Hunters of the East

taptap · Post by **taptap** » March 3rd, 2016, 2:05 pm

ahmannar wrote:Can someone tell me how important is to get a good number of footpads and thugs from scenario 3? I only managed to survive with 2 footpads and 1 thug(also have every possible loyal until this point, 1 spearman and two loyalist bowman´s) and the will to repeat this scenario again(needed 3 tries until i got it finally) is at a low level.

Every possible loyal unit is more than everyone else in this thread. It is not that important, but keep recruiting ruffians and try to level up a few footpad and thug line units in later scenarios, they will be very useful in different occasions (e.g. scenario 7 and 9).

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 3rd, 2016, 5:39 pm

@inky

Inky wrote:The fishermen + ruffians actually managed to team up and kill some chocobones!

I'm so proud of them!

Anyway, you gave me an idea on how to simplify this scenario: I will add some guardian footpads/thugs to the peasants to protect the leaders while your forces arrive. They won't look out of the place and it won't change too much the dynamic of the scenario.

Scenario 15:
sneaky tactic is definitely the way here. I guess the level becomes close to trivial once you realize it but well, you first need to realize it!

Scenario 16:
Ok, will decrease a bit the undeads gold. Concerning kylp, I am considering of forcing him to level up into white (although most people will already think: I'm fighting undeads->need white mage), it would also be consistent with his initial dialogue. I do not want to provide healers though, it will change too much the way of playing and I can't think of a story motivation behind it.

Concerning the ending (big spoiler)

Spoiler:

Thanks a lot for playing the campaign and providing all the feedback (and also for the text corrections), yours and Taptap's suggestions brought lot of improvements!

@ahmannar

ahmannar wrote:how important is to get a good number of footpads and thugs from scenario 3?

I agree with Taptap, it shouldn't be a major problem, but since you know you will face undeads at some point, plan to get some good impact-dealer in the next scenarios. If you have other high-level units you can team them up with ruffians to promote them.

Post by **Inky** » March 5th, 2016, 4:32 am

Kylp (contains some gameplay spoilers):

Spoiler:

Typos (12 - end):

Spoiler:

RainerT · Post by **RainerT** » March 5th, 2016, 6:22 pm

Hi,

I just found a smaller bug. If I place an elvish marksman next to a drake he doesn't get fire damage. All the other bow units get it. My first thought was, it might have to do with the marksman skill, but the huntsman doesn't have the problem.

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 5th, 2016, 8:32 pm

RainerT wrote:If I place an elvish marksman next to a drake he doesn't get fire damage. All the other bow units get it

Thanks for noting it. Today I learnt that elvish marksmen/sharpshooters' weapon is actually named 'longbow' and not 'bow'. Curiously enough, even the longbowman has a 'bow' instead. I fixed the code accordingly, in the last version (1.1.11b) also these two units will get fire damage.

@Inky: thanks once more for the corrections.
Kylp (also story spoiler)

Spoiler:

RainerT · Post by **RainerT** » March 8th, 2016, 6:23 am

skeptical_troll wrote:Thanks for noting it. Today I learnt that elvish marksmen/sharpshooters' weapon is actually named 'longbow' and not 'bow'. Curiously enough, even the longbowman has a 'bow' instead. I fixed the code accordingly, in the last version (1.1.11b) also these two units will get fire damage.

It works fine now. I'm facing a problem in the final scenario. Harilur doesn't enter the keep and simply stays outside. By the way, why don't you give control of the elves to the player in the final scenario? That would also solve the problem of healers for the human side.

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 8th, 2016, 8:35 am

RainerT wrote:Harilur doesn't enter the keep and simply stays outside

uoops

I recenlty made him passive to prevent suicidal attacks, but didn't realize there was this problem. Fixed now!

RainerT wrote:By the way, why don't you give control of the elves to the player in the final scenario?

This would make the scenario really straightforward, and it is a bit against the spirit of the story. The challenge of this one is to resist without healers (or one at most, if you have white Kylp). Unless many other players request otherwise, I'd prefer to keep things as they are.

taptap · Post by **taptap** » March 23rd, 2016, 9:47 pm

Can't say I enjoy the river crossing, since the other campaign I started has a scenario full of hidden units as well, I guess I will try again, but it is painful.

Post by **Inky** » March 24th, 2016, 12:55 am

taptap wrote:Can't say I enjoy the river crossing, since the other campaign I started has a scenario full of hidden units as well, I guess I will try again, but it is painful.

On that one I found it really helpful to spam some fire elementals (you get a bunch of gold from the middle island, so you can afford it). Since they can fly they are great for covering your flanks, the bone shooters love targeting them and they even do some nice retaliation before they die.

