Let's Play After the Storm

Share and discuss strategies for playing the game, and get help and tips from other players.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

The final scenario of Part II!
E2 S11 – A Final Confrontation
Image

Image

Image

Turn 1

Image
Well, we’ve got enough gold to take over Irdya, but since clicking a zillion units across the map isn’t my idea of fun (though fans of the campaign Northern Rebirth may disagree ;) ), I just recall my ghostly undead, plus a shyde for healing and bat for scouting.

Turn 2

Image
Elynia recalls the remaining spectre and joins the main group, while Durvan baits a demon zephyr without getting in range of the ghast.

Turn 3

Image
We continue advancing, and this time Durvan lures out a ghast.

Turn 4

Image
The ghast happily starts chewing on Durvan, but a couple backstabs quickly dispose of the ghast and save Durvan from getting completely digested.

Image
We put a spectre on the village and hope it survives the zephyr and ghast.

Turn 5

Image
The spectre made it… barely.

Image
The nightgaunts happily clear them out with backstab. Elynia then gets on the village to bait out the remaining zephyr.

Turn 6

Image
Anya finishes the last zephyr, and now this corridor has been nicely cleaned out. Time to see what’s beyond those doors!

Image
Just the usual, nothing to write home about. We leave the other two doors closed so that the drones will only have 1 hex available to attack us.

Turn 7

Image
Then when it’s our turn we open another door so the nightgaunt can skirmish around and backstab the drone. These doors are really handy!

Image
The second drone meets a similar fate. The southwest lake is just a dead end, so everyone heads northeast.

Turn 8

Image
Heading north through the corridor we come across a chaos lorekeeper leader, whose hobby is breeding imps.

Turn 9

Image
We begin working on reducing the local imp population.

Image
Durvan attempts to kill a demon but doesn’t do so well. I really should have used the spectre instead.

Enemy turn:
Image
Ohhh wait, I forgot Durvan has a good chance of killing these imps in retaliation, and they start chain attacking him walking corpse style.

Image
Argh, just leave the imps alone, Durvan! You’re no Mal Keshar.

Turn 10

Image
Whew, that was really close. That’s the last time I’m putting Durvan on the front lines.

Image
We start killing of enemies with the help of our skirmishing nightgaunts. A nightgaunt eagerly backstabs another imp to death…

Image
…except it turns out he was overeager and accidentally got in range of the lorekeeper leader. :doh:
Elynia slowed the invoker, and only afterwards did I notice my mistake. The vampire bat offers himself up to potentially distract some enemies.

Enemy turn:
Image
The lorekeeper goes straight for the nightgaunt though, obliterating it in an instant.

Turn 11

Image
And the stupid bat died too. The good news is, now the lorekeeper is on 40% defense and we should be able to kill him from 2 hexes.

Image
We zap the automaton, so now we can use the southern hex and the surviving nightgaunt can skirmish around and use the eastern hex.

Image
Sadly, the spectre and nightgaunt got slightly unlucky and the leader barely survives.

Enemy turn:
Image
The leader runs off to his keep, but this allows three enemies to gang up on the last nightgaunt, who tragically died after taking full hits from the invoker and several hits from the other two units as well. Sigh, that’s the end of our backstabbing fun :(

I would say that I should have leveled some extra nightgaunts, but at the rate I’m killing them I doubt they would have lasted very long anyway.

Turn 12

Image
We continue clearing out nearby enemies, and this time I remembered to check the range of the leader.

Turn 13

Image
The enemies gang up on Anya and the lorekeeper leader unwisely moves to a nearby village to heal.

We clear out the enemies blocking the way…

Image
…and exact our sweet revenge!

(skipping turn 14)
Turn 15

Image
Everyone heads north and we spot the other leader who is busily manufacturing automatons, which are the definition of annoying with their low damage but very high resistances.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I even resort to getting a couple lawful faeries for support. Their damage is pitiful, but at least it’s magical, and they are also very durable and can fly. It turns out that Forest Spirits can fly over unwalkable chasms but Dryads can’t, yet another reason why forest spirits are just so much better.

Turn 16

Image
The faeries try to help out by frying some automatons, though slightly warming them might be a better description based on how much damage they’re doing.

Image
About halfway through clearing out the automaton horde, I come to the realization that this would have gone much faster if I’d recalled some fugitives for impact damage.

Turn 17

Image
The automatons kindly help us out by attacking the spectre and getting whittled down in the process.

Image
We manage to finish off most of them.

Turn 18

Image
The enemy leader is looking a bit cold standing in his castle, so the faeries pay him a visit and start setting him on fire.

Image
The faeries actually did quite a bit of damage, so Anya and some spectres were able to finish him off.

Turn 19

Image
The crystal opens the path to the west.

Image

Turn 20

Image
Everyone heads west, where a couple mechanical goliaths are hanging around.

Turn 21

Image
With their pathetic damage output, they are more obstacles than anything.

Image
Elynia then moves to the keep and recalls another forest spirit.

Turn 22

Image
Elynia explores the center of the chamber…

Image

Image
Probably Durvan’s stomach growling?

Image
I don’t think I like the looks of these things.

Image

Image

Image

Image
Our units take a look around, but there doesn’t seem to be anything here….

Turn 23

Image
Whoa! It looks like he’s grown a bunch of… tentacles or something?

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
He helpfully provides some additional clarification.

Image

Image

Image
Most of our units can’t fly over chasms; the only ones who can are the spectres and forest spirits. And the nightgaunts would have been able to, if they were still here...

Image
We stay back and try to lure the zephyrs toward us. The spires can instantly kill any unit adjacent to them, making it inconvenient to fight near them.

Turn 24

Image
Sadly, only one zephyr decided to come over; we just kill it and continue waiting around.

Turn 25

Image

Image

Image
Wait, I don’t like where this is headed, I’m starting to see an alarming pattern among leaders in this campaign….

Image

Image
More importantly, someone needs to save our 1200 gold.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Now Elynia can reach Mal Hekuba, if we can get those pesky zephyrs out of the way.

Image

Turn 26

Image
There are still a bunch of zephyrs flying around, so we’ll try to get rid of most of them first.

Turn 27

Image
The zephyr fleet attacks, and we’ll try to kill as many as possible, though it will be difficult since we don’t have that many hexes to attack from.

Image
We even use the hexes next to the spire (which can instantly kill any adjacent unit) to finish them off quicker.

The forest spirit duo whittles down the remaining zephyr but their damage is too pitiful to finish it. Now would have been a really nice time to have a skirmishing unit. Like a nightgaunt.

Turn 28

Image
With most of the zephyrs gone, Elynia finally gets a clear path to Mal Hekuba. This… is maybe not such a bright idea?

Image

Image
Well, you never know until you try.

Image
Oookay... I’m thinking that now would be a really good time to leave.

Image

Image

Image
Augh, my eyes!

Image

Image

Image

Image
Well, he sure doesn’t seem too upset about this whole thing.

Image

Turn 29

Image
The next few turns are just waiting around killing off the zephyrs and drones he recruits, while Mal Hekuba provides friendly encouragement.

Turn 30

Image

Turn 31

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Oh great her again, just what we needed.

Image
Hey, look who's back!

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Turn 32

Image
We moved our units south last turn so the spectres could reach Ivyel in one turn. Eldulas actually makes himself useful by shooting down a drone in the way.

Image
And now our killer spectre trio has a clear path to Ivyel!

Image
The spectres got some nice damage in, but Ivyel barely survives with 1 HP remaining.

Enemy turn:
Image
The poor spectres! Mal Hekuba obliterates one and Ivyel zaps another into oblivion.

Turn 33

Image
But now Ivyel is so low on health that even a forest spirit can just punch her to death.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Wait, where did everybody go?


Image
Losses: 2 nightgaunts, 2 spectres, forest spirit, bat
Restarts: none
Cutscene – Fate
Image
Well, that’s convenient!

Image

Image

Image
I guess it's too much to hope for that they're just here to say hi?

Image

Image
Ohhh no. We didn’t see Elyssa at all this part and I can’t say that we missed her very much.

Image
They're from that time we should have gotten rid of her once and for all!

Image
So, about all those level 1 enemies we slaughtered…

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Ever heard of personal space?!

Image
Well, this is definitely a positive improvement from previous encounters.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Hey, give that staff back!!

End of Part II
Part II campaign stats
Image
I managed to make it through this part without any restarts!

Now to reflect on the awesome and not so awesome units in this part:

Most Useless Unit:

Image
This guy isn’t even worth the effort it takes to move him around the map. Even Eldulas the archer managed to make himself marginally useful.

Most Awesome Unit:

Image
This spectre demolished so many enemies he AMLAed twice, and he was also the only spectre to survive the final battle – so proud of him!

Most Useless Unit Type:

Image Image Image
What a huge help you all were during the final battle! :annoyed:

Most (ahem) Awesome Unit Type:

Image
Even cheaper than corpses, and also faster than corpses so you can get them to the battle to… help… sooner.

Image

Image
:whistle:
Attachments
AtS-2-A_Final_Confrontation_replay.gz
(83.84 KiB) Downloaded 679 times
User avatar
Paulomat4
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 730
Joined: October 16th, 2012, 3:32 pm
Location: Wesmere library, probably summoning Zhangor

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Paulomat4 »

Very enjoyable read again! I'm still happy whenever I see this thread resurging :D

Btw, you got any plans on doing another playthrough after part III?
Creator of Dawn of Thunder and Global Unitmarkers

"I thought Naga's used semi-automatic crossbows with incendiary thermite arrows . . . my beliefs that this race is awesome are now shattered." - Evil Earl
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

Thanks Paulomat4! And it still makes me happy when I get these nice comments! I haven't really thought about another playthrough since I'm still a long way from finishing Part 3. I was thinking UtBS with the new elves might be fun, but think I should finish this one first before making any grand plans :D

Part III - Final
Opening cutscene
Image
Mal Kendria is engaged in her usual activity, which is sucking up to Elyssa.

Image

Image

Image

Image
You may have forgotten about him because he hasn't been doing much at all, but Nar-Hamoth is the other member of the Iron Triad (besides Mal Kendria and the late Mal Hekuba.)

Image

Image
That doesn't sound ominous at all...

Image
Mal Kendria is a little bit slow on the uptake though.

Image
Okay, more than a little slow.

Image

Image

Image

Image
Well there goes another member of the Iron Triad, which isn't much of a triad anymore.

Image

Image

Image
After a hard day’s work, Elyssa takes a relaxing bath in the Chaos Empire’s hot tub.

Image

***
(I cut out a lot of the beginning story text since it was several pages long; this is the SparkNotes version :whistle:)
I thought I could save Irdya from impending doom this time, but I failed. I failed utterly, just like I did before, and again. All I have accomplished with my recklessness so far has been accelerating the process of our destruction. Perhaps my curse was more than the pompous last words of a necromancer after all; I lost my friends, my people, my home... and my love.

“You shall witness the eventual decay and death of everything you have or shall come to love. You shall regret your actions. And you shall either be forced to end your own life, or live in perpetual suffering. That is the price for my defeat.”

Somehow the choice seems trivial now... And if the fate of Irdya states so, someone more competent will take my place and bring them to victory. And then... I’ll be remembered as a coward. A coward who deserted her friends because she could not bear causing them more harm.
As usual, the campaign begins on a happy note.
Two days had passed since our bittersweet victory in the Valley. Mal Hekuba and his creations were gone, and the blast was mostly absorbed into the collapsing portal. For a moment I had hoped none of what happened was more than just a bad dream, a nightmare.

It could not have been more real.

Anya and Durvan found me after an entire day of searching the nearby hills. I had been badly injured by the fight with the lich, and my staff was gone. Elyssa’s appearance after my narrow escape was most certainly not a dream.

Many of our men simply did not survive our underground struggle. Anya exhausted herself teleporting as many of them back to a safe location as she could within that minuscule window of time; naturally, that wasn’t enough to save them all.
The bad news just keeps piling on - Elyssa’s stolen the Ruby of Fire, almost everyone died in the explosion, Durvan is still here…
The girl remains as optimistic as usual, in spite of the grim circumstances. I don’t think I can understand how she manages to do this after all we’ve been through together.

She suggested that we return north to rejoin Elorran and decide our next move.

I know I need to recover Argan’s journal more than anything; the information contained within it is most likely vital. Valen has not spoken a word about it yet, however, so at best we can hope that Elorran’s many informants—throughout Uria’s domain, and even Irdya—have gathered enough intelligence on Uria and Elyssa’s plans by now.
Well, let's go see how Elorran and his rock collection are doing.
E3 S1 - Beyond her Smile [size=90](A Light in the Darkness)[/size]
Image
A free loyal druid already? Things are off to a great start! Oh and we get a couple crappy fighters too.

Another nice thing is that our heroes retained their experience and AMLAs from the previous part.

Image

Image

Image
Elynia's become rather gloomy these days, and can't seem to go 2 seconds without saying everything is her fault.

