Descent into Darkness

[dthurston]

I was initially confused by the victory condition on A Small Favor, Part 2: I moved Darken Volk to the northwest, rather than Malin Keshar, and was confused when no victory triggered. I think either of them should trigger the event, or else both should be required.

[Baufo]

In Beginning of the Revenge, my blood bat fell through the ice. Was that intentional? It didn't make sense for a flying unit.

(...)

One more point on BotR: The scenario objectives probably should have an "or" in them. I thought I had to kill the leaders and escape with Malin. It's a little bit harder to do both as you have to stop recruiting and get Malin underway early on. I did manage that way, but it took a few tries.

In A Haunting in Winter, I wish I had gotten a warning about the possible turning of my units. (Someone else mentioned this too.) The one that turned was halfway up a one-wide passage with another ghost. A dwarf plugged it that same turn. I was in the awkward position of having to hope the enemy dwarf could blow through my ghost and destroy my former ghost before the rest of my units could leave me. Not likely! I lost almost immediately.

Makes all sense, I'll do that.

Also, in the same scenario, why do skeletons drown when they fall through? After seeing that the orcs would drown, I thought that meant my skeletons would be safe. If you intend for them to be destroyed when the ice breaks, there should at least be a different reason why.

Well, it "becomes mired in the thick mud at the lake's bottom".

- In 'a small favor' the only way I could figure out how to succeed was to take four shaows and kill the enemy leader before he could recall any troops. In a way this kind of feels like a cheap shot, but was this the intention? Is there any other way to play that scenario successfully?

Well, actually the scenario should be beatable in a "fair" battle if you are just trying to shield Malin and DV and force your way to the entry of the manor.
But assassinating the enemy leader with shadows seem like a really clever solution and makes perfectly sense in my opinion.

- In 'alone at last' I also had to play a particular way in order to win, I sent s wraith east as a decoy, then sent the others north, so Darian Valk sent most of his units to engage Sir Cadeaus when he showed up, and I was able to kill Valk with some nightgaunts, attacking from the north. When Dela showed up, however, I already had the aforementioned nightgaunts around and was able to kill her before she called any troops up. This also kind of feels like a cheap-shot to me, Did anybody use a different method for this scenario successfully?

Well, once again I was able to beat this in a "normal" battle. Note, however, that I am usually playing on easy to save time testing but I actually found it quite easy.
May I ask which difficulty you were playing on?

By the way, I took the liberty of writing the walkthroughs for every scenario except "Descent into Darkness", and the first four scenarios (which already had walkthroughs) based off my experience playing the campaign..

Cool, there are campaign walkthourghs? Where?

I was initially confused by the victory condition on A Small Favor, Part 2: I moved Darken Volk to the northwest, rather than Malin Keshar, and was confused when no victory triggered. I think either of them should trigger the event, or else both should be required.

Good idea.

[csarmi]

About the last scenario:

I don't understand:

1) Why should the lich lose eventually? He should be powerful, not just taken out by any foolish hero.

2) It seems kinda hopeless to balance it, because what you did still doesn't cut it. A good player should be able to defeat the AI with 5 recalls no matter what it is doing or how much gold it does have - unless there's a time limit. Probably even then - with wraiths and stab hero.

I can't see why I wouldnt beat a hero with 100,000 gold. Boring? Yes. Doable? Yes (with 70+ hp ghosts? gotta be kidding me)

oh and last time I checked there was a minimum gold defined, or isnt there anymore?

[pauxlo]

By the way, I took the liberty of writing the walkthroughs for every scenario except "Descent into Darkness", and the first four scenarios (which already had walkthroughs) based off my experience playing the campaign..

Cool, there are campaign walkthourghs? Where?

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/DescentIntoDarkness

Linked from here: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/MainlineScenarios

[Elrath]

I found two problems with A Small Favor, Part 2. First of all, its impossible to win. For whatever reason, the 'Malin Keshar,Darken Volk' designation doesnt seem to work. I suggest removing the ability for Darken Volk to win, or adding a seperate event for him.

Secondly, when/if you do win any mages you have are not stored for the next level because theyre not race: undead. I guess the change to this limiter was to allow Darken Volk to be stored under a different variable? Well its not a problem if you store him before using side/canrecruit filter.

As a last note, on Beginning of the Revenge, when the spirit changed teams, the dialogue was that of the warning on the beginning, exactly. Im pretty sure it used to say something new, like urging you to kill it quickly.

[eleinad]

Elrath is correct. I cannot complete the scenario. Moving Volk or Keshar to the northwest corner does not trigger the victory, so I am stuck in the dungeon and cannot go to the next scenario. Help?!

[Belial_rus]

ver 1.3.14a Just finished on 'challenging', and started 'difficult' here's a few ideas.

