1.16 SP Campaign: Trinity

[Drakilian]

Hmm, in the "Tower, Upper Levels" Scenario, a lot of the units I recall alternate between being displayed as normal units and being displayed as leader units (like Dardrus and Bresda, with the little crown icon on their green dot and the non-circular, explodey base). At one point I believe all of my units looked like that, but went back to normal (though one of the wreckers I sent out of the first room to explore - the one with the zombie dragon - is still displayed as a leader unit.

EDIT: Yep, all the units look like leader units until I move them in or out of a room, at which point they look like normal units again.

[Drakilian]

By the way, I think Dardrus' Meteor strike ability should be rebalanced - it's (so far, anyway) magnitudes more powerful than any of his other magical abilities.

The meteor strike gets a bonus of 8 damage every time you upgrade it and it's a one-shot attack with the focus ability (which massively increases its accuracy, frequently to a value greater than the normal hit rate for a magic attack). Since it's a one shot, and an very accurate one at that, it would deal more damage than a usual attack even if its maximum damage value is lower than one of an ability with more strikes (4 attacks at 6 damage each are nice, but you'll more than likely miss one of those attacks - one very accurate attack like the meteor storm at 20 is significantly more reliable and will deal more damage over repeated usage).

The normal attacks for Dardrus' other abilities are only increased by 1 point of damage (per attack) when increased (at least, the ones I've seen so far, it's possible some are increased by 2, I guess?). That's a way lower increase than the meteor strike (which gets an increase of 8 to damage - which the attack will benefit from far more often as well, since it always gets everything in that one hit).

I bring it up because right now Dardrus is ridiculously powerful from his AMLAs (since he's a level 2, with the heroine at the always-chaotic tower), i've got him dealing 100+ damage to enemies (even enemies that have impact resistance - and most enemies don't have a very high impact resistance, for that matter) in one-shot from his supremely accurate, high-damage attack.

(Oh, and if it wasn't obvious, I made Dardrus an Observer - because why choose a guy who throws rocks over a guy who throws magical explosions?)

And yeah, I know that it makes Dardrus more vulnerable to a counter-attack - but that's not saying much since the enemies who can survive that kind of damage in this game are the kinds of enemies that we spend our time running away from instead of fighting.

[doofus-01]

I just surrounded Keldan with the Azure mages for protection and the Cian mage attacked them (since he couldn't get to Keldan). They got pretty badly injured but with the leadership bonus they dealt more damage than they took, and then I had Keldan finish the job

Hah. That was pretty clever, I'll have to keep that in mind.

Hmm, in the "Tower, Upper Levels" Scenario, a lot of the units I recall alternate between being displayed as normal units and being displayed as leader units (like Dardrus and Bresda, with the little crown icon on their green dot and the non-circular, explodey base). At one point I believe all of my units looked like that, but went back to normal (though one of the wreckers I sent out of the first room to explore - the one with the zombie dragon - is still displayed as a leader unit.

EDIT: Yep, all the units look like leader units until I move them in or out of a room, at which point they look like normal units again.

It was a hack to prevent the player from instantly losing if neither Bresda nor Dardrus were on the map. I think there are some new(ish) options in WML that can be used to make this unnecessary, I'll look into replacing it.

By the way, I think Dardrus' Meteor strike ability should be rebalanced - it's (so far, anyway) magnitudes more powerful than any of his other magical abilities. ...

I agree, I'll have to see if I can raise the risk of using 'focus'. If not, I'll just tone down the damage. The magic attack he starts out with should also probably be changed.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Drakilian]

So, what's with the chained blue dragon? I killed it with Dardrus earlier (See Meteor strike's OPness) and I killed it with significantly more difficulty and many ranged units on the pushback scenario, and I get the feeling we're not supposed to kill it? Because after I kill tristan, I got the message that the dragon started looking around (and then the scenario refused to end).

