Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Feedback for the mainline campaign Secrets of the Ancients.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

User avatar
Content Feedback
Battle for Wesnoth
Location: Wesnoth.org
Contact:

Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by Content Feedback »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?
(4) What were the major challenges you faced?
(5) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?
Mainline Campaigns: Scenario FeedbackDevelopment & Overall Feedback
User-made Add-ons: Feedback
Landiss
Posts: 34
Joined: May 18th, 2018, 6:48 pm

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by Landiss »

1) 1.14, normal difficulty (the middle one)

2) 10, so far I cannot pass it (just 2 tries so far though)

3) The introduction of a new unit was nice, although it is next to useless in this scenario. I know that it's possible to get this unit sometime earlier in the campaign (I must have missed that) and this is just another possibility, but it's feels a bit blah. When you give me a new toy, let me have some fun playing with it.

4) It starts very slowly and I'm able to kill the first enemy units easily, but by the time I'm somewhere around half the way, suddenly there are too many of them to handle and they manage to get one of my leaders. It's difficult to protect the vulnerable units while being able to use them to counterattack, because enemy is so mobile and there is no early warning due to the fog. Because there is no info about enemy, it is not clear to me if I should try to first kill more of them or rather rush through the path as soon as possible.

5) 6. I like the challenge, although I'm not sure if I will be able to overcome it.

6) Make it more transparent to the player how strong the enemy is. At the moment I don't know if gryphons would just spawn endlessly or how does it work. It's a bit similar to the scenario 12, with a crucial difference - in that scenario you managed to give the player very clear information when enemy was spawned. I don't have any specific idea how to do it here though :/.
User avatar
beetlenaut
Developer
Posts: 2813
Joined: December 8th, 2007, 3:21 am
Location: Washington State
Contact:

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by beetlenaut »

Landiss wrote: May 20th, 2018, 10:49 am When you give me a new toy, let me have some fun playing with it.
It's a lot more fun if
Spoiler:
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
Landiss
Posts: 34
Joined: May 18th, 2018, 6:48 pm

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by Landiss »

Yeah, I realized that afterwards, when I was checking how the campaign was made. I have by now played the next scenario and can see how that unit is crucial there, so I understand your decision. Still, in the scenario 15 itself it feels a bit weird. Perhaps it would feel more natural if you move the event to the start of scenario 16 (before the first turn starts and of course only shown if you haven't got the unit before). That way you could also really make sure all players got it, even if they somehow manage not to land on a specific tile.
SanDonk
Posts: 32
Joined: June 26th, 2017, 8:58 pm

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by SanDonk »

1) 1.14.1., medium
2) 10 - I had to lower the level of scenario and even then it was problem
3) OK
4) I somehow managed to find a way to pass it after two months of attempts
5) 2 - It was way too much this time :(
6) Reduce the number of those damned griffins.
Robert_A_Booey
Posts: 3
Joined: January 16th, 2012, 5:16 pm

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by Robert_A_Booey »

Content Feedback wrote: May 13th, 2017, 10:36 pm (1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?
(4) What were the major challenges you faced?
(5) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?
(1) Medium, Wesnoth v1.14.4
(2) 10 - Impossible to beat
(3) OK
(4) Could not beat the campaign no matter what strategies I tried, got overrun with griffons every time.
(5) 1 - Waaaaay too hard
(6) Reduce number of griffons or add some villages along the path to provide healing. Or increase the starting amount of gold.

I'd really like to see a replay of someone beating this so I can see what kind of strategy they used. I've tried the following without success:

[*] Mixture of cannon fodder lvl 1 units and stronger lvl 2 and 3 units, trying to move and fight at the same time.
[*] Same as above but bunkering down and trying to weather the storm of griffons.
[*] Using nothing but lvl 1 units and trying to move and fight.
[*] Using nothing but lvl 2 and 3 units and trying to move and fight.
[*] Using lvl 2 and 3 units and bunkering down.
[*] Trying to make a run for it.
[*] Trying to use ghosts and bats to distract the griffons while the main party moved through.

No matter what I've tried, I simply cannot even come close to beating this scenario. There are just too many griffons. I started with 158 gold and have 12 lvl 2 units and 6 lvl 3 units I can recall, along with Vendraxis, Carcyn, and Shynal. Ultimately, I had no choice but to just enable debug mode so I could move the characters across the map to the finish on turn one. It sucks that I basically had to cheat my way through it, but it was either that or just give up playing the campaign entirely.

Some of the other scenarios have been challenging, even taking several attempts to beat, but those were challenging in a good way. I could always see what I did wrong and retry with a better strategy. Either there's a strategy or a trick here I don't know about, or this scenario is just waaaaay too hard the way it's currently built.

Is there something I'm missing? This scenario just feels so out of place among the others with how insanely hard it is, I'm almost wondering if there's another secret in it like the chocobone that's meant to give the player a fighting chance of beating this.

Once again, if anyone has a replay of this being successfully beaten, I'd love to take a look at it and see what I can learn from it.
User avatar
beetlenaut
Developer
Posts: 2813
Joined: December 8th, 2007, 3:21 am
Location: Washington State
Contact:

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by beetlenaut »

If you are having trouble with a scenario in this campaign, try it with walking corpses. People tend to forget how powerful those are. You constantly get new units to block access to your heroes and absorb attacks.
Attachments
SotA-Mountain Pass replay.gz
(51.67 KiB) Downloaded 734 times
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
Robert_A_Booey
Posts: 3
Joined: January 16th, 2012, 5:16 pm

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by Robert_A_Booey »

beetlenaut wrote: August 27th, 2018, 11:11 pm If you are having trouble with a scenario in this campaign, try it with walking corpses. People tend to forget how powerful those are. You constantly get new units to block access to your heroes and absorb attacks.
Hmm, so it looks like that campaign did the "attack while moving" strategy. The main difference from what I tried is that it used walking corpses like you said, and also some wraiths and spectres. I had plenty of lvl 2 & 3 units, but unfortunately no wraiths or spectres and the griffons just ate the lvl 1 ghosts like candy.