- As already mentioned there are multiple ocasions on which you can defeat Dela and it'd be nice if she at least said something when you do. Maybe you can raise her as some sort of unique undead or just a loyal wraith.

- I don't play this game in multiplayer yet, so I dont know much about balance issues, but in my experience this campaign isn't fun enough b/c there are a lot of "useless" units. I've played through almost every other campaigns and you can and often should use a large variety of units.
But in DiD I only used adepts and ghosts, and some skellies. No ghouls, no bats , no zombies. I'm not saying they are bad, b/c probably they fit multiplayer, but in campaign I just recruited a pack of ghosts and adepts and was just fine through the rest of the game.

Combine that with already poor undead unit choice (compared to humans for ex) and you have a bit boring missions in which you do all the same strategy all the time.

i dont load so I didnt have many high tier units so I had to use zombies in Small Favor part one (walkthrough http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/DescentIntoDarkness says you should beat it with 4 shadows but I think you cant have more than one in 3.14) and had a lot of fun, b/c it was creative. It's fun to use zombies! Sadly most levels won't let you b/c zombies are too slow or turns run out too fast.

Also there are some undead units I didn't get a chance to play, like chocobone or death knight.

I think it would be great to have some lvl 0 skeletons that can advance either to archer or normal skeleton, also something has to be done with ghosts, either let other fractions have a good counter or let them go wild if you have too many, like in mission 3 A Haunting in Winter.

and soulless is a completely useless unit , not worth recalling. If you can switch him to some kind of level 1 (if zombies are lvl 0?) zombie lord with leadership, than it would also make some difference in strategies along campaign. Another idea on abilities is some ("shrowd of) darkness" - opposite of illuminates. I have no idea which unit to put it on, maybe ancient lich, he's probably most powerful unit in game anyway so it wont make much difference =)

Really enjoyed the ancient lich, very powerful to the point of becoming scary. But alot of extra fun could be gained out of mission 11 Forver After, Amen with a bit of creativity. right now I can just send in single ancient lich and 70% he will kill everybody single handedly b/c lvl2 units can't even touch him. In fact Elves dont even try atacking AL, b/c he'll end up unwounded by melee and any shooter end up dead. I think I've beaten lvl 11 7 times already without even calling for any reinforcements.

1) heroes atacking Mal Keshar could change looks. Every race has different heroes and it would at least not look like the same mission over and over again, b/c once you win 4 times you realize it's repeating and is somewhat discouraging.
2) including some unique "boss" heroes on every 5th or 9th mission would be amazing (but I understand that'd take work you may not have time for), some legendary paladin , undead rival, powerful mage seeking your power, lost traveller in search for shelter in a cave or your sister Dela, if you havent finished her off before all come in mind.
3) - you can adjust difficulty by adding some high tier units to be hired by enemy heroes. Also enemy heroes may change names from foolish to some other kinds of heroes even through taking on Ancient Lich seems really foolish to me. =)

[Nutmegger]

A bug in Orc War: my shadows appear perfectly visible to the enemy, even during night, when they have the "invisible" note on their unit. I have tried "sneaking" up to then enemy generals, but my shadows are spotted, attacked and killed even if they never come near an enemy unit or pop. center.

[Nightstroll]

I'm in Elrath and eleinad's situation, I've killed the mage, then must go NW "to the entrance of the Great Hall". But I can't win the mission, as the trigger doesn't seem to work...

[AI]

Besides the fact that the Dark Mage/Apprentice Necromancer animations miss Malin's head in some frames, they are also based on the 1.2 line of necromancers.

Also, some animations are missing in the WML.

[discoapocolypse]

I've moved both darken volk and malin to the northwest, and still no victory triggers. i've also tried every other 'northwestern' 'passage way' i could find on the map, and still no trigger. is this a bug, or am i doing something wrong?

[thespaceinvader]

There is a pervasive bug in that scenario in which the passageway you have to access does not open when the Arch Mage is killed. If this happens to you, using the debugger to skip the scenario is about the only way past.

[discoapocolypse]

how do I use the debugger to skip the scenario?
thanks for your help and info.

[thespaceinvader]

Type :debug, hit enter. This puts you in debugging mode. Then type :n to skip the scenario.

[islandranger]

Hi,

I just finished DiD and enjoyed it. It's always fun to play the other side and I appreciated the ironic sacrifice that Malin had to make to help his people. Reminds me of some of Gemmell's characters. I like the ending although I feel that its missing a scenario. There should be a BIG battle scenario where Malin has a showdown with the orcs and drives them away from the human settlements. Then the final scenario where he realizes that, having sacrificed all, the only thing left for him is self-destruction, would be all the more poignant.