Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Feedback for the mainline campaign Descent into Darkness.

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taptap
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by taptap »

I didn't play until 2000+ gold, but I did no recalls / recruits in the 1000 gold variation and still won easily for one reason: The AI doesn't attack ancient lichs in good health with ranged attacks, because at least the big potential damage dealers are chickens, the 1200 gold variation (the fifth?) would have gone the same way if I didn't start to attack the ranged units with ranged attacks to end this unlife... The loyalist army had so many red mages to easily blast a lich away with little or no losses, but they simply didn't use their ranged attack. So when you sit your hero on a village focus on healing by attacking a ranged unit by melee (if you are low on hp the ranged attackers will start to attack you), your hero alone, maybe add another lich (Dark Sorcerers get the choice to level to Lich in this scenario) for speeding up the process, can "process" huge armies all by himself. High defense outlaws might be an exception to this, didn't happen to me, but against them you can still try the deep water area in the east, maybe together with a spectre that has ok defense over the water while the outlaws will be on pretty bad defense terrain. It will take ages, but I doubt you will lose there.

The only question is whether you will yourself turn to a zombie in front of your computer in the meantime.
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Curtis
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by Curtis »

taptap wrote:The only question is whether you will yourself turn to a zombie in front of your computer in the meantime.
:lol2: Excellent point, and thank you for the advice. I had already determined that I should keep the Ancient Lich on bad defensive terrain and attack as many missile firing units as he could reach.

My Dark Mages were not given the option to level into Liches. Would that be because they leveled up before I came into possession of the book?
JaMiT
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by JaMiT »

(1) Played 1.8.5 difficult and 1.11 challenging.

(2) The difficulty is what I wanted to comment on, but basically it's already been said -- if Malin makes it to ancient lich status and sits in a village, then the AI is afraid to attack, allowing the player to pick off a unit each turn, leading to a slow but pretty much assured victory. (I repeated this until I faced all possible types of foolish heroes, and all of them fell the same way.) Overwhelming numbers mean nothing if they are not used. So let's jump to...

(7) I think the scenario would be more fun if the AI would actually use its numbers. Unfortunately, I lost my saves from my most recent run-through, so testing this is not so simple for me, but maybe it would be enough to set the AI's aggression= aspect to something like 1.0 - 1.0/(1.0 + timesForever)? That starts aggression at/near the default value (0.5) and gradually increases it towards the point where the AI disregards damage received (1.0). In theory, after enough repetitions, that should cause the AI to just pile on the attacks, which should eventually overcome even an ancient lich.
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Ninjuri
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by Ninjuri »

Normal 1.10.2

The objectives were pretty weird to figure out. I noticed that the heros would get progressively more and more gold, so on the second and third guys i actually trapped them in a corner at low health and left them there while i gained bonus gold to match the starting gold of the next hero mathematically. Of course in the end, this extra planning was a waste of time, which mildly irritates me.

I first fought the orc hero, then the dwarf one, then the elven one, then i thought i was going to be fighting humans and that would be the end of it. When i got orcs again, i knew something was up, before playing it i went over here to check it out, which i guess ruined the secret, but i could've gone on for days due to the fact that i would have taken a boatload of heros to stop me. When i was facing elves, they wouldn't even attack the lich for some reason. I would insta-kill woses, and any melee units that attacked me would just feed me, so they stopped attacking altogher. I marched right into the enemy base and even the hero wouldn't touch me. So i put some units on his villages and just ran ring-around-the-rosie 1 hitting his woses.

I'm not sure which races do this, ( i didn't check) but it could be a problem.

It was certainly a unique way to end a campaign, but i have to agree about the anti-climactic part.

Here is an interesting way to get the same effect of the scenario while only making it one level: Why not have it so whenever an enemy unit dies, two more enter through some cave entrance. There is therefore no way to stem the flow of units and the player eventually gets overrun.
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caoraivoso3
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by caoraivoso3 »

this campaign is awesome and i think if we make a new campaign with this story but without endless and continue its good i love that
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The_Afterman
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by The_Afterman »

I agree with the lack of Dela plots. She seems to only show up to be a nag. Would be cool to have to kill your own sister, to show how his humanity is completely gone.
With how slow the game is, playing over and over this scenario was frustrating and annoying to me. Then instead of some epic ending, it's just 'wonder who that guy was? Even though nobody else ever asks this about other lichs. Oh well we'll never know, gg.'
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Pewskeepski
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by Pewskeepski »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Summoner (Difficult), 1.11.2

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
1.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Great. Though a bit repetitive.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
I had to suicide Mal Keshar at the end.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
9. Only because I do not fear defeat!

