Return from the Abyss [SP campaign for 1.12/1.14]

[Paulomat4]

I definitely find it amazing how far ppl manage to play in this campaign... Does it even have 24 scenarios?

Sry, I typed scenario 24 but meant scenario 3. It was because I thought about the 24 turn limit thing.

Mmm ok, it's probably not very clear. The 'or' is between resisting 24 turns and closing the tunnels. The third objective instead is mandatory (Find more information about Thoadarak king's power), so if turns run out without doing that, it's a loss. Any suggestion on how to make this crystal clear? adding '(mandatory)' after the third objective?

How about changing the order so that it's
-Find more information about Thoadarak king's power
-resist for 24 turn OR
-close the tunnels

[Inky]

Played the next two scenarios (Campaign version 0.0.3b). The new fire overlay for the miners is really nice!

About the HP loss bug, it seems to happen when a resilient or healthy unit starts their turn next to the unit with the Cave Agility ability?

S3 Old Castle
I think I'm going to have nightmares about centipedes now!

-Most of the images show up now, but the Electric Centipede image still does not display.
-It's a bit odd that actually the slower you finish the first part of the scenario (killing the leader), the more gold you'll have for the second half. You'd have a pretty easy time for the second half if you just farmed gold for the first 35 turns since you have high income, so maybe the initial turns should be reduced to 20+? (It took me 17 turns to kill the leader on my first attempt, and 18 turns on my second attempt.)
-Objectives: Another way to make them more clear is to add a defeat condition: Turns run out without finding the information.

Replay summary: 144 starting gold. Wow, this scenario was extremely hard! I got brutally destroyed by the horde of eastern centipedes on my first attempt, so I restarted the scenario and went for a "cannon fodder dwarves" approach where I spammed dwarves and proceeded to have them soak up the centipede attacks...not a single dwarf survived. I moved Eridon to the altar early on, then defended the center for the rest of the turns. There were a couple times where a leader should have died but got lucky. 15 losses: lvl 3 Mighwar, lvl 2 Muharib, lvl 3 Tineen, 12 dwarves

S4 Intruders from the Surface
Replay summary: 120 starting gold (minimum). I was relieved to find that this scenario was doable with minimum gold since I did a terrible job at gold management last scenario. Recalled some powerful veterans and sent them up the west side, so I only had to fight through about half the orcish army since the other half went down the east side. Won on my first attempt; finished turn 18/29, 0 losses.

Some typos:

Spoiler:

04 The Old Castle

29: Othrondor decided, not without worries, to let one of his generals in charge of the war -> leave
29: Beside, -> Besides,
344: each miners -> each miner
382: There are trolls in these cave! -> this cave / these caves
502: I am deeply admired. -> impressed / awed
522: It must be an access outpost to the castle, or I'm not a dwarf -> missing . at end
530: That road must have lead somewhere -> led
664: humans merchants -> human merchants
672: It is a long time I don't practice my translation from the high language -> It has been a long time since I've practiced
709: it makes perfectly sense -> perfect
741: What we need to understand is why did everybody left? -> why everybody left. / why did everybody leave?
783: They certainly run away in haste! -> ran
878: Nowadays very few dwarves explorers dares to open new routes -> dwarvish; dare
883: Some of our people still thinks -> think
883: But the few attempts made were not more successful of our naval expeditions -> than
908: Or possible any other time reference for their dating system -> possibly; missing . at end
964: several pages were teared away -> torn
1233: Despite of the rust -> Despite the rust
1389: This is matter that requires the highest secrecy. -> This is a matter

05 Audience with Othrondor

15: the way Othrondor lead them in battle -> led
149: if King Long-beard keep holding us here -> keeps
153: I wished I could see my family again before dying, but if that has not to happen, -> is
157: We are doing the dirty job for the dwarves, -> work
157: while they are attend their own business! -> they attend
165: Crawling in the caves and inspect underground lakes -> inspecting
181: Sometime I regret -> Sometimes
250: Our pact were clear, -> was
300: Only if we are unite we will be strong -> Only if we are united will we be strong

06 Intruders from the Surface

22: If they had found a way in, they must knew the way out! -> know
25: the perspective of seeing the sunlight was the only thing that could motivate my men to fight again -> prospect
28: being him involved in other urgent businesses. -> him being
205: Our man are surrounded! -> men
221: I took a decision, there is no comeback. -> there is no turning back.
225: warves -> Dwarves
229: I may regret this the whole life, -> my
245: send one of your scout -> scouts
265: I weighted the consequences of either choice many times -> weighed
368: we should move fast. -> We
368: Dwarves reinforcements -> Dwarvish / The dwarves'

[skeptical_troll]

About the HP loss bug, it seems to happen when a resilient or healthy unit starts their turn next to the unit with the Cave Agility ability?

well catched! It seems that if I give a unit an object to reduce its momevent costs on cave, it reduces its HP by 2 on the next turn. Maybe it's a bug, I'm gonna start a post in WMLworkshop about it.