EDIT: Yep, everything works just fine with the blue dragon dead. It ran up to the castle and fought a bunch of ghosts, then next turn the queen showed up out of nowhere (good thing too, that would have been such and anticlimactic death). Though i'm also pretty sure she's Echidna now.

[Drakilian]

In the Scenario Dark Planet, i'm pretty sure that there's some dialogue missing for Kerryn. Also, he conssitently is displayed as an enemy fighter, despite the fact that i'm pretty sure he's supposed to be helping out.

[doofus-01]

In the Scenario Dark Planet, i'm pretty sure that there's some dialogue missing for Kerryn. Also, he conssitently is displayed as an enemy fighter, despite the fact that i'm pretty sure he's supposed to be helping out.

That doesn't sound good, he is supposed to be allied. It worked fine when I tried it back whenever, but I think you've stress-tested this better than I have. Could you post a save-file?

So, what's with the chained blue dragon? I killed it with Dardrus earlier (See Meteor strike's OPness) and I killed it with significantly more difficulty and many ranged units on the pushback scenario, and I get the feeling we're not supposed to kill it? Because after I kill tristan, I got the message that the dragon started looking around (and then the scenario refused to end).

EDIT: Yep, everything works just fine with the blue dragon dead. It ran up to the castle and fought a bunch of ghosts, then next turn the queen showed up out of nowhere (good thing too, that would have been such and anticlimactic death). Though i'm also pretty sure she's Echidna now.

Blue Dragon: Sounds like I need to put in a filter to check whether that thing is still alive before that message pops up. But otherwise, it shouldn't matter if you kill it.

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1.3.5 has been uploaded to the BfW 1.12 server.

To deal with the Cyan boss that Keldan fights (aka Tristien) getting enthralled, I've used FORCE_CHANCE_TO_HIT, so he should be untouchable. I'm not proud of that, but it's a band-aid for now. I'll get a better solution when I can.

To deal with the OP of meteor attack, I've increased the XP penalty. I think this is a good method of throttling that attack, though the numbers may still need to be changed. I've also lowered the damage increase to 6 from 8.

The leader crowns on units in scenario Tower - Upper Levels are now a thing of the past. The new [side] WML key "defeat_condition" seems to do the trick.

Myself, I've played up to scenario Pushback (didn't finish it), and things seemed to work, but as can be seen from Drakilian's experiences, I can't catch every bug. So any reports are helpful. There have been some updates to Archaic Era that should probably have some impact on this.

[Drakilian]

If I knew how to post a save file, I would. Any thread that describes how you'd do that?

[Drakilian]

While I don't know how to post a save file though, I can note that on the turn where Kerryn appears there is no dialogue and I get an error message:

<Invalid WML found> [unit_overlay] missing required image = attribute

Also, just a comment on the scenario - I haven't tried to play it because it was noted that the next scenario isn't finished (so it would basically end here) but holy crap, that is a terrifyingly large number of phantoms. I'm assuming Keldan betrays Seth here, which would make the fight manageable (easy even, since he would be able to just snipe off both leaders), or that we receive allied reinforcements somewhere, because while I could take the ghosts (with heavy losses for my mostly lawful army), Keldan's level 3s and the damn belikakotaurus (I suddenly really regret enthralling all those azure mages) definitely make the fight ridiculously hard (especially since it's all cave terrain - if I try to retreat my heavily injured units they'll quickly get cut down by phantoms since they can't retreat far enough, especially my cavalry. The ridiculously low mobility for the white mages doesn't really help either).

At the very least, the scenario would be much more manageable if we could recruit dwarves or orcs (if, for example, we didn't recruit all too many in the last scenario, then we have a very limited recall army against the phantoms).

Oh, and for Tristien's fight with Keldan - it's been established that these are the mages who invented the teleporters, right? Why not have Tristien teleport Keldan and himself off to a different room (on the same map, perhaps) where they would be forced to fight each other? Doubtless a particularly obsessive save-loader could still win with Keldan, but it seems like unless you did exactly that, Tristien would win every time.