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 24th, 2016, 11:04 am

taptap wrote:Can't say I enjoy the river crossing

When I designed this scenario it looked like a good idea, after playing it I realize one needs to be super careful and disciplined, and it may become kind of a tedious exercise. I'm inclined to leave it for story reason and for variety, as it is the only scenario of this kind in the campaign, but if I receive many negative opinions about it I'm happy to make it shorter/smoother. I am personally not a big fan of crawling scenarios, but maybe other people think otherwise.

Inky wrote:I found it really helpful to spam some fire elementals

Nice idea, I never did that! One thing I like here is to spam poachers and put them in the front supported by drakes to screen precious units. Many will die, but it's likely that you'll level up few of them, which will be useful in the next and in the last scenarios. they'll also give good retaliation by night.

taptap · Post by **taptap** » March 26th, 2016, 9:23 pm

Yes, the crossing is not the most enjoyable scenario. Being completely blind and having to protect so many units is not really my kind of scenario. I don't usually mind crawling, but being blind in a wargame while having to protect so many.

Kylp: Only made Kylp a white mage because I read this thread.

About the story: The town of the duke has fallen... now it is our time to shine as a hero, when we did all we could to weaken it by forcing an additional war on them. Very clever decision, but at least we got our armour for that. Responsible leadership and coalition building much. So we sacrificed the town of the Duke for our armour, so let us now waste two out of five sets on rangers, one of them our leader, who has no business in the first rank anyway (I have several highwaymen, who would get so much more work out of armour). (Gave the other three to loyals fighting in the first rank: Benny, the Master Archer with the amulet and Athorvast the Mighty.) I don't like where the romance is going, if it endangers the alliance maybe one of our protagonists should be able to put duty before love. Especially Swethorvast who was once driven by an urge for revenge.

At the start of "Legend of Swethorvast" I have an odd wose in the recall list and I don't know how he got there (if intentional, it should be mentioned somewhere). The scenario objectives since Tocletus write that archers can "throw fire darts" when adjacent to drakes - a dart is not an arrow, "arrows do fire damage when shot from a tile adjacent to a drake" is probably better.

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 26th, 2016, 11:44 pm

Ok, I'll think of ways of improving the crossing scenario. Suggestions are welcome. In a late version of the campaign Kylp is forced to level up to white mage, but that was after you played scenario 11 so wasn't effective in you play through.
The wose in the recall list is not intentional, will be removed with the next release.

I also changed the description of the drake ability, thanks for the suggestion.

Concerning the story: it is my fault I probably didn't characterize the duke well enough. In my idea he is a really negative and egoist character. He called all soldiers of the region at his service without bothering of leaving the villages unguarded and gave gold to the orcs who would use it to raid somewhere else. He wouldn't accept to use his men to reconquer the forest or to secure the villages, so an alliance is not a viable option. What he was useful for was basically to hold the position as long as he could. Swethorvast's decision was between not interfering in the duke's businesses with the orcs or take his gold, weaken him a bit (hard to quantify how much anyway), but have the opportunity of use that gold for his own plan. I think his final decision was in line with his personality, at least the way I think of it. The elves had a different opinion, Harilur explicitly says that it's just better to fight without armors and not to mess up with the duke. So I may need to make this clearer, but I fear that there is already too much dialogue in the campaign and I'm not sure where to put it.

Armors: I don't agree that they are wasted on the two rangers, as they are great damage dealers when combined with drakes and it's good to have them protected. Given that there are compelling story reasons to give them the armors, I may consider giving more than five, possibly depending on the difficulty level. This however will change the balance, in particular of the last scenario.

taptap · Post by **taptap** » March 27th, 2016, 9:21 am

Maybe I am too verbose ... anyway, I am just writing down my impressions without any clear thought how to improve. (I only write all this because I do like the campaign in case this isn't obvious.)

Duke's town: What makes this part of the story so unconvincing to me is that I (player) see as prudent (concentration of forces in the town) what you try to show as weakness and "egoism" and lack of courage. He should have helped evacuating peasants, yes, but garrisoning the countryside a few soldiers per village would do no good against a major threat like an undead invasion? I.e. I take this argument as Swethorvast thinking like a civilian ("The Duke has to protect us and failed to do so."). I am not convinced that Swethorvast's raid just weakened them a little - it explicitly forces an additional war on them. When we meet them next the town is gone and we are trying to rescue refugees without one thought spent about our part in the downfall of the town, it might have happened anyway, but as far as the player can tell we forced them into a war and next they lost the town against a second enemy we knew about when doing so. Swethorvast just acted like a bandit or a clueless guy advised by bandits there. (And one of the bandits is giving all the bad advice and personally does very well in the process, revenge on the duke, get a lordly armour...) Now disregard for civilians is probably appropriate for bandits or medieval military leaders, but Swethorvast was shown to think like a civilian just before and a civilian whose last alive relatives might have been in the town, even if not true for the survivors of Drybridge, it explicitly is for those of Bantwood (Rorth). (I think you miss the opportunity to foreshadow what comes next with a short confrontation between Rorth and Den. You could even branch the story by choice between advisors here.) All of this has very little to do with the person of the duke, who could be the worst possible guy without changing the argument. The town standing is the best chance for survival for most humans in the area, this and killing of necromancers were the two main motivations for Swethorvast at one point.

