The Warlock → The Cultists

[maltz]

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/596

[maltz]

Thanks for the great walkthrough! Just a few minor points here:



1). There are five islands on the ground level; each can be accessed by a two-way portal in the underground level. Each island contains one stat bonus. One of them has a Witch Hut and another contains a Sylvana Ancient (level up tree).



2). On patch 1.2 heroic the enemy heroes start at level 22, and will come towards you starting on Day 1. All of them cast lv 5 spells possibly as an inherent AI bonus. I made an effort to survive their initial wave of assault.



3). Town 3 and 4 are usually the best-built AI towns. So it is really nice to take them first as suggested by Infiltrator. I usually leave Town 5 last.



4). The Inferno heroes come when you own 2, 4 and 6 towns. They try to ignore town 1 and 2 when Raelag is not around. So once you've secured one side of the portals, you can also send Shadya out to the other direction to capture towns. You should be able to squeeze the blue to only 1-2 towns left in the first month.
Edited on Thu, Aug 10 2006, 07:50 by maltz

[Lady Farquad]

I only found 2 islands... I thought I had swept the entire map... Are those portals random?

The third portal takes me to a location underground unaccesable otherwise with chests and neutral stacks
Edited on Thu, Aug 10 2006, 11:53 by Lady Farquad

[maltz]

The portal transfers seem to be fixed. You are right that there is a 6th pair of portals bringing you to a small area in the middle, with a witch hut.

[differ]

i've replayed this mission numerous times and i never get Resurrection from the Dragon Utopia. I do however keep getting Word of Light spell instead. Am i missing something here?



sigh... doesn't look like i have another chance to learn it before Raelag's Offer right?

[NickMP]

I don't know about 'little problem'! On Hard, it's a slog. As you say, if you attack on one flank they counter-attack on the other, and because you lose if either main hero goes, you have to have your defensive flank guarded by a lower-level hero recruited from a town tavern. I challenge anyone to do this on Hard/Heroic without lots of reloads.

[wimfrits]

If you are playing on heroic and has enlightenment on raelag, arcane intuition would allow you to learn resurrection from any high-level AI heroes. (Somehow they all can cast resurrection even they do not have the light magic skill.)

Don't you mean raise dead? I'm pretty sure that's what they're casting.

[DaemianLucifer]

I don't know about 'little problem'! On Hard, it's a slog. As you say, if you attack on one flank they counter-attack on the other, and because you lose if either main hero goes, you have to have your defensive flank guarded by a lower-level hero recruited from a town tavern. I challenge anyone to do this on Hard/Heroic without lots of reloads.

Why?I had just two or three really hard battles on hard.Dont know for heroic.And I didnt use tavern heroes for anything else but dwellings colecting and creature transport.

[maltz]

> Don't you mean raise dead? I'm pretty sure that's what they're casting.

On a closer look, it was indeed Raise Dead. Sorry about my mistake. The AIs in patch 1.2 loves to use them. Guess who gets punished in patch 1.3...

[Angelspit]

I'm having some problems hitting the level cap in this scenario, possibly because I shared the experience between both Raelag & Shadya (maybe I should have focused on the demon guy). Raelag was all leveled up before that scenario. Should I worry about it or just head to the final battle?

[Grail Quest]

Argh!

Found it utterly impossible on Heroic. At the end of Day 1, an Orange hero charges down from Town #1 and kills a chunk of my troops. I can take Town #1 on Day 2, but there are no reinforcements to buy there, and whether I am inside or outside a town, the hero from Town #2 couldn't be defeated.



*



Blood Furies in the beginning: On Heroic I got 115 of them, and they split into 4 stacks, in 2 groups that were 1 tile apart. I fielded only Minotaurs in a corner, and curiously, the furies Defended for 2 of their actions before moving. 4x Circle of Winter with Master of Ice finished them all off before they could hit anything.



*



Noticed the Inferno heroes appear when you capture the 2nd, 4th, and 6th cities. They beeline for the city you just captured, ignoring all heroes that are not blocking their path, and they stay in the city.



*



The Dragon Utopia gave me Town Portal! Anyone else get this result?