Image
I vote Anya for leader. She's not only great at zapping things, but also skilled at giving pep talks.

Image

Image

***

Image
Wait, why did we end up in this weird cave? And what's that stuff on the ground?

Image
I shouldn't have asked...

Image

Image
Elynia and Durvan bash in an innocent door and head outside.

Image

Image
Their comments are not particularly comforting.

Image

Image

Image
Looks like the Chaos Empire has gotten here first, and they are busily slaughtering all of our allies. They are even killing the poor rocks!

Image

Image

Image

Image
Sounds like a plan to me!

Image

Image

Map layout:
Image
Almost all of the villages are on the left side of the map, so we'll first get rid of the two western leaders, and then double back to get that faraway leader in the northeast corner.

Turn 1, First Dusk

It's time to take our revenge by crushing the enemies with a massive undead horde!

Image
:doh:
Ohhh right, without the ruby of fire we’re stuck with these guys again…

Image
We recall the 3 loyal elves and start recruiting random stuff.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Our allies proceed to get slaughtered even faster than what’s usual for Wesnoth allies.

Image

Image
Yeah, I like her attitude! If this happened to any other leader, who knows how many weepy diary entries we'd have to read.

Image

Image

Turn 2, The Short Dark

Image
(Well I’m sure that made Durvan feel warm and fuzzy inside.)

Image
The main focus will be feeding XP to the loyal elves, since the other units are pretty useless. Okay, the elvish fighters are also pretty useless, but at least they’re not demanding money all the time.

The loyal druid picks up some good experience by finishing off the level 2 blood imp.

Image
Anya zaps the other enemy and we spend all the remaining gold on more assorted recruits.

Turn 3, Second Dawn

Image
A demon zephyr flies over and makes another generous donation of XP to the druid.

Image
Everyone else just stands around waiting for the nearby enemies to come. There are some nice fortifications along the outer wall, which we can use to form a defensive line.

Image
On the enemy turn, the northwest leader runs off like the coward he is.

Image
Another unfortunate leader comes and replaces him.

Turn 4, Second Morning

Image
Some enemies tried to attack, but the ninja poacher in the fort was too quick for them.
Since it’s day we’ll have the lawful sprites start cooking things, starting with the annoying imp hogging the northern castle hex.

Image
And that’s about all we can do now since outlaws during the day are just a waste of space.

Image
We just form a solid line along the outer wall, taking advantage of the castle hexes and our high HP leaders.

Turn 5, Second Midday

Image
The sprites continue working hard, since the outlaws sure aren't helping much.

Our top priority is killing chaos invaders since they are the most damaging enemies by far.

Image
Nalan picks off another invader in the usual elvish fashion, which means shooting at them from afar with a bow since they’re too cowardly to fight in melee.

Turn 6, Second Afternoon

Image
Since it’s still day the enemies didn't manage to do much. We’ll just pick off some of the wounded enemies and stay in a line.

Image
We fried another invader in the south, and since Durvan can’t even finish off a wounded chaos raider he has to call in one of his useless poacher friends to finish the job.

Image
In the south a couple outlaws go to shield the druid, ranging some imps while they’re at it.

Then in the north a thug mauls a demon, and the dying poacher will just run off to heal.

Turn 7, Second Dusk

Image
Things are starting to look a bit dangerous now, as the Long Dark is coming and we’re getting surrounded.

Image
Anya finishes a dying invader and we have all the sprites fry something, since after this turn they’re going to be pretty useless.

Image
We maintain a solid line and put some fodder footpads at the corners of the formation, hoping that their high evasion will help them soak up some attacks.

Turn 8, The Long Dark (1)

Image
Massive explosions seem to be a disturbingly common occurrence these days...

Image

Image
So proud of the two fodder footpads who successfully held the line!

Our main targets for elimination this turn will be the two experienced demons, since a demon leveling and healing is not really what we need right now. Since they have 50% defense on flat terrain, magic is the best way to take care of them.

Image
Anya tries to finish the demon in the south but doesn’t manage it, while Crendil picks off an imp in the usual elvish manner.

Image
Elynia manages to fry the other demon though. A thug in the castle and Durvan try to hold the line in the north.

Turn 9, The Long Dark (2)

Image
Sigh, looks like the grand council is having even more problems than usual.

The good news is, the enemies here are starting to thin out. We’ll just continue picking off the dying enemies.

Image
Also, we’ve been very, very lucky this scenario. We lost a poacher last turn, but no one really misses him.

Image
We continue having the elvish fighters hone their archery skills by picking off dying enemies.

Image
Anya gets in front to act as a shield, zapping a demon and getting an AMLA in the process.

Image
I also stick an expendable sprite in the left corner of the line, to prevent the fighter from being attackable from 3 hexes (the enemy leader is also in range).

In the north the healthier outlaws try to get on good terrain, forming a line and hoping for the best.

Turn 10, The Long Dark (3)

Image
We lost a thug in the north last turn, but he wasn't experienced so no one is crying over him. Things are looking good now that the enemies are almost gone.

Image
So proud of Crendil, who finally works up the courage to use his melee attack! On an invoker.

Image
Owac the poacher finishes off a demon and is on his way to becoming a trapper! Sadly, no one really cares.

Image
Next we wipe out the 3 wounded enemies in the northern forest, getting a sprite close to leveling in the process.

Image
Anya zaps the last remaining imp and heads for the lonely leader.

Now the leaders are pretty much by themselves and all we have to do is march to their keeps and finish them off.
(skipping turn 11)

Turn 12, First Dawn

Image
First stop: this pathetic guy. Anya whittles him down while everyone else catches up.

Turn 13, First Morning

Image
The leader saves us some trouble by running right into the middle of our army, where he is finished off by the druid.

Everyone then heads north to the next leader.
(skipping turn 14)

Turn 15, First Afternoon

Image
We start whittling him down with ranged attacks.

Turn 16, First Dusk

Image
The leader runs away in terror, and we level another sprite while picking off the units in the keep.

Turn 17, The Short Dark

Image
So long, and thanks for the XP. Crendil picks off the leader (he is back to using his pathetic bow attack), leveling into a captain for leadership.

Everyone now takes a long scenic hike to the final leader in the northeast.
(skipping the next few turns)

Turn 21, Second Afternoon

Image
Nalan decides to level into a hero for the better stats.

Turn 22, Second Dusk

Image
Elynia and Anya first soften up the leader.

Turn 23, The Long Dark (1)

Image
And the druid easily finishes him off.

Image
Oh great. "Can I talk to you" is among the most ominous sentences in the English language (the most ominous being "We need to talk.")

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Durvan suggests just running away, why am I not surprised.

Image

Image

Image

Image
That's even worse than Durvan's idea!

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Advancements: elvish captain, hero, shyde, 2 fire faeries, trapper
Losses: poacher, thug
Restarts: none

Image
Attachments
AtS-3-Beyond_her_Smile_replay.gz
(56.36 KiB) Downloaded 686 times
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

E3 S2 – Return to Raelthyn [size=90](Reckoning)[/size]
It took us an entire day and then some more to arrive to Raelthyn, but the landscape along the road was hardly different to what we found in Falrore. Tortured corpses everywhere, ruined buildings, entire towns and forests burned down... It was clear that their victims never stood a chance. All capable warriors had been sent to the front lines in the southern regions and the borders of the Chaos Empire on purpose.

Our enemies were aware of this. That’s why they were awaiting the opportunity to invade the unprotected country, distracting the Grand Council with pointless skirmishes. But they couldn’t smuggle their forces in and pass unnoticed... Clearly, they had found a way to teleport their massive armies anywhere, perhaps by using that damned artifact.

In effect, I caused this.

But once we made it to the capital region, we found out that not all was lost. Or perhaps more precisely, we arrived in the nick of time.
Image
Time to see how the Grand Council is doing. Or rather, whether there's even a Grand Council at all now.

Image

Image

Image
Oh no, don’t tell me Elynia’s finally snapped too…

Image
Suddenly a necromancer shows up. I’m getting flashbacks of Zynara here.

Image
Hey, someone who doesn’t hate us! I’m liking her already.

Image
Galas seems to have had a lot of necromancer friends.

Image

Image

Image

Image
Agh the voice again, go away!

Image

Image

Image

Image
Agh, we’re under siege from gigantic mutant drones of destruction! Durvan’s idea of leaving the Great Continent seems much more appealing now.

Image

Image
If those things got here, I think morale would be the least of our problems.

Image
I see, so in other words I should just play this scenario the way I usually play Wesnoth.

Image
Hey! Undead have feelings too, you know!

Image
Yeah! Free loyals and a necromancer, but best of all is that now we can recruit undead again!!

Image
The early finish bonus would be huge, but killing all enemy leaders in less than 20 turns is not going to happen. We’ll just survive until the end of turns, and help ourselves to Torancyn’s villages to keep our income high.

Image
Image
We also have control of Torancyn’s side, which means the allies are actually going to do something this time. Still, he doesn’t need all that income (he’s not the one who has to save the world after all) so we’re going to be "acquiring" his villages at every opportunity.

Map layout (the green circles are the 4 demolisher drones):
Image
This is a very difficult scenario, as we will have to fight a battle on four separate fronts, each with an enemy leader and a demolisher drone.

The plan is to have Elynia split her army between the two northern fronts, while Torancyn manages the two southern fronts. He’ll also send some reinforcements north to help with the northwestern front, which will be a more difficult battle because there are a couple level 3 demon stormtides in the northwest.

Turn 1, First Dawn

Image
Elynia recalls the loyal elves and a bat for pillaging (he will be working very hard all scenario!), then heads toward a more conveniently located keep.

Irylean leads her little gang of loyals west. This scenario will be the ultimate test of our babysitting skills – just look at the HP bar (or rather lack thereof) on that rightmost archer.

Turn 1 (Torancyn)

Image

Image

Image
If the alternative is being stuck with stuff like poachers, I’d take my chances any day.

Image
Yeah! The prejudice against the awesome undead needs to end!

Image

Image

Image
Torancyn's side has basically the same objectives, with one noteworthy addition. I think we all know what this means.

Image
Spearmen are just perfect for our needs, being very cheap, durable (they also have 10% pierce resistance), and have high damage with firststrike.

Image
Being a spearman sure is a popular occupation in Raelthyn these days! Torancyn starts spamming spearmen – quantity and not quality is what matters here.

He also starts with good number of level 2 units scattered around outer edges of the city, which we can use to quickly get rid of the southern demolisher drones. The highly mobile eagle master heads southeast to assist with the drone there, since that is the furthest front.

Turn 2, First Morning

Image
Elynia moves to a more central keep and recruits a couple ghosts to focus on leveling, as well as some skeletons for fodder (the ruffian was a misclick and meant to be a skeleton, but don’t worry, we will put him to verrrry good use).

Turn 2 (Torancyn)

Image
The spearmen start heading off mostly to the west, but some go north and some go southeast.

Turn 3, First Midday

Image
Elynia continues pumping out fodder skeletons, and also gets a fire faerie for daytime damage and to help fry enemy ghosts.

Turn 3 (Torancyn)

Image
Meanwhile, we’ve sent several level 2s southeast, on a mission to destroy that drone. Taking down these drones isn’t an easy task, as they have 30% resistance to blade and pierce and high damage in both melee and ranged.

Image
We manage to whittle it down, though as can be seen here, attacking a demolisher drone in melee is not good for your health.

Image
Meanwhile some veterans and newly recruited spearman gang up on the southwestern drone, almost managing to destroy it.

Turn 4, First Afternoon

Image
There’s yet another drone and a horde of demons attacking in the northeast.
We send some level 1 units along with Crendil to lead them.

Image
The remaining units head west to try to help out with the mess here. Durvan starts working on one of the demon stormtides, which are very pesky with their 50% dodge and skirmishing.

Turn 4 (Torancyn)

Image
In the southeast, we have a longswordsman attack the demolisher drone. He ends up getting very lucky and finishes the drone, which was unexpected so I neglected to move the eagle master out of the way…

Image
…and in a flash of light, both nearby units are wiped right off the face of Irdya.

Image
There is no time to stop and mourn them though, as we’re now being swarmed with enemies from the southeast. Basically the job of these units here is to hold off the enemies to give Torancyn time to deal with the closer western and northern fronts.

Image
Fraldar was already dying so in a final act of heroism, he sacrifices himself to destroy the western drone.

There is no point in trying to retreat and heal Torancyn’s dying units (which would be difficult anyway with the enemy skirmishers around) - by the time they healed, the battle would already be mostly over and we need all the help we can get right now.

Image
Meanwhile in the north, Vaenceth makes Raelthyn proud, demolishing a demon stormtide with full hits!
The spearmen on the other hand fail to accomplish anything useful.

Image
And now that he’s broke, Torancyn makes a pilgrimage to go help with the southeastern front, which desperately needs reinforcements.

Turn 5, First Dusk

Image
This front is looking a bit precarious too, with our army of mostly level 1s trying to hold off a drone plus a demon horde.