S3 seems indeed too hard compared to what I wanted. Part of the reason is also the low gold at start you had, consequence of the previous scenario. I definitely need some more tuning of the S2-S3 sequence. For the moment I increased a bit the starting gold in S3, in the future I think I'll go for toning down enemies in S2, so it will be possible to finish earlier (which also implies to advance less units). On the good side, as you have noted the following scenarios are not nearly as hard (4-5 should be fairly straightforward, 6 could get intense).

What I personally do (I mostly test on medium though) at the beginning is using the stone elementals to level up some bulky dwarves (don't even bother recalling more than 1-2 khalifa veterans), which fight well regardless of the light. Then I recall some veterans and try to hold the NE bridge and the biforcation of the river to the N, fighting centipedes in water and with a small force dealing with the stream from the south. I think you didn't really have enough money to split forces in such way though.

-It's a bit odd that actually the slower you finish the first part of the scenario (killing the leader), the more gold you'll have for the second half.

good point, I decreased the initial turn limit, but it still looks quite weird. Maybe I can think of some sort of compensation for killing him earlier.

-Objectives: Another way to make them more clear is to add a defeat condition: Turns run out without finding the information.

Like it!

[taptap]

The new version of Trial of Arms is much improved, the dialog helps a lot. I added another replay that was strictly speaking a failure (I added turns to see the end this time) - although with slightly better disposition (less units to scorpion) or luck (no need to regroup in southeast) I might have finished within time. While Wesnoth relies heavily on imposing time limits (without time limit this one would not be half as difficult) it would help immersion to have a reason for the limit. As is it just feels a bit arbitrary and it is a long >60 turns scenario, so not something you would want to repeat over and over. If the turn limit is mainly about gold carryover on lower difficulties you can always change carryover conditions. Lower percentage or no carryover (but higher starting gold). And congratulations for the spider micro-AI, pretty unpredictable and nasty compared to default Wesnoth experience.

I took my obligatory beating by centipedes as well. It appears to me that you could simply make two scenarios on the same map, this would give some compensation to early finishers for missing out on gold and experience against the stones. I was surprised to see them coming mainly from the east and south when their spawns? were mainly north of the town. I initially thought I can hold the north and push southwest to close one of the spawns, but had to rush back to defend the east and southeast. Levelled dwarves both guards and fighters are really useful here - players expecting the scenario to be only stones (no preknowledge) might be discouraged from using dwarves by the objective description.

[Inky]

Played the next two scenarios (campaign version 0.0.4).

More on the HP bug: It seems like if an AMLAed unit starts their turn next to the Cave Agility unit, they will get healed to full no matter what HP they were at!

Scenario 3: Maybe another option is to have the player find some gold in the chest equal to what the early finish bonus would have been.

S5 Kidnapped Shaman
Replay summary: 176 starting gold. A relatively easy scenario. Split forces in half; small western force blocked western bridge bottlenecks while eastern force fought in the 3 hex cave bottleneck. Finished turn 21/28, 1 loss (orc grunt).

-Gold carryover issue: I had 54 gold carryover which carried over to the next cutscene, but then instead of adding to the next scenario's minimum gold it took the maximum so I started scenario 6 with minimum gold.

S6 The Path to Light
-I felt that there were maybe too many nagas; all my units were low on health from the initial fight with the nagas, and they never got a chance to heal since more and more nagas kept coming. So at the end I had a bunch of dying units running through the caves chased by an angry naga horde
-It would be nice if the two halves of the lake connected to each other, because right now they're separated by deep water so if you sent some units exploring the eastern side they're stuck and have to double back. (Or maybe just make the eastern area inaccessible since it's the wrong way.)
-The 60 gold from the ogre seemed pointless since by that time you are probably already pretty negative on gold.

Replay summary: 180 (minimum) starting gold. Used only Khalifate units (somewhat accidentally; I had moved the orc leader away before I remembered to recruit with him), mostly Shujas/Khalids. I ended up ignoring the ghosts area since there were too many ghosts to deal with. The most difficult part of the scenario was after getting to the lake, where there were nagas everywhere!! I mostly just tried to run away with the help of Cave Agility. Somehow I managed not to lose anyone except the wolf rider, but everyone was dying at the end. Finished turn 124 (took my time since there's no turn limit).

