[1.9.x/1.10.x] Dead Water

[Development Team]

This is the discussion/general feedback thread for the Dead Water mainline campaign as shipped with Wesnoth 1.9.x.

[Mountain_King]

OS: Mac
version: 1.9.0 (obviously)

Bug: It says, "unknown scenario: 12_Revenge". I cannot find the stderr file on the mac or I would provide full details.

[shadowmaster]

Yeah, that bug was recently reported, and it's fixed in trunk. Basically someone forgot to change scenario 12's id to "12_Revenge" (it was "Revenge") at some point after it was mainlined. So, if you have access to the core files, you can just edit data/campaigns/Dead_Water/scenarios/12_Revenge.cfg and change the following line around the start of the file:

Code: Select all

id=Revenge

to

Code: Select all

id=12_Revenge

[Jozrael]

A couple typos I noticed at the beginning of the campaign:

In the campaign description, "to be survive" should just be "to survive".
In the hero's level 3 description, "formidible" -> "formidable"
Level 3: "words of a man" -> "words of a merman" ?

[shadowmaster]

Gambit's taking over maintenance of the campaign, so feel free to throw all your complaints, tomatoes, etc., at him!

EDIT: apparently, beetlenaut is also taking over. No confirmation at this time.

[shadowmaster]

In the hero's level 3 description, "formidible" -> "formidable"
Level 3: "words of a man" -> "words of a merman" ?

Long overdue, but I just fixed these two, thanks.

I replaced "truely" in "truely formidible" with "truly", as well, since I wasn't sure whether it was a spelling mistake or not (my spelling checker and my dictionary suggest it is). If it was an actual archaism, we'll have to live without it for the rest of the development cycle.

In the campaign description, "to be survive" should just be "to survive".

And esr fixed this one on Sept. 9th.

[Reepurr]

Um...I hope this isn't thread necromancy.

I was flicking through my campaigns, but I wasn't going to play DW because I had no idea whether it was intermediate or expert, or how many scenarios it has.
Maybe this should be put in the blurb, like with other campaigns?

[bumbadadabum]

Um...I hope this isn't thread necromancy.

I was flicking through my campaigns, but I wasn't going to play DW because I had no idea whether it was intermediate or expert, or how many scenarios it has.
Maybe this should be put in the blurb, like with other campaigns?

I believe (Intermediate level, 10 scenarios) is enough.

[Maiklas3000]

I put up a walkthrough on the Wiki. It's based on the walkthrough type comments in the .cfg files and my experience on Triton (and a bit of Warrior) difficulty under 1.9.x.

This campaign is really quite good. It's one of the best, maybe the best, of the mainline campaigns.

Dead Water is wicked rough on "Triton (difficult)". I notice in the campaign files that this is actually "nightmare" difficulty. I think in other campaigns, "difficult" maps to "hard" in the campaign files, whereas in Dead Water "challenging" maps to "hard." I don't really know the conventions, but anyway, "difficult" on this campaign is harder than "difficult" on all the other mainline campaigns. Therefore, I think it should be labelled "Triton (nightmare)".

The campaign has several bottlenecks. The first scenario, Invasion, is very difficult, especially for a first scenario. The fourth scenario, Slavers, is even more difficult and is the end of the line for many. The tenth scenario, The Flaming Sword, was about equally difficult and thwarted me at first. To beat it, I had to replay the whole campaign to beef up my roster and keep all the loyals, and even then it was hard. All this would be fine, as long as the difficulty were labelled "Triton (nightmare)" instead of "Triton (difficult.)"

[Eros]

Same for me, while the campaign is well coded and scenarios 1 and 4 are great fun (IMHO they are my favourite scenarios esp the first one) they are a lot harder than the surrounding scenarios.

I have played it on the easiest and hardest levels in 1.9.0/1.

[blackjack]

I found a bug in 1.9.8:

In 10_The_Flaming_Sword.cfg, chocobone is mispelled as choccobone three times. This causes a Lua error to pop up in the console. Also means that chocobones will not be recruited.

Easy fix: correct the spelling.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Thank you for the bug report. Fixed in trunk, r51015.

[beetlenaut]

Thanks Elvish_Hunter.

[Curtis]

I recently finished DW on the nightmare level of difficulty, which required a ton of save-and-reload sequences (indicating perhaps that I'm in over my head). I encountered a bug in the final scenario. The Walkthrough, which I found to be generally excellent (though I strongly disagree with its advice for the Drake scenario, and it also failed in the final scenario), recommends sending your loyal Entangler to pick up a magic ring found in a pile of bones to the north of the starting position, which I did. This ring is supposed to reduce chance of success for magic attacks against the wearer from the normal 70% down to 30%, the idea being that the entangler can then be used to badly handicap the liches/death knight found in this scenario.

Problem: The ring didn't function. The little ring icon did show up in the map hex containing the character, but no note of any effect appeared on the character's description (as it did for all of the other characters who were using magic items). In addition, I foolishly tried to repeatedly use this entangler to attack enemy units possessing magic attacks. The combat matchups all credited their magic attacks with having 70% to hit the entangler, but that may've been in error because EVERY SINGLE ATTACK HIT HIM. His opponents probably went 20 for 20 against him. No wonder the previous possessor of the ring was reduced to a pile of bones!
*****
After healing him for the third time I finally relegated him to only attacking skeletons, and he did manage to survive the campaign. The campaign as a whole was well designed, and for the most part the walkthrough was very useful.

The two times it was badly wrong were when it recommended building civilians to capture cities it knew you could never hold (the Drake and final scenarios). In the Drake scenario building civilians was a total waste, as they were never able to capture even a single town, and they died like dogs. The characters you were given for free to start the scenario gobbled all within reach. I eventually replayed it, recalling a bunch of second levels, most of whom leveled up by the time I was through. This was one of only two or three scenarios in which I didn't have to resort to a save-and-reload frenzy… once I'd figured out how to solve it.

In the final scenario the recommendation was to buy two castles of civilians and use them to pick up towns, not intending to hold them long. This sounded familiar, but I tried it anyway. Once again, none of the twelve civilians was able to capture a single town, though this time they did prove useful in fighting the first level undead from the central island, so I didn't go back and try it without them. One leveled into a Brawler, though he died the same turn he leveled. Oddly, the bad guys attacked the civilians in preference to anyone else, so that preserved the magicians long enough to slay a great number of skeletons and allow the higher level recalls to catch up with them before they were overwhelmed.

The walkthrough also recommended capturing the castle on the central island first, then taking out the reinforcing necromancers before nightfall. I had to laugh, as the central island was defended so thoroughly that I couldn't get near it. In the end I had to take out the fellow in the southeast who was building ghosts first. It wasn't until late on the third day that the leader from the central island put himself in a position from which I could slay him, and the island itself didn't fall until dawn of day four. From there the undead position rapidly collapsed, and I was able to divide my force, sending half to take out the Draugs guarding the entrance to the bay and the other half to crush the Death Knight, who behaved irrationally at the end.

[beetlenaut]

This ring is supposed to reduce chance of success for magic attacks

No, it's supposed to reduce the damage of any arcane attacks. I checked it and it does still work. It probably helped the entangler survive as long as he did.

You may be right that citizens are wasted on the last scenario. (However, that suggestion is from Maiklas3000 who has made it through all the campaigns on the hardest difficulty.) On the drake scenario though, one or two can help you farm gold--especially if you don't have all the loyals, and they will also soak up one or two initial attacks. It may not be enough to make back their cost though. If you disagree strongly with the walkthrough, you can edit it, but Maiklas is arguably the best campaign player, so don't be too hasty.

Thanks for your report!