The first thing we’ll do is fry those two ghosts, since they are real pests and are blocking the way.

Image
Anya and the fire faerie dispose of the ghosts, and the immortal thug levels by whacking the demolisher drone.

Image
The other units don’t manage to do much at all - look how many units it took to kill one demon!

Image
Well let’s see how the northwest front is doing… it’s not looking so great here either. In addition to the demolisher drone and the remaining demon stormtide, there’s a bunch of new enemies arriving and we’re stuck with mostly level 1s, including several loyals which require babysitting.

Image
Elynia rushes over to help, while Zynara and Nalan clear out a bowman from the forest so Durvan can start hitting the other demon stormtide.

Turn 5 (Torancyn)

Image
This small commando of units in the southeast is still holding out, but they won’t last long.

Image
The dying spearman here took a gamble to try to kill off a chaos invader – it was a success but now he is essentially as dead as a walking corpse.

Image
The western forces meanwhile are outnumbered and facing a horde of assorted enemies.

Image
Valen helps fry a drone, and we also kill a bat. In retrospect, I think a much better idea would have been to retreat across the bridge and hold the line there.

Image
In the north, Vaenceth is mortally wounded, but he’s not going to go down without a fight! He engages the demon zephyr in an epic duel to the death.

Image
Well that wasn’t very epic. Seems like his luck has run out, as he just dies without doing anything.
The spearmen then just gang up on the headhunter.

Turn 6, The Short Dark

Image
In the northeast we’ve got a couple dying units and a bunch of enemies. We’ll first try to see if we can kill off the level 2 demon.

Image
Anya zaps it almost to death so Crendil can lead a skeleton to… miss three times. I want a refund.

Image
One of the ghosts went north to recapture a village, and everyone else flocks to the shyde for some much needed medical attention.

Image
Things aren’t looking very cheery over here either. We’ve still got the drone, demon stormtide and a bunch of enemies around and to make things worse, it’s night.

Image
Elynia and Zynara try to kill some imps from the forest and we stick some expendable units in the north. Luckily we also have 3 allied spearmen available, which we can use to fill in our line.

Turn 6 (Torancyn)

Image
Are these guys blind??! Unbelievably, the level 2 chaos magus survives, and with all those invokers coming I’m not liking the look of things here.

Image
Back to the western front, which is facing a bat infestation.

Image
Death to all bats! These units make it their life’s mission to rid the world of these bloodsucking pests.

Valen is taking a small risk here, with the imp and remaining bat able to kill her with very good luck (the spearman will shield her from the archer), but the noble pursuit of a bat-free Irdya is a cause worth risking one's life for.

Image
And in the north the 3 brave spearmen help protect Elynia’s units.

Turn 7, Second Dawn

Image
Okay, there are a lot less units here than before. These units have been plagued with bad RNG but finally some luck comes in the form of the ghost getting two hits on the level 2 demon and finishing it off.

Image
We try to clear out as many enemies as we can, having every single unit attack something.

Image
In the northwest Durvan has actually been making himself very useful, hitting these demon stormtides almost every turn.

Image
Nalan finishes the stormtide, and we use Elynia (who is invincible in the forest) and some expendable units to shield the wounded units in the back.

Image
A couple loyals (who haven't done anything except hide in the back so far) head east to see if they can distract the demolisher drone.

Turn 7 (Torancyn)

Image
Yikes! The chaos magus who survived due to Torancyn’s incompetence obliterated the spearman on the village, making room for one of his invoker friends to zap Torancyn down to half health.

Image
The spearman double hits the magus, finally killing him, and then I get a bit greedy and have Torancyn try his luck against the gunner, since it's such a shame to let his high damage go to waste.

Image
No wonder Raelthyn’s not doing so well with this moron in charge. He fails to kill the gunner, while taking enough retaliation that the gunner could potentially kill him next turn.

Image
In the west, Valen runs away to heal, while a couple spearmen stay behind to occupy the enemies.

Image
In the north a dying spearman fills in the line to help distract enemies from Elynia and the ghost.

Turn 8, Second Morning

Image
The swordsman in the south successfully lured the demolisher drone away, so the northern forces can clear out the remaining enemies is peace.

Image
Anya is by far the most useful unit in this scenario, being able to jump between fronts to help where it’s most needed, so I usually save her move for the very last.

Image
In the northwest the allied spearmen are all gone but things are looking much better now.

Image
Elynia and a ghost ZOC the drone so that the other units can deal with the demons safely, and the ruffian tries to distract the drone.

Turn 8 (Torancyn)

Image
Well the good news is, Torancyn is still (barely) alive, as the gunner decided to shoot the spearman instead. Though annoyingly, the invoker which finished the spearman is now almost leveling. The ghost can reach Torancyn but not kill him.

Image
In the west the enemies have all ganged up on a spearman, but all they’ve done is get him one kill away from leveling. He tries his luck on the dying bowman (it’s not like he has anything to lose), and fortunately manages to finish it and level.

Turn 9, Second Midday

Image
In the northeast, we get a newly leveled wraith, everyone heads west to help with the drone there, and the swordsman continues to use his ninja skills to distract the eastern drone.

Image
Elynia fries the drone while the ghost continues to ZOC it and the ruffian continues to distract it. Tho other units babysit Avethan, who is reminding me of a certain other useless archer from the second part of IftU.

Image
Anya teleports southeast to zap the ghost harassing Torancyn, who can easily run away now.

Turn 9 (Torancyn)

Image
Run like you stole something! Torancyn legs it all the way over to Valen for healing.

Image
Meanwhile the newly leveled pikeman is doing an admirable job holding off chaos invaders in the west.

Turn 10, Second Afternoon

Image
The shyde heads south to slow the demolisher drone, and the others head west to help out there.

Image
Elynia just slows the drone in the west, while we wait for some more expendable units to arrive.

Turn 11, Second Dusk

Image
The shyde again slows the demolisher drone, whittling it further down so the allied units can come finish it. Torancyn has made enough money to get an eagle rider, who along with the pikeman should be able to finish the drone (after the shyde leaves, of course).

Image
Elynia slows and whittles down the western drone again; the plan is to have the ghost and bandit come finish it.

Turn 12, The Long Dark (1)

Image
The ghost can finish the drone on his own if he hits twice, so everyone (especially the bandit) cheers him on.

Image
Yeah, he did it! The bandit lives to see another day, and the ghost will be remembered for his valiant sacrifice.

Turn 12 (Torancyn)

Image
Meanwhile we will generously let Torancyn’s units take the glory of finishing the last drone.

Image
Incidentally, those were also the last of Torancyn's units.

Turn 13, The Long Dark (2)

Image
Everyone comes together for a merry gathering in Torancyn’s castle. With all the powerful enemies gone it's pretty safe now, so the remaining turns are a perfect time for XP gathering.

Turn 14, The Long Dark (3)

Image
In case anyone’s wondering where Durvan ran off to, he is actually making himself useful by babysitting Nalan, helping him pick off enemies in the northwest.

Image
We then focus on trying the level the various loyal units.

(skipping turns 15-17)
Turn 18, First Midday

Image
We leveled Avethan into a strongbow, and also level the loyal swordsman into a longswordsman, so now he has 6 movement! (He could also level into a 4 movement guard, just in case you wanted to make him completely unusable.)

(skipping to the end)
Image

Image

Image
Once again our elvish friends demonstrate their uncanny ability to arrive just as the battle is finished.

Image

Image
We've been very diligent in grabbing villages (mostly Torancyn's) all scenario, so we manage to get a pretty good carryover.

Image
The losses don’t include the units that died in drone explosions, so there were actually 31 losses – i.e. everybody except Torancyn and Valen.

Image
Advancements: longswordsman, strongbow, bandit, wraith
Losses: 2 ghosts (including the one who finished the drone), ruffian, 5 skeletons, thug
Restarts: none!

Elynia’s units at the end of turn 20:
Image
With this many loyals we’ll never have to worry about upkeep again!
Attachments
AtS-3-Return_to_Raelthyn_replay.gz
(94.94 KiB) Downloaded 692 times
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

Cutscene – Reckoning
Image
After risking our lives to save Torancyn and his sorry city, he expresses his eternal gratitude to… the elves who showed up after the battle and just stood around.

Image

Image
With the world ending, Elynia focuses on what’s truly important – snooping in her ex’s diary.

Image
Ah, looks like Horo and Kyara aren't dead after all, it just seemed that way because they haven't done anything useful all this time.

Image
It's the thought that counts?

Image

Image
We sure aren't going to be getting any help from Torancyn, who doesn’t care about anything outside his little castle.

Image

Image
Bye, and don’t come back!

Image
Believe me, we weren’t counting on you.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Unable to spy on the enemies, Valen's been entertaining herself by stalking her friends.

Image

Image

Image
Oh cool, another demon lord wants to be friends - we’re very popular these days!

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Well time to go get that journal. And visit that useless orc and elf while we're at it.
E3 S3 - Amidst the Ruins of Glamdrol [size=90](A Path to Follow)[/size]
Leaving Huldnyir Hills and all the destruction in the border towns behind, we promptly found a half-abandoned guard post beside the large flooded region carved out by the great explosion in Glamdrol a little more than half a year ago. They informed us of recent skirmishes, an advancing platoon, and two refugees on a mission.

Just as Valen previously assured us, they were still alive and in one piece, at Fort Astar, and they had the journal.

Mal Keshar did an excellent job of instructing Kyara to not allow anyone else to access the contents of the journal, whatever his reasons were.
Image
She's probably just rambling in her journal again.

Image

Image

Image
That was surprisingly easy.

Image

Image
Wow, are we going to get some actual help for once?

Image
So our ally’s army is so pathetic the chaos empire didn’t even bother wiping it out. This is reassuring.

Image
I could have told you that before this conversation even started.

Image

Image
We also get control of Bardyl’s side, but this time their units and gold will carry over to next scenario (which is very difficult, so we'll actually need them), so sadly we can’t do the usual thing where we steal all their villages and fodder all their units.

One important thing to note about the gold carryover [though this may have changed in Wesnoth 1.13+] is that Bardyl and Elynia’s side each receive the full early finish bonus, which is much more than what they would normally make by waiting around since both sides have to share the villages. So finishing this scenario fast is even more beneficial than usual.

Map layout:
Image
There’s a fairly large distance between the left and right sides of the map, so our strategy is going to be very straightforward: Bardyl’s army will head straight south to deal with Karathas while Elynia’s army will go straight south to deal with Loras-Chalzerg.
However, Elynia herself will go over to help Bardyl’s army, since they have no healer or source of magical damage.

Turn 1, First Dawn

Image
Ah, one of the most beautiful sights in Wesnoth – a full keep of loyal veterans.

Turn 1 (Bardyl)

Image
General Bardyl is one of the most OP units in Wesnoth, giving level 4 leadership as well as +20% to all resistances to adjacent units of lower level. That’s +75% damage for the level 1 recruits!!
If we carefully plan his moves to lend leadership to as many units as possible each turn, our army of level 1 recruits will just wipe the floor with any enemies in their path.

Image
(The objective note kindly warns us not to get everyone killed.)

Image
Bardyl can recruit various aragwaith and orc units (the two other available recruits are spearmen and wolf riders).

His army will mainly consist of grunts for nighttime damage and spearmen for the daytime. We’ll also get a couple orc archers for ranged damage (aragwaith archers are pathetically frail), and a couple scouts/wolves for mobility. Assassins are useless here since we’ll be facing lots of drones.

Image
You can’t really go wrong with mass spearmen.

Image

Image
I can already see that working with guy isn't going to be the most pleasant experience.

Turn 2, First Morning

Image
We get some ghosts for leveling purposes and a sprite and fire faerie for daytime damage (we recruit them on the later turn since they’re fast and mobile). Elynia begins the long trek toward Bardyl’s army, which could really use a healer.

Turn 2 (Bardyl)

Image
Bardyl now begins spamming orcs, which will be able to help during the short dark.

Image
On the enemy turn, a zephyr boldly comes out to attack Anya, who promptly finishes it off. Nar-Hamoth then shows up in the southwest and starts slowly heading for Bardyl's army.

Turn 3, First Midday

Image

Image
In my experience the other demon lords haven’t been particularly competent, so I shudder to think how incompetent this guy must be.

Image

Image
Everyone else just takes a lovely hike through the woods.

Turn 3 (Bardyl)

Image
Bardyl spends his remaining gold on a few scouts (recruiting them later since they’re fast), and heads south to go lead his army.

Turn 4, First Afternoon

Image
A couple enemies begin to arrive, though most of our army is still busy admiring the trees.

Turn 4 (Bardyl)

Image
Some enemies start arriving here too, and we feed the kills to our two loyals, the spearman and wolf.

Image
We make an arrow formation with melee units in front to retaliate against the chaos invaders. Horo holds the exposed tip of the formation, since he has massive HP.

