Legend of the Invincibles

[Elendil]

Hello

First, thank you Dugi for this campaign, that's an awesome one!! And I'm not even at the half!

I got lots of question and some feedbacks, but got one main question for the moment: does anyone know how to finish the scenario "Bloodpath" (chap4, scen 12)?! It already makes hours I'm on it, and not even close to the end of it, the difficulty is just too insane (on Easy... ). Is there any "special" tactics, some events to trigger, ...?

Hope there is one

P.S.: guess there is a way to hurt the bosses, but can't figure which one (apart from meteor)...

[Dugi]

There are is help in right-click options, and you can find there also a hint how to complete this scenario. The scenario is intentionally terribly difficult, because your leaders will decide to retreat after several turns and the situation must be desperate at that point. It used to be easier, but one pro managed to defeat them and I had to make it harder.

If you have feedback, go on, I am interested to read it.

[Elendil]

Okay, I figure that out by checking the scenario .cfg...
Never though that would have been the solution... (so I guess it proves the campaign has a nice and unexpected story :p?).
Thanks for the help


Here are some thoughts of the campaign until now, for me. These are only things I notice so maybe some of them where planned.


General feedbacks:
- why does Efraim have these knifes/shredder when he becomes a preserved liche? It could make sense if he had this ability before becoming a liche, but that's not the case. Plus, they are awfully penible, making him retaliate ranged attack with knife instead of magic...
- When we kill more than 1 enemy while attacking (swirling, meteor, fireball, ...), why do we still only obtain 1 soul? Wouldn't it make more sense if we actually got 1 soul per death?
- Legend of the Invincibles has a great story, but dialogues and cut-scenes aren't on the same level. I got the feeling it would be great if dialogues could be "improved" sometimes.
- Explosive damages have a friendly fire (at least, ennemies' fireballs), is it normal?

Chap2 :
What is Aneng, the Elvish Overlord, doing here? cf screenshot + in the same scenario, the mermaid boss die at turn 3 (or 4) in Easy. Can't even imagine how it should be easy for spirits to kill her in harder difficulties.

Chap3 :
Overall, there are too many scenariis where we keep 100% of the gold at the end, so we arrive at the last scenarios with 5k+ gold: are we supposed to have that much gold, in a desert...?
What about the 5 veterans we talked about, in the first scenario? Never seen them.

Scenario where we have to close the barrier/gate between the world: might be a good idea to make Argan staying immobile for X (2?) turns, while incantating. If not, no reason for not doing it at the very start of the scenario, as they pronounced the formulas there

Scenario 10 "Gehenna": I beat Achilles using the Charges ability of Stormrider (39dmg x3). Not sure that was the right way to do it (as all other attacks only do 1 dmg).

Scenario 12 "Wings of doom":
Like when Lethalia said its prophecy, you could put the same effect (screen goes black) when Ba'al says one too, so players will immediately understand this is another prophecy.
Fire dragons are too easily convinced… "Dude, our enemies are stronger than before" "yea, but there is this and that so come on" "okay, sure". Maybe add some lines saying they will come due to their admiration for him?
Same for the ice dragon. Makes the dragons look dumb: were they not clever enough to think about it before?

Scenario 14 "Chasing the dragons" : could be nice to add some lines when we beat a boss. At least for Ba'al who could say something like "no, you're dooming this world!" or anything else among those lines.


Chap4:
Scenario 07 "Nemesis": Maybe add some lines for Argan, about the destruction of the castle? This is something we've never seen and so does it seem for Stormrider so that should be something really new. And Argan seems not to give a [censored] about it.

Scenario 12 "Bloodpath" : I've seen that the bosses are "untouchable" (direct attacks won't hit them), but they still could die from undirect attack (meteor on a close unit, swirling on a close unit, ...). Did you plan that?
And when we're attacking a boss, it should display that we have no chance of hitting them (0%) (as of now, it still displays 60, 70, ... 90%), so players will have a hint that killing them is not the final "goal".

[Dugi]

- why does Efraim have these knifes/shredder when he becomes a preserved liche? It could make sense if he had this ability before becoming a liche, but that's not the case. Plus, they are awfully penible, making him retaliate ranged attack with knife instead of magic...

He chooses the best attack available to retaliate usually. Most of the fancy spells like meteor are unavailable for retaliation no matter what. It has rather a positive effect on the game, it lets you focus on melee advancements and get a good set of throwing knives to get quite decent ranged attack. If you ask why he gets throwing knives, it is only because throwing knives are cool.
And careful, the word pénible is not english, I am lucky to speak French and understand it.

- When we kill more than 1 enemy while attacking (swirling, meteor, fireball, ...), why do we still only obtain 1 soul? Wouldn't it make more sense if we actually got 1 soul per death?