Edited on Tue, Aug 28 2007, 18:50 by Grail Quest

[akaihane]

I decided to try this on heroic 1.5 and I feel the greatest challenge is to do this without the use of light magic. What are the chances of getting expert light at level 18? I've played numerous times with warlock on tote and I know for a fact that the chances of getting light magic offer to you early game is almost next to 0 esp when you start off with defence. I don't like to cheat and use trainer to check if your specific game will give you light magic or not. That simply defeats the purpose of a challenge.

Anyway after numerous trial and error to know roughly when the heroes are coming , I beat this without the use of light magic.

If I was given a choice to remake my hero , I will get enlightenment-intelligence first before going for warlock's luck. Expert sorcey with erratic mana and arcane training is no brainer.



I think the most important here is surviving the first 2 weeks so I'll roughly write out how I did it.

Day 1 , park Raelag & Shadya near the surfur mine.

Day 2 , Raelag will dark ritual and shadya will take all troops but the minotaurs and assassins(thats all Raelag needs to defeat both the first 2 heroes) and move to towards the gold mine capping all the mines on the way. You should be able to do this with no loss if you had build Shadya well on mission 2. For range , just field the 2 shadow witches and slow them while your hero bomb them.

Day 3-7 , After defeating the first 2 heroes , you will have very few minotaurs left , I had about 10+. But this is fine because you will have 1 week of 2 towns creeps of scouts/maidens/minotaurs/riders and 2 weeks of 1 town creeps of hydras/dragons. YES dragons , you can build it before the end of week 1 if you do this right. Now its capping mines and taking resources time. Both your heroes are capable of taking out all the creeps with 0 to a couple of useless units loss. If you still don't know how to do that then something is wrong. Make sure you hire 2 extra heroes and use the junk units from other races as your meat shield during creeping. Have a route to ensure that you can cap town 2 on day 1 week 2 and immediately retreat from it after buying ALL the units.

Week 2 , make sure either hero is station inside town 1 on day 1 with full mana. In my game , heroes came on both sides of the portal. Also starting on week 2 , make sure you buy ALL level 20+ heroes. Use them at what warlock is best at , suicide missions with 7 random useless units. Just stay around town 1 and wait for heroes to come at you but make sure one of your heroes are near town 2 on day 7 so you can cap it again on week 3 day 1. After week 2 , it should be easy from now and you should be able to hold both towns and move forward. Have one hero stay to defend against inferno heroes and the other move to cap the other towns. If at anytime you face an impossible hero to defeat , just send your 20+ level heroes on a suicide mission to weaken them.

[RiccElijah]

I read you need Destructive or summoning or even light spells to beat this map.. so is it impossible to beat it with Enlightmen, War machines, Luck, Defense and Attack?? sholud I start the campaign from the beginning with a different skill choice?

[ahoover]

A skill that not many have mentioned that REALLY helps on this map is logistics. If Raelag and/or Shadya have expert logistics, defending the main 'island' is far easier. It also allows Raelag to hit blue quickly at the beginning of the map instead of waiting until later when the AI's heroes will have larger armies. While it is painful to have to give up having Enlightenment or Light Magic, you should still be ok assuming you have either Destructive or Summoning.

[Dharlee]

I notice that (at least on an easier game like mine) because of level limits you cannot learn Town Portal in the previous scenarios and in this one you can't (so far at least) build a lv 5 mage guild. So no hope of learning TP yet it seems. Also in my game Destructive magic was never offered so I had to go with summoning. I sure hope there is a memory mentor somewhere in the near future.



These walkthroughs are simply incredible guys. Thank you so much from a "gaming granny" who needs all the help she can get! =)

[Peredhil]

You cannot use a memory mentor in Warlock campaign or anywhere else before ToE.Unless(not sure, just guessing) you're playing original campaigns in ToE version.



Heroic 1.6

The first 16 days were quite difficult;after killing all 7 magnificent warlocks,praise the Light(magic),the counteroffensive was swift and decisive.One bug-the first demon hero could not compute the path to my castle so he just stayed in the SE corner where he spawned.Subsequently his brethren did too.The same thing happened with first 2 necro heroes in C5M1;Finally Raelag came after the horned idiots and complete the secondary objective by killing all three.It did help a little(I used Shadya to take 1 town too),but it would have been manageable even without this bug.