Turn 5, First Dusk

Image
Anya’s lured out a chaos lorekeeper, so our main goal will be getting rid of it.

Image
A couple melee units pound him, with Durvan killing him - we had him attack from the SE hex in order to leave room for the elvish captain to use the NE hex to finish if needed.

Image
Everyone then makes a line to prepare for the main army's attack. Durvan’s completely safe here because he’s 1 XP away from an AMLA.

Turn 5 (Bardyl)

Image
We lost a couple spearmen, but they did a good job of whittling down their attackers before they died.
We’ve got a bunch of level 2 drones and a level 2 skirmisher behind our lines, but not to worry, General Bardyl has arrived!

Image
Bardyl helps an orcish archer set fire to the rayblade, and the loyal flagbearer finishes the skirmisher for some great XP.

Image
Then Bardyl heads off to the right to help a scout finish the rayblade, and a grunt demolishes a headhunter.

Image
We then work on exterminating the wounded chaos invaders on the left.

Image
We also managed to finish off the gunman on the left, and everyone tries to make a line. Bardyl doesn’t attack since his HP is rather pathetic for a level 4 unit, and the drones have high retaliation damage.

Turn 6, The Short Dark

Image
Near-death experiences are pretty much an everyday occurrence for Crendil. Our number one priority will be to kill that drone, and we’ll also try to pick off as many nearby enemies as we can.

Image
On the left, a ghost and sprite clear out two dying enemies, and Durvan attacks the drone from a very exposed hex since he’s about to AMLA and heal.

Image
Irylean is really not being a team player here, missing two critical magic strikes against the drone. We have Anya and the fire faerie fry the bowman on the hill so the wraith can use that hex to attack the drone.

Image
Annoyingly the stupid drone just doesn’t die. Meanwhile we clear out another bowman on the left, leveling a second wraith in the process.

Turn 6 (Bardyl)

Image
We’ve lost some more spearmen over here, but in general things are going well - the enemy army’s almost gone, and Elynia’s just arrived to provide healing. Kyara starts softening up the drone in the north.

Image
Horo finishes the drone and AMLAs, while Bardyl helps the loyal spearman finish another drone and level into a flagbearer, so he can help lead units that Bardyl can’t reach.

Image
Bardyl then makes a journey around another level 2 drone, leading units along the way.

Image
We form a line and the scout tries to act as a shield, since he has slight blade resistance.

Turn 7, Second Dawn

Image
That was a scary turn! Several of our units get dangerously low on health, but luckily they manage to pull through.

Image
We feed the XP from the drone kill to the remaining ghost, and start picking off the remaining enemies.

Image
And the wraith finishes off the level 2 doom guard.
The next few turns for Elynia’s side will just be advancing south on the enemy leader, so they’ll be skipped.

Turn 7 (Bardyl)

Image
We easily exterminate the few remaining enemies with the help of Bardyl’s leadership.

Image
Our loyal wolf manages to finish a drone which Elynia had helpfully softened up earlier, and levels into a goblin knight!

Image
Meanwhile, Nar-Hamoth has finally arrived at the battle. He looks like bad news.

Turn 8, Second Morning

Image
We first deal with some stray enemies in the north.

Image
We then attack Nar-Hamoth, and find that the tales of his incompetence are very true – although it’s impossible to hit Nar-Hamoth, he’s unable to hit our units either.

Turn 9, Second Midday

Image
Bardyl’s troops begin advancing on the other enemy keep, and a couple units first try to lure out the dangerous demons guarding it.

Turn 10, Second Afternoon

Image
Once you attack Nar-Hamoth enough times, he gets bored of not being able to hit anything and leaves. Why did he even come?

Image

Image
Meanwhile in the east, a longswordsman on the village managed to lure out the enemy leader and one of his guards. The experienced ghost finishes off the guard and levels into our first shadow.

Image
We then slow the leader with the shyde and soften him up with the immortal sprite (the slowed leader does 4-4 damage so she’s guaranteed to survive).

Image
And Crendil finishes him and levels into a marshal! Hopefully he will have less near-death experiences now.

Turn 10 (Bardyl)

Image
In the west we’ve lured out some angry demons.

Image
With the help of the daylight and Bardyl’s leadership, Kyara deals massive damage to one of the demons, and a spearman finishes it off and levels into a pikeman.

Image
The other units just retreat and form a line – no reason to get them unnecessarily killed, since we’ll still be using them in the future.

Turn 11, Second Dusk

Image
The western leader came out to attack, so Elynia helps out by slowing him.

Image
On Bardyl’s turn, our loyal goblin knight gets the kill on the other demon.

Image
And the pikeman finishes the leader. A quick victory!

Image
Well you’re welcome.

Image

Image
Why are all our allies either a) friendly but useless, or b) useful but total jerks?

Image

Image
Though maybe, I should be less concerned with our allies and more concerned about Elynia...

Image
Thanks to our quick finish, we get a good carryover for both sides, which will be essential next scenario.

Bardyl’s stats:
Image
Advancements: flagbearer, pikeman, goblin knight, orcish crossbowman
Losses: 4 spearmen, 3 grunts, wolf rider

Image

Elynia’s stats:
Image
Advancements: elvish marshal, fire faerie, shadow, wraith
Restarts: A restart due to somehow managing to get Anya killed

Image
Attachments
AtS-3-Amidst_the_Ruins_of_..._replay.gz
(82.96 KiB) Downloaded 661 times
User avatar
Sapient
Inactive Developer
Posts: 4453
Joined: November 26th, 2005, 7:41 am
Contact:

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Sapient »

With the world ending, Elynia focuses on what’s truly important – snooping in her ex’s diary.
:lol: I really appreciate your sense of humor, Inky. Very nice walk-through.
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Sapient... "Looks like your skills saved us again. Uh, well at least, they saved Soarin's apple pie."
Delicius169
Posts: 189
Joined: February 16th, 2015, 5:02 pm

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Delicius169 »

Really nice walkthrought, I played this scenario about a week ago (about three times, trying to get better stats on 4scenario), and I didnt recruit with Bardyl till about 4-5 round, waiting for enemies to come. Thought, I have not feeling, your way was definitelly better, you ended up with better units and more gold.
I m really looking forward for your fourth scenario, it was a hell, the most difficult scenario in whole part 3. I played it about 7-8times, and finished it in the end with abusing save-load technic.

You inspired me to play the second and third part of this campaing, and I was really alot (in comparison to your walkthroughts) using Forest spirits, with their high resistances, unability to get poisoned/ drained, and with 47hp (resilient unit), they are better tank units than Spectres.

"The worst" thing about this campain is for me, the fact, that story is so gripping, I keep wanna know more, but I have to win battles first to know what is going to happen. Definitely the best storyline in whole wesnoth! (And I am still feeling frustrated that there is no third part of whole campain, and I dont know how is it going to end.)
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

Thanks for the comments, glad you're liking it!! :D
Delicius169 wrote:I was really alot (in comparison to your walkthroughts) using Forest spirits, with their high resistances, unability to get poisoned/ drained, and with 47hp (resilient unit), they are better tank units than Spectres.
Forest spirits are indeed really great units, probably even better than spectres. I still strongly prefer spectres though, as this campaign has lots of underground scenarios where spectres have a huge advantage. Spectres are also better for attacking the drones, which you generally don't want to attack in ranged.
E3 S4 – Outpost of Hell [size=90](Gateway)[/size]
I still remember when Uria first woke me up; her smile, her kindness. She reminded me so much of Elynia...

But all that has faded away with time. So much time has passed since she brought me back to life...

She still assures me she will bring new life to Irdya when the time comes, as her role as the Guardian of Life demands — she is supposed to keep our worlds on track to facilitate our progress.
We went through all this trouble to get Argan’s journal, just for this Uria propaganda?!
Many pages are missing or seriously damaged. Argan’s writing often becomes incoherent and meaningless as well, and some passages are not written in the common script. Trying to make sense of this journal will be exceptionally difficult.
And apparently that was one of the more well written entries.

Image
Anyway, we've got more important things to do right now.

Image
The man left in charge not being very bright definitely sounds like the more plausible explanation to me.

Image

Image

Image
Elynia reminds us that we didn’t come all the way here to gossip about Bardyl.

Image

Image
“Just” assist our allies?! We’ll be lucky if our allies assist us!

Image
Oh yeah! This time we’ll be the ones blowing things up! :twisted:

Image

Image
Image
Like the previous scenarios, we also control Bardyl’s side. This actually isn't the last time we’ll be using his units, so while it’s not essential to keep his veterans alive, it’s better if we can.

Image
There are six enemy leaders, and the large central keep also spawns units.

We’ve got 5 barrels at Bardyl’s starting keep and 4 barrels at Elynia’s keep [the amount of barrels you get depends on the difficulty level]. We need 6 to blow up the central pillars (this is starting to sound a lot like a math problem), leaving us with 3 extras for “alternative” purposes. :whistle:

Elynia’s troops can basically handle themselves since they have a ton of veterans and two healers/slowers. Bardyl’s army, on the other hand… is mostly level 1s, is too far away for Elynia’s army to come help, and they also have no healer so they’re going to die very, very quickly (as I found out from my ill-fated first attempt at this scenario.) Therefore my plan is to have Bardyl’s side “utilize” (ahem) all 3 extra barrels to help fend off the massive horde of enemies that’s going to come his way.

Turn 1, The Long Dark (4)

Image
As usual, we start by getting the loyals. I'll have the loyal veterans pick up the 4 barrels here which we need to save, since those units need to be protected anyway.

Turn 1 (Bardyl)

Image
Bardyl is definitely going to be doing a lot of murdering this scenario, but it mostly isn’t the chaos empire’s forces he’ll be murdering…

Image

Image

Image
A very realistic possibility.

Image
More than his leadership, It’s Bardyl’s moving inspirational speeches that truly make him a great leader.

Image
Units carrying barrels get a special overlay so it's easy to identify them. I give the 2 barrels which I need to save to the loyal units, and 3 "lucky" recruits will have the honor of carrying around the remaining barrels.

Image
By the way, you can’t give the barrels to any of your leaders or heroes, as satisfying as it would be to blow up Bardyl.

Turn 2, First Dawn

Image

Image
He’s ditching us, the coward!! Can’t say I’ll miss him terribly though.

Image
Living longer than Erathan is indeed a worthy goal. Why does Elynia get all the blame for his death though?! (Oh right, we did turn him into a walking corpse, didn’t we.)

Image
We start heading towards the nearby leader, with our heroes luring out some of the enemy units.

Image
Meanwhile the loyals pick up the four barrels, and we recall some assorted veterans.

Image
This is also my reaction to the statement that anyone would miss Durvan.

Turn 2 (Bardyl)

Image
After recalling the veterans/leveling units from last scenario, Bardyl spends his remaining gold on assorted recruits.

The orcish archers are good for killing off enemy ghosts, and the assassins can poison stuff like serpent messengers, a very durable level 3 unit that spawns from the central keep and is almost impossible to kill without either poisoning it or blowing it up.

Image

Turn 3, First Morning

Image
As usual the enemies can’t resist beating up Durvan, who gets some good retaliation damage in.

Image
We start bringing in our other units and finishing off these wounded enemies…

Image
…but instead of dying, the chaos invader transforms into some nightmarish creature!

Image
If you have any important secrets you shouldn't tell Anya, because she is terrible at keeping her mouth shut.

Image

Image

Image
These shapeshifters can be dangerous with their skirmishing and backstab, and they’re also really difficult to kill since their physical endurance ability instantly heals them for half of any damage they take, unless the damage type is arcane.

Image
There’s not much we can do about the shapeshifter right now, so we just slow it while the other units catch up. Elynia spends her remaining gold on some ghostly units which can hopefully get some experience.

Image
Anya decides to share her secret with a dying chaos gunner.

Turn 3 (Bardyl)

Image
Meanwhile Bardyl’s army advances on the nearby imp leader.

Turn 4, Second Midday

Image
Aghh! The enemy leader came out to attack, nearly finishing poor Nalan in the process.

Image
Not to worry though, chaos gunners are an extremely nutritious snack which can work miracles for your health.

Image
Nalan becomes a champion so hopefully he’ll spend less time dying now. We also advance one of the loyal skeleton archers by picking off a headhunter in the north.

Image
We slow and start attacking the leader, the strongbow finished the shapeshifter, and we start trying to level the ghosts.

Turn 4 (Bardyl)

Image
Things aren’t so easy on Bardyl’s side though. Not only is his army much weaker, but he’s also closer to the other leaders so he will have to fight multiple armies at once.

Image
First things first, we’re going to get rid of that imp leader which charged right at us.

Kyara led by Bardyl during the day approaches Mal Keshar levels of awesomeness. She conveniently leaves the imp with only a little bit of HP.

Image
The loyal flagbearer then jumps in to profit off of Kyara's hard work.

Image
The other units do not accomplish much. You know something is horribly wrong when Kyara by herself does more damage than the rest of the army put together.