Typos/suggestions:

Spoiler:

07 Orcish shaman
110: these other humans will help us punishing their counterparts. -> punish
118: those who kidnapped Falaweè will not live enough to tell it. -> live / live long enough
122: the dwarves will return in forces -> force
248: Falawè -> Falaweè

08 Farewell to arzeh
90: Beside -> Besides

09 Path to light
617: Digged -> Dug
621: dragons aren't but good stories to scary kids. -> scare
637: It is also darker than in the dwarves halls -> dwarves'
637: toarches -> torches
730: it was all silent and quite -> quiet
761: undergound -> underground
761: intelligeable -> intelligible
810: Unlesss -> Unless
961: I wonder if we'll se them again. -> see

[skeptical_troll]

@taptap

While Wesnoth relies heavily on imposing time limits (without time limit this one would not be half as difficult) it would help immersion to have a reason for the limit. As is it just feels a bit arbitrary and it is a long >60 turns scenario, so not something you would want to repeat over and over. If the turn limit is mainly about gold carryover on lower difficulties you can always change carryover conditions

I think I'll set a very tolerant time limit (80>), but with a declining carryover percentage over time, so it's 40% if you finish at 60 and 0 if you take all your time. I agree that being forced of replaying this longish scenario could be a serious fun killer, and it's only scenario 2! The story reason for the turn limit could easily be part of the trial: if you are not able to secure the cave in a reasonable time, it means that you are not efficient enough to be useful for dwarves.

And congratulations for the spider micro-AI, pretty unpredictable and nasty compared to default Wesnoth experience.

well, congratulations to whoever coded it! I only recently got acquainted with micro_ais and they really offer lot of possibilities for scenario design (I'm using a lot of them in part 2).

It appears to me that you could simply make two scenarios on the same map

Yes, either this or Inky's suggestion of a calibrated gold could work. The gold chest is the simplest, although a bit less transparent for the player.

@Inky

More on the HP bug: It seems like if an AMLAed unit starts their turn next to the Cave Agility unit, they will get healed to full no matter what HP they were at!

Damn, the 2 HP thing was almost tolerable, this would be too much. For the moment I will just change the ability such that max lvl units are not affected.

Thanks for nothing the carryover issue, I obviously forgot 'carryover_add=yes'. Fixed now

Nagas: They are probably a bit of a tomato surprise now. Point is, once you trigger them they start spawning like hell, so ideally you should be already in formation ready to cross the lake. I tried to warn the player with a short dialogue when the player is approaching the lake, I may need to make it more specific. I kinda like the naga-horde chasing at the end though, it adds some suspense.
Lake: ok, will close access to the eastern part. I could also reconnect the two sides to the north, but I fell nobody would survive if going east, so that would be just a nasty trap.
Ogre's gold: I am not sure that it is that useless. I typically start this scenario with lvl1 (lot of orcs) units and make an effort to keep villages from rats and bats while fighting ogres, and not necessarily go too negative. Beside, there is another gold chest to reward the braves who access the eastern water cave.

as for the ghost part:

Spoiler:

one can certainly try a brute force approach with fire-based units, however the easiest way is to send a skirmisher (Monawish,Mighwar) along the bridges. Ghosts attack only from the chasms (Falaweè hints at that) and will not get in your way, plus, you'll find out that units are healed when switching glyphs on. Anyway, all this is just for a little bonus, nothing crucial.

EDIT: @Inky: looking at your reply now, I am afraid I have not made clear anywhere that the shaman has the 'instigation' ability and he gives a bonus to units at unfavorable time of the day (basically all khalifate units in this scenario).


Thanks for testing this part, that was very useful!

[taptap]

Old castle: I refreshed the campaign but did not read the objectives for the additional hint. Seriously a simple move-to event? I mean not that hard to figure out what the key is meant for, but I wasn't really in role playing mode. I would have been able to break out to the place even at the end of 24 turns, which is what I half expected. Otherwise really nice scenario. (Replay may still be useful.)

Intruders from the Surface: Real treat... good dialog and a breather scenario for once. I went through the river, mainly w/ recruits + loyals, got the job done despite the darkness and avoided killing all the orcs. (I was somewhat scared by a slurbow.)

Kidnapped shaman: In the first attempt I underrecruited and could not push through in time. (Enemies coming back as undead gives them some surprising resilience in bottlenecks.) In the second attempt I was working both fronts and it was smooth going. (Got a bit careless here and there, but nothing horrible happened as a result.)

Bob's RPG era features a vast number of movement changing items incl. for caves, while probably not 1 to 1 compatible, none of it had the problem the cave ring has.