[doofus-01]

If I knew how to post a save file, I would. Any thread that describes how you'd do that?

This should help you find them (the file names match what you see when choosing a save in game): http://wiki.wesnoth.org/EditingWesnoth# ... _directory

I did find what the error was referring to, it might be fixed. If I can get a save-file for that scenario, preferably the start-of-scenario save, I can find out.

Also, just a comment on the scenario - I haven't tried to play it because it was noted that the next scenario isn't finished (so it would basically end here) but holy crap, that is a terrifyingly large number of phantoms. I'm assuming Keldan betrays Seth here, which would make the fight manageable (easy even, since he would be able to just snipe off both leaders), or that we receive allied reinforcements somewhere, because while I could take the ghosts (with heavy losses for my mostly lawful army), Keldan's level 3s and the damn belikakotaurus (I suddenly really regret enthralling all those azure mages) definitely make the fight ridiculously hard (especially since it's all cave terrain - if I try to retreat my heavily injured units they'll quickly get cut down by phantoms since they can't retreat far enough, especially my cavalry. The ridiculously low mobility for the white mages doesn't really help either).

At the very least, the scenario would be much more manageable if we could recruit dwarves or orcs (if, for example, we didn't recruit all too many in the last scenario, then we have a very limited recall army against the phantoms).

It's not as daunting as it seems: 1. Keldan changes teams, as you guessed. 2. Many of those phantoms are not quite what they appear, they are more like decoys.

As for the note saying the next scenario is not done, I must have forgotten to remove that. The campaign is complete, though the last couple of scenarios need more work, and I may rewrite them if I have the time & energy.

Thanks.

[Drakilian]

Okay, awesome, got it. I think.

Round 3 was when Kerryn appeared (for me, anyway), so I just added that in there because i really don't have any idea what you actually need

[Drakilian]

By the way, is there a special program or something that makes those saves comprehensible or am I weird for opening them and just being staggered by how little I understand in there?

[doofus-01]

By the way, is there a special program or something that makes those saves comprehensible or am I weird for opening them and just being staggered by just how little I understand in there?

The .gz files are compressed, you need to decompress them first. I use gunzip on Linux. I think 7Zip is what would be used on Windows for .gz files.

Attached is the fixed Autosave1 (re-compressed because the forum won't accept it otherwise). It was exactly what the error reported, not sure how I could have missed it... I must have figured it was such a small edit, I couldn't possibly scrwe it up.

Another thing I saw in that save was the mine unit with quick trait. I could have sworn I'd fixed that particular annoyance... I don't think it breaks the game, but it might make things look a little goofy.

[Drakilian]

Oh, on the Cyan-boss fight scenario with Keldan there was a mine unit that had managed to perfectly position itself over the bridge (forcing me to sacrifice a duelist - least important unit I had up there - to get past it), which was super-annoying, but other than that it hasn't affected the game so far.

So I just replace the auto-save I have with this and then scenario should work as intended?

[doofus-01]

So I just replace the auto-save I have with this and then scenario should work as intended?

Right. It'll fix the problem with Kerrnyn, and hopefully that is the only one - I'd have to play through the scenario to be sure, and it will be many days before I can do that.

[Drakilian]

So, started again.

Crap, all of this side-switching is absolutely brutal on me, and all those powerful Kthon ended up trapping my units between themselves and the mechanical dragon (who I was just about to kill) while Dardrus and the Heroine are stuck all the way in the back of the map.

Also, the infinitely respawning mechanical dragon thing is still in this scenario, so after I finally managed to kill the damn thing it just came back to life...

Which would have been awesome if it was still fightning the Kthon, but, well, I was sandwiched.

EDIT: So anyway, I restarted from when I had began fighting the mechanical dragon and just had all my forces retreat so that the Kthon (and the Belikakotaurus) would be kept permanently occupied by the invincible mechanical dragon. Worked out much better.