Turn 5, First Afternoon

Image
Meanwhile, the loyal longswordsman picks off the leader over here, and some stray purple units start to arrive.

Image
More food for our ghosts! The other units just keep advancing south while grabbing the villages.

Turn 5 (Bardyl)

Image
Bardyl’s army isn’t having such a good time, with several units dying or poisoned.

Image
We start retreating north, killing off a couple enemies on the right while we’re at it.

Image
Meanwhile in the south, Bidash the grunt hopes to attract the attention of the enemies in the south.

Turn 6, First Dusk

Image
First we clear out some remaining purple units in the north, continuing to give kills to the ghost whenever possible.

Image
The other units just wait around and try to heal, as there are a ton of drones coming at us from the south.

Turn 6 (Bardyl)

Image
Over here, the enemies just keep coming. We'll need to do something drastic, or we’re going to get overrun. Breana the scout bravely charges into the middle of the battlefield with one of the barrels.

Image
Meanwhile on the left side, the experienced scout finishes a headhunter and almost levels (and since he is now a valuable member of our army, he will drop his barrel on the ground for a, well, less valuable member to pick up.) The other units are just going to retreat.

Image
Well, everyone except Bidash, that is.

Enemy turn:
Image
R.I.P. Bidash, the noblest orcish grunt we ever knew.

Image
Ka-boom!! He manages to take 4 enemies with him to the afterlife.

Image
And Breana annihilates five more enemies in the forest, making her the most useful scout in the history of Irdya.

Turn 7, The Short Dark

Image
Elynia’s side is getting flooded with drones, but this will just be another usual cleanup job for them.

Image
We try to level the ghost on the bowman but it doesn’t hit so we level the thug instead.

Image
Then Irylean zaps the demon zephyr and the other units make a line, with some “less important” ones filling in.

Turn 7 (Bardyl)

Image
Bardyl’s side is still in a lot of trouble, and everyone runs for their lives back to the keep and villages.

...everyone except Vigorg, that is.

Enemy turn:
Image
Vigorg dies heroically, taking down 5 more enemies with him. Sadly that was the last of our 3 extra barrels so we’ll have to deal with the remaining enemies the old fashioned way.

Turn 8. Second Dawn

Image
Our fodder ruffian’s gone but the fodder ghost got lucky and survived. Time to start the routine drone extermination.

Image
In the north a wraith killed the demon zephyr, and we then heal the wounded fire faerie by having her burn a drone. (She started at 17 HP and was guaranteed to survive the counterattack; I also made sure to use her from the northeast hex which is not adjacent to other enemies, so that I could cover her if she failed to level.)

Image
The fire faerie successfully becomes an awesome forest spirit, while our veterans in the south get to work.

Image
We manage to kill off a couple more bowmen, and form a line.

Turn 8 (Bardyl)

Image
Ugh, how is it that after blowing up so many enemies, we’re still getting swamped over here?
We’re going to have to level those experienced level 1 units fast.

Image
Kyara helps the wolf kill an ogre, leveling into a goblin pillager for its useful slowing attack.

Image
And Bardyl helps the orcish archer finish the other ogre. So far, so good!

Image
On the left we killed the invoker but failed miserably at hitting the razorbird. Since the orcish assassin’s going to die anyway, he heroically uses what’s left of his life to poison that serpent messenger.

Image
Bardyl’s side also hasn’t been getting good RNG, which certainly isn’t helping matters.

Enemy turn:
Image
Sadly, Elynia’s poor wraith gets ganged up on by an angry drone mob - he’ll be missed.

Turn 9, Second Morning

Image
One of the bandits also came disturbingly close to dying.

Image
Elynia’s cleaning crew gets to work. The experienced ghost finally levels into a wraith, replacing the one that just died.

Image
We also attempted to kill a bowman, but he lives to see another day. In the north we use the two inexperienced (read: expendable) ghosts to fill in the front line.

Turn 9 (Bardyl)

Image
Meanwhile let’s take a look at the sorry state of affairs over here. As if there weren’t already enough enemies, a few more have arrived from across the eastern river.

Image
We start off by leveling the scout after using the wounded orcish archer from the back (so we can cover him later) to soften him up.

Image
With the help of Bardyl’s leadership, the crossbowman kills a bowman and the goblin pillager destroys another bowman in the water.

Image
Bardyl then moves left to help Horo and Kyara kill some demons. A spearman and pikeman try to kill off a bowman but don’t manage it. Unfortunately we’re almost certainly going to lose the experienced pikeman now, but if we hadn’t used him as bait the enemies would have gone for the wounded loyal captain instead, and could potentially have killed him.

Turn 10, Second Midday

Image
This was exactly what we needed right now…

Image
One of our northern ghosts got zapped by the invoker and the bone shooter had a very close call. We start picking off the dying enemies with units who need experience.

Image
The other fire faerie fries a done and is on her way to leveling now.

Image
And we also shoot down a chaos invader on the left…

Image
Ugh, one of these things again. We just slow it so we can deal with it later.

Turn 10 (Bardyl)

Image
Over here, our top priority is to finish that serpent messenger, which has already devoured several of our comrades, before it heals or kills someone else. Basically the only way we can kill it is to shoot it with Kyara. She can’t reach right now, but if we count the hexes we see she’s exactly 6 hexes away so she’ll be able to attack the serpent if we can get rid of the 3 nearby enemies.

Image
Outta the way!!

Image
No more food for you!

Finally, it’s starting to look pretty safe over here.

Turn 11, Second Afternoon

Image
Argh, just as we were about to get to this leader he starts recruiting again.

We just have Elynia slow him for now, while we clear out the shapeshifter with the shadow.

Image
Everyone else advances, so hopefully we’ll be able to finish these units off next turn.

Turn 11 (Bardyl)

Image
We lost the wounded archer on the village but everyone important is still intact.

Image
Everyone finds themselves a nice village to relax in.

Turn 12, Second Dusk

Image
Poor Elynia, she’s seen better days. Fortunately the leader didn’t have much cash so we should easily be able to wipe out the few units here.

Image
The fire faerie fried the assassin in the keep, giving us a second forest spirit, and Avethan levels into a slayer. I really hope this guy ends up more useful than Erathan was.

Image
Meanwhile, our ghosts clear out the saurians in the north and the two elves and forest spirit successfully eliminate the leader.
We’ve finished off the 3 northern leaders now, and still have 3 leaders remaining in the south.

Turn 12 (Bardyl)

Image
There’s not much going on here now, but Bardyl recruits some extra fodder just in case.

Turn 13, The Long Dark (1)

Image
Now that most of the enemies are gone, our units begin heading toward the central keep, while healing like crazy.

Turn 13 (Bardyl)

Image
Our loyal flagbearer levels into a captain! Pretty soon we won’t even need that grumpy Bardyl guy.

We’ll start skipping some of Bardyl’s turns from now on, since they're mostly just marching south without meeting much resistance.

Turn 14, The Long Dark (2)

Image
We start fighting our way through the bottleneck.

Image
Avethan and the bandit did a rather poor job hitting the bowman (and got a lot of retaliation in the process), so the forest spirit had to help them finish it off.

Image
The experienced ghost tries to shield Avethan, who would be pretty much dead if he was exposed to 3 hexes.

Turn 15, The Long Dark (3)

Image
The bad news is, the chaos invader got full hits on the bandit and killed him. But we don’t really care because the good news is, the ghost in the south survived two level 2 enemies’ attacks and leveled!

Image
We have no problem clearing out most of the other enemies in the way, and start advancing to the pillars.

Turn 16, The Long Dark (4)

Image
Our forces start spreading out and killing off the pests coming out of the central keep.
Elynia hides in the forest to set up an ambush for a demon zephyr in the south, who will likely try to fry the wraith on the village.

Turn 17, First Dawn

Image
The shyde drops off her barrel in the northern pillar – it will blow up everything in a 1-hex radius at the beginning of next turn, so it’s important to make sure none of our units are next to it.

The other units mostly head southeast.

Turn 17 (Bardyl)

Image
A squad of orcs has gone to south to deal with the leader here, who came out to fry a poor, innocent little wolf. She’s walked right into our trap though.

Image
Vernar the direwolf shows her that wolves aren't to be messed with.
That’s 4 leaders down, 2 more in the southeast to go!

Turn 18, First Morning

Image
A couple level 2 enemies came over to attack, though sadly for them they failed to notice the barrel of explosives right under their feet.

Image
The barrel explodes, revealing an entrance to an area we can’t enter yet. We place two more barrels in the north.

Turn 19, First Midday

Image
You have to feel a little bad for these poor enemies, who just get blown up the instant they appear.

Image
Have you ever done something really stupid and immediately regretted it? I don’t know why I risked the shadow for no reason trying to soften up the shapeshifter; he can be killed by the shapeshifter’s arcane magical attack now (if it hits twice, but it is a commonly known law of probability that enemies always hit twice in these situations).

Enemy turn:
Image
Aw, there goes my only shadow. Maybe I should just stop making these.

Turn 20, First Afternoon

Image
We try to lure out the two remaining leaders in the southeast.

Turn 21, First Dusk

Image
The southern leader didn’t want to come out and play, but the eastern leader happily flew over to attack our wraith. We easily finish it off, with the bandit leveling into a highwayman.

Turn 21 (Bardyl)

Image
And we drop off the last of the barrels! The captain didn’t have enough movement to drop the barrel and move away, so he passed the barrel to Gash the grunt.

Tragically, Gash didn’t have enough movement to get away either.

Turn 22, The Short Dark

Image
The last pillars (along with the unfortunate Gash) explode…

Image
Agh! The chaos empire definitely needs to be stopped, their drones have gotten way too advanced!

Image
Huh, attacking that thing looks pretty dangerous... why don’t we let Bardyl’s units have a go at it first?

Turn 22 (Bardyl)

Image
We first try with the leveling crossbowman, backed by Bardyl’s leadership and protection which reduces the fire swarm damage from 5 to 4. Even then he has a risk of dying, but this is exactly why we are using Bardyl’s units and not Elynia’s.

Image
Fortunately he does some damage and levels. Since the swarm attack is based on the drone’s HP, it’s now a bit safer for other units to also come attack.

Turn 23, Second Dawn

Image
In the south, we finish off the last of the enemy leaders, which grants a small early finish bonus.

Image
The drone also recruits some units, so we have Elynia’s side get rid of them. Since none of Elynia’s nearby units need the XP, we’ll let one of Bardyl’s units finish it off so the 32 XP doesn’t go to waste.

Turn 23 (Bardyl)

Image
We manage to give the kill to the loyal captain.

Image

Image

Image

Bardyl’s stats:
Image
Advancements: Captain, direwolf rider, lancer, goblin pillager, orcish crossbowman, orcish slurbow
Losses: Well, it’s probably easier to just look at the units I didn’t get killed:

Image

Elynia’s stats:
Image
Advancements: slayer, swordsmaster, elvish champion, highwayman, 2 forest spirits, bandit, 2 bone shooters, spectre, 2 wraiths
Losses: bandit, ghost, ruffian, shadow, wraith
Restarts: a restart due to Bardyl's sorry army getting absolutely trampled.

Image
Attachments
AtS-3-Outpost_of_Hell_replay.gz
(130.38 KiB) Downloaded 674 times
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

Back to our (cough) regularly scheduled let's play...
Cutscene [size=90](Gateway)[/size]
There’s lots and lots of backstory here so hope you like reading! :eng:
Argan wrote:Uria has gathered much knowledge through her most devout followers, sent to the outer worlds seeking any information she may require. Most of what we have learned comes from the ruins in Karash, which appear to have existed for longer than life as we know it. And of course, the Seer is always willing to help once provided with the right questions by her.

It is all so convoluted, I can barely begin to understand. I remember we once believed in the Gods of Light and Darkness and such, but now...
We're still reading Argan's journal in the hopes of finding something useful.
Argan wrote:Their kind, that of the First Gods; they ruled over everything that existed and would exist for an eternity. Peaceful as they were, they lacked the means to deal with what would end that eternity. The First Struggle took place.

Amongst the few survivors there were beings of light, and beings of darkness, but only one master of the balance between both. He stepped forth at the end of the Struggle to unite the others and create their legacy; a construct none but him could access directly.

Yarae, the Protector of the Tree of Life that gave us birth; the Tree that represented the Ten aspects of his people, and from which Ten gods would come into existence to function as the protectors and ideals of all their descendants. Ten demons who would serve as the testament of the existence of the First Gods and their universe.
So there was some big fight between gods, and Yarae ended it and planted a magical tree that grew a bunch of demon gods, or something. This isn't much more comprehensible than the ramblings from earlier.

Image
Anyway to recap, we’re about to head through a portal to Kalari to meet the Demon Lord Ergea, who wants to get with the winning team (that would be us).

Image

Image
As usual, Elynia makes sure to share her gloomy predictions and past regrets.

Image
Anya should start charging Elynia for the free counseling sessions.

