South Guard 7a. Into the Depths

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South Guard 7a. Into the Depths

Post by Content Feedback »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
SmokemJags
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Post by SmokemJags »

Before I fill out the normal bit... wow.
New leader, very interesting. Good and bad.
He went from level 2 to level 3 by... dismounting? Strange. Clearly appropriate, but still strange.

Experience... xxx/512? Non purple color experience? I wonder what he becomes after 512 experience.
Can't tell, because hitting 'd' to check unit desciption brings up... a blank page.
"A wise man speaks when he has something to say. A fool speaks when he has to say something."
SmokemJags
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Post by SmokemJags »

1. hard 1.1.1
2. 1 incredibly simple, just run to the back and kill the lich no chance of failure
3. pretty clear, though snapping the map to the 'lich's back door' would be a nice touch.
4. paying off trolls? trolls dont really seem to be interested in gold.. but it works.
5. Suffering through movement in underground, cramped caverns.
6. 1. where's the fun in following a set path and killing a grand total of... 1 unit after struggling through caves for 20 turns?
7. Incredibly anti-climatic end to the undead. I almost suggest redoing this for a good long battle vs the undead...
And that unit that gets trapped by the cracking ice/blocked passage... it really pissed me off to see a ghost and a shadow fly by and pick him off, what a waste of a dragoon. :cry:
"A wise man speaks when he has something to say. A fool speaks when he has to say something."
Kvasir
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Post by Kvasir »

1) hard on 1.0.2
2) 1 if you know the map, harder if you don't know it
3) clear
4) OK altough these were the first merchant trolls I ever encountered
5) learning the map
6) 1
7) too easy if you know where to go, too boring and unrewarding if you don't know it
Free
Posts: 82
Joined: October 30th, 2005, 1:51 am

Post by Free »

1. Hard 1.1.1
2. 10, because I basically told the trolls that I was going to slaughter them-not give them gold.
3. Pretty clear.
4. Clear, fine.
5. Spelunking through and having the last place you look, be where the lich is.
6. 5,
7. Well, to start off, what sticks out in my mind is you shouldn't have to have to leave 100 gold behind for some troll carcasses. I killed the trolls and the lich and then had to give 100 gold to the dead trolls! :evil: I think that needs to be changed. I CHOSE TO OFFER THEM LAND! NOT GOLD!

The ice breaking off and then a unit stuck in there the whole time is kind of dumb. Then that unit can be recalled for the next scenario, but yet they can't get out during the scenario.

Also maybe get rid of the windy river that leads to absoutley nothing.
Ewan
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Joined: July 29th, 2004, 4:50 pm

Post by Ewan »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
Several, but currently on hard, 1.1.2.
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
10. Impossible - I get to recall only 4 units, and none of my troops (mage of light, master bowmen, javelineer, dragoons, whomever) have any chnce of killing the lich even without his supporting cast.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Well, see above; but also getting anybody past the troll whelp roadblock that occurred every time in the middle (the ice around 18,16) where the mass of whelps prevented anyone from moving forward for several turns.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
Right now, 1. Just don't see a plausible strategy. I must be missing something :).
Ewan
Posts: 103
Joined: July 29th, 2004, 4:50 pm

Post by Ewan »

I suppose this is karma...

..immediately after the previous post, the RNG smiled on me preposterously, allowing the lich to miss with *all* of his ranged attacks in response to a mage of light's attack. So, I'm through, but it was through desparation rather than any tactical nous.
De Cock Hans
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Joined: September 9th, 2005, 6:40 pm
Location: Belgium

Post by De Cock Hans »

I got a problem on 1.1.2 on hard I have killed Troll Leader and Lich 2 turns before the end but it does not end. On the last turn the I sem to have lost the scenario ...

I must say there where still 1 troll welp alive and 1 shadow.

Must kill them all. Is there someting hidden in the caves after the keep ?

I have tried this scenario several times before I could kill the Lich so it is a hard one.