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Some indication that it's not an error.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
I won three times and had to restart each time...

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
Fine.

Below are 4 replays. Elves, humans, dwarves, and orcs. I completely wiped out the elves, but after being severely damaged by the humans and dwarves, I was swept away by the orchish forces. A shame since I hate them so much...
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DiD-Endless_Night_--_Orcs_replay.gz
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DiD-Endless_Night_--_Dwarves_replay.gz
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DiD-Endless_Night_--_Humans_replay.gz
Second.
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DiD-Endless_Night_--_Elves_replay.gz
First.
(28.24 KiB) Downloaded 841 times
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flammstrudel
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by flammstrudel »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.2 Summoner (difficult) – no reloads

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
Depends.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear enough.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I think it's a really great way to end the campaign.

(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?
...

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
*cough* my leader died *cough*

…..........

Since this was the last scenario let me add a few lines about Descent in Darkness in general. I thinks it's terrific campaign and I had a lot of fun playing it. The plot is great, who doesn't love anti-heroes? Malin's sister is superfluous, but it doesn't ruin the story. The difficulty label “intermediate” is appropriate. I liked that you don't get heaps of loyal units, many campaigns just overdo it. Most scenarios were above average or even fantastic, two or three bad apples do exist, but they weren't bad designed, they just didn't hit the spot for me. The only exception is 9 – a small favor III, this one doesn't serve any purpose and needs to be removed or completely revamped. One thing I found unfortunately has to do with the army composition that is more or less dictated by the game: right now there is no reason to use anything but the ghost line and maybe two or three dark adepts.
3 – a haunting in winter: best to go pure ghost, ghouls are too slow, bats are just weaker ghost (and village grabbing is fairly unimportant in DiD).
4 – Beginning of the revenge: the map design encourages to re-use your ghost, you are not going to have other tier 2 units at this point. Fire goblins and crossbow orcs do counter your ghost, but they also counter skeletons, so there is no incentive to get them and to level them up.
5 – orc war: for the first time the whole undead unit roster is available and some DAs are indeed very desirable. You could get skeletons and ghouls, but your leveled ghosts (by now you should have nightgaunts and spectres) hit harder and do the job just fine.
6 – Return to Parthyn: skeletons could be useful against pikeman, swordsman and longbowmen, but those are already tier 2s (and you aren't supposed to fight them anyway), so leveling is already harder. This scenario is designed to be a run scenario, that gives fast ghosts a huge edge. Therefore we are going to use our ghosts again (and our few DAs).
7 – A small favor I: intended to be won with shadows/ nightgaunts. Even if you indulge yourself in cleansing the city, the easiest way to do it is with mobile ghosts (guerrilla like) and maybe one DA. So far we don't have any tier 2 skeletons or ghouls (okay maybe one tier 2 necrophage), unless we were deliberately choosing the hard and inefficient way.
Scenario 8 and 9 are trivial and you can't recruit new units.
10 – Alone at last: again a “run for your undead life” scenario, mobile ghosts (atleast they have a chance to escape once you got the book) as backbone, DAs for leader sniping. For the first time skeletons could be useful (against mages and paladins), but by now it's too late to get them (tier 1s are useless). And you aren't supposed to fight the Holy Horde anyway.
11 – Descent into Darkness: you are fighting trolls. Trolls are skeleton and ghoul stomper. Ghosts on the other hand eat trolls for breakfast.