Image

Image

Image
And look where he ended up…

Image
That’s not a very uplifting example either.

Image
On the other hand, here are a few examples of people who do give up in the face of danger:

Image
Typical, he’s just going to sit back and chill in Torancyn’s castle while we do all the work. Maybe Durvan is secretly the smartest member of the group after all.

Image

Image

Image

Image
Most of our friends are ditching us but not to worry, we’ve still got the help of the almighty footpads and poachers!

Image

Image

Image
Predictably, these two are not going to be helping at all.

Image

Image
Argan wrote:Even in the beginning, the world of the Guardian of Fire fell apart, creating the blazing moon that would in time be known as Karash. The seed of Fire crashed into Norsula, paving the way for perpetual chaos on a dark world that was destined to belong to the bellicose beast that was the Guardian of Water, not the fair woman whose songs told of a peaceful existence on a bright land that would never be. The fate of their shared domain hung by the delicate thread of their strange mutual love-hate relationship; in time, that thread would be severed by the Guardian of Water himself by piercing through her heart with his maw.

Around the same time, a remarkably immature Guardian of Darkness would grow inexplicably jealous over Yarae’s favoritism towards her sisters of Earth and Life; for both the wielder of the Arcane Flame and the mistress of the Void had powers and physical attributes she did not. She would rebel against her creator and attempt to harness the full extent of her power, only to fail and cause the utter destruction of all life in her domain, including herself.

Meanwhile, something happened to the Tree...
These Guardians are really not doing so well at the whole ruling the universe thing. Though it turns out, they were still doing a better job than Yarae...
Argan wrote:It is said a powerful force beyond imagination possessed it and its Protector. Yarae turned against the First Gods, and fled into our universe to summon the powers of his remaining demons against his own brethren. Only three of our guardians refused the call, aware that disobeying him constituted an unforgivable sin, and that they could not stand a chance against his ire.

The remaining First Gods saw no option but to sacrifice themselves to create a new entity that could rival the traitor and his corrupted creations: Iluvia, the Avatar of the Union of Light and Darkness. She would obtain the support of the three guardians who remained loyal to the First Gods and their purpose: Uria, of Life, her sister of Earth and the Arcane Flame, and her sister of Existence and Secrets.

With their combined forces, they defeated Yarae and incarcerated him within the Great Void. Alas, the cost was too great: all the other guardians were destroyed, and so were the mortals who joined his cause—willingly or not—as well as those unfortunate witnesses of the lengthy battle between gods.
This Uria actually sounds like a pretty cool person unlike the current maniac who is trying to wipe out all life on Irdya.
Argan wrote:Our three goddesses did not have the power to repair the great damage caused. And most importantly, it was never within their abilities to resurrect the fallen.

With her last forces, Iluvia instructed them to take the bulk of the survivors to the remote worlds of Urvatha and Silida so they could continue to progress on their own in a reality set apart from the rest, created by the Guardian of Existence, and guarded by the Gatekeepers born from her many hearts.

Uria and her sister of Earth sacrificed their lives to restart the process that brought them into existence, wiping out any remaining lives along with their own, thus putting an end to the First Cycle.
Argan wrote:Life flourished anew, with the hope of a new beginning.
But the goddesses knew that it would not be the same.

The Tree is tainted with imperfection, and so is our universe: strife and chaos, death and misery.

Near the end, the goddesses saw what was coming for us; and although no-one had the chance to document it in detail before the process began, they did leave some clues.

And to ensure we would have the necessary resources to forge our own destiny, Iluvia provided us with the legacy of the First Gods: two orbs, each one holding the essences of Light and Darkness; and her own sacred body. Their locations remained unknown until relatively recently: Irdya, wherein the seed of Earth was planted, no longer tied to its guardian; Norsula, wherein the new Guardians of Water and Fire would finally find peace; and Ethea, wherein the seed of Life would prosper in solitude until the new Guardian would return to claim it.

And it is with Iluvia’s legacy that our new Guardian of Life intends to put an end to the fruitless existence to which we were doomed.
Whew, that was quite the history lesson. Time to get back to killing things!
E3 S5 – Pass of Sorrows [size=90](Gathering Storm)[/size]
Image

Image

Image

Turn 2

Image
Since this is a huge map, I go for more mobile units such as ghosts and sprites which can fly, as well as the 6 movement loyals. I’m hoping to level some of these ghosts to shadows since I got my only shadow killed last scenario. I also got a vampire bat for scouting.

Turn 3

Image
Hopefully no one got too attached to the bat because he immediately got eaten by a wolf. The poor bat just wanted to have a look around, he wasn’t hurting anybody :(

Turn 5

Image
We continue east towards a cave area, where we got ambushed by a couple dread bats. Or more precisely, the walking corpse which used to be a giant rat before attacking Irylean got ambushed by a couple dread bats.

Image
The bats make tasty snacks for the wraiths.

Turn 6

Image
We head through the cave section, picking off the native wildlife for some experience along the way.

Image
Anya starts exploring south…

Image
Oh yes, let’s come over by ourselves to see the nice pack of hungry wolves and thunderbirds, what a splendid idea! :doh:

Image
Irylean also comes over and points out a monolith way in the southeast. In retrospect, Irylean could have helped shield Elynia, who didn’t have any movement remaining…

Turn 7

Image
Thanks, Anya!

Image
Well I guess it did work out after all, since we managed to lure all these units here so we could start picking them off.

Image
We form a line, with a ghost on the left blocking the enemies from circling around behind us.

Turn 8

Image
The ghost holding the line died, but the experienced ghost successfully levels into another shadow. Hopefully these will last longer than our previous shadows.

Turn 9

Image
Everyone heads south, keeping an eye out for those wolves lurking around.

Turn 10

Image
We reach the area with the monolith, and Elynia uses the nearby keeps to get some more units, including the loyal elvish marshal for leadership.

Turn 11

Image
Elynia moves to the glyph.

Image

Image
A bunch of shadows suddenly appear out of nowhere.

Image

Image

Image
I think we gathered that much already. By the way, you might want to look right behind you.

Image

Image
The entrance to a big cave opens up in the south.

Image
First we have to get rid of these shadows, but since they were polite enough to stay put and let us go first, we can just fry them before they even get to move. A fire faerie fries one, and a ghost finishes another.

Image
Irylean zaps another shadow, and the final one gets a taste of his own medicine as a fellow shadow backstabs him to death.

Turn 12

Image
We start making our way into the southern cave, which is infested with bats and undead. Elynia also recruits some more ghosts for good measure, since these ghosts seem to have an unfortunate habit of dying.

Turn 13

Image
We start making our way into the cave. There’s a nasty ancient lich leader waiting inside.

(skipping turn 14)
Turn 15

Image
On the left, some more enemy units have arrived. Since fighting these things one by one in the small bottleneck would be tedious, we just retreat on that side to let some enemies come out of the cave.

Image
On the right we continue to make kills and advance. I got a bit overeager here though.

Enemy turn:
Image
Oops, I left a ghost in range of the ancient lich leader. See why I recruited a bunch?

Turn 16

Image
On the left, we’ve successfully lured out several enemies, which are much easier to kill out in the open.

Image
The rightmost group decides to put some distance between themselves and the ancient lich.

Turn 17

Image
A couple enemies wander to the right, while a whole flood of pests are pouring out of the left entrance.

Image
We get rid of most of the pests on the left as well as the two enemies on the right.

Turn 18

Image
We start making some progress into the cave, this time remembering to stay away from that leader.

Turn 19

Image
We’re still stuck in the bottleneck, but the end of the undead army is in sight!

Turn 20

Image
To speed things up, everyone retreats again to let some enemies come out of the cave.

Turn 21

Image
We start fighting our way into the cave again. A fire faerie levels up to Dryad for the extra frying power.

Turn 22

Image
A ghost finishes a bone shooter and levels into a wraith.

Image
We start forcing our way into the cave, with the newly leveled (but still expendable) outlaw leading the way.

Turn 23

Image
The outlaw died very quickly (as outlaws tend to do). We get revenge for him by clearing out the remaining enemies around.

Turn 25

Image
We start cautiously advancing toward the ancient lich leader. Anya scouted a bit in the south, discovering some more enemies lurking around which we’ll have to watch out for.

Turn 26

Image
Although most risks in Wesnoth can be avoided, taking down an ancient lich in a cave is one of those times you just have to pick a god and pray. Attempting to slow the lich with our loyal shyde is out of the question, as she’d have a 27% chance of dying, so we risk it with Elynia instead.

Image
Argh!! I thought you were supposed to be the useful one around here. We’re going to have to kill that ancient lich somehow this turn even if it’s risky, otherwise Elynia’s dead.

Image
Good old Anya has never let us down! She gets 2 out of 3 magical zaps in for 21 damage each!

Image
Oh no, not you too, Anya…

Image
Next up is our leveling shadow. Hopefully he has learned a lesson about dodging after watching these other units fail at it.

Image
That chance to die isn’t particularly comforting, but my hope is that if he does die, he would at least do some damage beforehand.

Image
But we get some good luck! Not only did the shadow survive, but he also got 2 hits in, saving the day!

We only have one more hex on the ancient lich so we try with a dying sprite. If she kills the leader that’s great and if she dies it just frees up the hex for someone else to try, so it’s a win-win situation. (For everyone else, that is; the sprite may see things differently.)

Image
Yeah! Looks like everybody except Elynia and Anya are doing their job!

Image
A spectre moves down to shield Anya from the enemies in the south, and now we’re safe! There’s only a bat around, and everyone has more than 10 HP so it can’t eat anybody.

Turn 27

Image
I may have overreacted just a bit ( :whistle: ) and recruited a whole bunch of cannon fodder, because there’s still a second ancient lich leader remaining.

Turn 29

Image
And here he is - as if one wasn’t enough!

Turn 32

Image
We advance on the leader, making sure the only units he can hit aren’t too important.

Image
This is a great scenario for the ghosts – a ghost finishes the death knight and levels into yet another wraith.

Image
Actually we didn’t need the fodder since we’ve got Anya, who is about to AMLA and has been sitting on a village healing all this time.

Image
Anya whittles the leader down and we surround him with some fodder just to be safe.

Turn 33

Image
And Anya finishes him off.

Image

Image

Image
It was just a simple question, we didn’t ask for your entire autobiography!

Image
Apparently Argan was spending his time going door to door spreading the word about Uria, probably handing out pamphlets too.

Image
Well that escalated rather quickly.
We learn a bit about the childhood of Elyssa, who wasn’t always such an unpleasant person.

Image
Most likely he was spending all that time coming up with this speech.

Image
Just give us the XP and go away!

Image

Image
Anyway, now all we’ve got to do is leave.

Image
After the obligatory spiders blocking the exit. They probably just sit here waiting to surprise unwary travelers, but this time they're the ones who are in for a surprise.

Image
We clear them out, and the exit is right ahead.

Image
Phew, it’s nice to be outdoors again.

Image

Image
After all our unpleasant encounters, Elynia’s long since stopped caring about being diplomatic.

Image

Image

Image

Image
Whoa, she seems a lot more awesome than Elorran.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
We don’t need to hear about Elynia’s mistakes from you, Elynia already mentions them every scenario.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
First we found out (twice) that Yechnagoth wasn’t gone, and now Zhangor. Why can’t things just stay dead!!

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Hey, there weren’t any attempts to kill us or steal our stuff! I’d say this meeting was an extraordinary success.

Image

Image
Advancements: dryad, fire faerie, nightgaunt, outlaw, 2 shadows, 2 spectres, 2 wraiths
Losses: sprite, 5 ghosts, outlaw, vampire bat, walking corpse
Restarts: none

Image
Image
Attachments
AtS-3-Pass_of_Sorrows_replay.gz
(101.94 KiB) Downloaded 706 times
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

Whew, that was a really long scenario!
E3 S6 – Divergence (Cutscene)
(As usual a bit of the dialogues were cut out in the interest of space.)

To recap, last time we allied ourselves with someone awesome for a change, the demon lord of the storms Ergea. She and Elynia discussed something in private, though we don’t know what yet.
Argan wrote:My conviction falters. Everything since I returned to Irdya has been a nightmare, and I begin to suspect I am becoming part of it myself. The mere act of thought demands more effort than it used to, as if my very mind was falling apart. Recent events have only increased this feeling of detachment from reality.

It was only a few days ago, in the Heart. While I was inspecting Reghara’s prisoners, he mockingly alluded to his men and their toy. “What toy?”, I asked. He somehow assumed I am concerned enough with their leisure ‘activities’ to have heard of this depravity beyond description; these Irdyans should be thankful that Uria will not let me give them what they all deserve at once.
We start with the usual gloomy journal entry from Argan. (Also, what kind of person quotes himself in his own journal?)

Image
In this scenario, Elynia can walk around the camp and talk with the other three people here.

Chatting with a massive troll sounds interesting, so we visit Cron first and ask about Ergea.