I'll try playing it over again with a bunch of walking corpses and see if I can beat it normally this time.
SigurdFireDragon
Developer
Posts: 545
Joined: January 12th, 2011, 2:18 am
Location: Pennsylvania, USA

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

Robert_A_Booey wrote: August 27th, 2018, 7:59 pm I started with 158 gold
More would be good
Robert_A_Booey wrote: August 28th, 2018, 6:08 am I had plenty of lvl 2 & 3 units, but unfortunately no wraiths or spectres
The Necromancer's Angels help a lot in any undead campaign.

It might be good to go back and replay S14 with eye to using the walking corpse strategy to maximize carryover & produce at least 2-3 wraiths as well.
Co-Author of Winds of Fate
My Add-ons: Random Campaign, Custom Campaign, Ultimate Random Maps, Era of Legends, Gui Debug Tools
Erfworld: The comic that lead me to find Wesnoth.
Konrad2
Forum Moderator
Posts: 3330
Joined: November 24th, 2010, 6:30 pm

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by Konrad2 »

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

Diabolic, 1.14.3

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

6

(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?

It was interesting.

(4) What were the major challenges you faced?

Keeping my unit protected against the mobile Gryphons.

(5) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

6

(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?

-
Attachments
SotA-Gebirgspass Aufzeichnung abspielen.gz
(45.93 KiB) Downloaded 631 times
Thrash
Posts: 223
Joined: June 25th, 2010, 1:54 pm

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by Thrash »

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

1.14.5, Corrupt (Challenging), 306 gold

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

Spending all my gold 4, just recruiting eight units to save gold, 7. Not sure which one was better strategically... will see.

(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?

The Chocobones creation is nice.

(4) What were the major challenges you faced?

Keeping a tight formation. One thing I figured out is the griffins wouldn't attack a couple of my necromancers (high hp?), and only very rarely the necrophage, so they made good shields.

(5) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

7, good challenge.

(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?

Good as is.
Attachments
SotA-Mountain Pass replay.gz
Just recruiting eight units.
(45.69 KiB) Downloaded 652 times
SotA-Mountain Pass replay.gz
Spending all my gold.
(46.03 KiB) Downloaded 669 times
LordWolfDan
Posts: 216
Joined: September 30th, 2018, 7:31 am

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by LordWolfDan »

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

- 1.14.5, Normal

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

- 6

(3) What did you think about the dialog and story?

- It's okay. Ras-Tabahn's illness is quite a nice touch. I wonder if he's going to live?

(4) What were the major challenges you faced?

- Facing gryphons

(5) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

- 5

(6) What suggestions do you have to make it more fun?

- It's fine
AlexanderRM
Posts: 7
Joined: December 23rd, 2017, 6:35 am

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by AlexanderRM »

(1) Easy, 1.14.9, 287 starting gold
(2) Not sure how to rate, pretty obnoxious but not terrible
(3) It was OK, served the purpose for this scenario; I'm liking the campaign overall
(4) Main issue was I didn't realize it was best played with exclusively Ghosts so I recalled 2-3 Dark Adepts and a few Skeleton type units, which were a waste and made it tough to fight the Griffons. This is mostly my fault since I really should have realized that pure ghosts was better, but I feel like it might help if at the very start it was more clear that you were going to face a constant stream of Griffons, like how the Wose level felt much more obvious about it.
(5) Not sure how to rate

I also was excited to hear from a friend that you could unlock Chocobones here, having missed them in the Merfolk level. I couldn't find them at all despite checking the guide and eventually checked Thrash's recording in this thread which confirmed there were bones in a spot where my game didn't have any bones; did they get moved in the more recent version? I definitely did not find them in the Merfolk scenario and don't have them unlocked.
I'd suggest that in at least one of the two scenarios someone should comment on the presence of interesting bones, to indicate that you should check them out.
SigurdFireDragon
Developer
Posts: 545
Joined: January 12th, 2011, 2:18 am
Location: Pennsylvania, USA

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

AlexanderRM wrote: January 31st, 2020, 3:49 am Thrash's recording in this thread which confirmed there were bones in a spot where my game didn't have any bones; did they get moved in the more recent version?
Yes, moved to
Spoiler:
Co-Author of Winds of Fate
My Add-ons: Random Campaign, Custom Campaign, Ultimate Random Maps, Era of Legends, Gui Debug Tools
Erfworld: The comic that lead me to find Wesnoth.
AlexanderRM
Posts: 7
Joined: December 23rd, 2017, 6:35 am

Re: Scenario 15: Mountain Pass

Post by AlexanderRM »

Ah, thanks! I checked one of my last saves from that map and had a unit literally 1 hex from them; I passed right by them without even noticing.
It sounds like I might be unusually unobservant but I'd definitely suggest having a character comment on the hex appearing to have something interesting, like how Ras-Taban comments that the Jail is probably a good place to recruit malcontents, since the fact that you can get Chocobones in an earlier scenario already makes a fun easter egg for observant people.
Post Reply