Ghosts all the way, baby. The solution could be one or two additional scenarios against loyalists, rebels or saurians between scenario 6 and 7.
devavrata
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by devavrata »

Content Feedback wrote:(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Battle for Wesnoth 1.8.3, Easy/Medium/Hard
Content Feedback wrote:(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
Of course it has to be 10 - you can play it until the strength of mathematics overwhelms you. The enemy's got 200 gold on the first run, 400 on the second, 600 on the third, 800 on the fourth... On the other hand, just when I decided enough is enough and launched Mal on his own against the 600 gold elf... he won! Fully surrounded by elves, made his way until the boss and killed him! A level 4 lich is really something - elves with ranged weapons keep from attacking him because of his deadly counterattack, and elves with melee weapons deliver him less damage than he restores through his touch counterattack. Of course, against trolls the lich has a much harder time.
Content Feedback wrote:(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear
Content Feedback wrote:(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
It is the right end. It has to be endless because Malin is inmortal. It has to be sad because Malin is baned from his home town and, as a lich who leads a horde of undead, has become the target for every other race in Wesnoth (nice variety of enemies, and with a different dialog for each race! Also, dwaves make the cutest undead). Malin cannot have a base in the outside which could be attacked by an army, has to retreat to deep caves where only small groups of heroes dare... even tough they become bigger as time passes. A taste of damnation - I guess the point of this campaign is to provide insight about undead and more precisely to answer the question about where do this liches come from. Also, on the fourth run, when the stupid hero is an orc, Mal says something about an endless supply of stupid heroes.
Content Feedback wrote:(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Just finding the right bottlenecks where to await for the enemies. The lake at the northwest, with its only two entries, is a good choice if you hurry up and get there fast - better than the cavity mentioned at the walkthrough.
Content Feedback wrote:(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7
Content Feedback wrote:(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Content Feedback wrote:(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No
Content Feedback wrote:(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
-
Laveley
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by Laveley »

7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

You can endless defeat stupid heroes if you have at least 2 nighgaunts, no matter what.

In fact, i was only able to finish the campaign because after i killed the seventh or eighth stupid hero i figured out there were something wrong and came here to discover you actually have to dye to complete the campaign. I had 3 liches + the level 4 lich + an almost 150hp ghast, so it was simply sit down in a defensive position and send the nighgaunts to assassinate the hero.

I played on medium 1.10.7 v. by the way.
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Maiklas3000
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) Level and version? Hard, 1.11.15.
(2) Difficult? (1-10) Kobyashi Maru.
(3) Objectives? Heh, well, it's not clear how to "win", but that's intended.
(4) Dialog? I still would like a counter of how many years you have survived.
(5) Challenges? I decided to use 4 Nightgaunts each time to assassinate the leaders. (Well, 3 plus a Shadow, after I lost a Nightgaunt.) I sent my leader to the village at the bottom edge, and nobody dared attack him... until in year #8, the dwarves got up the courage. My leader was wounded and in jeopardy. That cause me to attack early with my Nightgaunts. They got unlucky and failed to kill the leader and were killed by enemy troops. Still, my leader held out, and I think I could have killed all the enemy, but very, very slowly. I just wanted it to be over, so I did stupid attacks in order to die.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 8, a very amusing and appropriate ending, if confusing.
(7) Changes? The enemy seem too timid. Maybe you should use a higher aggression setting.
(8) Restarts? None.

General comments on the campaign:

Descent into Darkness may have the best concept and best dialog of any of the mainline campaigns. However, I agree with all the criticisms of flammstrudel above. Some scenarios need reworking. As flammstrudel said, the scenario that needs the most changes is A Small Favor - Part Three. How you should fix it depends on how you want the scenario to play, but as I said in my review, I suggest getting rid of Volk's army and leaving Volk under the player's command. Another problem some scenarios have is that they are stuck in eternal night, where Nightgaunts and Shadows are too powerful a tool. I'm thinking of A Small Favor - Part One and the scenario Descent into Darkness. Maybe A Small Favor - Part One can have a day cycle (with fog?) and enough distance that you can't assassinate undetected. Maybe the scenario Descent into Darkness can have some lit cave hexes that would disrupt the plans of Nightgaunts and Shadows. Remember also the "bug" in A Small Favor - Part One, where the guards won't leave their posts even after the alarm has been raised. They should all be freed to act normally.

I agree with flammstrudel that the campaign would have more texture if ghosts and their advancements were not always the best units. Beginning of the Revenge is a bit jarring for the player, because he acquires the ability to recruit Skeletons, but the scenario begs to be played with Ghosts, Shadows, Wraiths, and Bats, almost exclusively. So, I suggest adding a scenario just before it where Skeletons are actually quite useful - and you acquire the ability to recruit them then. If you add another scenario later where you really need leveled Skeletons, then that would nicely round out the campaign.