Image
Though this seems to be less like a chat and more like an interrogation.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Elynia continues to not-so-subtly pump Cron for information.

Image
Cron wises up though and stops answering our questions.

Next we talk to him about tomorrow.
Image

Image

Image

Image
A 100% unbiased and reliable source.

Image

Next we go pay Irylean a visit.

Image
We first just talk to Irylean.

Image

Image

Image
That's...comforting?

Image

Image
Irylean is not convinced.

Next we ask her about why she retired before.
Image
Hey, Erathan "not faring well" in the capital was completely his own fault.

Image

Image
The conversation goes downhill from here.

Image

Image
Well, that was a bit awkward.

Let’s go talk to someone more cheerful.

Image
First we discuss our plans.

Image
Well she's definitely right about that last part.

Image

Image

Image
Anya fortunately puts a stop to Elynia's grim predictions before they become even more dire.

Image

Image

Next, we talk about Ergea.
Image

Image

Image

And lastly, we ask Anya a question.
Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Hey Anya, where are you? Hurry up and say something positive!

Image

Image
Why do our all our conversations keep turning awkward?

Image
I’m not sure anyone would be able to handle the negativity if Elynia shared her feelings more often...

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

With her newfound companionship to Anya, Elynia decides to...

Image
...ditch Anya and run off on her own?!

Image

Image

Image

Some time later…
Image

Image
E3 S7A - Dark Fire Part 1
You know things are getting serious when even the scenario parts have their own parts.
Argan wrote:They had tortured the poor creature for weeks, keeping her alive with the powers we taught them, and forcing her to feed upon the flesh of past prisoners. But nothing is enough to hold a person who has already lost the will to live.

Despite the mud and wounds, her face and her hair were strangely familiar. Had I met anyone like her before my own fall, or was I somehow responsible for her fate? I put those questions and the pain they caused me aside, and resolved to give her another chance.

I would take full responsibility of her life... hoping our recently acquired Norsulan technology would be enough to make the difference.
Argan subscribes to the Chaos Empire's philosophy that every problem can be solved with drones.

Image
Meanwhile, in the Chaos Empire's fortress...

Image
Huh? Who’s this weakling?

Image
Ugh, typical bureaucracy.

Image
She attempts to use her persuasion skill.

Image
It didn’t work. At all.

Image
We'll have to go find that guard captain.

In this scenario, recruits are free and loyal (every Wesnoth player's dream!), but we can only have 9 units total at any time.

Image
There are some items scattered in the storerooms, including this useless axe which Is only usable by demon grunts and warriors, which already have a better ranged attack.

Image
The poison is definitely useful for taking on high HP enemies though.

The red potion nearby is the pompously named Potion of Magnificent Taste, which heals 1 HP. That wasn't a typo.

Image
We head on over to the captain, who is hanging out in one of the storerooms.

Image

Image
Great, another difficult person.

Image

Image
I’m amazed the Chaos empire gets anything done at all with these unhelpful people in charge.

Image

Image

Image
He slowly begins to catch on that maybe something fishy is going on.

Image

Image
Zap!

Image
Goodbye, and thanks for the keep!

Image
We can now recruit a few more units.
Demons are probably the most useful unit type here, being good in both melee and ranged, and trolls are also strong durable melee units. Saurian skirmishers are quite weak but it definitely helps to have a skirmisher or two with all the narrow passages here. We already have a soothsayer ally so we don’t need an augur.

Image
We get a few demons and head back.

Image
As soon as Vyrelyam enters the chamber, the units here turn hostile. More hostile than they were before, I mean.

Image

Image
That’s more like it! We've had enough of Chatting for Wesnoth; time to bash some skulls in!

Turn 1

Image
We start with the two enemies who had the misfortune of standing right next to the entrance.

Image
Then we make a solid line so that no one can be attacked from more than 2 hexes. There’s also an enemy chaos magus behind us.

Turn 2

Image
The enemies attack into our line, but everyone manages to survive.

Image
We use the standard tactic of rotating the wounded units to the back while sending the healthy units to the front.

Turn 3

Image
Just as we’re about to finish the enemies in the chamber, reinforcements start coming out of the northern corridor.

Image
We make another line, with the troll in front daring some chaos invaders to attack him.

Turn 4

Image
Some chaos invaders took the bait and are now easy targets.

Image
We get rid of the nearby invaders, and slow and whittle down the grunt in the south.

Turn 5

Image
Our own demon grunt finishes the enemy grunt, and from here it’s just easy cleanup.

Image
…or is it?

Enemy turn:
Image
Oops, I had completely forgotten about this guy who had been sitting in the corner doing nothing so far. All part of his plan no doubt.

Turn 6

Image
We get revenge for the zephyr and take him down with the help of poison.

Enemy turn:
Image
The last two enemies make a valiant last stand and manage to kill off another demon.

Turn 7

Image
One of our experienced demon levels up into a zephyr (the other choice is demon grunt -> warrior) to replace the one that just died. Although zephyrs have a maximum level of 2, their skirmishing ability and extra movement point can come in handy.

Turn 9

Image
We head up north to the guard post, which seems to be a bit understaffed at the moment.

Turn 12

Image
We easily walk over to the leader and take him out with ranged attacks.

Turn 15

Image
Next we head northwest (to the east is just empty storerooms) where a nasty looking demon spelldancer is waiting.

Turn 16

Image
We get rid of it pretty quickly with the help of poison.

Turn 17

Image
The poisoner grunt finishes the spelldancer and levels into a demon warrior. Elynia moves to the glyph, opening the gate back in the chamber we started in.

Turn 21

Image
Everyone heads back to the central chamber, and Elynia suddenly starts feeling poetic.

Image

Image

Image

Image
We’re greeted by some rather underwhelming guards.

Turn 22

Image
We get a troll and saurian skirmisher to replace the two units that died earlier, though upon seeing the pitiful HP of the skirmisher I immediately regret getting it.

Turn 23

Image
We head further into the fortress, where there are only a couple gunners hanging around…

Enemy turn:
Image
…or that’s what they wanted you to think! A hellhound comes out of nowhere and mauls the newly leveled zephyr.

Turn 24

Image
We get some easy XP from the hellhound though so it’s not such a bad deal.

Turn 25

Image
Elynia makes a detour to the nearby keep to get a replacement demon, while the demon warrior lures out a couple high level enemies.

Turn 26

Image
They provide nice snacks for our new recruits. The path then splits into a fork.

Turn 27

Image
The skirmisher scouts out the northern path, which just loops around.

Enemy turn:
Image
But a couple sentry drones attack out of nowhere! The poor skirmisher never had a chance.

Turn 28

Image
Trying to slowly whittle down these drones makes me really miss the spectres.

Enemy turn:
Image
The drones proceed to kill the newly recruited demon. You know, it’s a really good thing that these recruits are free.

Turn 29

Image
We eventually finish off the drones and then head south.

Turn 32

Image
Really? We’re going to leave a pile of gold behind because you’re too lazy to carry it around?

Image
Now we’re talking! This potion which can only be used by Elynia gives her the regenerates ability.

Image
You’d think she’d be a little more excited about it.

Image
Sadly there’s nothing else useful here, just more stuff taunting us.

Turn 34

Image
More foolish enemies try to block our path, but they’re no threat at all to our group of veterans.

Turn 36

Image
We use them as target practice for the less experienced units.

Turn 38

Image
Past the corridor is a conveniently located keep, where we get a couple more replacement units (including another quick, intelligent skirmisher…)

Turn 40

Image
The demon shapeshifters are a pain to take down without arcane damage, though poison works, and whacking them over the head with a giant club works even better.

Image
The demon warrior finishes the other shapeshifter and lures out the stormblade.

Turn 42

Image
And we feed the juicy XP to the new demon recruit.

Image
In the next chamber is some more free XP in the form of turrets, which don’t move and have 0% dodge, though they do decent retaliation damage.

Turn 45

Image
The demon finishes one and levels into another zephyr (third time’s the charm!) and the skirmisher finishes the other.

Turn 48

Image
We run into a couple more shapeshifters. The first one gets poked to death by the skirmisher, an embarrassing way to die.

Image
Elynia finishes the other and gets the +3 HP, since her other attacks are too weak to be of much use.

Turn 50

Image
We come to another lake, where I get the feeling that there’s another drone ambush, so the stronger units go in front.

Turn 51

Image
My suspicions turned out to be correct, though it turns out there was only one drone this time.

Turn 54

Image
We keep heading north. Looking at that ambusher’s tiny HP bar, you’d never guess it was actually a level 2 unit…

Image
Finally, we approach our destination, the transport area (the other paths are just dead ends).

Turn 56

Image
There are a couple tough enemies blocking the path, and another berserking dog trying to be sneaky.

Turn 57

Image
Our skirmishing units head straight for the dog and finish it off, with the saurian ambusher leveling up.

Image
Of course, the scenario would not be complete without another drone blocking the exit.

Turn 58

Image
It’s easily taken care of though.

Image
Next we just jam all our units into the transport in the southeast. Onward!

Stats so far:
Image
Restarts: a restart due to bad positioning and everyone getting slaughtered at the initial fight in the chamber.

Image
Despite all the dying we managed to fully level everyone in this part.
E3 S7A – Dark Fire Part 2
Argan wrote:Her subsequent awakening reminded me of my own, except that I did not have the power to tap into her mind and comfort her, unlike Uria.

I did not ask the girl what seemed to cause her more pain than before. Was it the many modifications we had to perform on her devastated body to enable her to live once again, or the separation of her body and her soul? Or perhaps... the presence of the Source within her.

Her name...
Image
Great, we’re stuck in a cramped elevator with a bunch of trolls who have probably never taken a bath in their lives.

Turn 60

Image
Eventually the transport drops us off at another floor – fresh air, at last!

Image
This is part of the same scenario, though we get a ton of turns added.

Turn 61

Image
To the north is a dead end with an enemy leader. We could just ignore him, but then we’d have to deal with the annoyance of his units chasing after us all the time, so we'll just get rid of him now.

Turn 63

Image
Fortunately he doesn’t have that much gold. We line up in the castle hexes and wait for some victims to arrive.

Turn 64

Image
To nobody's surprise, there were a couple sentry drones hiding in the fog.

Turn 66

Image
We manage to make relatively good progress – those doom guards are very weak to the demons’ ranged cold damage.

Turn 68

Image
After we clear away enough of his minions, the leader kindly comes out onto 30% defense to attack.

Image
We first clear away the two surrounding enemies.

Image
Then everyone can gang up on the leader.

Image
The remaining units get in front to shield the wounded units.

Turn 69

Image
After that, it’s a simple cleanup and everyone heads back down the corridor.

Turn 72

Image
The following corridor provides a typical demonstration of the chaos empire’s teamwork skills. First we have a lone headhunter.

Turn 73

Image
Followed by a knight of chaos by himself.

Turn 74

Image
Followed by another antisocial headhunter.

Turn 75

Image
Followed by a single demon zephyr. You kind of start to feel bad for them.

Turn 77

Image
There are 3 enemies here (we are generously counting the turret) so that’s a slight improvement, though it’s still not enough to even slow us down.

Turn 80

Image
The corridor opens into the familiar Council Chamber.

Turn 81

Image
They’ve set up a nice welcoming party in here.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Turn 82

Image
We cautiously fan out into the chamber, making sure not to lure too many enemies over at once.

Turn 83

Image
One of the trolls lures out the lich on the northern side.

Turn 84

Image
The lich takes the bait and is promptly greeted by a giant hammer and some fireballs from Elynia.

Turn 85

Image
We force our way onto the central island, and the saurian flanker which has resistance to arcane lures out the chaos lorekeeper.

Turn 86

Image
Unfortunately while we’ve been busy fighting the enemies in the chamber, drones and psy crawlers having been pouring out of that northeastern passage.

Image
We kill off some nearby drones and retreat a bit.

Turn 87

Image
The drones are arriving as quickly as we’re killing them, though.

Image
To make matters worse, several new enemies from the north are headed our way. With the spelldancer’s flying and skirmishing ability, it’s almost impossible to get the wounded units out of her way.

Enemy turn:
Image
It also doesn’t help that she gets full hits.

Turn 88

Image
We exact our revenge and continue trying to kill drones. Fortunately the flood of drones has mostly stopped, with only the occasional drone coming out of the hive now.

Turn 89

Image
Heading further north, we catch a glimpse of a fire guardian heading north through a narrow passage.

Image

Image
We’ve still got a few enemies here to deal with, but it’s so much easier without a zillion drones hounding us from behind.

Turn 93

Image
We start making our way to the northern passages.

Turn 94

Image
Several enemies will come out of the bottlenecks though, so it’s best to wait outside for a bit and take care of them first.

Turn 99

Image
We start heading through the passages toward a chaos lorekeeper leader.

Turn 100

Image
We've been getting really good use out of that poison jar.

Image
There are a bunch of enemies in the north, so the flanker goes north to protect the demon warrior.

