chance to act before your lillums can sweet talk 'em. Plus, you can cast slow every round, and it only costs 10 mana.



Reached level 1 blood. Inferno is less than impressive, especially given the cost of it. It really should do exactly double the damage it actually does, but I would settle for even 50% more damage. *sigh*



There is ONE thing about Inferno... because you have a way to paralyze enemy units indefinitely, all you need is a few non mana using tear or blood skills (like heroism, or pressed attack for blood), and if you have the patience, you can essentially give yourself full rep points in a single battle. I equipped rep boosting pauldrons, but even then, takes more patience than I can muster Still, entirely doable if you have an hour or so to kill, clicking buttons on the battlefield.



BIG EDIT:



THERE IS A BUG ON MAP 2 OF THIS CAMPAIGN:



DO NOT CHOOSE a magic hero for this campaign. This map, map 2, entirely bugs out if you do (with latest patch: 2.1.1). Your power levels will not influence magic damage whatsoever, not for your troops, not for spells. No matter what you do. Only your absolute level affects magic damage on this map, and even then, only for your spells. Why? who the hell knows. It's the only map I have run into where this happens. Might damage, OTOH, works just fine. So, unless you like gimping yourself, recommend not using a magic-based hero.



Edit2: Turns out this is not a map issue, but an issue with the Staff of Urgash, and not so much that, as that any staff that has magic school affinities built in causes this problem where magic power levels end up being nullified. so, sadly, if you want to play magic inferno, you have to avoid using the very staff that was designed FOR that. I noticed the same issue with the Batu's totem staff, which has earth affinity built into it. Watched the char that was using it lose power effects on a daily basis. my guess is that it essentially subtracts "5" from your effective magic power every day, until it flatlines at the minimum you would have for your current character level, regardless of what you have equipped, or any boosts you have gotten. AVOID USING AFFINITY STAVES!!



*sigh*
Edited on Fri, Aug 16 2013, 19:09 by Sir_Toejam

[Sir_Toejam]

I tried jaga's strategy with my game, patch 2.1.1.

no good. starting with frenzying the dogs worked fine, but then her troops get too much morale from the mass heroism, and you can't predict which ones will end up where with alll the double moving. the juggernauts rarely were in a position to do damage to anyone. I did get some mileage out of frenzying the tormentor stacks though. Also, the rock arrangement must be different, because there is no way to prevent large gates popping next to you by staying in the lower corner. OTOH, I found the gated stacks actually helfpul a lot of the time. they made good blockers, did less damage, and let me retaliate for damage a lot. other than that, just dodging the doggies until they were down to under 300 or so, then easy smackdown.

oh, and don't waste a turn marking anything other than the dogs, unless you really have nothing else you can do. you're usually better off blocking even.

[pgm27]

Same for me. Except that Xana casts Mass Burning Determination, meaning double attack per turn for every stack. The only location were I could block the dogs is the lower left corner. Problem is that Xana creates portals at the upper left, generating packs of 300 succubus while only 70 remains in the original stack (bug ?). Anyway, avoiding the dogs doesn't help. I got killed by the rest of Xana's army anyway...

[Sir_Toejam]

yeah, after the second turn or so, once you have drawn most of the movers down to your lower corner, move to engage the breeders up top for a turn or two, this will vastly reduce the number of ranged units damaging you. once the movers get close again, bounce to the opposite side (still up top) and cast your fire spell. then bounce back down to where you started again. that should do it. then, as I said, if it looks like you will be attacked by any other stack than the dogs, block instead of doing anything else. your retalliation strikes are where you will do most of your damage.

[Sir_Toejam]

There is also a unique building in towns, Heart of Urgash, that increases the Gating meter.



actually, as of some patch previous to 2.1.1, the heart increases the stack size you get when you gate, instead of increasing the bar itself. Dynasty trait "fanatic" or the pendant of mastery are the only two ways I can think of to start off a combat with at least level 1 gate bar, and I'd say starting off being able to gate is more important to this faction than the equivalent skill is to any other faction. so much so I keep thinking they should change the heart back to the way it was before, AND have it also increase gating efficiency, though with diminishing returns with each additional heart.

[Ninja]

Playing the campaigns the second time (Hard):



Most important skills for creeping: Regeneration, Reinforcements (on dogs at start of most combats), Ambush, Tactics, Pressed Attack (scales with hero not army and costs no manna).



Affinity staves are bugged (magic staves with lower manna for fire/light/etc.) -- you lose the benefit of previous +magic power if you load a saved game with the staff equipped. No loss if you unequip before saving. Not a problem with might staves.



Final boss battle in mission 1 is hardest in campaign. As of final patch, marking does NOT work. Frenzy only works if two enemies are adjacent, but the frenzied stack will always attack the adjacent enemy even if next to you. After losing several battles, best on-line advice I found is start by frenzying the Juggernauts and hope the dogs hit you in turn 1 with an extended attack (if they cross 1/2 the map then get a second move from high morale it's only 1/2 damage). Any creature attacking you in final battle takes double damage from retaliations. Avoid the dogs thereafter until the end. Try hitting every other stack once for permanent +10 luck for the battle -- especially gated stacks. I tried to destroy gated Jugger stacks before they popped, as they are very large. "Defend" is a good command if you don't have to move to avoid the dogs, as most damage is through your retaliations anyway.