Can you help me ?
ShadowMarth
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Post by ShadowMarth »

(1) Played it on the low difficulty, 1.1.2. It was my first campaign, because it was described as an introductory one.
(2) It is quite difficult if you don't pay off the trolls. Otherwise the only difficult part is the final boss, which tends to kill any level 1-2 guys in one battle.
(3) Pretty clear. With all the fog and restricted paths, it's a tad annoying, but a good level.
(4) The dialog is clear. The only problem is the person that gets stuck on the other side. Nothing ever seems to happen about that.
(5) If you don't befriend the trolls, it's difficult, and the final boss is difficult even when entirely surrounded.
(6) 8, I enjoyed it.
(7) Hmm... More undead in the north cavern, confine the trolls mostly to their own area so that it is more possible to win even if you don't pay off the trolls.
Signature dropped due to use of img tag
Aragos
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Joined: April 19th, 2006, 8:18 pm

Post by Aragos »

(1) Easy/Recruit on 1.1.2a (my first "real" campaign after tutorial and two brothers)
(2) 1-10 (see 5.)
(3) Quite direct. Go, find, kill. ;)
(4) Ehm, yeah, the trolls were weird, and the ice was somehow obvious. But nice overall.
(5) Ok, catching that unit across the bad ice didn't really have a point for me, so I didn't do it after I had to replay the scenario for the first time. There is also a kind of bug in that: if you don't catch a unit across the ice, and walk the small path in the middle, you still get the ice crashed message.
Then walking down to get to the lich was... well straightforward, if not to say boring, especially after having paid off the trolls. The lich was impossible, this was the first time I had to save and reload in this game, and I only won by luck after 20 times reloading. So it was easy up to this point, and impossible at the lich.
(6) 2... I'm sure it could get worse, but this needs some serious redesign (especially compared to the rest of the campaign)
(7) Well, I'm not experienced in this game, and therefore have no real ideas of what could be done. A fight-your-way-through scenario would have been more interesting to me though. Nice traps could have been included. :)
devermore
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Joined: April 20th, 2006, 6:39 pm

Post by devermore »

I'm playing 1.1.2 and there seems to be no end to it. The lich is dead, all the trolls gone, and I own everything, yet when turn 36 comes around it claims I am defeated. What's up with that? I'm playing on the hard level, btw.
mlangsdorf
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Joined: April 27th, 2004, 4:24 pm

Post by mlangsdorf »

1. Hard 1.1.7
2. 9 - I had to restart multiple times. Undead are fierce in caves, liches are hard to kill with Royal Guardsmen and Swordsmen, and the Mage of Light doesn't move fast
enough to be everywhere he needs to be. Plus, those damned Spectres and Wraiths picking off anything weak.
At least the trolls were pathetic.
3. Clear, but a map or something would have helped.
4. The dialog was unclear. If the trolls rejected my offer, why did I pay them? I could have used that money!
5. None of my units, except the Mage of Light, can routinely kill a ghost, wraith, spectre, or nightgaunt. Mage can only kill a few ghosts before he runs out of HP. Shyde is the only useful scout, so she isn't near the mage most of the time. Plus, scouting with Shyde means running into Boneblades and loss of scenario.
It's a pain to search through caves for turns and turns with units that are slow or slower. Especially when I only have 5 units to start with anyway!
Underground liches are evil. They always are.
6. 2 - why'd the dead trolls steal my gold?
7. Reduce the map size. Widen the corridors. Reduce the amount of ice and replace with dirt roads or paved areas. Replace some of the skeletons and ghosts with soulless. Give me more money to start with so I can recall a reasonable amount of troops.

One weird thing that happened here is that my auto-recalls were not healed from the last adventure, and only had partial MP remaining. That wasn't cool either.
Chris Byler
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Location: Blacksburg, VA, USA

Post by Chris Byler »

1. Normal 1.1.7

2. 10. Starting with no gold is very annoying but almost inevitable after the major cash drains of CitF (if you choose to side with the elves it is almost impossible to win early or to hold villages) and the almost completely villageless TGaI. So you're slow, outnumbered, in very bad terrain, fighting skeletons with almost all pierce/blade using lawful units in perpetual darkness (this makes their level 1s about as strong as your level 3s), and half your units are losers with low HP.

I had to restart twice just because of information I didn't have in time for it to do me any good - the trap, how necessary the trolls are (and the fact that you actually can raise 75 gold), which direction to go in order to not waste time and get slaughtered. You can't really scout with all the 2-3 movecost terrain everywhere.

Then you get to the fun part, fighting a level 4 (!) unit that can do 80 damage per turn and drain 10 or so per counterattack. I surrounded him with a royal guard, elvish avenger, cavalier and a pikeman backed by Deoran's leadership (luckily I only brought one master bowman, I hate to think what it would be like if you brought two), and in 2-3 turns he was down to 1/3 hp... then a bunch of skeletons wore down the cavalier, he one-shotted the royal guard, and hid behind his 5 more skeletons until they killed one of my low hp healers that lose the scenario instantly.