Turn 101

Image
He comes dangerously close to becoming psy crawler lunch in the process.

Image
We clear out the enemies, while the flanker runs off to hide in a corner.

Turn 102

Image
The leader goes down very easily after being poisoned for several turns.

Turn 105

Image
We recruited another demon to replace the troll warrior that died, and keep heading east.

Image
There are some doors here followed by a very long passage.

Turn 107

Image
I didn’t catch it in this screenshot, but we get another glimpse of the fire guardian disappearing into that indentation on the left and emerging in the western blue area.

Image

Turn 109

Image
We start sending our units through the not so secret passage.

Image
It’s our old friend Mal Kendria, the one who was recently on the receiving end of a soul removing spell from Elyssa.

Image

Turn 111

Image
She has a few companions with her, but they’re not much of a threat.

Turn 112

Image
Well maybe they’re a threat to that stupid flanker, but that’s still not saying much.

Turn 113

Image
Mal Kendria comes over to attack and is greeted by some hammers and axes to the face.

Image
She is not being very helpful.

Image

Image
Elynia loses patience and just gets rid of her.

Image

Image

Image

Turn 115

Image
The large chamber which Mal Kendria arrived from is empty save for some leeches and matrix flow systems, so we can just walk right through.

Turn 119

Image
The enemies past the chamber aren’t really worth mentioning either.

Image
We head through the doors…

Image
When Elynia enters this large chamber, the passage slams shut behind us.

Image

Image
The exit is blocked by a gate in the north which we’ll have to find a way to open.

The only enemies here are some rats and tentacles and there’s also no turn counter anymore, so we can take our time exploring and reading all the story glyphs.

Eastern glyphs:

Image

Image

Image

Image

Western glyphs:

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Finally, moving Elynia to the blue glyph opens the exit gate.

Image
Elynia makes her way through the newly opened passage…

stats (parts 1 and 2):
Image
Restarts: none in part 2
Dark Fire Cutscene
Image
The passage slams shut behind Elynia. Mass loyal units are always too good to be true.

Image

Image
Elyssa clearly just enjoys making Elynia run around activating glyphs.

Image
We enter a huge empty area…

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Elynia tries to attack Elyssa even though she’s clearly outmatched. Both Elynia and Elyssa will always miss all their attacks though.

Image

Image
She also summons some fire guardians, which don’t do much besides die after attacking Elynia.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
I don’t think you had to be a mind reader to know about Elynia’s crush on Galas.

Image

Image

Image
This eloquent response by Elynia is something we’ll be seeing plenty more of in this conversation.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Elyssa's really piling it on. Elynia responds with another "…"

Image
Elynia’s going to need some cold magic for that burn! But the only comeback she can think of is "…"

Image

Image

Image
Elyssa finally manages to provoke a response other than "…"

Image
Yeah, you tell her! That’s the Elynia we know!

Image


Image

Image
Elyssa heals herself back up to full health (as is her habit) and starts blasting Elynia.

Image

Image

Image
This seems to be Elyssa’s version of "…"

Image
Wait, we didn’t just spend the past 150 turns fighting through the fortress in order to just get killed here, right? Right??
Attachments
AtS-3-Dark_Fire_replay.gz
(144.69 KiB) Downloaded 644 times
AtS-3-Divergence.gz
starting save, cutscene only
(30.84 KiB) Downloaded 642 times
User avatar
holypaladin
Posts: 96
Joined: August 14th, 2017, 9:07 pm
Location: Poland

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by holypaladin »

Heh Elynia is not have pover to destroy Eryssa but "SHUT UP" is cool(:
„Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam"
Losthunter
Posts: 22
Joined: June 1st, 2017, 3:48 pm
Location: Well... I don´t know... maybe I should ask someone...?

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Losthunter »

Dark fire is really my favourite superlong-dungeoncrawl mision. When I played it for the first time I thougt Elinia can´t die... And then... Really? Death of the last Iftu main characters? By the hand of Elyssa? (Elyssa was my favourite character in Under the burning suns. What happened to that always-smiling girl? :doh: ) By the way, really nice letsplay and comments are awesome.
User avatar
Sudipta
Posts: 217
Joined: June 10th, 2015, 6:37 pm
Location: Meditating under a waterfall, Heartfangs, Wesnoth

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Sudipta »

Meh, She's gonna pull a Gandalf soon enough. Death ain't gonna stop our heroine. I really was disappointed by how depressed she got after the events of part 1. Not fun having such a brooding MC, and how weak she had become in AtS compared to IftU. I hope the new AMLA system will improve her.

By the Way, Awesome LP's as always Inky. There's never a boring moment. Its a real joy to log into the forums and see another scenario completed. Keep up the Great work and best of luck for the final part of the campaign. Show Zhangor and Uria who's boss!!
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Playing Wesnoth since 2010, still there is so much left to play
User avatar
Inky
Forum Moderator
Posts: 527
Joined: September 22nd, 2014, 1:02 am
Location: USA

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by Inky »

Thanks again for the comments!! :D
E3 S7B – Dark Sea
Image
Back to Anya’s group, which is about to be attacked by a massive army.

Image
You won’t be coming back either, unless you start focusing on the situation here!

Image
See, Irylean’s got the right attitude.

Image

Image

Image

Image
Yeah!

Image

Image
Our army consists almost entirely of dead stuff, though...

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
We get some new unit types to recruit, but at this point we already have a ton of fully leveled veterans so most of these units aren’t too exciting. The saurian augurs will be necessary for healing though since Elynia is gone.

Image
Take a look at our awesome new ally! Her stats, I mean. :whistle: In addition to being very mobile and powerful and having massive HP, Ergea also gives adjacent units +20% resistances (up to 50%).

Image

Image

Map Layout:
Image
We’ll need to head almost directly to Zaraphor’s keep in order to make it in time. There are also a couple enemy leaders on the bridge, and an enemy leader on the other side of the bridge.

This is actually only the upper right corner of the map; the rest of the map is covered in impassible shroud for now.

Turn 1 (This scenario takes place entirely at night.)

Image
We get a bat, which will get plenty of exercise this scenario grabbing a couple villages wayyyy on the western side of the map.

Turn 2

Image
I recall all the loyals, plus a couple saurian augurs for healing, some ghostly veterans, and a few fresh recruits.

Turn 3

Image
The enemies take the usual "quantity over quality" approach, sending masses of level 1 units our way. They can be quite dangerous in this scenario though, since it's always night.

Image
We recruit more heavily than usual in this scenario in order to quickly break through the enemy forces. Anya recalls a highwayman for smashing things in melee and everyone rushes southeast.

Turn 4

Image
Yikes! Nalan gets beaten to a pulp (a common occurrence), though he does manage to do great retaliation damage to his attackers.

Image
With the help of the marshal Crendil’s leadership, the new recruits start zapping the wounded enemies.

Image
Then Crendil moves in front of the recruits to shield them, and we start trying to kill the invokers since they are the most dangerous units.

Image
The aragwaithi swordmaster and slayer are good for slicing up invokers in melee, and also have some arcane resistance.

We make an arrow formation, with a couple recruits filling in to act as distractions. We also make sure to hide the dying champion Nalan from that sneaky enemy headhunter.

Turn 5

Image
The two recruits filling in our lines died instantly, but they did distract the enemies from ganging up on Crendil, who probably would have died as he is even more of a wuss than Nalan.

Image
Crendil continues babysitting the saurian augurs, leading them to attack wounded enemies from the back.

Image
In the east, we clear out the last of Zaraphor’s units. We’ll send off a few powerful units to his keep to kill him.

Image
We try to form a line but it ends up more like a blob, with the beefy highwayman out in front trying to act as a shield. Exposing some units is unavoidable, since we have to be very aggressive in order to make it to Zaraphor’s keep in time.

Enemy turn:

Image
A bunch of enemies gang up on Avethan, who was quite exposed, and manage to whittle him down. Is he going to suffer the same fate as Erathan?

Turn 6

Image
Not today! Avethan kills some enemies in retaliation and AMLAs back to full health! So proud of you Avethan, I’m sorry I compared you to Erathan earlier.

Image
There’s no rest for our wounded veterans - we try to make the most of their high damage by using them from the back to kill some enemies.

Image
The bone shooter levels into a banebow, and the healthy units try to cover the wounded ones in the back.

Image
We try to make a line again, though this formation really isn’t ideal since the shadow protecting the soothsayer is very exposed.

Turn 7

Image
Strangely, the enemies ignored the shadow and decided to attack into the solid line instead.

Image
We start finishing them off, and continue to focus on leveling the augurs to soothsayers for +8 healing.

Image
And with that, we’ve successfully cleared out most of the enemies on this front.

Image
In the meantime, the squad of veterans has reached Zaraphor and started working on him, making sure to ZOC him so he doesn’t run off to a village.

Image
Meanwhile, the bat has been working hard all this time flying around the western side of the map, and stops to grab a tasty bite.

Image
And of course, there is nothing Anya likes more than ambushing unsuspecting enemies near distant villages.

Turn 8

Image
Image
We finish off Zaraphor and steal his money.

Image
The rest of our army advances very cautiously because there are several high level enemies on the bridge and we don’t want to get in range of all of them at once.

Turn 9

Image
The enemies didn’t come attack though, so we advance a bit further, with Avethan boldly leading the way. He makes good bait with his high melee and ranged retaliation.

Turn 10

Image

Image

Image
Yeah!! Look who’s back - our aragwaith and orc veterans from scenario 4! Oh, and Durvan’s here too.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Cool, now he can help us fight off the - … wait a minute, most of the enemies are gone already…

Image

Image
The shroud from the rest of the map is lifted, revealing a ton of new enemy leaders. However these leaders start so far away that most of their units won’t reach us in the remaining 10 turns.

Image
There are seven new leaders, to be precise. Clearly defeating all of them in the time remaining isn’t possible, so we’re just going to try to take out the 3 leaders near the bridge (each gives some bonus gold), and then retreat back across the bridge.

Image
Meanwhile, Avethan has done a great job luring out some powerful enemies and damaged them quite a bit. I should stop being so mean to him.

Image
Crendil helps the adept take out the doom guard and level up.

Image
Then the shadow backstabs the serpent and levels.

Image
Meanwhile Durvan just heads over to join the group at the bridge without recruiting, since we won’t need his help anytime soon. It was still nice of him to come, though.

Image

Image

Turn 11

Image
The demon leader does us a big favor by coming out of his cozy keep in the middle of the bridge to come attack.

Image
The banebow first made use of the water hex to attack the leader (undead are almost immune to cold damage, so the 20% defense doesn’t matter).
Then the wraith finishes him off, giving Anya and Durvan’s sides a hefty 77 gold each.

Image
We clear out the remaining enemies on the bridge and start heading for the next leader.

Image
Anya has been teleporting around the map sniping enemies, but it doesn’t stop her from casually chatting with Durvan.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Turn 12

Image
We begin the attack on the next leader, first slowing him with the shyde from the forest hex.

Turn 13

Image
The experienced wraith doesn’t manage to hit the leader at all, so we leave him alive for the wraith to try again next turn.

Turn 14

Image
And down he goes, and we get a new spectre along with 80 gold each for Anya and Durvan.

Image
We also get some useless loyal units: two thieves, a spearman, and two bowmen. This late in the campaign, it really isn’t worth the trouble to babysit them just to save a few gold.

Image
We start advancing on the last nearby leader, the spelldancer in the south.

Turn 15

Image
The bad news is she zapped the loyal banebow into oblivion, but the good news is that now she’s right in the middle of our units.

Image
The dark sorcerer finishes her off, netting us 43 gold each for Anya and Durvan’s sides.

Image

Image
After this we’ll need to make our retreat because the other enemies have started to catch up.

(skipping turn 16)
Turn 17

Image
We line up on the other side of the bridge bottleneck and Durvan gets some reinforcements just in case, though we don't end up needing them.

Turn 18

Image
A "demolisher" drone shows up on the beach, but fortunately this one seems to be a cheap knockoff version and lacks the demolition ability.

(skipping turn 19)
Turn 20

Image
We mostly just stood around waiting, though we do manage to get a little experience for the dark sorceror at least.

Image
Durvan’s thug offers himself as bait to protect the dark sorcerer, which is notable because it is the only semi useful thing Durvan’s units did all scenario.

Image

Image
Thanks to the thug, the chaos invoker in the water didn’t attack the dark sorcerer, which was very low on health.

Image
Advancements: Banebow, nightgaunt, spectre, dark sorcerer, 2 saurian soothsayers
Losses: Banebow, dark adept, ghost, bat
Restarts: a restart due to major underrecruiting

Image
They didn’t do anything, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

Image
Image
Attachments
AtS-3-Dark_Sea_replay.gz
(155.05 KiB) Downloaded 658 times
User avatar
holypaladin
Posts: 96
Joined: August 14th, 2017, 9:07 pm
Location: Poland

Re: Let's Play After the Storm

Post by holypaladin »

Inky is master
„Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam"
Post Reply