[skeptical_troll]

I uploaded a new version (0.0.5). The most important modification is turn limit/carryover in scenario 2 (Trial of arms). Now at time over the player will not lose, but each turn the carryover percentage will decrease by 4% (so it's 0 after 10 turns). In principle, if the player is low at gold and high at income at the end of the turns, it may be convenient for him/her to wait few turns, but that will require doing the math.
I also added a 'dummy' epilogue at the end of the last scenario of this first part: when the next part will be released it will be sufficient to load this dummy epilogue to continue, instead of replaying the last scenario which is rather long (apologies to those who finished already, I didn't think of this before, :n from the last turn of the previous one should also work, if you saved there).
There is now one more lighthouse in scenario 3, to help (scare?) the player seeing centipedes arriving from the east.

@taptap:

Seriously a simple move-to event?

mm I might make it more clear, maybe adding a key overlay to Eridon, if somebody misses the dialogue? An alternative possibility I thought of was putting some guards next the altar (like lava elementals), but then I decided that the player was busy enough with centipedes/worms and protecting Eridon out of the fortress for a few turns was a sufficient diversion.

Bob's RPG era features a vast number of movement changing items incl. for caves, while probably not 1 to 1 compatible, none of it had the problem the cave ring has

I'll have a look there if there's something similar to what I want. The main problem here is that I want the bearer of the ring to affect also adjacent units for a turn, and apparently there is a bug when changing movement_cost with temporary objects. I notified it with the bug tracker, hopefully it will be eventually fixed. I am considering what to do for the moment, the worst is the effect on AMLAed units Simplest thing would be to reduce the effect to the bearer only, but that will be much less useful.

[Inky]

taptap: wow, that is a nice replay of Old Castle, so many leveled dwarves! Definitely better than just getting them all killed like I did

Minor note: I noticed Arzeh's trait is random, maybe he should be resilient? (he has 45 HP with resilient vs. 37 with quick, a pretty big difference).

Path to Light nagas: Oh I see, I thought there was an initial large wave of nagas plus spawns but it turns out I had just let them pile up by being too slow So it's probably fine as is.

Also, I found the note about the orcs being with you for two more scenarios a little ambiguous - I wasn't sure whether Path to Light was included in this count.

instead of replaying the last scenario which is rather long (apologies to those who finished already, I didn't think of this before, :n from the last turn of the previous one should also work, if you saved there)

Actually :n wouldn't work but :cl (choose level) would. And to get a last turn save, you can view your replay until the last turn, and then save the game from the replay file, then load the saved game.

[Sudipta]

Actually :n wouldn't work but :cl (choose level) would. And to get a last turn save, you can view your replay until the last turn, and then save the game from the replay file, then load the saved game.

Wow! U can do that? I had no idea. TIL something new.

[skeptical_troll]

I noticed Arzeh's trait is random, maybe he should be resilient? (

good idea, a quick arzeh is definitely too fragile. He's resilient in the new version

Also, I found the note about the orcs being with you for two more scenarios a little ambiguous - I wasn't sure whether Path to Light was included in this count.

changed that to 'also in the next two scenarios'. Actually I've never been sure about the utility of these notes. They certainly help planning, but they are also a bit of a spoiler. Plus, in this campaign there is the recruit limit which should encourage players to use allied units.

Actually :n wouldn't work but :cl (choose level) would

of course, you're right!

Good news is that I found a way to code the cave agility ability without objects (wasn't actually that hard), so now it's bug-free! Unfortunately the change will not take effect if you already picked the ring.
I also added the bonus for killing the elemental leader early in 'the Old Castle', 12/turn before the limit. With the last modifications, the combination S2-S3 should be less hard than before (hopefully still challenging).

[taptap]

I am in the process to see the light again... man this is a long scenario, 100 turns and counting. Feels more like roguelike than Wesnoth. Random thought: In War of the Dragon (maybe elsewhere as well) there is a little spear overlay for a char that picks up a special spear (5th scenario Hydra). Would suit perfectly.

[skeptical_troll]

yes, it's a long and hard path to the light! Splitting the scenario in two is one of the things I am considering but it could be complicated. Or there could be a 'check point' inbetween, so that there is no need to restart from the beginning. Of course the players can already do that, but maybe if there is an 'official' save point they would feel less guilty of save-loading from the middle of a scenario.

n War of the Dragon (maybe elsewhere as well) there is a little spear overlay for a char that picks up a special spear (5th scenario Hydra). Would suit perfectly.

Thanks for the idea, found and stolen!

[Gitanomad_X]

I find this campaign fascinating. Any chance of an update any time soon?

[skeptical_troll]

Hi Gitanomad_X, thanks for your words!
I am currently playtesting the scenarios of the second part. Some of them are a bit complex, so it's taking some time, but they will be likely released before Christmas. It will be 7 more scenarios (2 of which mutuallly exclusive).