Oh, and Dismounted Deoran is bugged. He starts with 60/38 HP and gets healed for -22 as soon as he rests or steps next to a healer. But then if you load a save game he has 38/60 (or 60/60 if you save and then immediately load at the beginning, I guess). I don't know if this is relevant, but he had the "barbs" AMLA already before I got to this scenario (very very useful since it overwrites his charge special *and* gives him an extra swing and slow).

3. Seems clear, but some people have reported killing the lich without winning, so maybe I'm misinterpreting them? On examination of the WML, it appears that if the trolls are your enemies, you can't win, even if you kill Mal M'brin; and if you kill Mal M'brin but can't pay the trolls, they become your enemies and you can't win even if you kill them too.

The "Explore the caves" objective really should change to "Kill Mal M'brin" once you find him, since that's what you actually have to do. It's intuitively obvious that you didn't come down there to shake his hand, though, so this is a minor point.

4. The trapped unit, aside from being an evil gotcha, can't actually be rescued as the dialog claims. The choices for dealing with the trolls are deceptive; if option 2 is going to result in war with the trolls, it should make that clear instead of trying to trick the player.

5. No gold, everything's highly resistant to all but one of your units (which is a low hp loser), hostile terrain, eternal darkness, narrow passages making it difficult to use healers/leaders effectively or focus firepower, too many units you can't afford to expose to risk, level 4 boss with drain and insane amounts of magic damage.

Three things annoy me more than any others in Wesnoth: being forced to fight with the wrong units because there aren't any right units in your recruit/recall list (typically because of terrain or resist issues - in this case both), being forced to fight at the wrong time of day (either eternal darkness or very short clocks that make you fight night and day to have even a chance of getting to the end in time), and forced restarts because you don't find important information until it's too late to do anything with it. This scenario has all three in spades.

6. 2, maybe. Frankly I'm regretting taking the extra time to do the whole elf branch of the campaign, it's immensely harder and not as much fun (so far). I shot myself in the foot in a *big* way to please the elves and so far they're not doing anything for me - other than leading me into a suicide mission, of course.

7. I don't know. Too many of the problems are tied up to its being a cave scenario at all (the bad terrain, cramped quarters and eternal darkness) or the way it fits into the campaign (resistance problems, lots of losers, no gold).

Eliminating the trap and the deceptive wording of the dialogue with the trolls would be an obvious start; both just force you to replay the scenario if you make the wrong move, without adding anything.

Ancient lich in eternal darkness is pretty insane; his drain and resists make it hard to do any damage to him at all. He's as balanced as a level 4 can ever be - in MP where all factions have some impact or fire and it's only dark 1/3 of the time. In eternal darkness against an army without any damage type that actually works on him, it's frustrating to see him gain back as much damage as he takes and then kill level 3s in one turn.

Ironically, what you really need to fight skeletons in the dark is chaotic units with impact damage, which you gave up (gaining a dozen more enemies instead of a dozen free units in the process) in order to have the largely useless elves not betray you two scenarios ago. Then most of them abandon you anyway.

One interesting (though rather radical) possibility would be to eliminate the option to bribe the trolls, but instead, if you kill their leader, you liberate some dwarves who join you and give you a few free units (as well as placing the bomb). Neutral-aligned units with impact damage that can move in caves would be incredibly useful, and they might come in handy in the final battle, too.
Chris Byler
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Location: Blacksburg, VA, USA

Post by Chris Byler »

Update: I finally did win this scenario. It's not quite as evil if you make a pincer attack, attacking the ancient lich from both sides simultaneously. This reduces the problems with the narrow opening and lets you kill off some of the skeletons first. I don't know why that didn't occur to me sooner.

I still lost two level 3s, though. Oh well, it doesn't really matter - it's practically impossible to lose the next scenario. Now that I realize that this is basically the final scenario of the elf fork of the campaign, I'm a little less peeved at the difficulty, too. You don't have to win *and* keep a decent amount of troops alive - you just have to win.

You still have to play it a lot of times before you figure out all the gimmicks, though - and most of the time is spent crawling through caves at 2-3 hexes per turn. Then when you get there you can easily instantly lose if the ancient lich attacks someone you didn't expect him to attack.
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Zhukov
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Post by Zhukov »

Difficulty, version: Hard, 1.1.8

Difficulty: 2/10, don't know what others are complaining about.

Objectives: clear.

Dialog: Not bad at all. I liked the big troll fella.

Challenges: The leader I suppose. I just whomped him with my Mage of Light. Again, I can't see what others are complaining about.

Fun factor: Not that bad, maybe 5/10.

Changes: This level is just begging for a better designed map. All that slogging through empty cave is really boring and unneccesary. Shortening the distances involved would do wonders.
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