This is for balance. You were usually getting full exp for all enemies killed this way, but it was impossible to control their advancements then, and making these attacks first-class in all cases, now you have to decide if you want to waste exp with it killing them quickly, or to do it in the traditional way.

- Legend of the Invincibles has a great story, but dialogues and cut-scenes aren't on the same level. I got the feeling it would be great if dialogues could be "improved" sometimes.

I am not sure what is wrong with the custscenes, I think there is nothing wrong about them, Wesnoth has limited interface regarding this and I don't feel like filling this campaign with tons of one-time images like To Lands Unknown; and definitely not like drawing them.
The older parts of the campaign have worse dialogues than the later ones, and I plan to fix it once, but finishing the story is a more important goal at the moment. Also, I was never really good at writing and English is not my native language.

- Explosive damages have a friendly fire (at least, ennemies' fireballs), is it normal?

The enemy ones to it on purpose.

What is Aneng, the Elvish Overlord, doing here? cf screenshot + in the same scenario, the mermaid boss die at turn 3 (or 4) in Easy. Can't even imagine how it should be easy for spirits to kill her in harder difficulties.

The name is irrelevant, it is randomly generated, but this guy is selling items for gold. Step next to him to engage dialogue.

Overall, there are too many scenariis where we keep 100% of the gold at the end, so we arrive at the last scenarios with 5k+ gold: are we supposed to have that much gold, in a desert...?

I was recently decreasing this gold (1-2 weeks ago, I think), is it still so high? I am not sure where did I mention 5 veterans, but it might have been Efraim, Lethalia, Argan, Stormrider and Delly or the 5 units you can afford to recruit at the beginning.

Scenario where we have to close the barrier/gate between the world:

Could be. Good idea.

Scenario 10 "Gehenna"

Achilles was supposed to be a small puzzle, because he can be slain only by pierce (arrows) or damage ignoring resistances (poison), pretty much like the legendary Greek Achilles, who could be slain only by a poisonous arrow. Because poisonous arrows aren't always available, you can choose similar things.

Fire dragons are too easily convinced…

Yeah, I will rewrite the dialogues once, but not now. I am working on chapter 9.

Scenario 07 "Nemesis"

Good idea.

Scenario 12 "Bloodpath"

Bloodbath. It was not meant to look like a puzzle, it was like the last thing to prevent you from slaying them if the enemies fail to crush you. Maybe I could give you a small chance to hit them. And this was not meant to be obvious, it was meant to look just like insanely bad luck (so I might change it to 10% chance no matter what is displayed).

To sum up, I agree with making the unit deactivating the portal need 1-2 turns to stay there to deactivate it. And I will improve the dialogues of the older chapters. Thanks for feedback.

[Elendil]

And careful, the word pénible is not english, I am lucky to speak French and understand it.

Woops, my bad. I just forgot about it

I was recently decreasing this gold (1-2 weeks ago, I think), is it still so high?

Well, I'm starting "Chasing the dragons" with 6,9k gold so... I still think it is (and I'm playing LotI since less than 1 week).

because he can be slain only by pierce (arrows) or damage ignoring resistances (poison)

Okay, so that was because Charge is a pierce attack. Understood.

One more thing I noticed in Chap5:
Scenario 03 "Pirates": At one point when the scenario is finished, Ysill (the pirate boss) is speaking instead of Efraim/Lethalia (saying "And would you have spared our lives?" while it looks like this sentence belongs to Efra/Letha) (+ his portrait is shown instead of Efra/Letha).

And again, thanks for the campaign !!

[Dugi]

Well, I'm starting "Chasing the dragons" with 6,9k gold so... I still think it is (and I'm playing LotI since less than 1 week).

What matter more, when have you started it? This amount of gold was common before the change, and it could have accumulated over time and it remained so high even after the update. When did you start playing chapter 3?

One more thing I noticed in Chap5:
Scenario 03 "Pirates": At one point when the scenario is finished, Ysill (the pirate boss) is speaking instead of Efraim/Lethalia (saying "And would you have spared our lives?" while it looks like this sentence belongs to Efra/Letha) (+ his portrait is shown instead of Efra/Letha).

Yes, there is a bug. I wanted it to be told by the unit that defeated her regardless who it was, but I accidentally made it told by the victim. Thanks for reporting.

[Elendil]

I started it last Sunday.

Edit:
The same bug appears in scenario 7 "Into the Shadow" (vilain speaking instead of the unit who killed him/her). I don't know if you already know this one :s

[Dugi]

I have uploaded that change on February 21st, so I suppose there is still too much gold. Okay.

[flyskippy1]

Currently working my way through Chapter 5. I'll have more comments on Chapters 3-5 once I'm done.

