Unique Noob Question...Do I even have the game?

[Magelord]

Sorry for the ambiguous post. By my estimation it will be possible for others to have this problem from time to time as well so I made it an actual topic.

Most on these boards wont remember me but I have been a Heroes fan since the days of the Astral Wizard and the 90's. I only dropped off the radar because I refused to purchase Might and Magic Heroes VI outright for two reasons. First they got rid of Black Dragons (Absolutely unacceptable!) Secondly DRM (Nuff Said!) However with the advent of Shades of Darkness I was willing to meet them half way with the DRM and yet that may have been another failed endeavor on my part.

My Problem:
OK so down to business I purchased the CD key for Shades of Darkness at my local Gamestop thinking this will be easy, just go home download MMH-VI-SoD and start playing. The download and install went well with no problems and the game opens up ok. The problem is I see no indications that this game I downloaded is in fact the Shades of Darkness game! By all indications it is only Might and Magic Heroes VI! I have provided a screen cap of the opening screen for review. So my question is what can I look for in the game interface or any other possible indication that will show me any Shade of Darkness image at all so that I at least know I have the correct game! If it is only MMH-VI then I simply refuse to invest a single second into the game until I know my beloved dungeon faction are present (For the record I know I am being utterly ridiculous on that point. ^^)


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[Magelord]

Update!!!

Good ol ElektroDragon over at http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showth ... p?t=190813 seems to have the answer to why this situation has occurred. Because Ubisoft released all this content at the same time confusion has ensued!


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From Elektrodragon:
Alright guys, if this helps even one person, my effort is worth it. Ignore my posts above.

I now have: Original Campaign working, Shades of Darkness installed, all other DLC I bought still there, NO MISSING content, NO missing audio, all SoD pre-order bonuses in place, no lost saves, no Nvidia crashes!

I originally had a retail copy of plain Heroes VI that I had expanded with the two DLCs and patched to 1.8.0.
I pre-ordered SoD a few weeks ago, and yesterday received the availability e-mail that contained the DRM key for SoD.
Yesterday I was confused because SoD did not appear in my games list. Today I was even more confused when my Heroes VI icon was replaced with a SoD icon!
But I figured it out and it all works! UBI's instructions are wrong, and could get you into trouble.
The key thing here is: THERE IS NO INSTALLER for Shades of Darkness! The 2.1 patch IS the installer for Shades of Darkness.

Here are the step by step actions that worked perfectly for me:

1) Launch Uplay and verify that your HeroesVI game icon is now a Shades of Darkness game icon.
2) Launch Heroes VI from the SoD icon. Just to confirm it says 1.8.0 in the lower right. (It launch your old plain Heroes VI game.) Exit.
3) DO NOT uninstall the game!
4) Download the correct version of the 2.1 patch manually depending on whether you bought it digital or retail, your language, etc. This is 2.2 GB in size. In my case, it was the retail patch since I originally installed from DVD.
5) Run the patch installer, it should work and install without error.
6) Launch Uplay again and start the game from the Shades of Darkness tab. It will LOOK like its launching plain old Heroes, but that's fine. Lower right should now say 2.1.0 and you will have Virtuous logos instead of Black Hole ones.
7) Click on UNLOCK CONTENT from the main menu.
8) You will notice there is a new tab to unlock Shades of Darkeness!
9) Enter your Shades of Darkness DRM key from your order e-mail yesterday, after clicking on Unlock.
10) Shades of Darkness will now be unlocked, and all your pre-order content will be in place. You will have no issues with lost campaigns, maps, saves, or missing audio. Everything should work as expected, it did for me! On the main campaigns screen you will see the two new Shades of Darkness campaigns after unlocking. One for the Dungeon campaign, the other one is Necropolis 2.

Also, don't buy this game from Steam, buy it straight from UPlay. Steam will launch UPlay anyway. The UPlay version works great with my steps above. The Steam version is completely borked. That's what happens when you have two DRM systems and two digital distribution systems layered on top of one another.

Hope this helps someone!!!

[Naki]

Um, a screenshot of the "Unlock Content" screen, please?
You most probably can access SoD there.
Although the game appears to be the original/vanilla Heroes VI, SoD is still playable from this.

[Magelord]

Um, a screenshot of the "Unlock Content" screen, please?
You most probably can access SoD there.
Although the game appears to be the original/vanilla Heroes VI, SoD is still playable from this.

Sorry mate, after I downloaded the 2.1 patch the SoD icon finally appeared so I cannot take a current screenshot that will show it missing again. But trust me it was not there before and Ubisoft has confirmed this on there site as well. Had I not downloaded the 2.1 patch I would not be playing SoD now.

[Naki]

Um, a screenshot of the "Unlock Content" screen, please?
You most probably can access SoD there.
Although the game appears to be the original/vanilla Heroes VI, SoD is still playable from this.

Sorry mate, after I downloaded the 2.1 patch the SoD icon finally appeared so I cannot take a current screenshot that will show it missing again. But trust me it was not there before and Ubisoft has confirmed this on there site as well. Had I not downloaded the 2.1 patch I would not be playing SoD now.

Oh, so you had 1.8 patch then! Sorry. Yes, 1.8 version lacks the SoD content, so you can only unlock it AFTER updating from 1.8 to 2.1.

[Magelord]

Oh, so you had 1.8 patch then! Sorry. Yes, 1.8 version lacks the SoD content, so you can only unlock it AFTER updating from 1.8 to 2.1.

Correct!

Although I am not able to enjoy the game still,
my screen is too dark....