Sanctuary 4

[Ell1e]

This mission seems to have been changed a lot with patch 1.2. The "We come on peace" mission fails even if you take over the neutral town or a Haven town captured by Inferno, so if you want to finish the quest you'll have a lot less towns to work with. The Inferno hero Nebiros is active with his huge army (for the sake of my pride, please tell me that army size was increased too, he actually killed me once) and now that I've finally gotten rid of him with only small losses, Gerhart seems to have grabbed all the troops from his towns because he appears as "deadly". The good news is, the garrisons of doom are empty. Probably because they're in Gerhart's army.

Any tips on this mission post-patch? I'll probably grab the Haven towns because "We come in peace" finished when I walked up to Gerhart's town and then camp outside for a couple of years, but that's boring and takes a long time.

[Kelben]

Yes, this mission is more... "dynamic"

If you have beaten Nebiros then at least, inferno should not be much of a threat now.

[ywhtptgtfo]

Yes, this mission is more... "dynamic"

If you have beaten Nebiros then at least, inferno should not be much of a threat now.

I played the mission pre-patch and the Infernos were garrisoned with like 4k succubi within months. I guess they fixed that?

[Ell1e]

They certainly changed a lot of things with this mission. I never played it pre-patch, so I can only compare it to the walkthrough.

First of all, if you're on the Tears path, taking the neutral Haven town will make you lose the "We come in peace" quest even if you choose the Tears option. This also applies to Haven towns controlled by Inferno. This puts you at a pretty big disadvantage, especially because the Blood path seems to have a different quest.

The giant armies in towns G and H are completely gone. I even saw an Inferno hero take over town G and he wasn't that strong.

As for the Inferno garrisons, I don't know about town D because Inferno and Haven kept stealing it from each other - Haven would defeat the hero and grab the town, then Nebiros would charge in and take it back, only to leave the town undefended. It was a never-ending circle of weirdness and it got even better when I took the town just long enough to convert it. Town E had a pretty huge garrisson but no hero since I killed Nebiros before.

It looks like the enemy heroes can't convert towns in this mission. The last town Inferno had left was a Haven town, so Malik ended up attacking my towns with a Haven army. I also ran into a pretty weird army after the Breeder Queen was gone, Nebiros had single digit stacks of everything except for Breeders. She had about 650 of those.

My original plan was to take over all the towns, but that didn't work as planned. The hero for town H was that guy who'd kept Irina prisoner in Sandor's first mission and he had a talk sign over his head. When Irina walked up to him, a dialog window opened but there was no voice acting, the text didn't move forward and I couldn't click "next" either. I just skipped the box but I couldn't attack him. His secondary hero was always patrolling between the town and the border for whatever reason. Never attacked me or anything.

[maltz]

Hm, what is the post-patch reward of the "We come in peace" quest? If it is not very important, you may as well just take the towns so you can survive the mission.

Or how about the way that always works - wait until you get a big army and then crush it? The CPU's army usually grows slower than yours.

[Ell1e]

Experience points only I think. Ironically this means your reward is worse than if you pick the Tears option for the neutral Haven town, at least you'll get an artifact there.

By the time I'd grabbed the remaining Haven towns, Gerhart showed up as yellow, so I defeated him. For some reason his army wasn't even that huge. I should have been able to defeat him when I first reached his castle. Maybe he split his troops with the second hero or something?

Then again, I'm starting to think the difficulty is somewhat messed up. I had a town in a different mission defended by two heroes. When one of them was outside, both heroes appeared as trivial, when they both were inside the hero inside the town appeared highly dangerous.

[FreshHope]

Ell1e, i completed this map recently at hard difficulty, and Maltz's walkthrough definitely has given a good headstart, despite it being pre-patch.

With patch 1.2, it seems that the gigantic armies for Haven have all been removed, but i cant be sure if Nebiros' armies have been boosted. I'm also surprised Nebiros is commanding quite an intimidating army, both on him and at Town E. But there is a trick...

It seems that the AI is programmed to attack Town D as a high priority. When i realized this, i just stood far enough beyond their reach and see them slog it out, battle after battle. It doesnt take long before one side is severely weakened, and in my case, Haven. Inasmuch as i want to stay in the course of Maltz's suggested order of conquer, i simply find Town F too tempting to let go, and thus it was F, D, E for me. It is likely that you will lose Town D once or couple of times to Nebiros, but that is an excellent way to wither down his huge stacks at Town E, giving you a perfect victory when the time comes.

As for the Tears quest, as suggested by all, i just let it fail, the artifact reward is not a biggie, but the troops you can use from owning it is a biggie!