My item storage is quite large at this point, though, so I had some suggestions around that. I've been playing on the iPad, so keep in mind that I might have a smaller screen resolution and slower processor than a desktop player. Also, it's a touch-only interface. So, bearing all that in mind, my inventory has gotten really tough to manage. It's improved somewhat by the new sorting feature that went in recently, but it's still a pretty big list to scroll through. It would be easier if I didn't have to scroll through all those spears, knives, and axes that I haven't had large numbers of units that can use recently.

My suggestion is that each item type could be put in it's own submenu. So if I'm looking for a bow or a pair of gloves for the current unit, I could see just the couple bows or gloves I have. Potions and Books could have their own list, too. The only ones that might be nice to treat specially are the sets of items that go together, but they could have a sub menu called "Item Sets" and appear in both that list and their appropriate item list. I'm not sure what list "Glitch Item" would go in, so maybe it would be good to have a list for "other", or still allow access to the full list as a seperate option.

Also, I managed to get a couple of "50 gold" items in my inventory, I think maybe because a leader dropped them when killed on the last turn. They did seem to give me the gold when I selected them, though, so maybe this was intended.

Once I'm done with Chapter 5, I'll give a report on what items were always used (hint: swords and bows, for all those elves), and which I never seemed to have a good unit for.

As always, feel free to ignore my suggestions, or put them on the backlog. You don't have to delay Chapter 9 for it.

[Dugi]

You don't have to carry all these items in the storage, because the units you lost will be brought back. I have no idea how is wesnoth played on touch-only devices. I even if I threw there like 100 items, it was not a problem to scroll through them with a normal mouse. At this point, it might not be hard to split the list into more lists, but I prefer if it is all together, because it is more comfortable to me (and, Wesnoth is primarily played on Windows, where scrolling is no problem). Adding one more menu to click through would be tedious IMO. I might move the axes and spears to the bottom of the list if you want.
Btw, glitch item would be stored with books.

Getting the 50 gold item into inventory is obviously caused by bosses who dropped it when you won, and you're right that I should fix this. You can get the gold if you take it from there simply because the code for picking items is always the same.

[Elendil]

Chap 6, scenario 8 "Misguiding Lives", Charles the Counsellor is repeating twice ""A messenger recently came to him. Maybe it was her."
Is that normal?

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

[message]
			speaker=Charles
			message= _ "A messenger recently came to him. Maybe it was her."
		[/message]
		[message]
			speaker=Efraim
			message= _ "Are you the counsellor responsible of taking care of the young heir before he grows up properly to be able to rule this town?"
		[/message]
		[message]
			speaker=Charles
			message= _ "A messenger recently came to him. Maybe it was her."
		[/message]

Scenario 9 "Across the Barren Lands" has a turn limit of 200, and we keep 100% of the gold at the end, making us start the next scenario with 15K gold.

Chap 7, scenario 1, there is a typo in the mayor's speech. He's saying magicain instead of magician.

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

    [message]
     speaker=mayor
     message= _ "Better do not call him fool. He was formerly an important magicain here, but [...]"
    [/message]

[Khar]

Hi,

first thing - thank you for the campaign. its great. i appriciate especially the RPG part of it. However i found some bugs and unbalancements.

1) some of the artefacts dont disappear after using them (or crushing them), eventhough they should (so i have unlimited number of them) - for example Holy sword, some armors, knifes....

2) i just finished 2.chapter and i have the feeling there is quite a big inbalacments between main characters and normal units. Main characters are nearly immortal and other units are wery mortal - its difficult to level them up. Since i trained and equiped my main characters for fast movement and strong attack, im usually able to kill enemy leaders without recruiting any army. And if i try to fight "properly" i usually loose all my units and win just with main character also.

3) leveling up and achievments. i found book of fireball and trained Efraim to cast really powerfull fireballs, then i got acheivment for collecting enemies souls, i choose fireball path and it offer me to learn another fireball...i would expect that it would allow me to improve my existing fireballs...

4)if you start chapter as a new campaign (not by continuing from last one) main characters are stronger. They have same ammount of leveling up i already achieved, but they need less experience for next level...so after few scenarios the difference can be pretty huge

[SchDerGrosse]

[/quote]

2) i just finished 2.chapter and i have the feeling there is quite a big inbalacments between main characters and normal units. Main characters are nearly immortal and other units are wery mortal - its difficult to level them up. Since i trained and equiped my main characters for fast movement and strong attack, im usually able to kill enemy leaders without recruiting any army. And if i try to fight "properly" i usually loose all my units and win just with main character also.

This doesnt sound too good.


My question is, how extensively (if at all) was this series of scenarios tested?
I assume it is pretty hard to balance the progression and the difficulty for such a long campaign (100+ maps if I got it right).

Id really like to give LotI a try but having second thoughts atm.
I wouldnt want to invest dozens of hours into the game just to see that the whole thing goes haywire from the middle.


thx

[gfgtdf]

Hi,

first thing - thank you for the campaign. its great. i appriciate especially the RPG part of it. However i found some bugs and unbalancements.