Armour: Please no more armour, 5 is plenty. I suppose you started with an idea to go to the dwarves, but crafting dwarves not fighting dwarves. So armour it was, then payment was required and for payment you ended with a robbery scenario, which is quite fun to play after all. And to motivate the whole thing the master has to give you bad advice. This is very understandable and the scenarios do play well, but I believe it weakens the story. On my own I would not have given armour to a recruiting leader at any point (I gave the rod in Northern Rebirth to Zlex), but tanky loyals and main damage dealers against the undead. Of course, I would happily trade all the armours for a chance to help the town when still sieged (without us weakening them / wasting less time on gathering armour) instead of coming late and saving refugees.

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 27th, 2016, 11:01 am

You feedback and criticisms are really appreciated, it is very useful too see how somebody else sees the story, as I obviously could not write down everything I was thinking about, and even what I did could be ambiguous given that english is not my native language.

Duke: the way the story formed in my mind actually was that I wanted to avoid the standard scheme of seeking alliance with everybody against the evil guys, and let the main characters depart from the spotless-hero stereotype with some morally debatable actions. I actually had in mind something like the ambush scenario long before the dwarves and the Master came into place.

Then the war/military situation as I imagine it is: undeads start with incursions in the villages, like at the beginning of the campaign. at this point having few soldiers in each village would be really helpful, at least for safe evacuations, but they are in the town serving the duke. This goes on for few years, while Swethorvast and friends stay in the forest. In the region there are band of orcs, rather than a real army, who likes to raid civilians. The duke is paying them a tribute to avoid raids on the town (I wasn't quite thinking of a real war with the orcs), so he is like spending people taxes to make orcs stronger, who will then keep raiding people's villages.

The undead invasion become a more serious issue after the expedition to find the master is organized (scenario 5-6-7), and at this point I imagine that they start putting some pressure on the duke as well. At this point Swethorvast has to make a choice: help the duke with their current strength, which they felt unsure about, without expecting much help from him in return; or take his gold at the risk of exposing him and the town's inhabitants to orcs raids, but gaining the possibility of paying the dwarves and build a stronger army to pursue his own goals, thereby following the Master's advice (who could not know about this in advance!). Had Rorth been there, he would have surely advised against banditry, but he's gone in scenario 7.
So basically Swethorvast had to weight the weakening of the duke's protection on the civilians against what he could personally do for them with a stronger army. I agree this is not an easy call, but I think it is reasonable that Swethorvast choose the latter, given his personality and the fact that the duke is not considered reliable by him.

Then yes, in my idea the fall of the town would have happened anyway, and without the means and allies acquired in scenarios 11-13 Sw & C couldn't have done much for it (but this may not be true from a player perspective).

I imagine the best thing to do is to extend a bit the dialogue between Den vs Harilur & Nirydia just before the ambush, and try to justify better Swethorvast's choice. Den could remind him that the duke abandoned Drybridge and the civilians, and convince him that he could make better use of the gold than the duke (not to say about the orcs).

Armour: ok, to be precise the story only requires that Den gets one. I may let Swethorvast show some altruism and decide not to take one himselff, unless the player wants so.

taptap · Post by **taptap** » March 28th, 2016, 1:12 pm

Still in the process of figuring out how to play Legend of Swethorvast. Moving into the center in force while leaving some reinforcements with Harilur and carefully watching gold to have income to recruit L0 reinforcements (mud and ruffians) there is my plan.

One thing I notice: the elvish allies are very frustrating. Now I am resigned to them fighting in the water, but as is you can't approach, enemy kills a few elves, elves move up kill nothing, you can't approach again until they are finished. So putting units with them feels useless, but at the same time they can't survive without significant reinforcements (at least one arcane/fire damage dealer). My last attempt given up on turn 9 had 4 wraithes closing in on the elvish leader and the tree I left would do no good either. Would it be possible to let Harilur move directly after the player not after the undead?

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