Thanks for the great campaign, though!
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vanatteveldt
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by vanatteveldt »

Generally liked the campaign, good story development and scenarios requiring different tactics.

I disliked the final scenario, mainly because I had no idea what was going on, so I didn't even attempt the second foolish hero (I like to get paid for repetitive work ;-))

Question: after finishing the first foolish hero (outlaws), I reloaded a save and suicided my lich, but that ended in normal defeat. If I suicided my lich in the second foolish hero I got the credits. Do you need to pass at least one?

Suggestion: alter dialogue to make it clear that something is going on. Maybe have Mal suggest increasing weariness, e.g.
(not as actual text suggestions, but to give the idea)
1st hero: Mal: I will kill you
2nd hero: Mal: I will kill you just like the previous fool
3d hero: Recalled unit: We will wipe you out. Mal: I wonder if I made the right choice by choosing the unlife.
4th hero: Recalled unit: We will wipe you out. Mal: My soul is getting heavy with the pointless slaughter, if only I could find rest
etc
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zookeeper
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by zookeeper »

vanatteveldt wrote:Question: after finishing the first foolish hero (outlaws), I reloaded a save and suicided my lich, but that ended in normal defeat. If I suicided my lich in the second foolish hero I got the credits. Do you need to pass at least one?
Yes.
vanatteveldt wrote:Suggestion: alter dialogue to make it clear that something is going on. Maybe have Mal suggest increasing weariness, e.g.
(not as actual text suggestions, but to give the idea)
1st hero: Mal: I will kill you
2nd hero: Mal: I will kill you just like the previous fool
3d hero: Recalled unit: We will wipe you out. Mal: I wonder if I made the right choice by choosing the unlife.
4th hero: Recalled unit: We will wipe you out. Mal: My soul is getting heavy with the pointless slaughter, if only I could find rest
etc
Sure, I agree there should be some extra dialogue like that.
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Inky
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by Inky »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.4, hard (Summoner), 532 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
2 - just use nightgaunts (should be the motto for this campaign)

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Too confusing. It's not clear at all that the way to win is to lose. I think the fix is (as mentioned above) adding dialog for Malin about wanting to find rest.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Fine (a little repetitive!)

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
None

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
2 - While I think this scenario has a creative idea, I feel that in practice it is too repetitive. No matter how much gold the enemy has you can use nightgaunts to assassinate the leader just the same.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Not sure. I don't like how repetitive it is but to change it would mean completely changing the idea of the scenario.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
None.
----
Comments on campaign: While my favorite Wesnoth units are leveled ghosts, I think this campaign is much too focused on them.
Basically every single scenario (except Orc War, and there is not much sense in using units good for only one scenario) has terrain which heavily favors flying units. And in many scenarios (the second to last, Descent into Darkness, in particular) nightgaunts for assassination are just too good.
As this is the only (mainline) undead campaign I think more emphasis should be put on the other units of undead like the skeletons and dark adepts. Currently they are pretty useless and there isn't even a point in having them on the recruit list.
In other words better terrain for land units and less opportunities for leader assassination would encourage using a wider unit variety.
MerlinCross
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by MerlinCross »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Answer: Easy because I'm new at this game. Version 1.12

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
Answer: 2-3. I had ended the last scenario and was given a ton of starting gold. Having been informed of the endlessness of the battle, I just went nuts on the first guy(who was an orc). I flooded the tunnels with undead and mages, barreling past his troops and killing the hero easily. Felt nice to be the 'bad guy' and flood the board with dudes.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Answer: Quite clear, kill the Hero. If you know what's coming you can just go nuts with recruiting. Or see how long you can last.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Answer: Pretty good, I liked how everyone had their own bits...., outside of the ending. I think they all say the same thing.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Answer: Because I only played one round, no real problems.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
Answer: 10. Very fun if you can end the previous map fast and have a mountain of gold to work with. See number 2.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Answer: Maybe add in the two multiplayer factions in as heroes? Other change would be to give each Hero their own ending dialogue.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Answer: Given that the end goal is to basically die, no not really.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
Answer: I actually haven't looked.
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