1) some of the artefacts dont disappear after using them (or crushing them), eventhough they should (so i have unlimited number of them) - for example Holy sword, some armors, knifes....

2) i just finished 2.chapter and i have the feeling there is quite a big inbalacments between main characters and normal units. Main characters are nearly immortal and other units are wery mortal - its difficult to level them up. Since i trained and equiped my main characters for fast movement and strong attack, im usually able to kill enemy leaders without recruiting any army. And if i try to fight "properly" i usually loose all my units and win just with main character also.

3) leveling up and achievments. i found book of fireball and trained Efraim to cast really powerfull fireballs, then i got acheivment for collecting enemies souls, i choose fireball path and it offer me to learn another fireball...i would expect that it would allow me to improve my existing fireballs...

4)if you start chapter as a new campaign (not by continuing from last one) main characters are stronger. They have same ammount of leveling up i already achieved, but they need less experience for next level...so after few scenarios the difference can be pretty huge

1)thats i bug that appeared with the new inventory spuppose it will be fixed someday.
2)ye if your leader has good items / a lot advancements they can win most levels without any new units (there are still some levels where thats not the case i think), but "normal" units can get strong too especialy some can get verygood abilites (Lvl6 leadership of duke, Hit and Run of elvish gryphon rider, for instance). Especialy in Chapter 3 i had a lot of very strong "normal" units at the end. (but i have to admit that the i changed the +20% exp per amla to +10% per amla)
3)the is somewhere a note that you shouldn't learn from books wirh your heros, however maybe you second advancement of fireball path will inprove both fireballs, i dont know.
4) they have all the amlas you already archieved if you start a new campain? thats strange. the reason that they need less exp is, that there is a general exp modifier that affects all the units, because you have no leveled up unit from the previous scenarios to make it more equal , but thats lasts only for a few scenarios.

[flyskippy1]

Hi,

first thing - thank you for the campaign. its great. i appriciate especially the RPG part of it. However i found some bugs and unbalancements.

1) some of the artefacts dont disappear after using them (or crushing them), eventhough they should (so i have unlimited number of them) - for example Holy sword, some armors, knifes....

2) i just finished 2.chapter and i have the feeling there is quite a big inbalacments between main characters and normal units. Main characters are nearly immortal and other units are wery mortal - its difficult to level them up. Since i trained and equiped my main characters for fast movement and strong attack, im usually able to kill enemy leaders without recruiting any army. And if i try to fight "properly" i usually loose all my units and win just with main character also.

3) leveling up and achievments. i found book of fireball and trained Efraim to cast really powerfull fireballs, then i got acheivment for collecting enemies souls, i choose fireball path and it offer me to learn another fireball...i would expect that it would allow me to improve my existing fireballs...

4)if you start chapter as a new campaign (not by continuing from last one) main characters are stronger. They have same ammount of leveling up i already achieved, but they need less experience for next level...so after few scenarios the difference can be pretty huge

1)thats i bug that appeared with the new inventory spuppose it will be fixed someday.
2)ye if your leader has good items / a lot advancements they can win most levels without any new units (there are still some levels where thats not the case i think), but "normal" units can get strong too especialy some can get verygood abilites (Lvl6 leadership of duke, Hit and Run of elvish gryphon rider, for instance). Especialy in Chapter 3 i had a lot of very strong "normal" units at the end. (but i have to admit that the i changed the +20% exp per amla to +10% per amla)
3)the is somewhere a note that you shouldn't learn from books wirh your heros, however maybe you second advancement of fireball path will inprove both fireballs, i dont know.
4) they have all the amlas you already archieved if you start a new campain? thats strange. the reason that they need less exp is, that there is a general exp modifier that affects all the units, because you have no leveled up unit from the previous scenarios to make it more equal , but thats lasts only for a few scenarios.

1) Yeah, that bug got fixed in the latest release.
2) I find you can play it several ways, often using just your leaders, going for a few good units, or a lot of cannon fodder. Obviously there is a lot of flexibility. I found that dIfferent Chapters lent themselves to different approaches. In Chapter 4 especially, you have a lot of cannon fodder and need strong leaders. Chapter 3 lends itself to building up a few good units, but the enemies are tough, so they need support. Chapter 1 lends itself to variety. Chapter 2 is probably the best for really building up some super units. In Chapter 5, if you played all the way through, you can get everybody back and have a good chance to level and gear up a bunch of them.
3) Books aren't really useful for your leaders, especially as they add +20% exp for the next AMLA. I didn't realize this either on my first playthrough, though.
4) I'm guessing it's tough to balance the difficulty for both people continuing and those starting fresh. Especially Chapters 2 and 3. This likely helps a bit.