And yes,Utopia gave Town Portal.Twice,to both heroes.
Edited on Sun, Jul 26 2009, 05:24 by Peredhil

[Abruzzi]

Weird, i only found 3 Islands above, and i searched the WHOLE underground, no more passports. Maybe this has been edited in Patch 1.5...

[ShadowLiberal]

Ugg, I'm having a really difficult time doing this mission on Hard in patch 1.6. I made a few big mistakes in building my heroes that are starting to cost me dearly.



1) I gave Raelag Destructive and Dark magic. Destructive magic helps some, but it's just not able to keep up enough, though Warlock's luck is starting to help some. The Dark Magic on the other hand is proving useless because #1 the enemy heroes stacks are too weak to bother puppet mastering or blinding or even frenzy. Also, #2, Puppet Master is giving me a much higher initative penalty then Markal had, I guess because Markal had more power then Raelag and Shadya? Either way, by the time my puppet mastered unit gets a turn I no longer have control over it.



2) I didn't give Raelag summoning magic, big mistake. Shadya got Summoning magic, and her phoenix is single handedly making her more powerful then Raelag. I've had Shadya clearing out creatures guarding mines with an army of 1 assassin and summons. You can't do that with Destructive and Dark Magic (though you can get close).



3) I skipped Light Magic on both Heroes, and the lack of creatures after all of these endless battles (and the constant destructive magic killing off my creatures) is starting to kill me. I'm close to week #4, and the computer still has 7 heroes according to the Tavern (though their strongest hero is now a low level wizard, so maybe the heroes are finally getting weaker), while I'm so low on creatures that I've been giving all but 1 assassin to Shadya.



4) Because I'm so low on creatures (see above) I never have the strength or the numbers to advance and seize one of the other 5 towns. I've tried twice already to send Raelag & Shadya (from different routes) to seize a town, only have to quickly turn around and flee back to my base when I run into an enemy hero moving towards my base on the same path (with a difficulty rating of hard).



EDIT:



I restarted my game, and took Light, Destructive, and Summoning magic on Raelag, as well as sorcery. This build was much more powerful. Raelag's Phoenix ripped through the small armies that the early heroes attacked me with, leaving him free to aid it some with destructive magic & resurrect most of his army before the Phoenix killed everyone.



I went with Light magic and Sorcery on Shadya, though honestly I think she would have been better with Summoning magic rather than Sorcery, her lack of the Summon Phoenix spell relegated her to defense until Month 2, when she had enough army to seize town's #3 & #6 while Raelag defended the area around town #4 & #7.
Edited on Mon, Oct 03 2011, 22:45 by ShadowLiberal

[VAMPSVSZOUNDS]

right now,I have 3 heroes with ONE ASSASIN:Raelag,Shadya,and a secondary.Lol.Barely survived the Yrbeth fight,with 1 turn to spare.



edit:the second-last big hero clash ended in my victory with,you guessed it,1 assasin.This time though,I captured my 2nd town,and the demons are out too.However after this final hard hero is out,I'll be able to put up a decent fight,especially as I've hired Yrbeth,so now she can help out in mine flagging.
Edited on Thu, Dec 08 2011, 15:35 by VAMPSVSZOUNDS

[Wolf13]

Played this map on hard years ago and it was a bit challenging but OK.

Now with 1.6 I'm starting the campaigns on heroic and considering this mission as impossible.

I'm starting the mission and have two tough fights with the two first heroes, but it cost nearly all my starting troops, that I have left 6 Assasins and around 20 Minotaurus (beside the 30 Maidens, but they survive in a fight against another hero only 1-2 rounds).

It is day 3 and I captured the 2 towns, but the next blue heroe is awaiting north of the north town and on day 4 the next two heroes of blue are coming from the south with armies the size I was able to beat, but not without losses and my pool of troops is empty, that I can with luck win one battle, but not 3.